You made me a race
from the womb to
the itch and stretch
of a world for me
to traverse around.

Inches then meters
to stride against:
first the garden to
the park's expanse,
by then countries

are feet then miles,
and so I become like
the drip of cloud-tears
on car window panes,
shooting themselves

down the weathered
sheet to be closer
to an end of journey
that feels measured
by the centimetre.

Coming home from a fair,
cusped between your lap
a globe of darting eyes,
your hands rested atop
the thin film of a world
as you endlessly peer in.
Are you scrying over
your future career?

Here a tungsten bulbous
body, a chunk of flame,
swills itself in spins
and mindless dances,
as you think you could
be so careless like them
to live hazily in a framed
bubble of treasured youth,

fed by some divine fate
looking over you. Golden
scales make your skin,
binds you as if you were
a chocolate in a wrapper
for people to circus over–
every flicker being edible.
Or maybe you're like

those tinned peach slices,
posing in a cage for all  
as a marvel to feast with
until you end up rotting,
there in your tomb-space,
muttering an open mouth,
“help me” before they serve
you up on a silver-lined dish.

I assure you, you'll forget
these childish thoughts
of aspirations and dreams
sooner than you think:
no matter how much
you think they want you,
I'll bet they'll let yourself
drown in coming weeks.

I'll follow you through
sunflower cranes, stood
straight up on one leg,
tiptoe-heads above. Thick,
trunk stems support eyes

as though a field of giraffes
came to Loiré on holiday,
a tower of swinging faces
basking in a summer breeze.
Sepia yellows peg out

like eyelashes, shine
against that blue wave
of ocean sky, barely
frothing a cloud. Atop
your shoulders, I'll try

pinching a bud to keep
for home, looking back
a thousand suns echo
a staining rust, autumn
reds sinking as they set.

We're on a train
in London's subways
and everyone stands
with a dead-eye peer
down the carriage, so
please, hold my hand.

They're all like apes,
hung on bamboo poles
and strung vine-straps,
hunkered over the small
space I have to myself, so
please, hold my hand.

I think you've become
just like them, Daddy;
a ringed-eyed orangutan
or narrow-staring lemur.
You've become much less
human it scares me, so
*please, let go of my hand.

We hold onto
each other like
teeth trapping
new wisdoms,
heads crashing
through agony

as the jaw scrapes
and screeches like
demolition derbies.
We'll battle it out,
but who will last
until one is left?

No, drag my teeth
out of contention:
lasso a noose, yank
hard until whipped
numbly off track
to bleed the oil.

Peering down
an empty bottle
we've begun
a kaleidoscope
full of broken
memories and
twist of tongues
where nights
flash, conducting
awareness to all
and everything,
a glare of mirrors
basked above us
in splendid colour
with my hands
firmly earthed
into yours.

I was doing
something
when a flash
smashed out
to every corner
of the room.

It came like
ominous bolts
of lightning
had leapt from
the light bulb
bursting inside,

as though
storms had been
brewing slowly
under a muzzle
of glass frame.
I regarded how

strange it was
to be fed up
to a thrum of
75 watts
in its lifetime,
to finally break

its broadcast.
I look to a
tungsten tongue,
see the ember
flick into the dark
and say,

*I lost my religion.

mornings I get up
early and watch
the night sail
into a water
bucket so I
can wash
over in
moonshine.

A thin, red trail
slaps the pavement,
becomes so swollen,

strands trip around
the neck and cut
deep where there,

in the slick trickles
pulled to small floods,
sinking out, a tip

of the tongue cry
never quite confirmed,
stays strangled. Drips

and ebbs with bottle
in hand, a scarf
in the other. Like ribbon

it weaves into spaces,
drenches the ground
until everything is art.

Semi-permeable
translucent vibes;
rhythm through
a château door
into neon nights,
and lanterns like
red-eye photos
look down on us.
They look down
on me, and they
see me shaking
the vibes out on
cement cobble-
blocks. I got the
cancer / excess
disease, we say
I'm the new-old
where the auto-
focus is good
but around us
is gaussian blur
forgotten future.

When we grow older
and friendship blooms,
let that golden ring be
a shade of evergreen
and then we can say
"We didn't make us,
we were made for us."

What you don't see
is the way I wait,
watching her braid
worries in her hair
speckling small daisies,
my eyes like tumblers
gulping her in swigs
as she perches glasses
on the arch of her nose,
and then we'll take
a photo
to remark on how
we were back then
and now.

After the pay toll
I go down steps
to wait for a train
heading one way.

Glances reveal a
demon eyed glare
searching through
the dark tunnel,

a waft of air pushed
up against me, spins
the time I wait from
seconds to minutes.

I'm going underground.

It's warm, clinging
to soaked skin -
everyone is the same,
drenched in a fatigue

like tired ghouls
smothered in oil,
their bodies caskets
lined up as the day's

catch. We shuffle
into a viking funeral
riding the current
for the journey home.

