‘Somewhere in Heaven’ is the title of my next poetry collection from Red Squirrel Press.
The launch is @ 6.00 pm on Wednesday February 17th
2010.
Gallery North, Northumbria University
See Red Squirrel Press Forthcoming.
http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/index.php?coming

Here are the first two poems in the collection:

A CHILD’S DREAM

They are reading:
long gardens,
ornate chairs,
no-one fighting.

Sunday newspapers flap
seagull like.

A woman smokes,
halos lasso still air.

Dark clouds gather
smudge sun,
but no bloodshed,
screaming and hair torn.

A perfect Sunday
somewhere in heaven.

AT TWELVE

Rosary beads slip between my soft fingers
praying in front of the open coffin.

The priest chants
in the dead man’s bedroom,
“Hail Mary, full of grace…”

His wife stands by his head,
her eyes avoiding him,
“The Lord is with you, blessed art thou amongst women”.

Another decade runs through my fingers,
I marvel at his perfect stillness,
holding my breath and without thinking
ape a dead man at twelve.