Early stroll. Heat has yet to make an entrance. Half-open gate as a site for potential creaking. Ian’s shadow walks with him. Light catches a pint glass on a low wall and won’t let it go. A dropped pen, leaking poems.

Beaches are dark spaces. Collage and oil paint on card.

Wording O don’t taunt me again This sick permutation Five idle fingers Rearrange the birds on the fence A sundry bundle Makes no sense Take a hammer to the screen Or at least scream Banish electricity Eat air, feed See the light of a distant sun It’s what they don’t need M @imcmillan.bsky.social

Early stroll. Crows are rehearsing with crow pianos. The sun tussles with reluctant mist. A man without a shirt on wanders aimlessly. One blue sky, two vapour trails. Those leaves seem almost too heavy for the branches of that tree.

Quick oil sketch of Teapot Street. Slight inaccuracy bias. Oil on canvas.

Gift The letter came one afternoon The postman harried like a serf I took the keys to prise the box And mine the treasures of the earth Prostated by the sheer surprise Plucking it from junk mail drift I thank the state with all my life For their indifferent random gift M @imcmillan.bsky.social

Early stroll. The sun haloes a tree. Someone walks really slowly by the cemetery. An enormous excavator in the big field. A half-collapsed curtain in a window, looking like an incoming wave. The hill exists In hill time, slow hill time.

The three bridges of Berwick upon Tweed. Collage and watercolour on card.

Mulchination Nodules of gristle Are best hacked away The teasel and thistle Now enter the fray Something suspicious In beds sweated out The fronds are delicious And good for a bout Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Early stroll. A still blackbird on a fence. The hint of a whisper of a ghost of a breeze. Sunlight held in a parked car’s wing mirror. A mosaic of dropped sweets. A low branch tries to style my hair.

Berwick old bridge. Collage and watercolour on card.

Wind chimney On the North Sea mistral The spores of distress Chopping up herring gulls The rest you can guess Those pylons are rusting Ships have few ports I’m getting my drill out Of diamonds and quartz Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Our house. Collage and linoprint on paper.

Bullish Knottish twine Cusp of Dawn Insects dine Nature’s norm Splitted cane Buds like teeth Power wanes Falls beneath Roiling sun Humid crush Delphinium Something lush Dripping wet Inviting ire Now I get Such hot desire Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Eerie beach scene. Collage on paper.

Nosecutting In spite of white lies Burning souls, I spurn My friends and neighbours. Holes and graves are dug For me so I can spin There dustily. My foot shot off to bucket clangs, I perish all alone Without the social glue Of wizard prangs Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Early stroll. Sunlight bounces off a car roof. A chair turns that garden into a stage set. I briefly hold a birthday card in my mouth as I check my pockets. A man asks me about the work they’re doing in the big field. The site of a former and future puddle.

With ruthless efficiency the hunter closes in on her prey.

Early stroll. The sun, bright as a button. My shadow on a parked white car. A taxi passes, packed with goals. A fallen branch leans against its tree lovingly. A wheelchair at a bus stop.

Marygate surreptitious sketches. Pastel on paper.

Today’s catch On my watch Crabs dismembered Laughing gulls At culls remembered Coral prints On rocks of eons Never risen In life’s seance Bottled sand Breath of air Bury me Just for a dare A million years Resurrect My boulder bones I do detect Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Oh look, she’s found a…. Ah, a sock.

Evening swimming in the rain, I’m swimming in the rain, what a wonderful…etc.

The oil sketch for yesterday’s painting. The house the parcel companies cannot find. Oil on paper.

Them I can’t account for it Living in the sticks Don’t talk climate change Race or politics The world is really cool Falsity of fear Follow credos underhand Bring ‘em over here I tend to keep it Schtum Swearing hand on fist That I’m an artist, also an Anarcho-syndicalist M @imcmillan.bsky.social

Early stroll. Closed curtains like eyelids closed sideways. Car headlights as bright as the sun. Three women dressed for Saturday night get out of a Sunday morning taxi. The white painted bike on the pavement is starting to fade. In a garden an empty swing swings.

