We found the thing
  on our walk,
   vacant, drinking the waves.
You tugged it
  from the mush,
   rolled your fingers
over its wet knobbles
  like kneecaps or ankles.
   What a find.
Held it up,
  let sunlight glimmer
   from its clotted cream body,
felt the smooth blancmange
  pink interior and said
   you have it
no you have it.
  I put the shape to my ear,
   listened for the sea
but heard hushes, whispers
  whirring within a dark room.
   I had to own it in the end.
Able to keep
  part of the beach
   but not you,
not you.

what feeling
    like a chunk of gum
numbed    by a dentist
     knowing Santa isn’t real
     milk    and cookies
gone
anyway

     lost in streets
   lost
    darkness thrills    you
chills you
   as rain on the first day
of spring
    love is a mystery
odd   one   out
among liars
lovers
     extroverts

     yet
and   yet

    feels red
when windows   creak
   open to greet mornings
musty     novels
wedged like teeth in boxes
     take them  
just a pound

slivers of kindness
   smiles to say  
   I know     me too
smell handwritten letters
     phone-calls under    swathes
     of duvet
     at midnight
to someone
their name sounds   just   right

pangs of solitude
   muted by a voice
a touch
     some words
   thrown      together

horns squawk
   rainforest avenues
  
  exoskeleton
of cars
   arteries clogged
with unlovely   taxi cabs

fat  green  fruit
for sale
     five languages
merge into a knot
hisses    kiss    vowels
   kiwis apples pears

   black guys   basketball
debt rises like      blood pressure
stocks tumble
    but we walk
brogues clop on concrete

count  brick after  brick
sun cascades
   over roof slates
mind cracks in slabs

   (you say
Monroe      stood here)

   heat quivers
men are dominoes
suits    for the office
   a funeral

designer sneakers
   daddy paid for
pigtails   cheap thrills
  violet octagons
  on a stranger’s neck
(behind the closed doors)

today
I drink purple water
     aubergine lips
remind me
of a Tuscany Superb

   list the names
Houston   Charlton
Leroy   Sullivan
Perry   Cornelia
Dominick and Jane

(ladders lead
                away from me
                close to
you)

and back again

I write your name
                              in red
   sunlight
seeps through bottles
          on a windowsill
   margarine kaleidoscopes
         on legs

naked for a change
(early summer risky business)

Floorboards yawn
     under the weight of our stories
   I take showers
        as well as baths now
   Can't be twenty-one here
older   shush you couldn't tell

   Roll my finger
   make your piano tingle
like when our wrists
    bump together
    when spines crackle
on books bought yesterday
    this city   bubbles
        all fiction

You think
monochrome
     makes you look better
     camera   snap   done
jazz sashays around the room
    head out a window
hear people as nosebleeds
                    scrabble about

You flirt
        (what a discovery)
like flowers in a vase
   orange juice   bagels
ten-plus-ten toes

     (A moment
where your eyes ache
     into mine)

I hop
stepped jumped
into this mess

     you know as well as I do
     what a delectable
mess we are in

Hours taken by sea
butter sunshine gone
to a chalky lavender smudge

our feet made prints
in piles of freckles
skin tickled by heat

are you in my head
pirouetting
between dreams

or real as diamonds
(so you’d know
about kisses)

you filled hollowness
with petals
cups of lust

played
my fragile xylophone
like an expert

swapped it
for a piano
made it sing

you’re the pearl
on my palm
in a thunderstorm

my sweet speck
of dark magic
at sunrise

I pull away
for you to tug me
right back in again

I.

You scribble your name,
   spaghetti letters
on my arm
   in sky-blue ink
so when my eyes open
   I’ll be able to remember
when you asked
   if you could
write your name
   on my arm.

II.

Where did you come from?
The waves
must have done something,
the water
glistens on your legs
like a hundred
million silver sequins,
your hair
melted toffee squiggles
oozing
between shoulders.

III.

The longer I stay,
the more the empty pit
   he can’t ignore
   will froth with pink bubbles,
gurgle as a kitchen sink
gulping soapy water,
   spill over in a torrent
   of sugary sentences
but it’s OK;
I ought to tell him
   I like the electric rush.

