Monet was painting up my vision
while the droves were driven out.
We stepped out to the derision
of a tenor waterspout.

The town outside is dancing
in the ruddy neon hues
and I’m ****** whilst Amsterdam-ing
by the slam-dunk cognac blues.

And a cap was shaking coppers
in an out cove by the way,
where instruments and owners
had begun to play.

The bar stools are all swaying
whilst the festival ensues,
and I’m ****** whilst Amsterdam-ing
by the slam-dunk cognac blues.

With the rhythm of the rimjhim
and the stamping our feet
we sing our drunken-whim hymn
whilst we stagger down the street.

And we had sunken five; still sinking
Im strung out, slammed, and stinking
Four sheets to the wind and freaking
about what I had to lose.
so that’s when I got to thinking
had an inkling to the linking
between my errant drinking
and the slam-dunk cognac blues…

we spill
out
into the dark
Sanguine moon
watching
your
guiding hands
and mine lead
so softly
to the lily-vellum of your thighs
then
a fuse-spark
a cataclysm of ruffled
skirt
hands on your apocalyptic hips
your lips are rhododendron honey
your lips are codeine
mellifluous and urgent
as the pressing heat of a black summer night.

folded sunny side
Golden bellied bottle kiss
ruddy bubbles burst

Her fingertips loosed the glass
bottle, which had
of late
gathered rain like the
hands of paupers.

Glitter in a heartbeat.
to be collected by old battered shoes
or car tyres
and streetwise magpies.

it joins a city evensong
this oceanic roar of nothing
fusing chords of cars and smoke
and lonely dogs
with hacks
and throngs
of perambulating suits
and suitors
trampling athwart broads of concrete
As swifts in summer.


We swim in it
through open atriums
and barren rooms of
magnolia and magnolia and magnolia.

All the while if you look harder
you see through chinks a sepulchre
in each greying tower
ranging higher and higher still.

Machines and machinations
stacking life upon life to
build pyramids
to gaudy kings
in pinstripe or herringbone.

Flumes of fumes ***** like floods
Into and out of train stops
and bus stands.
Circling lungs like hungry crows.
Crows which haunt
Bombed out chapels made new
resuscitated with waxen ivy
and ivory lilies.

And the leaves of saintly oak trees
chatter in shrinking crevices of green
story telling
Of how people and things grow old.
And you can walk these streets
And dive too like cormorants into
The platitudes of city living.

Soaked to the skin in sound
to tell your story
like the shards
of a broken bottle.

Out of the window
a courtyard yawns,
Passion flowers overwhelm
sun-brushed brick

A cat paws a
gutted cassette tape,
whilst pigeons
steal into the
forgotten yard building,
with newspaper windows
and wonky slates

I guess they own
the vestiges of the old
car in there now;
rust on rust on rust
Their own kingdom
in old boxes and older dust.

They aren’t aware,
of the lunacy of it all;
this human race.
People are just
no good to
each other.
Money before morals
before health
before warmth
before kindness
before love
before life.

I envy them,
those
birds-
they only
Have
to worry about
the
   cat.

Slender
you wear
a palatine Ivory
beneath your dress.
I trace the sea of your eyes
with mine.
As you catch your lip between teeth
and tilt your head, beaconing
my gaze with yours.

your smile unbuttons my shirt
and you twist, the wings of your hips,
Urgent, seek my grip.
We find a bedroom.
My back finds the burnished brick
as you push me to it
your hands lead mine
to curve of your waist,
to the loops in your lace.
and all is undone.

Lips sink to neck, to shoulder
To breast, to the pink betwixt your ivory.
and soon we are sundered on linen sheets
like tulip petals after a storm.

A
Drop.

Then it came
Pirouetting.
It came clattering
It came guttering
with furore and fight
with rhythm and rhyme
like many dancing feet.

On steel roofs
On downy pines
and baobabs
and old cracked earth
Pattering and shimmering
drawing dust from dirt
women and men from houses
enshrining the sky with their trembling hands.

The Night Left
With the smack of a
Panko breaded sunrise

Poppies in the garden
And passionflowers
Peering
through banjaxed window frames

Brusque Coffee roughing up my arteries
Damson Coloured smoke
Bacon & Bacon & Eggs

A little vignette of perfection
Let this morning dawdle
like the hangover that chased the stars out.

Coal dust
+
asbestos
+
Silicone
pull J U G U L A R  
straighten larynx
Plug my cord in.
Run:
digitized opalescent sky
Terminate process
heart exe. Cannot be found
reboot reboot reboot
sign up to facebook
sign up to dumb luck
sign up and sign off
C:/prey
C:/pray
C:/pray

that I don’t get swallowed
by this machine
that I don’t get swallowed
by this 01101101 01100001 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100101

We tied a knot in heaven
and left it there
suspended in the air
unaware of the care that lent there
we stare, bare of emotions
for those we sent there
prematurely
surely it was god’s plan
between that ISIS and
the American man’s man
but wait
I don’t rate the
Wests lack of responsibility
they attest not to the culpability
and without an ounce of timidity
suggest that their
interactions are near
the vicinity of humility
when really Iraq
was left gutted like a
listless fish
to be added to the list
of countries
America and Britain not great
Felt the need to mend
not with gentle hands
but with the bayonets hate.

left without infrastructure
a poor suture on
a shambling wreck
Iraq limped on
to suppurate into civil war
which we condemn and abhor

but somehow haven’t the
nous to implore that we have been here before
The imperialist shadow looms like
a hound, as we espouse civility;
Irony abound.

