I write your name
at the back of the book
because I know
you’ll flick to the end first.

Endings are the real killer, I say.
I have said before,
they are only ever coming
or artefacts of the past.

Don’t think about that, you say,
look at the clock,
its hands stammering on,
the time lost and now

lost again.
What will we become
if not whispers
in every hundredth conversation?

Here is now -
cup it in your hands,
or like so many things
it will be a forgotten echo.

After Hungary and Hong Kong
they arrive at last, and the crowd
stir from their somnolence to greet
the thirty-five behind one flag.

A splotch of blue on a ripple
of white, all ice-hockey players
in snowy coats and bobble hats
waving to the fans, to the world.

Euphoric pop as the athletes
soak it in, absorb the notion
of unity, of millions
of invisible eyes watching.

And does this mark the beginning
of an end? Perhaps          perhaps not.

James Hamilton Bruce (1st April 1864 - 21st March 1907), buried in Smoot Cemetery, Wyoming. A newspaper obituary from the day after his passing stated he was poisoned by the dried plum pie he ate for breakfast. Furthermore, a piece of this pie, fed to his family's cat, reportedly killed the animal within five minutes. He was a 'highly beloved' resident of the small town and is buried with his wife, the English born Annie Elizabeth Bruce (1868 - 1961).

The car brings us here,
another titchy town
with its one-floor houses
spread like piano keys
either side of the road in
road out.

A ramshackle barn
and pick-up trucks,
green ripples
of the Star Valley
beside us.

The vehicle grunts to a stop.
You say *here’s the place
- me thinking the place for what -
but we get out,
   stretch,
a wilting American flag
by the post office
our obligatory welcome.

You breathe in,
arms wide as if ready
to embrace where we are,
keep it under your coat.
Have you been here?
   Never.

So we walk,
see no face
bar a cat that slinks its way
through a square
of overgrown grass
oblivious to us,
tired newcomers to this
scribble on a map.

And then we are in a place
full of faces six feet under,
scattershot blocks of grey
tell us who rests here.
BRUCE,
a James H.,
21st March 1907.

A distant relation?
A swift shake of the head
but a story
gushes from your throat,
how he was poisoned by pie,
loved by the locals,
a father to many.

And we spend a minute
in silence
as that’s all there is here,
thinking of a man
we never met
in a place we’ve never been,

the clouds swimming
across the sky
like plumes of chalk.

we have travelled
to the place you go to
to get away

     this time
I have been reeled in
your thumb

   on my wrist
as we step off     the train
into a city

that isn’t home.

In the museum
the sunlight
paints your face

cobalt eyes
   catch mine
between the     echoes

of our words
and if there’s ever peace
   I believe

   it is this
among strangers
and paintings

in the place
you go to
   to get away.

So I walk in a little late, still high.
Groups of strangers on primary-school chairs,
no question that I smell differently.
‘We all know why we’re here’, the man declares;
forty-something glares behind her tall glass.
This week’s book, The Bell Jar, and so she reads.
A page down, ‘would you like to go now?’ Pass.
I think of my ill brother up in Leeds
as her pretentious voice clogs the room.

What a state of affairs, what a life. How
it is what it is, it is what it is -
My brother says that a lot, back at home
or he used to, at least, long ago: Now
he can barely drive through small villages.

Fad leis seo a thagadh cairde agus lucht gaoil an té a bhí ag imeacht chun na coigrithe. B'anseo an scaradh. Seo Droichead na nDeor

Family and friends of the person leaving for foreign lands would come this far. Here was the separation. This is the Bridge of Tears

so let us go to Falcarragh
where I kiss you by the corner
with salt on the lips
and a mouthful of chips

where my ma wants me home
by eleven at the latest
and the neighbour’s dog slobbers
its love against our cheeks

where we meet on the beach
with braids of seaweed by our feet
and the wind begins to jive
through the tangles of your hair

where we share a drink (or three)
and *sláinte (more than once)
on the crossroads of yesterday
and the rest to come

say goodbye by the bridge
with my hands in your pockets
our tears specks of memories
we scrunch hard to keep in

twenty years
since the days of maroon
jumpers tucked in
black shoes
golden time
and a thin blonde fringe

