Oz is a writer, photographer and would-be musician – usually in combination. 
He lives within sight of York Minster, on a road that has been walked by Romans, Vikings and other tourists. 
He is passionate about poetry, medieval art & literature and 70s bands most people have forgotten. 
In order to pay the rent he lectures in English Literature.
 

Hotel Windows

I

Freeze-frame at this window
in any city; smoke-smudged sunset,
separated by double glazing.

Air-conditioned, I wait for
something: a gift you will bring,
open-handed and barefoot
on this anonymous carpet. But
not yet. This window faces
anywhere. Outside. Nowhere.


II

On the falling of fabric across your face
there is the ending of day and soft descent
into feathers and dreams. For all I recall
tomorrow, I will mostly forget, yet
I will hold this hotel moment, myself
not quite sleeping, the sun almost
rising.


III

There have been mornings
brighter than today –

we were younger then
with fewer memories

but as you shower
with door half open

your morning song
rises incandescent.
 
Just Say No

If you remember the good times you weren't really there:
we knew how to party. Pass the pills
and watch the Moon go down slowly,
gracelessly thrashing on elephant tranquillisers.
If the drugs don't work you're not really trying.

If you can remember your name you were someone else:
losing the id, embracing the void,
cosmic cowboys, om on the range.
Liquid light flashbacks illuminate brighter
than hi-fi, surround-sound DVD.

If you remember your face it was just a mask:
acid invention in smoking revolution.
Dangerous, but which would you rather risk:
LSD or GM
mutation and tumours from your mobile phone?
 
White Summer

Paperbacks peeled, pages suntanned,
abandoned, scattered on flattened grass,
my eyes read the red of closed lids
and I breathe the summer of flowering years:
here we are. Who would have believed
this evolving vision of mirrored sky,
unfamiliar outlines and the shifting drift
of false horizons’ ephemeral haze?

Skin-smooth water blinks and beguiles,
Indian and fleeting in bright September,
washed to white with hints of silver.
Invisible birds and scented herbs
lazily invite time to rest on fingers,
tingling goose-pimpled flesh, awake
to the thrill of one cold droplet.

Lost in light, steering blindly
to the river’s rhythm, a mirage moves,
aching in the glamour of yawning, intangible
music, of heat, the plash of oars
and sun refracted – limitless – uncertain:
ripples suggest the end of sharp distinctions.

Somewhere a fiddle sings England
from chronicle and myth, with lavender lilt
weaving swifts in the loose tapestry
of all we’ve become; lovers and dancers,
May Queen and Harvest King.

Still she shimmers, colours flaked,
writhing in witness to age and legend,
blended to weft of mille fleurs,
flora of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Stretch and touch as books ignite,
as the barge ploughs imperceptibly,
catching flame, feeding desire.

We follow, inevitably, we follow,
drawn to a dream of Albion sun.

One note holds. Words blossom to white.