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.”

The bones of you spoke to mine,
finger and thumb picking the ivory,
screaming softly at daintiest pushes
and ground sweetly at my bones.

My hands washed over the high keys,
though settled for the low. You see,
my fingers ached without yours.
They suited the high; they were nimble

and sharply caught each note,
whilst I kept the wallowing octaves
moaning like an ocean’s breath.
Now the hammers thundered softly,

they plummet through the sails
having had lost that lengthy breeze,
tumbling into a lonesome abyss.
I had you, though now your chime

resonates right through the depths;
it leaves my heart crying for a shine,
a glimmer in the dark. These bones
play bones, and a piano plays me.

Smile like you mean it, I titter
with tongue in teeth. Bite the end
and hit it across the consonant. Cry,

abuse! Beater! It’s part of it –
to do you good. Tears trip pity.
No, I know those weren’t meant;

you’re here for my rapture.
Caught between tines a *******
brands you both illicit and curious,

clings to your skin as blood
and *** is alike to smoke and fire.
I’ll teach you to be felt contented.

Take my example. Look, note here;
the slant of a lip, eyes just taut,
the jutted chin—look! Copy in delight:

‘Smile like you mean it.’

“Ring-a-ring-a-rosie,” we screamed
holding hands in circles. We laughed,
fell, tumbled when the end came
and rolled about in the thick grass.

Mothers would scold us and click
their tongues. Big sighs came;
we knew the games were over
and retired the evening inside.

At night I played the game myself,
pulled on my teddy bear’s arms
and loudly whispered the rhyme
as I danced around my room.

Like a possessed child I danced,
fully drunk in the night’s vigour
until there came the trumpets,
slowly gathering pace outside.

They became louder. So did I.
I twirled as the house shook,
span around me and laughed
until it all blurred violently.

The sound was deafening
much like my heart in my ears.
Ba-doomph. Ba-doomph.
The explosions rattled me

as wailings came and cawed,
but I carried on in my fever:
“We all fall down” I said, dizzy.
I knew I wouldn’t dance again.

it’s a dream
under cities’
block bricks
a small house
like canvas
squats cut out,
array of colour
not black
or grey, or white,
is tangerines
and strawberries
paper works,
also a ribbon
picket fence
take a stick to
beat of a ribcage
diagnose blame
too memorable
no serious future
says this dream
it’s a lucid one.

My heart leaps up when I behold*
a skinny-lit vein split even the sky
and I am held, scared as a child,
by the wonder of its roar, my cry's
like that of a lint quietly set alight
in the large of the pitch-dark night.

I would not move from the bed
and yet, I cannot help but stare
through curtains like a coward,
pared apart by curiosity to where
I wish to slide open the window
and see what the sky did sow.

The Child is son to the mother,
and should he ever need forget
he only need look to a shatter
in the sky. The crash on his head
that follows goads, “You know
where your father goes to crow.”

Knife crunching through
skin? No, it slips down
like a gulp in the throat,
a breath before pushing
in. My moon-eyes stare
at the shock of the victim's
as their belly is hollowed,
blood swilling in the sink
as fingers reach in the cut
to polish the insides clean.

I wonder why that look of
panic? There is a pink lining
stitched in by spinal threads,
the tenderness under a coat
proving you were only dressed
in a glazed metallic shimmer
to impress the eye. The head
must go, and the dressage off
so I can go soak your flesh
in a much tastier puddle.

skinning a lemon
he slips the rind off,
cradles a pulp

drowning his hand
The taste is so bitter
The taste is so
bitter. His face

looks blenched
white, lips pucker
like a child's first
love's kiss

Tears on his face,
a sour smile, lips
wrinkle one more
It isn't too bitter

I'd like your opinion
on the state of this
building. The state
of this building.

Did you compile
this boarded nest
made of bricks
and metal twigs?

Can you not feel
the cold weeping
through open pores,
or the cries at night

when the summer
wets the old bark,
roars of young blood
screaming past you?

All you do is gun
a gaze down streets,
a survey in envy
as the new cribs

beat up the block
with a freshly carved
skin. A freshly carved
smoothed flat skin.

‘That one's for sorrow,’
she said,

holding my sleeved stump
and pointed

to dancing in small floods,
glossed feathers

dripped in dips of a path.
I asked,

why's it sad? ‘She’s lost someone,’
she replied,

‘Two’s for joy.’ I looked back
beady eyed,

to cast out my hand
for hers.

I hold myself together here,
for fear my eyes may never close.
A pocket watch ticks until I tear.

You left it on the table there
just for me. I stood, froze,
and hold myself together here.

I took hold of a chair, made it steer.
Crept to the edge like a recluse,
as the pocket watch ticks until I tear.

I wanted to end the dreaded nightmare;
you made the choice I’d never choose.
So now I hold myself together here.

I cry as I realize you had made it clear.
My words had slowly become the noose,
like the pocket watch ticking ‘till I tore.

Though if it were so much to say I care,
or even say, “I need you, heaven knows”,
instead I hold myself together here.
My pocket watch ticks ‘till tonight I tear.

Yestreen, the night cried like a flying circus,
with belts of hoots, laughter and howls.

Thumps caved walls like a drum,
seeking full attention in the early morn’s hours.

A shrill would chirm a space,
as a soul would burrow its place to hide.