Here are my eyes
my fried eggs
teal lily-pads floating
on white albumen.

Here are my elbows
like deformed peaches
my knuckles the peas
wrist corn on the cob.

Here are my teeth
my frosty Stonehenge
a ring of slabs
solid halibut.

Here are my ankles
four gobstoppers
cracking as rocks
under her size-five feet.

Here is my nose
fastened to my face
the garbage chute
meets hoover hybrid.

Here are my knees
two wrinkled potatoes
mashing in their sockets
as waves crumble on me.

Here is my hair
my straw candyfloss
unlike her buttered popcorn
curly-wurly waterfall.

Here are my tonsils
squashy strawberries
wedged at the back
of the cave I once made.

Here are my lips
azalea-pink sweets
flecked with salt
from our slice of sea.

I like when it begins   the white
icing of a dream   and the ones I only know
with my eyes closed    glow like rubies
brighter than    raspberries in July.

I like when it   unravels as a scarf
the people   clearer than cellophane  
the speech fresh as juice   here it pours  
into each eye   I like to swallow each second.

I like to wallow in    the shadows of strangers
until light   slinks under the door come morning
and I like the very spangled thought of    you
too close not close    enough to my arms.

I like the buzz of my blood   flowing quicker
when you talk   knowing your bones
disorderly network of navy veins   I like
to feel the static crackle and fizz   between us.

I like the bench   in your back garden
and us on it   I like the heady loveliness of it all  
inhale the flavours   brush your cheek
cling to the seconds ’til I wake   and you go.

Forgive me
in summer
if I were
to buy you

some roses
one morning
with fraying
red petals

for they’d be
so frozen
bespeckled
in silver

so you’d know
how it felt
to be cold
just like me

Nightfall
and I cannot get over
the architecture of you

I could draw your fingerprints
from memory
with rainbow crayons

paint
how you scrunched your toes
like yesterday’s paper

whenever the water
threatened to soak
our undressed feet

We are here
talking about
anything everything

nothing at all
your words are my wine
I want to sip every drop

ask for another bottle
in the coal-black silence
and get smashed

wake up tomorrow with sand
strewn through my fringe
a silly smile or two

forget what is not
on this beach
and know only now

the tone of the waves
hue of your lipstick
beat of our hearts

This is no box of tricks
rather an ottoman swollen
with some daft curios

that you know little about
and I can’t control
like the tide leaking in

Here’s a sack
of silly cravings
boiling over

as a *** of hot coffee
feel the discomfiture
bloom inside my cheeks

Dreams glazed
in electric colour
hooked on fiction

every night
wishing for the lights
to blaze upon whoever you are

Imagine, if you will,
an empty stretch
of carroty sand
and me and you
skedaddling up
to the waves as they unfurl out to us,
slide back in
like a dog’s tongue in heat
or two lovers’ lips
to say hello, farewell,
then hello again.

Imagine, if you will,
the two of us
on the beach
as the sun
dribbles down
like raindrops on a window,
afternoon into night
and our toes meshed together,
and our hands pressed together,
and our bodies together,
so close I can count
every time
your heart pounds,
beats with ecstasy.

Imagine, if you will,
what this is like
in a dream,
what it would be like
if you blinked
     and the scene
became real,
if you turned your head
and knew my eyes,
if I turned my head
and couldn’t take my eyes
away.

Here it comes,
what we weren’t expecting.
Thankfully you have one with you
so you fish it out
before the drizzle
becomes a downpour,
press the button
and watch it pop open
like an airbag,
the spindly blue tent
to protect us
from the wet.

We huddle together
as marshmallows in a bag,
as fruit in a bowl,
listen to the spattering,
the clattering of stuff
from the sky,
rounds of applause
dropping off the edge
onto sand.

I hope it stops soon.
     Yeah, me too, me too.
You grab my dry hand
as we shuffle closer,
only able to hear the rush
of the rain.

