by Tom Pickard

the house empty
a gust of sun
and some bird thinks it spring

I’ve just seen her on a vid
the river in flood
in a mis – aligned season

what of the flood ?
can you canoe it ?

altho we bicker
above the beck
we burn in bed

her breath expects
wind and river rip 

by Tom Pickard

at one end; sharp,
penetrating, a sliver of steel
slid between ribs to stake the heart,
solid as a hangman’s knot,
cruelly incisive, playfully cruel,
contradictory, repelling, rigid

in the middle; taut, flexible,
elastic —
the string of a well – tuned instrument,
a hammock, the sleek vibration of a vocal cord,
the give of a tree in a gale, inviting, rooted, resplendent

at the other end;
floppy,

dangling,

blown by any breeze,

adrift,
overwrought,
wretched, irreconcilable

by Tom Pickard

don’t get me wrong, neighbour,
I just want your dog
to stop shitting on my step.

I may be dissing it,
it could be your bitch.

I’m not saying it is,
or ripping the piss,
I just want her, it,
to stop dropping the poop
on my stoop.

by Tom Pickard

A small isolated café with a large empty car park
overlooks a range of moorland tops that drop
into a lush valley.  Sausage rolls, pork pies,
and Cornish pastries pile up on the counter.

A gust of wind launches a coke can from the rutted asphalt
as though it were a runway.

He joined the party because the armbands
matched the label and anger inside his angora suit.
But he still can’t tell if he’s living inside of an idiot
or if an idiot is living inside of him.

And can’t remember when Casper David Friedrich
and sausage rolls became linked
or see a landscape without one sweating in the foreground,
center left of frame.