Widely published over many years in various countries in numerous magazines, journals, anthologies and competitions, most recently first prize in the Brian Nisbet poetry award. His book ’History Doesn’t Die’ came out last year.

FLOATING VOTER

Call it the hunger
of a searchlight
naked in his eyes:
he relentlessly seeks
a singer of a new song,
aligning with anybody
with the art of naming
a future to fit him.

Daydreams will launder
words pieced together
by a temporary hero
into a perfect horizon,
a vision that survives
only as far as
a round of rival promises.
Political speeches
will clock changes,
playing him wildly
for a pendulum.

Belief has crumbled
in choices, in himself.
Somewhere a cry for needs
will use his voice.
Somewhere uncertainty
will use his vote.

FLATTERY

My mouth mimes silence,
my words have settled
for an empty dictionary.

Your flattery dines
in a cage of misplaced bias
from a plate of fake news,

and the drug of embarrassment
fits me like an avalanche.

I wrap your comments
in a map of my thoughts
for translation purposes

and save them for a time
when you know who I am,

so please, feed the ego
if not the scepticism
and I’ll be your guide.

No one moment
can ever be the truth

when my whole life
doesn`t amount to that.

MEETING OF PROMISE

And if our inner clocks
recognized inevitability,
could they slow hands
to hold a moment’s breath
for the duration of
choice or circumstance?

And if our cells
reply to each other
and time pursues us
the length of a night,
could it be said we fell
for each other’s ambush?

And if tomorrow
in the count of reasons,
it all comes back
like a new address,
can it be said we tasted
the myth of love?

We are different worlds
in the same-faced disguise,
falling to the same gravity
and it cancels everything
we might have been alone.
This ain’t over yet.