Always a man to mean what he said
Handled his words like spades
Until something pulled them out of his hands
And then smacked him in the face
Always a man to pinpoint the truth
The thing he loved to do
Until the day it pinned him into a corner
And beat him black and blue
Never the man to hold a deceit
Until he burdened himself a secret
And despite how he cried
How he twisted inside
He knew
That he’d just have to keep it

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

At some point
The year will start to sleep
The leaves will change and fall
Before their slow turn to spiders webs
They'll bleed their colour in to the ground
At some point
The year will end
We'll hold hands
And promise things
All the while knowing
We'll turn slowly in to spiders webs
We'll bleed our colour in to the ground

Summer bleeds its last
In a shower of red and gold
Beneath the billow
Of a sailcloth sky

Flames in the dark
Reach for the distant stars
And the early light
Wears a mantle of frost

One season
Gives to another
The days
That never really know
What weather to wear

It's because the trees are bare
I wonder if it still makes your heart beat
That little bit faster
Or have you put away your love for winter
No longer any place for it
No point to it
Now just something else about you
Best left unresolved

Listen to him
Being blunt about it
As only the truly sensitive can be
Throwing his words down
Just like bricks
Just like ****
And as only the truly sensitive
Sometimes don’t see
The harder
The further
He throws them
The more they’ll break
And the more they’ll stick

Hypothetical child
Born of the what if
Words from a distant would be mother
Have placed you
In the eyes of others
And now I cannot look
For fear that my heart will break
In everyday places

Convinced as I am
That life is a circle
I don’t always welcome
The feeling
Of all its
360 degrees

Eyes of an old book prophet
Clothes made of furs and coloured rags
Makes her way down the aisle of the bus
With her whole life
In two
Over full
Unwieldy
Duffle bags
To stand, where else?
But right in the middle
Hands tight on the rail
A modern day Ahab
Steering her own ship
She speaks in tongues
“The man in the yellow shirt called me a ****** backed *****”!
Those that can see her stare straight through
The others smile at someone next to them
Strangers sharing concerns
The separate joined by a sudden, fleeting sadness
Underneath
They are in awe of her
All disturbed by her
This woman
This lone traveller
Each tic
Each barely controlled muttering
A reminder
A pointer
Towards their own
Suspected
Madness

Now that we have calculated the distance between us
We have proof that it is not as wide as we thought
After our data has been collected and displayed
In scatter graph and pie chart
We can show evidence of coloration and similarity in the almost equal shares
Of the two coloured circle
And the dots that cluster around the straight line
Now that we have sized each other up
First by estimate
Then the inch
The centimetre
And the micron
We finally have the measure of each other and can present the findings

I already know that this will only highlight the flaws in the facts
It will point out the odds hidden in the evens
And have us dividing ourselves
By numbers that will always be prime
You will present with flipchart
Use illustrations
And pointing stick
I will scribble down half-finished thoughts
And mumble my way
Through self-conscious poetry

Lamp post light
Wreathed in their winter breath
Their silver tinged by sodium
Silent pads worn down
By concrete and brick
Laid over old earth
While dormant in sleep it waits
Eyes refracted
The light of late car
Passing

Through city scape in midnight hour
Ghosts of the past
Prowl alleyways
With long slow lope
Hunt under spectral moon
And haunt the sleep of the wolves
Who’ve been tamed

It’s a problem for the dead
The feeling that it’s all still there
It’s a trait that they
And some of the living
Can
Unknowingly
Sometimes share
To make the matter worse
They’re pushed towards the brightest of bright lights
By well-wishers armed with bells, books and candles
I often feel
It’s more than many of the un-quiet departed
Should be expected
Reasonably
To handle
Perhaps it would be better to take them quietly to one side
Just explain
Don’t you remember?
It all ended
It’s over
The heart gave up
You died



With that said
Things can be as they were intended
No more hanging around with shadows
Rattling knobs on cellar doors
Being the prickle on the skin of loved ones
Enough of being the cold spot
In the empty hall
Give it up
Let it go
Slip away
Then we can all get some sleep
Instead of lying rigid in the dark
Eyes wide
Waiting for the obligatory midnight moan
But more importantly
There’ll be no more unwanted
Nocturnal rearranging of the furniture
Because
More than anything else belonging to the living
Their tables and chairs
Should always be left well alone

Do you remember when you said
That a man’s heart
Was a straight forward thing
A simple thing
An open thing
And how much you envied me for it
Do you remember
That I just didn't answer

