My dreams are compact

and filled with bored accountants waiters leaving second hand shops
in fashionable post codes,

dressed like bit part actors
carrying spare hands,
gripped at the wrist,

dangling.

Their voices are a magical shrill,
a goats bleat
a synthesizesr whoop,
mesmerizing pigeons
and paper sellers
alike.

And you know how it is,
when you find you share a name
with a famous person

you look for frames of references,
points of similarities
but you find none,

only that you share the same name.

Signposts at the crossroads point in all directions

like skeletal fingers

like ghosts moving across a tundra of white

like thin skin that you see through

like rice paper held against the sun

like your hand that shows veins that run like tributaries

into the delta on your metacarpus

flecked with freckles

where small hairs stand on end.

1.

Through the wall I hear you move,

feet padding across

the floor,

avoiding the toys left out of boxes.

You appear at my door

nightmare hair matted on your forehead.

My arms will hold you now as then,

when your soft fontanel throbbed

in those endless sterile

nights of pacing

and the creak of the old rocking chair.

2.

During daylight hours you look at me like I was made of stone,

As if I was permanent

like this island.

3.

Maybe you’ll remember these moments,

I can't say you will,

but I hope.

4.

All I know is we live and so

we die.

5.

Restaurants

old sofa

the pet
cat, dead.

Beach
breezy Autumn piers

rainy football matches Saturday & photographs

taped in scrapbooks

with dusty corners.

These I leave to you.

Lunchtime stroll = ugly couples, prams pushed by youth, smell of corn on the cob,eyebrow maintenance, baklava.

Dull train update: man who looks squeezed at both ends, like an accordion, with glasses, a lucozade bottle half empty, lady appears perplexed by a crossword clue (but it may be sudoku).

Clouds outside seem to cover the black to white spectrum.

Dull train update:  a sign, a lyric repeating itself 'an even cash flow: this cannot be underrated', the cranking of metal the smell of meat.

50/50 weather.

Left foot, loose lace

and canned laughter follows him everywhere but he feels nothing, inside he is empty, save from a series of ropes and pulleys that control his movements.

The parents are being pushed in the swings by their offspring, grown men in nappies crushed up in bulging prams. Cats eating dogs. Humans ******* on pigeons. It's all a bit weird today.

The Witch Finder general hides between the pavement cracks. His breath smells of something  something sinister.

He lives in an old peoples home and he smells of **** sedated by beautiful nurses in stockings.

In flickering moments of lucidity he wonders how he has come to be in this place, this pitiful existence. His mind feels strong during  vague vignettes but he is imprisoned by his failing and aged body.

More drugs administered by the ***** nurse soon weaken him again, his awareness washes away
his mind slowly slides down
                warm
                   nylon thighs.

On his knees,
hangnails scratch against stockings, ladders and runs.

Red post boxes stand on street corners like aged prostitutes
rusted and flaking
and they are going the way of phone boxes and TV aerial?

Are there still milkman?

Who writes letters?

Postcards from men
working down a pit?

Stuck in the trench
I killed time by attening seminars about powerful words,
the history of things,  
body language as legitimate currency
exposing the micro.

A craven emptiness screaming extinction.

Contradictory

messages erased. Right now

we look for the truth.