I.

The childhood lie
of a rotund Santa Claus
who delivers gifts

--------------------
II.

Smells from the kitchen
potpourri of vegetables
steam glued to windows

--------------------
III.

Muddle of colours
wrapping paper ripped open
revealing presents

the sun signifies
a deep bloom of affection
radiant in the heart

a kiss miles in the making
geography of your love
an extra horizon away

eager heartbeats
the ache of a touch
electrifies every nerve

warmth of a lemon embrace
light swims in
now watch how you glow

and again
that cool delectable taste
of a moment

assembly line
of conversation
rolling out

all manner
of topics
with a candle on top

each one
tumbling as a domino
under the table

subtle twinge
of single life
pushed aside

to volcanic laughter
and the put to sleep
of another year

but we sip the syntax
let every vowel
soothe our blood

my life is a million things or a million and one   look at this situation   words dribbling from my fingers like raindrops     I want to feast
on every piece
   you are willing to display   to roll out and reveal
     no matter how fragile
I feel my bones groan for you   but I all I have   are these syllables stationary   on a screen
the idea of something more   an improbability
we can share our language   and breakfast cereals   and our feet will rest
on the table   with the murmur of the TV     in the background   and oh my god   I am sprinting through a blizzard   as fast as I can   but I was never a good runner     my toes are almost numb   but I want want want   to experience it all
   ripples of reality   it has bypassed me
carved a pear-shaped
lump     out of me     I am ******* in string
I am oblivious   to kisses and loving   and intimacy
   the rush   the blinding delirium     I see everybody glisten   it seems so   but every person is ravaged        
   by a manic voice   flaws written high   and glowing
I try to explain   but my handwriting
indecipherable
   a blister-free   relationship   glorious silence   delicious shiver
of something like love   between us   over our shells     I am out of it   in a make-believe land
drag me to real life   and I’ll burn   like a slab of meat     before I trip
     into a lake of salty worries

They all smoked in the garden
that night. Inhaling the chemicals,
the manic whirr in the lungs
of something toxic. Everybody there
wanted a piece. Their own segment
of you to cup in their hands,
taste whenever they pleased
as if you were red wine.
They wore woolly shirts
and stonewashed jeans. Bare feet.
Looking at you, a valuable gift
up for grabs. Voice like liquid gold.
Wishing you’d pick them
over the others, point a finger,
claim your prize. You had a hold
on their heartstrings and didn’t know it.
They said you were unattainable,
that you were hidden behind glass
and couldn’t be touched. Anger bubbled
between them, red kettle-hot.
Raised voices papercut the air.
I could understand.
You were glorious, untarnished.
A cleaner mind and cleaner arteries.
It was a rare and confusing thing
for them. Blonde hair, blue eyes
made their thoughts turn to flour.
You were sweet when all
they knew was acidic,
like a chunk of lemon
under the tongue.
As they squabbled in silence
we spoke. And still
they continued to smoke.

In the darkness
I hold the trickle of your whisper
like a falling feather

feel the contralto tick
of a heartbeat
skin against skin

holding each other
as if flowers
delicate in the breeze

tumbling through
a carmine flush
of desire

The thrill of it

nicking a Twix
from the corner shop,

a lunchbreak one day
in the mid-nineties

looking inconspicuous
between the chocolate

and packs
of smoky bacon crisps.

Sam pilfered
a Snickers, a Wispa,

we dashed outside,
ran back to school,

couldn’t believe it,
looking at our stolen goodies,

not a splash of guilt
alive in our minds.

As soon as the final cupful
of water was poured,
we’d hoist him from the plastic tub
and he’d jiggle as if electrocuted,
water flinging everywhere,
a wild tremor from head to tail.
Then we’d pat him dry
with a pink towel,
black hair glossier than ever
and he’d run
straight to the fence,
rub up against it
as if rubbing the freshness
out from his skin,
back and forth
with a goofy look on his face.

then you would be wrong.
I have many more words
to leak from my fingertips.

I think of the couple making love
to Calvin Harris songs;
what a way to annihilate
the purest of evenings.

I imagine the man with gums
coated in whisky,
the beat under his wisdom teeth,
tie slack around his neck.

