Everything at once
and at once, everything
Crashing outwards
then folding, dissolving,
pulling inwards.

He drove from me a torrent,
calmly observing
my undoing.

He balanced my pleasure
on the razor’s edge,
reading my responses
as the blind may experience Baudelaire.

He keeps me
in the palm of his hand.

Some people come and go in our lives without incident, while others leave an indelible mark. H was one without compromise - and quite often without humility, displaying flaws so apparent on a single meeting that he may as well have had them printed on a t-shirt or pamphleted around the area wherever he went to avoid anyone having to discover just what a heinous ******* he really was.

Conversely, he was also the most unfailingly generous person I’ve ever known when it came to noticing the actual or potential for good in others. A complete dichotomy of one seemingly split down the middle, irreconcilable in so many ways.

H also made me laugh like no-one else and some of the stupid things he did continue to. One evening, he decided he wanted a chicken club sandwich from the Oakley Court Hotel (famous as the exterior for the Frank N. Furter castle from ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’). It soon became apparent that absolutely NOTHING but this particular sandwich would do.

The hotel wasn’t far from H’s house, but neither of us could drive owing to having been revoltingly drunk since lunchtime, so we called a taxi and took a Tupperware box with us.

On arriving at the hotel, making it very clear the taxi driver should wait for us, we stumbled into the bar, ordered a round and requested chicken club sandwiches to go. The barman stared at us as though we were from another planet.

‘You are guests at the hotel’? he enquired, through narrowed eyes.

‘No,’ said H, ‘We have recently arrived from Uranus and would like to sample your earth food’.

That attitude, I asserted, wasn’t going to get us club sandwiches on any day of the week.

‘I apologise for my butler,’ I said, ‘He’s just got out of prison and his manners have lapsed. Please could we have two rounds of your delicious chicken club sandwiches’? Proffering the Tupperware to prove we didn’t intend to stay after slamming back the ***** tonics we’d just ordered, I added: ‘We’ve brought our own box’.

The barman wasn’t having any of it. ‘We do not bring food to the bar after nine pm’, he intoned. H checked his watch, which he never remembered to wind. ‘It’s only just gone nine’, he argued, then gestured, foolishly to the clock on the wall behind the bar that showed half past ten.

‘Sir, I’m sorry,’ replied the barman, clearly being nothing of the sort and having recognised our insobriety the moment we’d entered the bar. ‘No food served in the bar after nine pm’.

‘But we don’t want it served in the bar’, said H. ‘We just want it placed into our lunchbox here’. Snatching the Tupperware from my hands, he looked around, presumably for the door to the kitchen. ‘Would it help if I just popped along to the kitchen myself and asked them’?

The barman shrieked with a sort of strangled cry ‘Uh, sir, NO’. He regained composure, attempting, no doubt to tamp down the fear of whatever mayhem might ensue when this ****** idiot got punched by the chef for appearing in his kitchen demanding takeaway sandwiches.

Unperturbed, H pressed on. ‘If we were residents, would that make a difference’?

The barman pushed our drinks, reluctantly, towards us. ‘You would call room service, Sir’.

H shot me a look. ‘No’. I said, firmly, ‘We’re not getting a room just to order chicken club sandwiches, that’s ridiculous’.

‘Is it’? asked H, seeking definitive clarification.

‘Yes’, I said, ‘That would make a chicken club sandwich, like, three hundred pounds’.

H considered this for moment. ‘Be a ******* good sandwich for three hundred quid though, right’?

Querously, H negotiated for a full ten minutes with the seemingly immoveable stance of the barman, and had now begun addressing him by the name on his badge. ‘Kurt, what’s the reasoning for not serving food in the bar after nine o’clock? Give me something I can work with’.

Pondering for a moment, Kurt had the good grace to fully consider the question. ‘Because lots of non-residents use the bar after nine pm’, he gestured to the empty room behind us, ‘The kitchen does not have full staff at this time and could not handle all the orders from the bar as well as room service. Bar patrons would see the sandwiches and want them too’.

H made the face that meant Kurt’s perfectly reasonable logic was about to be ****** sky-high.

‘Kurt’, he began, ‘How many patrons are in the bar this evening’?

Kurt blinked, like a mouse asked where the cat is. He even looked around as though there may have been patrons hiding behind curtains or under tables. ‘Just… the two of you, Sir’.

H leaned over the bar, looking left to right in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘Just the two of us’, he said, ‘And we’re not going to tell anyone if you ask the kitchen to make us chicken club sandwiches. Scouts honour’, he finished, attempting a salute and smacking himself in the eye.

Kurt looked defeated. He was already reaching for the phone to call the kitchen.

‘On one condition’, he said, ‘You must sit around the corner where no-one can see you’.

‘Kurt, my man,’ said H, ‘I’ll sit on a ******* spike if necessary’.

Two hours and two bottles of sauvignon blanc later, we realised the taxi was still waiting on the drive outside.

As it turns out chicken club sandwiches do cost nearly three hundred pounds after all.

You were sitting in your car
smoking a cigarette,
looking for all the world
like a pound shop prince
a marketplace marquis
about to steal my heart

And I fell,
so quick and hard
that my feet touched
nothing but thin air,
on the way up or down

And there’s never been a summer
that flashed before my eyes
as fast as ninety eighty-nine

And I wonder
of all the things you’ve done,
the places you have been
without me
The things that you have seen
my eyes have never touched on.