The moon turned searching spotlight,
bawled mumbling  groans like a child gone snide.

Screams were thrown in disgust,
like a temperamental mother in a sunken heat.

A whip-crack tore at the sky,
as though it swore I could never be true or right.

The rain had sounded like flittering lashes
against reddened cheeks cold, beaten and bruised.

It was quiet as though the right words
were not for the night’s embrace to ever be used.

The windows did cheer so wittily
like clapter belting the colour out of a smile.

The sky cried and wanted me home,
although I would return and never leave her side.

Sunflower cereal;
trickled clumps
cast into demi-
dune sacrificial,
China region
size cup cusp,
awaiting
the
cantankerous
gulps of pearl
globules seeped
through crinkle
cut skin petals
to sounds like
wet paper pulp
mulch peeling
in a bake sizzle.

In the garden out back
I used to gather up leaves,
looking like burnt flames
crisping up on my lawn.

The sun had stained them
from springtime children
to tarnished stars, waiting
on the ground for my dance.

They would  blush for me
and crackle in delight
as I pirouetted around
then eagerly pounced,

piling up a nest so then
as the winter wind came,
roughly rubbing my cheek,
I'd sit there with sandwiches.

Down the garden
sits a small water,
sunk with moss ink
floating its own

second skin like
a face left blotched.
Hands peel away
the tumour lips:

under dank flesh
splay young starlets,
gazing sirens lost
without their ceiling.

Their eyes are bright
in the gloom - plates
hunker foolish heads,
anchored by the stem

to murky pond-floor,
they cry up to a night
begging to be taken
into the jet reflection.

She was never my own; always stayed
with the night. Her dark coat glazed
only when the moon was lit.

I asked her to stay for just a while,
then it passed. She became too tired
watching the pond wallow, shine.

She asked me if I loved her, see if
it was true. I told her no lies though
she danced to her merry tune;

“Cat’s got your tongue! It will merrily
be mine!” and sang to the sky until
it burst into booming song.

Many others agreed so I sat there.
Me, alone. She left with her play
along smile ‘till I sang my own verse.

“Cat’s got my tongue! I’ll chase
‘till I die!” Wailed into the night,
perched forward, fell, to fly.

peeled back eyelids
splay venous binding;
snake skin exoskeleton
though not brittle but
woven like rope
stretches its casket,

though tenuous, its
compound dimples
gaze as pupils not
sure where the
sun is meant
to be

I leave
a jilted shell -
afterbirth horror! -
as forgone lifebearer
so that by contract,
unspoilt to be ridden,

a progeny delights
in its own delicacy.

fingertip strands spread
like a flower gulping
embers delicately held

tight in lingered lips.
Sticking between folds
hands warm as honey

trap the air in
and through
touch and kiss.

These kids remain
forever stuck with
golden memories.

Snow melting when I left you, and I took
the kite you sewed, stitched and saved.

I’d never left you before but, as a kite would,
I would explore and soak the sky in colour.

I would delve and dive, swoop in crescents,
then save myself when at my lowest.

There were times when a kite should fly
and so it would, were there a breeze to sail.

Many others plunged and plummeted,
shot through and down with a brash snap.

A holler raised for another sent down,
saw red splayed on green then blackened-brown.

It was then my friends did not play anymore.
I saw how the colours were black and white.

Only a few kept a strong hold of their string.
Those who didn’t, fell. Tumbled. Tore.

Red flushed our fields when I wrote, though the
tides of scarlet set silence in all man’s heart.

Swards settling when I returned, and I saw
my kite that once flew brimming on proud lapels.

sit down; Mexican standoff
side saddle head cocked
readily shot-stare asunder
to paper/pen & the
grinning wince.

employment; where are you
now? You, in current state
gaseous coagulation, you
neither “in the mix” or
ahead.

bullet point; list thoughts
& aspirations, where you
thought you ought to
wish you were here!ing
and not.

T&C; going forward agree
to meet the anticipated
expectations as if you
wore that crown to say
"you own you".

handshake; the formality
contracts its bindings,
and the paper witness
writ as statement that
we will

                 do this again sometime.

A poster leans gaunt
against a lamp post,
its translucent skin
hung in its plastic film
coat pinned by corners.

Her face has seen better
before the wind and rain
had crept its fingers in
to caress her youth;
half of her is smiling,

the lipstick a smoulder
of tone black chaste,
the eye catching yours
in its fine-lined frame.
But the eye on the face

next to her is smudged,
ink drowning the socket
like a welt of a bruise
down her cheek, the lips
dribbling down her chin

like a cut, and the hair
strewn over in curtained
bleed as though she'd cried
tears down the image that
prophesies to her end result.

She rolls the paper
with a kind of ease:
like a silk dress falling
on the eve of her skin;

or the delicate sips
taken from her glass,
delicately held between
curled spread fingers.

Then maybe as tongue
presses to the lining,
it looks as though
rice-paper become lips

her kisses sealing
this tube filament
mantled in her smile,
lighting up the room.

At my father's funeral
my childish hand suckled
my mother's wrinkled fingers
as though kissing a wound.

Looking up to her, I found
such a raw flesh of fear,
so hard in the face, so soft
in the lips, glowing dark red

against her cheeks like
blood on chalk-bone,
the rest in a second skin
of a black bandage dress.