I think of the body in the bath,
the stillness of such a scene,
the silent blush of crimson
like a throng of roses.

There are not just grim slivers of life.
I will catch the moments soaked in sun.
The pen is ready,
the poems will come.

Nine years later I find my old
my Geography book,

Wednesday afternoons
if I remember correct and there,

faded but still visible in blue,
T.M. 4 H.S.

and I’m transported back
to 2007 and the fizzy embrace

of a crush, the two of us
running around

in a gust of e-numbers
and holding hands under tables.

My husband calls from the other room
and the image dissolves,

snapped back to the present
as an elastic band, the initials fading further.

I talk to you
even if I have
nothing to say.

My car sounds
like it’s got food poisoning
but I drive it to your house anyway.

I wear the same dumb boots
because I wore them
the first time I saw your face.

I pile up your laughs
in my pockets so I can pull them out
if the day turns to mud.

I hate the way you’re leaving
because everyone leaves,
but I’ll keep your poem

on repeat,
the words will cool my veins,
rock me to sleep.

Part of the shop
I never venture into,

rows of bright
scented candles,
each name more
absurd than the last,

a child’s wish,
sunset breeze,
soft blanket,

since when have
they had a whiff
worthy of a jar of wax
I wonder

as I pop open
the lids of a few,
almost keel over
at the aromas

blasting up my nose.
I barely know the woman anyway,
so I ****** a
Raspberry Sorbet,

toss a twenty
on the counter.

On the TV
at the azure blue
Olympic Hockey Centre
in Deodoro,

our keeper’s
saving everything,
the Dutch careless
when faced with pressure,

the gold medal
swaying the way
of our women.
It’s the first time

I’ve paid much attention
to this stick-wielding sport
but when Webb swerves, turns,
clouts the yellow ball into the net,

I’m chuffed for us
as a cheer detonates
and there’s an ecstatic
bouncing circle of red.

Knocked into each other
in the travel section
of Waterstone’s.
It had been years.

A cluster of seconds
where you scrambled for a name,
like fingers fumbling
for stray egg shell
out of a bowl.
Then the realisation.

We exchanged how are yous,
mentioned jobs, kids, life.
Doing well I see.

My teenage memories defibrillated,
began throbbing at an ludicrous pace
I thought I’d never feel again.

You mentioned Madrid,
I drooled out Wellington.

The dog scrabbles
in the lady’s arms,
tongue flopping every which way.

‘He’s only young’ she says
as a bark coarse as sandpaper
rips through the cabin.

A man with teeth
briquette-black
chuckles at us, at the mutt,

its hair like chestnut
paintbrush strokes
slapdash around the mouth.

The lift judders to a halt.
We go one way,
the dog goes the other.

In the midst
of a fiery debate
on Christmas music.

John says Mariah, hands down,
‘what a voice,
always have a shimmy to that
at the work do.’

Mike thinks Band Aid,
‘number one
for six years
but the original’s the best.’

Sharon believes Wham!
because if you can’t
have a bit of cheese
this time of year when can you.

I put forward the Pogues,
fist on table, ‘it must be the winner’,
and before I know it
we’re calling each other scumbags.

Explain why fluorine and chlorine
are in the same group of the periodic table.

He blunders. There’s a question
on polymers soon
so he knows he’s *******.

An afternoon in June
spent regurgitating answers

rehearsed a hundred times
in overcast classrooms.

He knows there’s a matter
of days before his mates
will go their separate ways.

Names he’s spoken for years
will decay over time,
cemented over by people

he hasn’t yet met.
Two, seven, two, eight, seven.
Seven electrons in their outer shell.

He’s surprised he knows,
the answer chiming
in his head like a peal of bells.

Cat food is
a high priority
shopping list item.

A fly dies
its useless body
a pimple on the windowsill.

The pub is not an option
you know the man
in the cornershop quite well.

Your car has had
a toothache for
the past six years.

A phone call
is never good news
only your sister’s white noise.

The TV’s used
just for the lottery
but you’ll never win

and the cat meows
wondering where her
food has got to.