I look into the still
second circa 1998
faces of future
troublemakers
a lesbian
an ex of a friend

words non-existent
that would become
existent
like flowers
bursting
into the millennium

and long ago
split
marbles that roll
in different directions
same names
another age

century before
a time not sure
ever lived

And here we are,
blundering through the cold, dark
early weeks of the year,
flames from the fire
growling up
the walls
at the King’s Head,
our local.

Inside we’re the jokers,
knocking them back,
lager in
our mouths,
a bwah-hah-hah
noise
between old songs
and the lost-count-which-pint.
Questions blurt     out
but we’re on
the razz,
sozzled.     A mate turns up
the volume, which one
I don’t know, lights
swirl
to x’s, white pinpricks
and would
I like another?
I slur out a guhon then.
We’ve all got
the zest
for more.

slowly          slowly
then in the space between   seconds

cerulean morning
shade of silence

my throat
or rather all of ours
on mute

raindrops
with their stop-start
arteries
on the window

it is an age
of invisible money
trickling into
strangers’ hands

burgundy bedsheets
box-sets

names that flicker
on and off
as if shouting them
across a lake
in high winds

twenty-five
a week before
the year of the dog

should be bounding
into things
with electric fingers

but they’re at work

and slowly          slowly

snooker’s on the box

are holding hands.
I think
they think they are
in love,
in the eye
of a glorious storm,
with aisles of x’s
in text messages,
a wink that suggests
anywhere but here
is better.

The babies of
this century,
maked-up more
than the generation before,
flecks of snow
in a blizzard
of pimples and kisses,
condoms and phones.
There is no jealousy,
just a shift in the times,
a jolt in the system
of snotty noses and whispers.

They look happy, at least.
Love, or something like it,
a blossom in their lungs.
Now, I wonder,
walking,
if they know what comes.

dipped your locks
     in a *** of gold,

beautiful as a haiku,
                                 cryptic as a silent night.

I’m the clock with
a faulty second-hand,

my days made
          with rings of mist.

          now,

I picture your voice,
          hear your skin,

names pile up
                       like a tower of cards

                       but the hearts aren’t real,
they never have been.

     sing all the colours
     the rainbow forgot.

I dip in my pen,

          write the words

                                      you’ll never see.

is this what your voice is
voice is
a teardrop in the space
where a puddle should be

television static
you know
I’ve tried
to get a picture to form

shapes and colours
and delicious sound
but still only
on the screen

moving talking
a time that isn’t now
I want you present
with your mouth

breathing out
words I can swallow
a real wrist arm elbow
real clock

real time

Then there’s the attire.
You spend hours checking yourself out
in the mirror, the drool across the floor,
******* of your dress
and the ******* smothered in lace.

Step back, look at that face.
The realisation seeping in
like blood into a bandage
that you are almost ready.
A cast of a hundred or so
seen-once-in-two-years
with eyes on your eyes,
the cold finger ringless for
just a few seconds more.

Here it is then, the moment when
you settle down
as a child clambering into bed
for a parent-read tale.
You have chosen this man
with this face and these hands
and he will do.
The search cannot be continued.

In one month, an argument.
In one year, a child
after the umpteenth round
of relatives' questions.
The story writes itself
and oh how plain it seems,
the predictability like gone-off milk
makes you want to gag.
But, you say, it’s how it goes.
How it goes.

The woman asks if it’s the one.
You’re flummoxed for a second -
the dress or the man?
Yes, you reply.
I think so.

Find it in the sound
of the crick of your wrist

the crinkle of an eyelid
drooping by the gravity of sleep

there is laughter
to be found burrowed
down the back of the sofa

but people who live
in static images alone

headaches dissolved
in purplish juice

it is so easy
to dance wickedly in the dark

look how it holds you

right through to the bones

I.

