Two New Poems

Sleep tonight

If I don't get any sleep tonight
There will be heartache
The skies over Cardiff will break
More than I can take
Satellites plunged through the cloud
Will fall and hit the ground
The faraway port will throw up
Everything that hurts
Take my cells apart
Recoil and separate
My meaning will all go to waste
Even as I peaked
Soul-breakingly awake
The windows and doors will shake
Like the old city lights
And the hours themselves will grieve
The air quiver and quake
Blur the world its sight
If I don't get any sleep tonight

An end to summer

The clouds were black as space

before the nightfall

sinking over the rooftops of my home

I can’t afford to keep

and the squeal of sirens

cut me to the bone

I am not cutting

nor am I quitting this unusual place

this hollow bunker

before I’ve done my level best

to carry on

if I can do it for my much missed brother

I can do it for my son

my wily daughter

somewhere I lost my touch

I have no other

plan but to improve each day a little

to put the hours in and

turn a corner

the lovers I have lost should keep me sober

when I think of what I’ve done

at the end of summer