Jolts me
like a jump-scare
in a ******* movie

stepping out
of Tesco
and wham bam

she pushes the trolley
towards me
the burr of the wheels

a man I haven’t seen
alongside her
like a magnet

thank you mam

attracted to what
I was attracted to once
and my stomach simmers

the truth revealed
like a relic
emerging from the soil

and I swear
I hear the milk curdle
in its carrier bag.

They said
don’t go into the tunnel
but I did
what a rebel.

They said
it wasn’t safe
but I didn’t listen
such a rebel.

Marks on the walls
looping letters
like strawberry laces.

Names of strangers like vines
spewing off
in every direction
submerged under dirt.

Alone and loving it
when I screamed
the echo whooshed around me
like a posse of wasps

and when my mother rang
I didn’t answer
the darkness took over
covered me up.

Imagine blue as building
the first snowman of the year,

red as the toasted marshmallow
above the fire,

then pink as a child
roly-polying on the grass.

Can you see green
as the smell of a new paperback

and orange as your toes
over the sea-licked sand?

What about yellow
like a hug on a December morning,

black as the rain
as it pelts the windows,

with white the sun
creeping in through the curtains?

But what about purple?
It is round? Is it loud?

Give it a nudge, note the sound,
let the taste cool in your throat.

We’d only seen her
a week before.
Appeared fine,
cradling her cuppa
as if a freshly-plucked apple,
a library book
chapter down
on the little wooden table.
You wouldn’t have thought it.
It was hidden,
like a forgotten photograph
slipped inside a fading album.
She laughed,
the skin wilting around
the fingers, the veins
like roots sprouting from within.
I was going to call
when the phone rang,
the shrill signal,
that ugly brick of tragedy.

In Science class
he brandishes the stick
of wood, alight at the tip,
wafts it against
the balloon’s skin,
his students awaiting
the expulsion of colour,
a bang to jangle the eardrums.
He moves in, the pumpkin flame
prods the hollow shape
and it vanishes
in a second of a second
to a spiral of fire,
the sound spreading
through the room faster
than teenage gossip.

I hold her arms
as she knocks the egg
against the bowl

a bump

a bit harder I say
again

a crackle
now pull it open
slowly

she gasps
as the yellow present
slops into the bowl

a lake of yolk
on flour mountain

I see it in a way
I haven’t seen before
as if I can see
and feel what she feels
a swell of pleasure

again she says

as I hand over another
from the cardboard box
excited for what comes next

Our faces
in the dictionary
next to awkward,
me clutching a can
of some second-rate cider,
you looking round the room
for a certain someone? For someone.
I flitter over like a moth,
my eyes assaulted by every little thing,
the earrings lipstick
top skirt heels perfume,
a barrage of chemicals
that send my mind whirring
as if sloshed in a blender.
Conversation swarms with errors,
my syrupy words out of date months ago.
Then he comes with his stubble,
charming smile that appals,
and the silence flows in
like a toxic smog.

Love is a funny word,
tossed around
recklessly,
thrown as if
a polished burgundy cricket ball
you’re supposed to catch
before it crosses the boundary.
It’s just a word,
no different than tea
or jodhpur or penguins
but we treat it as more,
said too little
or far too often,
a glittering jewel
seen as a trigger for something.
Use it if you mean it;
don’t mean it, it’s no use.

the air is dense
with guilt

smoke we made
that threatened
to devour us both
has gone

but our exclamation marks
still loiter
like unwelcome
dinner-party guests

we’re red-faced
and aching
from the tsunami of garbage
hurled franticly
about the place

but our eyes connect

our apologies
ready to float like balloons
from our mouths

I ask you
what you fancy,
Hawaiian or a Texan BBQ.

I mouth
‘hurry up’,
the guy’s dawdling
on the other end,
the phone pressed
against my ribs.

A raised finger.
‘Just a second’.

Sigh.

So I say BBQ Meat Feast, er,
a Pepsi,
(we’ll use the profiteroles
in the freezer for afters),
and, er,
‘Go on, Hawaiian then’,

and I know kissing
her later will be fine
because she doesn’t ask
for garlic bread on the side.

You taste the birth
of winter on your tongue,
that smack of cold.

Grass slobbered
in frost,

streetlights on
at half six,

stars like splinters
of glitter
in the night.

If we could touch them
they’d feel soft
as pillows,

glow bright as torches
to guide us the way home.