Feeling like the sea,
a single wave
blushing blue,
gathering momentum
only to fall
flat
on my face,
broken and soggy
to start all over again.

Feel the beach
with my hands,
scrabble at the sand
like a dog
ready to bury a bone,
but am pinged back in
as an elastic band.
Why does that happen
and who is to blame?

You must be a dream
and yet the lines on your hand
know the lines on mine

You say we should build one,
I say we're not six-year-olds anymore
but you coax me into it
and I find myself
digging with a blue plastic *****
but you use your hands,
scooping up lumps of the stuff.
I notice how some gets stuck
in your fingernails,
how the tip of your thumb
has been stippled orange
but I laugh when you tell me
it's nice to feel young again
and I feel it too
although you, not the building
has more to do with that.

We don't stop,
we make a whole row of them,
name them after ourselves,
feel so proud of our work
like builders after a long day,
but it's still morning for us
and every-time you stand,
tiptoe up to the sea,
I get so stupidly worried
the tide might take you away.

Sometimes I only watch
the waves tumble
as a blue rug
over a flight of stairs,
other times I want them
to pummel me,
wallop into me like boulders
and smash against my ribs
again and again
and again,
feel my digits wrinkle
like a rotten fruit,
feel the water splash on my lips
and know it's alright
if I dunk down
surrounded by swathes
of aqua satin,
hear a rattling,
an amplified burble in my ears,
aware it's just me and the sea,
the sea can have me,
I'll allow it.

I watch
     clumps of wet sand
snuggle between your toes,
     water cuddle our ankles
before running away
as if it’s done
something naughty.

     You launch a grey pebble
towards the scorched horizon,
lands with a ‘plop’,
     and another,
     a plump rock
goes ‘sploosh’,
guzzled up by a wave.

Next, with a finger
     you scrape our names
on the beach,
our temporary graffiti,
   squash your hands
into the surface
like we’re at the Walk of Fame.

I listen to the candy-*******
sound as you move,
    look back and count
    the footprints we’ve created,
know by morning
they’ll be gone,
like we were never here at all.

There is nothing I know
                       about you
and yet like a peach
I want to perforate your skin,
                taste
something delicious,
find   out   what I can,
open
      your
             grotesque
                            novel,
discover all the        flaws
I can later ignore,
a sea can come
                 to **** them up,
                 leave your gems
on the shore.

I'd like your name to be sugar
                                    on my lips,
                         sink
my fingers in the     gaps
between your           fingers,
be suffocated by you,
       be drunk on you
     in the best possible way
and still be left
rasping
gasping for more.

A day
will arrive
when your wavecrashesintomine,
no clock needed,
no forward
                  slashing days with a pen,
it will happen
    and I’ll be here
sitting
on our beach    with a book
ready to fall,
fall to the edge
of wonderful madness.

Experience is limited
I could store my lot
in a test-tube

others have barrels
and barrels
and can roll them out.

If you are far out at sea
half-hidden half-showered
in sun

I am on the beach
with water licking
my little toes.

Never pushed
only nudged
as a chess piece

to where I need to be
to absorb
a hazy scene.

Tiptoeing
at twenty-one
so be it

at least I will be ready
when I hand myself
the new baton.

Wouldn’t it be great
a decade from now
when it’s bills, insurance,
married life,
to wander into Waterstone’s
and go ‘hold on a minute,
I sat next to him!’

At the counter we could say
‘Oh, I knew the author,
uni days and all that’
as we fish around
for a ten quid note
thinking ‘hang on,
I should have a signed copy!'

We’ll call ourselves
intellectual,
scrawl sonnets in cafes,
sup pints, smoke cigars,
proclaim Seamus’s work
‘just... just… it just speaks
to me you know?’

And we’ll remember
that teapot,
those guys coming in late,
dishing out slips of paper
like a croupier with cards
and still wonder
if what we’ve written is *magic.

I’ll listen to what you’ve written
but not recreate

I’ll do-it-myself, let pages
sip on my letters

let every vowel stand out
as skyscraper lights.