Here he comes lately
So much on his plate
All **** and wind
Or a victim of fate?
No matter which
Always buys in too late
Picking up on your vibes
For mistakes he can make

Here he comes lately
You tell me which
Play for keeps cos it’s special?
And the rest we can ditch?
Brought out his beast
To waste time on the *****
Lost all of his nines
Without saving a stitch

Here he comes lately
At the end of his road
It would come to no good
He remembers being told
Still
If he don’t push his luck
Then he might as well fold
It’s never that good
To feel cold
Makes you old

Here he comes lately
I’ll tell you what
Will never replace all the things that he's got
Chose the wrong types
Regardless of cost
Then discovered that life
Makes you something
Or lost

She told him that her world was round
And it in turn
Went round because of him
This man
Her sun
Her moon
Her stars
The subtle tilt along her axis
The gentle push behind her endless spin
And being the man he was
He listened only with his heart
And so took her for her words
But as in many things
More so in words brought on by love
What is said
Is seldom ever really what is heard
So on he went
With her
Around her round world  
All doubts subdued by thoughts of what was said
Until the day he found that sometimes worlds
Can be as flat as they are round
And somehow the words used by another
Had slowly pushed him
To the edge

From never really knowing how to start
From stilted to flow
From what I wanted to be
To what I turned out as
From thinking I was one thing
To finding I’m quite a few
From not being good with my hands
From not thinking in straight lines
From not concentrating
From not speaking my mind
From not telling the truth even when I was asked
From not having the same ideas
From not loving things in the same way
From not wanting to make birds fly back home
From wanting to stand in the shed with them
With my eyes closed
Until their curiosity made them silent
From too much time spent looking at the stars
From not seeing them as just slowly burning Hydrogen
From asking too many questions
From not having answers
From even now thinking hearts won’t get broken
From not having the words to fix them

From song lyrics
From scribbled words
From good ideas at the time
From hitting the iceberg at 35
From being pulled out of the wreckage by forgiving hands

I am from here

In between the late  news
And the weather
She abandoned her own expected forecast
Deciding to throw all her cautions
To any of the four winds that would have them

Through the rush of the morning
She stayed still
And later with the house quiet
Went out into the garden
And stood in the rain
Until it made rivers of her arms
And a water fall of her hair

When the evening brought its storm
Of whys and whats
She let it rage through her
As if she were an empty house
And when it was spent
She held it in her arms
And became the calm

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

Bend
Break
Love
Hate
Lie
Steal
Give
Take,
Chance
Destiny
Luck
Fate
Just in time
Always too late

Care
Neglect
Memories
Regret
Every detail
Want to forget
Duty
Promise
Freedom
Choice
The catch in the throat
The crack in the voice

Heart
Head
Lead
Led
Burnt
Frozen
Starved
Fed,
Whispered
Sc­reamed
Ignored
Heard
Endings
Beginnings
But all                Just words

Scientists have discovered
The possibility
That giant river turtles might talk to each other
This they do, so they say
Whilst rearing young
Research over long periods of time
In depth studies
Have shown
Parental bonds and the tightness of community
A complexity in reptiles
Not previously known

Two streets away
Two months ago
An old woman was found dead
In her small sparse living room
Research over a long period of time
Has found that she had been dead for while
That she died on her own
An in depth study
Found that she might once have had a daughter
No one really knows
Severed bonds, and the lightness of community
A complexity in people
Previously shown

Time will not heal you
Only convince you it has
Will not give you wisdom
Only show you
Exactly who you are
So why not spend it on words
Of how you've loved
What you've lost
What you wish the world was
In this
There is some comfort
While you wait
For the sucker punch

Somewhere, between familiar places,
He had somehow gotten lost
Beneath his feet,
Not the same day to day well-worn path
Instead, he found himself in an unknown wood
And when he tried thinking back to where he’d started from,
There was no recollection, no memory
Just
Soft sighing music
Going round and round inside his head

Somehow, he had been misled

Looking through the gloom, to find some bearing
A land mark or sign to shed some light
Only ended in confusion, to the point
Of him not even being sure which was his left or right
And the more he looked amongst the trees
The more he thought he saw
What might be faces
Bright eyes in the shadows
Just on the edge of normal sight


So, what to do, what choice should he make
Stand still, stay there
Backwards, forwards
Which unknown, uncertain way should be the one to take?

