One day I’ll write a poem so wild
It will knock you off your perch!
You’ll pick yourself up from the floor
Weak-kneed and cross-eyed, lurch

Towards me wailing, ‘I must have
That poet — give him to me!’
See, that’s why I write and write
And write this poetry.

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Paul Stevens (MySpace page), formerly of Leeds and Harrogate, late of The Strand, has taken up permanent residence in the Seventeenth Century where he may be found at the Mermaid Tavern, roistering intemperately, waving a tattered copy of The Flea broadsheets.

Shrubs in the hedgerow sharps whisper conspiracies,
with breath of grey wind torn from shrouds stretched over
the land of fear. Sheep stand cold in the rain,
tree branches fracture light fault lines,
fingering upwards where the ravens clot,
circle, clot. Locked-down land, squeezed tight;
police country, clocked by the cc camera,
factories rolling out weapons, wheeling out tanks,
beneath the radar-rook-infested storm,
helicopters beat low over Stonehenge,
satellite heaven, black electronic cloud,
cracked by media thunder; shoppers galloping
crazy down Oxford Street, reality tv eyes
staring flat across the flat, hard to the tor.
The grid lines gather, the ley lines collect and hum,
accumulating power; tractors tattooed
into the raw soil, etched into landscape skin.
We huddle, we whisper against the terrorist,
and reaffirm our bond. We pray for petrol, diesel.
The trucks muster and hurtle down the M4.
Fluoro-jacketed police sharpshooters, deliver us.

by Paul Stevens

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