The moon rose behind
the mountains, like
a runway.

The stars up ahead
looked pretty, from
far away.



With little vision in my eyes,
and face half-under messy water,
those lonely shores now rippled with life,
moonlight flash on pier.

Scratched ghosts of headland through seafoam,
bruise-coloured & careful, and I alone,
seeing faces in old raindrop night-time
moonscape storm had come.

All with black language of love and luck,
started war with that woman, since we changed.
Despite remem’bring tattoos and smiles at dusk,
in my dreams you fade.

Island ferry siren naked,
waves of black and brown, pulling it inward,
vibrating great shadows of formless bay,
and consuming it.

Through the spiral of shiv’ring moonlight
magic, cheap birds lost their names in the moonlight,
reworking old songs they half-memorised,
breathing us goodnight.

But have you heard their songs lately?
Are they kissing, working on new poetry?
What will they remember in three-month’s time?
And who will be there when it all falls down?

Well does that matter anymore?
This poet’s a fool, he thought he changed; It’s
just new kind’s of ****, new moonlight on pier,
hold me, anyway.

The rust-red banks of old love soon
crashed under cigarettes of rippling tide,
as horror covered whole stretch of sky,
midnight scene, & I.

There were severed shades on the waterfront,
the shore cradling that sombre sea;
wind moving shine across waterfront,
creating spaces with rolling beats.

And as I lay by the side of the beach,
resting beneath that warmth of sun,
with fingertips laced through bluebell flowers,
I’m at your hill; missing your ****.



It was a beautiful day.
The sun set at nine, and it’s different in the evening.
The rain fell with a faint sheet of blue-grey, far without end, and with stars filling ten times the space that measure city’s sky, Ness Boy followed that leaf litter path; and as daylight closed its curtains, he could see there was a circle of stars above that mountain.

The colour of the mountain’s sinking
& moving across its landscape, leading
the eye to the heart of its mood:
Whisp’ring geometries, complex with hues.

The Dollhouse Mountains are almost fluid,
the mountains, with noise on your mind,
with navel sea and your constellations,
like a figure in rest, reclined.

Round hill-flow *******, your bones made the landscape,
your hips wave the mountains, my love.
Curled honeycomb heather trembles in cold,
cross-legged softness, your thigh becomes.

Your blissful breath, lightning ****** ‘cross brush
golden grass, your stomach it dances.
Low warmth beneath your flow’ring underwear,
lift my brook to your deep canvas.

And at the headland peak, I’ll reach that view,
wrap my poems around your throat.
At the headland peak, I’ll kiss your cheek, and
push in softly inside your throat.

This forest is a secret happy place, filled with so much light,
and from where Ness Boy sat, at the seat of that forest,
he could see everything.

In the distance, a train coughed its fumes over the trees.
Wind turbines, and further along pylons too,
reached through the heavy mist.

There was the sound of cars,
and birdsong, like rolling scurried sounds,
and a cold breeze, which kind of runs its fingers over your body,

and Ness Boy found himself counting the birds in the trees.

But above the quiet things, were The Dollhouse Mountains,
where reds, yellows, & greens, were pressed into the fields,
and, wrapping around those patchwork hills,
which rolled in on themselves far away,
and got a little bit lighter, the farther away they were,
were the clouds, with a half-away slumber,
swallowing it up.

And there was something about those mountains that felt really good.
All Ness Boy wanted to do was climb.