Divide

The blood blister is expanded

As though the pool of ozone treated water

Had infiltrated the final layer of skin, passed

Through the membrane to dilute the purple puss

& thereby facilitate its further hold around the finger

There are five shades of green; from lime

To grass, to fir, to laburnum, to mimosa

There is only one pink, that of the solitary rose

Planted, one presumes, with a certain purpose

Perhaps to the memory of a prematurely lost love

And so the flies land on the skin; drawn by the sense

Of victory, or drawn by the same death as witnessed

By the fallen and dried leaves of the bougainvillaea

An old climber, that trails haphazard over the pergola

This poem is from the collection 

Long Player

Might I name this breeze ‘The scratch’

Like the sound of needle on vinyl before

The singer or orchestra make their entrance

The sound of the formula one racing cars

As they take that long corner at the far end

Of the two hundred miles per hour circuit

The sound of the sea washing the shore

Though we know the shore to be too far away

For the wind to carry the rush of the sea

It is the sandpaper in my own mind that generates

The internal sense of ‘scratch’; sandpaper which 

I would willingly rub over those f’ing mosquitoes bites

This poem is from the collection 

Moura

Beneath the skin a poison

An irritation, not life threatening

Yet a disruption nevertheless

That also spreads to others

The urge to scratch is withheld

A similar dissatisfaction

That I imagine for a hunger striker

Within the confines of a prison cell

Yesterday we visited the vast water

From the balcony at Amiera near Alqueva

We looked out on our own Lake Isle of Innisfree

But to live here, how am I able to contemplate

When my mind is focussed on the bite

Rather than on the refreshed vine plantations

Irrigated by the man-made dam that also powers

This sparsely populated, but firmly historical region

This poem is from the collection 

Pinpoint

Sting, sting & sting again

Three stings

From yesterday night

Transitory annoyance

How not to have seen

How not to have heard

That certain little blighter

Who helped himself

To myself; more of

Myself, than I ever could

This poem is from the collection 

Unsettled

In the night I have been stung

Thus I am woken, not only by love

But also by the resonant throb

Of the mosquito’s poison

Now it is the minutiae that attracts me

As if F Scott Fitzgerald’s own despair

Was a fundamental part of this occupation

Founded on ants, this place named Algarve

Is throng with their movement

Only the water, of which there is ample

Only the water diverts their passage

This poem is from the collection