Sometimes you’re there
Wry eyes,
I can smell you –
This flat seeps,
And the doors weep,
And the corners hold you up.

Marionette -
Magic directs you.

My atheist,
You are my reason for God.

Happy thing -
Come fiercely.
Bend me like a tulip at midnight,
Make something out of me,
Smoke out my *****
And saddle it in gemstones,
Gallop me like a tongue-twisted
Traveller into the
Whole globe’s bedrooms.

Happy happy thing -
Push me!
Make something out of me!
Kid me,
Front me,
Strike me dancing like a hot
Stone,
Hand me cigarettes that I’ll light
From the last one,
And the second to last one,
And the next one.

Happy thing!
Ohhh come colourfully!
Make the world all-a-bright,
Make red as red as a big red love
Or a spitsuckled cherry gumdrop
Of red-red-red-red-red,
Make yellow smear itself
like crushed cats eyes,
Make pastels all pennysweets
And green so luminous that
Clock hands can’t even dream of it.

You beautiful
*******
Happy
Thing!
You happy happy happy thing…!
Songs are burning!
And planets are droaning!
And London is sleeeeeeping,
And the morning is leaping at me!
Is it leaping at you?

My happy thing,
Come noisily.
Sit with me jabbering,
******* with me,
Snog me,
Pull apart my face and
Absolutely ******* drench me
In come.

Happy thing,
Pierce me,
Make me a Sebastian,
Riddle me with spears and watch me
Laugh out the blood,

Happy thing,
Come quickly.
Take my hand and run with me.
They’re shooting at us,
Making saints of us,
And they’ll get us y’know, they’ll get us, they’ll get us –

Happy thing
Come on now dear,
I know the watercolours are running but
Don’t they look pretty
dropping as keenly as our tears –
being caught is just another reason to escape!

Happy thing,
Don’t swallow that.
Are we lowering ourselves?
Are they poking holes in us?
Oh no,
Are they sinking us?

Happy thing,
I hope you always
Come fiercely,
Colours aren’t the same now
And ******* is just a drone of biology.
I promise that
next time we'll be immortal.
Next time we’ll have learned
How to really, really run.

1.  Understand Weather.

(Strangers on a bench,
Looking up.)

“Cirrus, I think.
Cirrocumulus?”
“Stratus surely.
Or altocumulus.”

(You must also hate the cold
And the sun,
And always wish the current season
Was a different one.)


2. Never Be Honest About Stuff That Hurts.

Pain so bad
Can’t even **** –
“How are you, Arthur?”
“Brilliant, thanks!”

3. Have An Opinion On These People

Katie Price (Feminist? Witch?)
Kate Moss (Goddess? *****?)
Stephen Fry (Snob? Wilde?)
Frankie Boyle (Offensive? Mild?)

4. Never Talk About Money.

“So.” An American asks. “How much do ya make?”
“I…I…Oh My God look at that dog over there that has a face like a pancake!”

5. Learn How To Apply The Class System To Cigarettes.

Pipe – Monty Withnail
Silk Cut – Comfortably Middle.
Lucky Strikes – Probably not British.
B&H; – Shops at Lidl.

6. Secretly (Or Openly) Enjoy The Royal Family

“So, did you hear what they called the baby?”
My boyfriend shrugs and says -
“I don’t give one tiny ****.”
“They named him George. Isn’t that twee?”
“Aw ******* hell, I had a tenner on Louis!”

7. Hey Jude.

If all else fails,
At the end of the night,
Sing na-na-na
And it’ll be alright.

8. Never Complain About Your Meal

“Hm. These mussels look a bit suspect.”
“How’s your meal, Sir?”
“Perfect!”

9. Always Hate The French, (Even If Your Own Mother Is French)

Numberplate 'F'
On an articulated lorry.
“Stuck up…onion…*******.”
(I’m sorry mum, I’m so sorry!)

10. ‘Jerusalem’

Mime a sword in your hand,
Bang your chest with devotion,
Wave the sword about,
Sing with emotion.

text me back to tell me that you're in

that you're in the living room,
downing gin,
sat next to an overflowing bin
whilst your flatmate plays the smallest violin

because if you're out I know you're meeting him -
(swollen from his evenings at the gym)

and I'll turn up, to tear him limb from limb,

so please text back, to tell me that you're in

An inch -

the most
unsung
jacket
of skin

of tongue

of fur

of floorboard.

Run me over

Give me
An
Inch

And one more
And one more
And one more
And one more

Click them off like

rosary beads

with accossiated prayers.