The first pair of shoes you wore were black,
velcro straps sat atop your pair of dollies
to make it easier to put them on for the park.
They were meant to be smart, but you laughed
as you wore them against the ground so free
as dad slung the swings, smiling at his child.

Our mum told me I was a creative child:
I didn't like to wear anything black. Red
suited me in how I stood in puddles, free
in indifference to how brown my wellies
became. If I was asked why, I'd shout,
“I'm pretending we're all at the seaside.”

From there we made our way to beaches,
where the wind was crisp and the children
we could see around us acclaimed screams
of emphatic joy at how the sea was so blue
and big. We had to wear pairs of sandals
when we went, but being barefoot felt free.

All that time we had at being young and free
soon went with the summer ending in school,
the arrival of my freshly polished black boots
was identical to almost every other child's-
a lather of paint dripping over in mud yellows
proved who I was with a mother's groan,

and this wasn't the only time she wailed.
As we grew older and wanted to be free,
my sister started to experiment with pink
highlights in her hair as I visited clubs
with fake ID. We were adults with childish
personalities in how I wore my Docs

like a religion for feet, my sibling in high heels
that you could hear in Sunday morning claps.
The arguments broke out: she wanted a child,
mother saying was too young, needed to free
herself from lazy culture and find a workplace.
I'd never seen both their faces so gushed red,

just like the red richness of those wellies
I had worn in the park. I pipe up and say,
“The best freedom is our time as children.”

We'll start the fire
in morning streets
with a flick-clip
on a matchbox
and light a trail
we made to steps
headed for a bed,
this time with no
extinguishers or
hanging fire exits.

Coffee house
windows drape
litters of faces
like teabags
milk white but
feature black yolks
in sunken pits--
sinking pits, dip
under the morning
embers. Sunny side
where? A day begins
though you lot, out
to dry, waiver it off;
It's not ours, you say,
It's yours and you's
filling the streets below.
We's wait for the sunny,
we's wait for the up.

I'll have roses,
daffodils, ivy
and snowdrops
in a bouquet
on my palette.

Slipping a taste
of one another,
a puddle is made.
It is murky like
hungover clouds

though now
with new regret
I understand
the mixing of
beautiful ideas

brings me pity
for my creation
formed through
pursuit of a dream
to a wretched being.

As you open this book
pressed flowers lie still,
dormant veins of cherry
splashes and scarlet
pools for their faces.

I was told that they grew
for such a beautiful head
to die a martyr, their vain
silk of a skin pulled apart
like lips on a gun barrel.

I caught them with wings
spread out, yellow stalks
for their eyes seeking
a summer sun. I wouldn't
let them fly, so I stuck

their lovesick in a casing
bound to hold them down.
Coffin closed, box sealed.
They sleep a winter, raw
as the day lately picked.

In English gardens she blooms lilac,
comes with her petals spread
and swept across for me to pick
out a red droplet ready to bead.
She reaches my lips, then I bite.
And as the pips tumble and hit
teeth, tongue and cheek, I find
the sour taste she leaves behind

is ill-fitted for me. Innocence dies,
so now I swallow in hesitant takes
with spoonfuls of sugar to get by.
She drips from her brittle-soft skin,
and bleeds until she begins to break
whilst in an English garden I lie within.

Opening my hand,
you read the lines
rooted in my palm

before

taking the fingers
to crook them.
They splinter

new

spines, grow
tall steeples
ringing out

like

church bells,
or wind chimes
once your fingers

touch.

Box has me press-ganged.
 
‘Please read. I can help you:
recall nausea and ****-buddy
depravity? Dee-press-shun.

‘Suffer the shirk? Cancerous
pressure talk taking its kind
time. Makes the clock scream

****** at twelve. Tick, tick,
tock—it’s time. Open, take and
swallow. Feel much better now?

‘Take another! Toss it down
the hatch. It’ll stun you alive
until dead. You’re chastised, kid.’

Dey real kewl. Dey
selfie skool. Dey

glow goonz. Dey
PC geeks. Dey

luv Jay-Z. Dey
RT #JK. Dey

tan tangaz. Dey
pRT bangaz. Dey

dwn danger. Dey
jack jäger. Dey

dbl dip. Dey
do trip. Dey

l%k weL 7k. Dey
die s%n, LOL innit.

Here you are in those
purple-jelly dolly shoes
and you wonder why
the sky is blue when
the jam on your face
is a brilliant lipstick red.

We gave the
infant
our features;
the babe got
a bulb nose
passed on by
its grandfather,
jet-turf of hair
like a wave of
soft sulphur
from the other,
but the eyes,
tungsten grey
set in firm lids,
burnt out like
incandescent
light bulbs
as it left their
filament fingers
gasping mine.