You wore a paper white quiet
like the spaces between      
words
And that’s when I realised
that we-
Are a misprint
unique, beautiful in a way
but never now to be.

Ancient leviathan,
City in sands
Razed in a roar.
Now silence stands

Taller than your
Pillars did before
As the world looks on
It can’t but abhor

Let sleep find your
Great arches now
Though brought down
They did not bow

For their shadows
Outstretch the hand of man
And the rote of
All religion’s plans.

They did not destroy!
They have not won!
And in undoing
Become
undone.

Staggering you stagger out
a trickle tout lager lout
a beer abuser a loser
with morals looser
than the crude jokes you spit in bars
EDL violence
Daily mail intolerance
you dog beater
with talk cheaper
than forgotten junkyard cars
***** dog breath
bereft of what’s left
When you’ve rinsed your words away
alienating while fornicating
with bottle after bottle
day after day.

Crude
We pushed
each other
against saintly walls
lips sinking under
leaving bite marks
like cherry blossoms
on magnolia skin.

Hands through hair
Heavy air
Heavier breathing
Ribcage to ribcage
grazing flesh
on limestone
obscured by altars
behind cloister doors
Our bodies are cathedrals
built of blood.

We fall further
into one another
On hallowed stone.
hate the sin…?
Love the sin
Love the sinner
Be the sinner
Be the sin.

It’s an
odd comfort
that it is
always raining somewhere
Old watering cans
collecting water
Tawny pines
lofty, sighing in the mist.

When my bones
are laid out
like a picket fence
in a wooden coat
they will drink
with the roots
and stone
and earth.

And when I am but
dust or atoms it will still rain
maybe I will be bricks
in a building
or some tarmac slab
something functional
or a peony flower
or even forget-me-nots
it will still rain
and I will be gone.

We planted tulips in each other,
in the night.
While the rain played in street light
We intertwined,
As old roots or Ivy.

We left marks in each other;
Like pressed limestone,
Like Rock built into churches,
Like wave weathered slate.

I move the hair from your
Noctilucent eyes.
And we arch together
Like ash or poplar.
Your lips are warm;
A sirocco in the chine of winter.

Love,
It is this.
No greater no lesser
And though the deeps of oceans
May stand between;
The between of us is neither wide, nor far
I carry you with me
For my home is built of
What we are.

my body is bottle glass
its shatters
under the hammered
kisses of her
my body is crude
and
salt glazed
lying next to
the porcelain pieces
       of her
my body is obsidian
glossed
by the heat of her
my body is
a crooked    
                 rhyme
timed by the beat of her
my body is a cider apple
made bitter or made sweet by her
my body is a vessel made broken
or complete by her.

We blew the brains out
of midnight
under a root beer sky
and followed the tawny
streetlights like a spindle on a B-side.

Ever effervescent
we tango on piano-key pavements
dancing like febrile bacchants
under a tallow moon.

And we might amble into
crepuscular philosophy
whilst alley dwellers
Do their best to stem
the global water shortage
and graffiti artists
sharpen their spray cans.

Inevitably we perambulate in to lamentations
ruminations on *******
over those we loved from afar
like jackdaws gawking at carrion
we just don’t put it in so many words.

Later we get home and ****
because once you’ve murdered midnight
and the doves come up
and dawn is born
it’s the only thing left
to
    do.

Your leaving
Scribbled ripples
In my bedsheets
A tragedy in drapery.

Where between each fold
crashed
       sighed sonnets,
and from
every ruffle
poured
our trickled
        love notes.

And the swell of your
hips unmade
my bed into tussled art.
And the peach
of your lips
drew a tide of
ache
   from mine.

Now I ache
  in my reading
   the brushstrokes
        of your absence.

I watched you unravel
You sat beside me
And slowly I listened
It with cadence ebbed
As you spat truth after truth
And in your moment of leaving
I loved you more
But was powerless
As you disappeared
Into the night.
And later
I assume,
His embrace.

As wild as wolves go
we tread
lines between each other
we circle each other
we are ravening
for blooded lips
for the chase
your bite leaves a sting
it breaks the skin
as the pressure of your hips
pins me to the earth
the world revolves around us
urgent breath
urgent sighs
my nails count your vertebrae
you grasp at my hair
we are in rhythm
you keep me within
finally your last bite
shakes me dead
like a rabbit unravelled
gasping for air.