Smudge the dreams

into the eiderdown,

And divide them down

in ironed out

layers.


Line them up and

gobble them with listless

tea.

I am your prediction!

(said in shushes,

quite benediction)

I want to drop like stingless bees.

I am Addiction to Tranquility.


How jealous I am!

Watching him fall on his ****

as I begin the solitary farce

of trying to close my

eyes.

I watch his chest slowly sink and rise.

How beautiful -

to be cut down,

like grass.


Flophouse drapes of

cigarette smoke

hang from the ceiling in

billows.

A headache clings and

holds me close as

daylight stumbles

like a ghost,

and settles her questions

on my pillows.


The tragic thing about each morning

Is that I greet each sleepy dawn

with the dry and

pinkened threat of tears.

Sleepers – do you know the

might of what you do

each ******* night?

The oblivion in half your years?

The fiction of your wild frontiers?

The obliteration and presentation

of all your garbled

Freudian fears?

Do you know the glamour in what you do?

Do you know what I’d give to be like you?

To live and somehow not be here?

To close my eyes?

To disappear?

no

of course  not

a disease is a disorder
with symptoms and signs
an internal dysfunction
a...
disturbance
in the design

No
I am not infectious -
I touch this boy so,
and see!
He is still a normality
A ******* fiend
An hourglasss devotee -

I am not foodborne, no,
Unless you count
the macaroons
pistachio green
and lemon too,
what a taste
of boyhood,
schoolboy blue

I am not acute,
a one-time sneeze.
I am not
a short-lived
Green coughed
wheeze,

I am not
the plunger in your vaccines -

I am the pistol red and glitter
in your
genes

It Girl,
Pierced **** girl,
****** as a jaywalking crow
With bluebottles for eyes.
I can see your billion goosebumps,
Your skin dragging at
Your perfume.
You’re not beautiful,
But girl -
You
Are
It.

Our teeth clashed –
A clunking omen?
Tipsy fingers strolling.

“I think you might be a genius.”
“Shh.”
Onto backs, rolling.

Something asked,
Can’t disobey it.
Dreaming mouth delays it.

“I love you.”
“Shh.”
No, I’ll say it, I’ll say it.

Dinner table,
Bowls of light,
Stage fright, lilies,
No appetite,
Dark absences nibbling
Right through my eyes
Like black rabbits pulled
Out of Truman Show skies,
Provoking the question
From those sat up front –
Is this a trick you’re pulling -
Is this one of your stunts?
But no amount of smiling
Will do –
Nod all you like.
They’re onto you.

Christmas Eve,
Sister’s house,
Black eye,
Ulcerated mouth.
Divinely tickled-
By Miss World!
A pinecone and mistletoe
Christmas hurled
Down en suite toilets
Porcelain pink,
My face makes love
To the bathroom sink.

The most squalid Little Lord
In the county, me,
Summer blooms hold
No charms for me,
So I try to apply my
Favourite smile
And travel a few more
Country miles
To a chemist that doesn’t
Know my face.
I browse a bit
(Condoms, spectacles case)
Then I try to
Convince the pharmacist
That I need two
Bottles of
Gee’s Linctus.

The cruelest boyfriend
I ever had
Gives head to a toilet roll
And his fingerpads
Are bordello yellow
From greased nicotine,
This ******* in Primrose
Exhales smoke in a stream,
And I try to remember what
Buttercup said,
His baby’s breath whispers
Wilt in my head,
Something about purity
Something about loss
Something about cleanliness
Something about God
Something about something
That I should tick off as regrettable,
But one flower can make everything
So *******
Forgettable.

When I was young
I didn’t have the language.
The locus
Of my pain
Was beyond reach,
A book of forgotten
words.
I’m older now,
And sometimes I still think
All the words are foreign.

In a Bluebird toffee tin
Are a hundred letters –
Most of them doodle-stamped and
Delivered by hand.
Unlike the letters I sent to you
They do not smell of spritzed cologne,
(A trick that I learned from Grease)
They are not messy
Or tea stained,
But perfect powder blue
And allowing for small extravagances –
The Cursive of the Obsessive,
Cursed by neatness and perfect hearts.

I pick one out at random,
A casually cruel one sent from Rome –
I imagine you blinking on a balcony
With dazzles on your collarbone,
A teeny tiny sugarless coffee
At your side,
And a pen tapping your knee.