When I sink to sleep
I’ll lock my dreams

in a wooden chest
retrieve them

when morning strolls in
fetch the fresh post.

I wonder if there is such a thing
as drowning beautifully

I want to consume you
like that ocean water

make what I have said
gush into your eyes.

How many have stood,
will stand beside you
in Heptonstall,
had a photo taken
next to her spot?
Students, admirers
from any nook or cranny
with drained biros,
Ariel under an arm,
her morning song spoken
again, and again.

You're the next-door neighbours
they haven't come to see.
Only a lonely cup
of coffee-stained
hunchbacked flowers
where you lie
in loving memory,
with Emily,
husband with wife,
home to the right
of the graveyard's star.

First of May.
That peach tree you planted
now blooms, flushes pink,
the cherry ones burst purple.
Umpteen types of daffodil
sprout up to gulp sunlight,
flower beds house seeds,
beans and peas in abundance
in your vegetable garden.
Plum batons of rhubarb
protrude, threaten
your little portion of Devon.
But the finest thing
is the girl, the daughter,
a great blossom skipping
from spring to summer,
beaming like a lighthouse
to guide both of you home.

Last night down Hanover Street,
that snaking backbone
  in the north end of Boston,
   you saw paper flowers,
    bursts of blood-red hearts
     and ruffled yellow fists

     and in the windows
    of limitless pastry shops,
   multi-story cakes
  slathered with icing
for weddings,
for partners in waiting.

He'd be more
than one page in your journal
this man, Yorkshire-born,
anthropology at Pembroke,
the one who wrote
about a fox and a song.
Piano music in the room,
British-bohemia.
You, enthralled,
wonderfully drunk
among turtle-necked boys,
friends of his
and then him,
the unscratchable diamond
you wanted bad.
     'Then the worst happened.'
Earrings like tears in his palm,
two accents mixing,
new paints in a ***.
Before long
he'd be chucking
clods at your window
though you wouldn't be home.
But his name would spray
from your mouth for good.

I searched for where you met.
Cambridge at Christmas.
Now a shoe store, a Top Man,
trees drooled with tinsel.
So I imagined that night
at Falcon Yard in '56
and the church-like windows.
Didn't expect a thunderclap
but it came, a bolt
through a blue night.
The red-hairbanned girl,
tipsy, she loved your work,
your raw debut words.
Amateur dancing,
brandy on your tongue,
a kiss bang smash on the mouth
from her hunky boy.
     'Ridiculous to call it love.'
Smitten, she bit,
gnawed on your cheek
to leave her own mountain range.
Her interest - peaked.
Your person - snaffled,
cast as the lead
in her American play.

My Mum owns a load,
twenty-or-so globes
collected over decades,
bought in musty stores
you won’t find around here.

Frozen images, colours
congealed in glass bubbles,
one housing a red flower,
an old-as-me rose
unable to inhale.

Christmas presents
stuck onto shelves,
hugged by a duster
so an eyelash of sunshine
can reflect from their heads.

Home from class,
into the living-room
and see a bunch of *****,
scoops of rainbows
in the back cabinet.

He picks up a twig,
a thin knobbly wand
and drops it in,
watches it turn,
twist like the hour-hand
                                    on a clock around the bend.

Now a stone,
a grey sphere
plopped into the mix,
as a magnet
sticks to the river’s tongue
and won’t budge.

He calls me over,
‘can you see our faces?’
The melting mirror
gurgles along,
doesn’t know
we are there.

and I saw you.
And yes, you were good.
And yes, you can sing.
The paper hearts fluttered down
from somewhere,
snaffled by hands
before you sank from view.
Young things in shorts
wielding rainbow sticks
seats in front and I doubt
my indie record
is cooler than yours
but I saw the sparks,
circus tricks,
dancers popping
along the stage.
But now it is Wednesday,
a four-hour memory
that is sleepily blending
into delicious red.

