Caught sight of the man with the feelings again
Catching his slink in shop windows
Magnified in glass and ill-fitting doorways
Didn’t want answers
Just for him to hold my face in his hands
Tell me it’d be ok
Instead
I got the smoke from his roll up and that self-satisfied smile
The one that says he’s told me so before
**** him
Why does it have to come to overload in public
When I know that it’s just my reflection after all

I’d **** for a life of straight lines
And not give you time or money
For this one made up from second guesses
All desire for a break in someone else’s silence

I’d spend my time on mindfulness
But that only means drinking two bottles later instead of one
So for now let’s settle
On taking secret swigs from the dregs left by the other
And waiting on replies for things I wished I’d said

I suppose I could have stopped it
As the boat went through pitch and roll
As the timbers underneath them cracked
And then they splintered
As they slowly lost their fight
As they struggled
As their bones filled up with cold
I could have saved them all the trouble
As they fought with sail and rope
Their hands all raw and bloodied
Burning with the salt
If I’d just mentioned, it was more than likely
This unfortunate turn of the weather
Was more or less my fault
I could have told them not to bother
At shouting at the dark
At cursing at the howling wind
All those angry words
All that bravado
All that pointless hope
All that wasted spark
I would have saved them all from drowning
In this the cruellest of all seas
If only I’d just have said
Stop fighting give it up
Throw me overboard
Save yourselves
Because the storm
It's meant for me

She went down
Somewhere in the middle of a three day storm
All hands lost
The space that was left
Nature and habit filled
Love brought grieving
Friendship found drunken tears and slack mouths
Words of comfort given about the mysteries of God’s ways
Hymns sung
Sent to unsettle the dust on high rafters
At the back of the church yard small wooden crosses
In this at least
Flowers could be left somewhere
And memories could be held
But no goodbyes ever got said
No personal belongings were ever held
No wedding rings, watches, the everyday that fills pockets
To be kept in drawers
No dead faces turned to stone touched
No last kisses for hollowed cheeks  
No remains

Left with the things not said
The real life twist
The the bruising from emotional fists
The push and the pull
Of the heart that's hopeless
The empty head
One always more than the other
Just let it breathe
Please
Or **** it dead
Do your best to be quick though
When you cover it with the sensible smother
Otherwise this thing will get bigger
Take on the shape of a monster
Uncontrollable
Won't sleep in its box
So disown it
Then deny it
Before you find
The concrete, the comfortable and the expected
Are what you've lost

I resolve not to be April’s fool
Not to look like they do
And stumble into the onslaught
Of sleet
Having no shelter under empty trees
No defence
Against the present and the past
Make it all new
Make it all last
While on the mirrored streets
Beneath the sodium glow
The winter bites
Slowly, in between the bone
Taking no way around
So we rifle through the bargain bins
Look for treasures in someone else’s lost and found
Again we cover it all in new hope
That this year unlike the others
Won’t start to dangle from the same old rope
That hope that keeps it all afloat
Before that slowest of all sinking
Down towards
It’s ok we’ll cope
But then again it’s always back to front
A simple case of I will, you won’t
And a chance encounter throws it back, an endless wish
That finds us, before we know it, somehow back to this
Where in colours dulled I think of you
With my my devils hands and empty time
What else to do?


You in that charcoaled woollen coat
Where despite the cold
There’s gloves kept in your pockets
And an open throat
And I know that with this comes the swollen heart
Somewhere there’s a point in this
It will slowly burst apart
With pressure from daily decompression
Slow rise from secret depths that never end
Would it be better just to come up fast?
Feel everything I ever wanted
Surrender
Accept the gut twist from my self-inflicted bends
Or simply hold my breath some more
Take my time until I surface once again
Then in clear light realise
It’s just the shadows of things
The things
That the starting of a New Year
Always seems to bring

Trying to catch the last of the sun
Only catching shadows
Go back inside to find
The day’s heat is held by the bareness in rooms
Where corner plaster has fallen away
To give us someone else’s past
Through glass
The whole of it is lit
Stark in some lasting seconds
Never really captured by words
These are the things we carry with us

The opening line
Already an apology
“I know that things will never happen but if they ever do,
I’d want them in the shape of you”
A Laureate in the making
“Your face, your hair, your voice, your eyes in fact all the things that make you, you
All true
Words straight from the heart
“That’s really sweet”
The closing line
That’s where patterns start

At some future point
As patterns go
She made her deposit
Into the bank of 2.4
This perhaps somehow
I had already known
Would be
So not for me
Instead
I spent some more time in the wilderness
Working on my opening lines
Following patterns
Perfecting the apology