“I’m not a **** at all –“ you wrote,
It’s only that you are gregarious
In the most DISGUSTING way.
That’s your problem not mine -
Your optimism won’t catch you.
Cynicism won’t catch you either,
But it has the courtesy not to throw you.
I’m stopping now,
By the time you get this
I’ll be back home.
What pointlessness we endure for one other.
I miss you, as you say,
‘ever so’ –
Bedtime here is a source of misery.”

And then you signed your name,
Tiny,
Small,
Impossibly graceful,
Just like yourself.

You were always nasty
When you missed me.

Paris sits at a heart-shaped table, her lamplight eyes dimming for the morning. She pumps a tube of mascara, yawning.

“Oi!”

Paris jumps, troubled by the noise. “Oh no. Not you.” She says, blusher brush poised.

London doffs his rooftops like ten million battered bowlers.

“Nice to see you too. Not a morning girl, eh?”

Paris shakes her lovely head in a flurry of churchbells. “For you mon cher, there’s no right time of day.”

(The Channel chuckles, unsettling ships, as Dover reclines in her cloud of talc and giggles like a tickled bluebird.)

London utters a swearword. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“You’re not fit to lick my shoe.” Paris scowls, adjusting the Eiffel Tower until it sits slap-bang in the middle of her head like a crown.

“What hard work you are!” London howls, slamming a fist into the Serpentine.

Calais shrugs his trees, bored. “Mon dieu – get a room.”

He takes his shirt off without
unbuttoning
and in the dead of night
when he goes for a ****
I see his silhouette
and think -
what a marvellous man.

We row a lot these days
and he is often cross
with the way I never clean the bath,
with the way I move,
and sometimes
with what I eat in bed -

I know I'll never be
the heartless soldier he knew before
or the gym bunny with two iron eyes,
He'll never be quite as blond
as I want,
nor quite as odd.

But still I look at his silhouette
dark and strange
when he goes for a ****,
and I think,
dear me,
what a marvellous man.

I am back in the old house, sat in the garden on a white chair. I am barely awake and a cigarette fizzes between my fingertips, turning into a long column of ash.
I stayed away from this house for over two years. I stayed away for lots of reasons. When people ask me why, I say ‘too many memories’ and they know not to press me for details. What an excuse! ‘Too many memories’. How tragic. How mysterious. A house as full as a brain, abandoned for knowing too much.
Memories are the stuff we are made of. It is impossible to have too many of them.
I sit on this white chair, and the house nudges my seahorse brain. All the candles of my mind are lit.
My cigarette burns out.

I wake up in the garden. The wisteria hovers over me like the ****** Mary. The wisteria was a present from Dee’s mother, except she didn’t call it wisteria, she called it ‘Bethany’s Flower’ because it had first been grown by great aunt Bethany over one hundred years ago. The wisteria is sky blue, passed down through the family like a blue-eyed gene.
I stumble into the house and shamble upstairs. Maria is in my bed - a **** vision, a lovely blur. The mirror laughs at me as I pull at my eyelids, staring into myself. My eyes have a sort of skin on them, a dull film, like two brown bottles left to collect dust in the cellar.
“Morning.” Maria says.
“Morning.” I say, breaking away from the mirror.
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere.” I grab my mobile from the bedside. “Excuse me a minute, I need to phone someone.”
I go back into the garden and dial.
“Dan?”
“Good morning arsehat.” He laughs. “Hungover much?”
“Yeah. Listen, Dan-“
“Maria still there?”
“Yeah she is. Listen Dan…”
“What happened with you two last night?”
“I’m not sure. Listen Dan – this is going to sound stupid, but can ketamine turn you blind?”
“What?”
“Ketamine. Can it turn you blind?”
“****. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Ok. See, I think I might need to see a doctor. It’s my right eye. My right eye.” I sit down on the white chair, holding on. “I can’t see a ******* thing.”

It is the day after the funeral and my sister is with me. I’m drinking Covonia straight out of the bottle.
       “I wish you’d come home with me.” She says. “You don’t want to be hanging around here.”
I wonder to myself how I’m doing this. I haven’t gone upstairs yet. I’m too tired to be mad, too tired to be suicidal, too confused. I breathe out, swallowing hard, my head jumbled, and I say:

       “In another universe I suppose this hasn’t happened.”

A post-it note on the kitchen memo board reads: WHAT IS TIME?

He comes into the bedroom and thumps me three times on the shoulder. It’s his way of telling me he’s going to sleep. I reach over in the darkness. His spine is in my hands, his mouth is reluctant, and I’m sleepy. His skin is very cool. The pillows bunch up like a cloud between us. We are Tarot card lover.  I tell him that I want to **** him.
Later on I watch him slink away to the bathroom. He is so beautiful in the light of the doorway with his hand reaching out to guide him - my God, I can hardly stand it.
There is a glow, the bed rocks, I smell soap.