I don’t suppose
you remember
that day one December
when I scored a hat-trick
in the mouthwash-smeared hall
and thought I was Messi
for a couple of seconds

or when we went to the Tate
in about year eight
for a rare school-trip
with a gang of teachers
and we gawped at the art
like the cat next door
stalking a bird

or when my Dad said
that my uncle had expired
and I was on stage one night
with Joe’s coat of many colours
and wet veins on my face
for some reason
I didn’t get

She didn't want spring,
she wanted autumn.
She wanted
the butterscotch leaves
snuggling the curbs
and porky pumpkins
with fire for a heart.

She wanted autumn
even when underground,
where seasons are unseen
except in the snow
sprinkled in a man's hair,
or heard, a sneeze and a sniffle
into a flimsy tissue.

She wanted autumn back,
like a first kiss over again,
like a childhood memory
flipped to the front of her mind
to stay there,
a vicious, intense red.

But she was stuck in spring,
writing about Octobers,
what happened back then,
how it opened like a flower,
and whether come next year
the season will breathe

orange again.

Like the loss of a limb
or a missing *****,
whether an arm, kidney
or half of a heart.

Every bone numbed,
laden with pins and needles,
every puppet-like move
languid, free of joy.

Hoping for a letter,
brandy to spike your mood,
but for now it’s Yeats on the moors
as you long for your wife.

What colour are Mondays?
Red? Well mine are.
The same colour
you’d imagine a headache to be,
tomatoes, morello cherries
or like a nosebleed.

Does that mean Tuesdays are blue?
That mouthwash shade,
brain-freeze after a Slushie.
Wednesdays? Perhaps purpley-pink
as burning potassium,
Parma Violets under your tongue.

Thoughts on Thursdays?  Fake-tanned,
tangerine skin, the ugliest orange
for the ugliest day.
But Fridays are a healthier green,
think telephone-pole celery,
cucumber truncheons and kiwis.

Saturdays then? Funeral black
speckled with brown sugar
though Sundays are white.
Hurts-your-eyes-like-snow white,
almost transparent, for they come
and dash by with no tone in-between.

Everything is blue.
Sometimes, it is blue for you
like the tongue of the sea
or the Pacific
when the sun
drools upon it.

Other times - electric.
A bright, gaudy blue
nobody can miss
as the vibrant shade of the sky
or turquoise
in your teeth.

I remember when you longed
for blue, the darkest tones.
Your mood was deep blue
like the deep red of blood,
the colour of evening,
impending midnight.

You made everything ice,
the trees, the grass,
your digits chilled baby blue.
I offered you gloves
but you knocked them
from my hands.

Then, for a moment,
a pinprick of green.

Green was a gem.
Green was a rarity
like a white Christmas.
I told you to chase,
to run after it
but the blue held you back.

I said 'how are you today?'
Never yellow, never orange,
you spoke blue,
spat sapphires,
every object, item
glazed over azure.

I wanted you green.
Avocado, mint, emerald green
but it never stayed long.
Blue waves would come
and gulp
your good food.

Now you flit between them,
cellophane
dancing behind your eyes.
One day, drowned in blue,
one day, swimming
green.

I have not injected myself, felt the pulse
of illegal things under the bonnet of my skin
or swallowed a pill and let the room swirl
in colours from the mid-sixties.

I have not guzzled ugly orange drinks
until my liver aches to talk
and I erupt pints and shots
against ***-coated cubicle walls.

I have not had the awkward first
with one of my teeth knocking on hers
or a line of saliva in my stubble
that I perhaps should have trimmed.

Instead I drink tea with two sugars
and whizz through each channel
rather than absorbing stories for class
as best I can like a square of kitchen roll.

Instead I see streams of people from 20-whatever
take pictures with berries and apples
to remind themselves who they are
and remind me they still breathe.

And instead I write what I don't know
for if not every word burns black then dies
and so I continue to fight the other me
who will not turn, walk back the way I just came.

I.

The day will soon come
when your children discover
that you are Santa.

II.

After Christmas Eve
no-one really wants to hear
Mariah Carey.

III.

Christmas is about
gifts and time with family
and then *Doctor Who.

Look at the thirty-three.
Nine years ago
in the junior school hall
and now how many miles
between you, and you
and me.