I brought the sandwiches,
you brought the drinks.
M&S; and cress,
cans of Coke
from the local Spar.
Kids on the football pitch,
their shouts rising like bullets.
Mrs. Smith from number 33
walked her collie - waved.
Rain came. ‘Typical’, you said.
So we bundled up our stuff
as if the end of a holiday,
then in your house
we unbundled it again
onto the living room floor
with our hair still wet
and watching E4.

Some say a first kiss
is like a firework

so when I hear
that needle-sharp shriek
the wait for it
     b o o m
of amber drizzle
in the sky
I ask you
if that’s what it’s like

and you said
‘like that, but all of the colours
and all at once.’

every word
you throw into the light
like a thunderclap

I get pins and needles
from where you grab
my wrist

electric taste in my mouth

so wind us up
like toy cars

and watch us scurry
delirious
as wild animals

in a hurry for something

to get out
from our self-made mess

to breathe free
from the labyrinth
made of ***** mirrors

let’s melt the icicles
use our words like fire

the roar of our stories
warm flicker of your voice

I wanna whirl
in the moment

swallow the blur

keep spinning

absorbing noise
and colour

our noise and colour

write a diary
in purple ink

bits of string
a coffee-wet finger

and still keep spinning
away from the maze

with you
and each second
that follows

There was almost a fight once.
I say almost, because it was.
I saw it with my own eyes,
in the bus station
that isn’t there anymore
because they blew it up
and everyone cheered.
I don’t remember it much
because this is years ago
and I hadn’t finished university yet
but I was standing in line, as you do,
avoiding eye contact,
like the cucumber
sandwiched between a grey old lady
and a pregnant ******* her phone,
waiting for the X4
or whatever it was called.
I was eating something
and then the black man stood up,
not too far away,
went up to the elderly man,
told him to move, got in his face
like an optician inspecting your eyes
except with more venom.
You could see it in the way he moved.
I don’t know what words were spilt.
I didn’t hear. I said I only saw it.
Then he, the black man that is,
kicked the other man in the shin
with the tip of his boot.
I just stood and watched
like everybody else
because it’s an unexpected moment
in an unexceptional place
as a brief scuffle began,
a thrashing of arms, a spell of aggression.
It ended.
The old man sat down again,
rubbing his leg as strangers spoke.
The black man looked riled.
Cops came out of nowhere
as if they magically transported
to a bus depot by mistake.
I don’t know what happened next
because I got my ride home
and got on with my life,
but I like to think they nicked him
for causing a minor ruckus.
But they probably didn’t.
The buses don’t go there anymore
because they exploded the station.
I might’ve said that earlier.

in our veins
the warm slither
of familiarity

spilling spider-like anxieties
serving molten stories

written
on multi-coloured balloons

we inhale the air
like it’s precious

and it is

each mouthful
a moment
a reminder
of what is now

after the rain
tide out
  the sea
   a sliver of mauve silk
    in the distance
     sand pockmarked
    with footprints
   like paintbrush stipples
  a mishmash of patterns
naked to the sky
all pastel hues blended
with a slippery finger
  ultramarine
   into a violet yawn
    into a lavender blush
     into an apricot kiss
    the mellow slosh of water
   chatter
  sun setting
as a pinkish glimmer
slithers over the beach

What I'm trying to say is

I want that     jolt

that sudden   judder
   of something

you'll give me
without thinking

I want to feel it
throb in every   bone   of my body

I want to be     blown
backwards

   as if kissed   by lightning

I’ll see you
   but want to see you
again   and   again

like a sunrise on a cool morning

   your face being the     sun

talk

cupping conversation
in our
hands
like cool water

slipping giggles
into
pockets

caught in
the current
accepting the twists

noticing it
all

purr together

   chrysalis
     of skin

tangram of
                 bones

corrugated teeth

and     ping-pong     ball
   elbows

in sync

crackling like
radio
   static

   as fingers
dribble
   over the   frets
     of our spines

psychedelic eyes
lips charged

our   fragile frames
     moving

   fluid

Then you said something about
how this shouldn’t
couldn’t happen again

picking your shorts
off the floor
squirming your legs into them

like milky straws

me in bed
your reflection in the mirror
one hand in your hair

strands hurled
back and forth
as if throwing last night

out of your head

red streams in your eyes
stains on the table
and I’m static but inside

all over the place

In the morning, we were woken by thunder,
a vicious gurgle vaulting across the sky.
We watched the rain fall outside from our bed,
the windows stippled with droplets,
the clattering of water on the roof
like women dancing in high heels.

