Above: Another great comic from Nedroid Check it out!

SO I promised more poems and by gum that's what you're going to get. No more shilly-shallying from me. Also, if you're reading this on the 14th of July, come to the Bowery tomorrow! There will be a load of fine poets and poems.

FYI that was dilly-dallying.

PS: OH MY GOODNESS I BOUGHT A NEIL GAIMAN NOVEL TODAY AND IT MADE ME SO HAPPY

POEM

Spring

Now that I’ve finished cleaning
all that’s left to clean away

is a jumbo tub of lemon Cif,
the meadow-sweet Febreze and Glade

Plug-In, a freshly-rustled bustle
of pot-pourri and Mr Muscle.

Perhaps it’s only the scented candles –
Camomile, Sage and Citrus, Evening Air –

but I am a child again
in my parents’ house, stamping dirt

and god-knows-what across the carpet
and my mother tuts and clicks and hauls

me to the kitchen sink and soaks
my fingers clean beside the feeding ferns –

Peace Lily, Narcissus, Mother-in-Law’s Tongue –
the scent of being young

and being one more thing to clean
is stronger now than it’s ever been.

See you tomorrow,
Dave.

WHAT IS UP BITCHES

Hey, how's it going? I have been away for an altogether too long length of time. Updates: I have begun my job at the Scottish Poetry Library, working at the front desk! Check out our adventures through poems and cake at the awesometacular Our Sweet Old Etcetera. In other news, The Forest Café have published a beautiful little chapbook of my poems, and a sister-volume of my buddy Fiona Morrison's fiction, which rocks many socks. I have rarely had so much fun as I have had wrapping up and posting things to friends near and far. Whether it's any good or not is nigh on moot.

Other news: I met Jen Hadfield! We talked about creative writing courses and I was an excited fanboy. Doubtless she will soon be blogging about the experience. Also in the month of June, I started reading Charles Simic, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Americans FTW.

Also, the gorgeous Julez embarked with Anna on their mission to make the USA fractionally more awesome. They're intermittently blogging the experience here.

Here's a poem I guess. More tomorrow, and another the day after. RAISE THE FRIGGIN ROOF Y'ALL

How Jackdaw Made The Sky

Crouched among wet leaves
and looking up past streetlights
lining this car park, Jackdaw
waits, wings tucked in,
head tilted toward the tarmac.

Jackdaw’s haunches
clench and release, launching
those few pounds
of flesh, bone and feathers
away from concrete,
away from lamplight.

Feet, yards and faster,
Jackdaw’s wings spread
furlongs and further,
Jackdaw’s wings span
the breadth of the sky,
tearing wing from wing
feather from feather
Jackdaw’s beak
space-black, world-black.

Why shouldn’t the sky be a bird?
There is earth beneath the tarmac,
there is indifference in the stars.

This much is true:
shards of feather will turn
to the black and glinting
winter sky, all the stars
tangled in Jackdaw’s wake.

Hasta mañana,
Dave.

More exciting times ahoy

Fantastic news! The folks at Forest Publications are publishing a pamphlet of my poems! If the others are anything to go by, this will be one good-looking piece of book. Here's a sneak preview, the new and improved "Descent".

Descent

Flying from Glasgow to George Best Airport.
Through the window, knuckles of coastline
reach out beyond the fallow piebald farms.

What to make of the rolling breakers, snow-
white foam? I think of my grandfather
flying from his home to work in Scotland.

He left his son behind to watch the sky.
What to make of the sun split in half
by the horizon? The light lasts longer

at this altitude. And what should I make
of the city where two rivers meet,
this strip of black we will suddenly hit,

the pilot’s lilting “BMI welcomes you to Belfast”?
My wings melt as the black hills drift into view.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

hello poem how have you been

I've been spending a heckload of time tinkering with an already-completed portfolio and then an enjoyable but time-consuming essay. And I think me and Michael Longley need a bit of time apart. On the other hand, here's my first new poem in a long time, which totally apes him. Woot?

Body Language

Since I will, some day, forget your face
this poem will celebrate your will
to keep talking, your ease in lip-reading
that switched our roles in crowded clubs,
and apologise for the time my hand
hesitated on your hearing aid as my hand
has since hesitated on pierced ears, healed piercings.

Thanks for reading!
Dave.

New Year, New Poems

First, some plugs: I'm an editor for Read This Magazine, a little Edinburgh-based publication for young and emerging writers, and our editor-in-chief Claire Askew runs a cool-as-fuck poetry blog at One Night Stanzas, more than just a witty name.

So! I've been fairly active over the holidays, and as such, over the next week I will upload a brand new, never-before-seen poem EVERY FREAKING DAY. Wowsa!

Today, a poem that is pretty darned straight-forward.

Train to London

The cloudline tears and sunlight spills out in streams.
Stars hide behind the two-way mirror of earth’s atmosphere,
the full-grown ash looking dwarfish as the motion of the train,
the motion of the farmer’s quad bike, throws us in centrifuge,
the vast brown field growing vaster.

A rickety wood-pole-bridge slants
across the bare-bark-reflecting stream. Sheep-trails and fox-trails
that line the woodland are not veins for plasma flocks of cotton,
and I cannot explain what makes the yellow digger such a good shepherd
though I can hazard a guess.

I give you birchwood. I give you the white flowers of hawthorn.
I give you witchhazel and alder with sunlight strobing through their branches.
You give me the fuzz-yellow buzzcut fields, heather like coral,
gaps in stone walls, a scarecrow, faces of cliffs like ellipses, the sea,
the sea,

a bluebell, seagulls following a tractor like seagulls following
a trawler, the soil deep brown, the summerhouse overlooking the water
where hawks hover, haybales like pigs in a blanket,
like an art exhibit, like the wheels of the sun, like morse code, like braille,
like the sign language I never learned,

the elm bare like handstanding roots, pheasant farm
net-roofed, sheughs of water left in train-wake;
horses graze by the river that curves out of sight,
branches reach out through reds, greens, blues,
white

Thanks for reading,
Dave.