Pringles are eaten
as gifts are slowly unclothed
might be pairs of socks

----------

II.

The Queen makes her speech
pigs in blankets passed around
crackers house trinkets

----------

III.

Adverts for sales
folks queue up hours before
for a new TV

Tell me who you are

Oh I am hoping
to grab your voice

and keep it
alongside mine

so we can talk
     look how we can talk

it's not pretty
but maybe

this is how
it can be fixed

fixed enough
for everything

is just a bit
broken sometimes

Am I an eagle
with aluminium wings
in the electric night
or the mad man
watching mosaics
melt into stained-glass puddles?

Look into my bloodshot eyes,
speak to me in that Spanish susurro
and tell me to fly,
          tongue of lightning /violet horizon,
or I’ll be seeing colours in bubbles
dancing a marinera,
a manic stalactite-white grin
I’m not in control of wriggling
across my whiskered face.

I was in the twenty-four hour supermarket at close to midnight. I always shopped at that time because it was quieter and because it was easy to find somewhere to park. It was a cold time. The workers all looked sleepy and the store security eyed me up as if I had pilfered a packet of noodles.
     A girl I hadn’t seen in years was in the wine aisle, her basket fairly full: a loaf of Hovis, dark chocolate, and a packet of M&M's. When we got into the car park I made her laugh because my bag broke and the radishes rolled on the concrete like small red pupils.
     I’d got to the last-but-one roundabout when I realised she had followed me home. She parked her car and came into my house, asking if I could make her a sandwich and pour us each a glass of red. I didn’t think it was strange, but I noticed she had a ring on her finger, the signal of marriage. I put cucumber between the slices because there was nothing else even though I’d been shopping.
     She told me she liked the food but could I please go back to the car and get the noodles from the back seat. The street was empty but full of houses. Her car, a Ford, was there, but not mine. I understood my car was still in the car park six miles away, gathering frost, waiting for me to drive it home.
     When I got back inside, she was grabbing her coat.

oh look
              how you run
the desert today’s playground
              in your head
oceans
              of possibilities

fawn undulations
              of sand
yawn to the distance
              tracks temporary
telling the story
              of what was
of what
              you won’t forget

the sun
              cupped in your hands
orange disc
              kisses the horizon
and there are miles left
              moments
that will emerge
              as if breathing
through the map
              on your wall

to pulse
              to play to the beat
of your heart
              this is the light of desire
this is the light
              of hope
going
              only to return
again
              like your favourite song

off the plane
and the word marriage
alive on your tongue

another with
another
spilling bits and
again

you take their hand
not the other way
around

both say no
but I know yes

yes
offered silence
black water
in a bucket

drink it like whisky
scorches my

life
segments
through the letterbox

a horrid shriek of sludgy colours
or always cooking
in the oven

friend to stranger
words to page
quiet to quieter

say 'love'
but you both know
it's anything but

let me tell you
about the names
I keep silent

the gap that exists
and never shrinks

could've been that somebody?

now somebody
else

this
is
how
it
happens
then

the
beginning
of
a
trickle

neither
­of
you
know
it

but
this
is
the
meeting

a
word
or
a
sound

you
m­ight
not
remember

in
the
decades
to
come

but
in
this
second
an
­explosion

surprise
jumpstarts
your
heart

siren
of
beauty

oh
my­
goodness
me

the
meant
to
be

for
now
at
least

who's crumbling?

is it me
not me

who's running?

not the man
drenched in the dark
his feet don't move well
don't work

who's moving?

maybe every person
who isn't you
doesn't have chains

who's talking?

unknown voice
they might not
have spoken before

who's answering?