I breathed in your smell, wanting to
inhale everything about you that morning,
wanting not to forget our trickle of minutes.
I brushed my feet against yours, under the sheets.
At one point, our hands touched, I knew your fingers.
That’s what I thought then. That I knew them.

Your khaki green shirt sleeping over a chair.
Design of our fingerprints on the half-full glass.
I caught a glimpse of your Atlantic eyes
as you turned. I kept my words private,
wanting, not wanting to stitch them together.
Last night, lightning. Now this.

It was lust we were building.
Moving in the dark, all elbows and ankles.
Found each other’s lips, leaned in for a kiss,
the first of what would be countless that night.
Your mouth tasted of strawberries and wine.
On the stereo, our favourite song.

You said ‘I love this song’,
peering out the window at an opposite building,
one hand clinched around a glass swollen with wine.
We still wore our socks, cuddling our ankles,
and we kept them on throughout the night.
In my head, replaying each previous kiss.

We’d never wanted to kiss
like this before - as soon as one song
ended we did it again, the night
oozing like a wound into early morning, the building,
our bodies alight with desire, ankles
knocking between sips of wine.

We soon finished off that bottle of wine.
Drained my glass of red, placed a kiss
on your shoulder, shuffling my feet, my ankles
into a more cosy position as a new song
kicked in, swirled into the building,
a hot breeze of music disturbing the night.

I didn’t want it to be just one night.
There was more to discover and plenty more wine,
every word we spoke echoing through the building.
I could savour your smile with every kiss,
loved your freckles, the daisy tattoo near your ankles.
It felt like writing our own story, the lyrics to a song.

But you didn’t want to hear our song.
At the end of the night
you went cold. I wrapped my arms round my ankles.
I felt sure you’d gone off me. Maybe it was the wine.
My lips were anesthetised from every kiss -
when I asked what was wrong, you said 'get out this building.'

Something had changed; I didn’t know what. Night dissolved into day. We stopped listening to Kiss.
Your lipstick stains the colour of wine on my neck. Was it the final time I’d see your naked ankles?
I took a mental photograph of the building as I left, though I’ve forgotten it since. But not yet our song.

Tonight I met a boy with wild green eyes.
Tonight I met a boy.
Tonight I met a boy.

Something about gunfire.
Somebody says religion.
It’s an opportunity for the TV
to screen the same scenes,
the blinking blue and reds
of a bevy of cop cars
and the spooling headline
that assumes, then confirms
the worst.

And so strangers from all corners
spew their pennies’ worth
like bees fumbling for honey,
thousands of hypotheses
replete with exclamation marks,
the name of a Floridian city
swelling as a violet bruise
in the aftershock,
plunged into uninvited limelight.

The chief claims a ‘lone-wolf’ attack,
a man who loathed rainbows
then wiped his own life.
Talk swiftly turns to guns,
the increasing frequency
of wicked bloodshed,
the how, the why, the ‘this day and age’
and ‘the world isn’t safe’
and the nothing, still nothing is done.

Just one night before,
another tragedy,
a young singer shot
while signing their name,
fans left to clasp
the musical remnants
of a life snatched away,
the acerbic word ‘******’
in a nonsensical second.

Something so horrid
became something so common.
How many more gunshots
must shatter a night?
How many more families
must crumple like newspapers
peppered with headlines of the recently lost?
They are asking for answers.
We wait for them to come.