Pre-pubescent times,
bananas on our faces,
eleven, maybe twelve
with collars all tidy
and jumpers tucked in.
Say cheese.

We grew up too fast.
A few have kids
who'll study
where we once did.
But my friend is at Park
and I walk an Avenue.

This one inked their skin
and this one had drugs.
And you, third row,
well you moved abroad.
I'll bet ten bucks
you don't 'remember when?'

If I saw her, him
what would I say?
A hasty hello
or not one word.
They have far different leaves
on their trees now.

Near a decade later,
the photo back on my shelf.
Here's to you,
what we were
before nowadays
snatched our hands.

A hum among our tall crowd of flowers,
a small cylinder in feeble sunlight
hops along a rainbow before showers,
tin clouds now suffocate the yolk from sight.

Dressed in a garish old knitted jumper,
I watch as it slurps every face dry
and can you hear? The grumble of thunder
but still the bee murmurs, fizzes on by.

Sun covered up, a cloak made of metal,
not long until all drains choke, gutters leak,
this insect sits on a topaz petal,
looks out for a first silver drop to break.

Now the bee jumps, has committed its theft,
a blur in a downpour, exiting left.

Sunday morning, my dad
with the News of the World,
picking Bob’s Your Uncle at 10 to 1.
My mum in a titchy kitchen,
joined by a ***
of pongy tangerine cells,
raw tongues in a pan.
The tang of frying bread
tanned brown tickles my nostrils,
sizzles like Velcro on trainers.

Now my brother
in crimson pyjamas
walks in, plonks down for a plate
of six-hundred calories
all before midday.
Three meaty tubes
next to two yellow moons.
The mist of oil,
of grease clogs the air.
Tuck in.

How weird
I am here
and you don’t know it.
Sleeping they say,
in a better place.

George on my right
has been gone for years,
even the flowers all brown
gave up God knows when.

I wonder if you knew
your neighbours
before the batteries stopped.
Did Edith know Agatha?
Did Frank chat over the fence?

Chris was seventy-two,
moved here mid-nineties
when I couldn’t yet hold a pen.
Now just a name
on a slab of stone.

There’s a spot near a tree,
no stone no dirt.
I think ‘that’ll be fine,
a place by myself.’
I shake my head.
They’ll stick me
somewhere else.

These aisles go on and on,
one giant Tesco,
nobody at the tills.

If you could speak,
the stories I’d hear,
the chapters spilling out
like salt from a shaker.
But you can’t talk
and I can only walk past
and wonder how you went.

My clock has stopped.
It says eight forty-four
but it's nine thirty-eight.
It stopped when I wasn't looking
or was looking but didn't notice
a few days ago,
the knobbly black fingers
frozen, pointing west.

I take time off,
feel its chilled curves
dig into my palms,
another river among many.
Held up to my ear
a soft heartbeat,
my thumbs squash
numbers three and nine.

On your back.
The old red tube removed
with my nail
like flicking a splinter
out with a needle.
In snaps the new guy.
With one spin of the white wheel,
a new breath.

I.

A louse in a house
or a mouse on a blouse.
A bell that goes ****
or a gong that goes ****.
A gap on a map
or a cap on your lap.
A drink in the sink
or an ink that stinks.
A spleen on a screen
or a queen who is green.
A bow in the snow
or a crow that glows.

II.

A wash or a whip,
a lip or a lop,
a top or a tip,
a car or afar,
a bar or a war,
a door or a snore,
a bore or a nail,
a flail or a whale,
a run or a bun,
a sun or a moon,
a spoon or a bus,
a fuss or a sigh,
a cry or a cheer,
a fear or a smile,
a while or a pen,
a den or a cat,
a mat or a hat,
a bat or a glass,
a vase or a weight,
a mate or a fork,
a cork or a mop,
a cop or a stop.

III.

