A reading for my poem Encore from my third poetry collection, Conflagration.
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Tag: poetry
eBay store now open
Just a quick update to announce that all of my books are now available on eBay, to make it easy to purchase copies in the UK.
April Update
Conflagration is now on sale at Beccles Books, Halesworth Library and Lowestoft Library for £4.
Each of these retailers now stocks the full selection of my work. £1 from the sale of every book sold at the libraries goes to a good cause.
And finally, Swannui and Cygnus is now just £2 at both Halesworth and Lowestoft Libraries.
Are you based in East Anglia, have you previously purchased one of my books?
Please comment below.
All books are also available via post within the UK and worldwide on Kindle.
Announcing Conflagration
My latest book, Conflagration, is due to be released this month. Conflagration is my third collection of poetry (fourth book overall) and spans two years of work. Conflagration is longer, more mature and better balanced than my previous works and is the book I am most proud of.
I would like to offer a huge thank you to my friend Matt “Swampy” Ward for taking over the artwork mantle and providing a vivid, manic rendering of the title poem.
Conflagration is priced at £4 and will be available in store at Beccles Books, Lowestoft Library and Halesworth Library. It should also soon be available in Kindle format from Amazon and also via Paypal using thefallofscience@live.co.uk (unmonitored email address).
Observant visitors will have noticed a considerable drop off in my posting in the last year or so, Conflagration is likely to be my final collection for the foreseeable future.
Encore
Let’s leave the city
Leave it wanting more
An ovation innovation
For once not honouring the encore
Run flat out on our flat feet
To a place where we can find
Some semblance of self
Sit beneath the trees in the old orchard
And who cares if they’re rotten
Or if this dry grass is long dead
Wiry, dried out and gone
We can still breathe the air
Where we had fewer cares
And brighter skies
Those stars flickered through
With no smog to obscure
To hold back a heartbeat
Or a celestial body
To grasp either in one’s
Hand is not for the likes of us
So live and let live
To die another day
A long time from now
As we stroke our fingers through the dew
And the dirt
We’ll be glad we never outstayed our
Welcome and a welcome home
When we reach that front door
Would always wait for us
When we returned from
The bright lights and tight streets
Charging breakneck through fields
With a sense of finality and urgency
We urge ourselves on
Toward the tower, sat alone
On a hill as it always had
Since long before we burst forth
And will be long after we’re gone
All of us
Let’s leave the leaves
The grass, the skies
Leave the country wanting more
Conflagration
Fill the grenade with grenadine
We’ll reutilise the war effort
Repair, recycle and reuse
In such imaginative ways
Yet if all our swords are ploughshares
And all our bullets turned to bracelets
We’ll only beat each other
To death with farm machinery
I’m all for hugging trees
Yet sometimes you need to carve out a
Spear handle and use the light from
That spare candle to whittle out a
Sharp point to penetrate and pierce
We won’t be here much longer
The way we carry on
Carrying out covert ops
Covering the tops of our
Hidey holes with thick foliage
Thin branches delicately draped
Across the entrance
And yet these new school
Retro, remade, post modern
Contraptions keep on turning
Ammunition into pencil sharpeners
And gasmasks into fishbowls
We can deny it all we want
But we all know we’ll need it again
Soon, wipe down the respirator and
Chamber the parer
Bear down on them with teeth bared
And our right to arms a necessity
When it’s been ingrained for so long
A culture built on blood
Soft, slippery surface to lay foundations
Upon
They did it anyway
Fine days and dark nights
Fly by without much more than a whisper
Flickering and flitting through
As we cling on to what we hold dear
Drag it deep down to comfort us
We’ll sit here watching the world burn
And brush dry tinder toward
A forest fire
Breathing in the pine
As it crackles and chokes
Into life
A conflagration for the flagburners
And the deathbringers
The wild, the hungry, desperate and dreary
No survivors set the world afire
And none of us ever expected to make it out alive
Health and Her
Take no photos, make no sound
One day you’ll realise
It’s better to live your life through the iris
Than live it through the lens
One day, one more day is what we all
Hope for
And not one spent in suffocating suits
With collar chafing tight
Around your neck
A millstone made of menswear
Bought for far too much in a store
For people who put store in counting coins
And ticking boxes
Instead of counting blessings
It’s not like me to be esoteric and meaningless
Crumble some creole into the mix
Natty words from a native tongue
Will wow the now crowd but I
Do it for myself and not for them
And if pleasing anyone but family
Matters more to you than your own
Peace and piecing together
Some form of fabric in which
You can live and lay down roots
Then three cheers for your cares
But I’ll take mine to the wire,
Waiting by the phone for those
Three words that nobody ever tires of
Heard in halting breaths
Between exclamations and sighs of
Delight, when we light up the fields
And call it a celebration
With flares, not bombs
And binding blankets that wrap
Us tighter than any razor wire
But it feels like home
Right here, in this moment
In this place, with you by my side
That house is three thousand miles away
Yet all I need is here, is her
All I need is my health and Her