We let the align-
ment of our con-
tact create a new-
lyfound structure:

you dress our bed-
ding over frame-
work, shapes mold-
ing words on paper

as though our truth-
fully plaiting finger-
tips shape a stereo-
type linear tendency.

Look at your spider legs

clambering out like that
as though your crab cage

has stayed too still, sat
too long as a street tumour
spat up on the pavement.

You must miss the frailness
of the skin that sheltered
your birth, the patterns
strewn across the sheets

in blurs of stripes and dots,
colours and tones. But now
it's a sickly sight, those ribs
scuttle like limbs pushing
through a shell that suited

your broken spindles just
fine. Maybe you need a fix
of a skin to get you in shape,
web the joints in the hope
someone will hold you again,
your handle gripped in hand.

froths in lichen:
gushing on its bark,
it looks like pollen
was smeared on in
yellow gouache,
ulcers spread to lick
on to each branch.

I let it take over
in the way you
spread your arms
over bed and torso,
in the way your kiss
through the mornings
paint my cheeks red.

Choson dynasty,*
you utter from a stub
on the stand's neck,  
your eyes admiring
pimpled spaces or
the bulging curves
of the moon jar.

It is imperfect like
papier-mâché,
the hollow centre
surrounded by
a slumped figure:
two bodies thrown
as lovers, where,

noticing a crease
stretch the belly,
the mating halves
fuse to function
a wholeness like
the moon we make
when we hold hands.

This boy sits on the carpet
with his crayons in hand,
a mural on the wall saying
he loves his father just like
the gaze of a rising sun,
an eye always watching
him as he reaches higher
to proudly touch the sky.

The sea at the base tells
his mother she is a war
of temper and peace,
her lullabies teach him
how to whisper secrets
as the waves bear him
journeys to new land
for him to be the sun.

I ask if you want to
escape
when maybe we're only
synthetic
bound together by the
wire
slipped between our
skins
filching at each other
inside
these metamorphosis
cocoons,
waiting for one to come
outside
of our shelled carbons
nearing
the brilliance of the city
lights
as though slops of rain
dancing
off of tall windows was
like
the sky setting itself on
*fire.

keep an eye
on her church
mouth, place
a kiss upon
liquor thighs
then remember
she'll make you.

We own a pond;
mottled bluebottle,
flecked in freckles
when the sunlight
skims the surface
between the moss.

I dip a finger inside
and stir. A nebula
swills, swirling like
a whisk of spilt oil
from a water spot
sometimes found
underneath a car.

My fist plunges in,
embalming a gulp;
moss bandages
around the orb that,
withdrawing in drips,
I see a new world
set alight upon it.

pushed clouds out,
pursed lips like
whistling in a shell,

reverbs into tumbler
held down
and spirals back.

Then, as it rises,
Advocaat crackles
thunder-yellow,

tickling the insides
into familiar
house-warm feeling.

Putting the receiver
to the cupped side
of my leaning face,
I'll listen to an old,
dead phone, a husk
with a sound echoing
inside like a seashell:

I tune into the static
as if they were waves
sweeping in and out
of my eardrum, hear
the whisper of voices
asking the operator
to pass on last sighs.

Carpals, knees, elbows
scuffed. Cement carpet
freshly sears the fabric
then cuts, but a bruise

silhouettes the tear:
start Saturday raw, soon
swells a red ruby gulp
charring to black coal.

By Monday it slips
into a nebula of purple
constellations, a drink
of red still remaining.

You'll wish it never
faded – a jaundice
dulling swims palely
like the fated colour
of that new bike.

Could you hold me up-
right, left to sit and stare
though your sifting smoke
columns like a spinal wisp,
wasting away time in your

beautiful lungs. I like to in-
hale the cast-away smiles
you hang over me, into me,
my mind lost in taste to how
your chest is as mild as May.

one day we'll shake
our heads out like
flowers in spring,
like our hair was
on fire to light up
the fields, and we
would watch on
to those who sang
their songs for us
and only for us
as we are always
there, for them,
as though we're
weeds in thought.

got a pink bulb
suckered in mouth—
spit it out. dribble
gobstopper sun,
pause motion to
explosive creation
cake the surface
rubber dumb, POP!

sharp tap like a
snare bubble
vacuum record
in recycling bin
you had it made
su-per-ma-ssive
try again a same
chum the chew
begin renew
anew anew review

leaves fall from
tree bark shoots
left some pellets
scatter the ground

spatters of petals
lying across them
like stains marking
a once vibrant floor.

In the nights
are sculptures
in bleach colour,

their soft shapes
huddled together
on street corners.

Like Pompeii
as tar flooded,
sunk into spaces,

they stood so
still as though
alabaster angels.