We spent our first night as far away from each other in his lounge.     I was on the squashy coffee-coloured chair his father always sat on; you seemed continents away, on the couch on the other side of the room.     We did that thing where we look at each other but turn away as soon as the other person notices. It wasn’t flirting with no words. The air was swollen with shyness.     The television was on. We drank whatever fizz was placed in our hands.     You were awkward and quiet and I liked that - maybe we are fascinated by people just like us. I wanted to wrap my arms around you like a blanket, but I didn’t want to close you away and vanquish the light, I wished you could have opened up.     I followed you into the kitchen, my mind whirring with the possibilities, each one more unimaginable than the last.     The list of ‘things I now know’ grew at a reckless pace; the chocolate mole beneath your left ear, the glint of a piercing, the Irish tinge to the accent that lodged in my head and played endlessly for hours. Then the inescapable silence. The inability to instigate.     I threw a lukewarm answer back at you as if a shuttlecock barely flopping over the net. You said something about you weren’t staying long. You left the kitchen, and then I did.     On the chair in the lounge we went back to snatching glimpses of each other for a handful of seconds. And I bubbled full of frustration, annoyed at my cellophane-made response, wanting to punch myself in the jaw for not being better, for not being normal in a rather normal circumstance.     My eyes were sacks of rocks. You kept twiddling a strand of your hair, and the night sank like a kid dunking a plastic ship in the bath.

wouldn’t it be great to learn Greek
she says
quickly riffling
through the phrasebook
with a thumb and her tongue out
while I try to discover what
‘to speak’ is in Dutch

everyone uses English
you know I say
spluttering ‘ik spreek, jij spreek,
hij spreek’,
trying to nail the pronunciation
like the book tells me to
‘ick sprake, yigh sprake, hi sprake’

but they might appreciate
tourists knowing a bit in Crete
like ‘efcharistó’
or ‘ti ypérochi méra’ she mutters
but it all, literally,
sounds Greek to me
and we can’t visit everywhere

besides, she wants warm weather
but I’d be fine in, say, Sweden,
‘Där är den närmaste Ikea?’
or in Iceland, but I can’t
pronounce anything
the way the phrasebook
wants me to

so Greece is probably best,
and anyway,
she’s too busy
informing me that
‘monókeros’ means unicorn
and it’s 575 quid each
if we book now

pulse of 80s music
     conversation
swirls
between   drinks

bubbles rolling
     under
   the   tongue

bank holiday getaway
beermats

not getting any   younger
   doesn’t mean
you have to feel   older

people
   stream in
   shadows pour
across   the     floor

names that haven’t spilt
from my lips
   for years

   and you wonder     how     long
the   puddle   will last

names scribbled
by a   dartboard

the faint    
     clunk
   of potted   pool *****

dialogue   fizzles
like   tablets
   in water

voices
   dripping
coming     then going

wilt into
the cool   spring   night

When I tell you

   when I say what
I’ve been   meaning   to say

your     hands are   heavy
   with     cold

words   sharp
     pellucid as ice

melted in seconds
     as if never     said

our bodies
frozen   as snowmen

cheeks
     slapped    vermilion

you tell me no

   it’s     impossible
and I     don’t

but I   do
and I’ve   noticed

     the crinkles around
your   lips   when you     smile

the way   you comb your hair
   put on your     socks

but the silence that     follows
   is like a muffled   black   hurt

   in my   chest

our eyes
never   meet

Oh you feel it
rising inside you

filling you up
like lager into a glass

you know this all
as it’s happened before

you’re pretty sure
you know how these moments

unfold
fold back together

the colours
gleaming as if

newly discovered
the words that dribble

from your mouth
in a lacklustre fashion

and you’re telling yourself
stop it

but then you see
every little detail

or you think you do
and it’s what you want

when really you have
no idea do you

fall out
from the back of the van,

scuttle away
like animals made of leaves.

They’ll come back
as if letters in the mail

without any crinkles
or a slit down the middle

or a welt of ink
like a bruise nudging the margin.

I’ll pick them up
and taste every syllable

before slotting them
inside empty yoghurt pots,

deserted notebooks,
ready to be revived  

so I can swallow them anew.

wash me clean
of all the things I am not familiar with
not familiar enough with
I’ll fling them out like pebbles
to scorch the horizon
corrode away

feel fresh accents
question marks
spill against my legs
like dandelion seeds

old letters will unfurl
underwater
dissolve as stars

these are naked lips
bare hands
when I press them together
you hear tears
plopping onto my skin

the sea is my flesh
I mould my memories
out of salt and clay

leave them in places
we keep a secret

I hold the chill
of your language
as a cluster of pearls