Sample Poems


Listen to Russell read:

After the Moons

Breathing Space

The Flat Opposite 
The Ant Swap

God Has Still Not Appeared to the Birds

Star

The First Kiss

Jupiter

Waggledancers

To His Coy Dalek

Pet Poet Laureate video samples:

A Tempest

Hero


Or read a few verses for yourself:




God Has Still Not Appeared to the Birds


In Boston we kept a jar
of eggs, thought nothing
of the life

cracked onto the waffle iron.
This palm shook, rattled out
a yolk. At the window

starlings – I think they were –
flew by us. Do you think
they saw

my shudder, my shell,
my hands? A knuckle
remembers

the old wounds it gave,
the eggs it’s beaten
and God

has still not appeared
to the birds. These hands
are my knives, my gut,

they have tasted things.
Think about that
chick

that hit the thud window
like a wet sponge and let out
its first

and final choke of a song.
These hands
took it,

they have felt things
breathe, life flap 
in the smallest wings. 




The First Kiss


What a disappointment. Nothing like the movies,
nothing like the mind. A mass of muscles writhing,
an awkward hand on a tightened arse
at the under-sixteens “Angel and Demon Night”

What a farce. Is this the limbo
stick for life? Where are the fireworks,
the butterflies, the butterflies exploding
like fireworks into a glorious rainbow
of wings and ash?

My son will sit with me and I’ll tell him
the truth that there is no word to fit
a feeling of lust and immediate unrest.
Or the lingering taste, the pleasure, the alien
of a first kiss. There’s no word, I’ll tell him,
for the particular fullness that breaks through
the lungs and fills you with the breath
of their hair, for the sudden rush of two hands
clambering until the fingers find
each other and grip. Grip to that, I’ll tell him
and be thankful for the imperfection
of love and that the first kiss is nothing
like you expected.




Ghazal Jigsaw


From the small, closed window by our study table the stars are set
like the pieces of your space jigsaw. I ask if you’re any closer. The stars are set

you mutter as you slot another nook into the realised corner, and yet
you seem unsure which cosmos you’ve pieced together. The stars are set

upon like foxes: your hands are hungry dogs. Your eyes are ready trumpets.
Your mind is a nebula and then aha, you’ve a northern glow and the stars are set

in their place with a satisfying click. Another, two more and you’re a puzzle-rocket.
They look so still and steady with you, but through our study window the stars are set

in more dimensions than just those two. You drop a red dwarf and I reach for it.
You continue. I open the window and, like the sails of a ship, the stars are set.







2 comments:

  1. "The first kiss" is so beautiful and poignant❤

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! If you want to hear a reading, there's one here (scroll to the bottom) http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/first-kiss

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