Apples and artichokes, ants and antelopes,
bees and beers, books and brains,
cucumbers and chimneys, ***** and coats,
dogs and drains, dots and dominoes,
ears and eejits, elephants and exams,
flies and flutes, files and friends,
grasses and guts, giants and gyms,
horrors and hiccups, horses and hills,
igloos and irons, irises and idiots,
jumpers and jackets, jodhpurs and jellies,
kings and kettles, kites and kittens,
lions and lamps, lemons and lunches,
mums and monsters, mosses and moths,
noses and notes, nightmares and needles,
oblongs and orang-utans, organs and oranges,
paintings and pennies, ponds and pants,
quiches and quizzes, questions and queues,
rainbows and rings, rascals and rabbits,
snakes and sprouts, sweets and salts,
trumpets and trains, tables and toasters,
umpires and ukuleles, umbrellas and uniforms,
violets and vests, violins and vials,
wheels and wings, windows and weeds,
xylems and x-rays, xylophones and xysters,
yachts and yoghurts, yards and yaks,
zigzags and zephyrs, ziggurats and zombies.

The bag is half empty.
All evening, my right hand
swimming with cushions.

I pop in another
pink cylinder, squash the shell
with one bite.

A tinge of strawberry
coats the ceiling of my mouth,
swirls under my tongue.

Like scoffing
a miniature sponge, its insides
weld to every back tooth.

Once down my throat
I reach for the next softy.
Just one more.

You've done it now.
Opened your mouth,
hoping the ice starts to thaw.
Maybe you have to spell it out,
spill it out
to hit your mark.
Like a tree
I need to drop my leaves
and see if some person
catches a few,
a handful of paper-thin shapes.
Everyone moves forward.
Is that so?
The water around my ankles
has been here for years.

It started when he drove me in
and the teacher couldn't help.
After that, four years passed
like water sliding into a gutter.
What a shame the last days
are remembered the best.

A page, written on a whim,
given to her by my friend.
That was long ago.
The new wave came, swept me up
in a chilly embrace.
Thursdays, a corridor,
a newspaper for the bus.

It would never have worked.
How could it have worked?
One-sided, the colours didn't mix.
Two seasons later,
a new shade in the light.
I stumbled down invisible steps,
almost said your name wrong.

Meant to leave
but still you stick around.
I went to the new place, grey place,
new names, stories to stick
to my tongue.
A challenge in itself.

Now words I use
are used for a reason.
The waves don't shatter my ribs,
drown my lungs as much.
This phase, this pinch of time
is almost complete
but as for the rest I don't know when it

The red shirt is torn,
an eyelash ****,
your skin exposed
but no blood.
You were born for this.

I dig in my silver weapon,
sever your synapses.
With each new cut
comes a soggy cream sheet
and you sigh and you sigh.

It was inevitable.
Fixed smiles
flop from your spine,
see-saw on the board
and form a wrecked star.

Now just your teeth,
the brown raindrops.
I use my thumb
to tug them out,
dislocated, then gone.

Autumn’s still yawning.
Sunlight seeps between
a few trees and leaves pools
of yellow drool.

A crow nearby looks up,
a black speck
climbs the steps
but then, as a bullet, it’s gone.

Moss, like acne
tiptoeing up the track
around my feet
stains the ground green.

A broken-bone crack,
a twig split in two
joins other brunette arms and legs
strewn everywhere.

Clouds begin to blush
silver above my head.
I hope I get home
before they start to weep.

I. (Girl.)

Young girl with blonde hair
peers at her phone once again
to see if she's loved.

---------------------------------------

II. (Black Umbrella.)

A black umbrella
even though it's not raining
to anyone else.

---------------------------------------

III. (September.)

The clock crawls to nine
as autumn comes to students
for an awkward hug.

Well, you're in a good mood.
Those friends left and right
could learn a few things,
how not to whine as a kettle
until I notice the gold body,
black pearls for eyes.

To me it's a forest,
first breath of March,
winter locked up
and now leaves bleed green,
snow switched to slush.

Who wants to be raucous,
get sloshed, go hoarse,
slur every word?
With you each syllable
twirls through the air,
hopscotches from note to note.

We may cough/choke/sneeze,
as the curtain rises
but when you choose to speak
spring skips to my ears
regardless what month.