Birds.

These poems were written to perform at a Sundown Arts event featuring Birdwatchers' Wives, a performance piece by artist Caroline Smith.

Hide.

A twitch of tweed hat
sneeps through wooden slat.
There are caws,
and carks outside,
and whispers of reedy grass.
The lid from a flask of tea drips
cold buttons of condensation that
flash like bird's eyes on the dusty floor.
There is no drama here,
but the snaps of beaks fighting
over slivers of fish,
or the minor horror
of a dog let loose
into the hide.

Binoculars

It is midnight.
I have literally just turned eleven.
My brain is fizzing with the sense of BIRTHDAY.
My feet kick impatiently as my sister slumbers,
and I wish the next seven hours away.
I know I'll get cards,
and bath pearls,
and a Friends video,
and hopefully new felt-tip pens
but most of all
I am getting
NEW BINOCULARS.
This is highly exciting.
This means my Dad and I can tramp through woods
with our own binoculars
and look for birds.
My favourites are jays,
pied wagtails,
avocets
and great tits.
My pre-teen mind does not think to find this funny.

In my first tutorial class
in my new secondary,
all-girls,
hyper intense school,
we have to write a list of Hobbies.
I write:
Writing stories
Playing guitar
Birdwatching.

We read them out. There is a
snick of laughter
coming from the girls who put
Shopping
Cinema
Boys.

Very soon after,
the binoculars become my mum's
and I never go to Lee Valley with my Dad
to look for oystercatchers.
I go to the cinema instead.

Middle Class Woes

I'm coming to terms with my middle class woes.
It turns out I have them EVERY DAY.
There's a strike, and there is no Today programme on Radio 4! How will I know what's going on with the world?
Fairtrade cloves are FAR too crumbly to make a pomander.
I have eaten so many M&S redcurrant puffs I may burst.
Mustn't drop my laptop in the footspa while I write this.
Oh, and we ran out of newspaper to wrap food waste in for the compost: so we're using Vogue instead.
Ugh! There's apple in my Waitrose beetroot salad! I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS!
Woah, I nearly deafened myself there, eating Kettle Chips with my noise-cancelling earphones on. Oof!
OH MY GOD there are no avocados in the shops; HOW will I make guacamole now??
Shit, it's Clinique Bonus Time; if I buy two skincare products I get a free make-up bag. My bathroom cabinet is already stocked with everything I need. BUT I WANT THE MAKE-UP BAG. To add to my 'Clinique Bonus Time free make-up bag' drawer.
I *really* cannot get to grips with the new layout of the Radio Times. The daytime schedule wasn't always like this!
Somebody help me.

Almost December

The reflected sun is a
fat gold wristwatch, laid out
on the frozen mudflats.
Time is still.
Caws of Hitchcock crows fill the silence.
My boots crunch on salt, crystallised and laid out
on the pavement floor.
A half-moon of banana skin gapes,
a leering smile,
all concrete-stuck and cold.
A frosting-topped train slinks by,
twelve carriages of steamed windows and
sleeping commuters, laid out
like tin soldiers with their legs stretched out.
Grass is stiff and stuck, bunches of
iced green jutting up at the sky
and nestled with lacy leaves.
My face is stung.
My knuckles creak.
The sort of morning that makes
an old man's eyes water at the corners,
the sort of morning that reflects you back on yourself.

Bacon; 7am

For National Poetry Day

It's carried on the October air;
a fizzing pop of savoury, salt,
fried and turning an unseen pan black.
Someone has a window open
as they cook,
as I trudge towards my working day.
The morning is fresh,
green,
damp underfoot. A tang of
coldness hangs, not unpleasant.
I smell grass too. Dewy, jewelled.
The bacon scent lingers,
mingling with the morning,
and I am not walking to the station,
I am not heavy-shouldered at the thought of work,
I am not an adult,
I am 6,
waking up in a tent with a cartoon-yawn,
putting on tiny cheap flip flops to slick through wet fields,
I am camping, I am transported back to holidays;
I am hungry.

Haiku FTW!

Thanks to the lovely Inkspill magazine I won a recent Twitter competition for haiku.

My winning haiku was:

Stones are lost buttons / torn from the shirt of the world / in sudden passion

I highly recommend following @InkspillMag on Twitter and buying the brilliant magazine itself.

Ray x

Cakery

Big thanks to the lovely folk at the Great British Bard Off for publishing my silly poem Tomato Boy!

The blog is for poems inspired by cake; specifically the Great British Bake Off. Which let's face it, is like a religion in itself. Hail Mary (and Paul and Mel and Sue)!

http://greatbritishbardoff.blogspot.co.uk/

Ray x

Hotel contents clearance sale

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO WONDER AROUND
EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE
says the A-board, propped up all
jolly and wrong in the hallway.
The hotel was dying, now it's dead.
A small man starts to pick up the corner of the hall carpet,
rolling it back,
saying,
is this going too?
Everything mate,
says another man. Everything except in this front room. That's all sold.
We creep further in.
It is a rabbit warren of deceased rooms,
empty of everything but
fitted wardrobes, stripped beds,
and the odd flatscreen TV.
There is a patio out back -
dead plants in plastic pots for 20p.
A slimy watering can.
Rotting wicker garden furniture; everything must go.
The bar is empty, of course. The stools hold no-one.
Crates upon crates upon crates
of Carlsberg glasses; pint glasses, halves. Ashtrays,
a fondue set, beer mats, drip mats, table mats.
Oxo cube tins, "the original beefy cube" - we laugh.
A griddle pan, slick with grease.
A Gaggia, the only thing that's clean and
gleaming, £1,000 ono.
Bundles of cutlery snick against each other in
metal dishes; bound in the postman's red elastic bands.
Nobody speaks, they just rifle. We rifle.
I go upstairs. The bedrooms are too spare:
even a fitted bedside cabinet has been pulled out,
and the bathrooms are echoed and cold.
I could go up, higher and higher,
but I think about the twins in The Shining,
and hurry back down.
We poke around,
looters of this final resting place,
feeling cheap and thieving,
wondering who ever stayed here.
People swim in, and swim out, a quiet tide of shufflers.
A man calls after us.
If you see anything you want, we pack up tomorrow, so.
We nod, and say thank you.
But there's nothing here we want. It's all too used.
Two enormous televisions walk out before us,
legs in sports shorts.
We don't want anything from here.