ghosts perhaps

petrichor hour
colour bundles
on the windowsill
amber and blood
blood and amber petals
flecked with blobs
of rain

child chases the dog
by the love-lies-bleeding
amaranth ponytails
a rainbow somewhere
hemispheres of dandelions
breeze-swing
wet dog chases child

so this is it
jumped ship
or whatever it's being called
these days

I feel myself
falling
Alice like
into a murkier space
than before

where the silence
gnaws at my brain
splinter of a twinkle
heavens above

quite obvious
what's happening
ignorance that flares up
like a blanket of acne

an excuse that drips
quick from the fingers

your game is peeling
from every corner
and rolling the dice

ain't as easy
as I found it
when you spoke
with an actual voice

Two people are kissing
on the bus, their lips
entwined like one knot
of candyfloss. Nobody
else notices this, or does
but doesn’t care, eyes
peering gloomily out
the windows at the
belly of fog across
empty fields. I wonder
how long these two
have lasted, how long
they have brushed
tongues and laced
fingers with each other.
Barely eighteen, adolescence
prickling their skins
like heat rash, the fear
of young adulthood
a neon light down
a dark alleyway. I wonder
if they will last. I doubt it,
but there is no way of telling.
I ought to say it’s fleeting,
that in half a decade
you might not know
each other, two people
together once in some way
but now not, or with others
who have yet to enter the frame.
But it would be rude
to interrupt. They kiss,
I sit.

Thirty pages     into a thriller
when she steps     out

blue-bikinied     beauty
water clinging     to her bronzed skin

like a t-shirt     made from opals
slick curlicues     of hair

and blinking     the sea away
body     a perfect pair

of inverted     parentheses
sand populating     between every toe

wet specks     that dribble
past the collarbone     between the *******

I am looking     at a moving painting
stupidly entranced as if     this was a Picasso

improbable     as always
but enough     for me

to put     the book down
a flawless frame     radiant and alive

and just five     footprints away

for God’s sake
     the plot well lost

moths back in my head
                                 flappity flap
   worries
     quickstepping against the light

they’ve got it easy
   when I think about it
the kids at the school I mean

     know of the swarming
                 strange desire
                                to impress
   with altered pictures
     but no notion
   of depleting tenners
        raindrop-like friends
        that slip through fingers

my agitation a snare drum
     everybody else
          out of tune violins

I’ve never been good at jigsaws
     give me the next chapter
     of my damp-speckled twenties
     fully formed
with a warm glow

what was the question
                                       again

oh
wondrous
you

among
the
wreckage

came
from
nowhere

to
my
eve­rywhere

I am either one person.
or the persona I created.

don't think you like
the fat. black full stops
I offer. handshakes where
the gloom seeps through.

what is this. change
of season and a mind
squeezed lime-like.
know what's on
without having to look.

oh look. help drip-fed. when
you're in the mood
but stops short. or
a faded repeat of what's
come before.

don't tell me
I'll be liking you. next
for I'll only stub
my toes. Not gold standard.
Slip into the outfit
handed out by another.

inhale. leave it.
leave it
to early morning REM
and my silly illusions. where
the comma in your breath
suggests something more,

between one or the other
revelling in the *****
of a moment
that has been well rehearsed
or drowsy in the clasp
of some strange blueness
that coats itself
over my skin
like a viscous
odious paint

there are tricks you know
that I don’t
sleight of hand
misdirection
tell me because I am in a stupor
tripping through the best years
repeating familiarities
friends are ****** in by the shadows
or swallowed up
in the whirlpool of marriage
or trickles of intimacy

I told you it was like this
one eye on the phone
one ear on the words
nothing is shocking
bar a ripple of a shudder
normal service is resumed
but I told you it was like this
didn’t I
oh you went silent
don’t blame you
if you forgot

potent blue sky but ground laced with blood
stench of death in the air and on that August day
he joined the deceased Spaniard in the sun outspoken
generation of ’27 with the taste of poetry on his tongue
called a socialist partaking in abnormal activities
never found a single shot or several nobody knows
during La Guerra Civil the voice of a nation
quenched in the blink of a second

like the cellophane wings of a dragonfly
torn from its body so the whirr vanishes
or fire strangled out of someone
drenched with bullets of water

como las alas de celofán de una libélula
arrancadas de su cuerpo
para que desaparezca el zumbido
o fuego estrangulado afuera de alguien
empapado con balas de agua

So I drink
the voice from your throat.

