First Breath
Before our lips touch
we inhale this first breath.
Our diaphragms lift.
Our abdomens contract.
Then each and every
molecule of vapour
exhaled embraces
the moist evening air.
Our lungs conduct this
dance of gaseous exchange.
And the heart?
Only the heart knows
what lips will touch.
The lips its emissaries.
Or maybe only the tongue
sends back word silently
to the heart. Of how it feels
to beat outside the body.
Then the heart may know
love is the consistent beat
that shares the pulse
of another body echoing.
​
- from Vital Signs (Cinnamon Press, 2024)
Albaldah by Night
​
I sit by the window
of the old house.
It is no longer raining.
A single star shines
in the clear night.
Wondering if ignorance
has its charm. Or is it
innocence unplotted
in the constellated mind?
But Albaldah shines
after our inquiries.
Mass of six suns five
hundred light years away.
How reassuring to be dwarfed.
Being ourselves small miracles.
Star gazers cast their eyes
on this sight in search of Pluto.
So it is in the galaxies
of words seeking smaller
almost indetectable sounds
pulled by silence.
Beneath those the ever
tinier universes love shows.
​
- from And Then the Rain Came (Cinnamon Press, 2022)
​
Poem by Donald Trump
​
I haven’t learned
yet how to write
Poetry
but I’m a very quick learner
very quick and I’ll have
the best people
the best people around
me I mean some of my
best friends even are Poets
are even Poets and they’re
always telling me what
a great Poet I’d be
and really how really
difficult it would be
for me not to be so great
not to be a great Poet
and when I become Poet
they’ll just have to forget
everything they ever learned
about Witman Eliott Yates
Oppenheimer Heiney Otto Plath
and all those other Muslim rapist
Mexican women and letterists
who are terrorizing this Great Cuntry
of Ours that is not a poem
in our eyes but will be
My Poem Trump Collected Inc.
pasted on every goddam
mile of every goddam wall
of My Great Wall Cuntry
You can bet your bottom
$
on that ass
facker
January 2016
Note: Donald Trump is not the author of 'Poem by Donald Trump' and the poem does not express exactly any of his opinions, views or comments.
​
- from Exploring Rights (Cinnamon Press, 2020)
​
Punctuation Points
The Comma
A stepping stone,
in the pond of meaning.
The Full-Stop
The smallest and largest
point in the universe.
The Colon
A pair of identical twins:
balancing.
The Semi-Colon
A comma;
with a chaperone.
The Hyphen
One of many bridges
across-the-pond…
The Dash
A hyphen on holiday –
Inverted Quotation Marks
“Side-burns at the
face of language.”
The Exclamation Mark
Surely this could not
happen to a full stop!
The Question Mark
But can this key, as you say,
truly unlock the world?
​
- from Holding Unfailing (Cinnamon Press, 2017)
​
​
Fragment: Unaccountable
I lean towards
your city
but do not move
…] as China floods
past, its floods past
in the present metal.
The continual ships
of the continuous river
…] the metal of our days
to you I lean and see
today’s tomorrow
yesterday
​
- opening poem from Holding Unfailing (Cinnamon Press, 2017)
Note on Text
Around the time of writing
a cat brushed his knee,
demonstrating for one
and all how the most
resourceful creatures
make their opinions
known in silent messages
surrounding the truth of words.
- opening poem from A Force That Takes (Cinnamon Press, 2013)
​
​
Reversing Sonnets
‘Is this love?
A cure for the visible.’
~ Lavinia Greenlaw, ‘Winter Finding’
Until she lights on somewhere to arrive
box-cut hedges in a cul-de-sac drive
smart her sense longing for impatient cliffs
without a view but within a minute
photographed traipsed to know them there the skiffs
the anchored bay the clouds that suddenly fit
the frame of bobbing hulls and blent sea air
how stepping backwards from a wintry edge
is almost to ask ‘Is this love?’ or care
enough to touch a painted window ledge
as much a cure for seeing as to know
face-to-face the visible betrayal
of winter gone that melting ice will show
the harbour master’s hands unfurl the sail
The harbour master’s hands unfurl the sail
of winter gone that melting ice will show
face-to-face the visible betrayal
as much a cure for seeing as to know
enough to touch a painted window ledge
is almost to ask ‘Is this love?’ or care
how stepping backwards from a wintry edge
the frame of bobbing hulls and blent sea air
the anchored bay the clouds that suddenly fit
photographed traipsed to know them there the skiffs
without a view but within a minute
smart her sense longing for impatient cliffs
box-cut hedges in a cul-de-sac drive
until she lights on somewhere to arrive
​
- from A Force That Takes (Cinnamon Press, 2013)
​
​
​
​
For more recent poems, please see News.
For a full list of Edward's publications, please download the PDF.