By God, when the rain
in summer nights
spat into jam jars,
I could hear the pots

swallow the slurps of
pitter-patter raindrops
tumbling down in slips
on small panes, as though

starlets plunged like
pitted pips torn out
of blackberry skies;
the morning jars

left with shining tears
waiting to rise as
darkening blossoms
of the night again.

The kid’s quiet
then she teeters in,
all glamour and glitz.
The Ritz is asking,
Mademoiselle, for your
curtain call dress,
a glitterball gown,

dragging by your feet—
oh, but her shoes!
Duty bound cardinal
red swim in the eye
like the carpet you
ought to premiere on.
It matches the lipstick

rub, your lips a yolk
as though you had drawn
over the lines, a smear
having caught the pearl
shawl around your neck.
Those your grandmother
passed down, you say?
She would be so proud.

he got caught;
yes I got him
caught on the
edge of 2nd &

                crux,
he turns to me
on eyes glazed
through a pane
of his car, white
balloon balancing
the pretty cast
of his head. It

serves the eye -
it isn't quite there
as I move closer,
parallel to collide
as sensations start
to crunch.

air-goggles clasped
eyeing up slickness
like a gull hangs over

bright airy gasps
brings arms up
feeling the tilt

toward water-sky
kicks up then down
to earth-pull push

A leaking clock keeps you
nose up with eyes peering
through night-flooded sky
towards glow-in-the-dark
stars, childhood mementos,
to keep those other shapes

from seeping in, like snakes
slinking over drawers when
they were socks left hanging,
or a hand haunched achingly
through the wardrobe door
was only a shirt sleeve, but

now light escapes the curtains,
becomes a silhouette of a man
out of the second-floor window.
It's ok, you remind yourself.
You roll your head over to
drink, drink, drink in the ticks.

You would cry like there was no end,
tears dipping in the broken smile
until they clung on the very outline.
We were sat in the morning shade,
sketching me with your lead
in hand; you see me. I’m empty.

Across the field the thickets were empty,
the crisped, golden summer would end
as though the teeming life were mislead.
The sun would fade like your smile,
then only a glimpse would escape the shade

and stay with me as a furtive outline,
inescapable in nightmares. This outline
leaves my bed covers breathless and empty,
waiting for your hand to guide. You lead.
I question whether this will end:
When will you stop taunting me with a smile
unable to slide, sketch and shade?

I’d try to broach the shadow of the shade,
yet my eye cannot catch you. Just an outline
of that torn heart is left in the smile
leaving the space more than empty
until I decide to have it end
by picking up the scattered bits of lead.

Across the golden fields I would lead,
looking back onto the folds of the shade.
The tall grass would make my gaze end,
leaving our tree grazing over the outline.
The field’s thickets were undoubtedly empty.
I head on home. I can still see the smile.

In our child I can see your smile,
as it was before you were misguidedly lead
and left me here feeling alone, empty.
I see on the walls how you used to shade,
how darkness clung to the drawing’s outline.
There I see that you knew light would end.

You always seem to end with the same smile.
I am the outline that you embrace with shades
until the skin is lead. You left me empty.

Friday mornings I'd slip
the little bones of me
into the big skin of you;
the bags under the arms
spaces to fill. My head
dives under the seams,

finding encrusted sea-salt
swept into nicked threads,
fresh surf cast in nostrils
like delving into wafting
depths of a second-home,
painting the skin rough.

I'll pretend I have your eye,
search for fish in the dark
as you do when away,
and I'll explore with hands
as shimmers fade between
soft holes in cotton waves

small fingertips touching
gasps. They slick the sky
like breaths in the night,
their smear of scent
a welcomed reminder
until you come home.

Looking out to the sea,
there is art in the white,
frothing rinds like billows
of chalk softly skimming
each wave, or in the dark
blue of a day-old swelling
stretched across jelly skin
like spread blueberry jam,
or maybe in the bright red
jacket you wear, your hair
held to your face as you
grin like an absolute twit,
small fingers gripping on
to the rails as you peer over,
and in my grin is my reply
because I love you for it.

I laid the twigs as bones,
blanketed in my favourite
summer leaves tucked
inside the fire-nest.

Newspaper down
nestled a small ruby
placed in the centre,

then grew a childish flame
dancing in the brick ***

its cries singing upward
as autumnal ghosts,  
in their flickered gasps,

cackled their summer
screams as they fell
back through black coal,
seeds for next season.

There is a misdeed where,
on a corner of Hunter Street,
a phone box sits in a puddle
like a flamingo in a storm,
yet it's not pink. It's a dull

shine with legs protruding
out of its sea, a lone oil rig
with an open mouth to enter
in which (you would hope!)
some black gold would pour

out of its receiver and say,
Press your fingers to me,
then my hand to your cheek
and I would stand there
drowned in those thoughts,

my feet also being rig stalks
as I would hold your hand
to my face, my other leaning
against your body, then only
to gather a simple “Hello.”