If diamonds
had a taste this is it,

it goes down
so well. It goes down

so well
in mouthfuls that shimmer.

December, end
of year, end of something,
my acquaintance will be forgot.
Ode to divorce, if we were hitched,
but hey! To a new beginning.

Night like charcoal
on windows. Out of bed,
coffee, new machine, shiny black
juddering awake,
spurting caffeine
into the vacant cup.

   You’re doing my head in, you know that?
Yesterday’s game, lobbing
words, ping-pong tiff, oh
you didn’t think I’d forget?
Regret it? No. I was on top.

A dog barks.
I think of my grandpa’s Alsatian,
bounding tennis-ball-in-mouth
when I’m fifteen, hands sticky
with slobber, for a second,
when you were unknown.

I sip, finish, got new batteries,
make that gawky move
with the jacket, slip on trainers.
I take my Soviet Kitsch, Sigur Rós,
and your Killers. After all, the latter
is how it began, ‘it’ being us, your lips laced
with lager, my Dr. Peppered self
gushing with excitement
at being out of the house.
  Didn’t peg you for a fan…
   I guess I’m not what I seem…
ain’t that the truth darlin’? Everything
will be alright. Look

at me now, opening the door so quietly,
cold latching onto my skin
like I’m a magnetised substance.
I like how you don’t know.

Ginger cat scurries from under a car.
I think it’s running away too, running
from us. Right idea ****.
You know ‘****’ means kiss and ‘tom’
means empty in Swedish? I think of that
now, funny how a strange thought
can leapfrog to the front of your mind.

I can’t drive, you can, but you’re asleep.
Boy, you’ll be wondering
where I am, but I was never
there anyway, really, I don’t think.

Hours from the shock of me, gone,
for reasons unknown,
a magic trick with
Carbon Monoxide in my ears,
your Brightside too.

Me in jeans plus four others,
the nearest a guitarist,
black bag shape slung
over a seat, his sleeve
rolled high enough
to see a clamour of ink
in his skin, a ladder of colours.
He listens to music, white worms
lodged into ears.
Another, female, older,
glasses two-thirds down the nose,
much wrinkled Times between
her wrinkled fingers, glint of a ring,
the only one it seems, fatigue
rolling over her face.
The third, sweating, texting,
doesn’t look up, unaware to
anyone but the swirl of letters
on the screen beneath his eyes
where only he knows what exists.
The final guest is asleep,
or is pretending, head drooped
to a shoulder like a dog’s.
The train rattles on,
Monday night,
metal vessel of mysteries.
The musician glances up,
notices he is among a clutch
of others, sees me
and for maybe five, six seconds
does not look away,
his muddy-coloured irises
pouring into mine,
his boots scuffed with muck.
I cannot help but acknowledge
this unexpected attention,
but, flustered, I rustle for a book,
even though my exodus
is minutes away.
I flip to page sixty-two, he looks away,
and then back, swivelling, as if unsure
which way to stick, and there is
a fleeting stab of fear,
of what if in a shred of a second
he lunges across, a tattooed panther,
pins my wrists to the cold window,
spews his breath to my face
and grunts in that appallingly masculine way,
a way that suggests he’s in control,
ha ha *****, what you gonna do now?
when he wouldn’t be, I’d know.
I’d have a clear shot at the crotch
and even if the texter, sleeper, reader
didn’t spring to life, I could put a stop
to it, shove him from me like
yanking a piece of furniture across the room,
crank my voice into a bellow.
I can imagine the stupid mask
of shock on his stubbly face.
He could hurt me, of course he could,
anyone can hurt anyone
how they please, and I’m just as capable,
but I wouldn’t, shouldn’t
launch an attack of fists and kicks,
inject my words with venom.
This thought shrieks in my brain
and dies, squashed bug-like,
its pulse destroyed.
Always assuming the worst.
I’ll learn.
I don’t look at him again.
I don’t know if he looks at me
but he probably does,
thinking of a song he’ll write
or leftovers to eat,
or a missed opportunity.
The book slips to the floor,
for a moment, I forget,
I am being transported.
Everybody leaves, I am no exception,
standing, moving to the doors
that will open with a quiet whirr,
it slows and then a bit more,
bit more,
his memory of me
my ***, perfect in these jeans.
Typical. At least, I think,
it looks good.

