Around The Back Poems

Rednecks and roundabouts, they don't mix.
Don't try and fool us with your media tricks.
We drive around the back roads throwing bottles at signs.
Your roundabouts make us slow down or the ladies spill their wine...Read More

My whole world as I knew was never more; when I caught a glance of an attractive  dark haired Irish man with piercing blue eyes, and a shadow of a beard framing his square jaw.  He walked towards...Read More

The old lady planted roses near the corner by the driveway
She never planted roses by the door
I remember once she told me, "Bees come out to get the nectar"
And a bee sting can be deadly or quite sore
Instead, she planted...Read More

Our latest product is the Viv mark one,
please stop and take a gander,
coated with skin of medium grit
and an ass like an orbital sander.
Adjustable nozzle to help you reach
in all those hard to get places,
plus two large air vents for...Read More

A prawn masquerading as a peanut can be quite disturbing. So many times a peel is a garment used to shroud. A tentacle hidden. Here and there. Then to reappear with an often violent burst of becoming. A burst of...Read More

 Well!  I remember the first date I was a teenage boy
I picked her up in the car had to wait for her she was late 
She finally came out I open the door she sat down I close...Read More

Rumors spread like a flood seeping through the streets
That an adult black panther, kept as a pet, had escaped,
And was now prowling around the back alleys in town, according to the tweets.
Big cat far too black to see in the...Read More

Blimey times are tough lately,
and most of the stations too.
I haven't eaten for a week;
the squatters offerings is 'shoo'.
My wish is flour for some damper;
a small handful of leaves for tea.
They reckon we're all pests out here,
the blokes who walk...Read More

You know when I think about it now and what I have to do,
a lot of you folk out there would have a bit of envy too;
you see I'm a 'lacky' for a vet, well a nurse I s'pose is...Read More

He waits for me in my dreams each night
I hear his soft neigh when he catches sight
of me. I am only a tiny little slip of a girl
who sits on his back as we travel the world.
Into the stirrups then...Read More

i almost cried 
bought a cheap 
gas bottle
from a friend 
who was up visiting
said a neighbor 
had moved out
gave it 
to him saying 
its almost full
saying its three times
normal size 
of the gas bottle t
which you 
have out there 

how...Read More

I saw the old stone cottage
A shell of all it used to be
Its gardens wild and overgrown
but that cottage spoke to me .

Here I'd get my independence
my family wouldn't be too far away
Sure I would have to put in the...Read More

		

	
	Apparition
	
	
	For several years
	a photograph of my grandfather,
	my mother’s father,
	hung on my living room wall
	There’s no date on his portrait; 
	family lore says it was taken 
	shortly before he deserted his family.
	
	He was a handsome man,
	easy with women, 
	or so I’ve...Read More

It’s October, we find time to go by the spring-house to get the tulips. It is time to prepare for winter and the inevitable coming of spring.  The bulbs look hopelessly dead and ugly, rather pitiful in fact. ...Read More

A chimney on a low rise standing sentinel 
On the loosely scattered outskirts of town.
A reminder of an old house built by hand, 
The home around the hearth long fallen down.

The silvery frost covering the remnants 
Of the old broken...Read More

It's awkward and strange,
and if I had to sum it up
in about four words
They would be

My mom was driving.

Not romantic, just weird.
And when we got to the movies
mom went to the other side of the theater
realizing her presence on my...Read More

   under the bay bridge in astoria there is a 
brick building with a gnarled up old wooden door.

 the wood does not have hands but three bare 
knuckled hindges of iron that swing heavily. 

 In the...Read More

Wings flutter
     off in the distance
as I shuffle through these stones,
tasting the energy trapped in each,
scouring my lands
         for my lost crystal,
that which can mend
what I’ve torn asunder.

In...Read More

Dad and Scott carry the refrigerator into his dorm room
where mom makes the bed, smoothing the sheets 
and folding hospital corners with motherly precision.
Corey and I sit on the bean bag chair contemplating 
potential line width and dimensions 
of releasing...Read More

In the hallway, was the memo.
All avoided it! Some walked
around, the back way, past cubicles,
the copy room, to avoid it.
Being Friday, no one, I mean
no one, wanted to read it.
I took a chance. What do
I have to lose? I told...Read More

In Knotty Ash where magic lived
The trolley runs all day
The pillbox on the corner stands
Five flagstone from the bus stop
Outside the News and sweetshop door
The start of Eaton Road
The next left down East Prescot Road
Woodbourne winds around the back
An’ up...Read More

Grandmother used
the same kind
of round, metal tub
that we put the Christmas tree in
to soak her laundry
before she washed it.
She used the same tub
to clean a chicken she'd kill,
holding it upside down by the legs
and chopping off its head with an...Read More