Contents
Pay-back Time
Learning to Read
My Little Eye
Snipers
Tramp Tramp Tramp
Hearts and Flowers
Casablanca
Bye Bye Black Sheep
What Happened to Henry
What Happened to Dorothy
The Railings
Squaring Up
Sacrifices
Wearing Thin
Snowing Down South
‘What does your father do?’
An Apology
Comeclose and Sleepnow
The Act of Love
May Ball
Discretion
You and Your Strange Ways
Vinegar
My cat and i
The Cats’ Protection League
Mafia Cats
At Lunchtime
On Picnics
A Square Dance
Let me Die a Youngman’s Death
I am not Sleeping
You and I
40 – Love
No Message
A Golden Life
The Rot
Head Injury
Catching up on Sleep
9 to 5 (or cosy biscuit)
Waving at Trains
Unlucky for Some
In Transit
The Lesson
There Was a Knock on the Door. It Was the Meat.
Vegetarians
Cabbage
The Birderman
Honey and Lemon
Trees Cannot Name the Seasons
The Lake
Fatal Consequences
Ex Patria
Tsutsumu
Posh
Shite
The Jogger’s Song
End of Story
No Surprises
Greek Tragedy
The Terrible Outside
The Identification
The End of Summer
It’s a Jungle Out There
A Cautionary Calendar
Poor Old Dead Horses
Who Can Remember Emily Frying?
Today is Not a Day for Adultery
Your Favourite Hat
The Map
It’s Only a P…
Love in the Laundrette
This be Another Verse
Blazing Fruit
An Ordinary Poetry Reading
The Logic of Meteors
The death of John Berryman in slow motion
Poem for a dead poet
Big Ifs
Children’s Writer
Rabbit in Mixer Survives
Happy Ending
A Joy to be Old
In Good Spirits
Nothing Ventured
Days
Bees Cannot Fly
The Death of Poetry
Here I Am
Crazy Bastard
Perfume
5-star
Melting into the Foreground
After-dinner Speaker
Half-term
Vague Assumptions
Prayer to Saint Grobianus
The Bright Side
The Unknown Worrier
The Wrong Beds
Bits of Me
The Health Forecast
In Vain
M.I.L.T.
My Divine Juggler
Echoes Sound Afar
Defying Gravity
The Man in the Moon
Sad Music
The Trouble with Snowmen
Everyday Eclipses
Bearhugs
Just Passing
Who are These Men?
Cinders
Monstrance
The Way Things Are