I put the drink to my lips,
bookcase brown,
not quite up and at them
at this mid-morning hour,
disjointed murmurs of strangers
ordering coffee,
the soft thrum of Saturday chat.

For a moment,
my eyes fixed at the map
that adorns the wall,
I feel myself shrinking back,
my head a *** of blue
nothingness, before
a flock of images

pop up like blood
from pricked fingers,
material that could be used,
a splinter of a half-told story
but no siren yowl,
more a coil of smoke,

and so it goes.
The flow stops, I thunder
back to where I was.
A child’s cry scorches the air.
I slip in and out of conversation,
picking up snippets
like the metal claw in a grab machine,

unfamiliar particles,
a peculiar curiosity,
a whirring like clockwork
of the recent expeditions,
how it felt

when you kissed her,
and the fizzy burble,
little glob of ruby
of what hasn’t been said yet,
or if it ever will.

a wodge uh Wrigley’s
  ‘ard an knobbly on thuh underside
uh desks

shufflin’ tuh DJ Caspar
  in thuh ‘all
unduh thuh gaze uh
  year three’s

it were
  packed lunches,
dislodging mi brace
  from thuh roof of mi mouth
like extractin’ a tooth,
  scoffin’ bars uh white chocolate

years-old Blu-Tack
  stamped black intuh carpets,
grey plastic-y chairs,
  writin’ learnin’ objectives,
underlinin’ dates
  with shatterproof rulers,
I upgraded tuh a pen
  in year four

same time
  remember listenin’ on the radio
in Scottish Clark’s mobile
  when it wuh Ingland v Brazil,
summer uh ‘02,
  thuh likes of Sheringham, Beckham
in audio only, no picture,
  and thuh TA came in
  ‘alfway throo a lesson,
said ‘we’re out’

and the time
  I cort that cricket ball,
dived and it stung mi hand,
  a crimson-drizzled palm,
throbbin’ ring

and the time
  we played football wi’ tennis *****
and I blurted intuh a trio
  uh eager classmates,
a tumble-shirt compote,
  knee flecked wi’ grit, mi own spit,
skinny whispers uh blood

and thuh time
  I plagiarised Potter
around Azkaban,
  got a Woolies notebook,
ragged Pritt-Sticked cuttins’
  of Watson in the pink ‘oodie,
but it wuh the seed
  for thuh next decade and more,
standin’ up,
  tellin’ a story,
somethin’ or othuh

Back at the start for the last time.
I get our drinks before you arrive,
£1.10 more expensive than when
we began dating, which sounds strange,
that word, ‘dating’,
it was only convening for cider,
a JD and coke twice a week after work,
you correcting the spelling
of children born post-Miracle of Istanbul,
me in front of a screen
splattered with numbers
imperative to any name but mine.

Now it was amicable.
Before, not at all.
A sort of swell inside me,
a boiling kettle, the shock tiptoeing through me
when you said enough.
I wanted to hurt you. Absurd.
I felt an uninvited sensation,
a sanding of the ribs,
a brain stapled again and again.
Later, I discovered you felt it too,
if not more so. I softened
like a block of fudge in the heat,
the fury dissipating as cigarette smoke.

