Rhyl

1.

So the father and baby room
wax face boy-man
danaiad typanum skin
shoots up and exits with his fat friend
down to Queen's Market where
the air rifles are all sat up nice
and what a smashed nox glass smile


2.

The sea wall is the wall
stumm
stumm

Lupine gull whiteeyes up
my cheap cheese sarnie

Brassneck calls above
lift dry heraldic breast

Fine cream throat is tense
till the salted us tongue chant

Behold:
they're letting the slow breeze lift them
then turning
to puncture
and through
in illegal sodality


3.

He walks past with smudge moustaches
his Sindhi cap
with silver stitches

What is this place here

ident tremors

prior tender embroidery

Everybody's got a few paper cuts it shows


4.

The radio tower is made up of squares
the edges of which are oxidised

joke flowers

Think of the sea
being empty of expectations: a picture
or not

Boy turns his wind-up gun and fires

Mum calls him a little cunt and drags
her menthol till it's at the tip

The Green

3 drunks we

in remnant heat

blistering

arrangement bench

say story time
is sung blown glass

piss wet
dust stretches

shady picturing

and 4 worn leaves

lift up defeated
lift up your downy head

O Willow

From Smethwick to Wolverhampton, Birmingham Canal

Piebald pony in sham heat
roped to a lamp post
on a Tipton verge

*

It isn't love if it isn't love
goes the switch box

*

Bullrushes
compact
dark
on pen stems

definite

*

Coseley Tunnel
kept air sharpens
with droplet calcium

The front light's swamped

*

Forgive-me-nots

He's crouched by the bank
with a thin stripped branch
as if half divining

Weeds in the water
are half seen
Are they creaking?

Crickets are all
a shook
their organ legs

We PAN, with slowly streaming weeds

*

and blackberries blacken
past black to rot dust

*

At the outskirts
inflammable tanks
will dissolve
halfarsed feathered mysteries

*

well there is
no rain just
whitened sky