Northend

No trains, quatrains, query no more this timetable

But the gallery awaits

Crowned by polystyrene the green picket fence curves away

The scratches of bored love paint forms unhindered by ambitions,

And the sheer unpoetic beauty of a giant articulated lorry parked on a derelict terrace reticulates any attempt at understanding.

This granular grows through the logic like frozen water through a peach and renders it exquisite

And the pleasure of sensation without critique blesses the moment.

At this, Birkenhead North gives an opening.

At this the delicious flavour of the small undefined aesthetic runs pure like a thirst.

And everyone stays away.

And I like it that way.

Lime Street

One open world

With hope no currency for those in the birch wood.

A war in town, with wide knees blocking any way through

With clouds and jetstreams the only sign of another way.

Brown brick buttoned up fascias

And satellites of satellites of satellites

Believing in nothing but sky

Above us only sky.

Touched by distance

As small as a crack in an A road

With all geography relative, and all relatives still too far away.

But home is home

And spires dip before the sea

And sires three children

A trilogy of genetic joy

With every song sung with a resonant note

And every tune a canto of praise to the gift of life.

Lime Street is a terminus

Who could live on a through route ?

Queensway

A little bit of grit in your eye

Too many people, too many stones

Too much construction

Not enough known

I crossed this river today

Just like all the others

I sweated in dampened clothes

While sitting in my syringe

Disgorged into light

The sparkle turned to grey

The tarmac turned to runway

As life landed on this day.

A whale called Benbecula

I stood and looked and there was nothing there.

A city, a sea,

a tall stone that seemed to be dusted on either side

with dust that no longer moved.

Lime-green grey fringed lichen

clung like love to a finely wrought stoneface

While a gentle lap, a slap

welcomed me in rather than turned me away.

A slight lifting sun

that made me,

that made me

stand and look.

The bridge busy with sheep doing nothing,

with the natural so unnatural,

so unknown to mine

a purpose not known.

A steel blue stream that denied the hill,

that illustrated all science in a minor key

and with a major palette.

Over the hill was a town

and less than this it could never be.

But lower and closer

as a life stopped and held in check

for a beat longer than mystery.

And at the end

One lump and a large shadow

sliding into the distant sea.

A silent foam like confetti

blown across a light grey shadow

that in time would be gone,

but for now was for always.

And distantly a whale called Benbecula slept

and shielded us from the nowhere

and the merely normal.