She voyaged
to the cusp of my being
as I exhaled into her
magnolia skin.
Sans chart
sans compass

she knew me by the moon
and stars only
she knew me by the tide
of my breathing
by the pull of the winds

And I fold like the waves
to her touch
and I fold like feather-tips
in the catch of her gaze
I sink under in her ocean
as wild men in a diving-bell.

and soon my
thoughts are
anchors
in the depths
of my wonder for her

and soon my
thoughts are
anchors
in the depths
of my
love of her

she turned
as the page of a book
I etched my name in her
and
slow came
the burn of a quiet flame
and
slow came
the inferno in her name
that was ushered
into life
by the tempest
of our embattled hearts.

China blue evensong
white egg moon, birds nest night
frost gilt grass shivers.

Were we to pass as strangers in the fray
As lost newspapers, or such fleeting things.
Were we adequate strangers today
Who in the wintered wind may drift.

And were you not of basalt built
A Pillar stacked in greying sea
Weather-worn still weathering
But eroded not to frailty

Were we but strangers today
I could chance upon a greater strength
As like stone you are worn away
By tempests which you fought at length.

While now we wait in whitened rooms
As morphine pump lets out a rasp
I wish I were a basalt being
For I had missed your final gasp.

It is
The greying stones of old buildings
Weathered people
The palpable cinders of coffin stains

Draped flags Drooped heads and Drained faces
Sequoia’s ancient as Methuselah Falling in once lush meadows

It is
Diesel and gold, and diamonds
It is, dictators and conservatives
It is murderers and mutilation
It is the lies we tell to children
It is the scars on my brothers back
It is religion and regalia
It is an indifferent and inhumane god

It is the desperate stare of the ravening children

And it is life.

And you deign to tell me I need
Your god.
I hope we can teach him
how to love…

We blew the brains out
of midnight
under a root beer sky
and followed the tawny
streetlights like a spindle on a B-side.

Ever effervescent
we tango on piano-key pavements
dancing like febrile bacchants
under a tallow moon.

And we might amble into
crepuscular philosophy
whilst alley dwellers
Do their best to stem
the global water shortage
and graffiti artists
sharpen their spray cans.

Inevitably we perambulate in to lamentations
ruminations on *******
over those we loved from afar
like jackdaws gawking at carrion
we just don’t put it so many words.

Later we get home and ****
because once you’ve murdered midnight
and the doves come up
and dawn is reborn
it’s the only thing left
to
   do.

Rain let itself in
Through the window.
Emerald moss rugs grew.
Braggarts smash the slates,
Windows and tore out the
Milky way marble.
Capsular mushrooms
Bulged with spores,
on dirt carpeted floors.
Wood rotted
bricks crumbled
and
stones ached.
Sun peered in through
The oaken ribcage
The chandelier grew green
and became a surrogate
To
    goldfinches
A stack of newspapers
Gathered woodlice and
Poison ivy hugged the legs of
The south facing windows
Like a lover Scorned.
The doors fell off
In rebellion
as the burdened porch
broke with old age.

But the house knew love
And returned to the earth smiling

On this day
it rained but was sunny

A small pawn shop closed in york
A man dropped his lunchbox from an unfinished skyscraper
Tennessee Williams took a walk ( a long walk)

The Aztecs struck oil and Cicero dropped his quill
People declared peace and the world ate its fill

On this day they shut down the earth
Swept up the stars and exiled the moon
and auctioned them off for all their worth

On this day we sold every star
except one

And so
I am condemned to my loving you
As the ramshackle house, at a street terminus.
But no one prepares you
For the destruction of it
Inevitable
As heat death
Or crumbling mountains
Or the folding days
And as all is brought back
To grass
To earth
To moss
To modicum stardust
So am I
For
Like the house that the brats burnt down
I am condemned
Like bones to ash
Or hearts that roar.

I grit my teeth at the thought of it
As if to sheer
The skin from them…
To brooch the
Kingdom between your
Whitening thighs
A
Bell pepper blemish
Roar and tumble
The apricot lull of tongue on tongue
You salt my ***
As I find my fingers
Finding the depths of you
We slip further into
Despicable blue.
Beautiful
Filthy
Blue.

They say love is like art…
We scribbled out the night
I scrawled the rooftops & spires
You painted
The stars
The clouds
The sky
We together
made the view I see;
splashed colour into the world
All the while we drew our lives together
You and me.

We are enfolded
by silences;
your bags waiting to leave,
my begging eyes,
but the greatest silence
was
the absence
of your breath
in the
     Night...

My lips
grazed her clavicle
as I sank
like a diving bell
into her chest
and in a moment
I was shore bound
no longer treading
water in the
dire depths
but safe,
home,
on the
warm sands
of your breath.

I close my eyes
And you’re still there
you washed your hair
whilst the pots
and the pans
you left in your shower
clamoured for water
in calming tones.

padding feet
careful tread
A dancer? Maybe…
And I watched from
the ribbon of hall light

as you

wrung out your inhibitions
cleansed a small torment or two
Somewhere I hear a piano
your eyes found mine
and for a second I loved you
for a second there was but that second
and nothing, nothing more.

She held in her hands
a bluebell sky
as it drizzled
out between her fingers
I clasped them
As if to stem the flow
and we carried
those summer days
wherever we went
until each
and
every
drop
      was spent

If talk is cheap
then Poems are pennies
Long lost
Traveling in pockets
Or Saved for rainy days