Toscar and I barely know one another. We burst into the house like two lions, scrapping, kissing.
       “******* hell. This place is huge.”
I have a desperation. His parka is wet.
       “You’re so cute.” He says as he hauls me upstairs. He unzips my jeans, throwing open doors, trying to find my room.  His hair is biscuity and thick. “You’re so ****. So cute.”

At around three o’clock we sit in the cold garden, smoking. He’s put his parka back on, with the hood up.
       “So, what’s going on with your eye and all?”
“I’m not sure. I have to have an MRI.” I glance over at him. “Maybe I’m dying.”
       “You’re not dying.”
“Maybe I am.”
He exhales a ball of smoke.
“My mum died of motor neurone disease.” He says. “Horrible ******* thing. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll get it too.” He pauses and fumbles around in his pocket, pulling out a pound coin. He starts flipping the coin a little bit, before putting it back in his pocket. I think he wants to make a point about his chances, but it’s too dark to really see the coin. “I just don’t think about it. Death. There’s no point. I’m alright today, d’y’know what I mean?” There is a silence.
       “My boyfriend died.” I say, eventually.
“Yeah, I know.” He says quietly. “Anthony told me.”
I try to stop myself. I really do. But I start to cry. Toscar doesn’t care. He pulls his white chair over to mine, and he lets me cry and cry and cry.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.” I say, and I’m not sure if I mean here, in the garden, in the house, or here, in the world. It doesn’t matter what I mean, anyway.
       “Hey, mate.” Toscar says, very gently. “You didn’t die.”

There is a deep, rich silence and the bedsheets are as soft as oil.
“What do you think happens when you die?” I ask. “From a purely scientific perspective. Is there any way…?”
Dee rolls his shoulders onto my hands.
“No, Art. I told you. There’s just nothing.”
“But I can’t imagine ‘nothing’.”
“Of course you can. Before you were born – what was there?”
“There was the promise of me.”
“No. There was the risk of you.”
We both laugh.
“There must be something.” I say. “There must be.”
“I hope there’s nothing.” Dee says. “ I can’t think of anything worse than an afterlife. I want peace and quiet. A lifetime is enough. Being alive is such a strange predicament. Knowing everything and knowing nothing.”
I can feel his heart against me. I can feel his heart and smell his skin. I feel us, as we are rocked by the world and breathing together.
And outside is the garden, the wisteria, the white chair, the promise (and the risk) of something, anything, everything, nothing.

There’s a spider on your cheek
To the right of a wrinkle.
Has it become a feature of your
Face -
Do people stare and sketch it?

What long days you keep.

I will turn my eyes on you tonight,
Because there is no romance to the burning dog
Dragged like a myth to the tune of a truck -
And no roses or violets
Will sweeten that path.

He always showers right
Before bed -
His version of a milky drink,
Taking advantage of my
Chamomile shower gel.
(Girly? Yes,
But undeniably relaxing.)

Sometimes I join him,
Knees pushing into the
Bottom of the bath,
Boiling hot water
Hitting me directly
In the back of the head,
Giving me sunstroke.

Not tonight though.
Tonight, just sit,
Wait for the door to open,
And watch the steam
Slowly greet
My mirrors.

I’d done a lot of drugs that summer, drank a lot, and lost my virginity a hundred times over.
David. He was the man who ****** me for the first time. He was in his thirties, a Buddhist, and a patient teacher.
In the dark, he was so ****, iron filings and gum.
But perhaps it wasn’t him that enticed me into ***. I think it might have been a combination of everything. The way his girl-faced Buddha shone by the light of a candle. The view from his window – city flowers and washing lines, Chopin on the stereo, the cleanness of his sheets, the girl in the next room talking loudly about Jean Paul Sartre.
I want you, I said.
Fifteen, I was. He didn’t know that, of course.

There was a terrible pressure when he ****** me, so he told me to
Relax
Relax
Relax
Imagine you’re emptying out
Imagine you’re emptying out and accepting something holy
communion if you like
you're catholic aren't you?
You look lovely
You feel lovely
You look lovely

There was a part of my mind that thought of girls being torn through, blood and pain, embarrassment in the morning. I couldn’t stay hard.
There was a part of me that gave in, with my knees up by my shoulders.
There was a part of me that wanted to flip him onto his back and **** him, part of me that was desperate to be a man, part of me that hated this submission.
In the morning there was no embarrassment, just cereal and ten different types of smile. Milk in bed. A lecture on loving kindness.