A half decision, quickly made

To go backwards somehow already felt too late
Forwards then, the ending of the path ahead known but to fate
So, on he walked, deeper in to the woods
But with him now, a nagging doubt
A feeling he’d been warned about being misled
And that someone had told him
Before he went through his door
He should turn his coat, inside out

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

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

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

He couldn't let the sleeping dog lie
***** of the past
Woken
Let lose once again under the moon
Now he only wants to follow
Run with her
Her sleekness
Making him forget her bite
Old marks from the tooth
And the claw
Better he spends the night with restlessness
Before she comes back
To whine beneath the window
And leave scratches on the door

Beneath Polaris and the Plough
The way things look
And
How they really are
A million light years in between

Adrift in nebulae and swirl
And yet
Numbers for constellations
Names given to stars
All hung in my own stellar picture
Framed
By singular perspective

Who would gaze at me?
Satellite
In slow orbit of my own sun
Obeyer of physics
Captive of unseen pull
Consequence
Of unrelenting gravity
Me

Witness to the solar flare
The magic of the comet’s tale
Slowly turn
I watch the universal
Silent spin
Through this cosmic play eternal
The glow of distant suns
Some, so long ago
Their fire already gone

I tune in and out
To the faintest of signals
From station to forgotten station
In between
Listening for the whispers
That will lessen the buzz
The whistle of static in my head
The ever distant
Heartbeat of stars
The ever present
Voices of the dead

The week old beard and the pavement look
Earned from sleeping in doorways
In his hands
Soft spined
Well thumbed
A copy of the good book
He shouts to me about Jesus
Tells me it’s not too late
But I’m already several steps
And twice as many thoughts away

Stop talking to me about love
As if no one else has ever found it
Stop boasting about your angels wings
And how they lift you higher than the Sun
When I know only wax, old rope and the memory of flight
Just tumble down into the dark blue and be done
Enough of your heart
Lighter than air
When mine is a magnet
Pulled by the Earth’s core
Spare me your sweet breath
While I wait for others to exhale

Now that you’re happy with him
Do you still feel the bruise
The one you told me he left that one time
Do you still get checked
For the smell of other men
Did all that end
The day you told him you’d had enough
Of him
His suspicions
When you were changing rules
Shifting roles
Do you think he knew
That someone
Somewhere
Still had had your taste
In the back of his throat

I first saw him telling tales outside a charity shop
To more than one
None of who would stop long enough
To hear the story
Filled with hard learned consequence
Brought on
By life’s hard knocks
It was only later
That he caught me
Emerging
As he did
From the well-used telephone box
Clinging to a rucksack
***** trousers just a bit too short
In this unexpected setting
He began to talk
Already the expectation
Of my dismissal
My retort
A truth
Or fabrication
Made up on the spot
Or several days before
Considering the question
His measure of my reaction
Every word apologetic
He knows I just won’t get it


This
The latest chapter
In a lifetime
The colour of every forgotten
Back street door

By now it’s all too late
The question’s out
And before we know it
We’ve reached the pause
I give him what is asked for
And he is
Forever thankful
Perhaps though
More for my time
Than for the legal tender
Given as it was
In an ready open handful

In my small neat room he made his choice
Sat
Clawing at his coat
Charity’s finest
The hand that made him the man he was

It found him bottles to live in,
Emptied his pockets
And with its twin had given its view on how it felt
About what others had just said.

Bleached eyes
Slipped away to somewhere else,
Some when else

Bleary focus
Was barely there
The nowhere stare began to water.
He smiled
Crooked
Resigned

The hand
Still for a while
Shook
Was it laughing?

Did it have its own grin
In mockery of him
Keeping the joke to itself
Had it read his mind
Did it whisper

“It would be easier to cut me off”.

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 room slumbers
In soft candle light
A summer ghost haunts the corners
This end of August
I am lulled
Soon my eyes grow heavy
Surrender their focus
As I drift from what is known
Towards that world apart
There to dream myself
In the heart of something eternal

First in handfuls made of grit
Gripped tight
Small and sharp against his skin
Its bite
Then
In the dark
Thrown high against the window panes
Of those deep in sleep
Their dreams haunted by the sound of rain
As he grew braver
Stones
Smooth against his fingers
Thrown at strangers in crowded streets
For no reason
Other than
The satisfaction
Of breaking skin
On hands and cheeks

A sudden exposure
To unstoppable decline
In someone who for years
Has lived in Christmas cards
And fading eight by tens
Brought into sudden sharp relief
By family ties
And how to handle
The witnessing
Of memory and self
Stripped bare
The slow unfair unravelling of time
Still it’s best to hide
Behind my own uncertain way of feeling
Don’t aggravate the schism
Between the grown man
And the child

When we can have the thrill
The rush
The pull
The push
Who would give in
To the
Happy
Ever
After

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