I love you in your waking Bleary yet so anew Your eyes adjusting as they might That piercing brand new blue Each day without you starts so slow Long shadows on bare wall The tug at my heart never lets up I reach, trip, trapped, freefall I love how strong…

I took out a loan and bought us a car The first either of us had owned It would be the chariot for our child We’d carry her gently every mile We laughed the day you scraped the door How we can never have nice things You could barely fit behind the…

My life is a rocket ship, flying through space Unmanned, low power, intergalactic waste Hurtling silently through the yawning vacuum Lights out, comms down, lost My spirit is a tape recording, captured long ago The picture is familiar but static breaks the flow It ends; is rewound and plays again The tape unspools…

Previous years’ write-ups have begun with me allowing myself the indulgence of commenting on the year itself — what’s happened in wider society; the cultural impact of those events and also the micro-influences that those tectonic shifts had in my own life. I’m not going to do that this time…

None of the advice is good Will I do more damage than my shadow would Should have finished mine before starting hers I’ve let us all down I come back a stranger, a man with no past An image without purpose, a sharp shard of glass When I see you I know…

Do you wanna be in love again in love again with me ‘cos every time I look at you I know what I want to be Do you wanna be in love again is it now the right time we’ve been orbiting for so long I’ll be yours and you be mine…

My lockdown stretches on without end I wake, break the foil, eat what’s inside like it’s advent Thinking back to when they worked, was a godsend Felt like they’d never let me fall Now it’s on I swear I’ll never take this mask off Got addicted to the feeling like I’m…

I keep an old depression gown, slip it on from time to time It warms me in the winter, then shades me from the shine It smells a little musty, like my old bed back home It hangs up in the wardrobe, I wear it when I’m alone It’s tattered but it’s cosy, it…

What else is left to say about this past year that hasn’t already been said before? When I started thinking about this piece a month or so back, ‘The Year Of Recovery’ felt like a definitive, solid moniker but now I’m not so sure. Yes, in terms of the music…