You walk in; I get a different shock,
a cold jolt inside me, a voice that says
within an hour it will be over,
a footnote on the CV of my twenties,
April 2013 - October 2016.
You look great, more of an effort than me.
Lately, I’ve let myself go, no surprise.
We talk and laugh. I ought to shave, I know.
Joke about late-night Monopoly,
a fraction of our love, always ours.
The realisation it is a first time last date,
the closing of the door, the final word.

For a second, I am enthralled
at the thought of you, naked,
standing in the doorway to my room,
chestnut hair shimmying down your back.
It won’t occur again, not in that room,
not in that flat, not anywhere
besides a flicker of memory.

Our friends are getting married.
We’re not.
I think we both knew
it would crumble before long,
our relationship a headache tablet
dissolving speck by speck.
Pool, like we used to? you say.
Sure. Three games, I win two one.
Could we restart? Turn it off then on again?
I dare not ask.

I leave you to get the tube from Chalk Farm
as the half-blotto strangers
blare delight at an Arsenal goal.
A hug is too awkward,
shaking hands even worse,
but a hug is the gift. No kiss.
Seven seconds.
The back of you is how
I’ll remember you, walking away,
hands in pockets,
not looking back.

Oh if you don't stretch you'll rot
and if you don't talk you'll sink

what a predicament, a quandary
with that rainmaker sound
counting down to the final trickle
when you offer nothing that glows

there'll be faces drenched in confusion
and you'll taste the shadows
so familiar but like oil in the veins

give me that dynamite answer
stop the gurgle of decay
leaving you with a limp

let the responses pour forth
a fountain of spot-ons
or close enoughs

Early morning drive,
the blur of landscape
past my eyes,
vacant fields,
stationary trees,
and here in these crooked hours
between the first papercut of light
and the salutation of sun
are when the memories assault me,
a ripple of echos,
champagne hair,
a voice drizzled in alcohol
and venom on her tongue.
I’d be rotated, a personal Picasso,
and I clutch the steering wheel,
the pulse of something strange
thuddering deep in my ear.

And there it was.
Static streak of animal,
collecting feathers of snow.

I came across it on the walk home,
frozen bite of early evening
scrunching my bones.

Almost hit him with a foot,
my eyes adjusting to the sight
of a defunct hunk of fur.

Eyes like bullets of liquorice,
slack jaw and an ice-cream scoop
wound, a flush of sickly crimson.

That night I thought of it,
fantastic, an orange flurry
between trees.

A day later, with rock-heavy eyes,
a head swollen with cold,
I walked the way of before.

People nodded hello,
the path draped in a translucent drool
but the animal had gone,

hauled from its bed of death,
its memory a blemish of ruby
on a beach of boundless white.

My head against your neck, I am breathing you in. I am breathing
                                                       ­                                             you
                ­                                                                 ­                   in
and I feel transported to somewhere that isn’t where we are, your shapes welded into my memory as though building a house where each brick is another moment. A moment. That shimmers when light slathers its face, that quivers with a sound when we speak of things that nobody else needs to know. Doorbell rings, dog bark, jangle of rain on the roof. Our spider web of memories a pearly glisten. It’s nice to be an ours and not a theirs. Sunflower voice on my lip.  This is a private matter, a fragment in the shadows where we play play play. You are my shadow. My shadow. Magic dust, body of the night. Touching you is like a snowflake wickedly intricate in my palm. Look at you in my midday dreams, a spicy smirk, bringing your own brand of pandemonium. Bloodshot eye red, a day on fire. You don’t know you do this, no no, ain’t that the way. I still breathe you in. Ain’t that the way. Inhale, inhale, I say your name as if its clockwork, regular and there, my seconds, my hours.

