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Gram Davies was born and still lives in the county of Somerset, in the southwest of England. He is 30 years old, and recently realised he had spent over a year playing too much World of Warcraft, so decided to start writing again. In the past he has been published sparsely online in the journals Tilt and The Centrifugal Eye (which he occasionally writes reviews for as well). In 2006 he was nominated for the Pushcart prize for his poem A Reading From the Book of Changes. Gram enjoys interactive projects, commenting on poetry forums, workshopping and generally sharing poetry as a live and current experience, in preference to reading classical works.

Without the Walls of Self

The frantic goldfinch smashes twice,
careening off the greenhouse wall,
bewildered by the silver light.

Folded, with its skull half-split,
heart pressed against the beating glass,
its death, a gift, reveals an exit:

I step out, without my self,
transfused across French-window doors
like golden carp in silver ponds.

My fingers flex their ghostly grip,
shot-through like dust in silver beams.
a frozen motion: birch-tree dapples

falling onto linens draped
along clothes lines between two poles.
Like plunging arms into a bath

I reach into the greenhouse glass
and lift the shattered body, cupped
in hands of air, a warm updraft.

A Place Called The Moon

Not to pontificate about the view:

aerials, tall-topped constructions,
stood like rocket gantries, amid
hoppers and cracked chimney flues.

We stood there on the rocks and sand
and listened to the seagulls mew,
in sight of silos, timber stacks
and lunar-module smelting vats,

an early sun arising on the new
construction site, still minus
its construction crew. Meanwhile,
the sea out there continued
to develop a still deeper hue.

We had chosen not to sleep
but found a niche between
the prefab concrete sheets,
disintegrating slowly due
to natural causes. Vents
made open invitations
to attrition within spray-
tagged walls, all decked
with weeds and bushes.

There were foot prints in the dust
where once a person must have paused,
examined the graffiti
but then carried on,
nonplussed. We stood
in the arena's very centre
just to listen to our cackled echo
rattle back at us.

Old Vinyl

starts to skip and crackle, sits
un-played in my collection,
makes me to feel bedraggled.

.......That my accumulated relics perish
urges me to sacrifice those blemished discs –

............deposit them in some volcanic rift –

to leave my lodgings pure and perfect
with no vestige of the interest I invested.

........Later, when I recollect a record -

............buying it, the journey with it pressed against my back,
............my thumbnail running up the pristine shrink-wrap -

I am thankful something stayed my hand
above the dustbin, outside Oxfam;

......pull it from its crate inside a dusty cupboard,
grease-print covered; run damp velvet round
it’s whirlpool ridge and wait

......while drips evaporate, then drop

the cue arm, sit back, listen
as if no intermission
........................ever occurred.

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The Adroitly Placed Word