Early stroll. A fly tries to fly into my eye. The sky wears a tattered shirt of cloud. Captain America guards a windowsill. Ghosts of a lolly-stick alphabet. The bloke who always crosses the road in the same place crosses the road.

Our house in the middle of our (Teapot) street. Oil and collage on canvas.

Downbeat boy A low slant sun exposes The machinery of dusk. His wary headspace closes To all. An empty husk Or carapace of skin Is all he seems to be; To lose is thus to win Surreptitiously. A trudge or lope describes his walk An emptiness inside his talk Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Early stroll. A fallen blue jigsaw piece. Trees reaching for the sky. A vapour trail heading to the moon. That green bin’s monumental shadow. A broken electric fan on a lawn.

A bronzed Adonis on Berwick beach favours a frisbee. Collage, watercolour and pastel on paper.

Sickening seeds O the grip of cleaver Binding like straps Whipping like a hauze Reach into the stench Of old growth The blurt of pollen Golden notes, yes But the spurt of sap Burns naked skin So don’t go in Unbirthday this sleaze Couple with pure trees Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

A man sits on Berwick beach and contemplates a fish supper. Collage, watercolour and pastel on paper.

Dog days Under filigree weeds Firing spores like ghosts Self-seedlings In the tussocks Dank soil, fermenting Rhubarb, meadowsweet It’s the heat: Rays like ribbons Slicing quivering air Fractals lean in Bleed hues, bathe In light and greed Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Quick sketches on Berwick beach. Pastel on paper.

The fool I turn convention Upside down Feign to mention Smile for frown A book of curses On the run To filch your purses Just for fun And run at maids Into the hedges Making raids At villages edges No one dares To implicate Or even cares For love or hate Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

The loneliness of a short distance allotmenteer.

Tweedmouth, old bridge, boat trip. Collage and monoprint on card.

Hullabaloo In the sticks Taste the old air No metallic tang here But the distressed bull Doom-crack of jets The wind in rook infested evergreens Then silence Time bent by the arc Of rotation Living between the noise And strangely inverted In the dull ache of lost sounds M @imcmillan.bsky.social

Afternoon sketch. Working hard at the chalk face.

Afternoon swim. Uphill all the way.

The three bridges. Berwick upon Tweed. Collage and Lino cuts.

Another When the moon is quiet & a dream is close I choose the scurrilous muse Monty Don may be rabbiting on Or the rolling news The words come on It’s like a tap Or the silted sluice of a dam Environs as a ruse All of it I use The detritus that’s wed To my scabby head M @imcmillan.bsky.social

Wet bulb moment. Spittal. Oil and collage on card.

The garden is rosey But we don’t like them Deer nuzzling buds Wire cages like silos Box hedge irregular fractals Dubious cosmo seedlings Horsetails deep as gold mines All we can do is hack Slaughter feaster beasts And eat the leaves before they bolt Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Spittal, land across the water. Oil on card.

Duffy test The fence behind our back yard 6 foot if it’s 3 Daring you to leap in one Probability Sticky willy, nettle patch Vicious as a bee Grab the bunch & hold on tight Probability You can’t display a weakness You have no liberty Better take a Duffy Test Probability M @imcmillan.bsky.social

Time to believe. Hot nights nearby. Oil on card.

Rhubarb Talking to the warm breeze To the grimy hands Waving trees It stands to reason The world is righted Apologising for empire Piercing hubris With its nicotine grin Where to begin? Supergluing the state O, the state of it Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb Morn @imcmillan.bsky.social

Early stroll. A welcome breath of cool breeze. A pigeon’s silhouette on a roof. That leaning bike with that missing wheel. Grey bins are the ghosts of blue bins. Man walking briskly in a red shirt/man walking slowly in a green shirt.