la la la la
is this what love feels like

or what I want it
to feel like when it comes
slam-bamming in

the snigger on the stairs
first saxophone note

my throat
knows the right words
speak
of succulent fruits
count the seconds
it takes
for our fingers to crumple
in warm baths

look
toothbrushes together
own side of the bed
I have a side
where I sleep
in the madness of you

la la la la
I can’t sing
but I must have swallowed a pill
or a bucketful
of elation
look at me go ha ha

does it crunch as an apple
is it flat pack furniture

cup of coffee
in the same café
steam to sip sip sip

my temperature spiking
blood thunderstorm
in my ears

coloured hair
new language
list of I’m becomings
you’re becomings

oh darling
not pumpkin never pumpkin
lyrically I’m losing it
love like this
or not at all my love

maybe a shelf
without books

maybe a house we paint
or a song
how it starts

I find myself here, by choice,
the swells of heat between duvet
and body and your body,
naked except for a gold necklace
half sunken in light
from the bedside lamp.
My skin is slick and unpleasant,
my toes knock yours
in the space we can’t see.

Not the first time, not really,
but the first time here.
A different mattress, pillow,
shapes that before were yours
and yours alone
but you’ve let me in,
a secret place to many
with frosted grape walls
and your name
blaring ornamental from a shelf,
seen by only one man besides me.
You told me who.
The blistered image of you
with a stranger
in the place I’m now in
makes my throat sting
a little,
makes my muscles tense
as though about to
run the hundred metres.

You look at me,
tangled in white,
a tattoo of a flower
I don’t know on your shoulder,
moving when you move,
a grey filling
clamped in a tooth
at the back of your smile.
How strange, perhaps,
I notice this now,
I didn’t before.
I wasn’t looking.

In the room
I used to be in
but now on the other side,
a ****** on who I was
or think I was,
knees bent beside punnets
of new faces
born well after I left.
They are rising like vegetables,
some already have
in the few months
that have passed
since I saw some last.
I’m sure they recognise me
but say nothing.

Gripping their lead utensils,
digging the pointed grey
into flawless white,
today’s date,
Tuesday 12th September

a mob of letters
compressed or stretched
as elastic across
the maiden line.

This afternoon
involves castles and knigh.
I point at the page, say
‘there should be a ‘t’ there,
on the end.’

They draw, content.
I loop around the desks,
a sporadic
sliver of praise
drops from my mouth.

1.30 becomes 2.30.
I think of how
they’ll still be studying
when I am thirty,
and a string of incidents
will keep flooding in:
job, relationship, money,
perhaps, crackling black words.
These pale faces
know little of the sort,
so they shouldn’t.

I leave them to sing,
this knowledge
rowdy in my head
like a shaken sack of marbles.

You make it all go red,
bottled wine crimson.

Pictures pop like plump bubbles,
sleep clogged
with soggy might-have-beens.

I bounce my words
along a washing line
in the hope they’ll find you
looking out
at a cement-made sky,
windows lashed
with crinkled blobs of rain.

Pause. A thought.
Skinny ***** of light
javelins across your face.

A sentence built
with strawberries,
not a comma
like an ugly smudge of blood.

Look
I’m not sure
what to say here
about this picture
maybe it’s the colour
you painted your nails
or the way you are awake
but in a position ready for sleep
regardless there is something delicate and silent
about this picture and the way that you look and so
I thought that I should tell you that
even if these words don’t breathe
in the shadows of your mind
for being strangers is such
an indefinable sickness

blue like a loose carrier bag
blue like rainfall

you feel that
tight tangle
suddenly blooming bruise

inside your xylophone

a common taste
but a different language

mi dispiace, non parlo italiano

wish I knew you
wish my single syllable
was your drink of choice

blue like cracked ice
blue like brushing teeth

reach into the vegetable soup
of your mind

here! a paragraph
made from colourful buttons
and not so sticky tape

mon français n'est pas très bon

wet hair and brown eyes
will satisfy me nicely

or brown eyes and wet hair

miles and minutes
and seconds
and seconds

disculpe

and seconds

är detta rätt?

nicotine no thanks
silence will **** you
decay the veins

blue like so-called heartbreak
blue like too much space

and seconds