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Two poems taken from my back-catalogue...

Heights (selected by Edwin Brock for 'A Rose is a Rose is a Rose' 1995)

The church is caught,
gaunt; a documentary item
in the cruel round of memory.
Silhouetted against the moor's cloak
its dead bell peals unheard
across acres of peat-dark fields.

The moor yields up its secrets rarely;
and this one it guards.

Pews gather dust in the stone-dank
guts of the building. The moor winds
creak through its gaps: a galleon
on the shoulder of the hill.

Our devotions are now given to more obscure gods.
Sheets of slate blind the windows.

Three houses are shuttered closely.
At night we hide our fires.
From the valley no light can be seen
as the dead streak like lightning
through the razor grasses of the heath.


The Frog Princess (from 'Ambit 175' 2004. Taken from a series of three fairytale poems published in that issue).

This heart pounds and mocks.
I pull on my frogskin gear
and wish for someone to turn me into a princess.
Following sluttish nights the aftershock
leeches like a sick thing.
The payback.

I open my eyes to a newly sullied world
and think this is the answer.
But after the pretty boy's kisses I am still a frog.