We were just two children
Really,
Not knowing which way to
Turn the maps,
But finding our own way
Anyhow.

Our own strangeness
Propped us up
Until we were
Curling our fingers
Around a strange sky,
Two stars touching,
Neither hot enough to
Burn the other.

You learned how to cry quietly,
The same way that I learned,
Holding onto your stomach
Like a little bear that was worn out
And threadbare
From the wear and tear of a
Lonely childhood.
A tear slipped,
Like a boy on a wet slide,
Pooling at your nose.

“I keep making mistakes.”
You said.

And I told you

That I would delight in
Any mistake
you had ever made,
Or would ever make.

this dust-rolled
brown moth
is
patterned
with a band of white
to stand for winter,
when it was just a flimsy bundle
of gristle and sticks

and all the boys in the summertime are sticky and
unclean
like the mouths of dogs -
pink where the sun can't lick

the backs of their necks are baked red brick

girls wear bronzer
piled on thick.

Liquorice fellows,
Hooded
Execution -
A glossy black
Etonian intrusion,
Settling walnuts
Cracked apart and clever,
Snap crack
Snap, crack,
and
black
forever

Caterwauling rats
All brown and nasty
Sprouting tumours
Buck teeth
Rhinoplasty,
Stealing eggs and dragged on backs
of tumours,
Hissing soft through yellow teeth
'consumers'

Rabbits silver
Lands of plenty green,
All green and plenty
Land of ours, unseen,
Rats and crows
Pick our country bare,
God help the rabbit,
God
God help the hare.

I remember the back of your neck.
The summer changed it
and it became a thing,
My own sleeping
Pet to stroke -
Powder dry,
As warm as the bed.

I sometimes touch the back of my neck
and pretend it's yours.

Never
Orchestrate a hook up with a
Ripped and curious hetero
Who dances like Prince.
Ever the idiot, I
Grabbed hold of his hand and
Instigated a kiss, whispering
“All is well with me, I’m a good bet…”
Not knowing just how much of a
Weird night it was going to be.
Ominously, he told me to leave straight afterwards. With
One eye on his sleeping form, I
Didn’t set fire to his flat, but I snapped every one of his cigarettes.

Is it weird to hallucinate wind chimes? twinkle twinkle, they go - twinkle, twinkle

I didn't eat breakfast but went straight to church, out of the sun and into the stone. I lit one candle and it shone on the rack.
I am sitting behind myself, a teenager coughing emeralds into a wet tissue, raging with flu.
Over there, I am ten years old.
All of these me's, bursting in the silence, finding excuses not to pray.

ten am
walked to the cafe to watch ten thousand beating hearts carried like luggage -
one girl has bought an orange and is eating it right in front of me-
It slipped down her neck one piece at a time.
I suppose it's quite intimate to watch someone eat an orange like that.

Dutch guy (I think Dutch, but god knows) on the phone
with a very, very, very nice **** and a tattoo going up his arm that
sort of looks like a vine.

walked some more and dunked my head in the fountain to cool off,
already dry and sitting in the park
music everywhere
I can't get that piano piece out of my head, 'The Entertainer'
and also that bit from ******
'all the stars and the cars and the bars and the barmen'
or something like that.

hello love, would you mind a good seeing to?
not tonight sweetcheeks, I utterly loathe you
I am aching everywhere.
Do I look mad or heartbroken or both?

if he doesn't call by one then
(what? what are you actually going to do about it you stupid ****?)

The key to good mental health is to avoid thinking at any cost and don't go anywhere when you have nowhere to go.

The mother of Love
Is Quietness,
And
The last thing to leave
Pandora’s box
Was
Hope.

Amber storms are coming –
But not for you and I, my love.
We will sit here in peace
With the windows
And our mouths
And the boxes
All shut.

He had a tearjerking smile
A temper,
A medal,
An offering of soap
And a knack for loyalty.
In letters
He called me
Old Sport.

And she
Was a film star
Who could paint.

To be 'old hat' at something
is to know it inside and out,

off by heart.

four weeks ago you pinched my panama
and it looked so good on you,
butterscotch and black

Bedside origami,
A corset of pins turned
Inward,
Find some solace in folding yourself
Into two pieces,
Tubes scratching the back
Of your throat to
Carry out blood and
Bile as
Thick as treacle.

Puncture wound,
Important vein,
Hits the back of the
Teeth before it
Registers on the skin,
Like a cold hammer
Smashing into
Echoed ice.

Cigarette burn,
Cold,
Setting the edge of
My hair alight,
Dusty, bright,
Almost holy.

Bladder spasms
Like boxer’s kicks,
Yellow rodents
Thashing,
Can’t
Even
Speak.

Thick muscle aches,
The kind that make it
Hard to pour milk
Or ******* -
And leave you like
An OAP in the most
Deathly of winters.

A sensory explosion,
Indoor sunburn,
Lighting up your
Leg
Like a pajama on fire.
Cool flannels will
Do nothing.

Five week constipation,
A car with no
Biting point,
Suspended over a toilet
Crying tears that
Have nothing to do with
Sadness.
The mirror hands you
Back your own
Ugliness with a smile
That is not a smile.

I spent a whole hour chasing the ducks,
Trying to make friends with them.
You watched.
I don’t think you even cracked a smile.
As the sun went down you took my hand
And in the resigned manner of a man resigned,
said,
(For the first time,
Like you’d been shoved into it)
‘I love you.’

I laughed today,
I looked like Super Hans
When he tried to come off crack.

I suppose it's fine to be sloppy.

But if I ever wear a tracksuit –
Shoot me.

You stood up,
Your blazer ironed to immaculacy,
And in the quietest voice I’ve ever heard
Told the Society
That
You

Were

A

Nihilist.

I piped up like a prophet and said
"The only true nihilist
Is a dead one."
I just wanted to speak to you.
God,
I didn’t mean it.

Your name
Snowballed once inside my brain
And was gone –
(I don't know the Russian for 'one' or 'two'
But for a minute I knew the Russian for you)

So go spend my winnings on the days you've lost,
Your blind-eyed perfect smile is worth the cost,
Good fortune means more to me than luck
But don't sit so close, love,
My poker face is ******.

(You were so good,
Your taste went on for days as no taste should)

One day soon I'll recall your name,

Where I'm from
All the snow melts in the rain

A bee with innards spilling
A lost tabby,
A blimp caught up in trees,
Tintern Abbey.

The gravestone of a lover,
A drowning ship,
An NHS delivery of
Fortisip.

A girl with alopecia and
Fungail nails,
A one legged pigeon,
Exploding whales.

Ivy choked churches,
Merlot tongues,
Parrots plucking feathers,
Marlboro lungs.

Girls locked up in attics,
*** toys.
Boys punching girls
And punching boys.

Babies crowning
Fussed about like kings.
Darlings,
You shall see such pretty things.

The cries were lynched from wall to wall
Dangling like pastel vowels
And painted planets,
So the air smelled of colgate and snot.
Aw Dan, what a night that was!
You cried for your dog -
I wept for the bow in my laces
Which I knew I couldn’t tie without Mother -
But then the morning came with a friendly knock,
And in a few more nights, we were brothers.

I’ve totted it up, you know
And I’ve watched you wake up over a thousand times,
I’ve filmed you crash your car,
I’ve stolen your chips,
I’ve punched your kidneys
And pressed my eyelids to your lips.

What a long way we’ve come
From those two boys left alone.
I wonder what they’d have thought if they'd been shown a video
Of you and me in 2014,
Rushing a hug over beer?
I almost wished we’d known back then
So that we wouldn’t have been so frightened.

I wish we’d known how much we’d laugh,
How we’d utilise Latin,
How we’d sell those diamonds
Blagging, without a clue- !

I wish every boy had you
To see them through.

My phone clamped to my ear,
Listening to you think.

We were punning.

(We would combine categories like ‘The Royal Mail’ and ‘Sea Life’,
And come up with things like Octo-post and
Cod-espondence.)

That night it was ‘Crockery’ and ‘Celebrities’.
You thought of Plate Moss
And
Camilla Parker Bowl.

1.

I'm on my fourth
pack of cigarettes,
my twentieth cup
of tea,
my mouth tastes like
the gusset
of an unwashed person's
negligee.

*******, phone.
*******, door.
I don't even know
what you're for
anymore.

2.

A copy of a copy of a copy...
who said that?
who ******* said it?
No! Train your brain, Arthur!
Don't you dare Google it!

3

I can already feel
the lights of the
hospital
warm on my
head.
Make me a brew, ladies,
save me a bed.

4.
Why didn't anybody tell me
that it would be so hard
so instantly?
The last time
if I recall
it took two weeks
before the curtain call.

5.
I think I need to dream
to be reminded of
pretty words.