Breezy, not bright, stems of crispy grass
Whisked about my ankles
I was regarded, chewing,
By ten pairs of curious eyes

My blanket set beneath an oak
Eight hundred years of shade fanned out
Above and wrapped me
Whispering of history
Its own, mine and his

Henry’s house at my back
Unexplored
As for two hours I indulged
A novel having no right to my time

And he came, focusing into view
As though he were rendering
From the past, before my eyes

And, this time, it was to be his voice
That so reminded me
Of family
For he seemed to be
My kin
And recognisable
As one who holds
My trembling and sorrow

Forever he has known
Of my wish
My fear and breathlessness
Indivisible from his comings
And goings

Three hours
Of having been held underwater
And yet being able to breathe
In and out of his presence
Was not long enough
Nor ever enough.

Full of love and tears
the hour late.
I've been ******* all day
cursing myself for clumsiness
and unimportant inability.

Fed up of being fed up
bored with my own thoughts
and sick to death
of seeing kids in snowsuits.

All it takes is a simple shake
like a dog coming out of a lake.
But that hate sticks to me,
and drags me back
to where I once lived.

"**** this" I say aloud
enjoying the swearing that I'm alllowed
relishing the indignity of self-pity
and the thoughts that rattle
as marbles in a bag.

No-one can make me
and so cannot break me.
I am me: ***** and uncommon
bitten fingers and a permanent sulk on.

Pick a little bit from the bottom of your pocket
Make a fist and hold it very tight
Grab a little courage where the fluff lives
Everything is going to be alright.

The bottom of the pocket is the safest
Curl your hand and catch your waning fight
No-one else will see your nails digging
Into palms or knuckles going white

Down in the pocket’s where your guts are
Look skywards and believe in coming light
Take hold of a fistful of pocket
And I promise you will make it through the night.

Lack of touch has rendered me numb
Kisses left unkissed, cold-handed, cursory
Fleeting swipes of barely-love
Have become and are dwindling

I burned out long ago
But love you no less
I promise, I swear
Hand-on-heart and always

My head tells me daily
To be warm, put my arms around you
And squeeze... just squeeze
So easy, little, simple
But daily I tie my arms behind me
And the drips sink beyond my fingertips
Disappearing

Terrified of what’s leaving me
I do nothing to reel it back
Inert, lazy, dead, ice-cool
All my heat has dispersed
Pooling about my feet
Before draining silently away.

Underline me in that little black book
of your mind’s eye,
tapping a pencil on your teeth
and remember when
last time I saw your face
was the last time
was the last time.

And there can be no desire
hotter, brighter, fitter
than obsession in miniature.

A pair of heavy, darkly-polished oak doors swing open, throwing moonlight across a wide expanse of pale marble hallway, veins in the stone winding like sinews into the shadows beyond.

Gilded in silver light, I enter. The steel tips of my heels click out a dreamy staccato, treading in the footsteps of princes, duchesses, rogues and queens. Their faces gaze down upon me from the high walls. Immortalised in oils, their traditional, inscrutable countenances reveal little of their passions, furies and secret obsessions.

I turn towards a chair in one corner, letting the heavy coat damp from the night air, slide from my shoulders. I lay it carefully over the velvet upholstery, shivering slightly in the chill, unmoving atmosphere inside the house.

I move toward the centre of the hall. Click… click… click…. click. My heels tap out an intent. Upon a small table, a crystal vase holds a single red rose. In rude bloom, the rose has let go of three petals, they lie as perfumed tears upon the table.  

An envelope is propped against the vase. Unsealed. Unnamed. It doesn't need to be addressed for me to know its content. Virtually every goodbye I've experienced has been unaddressed: I can't bear them any other way. A personalised parting ladens the heart, eventually rotting away to leave a brand in the exact shape of its pain.

I reach out a crimson-nailed finger and lightly stroke the envelope. The action pulls at the cuff of my silk shirt, exposing four rows of pearls circling my wrist. They gleam mellowly in the moonlight, exactly the same colour as the skin on his back.

I hadn't wanted him to leave, but I was compelled not to have him feel indebted to me. His love was weighty, dense like hard-packed snow and he wore his sadness like an overcoat. A good overcoat, and one which suited him, with deep pockets of melancholia and often-visited regret.

A cloud sails over the moon, veiling a fleeting wish for his return. The moon knows when to place a finger to the lips, lest foolishness begin drumming insistent fingers against our better judgement.

I turn and walk back toward the doors, pushing against their resistance, closing myself off to such thoughts.

In almost total darkness, the sound of my heels echoes again. A determined, resolute tattoo upon the path of my own better judgement.

Unseen, the rose drops another petal.

I am I am I am
Floating,
Sadness, floating
On a well-pool seeing my own face
From above
I am, I am

I tried not to think of you
Scrubbing my mind with bleach thought
And you just came back cleaner

I am I am I am
Sadness, suffocated
Holding down, holding in
I am. I am.

Bare-faced, polished like a stone
gazing into pooling deformation,
rank with artifice
pulled as an oxon cart
over the furrows of time

The sighing heart
misted by sadness
is still full to bursting,
and saddled in well-worn pride

A moving face echoes
with spells yet-to-be-cast
and deeds complicit
in a mighty downfall

Joannes and Sarahs
polluted my wants and wishes;
several of them became ash
sticking to wet skin.

The house, positioned randomly
At a squat, awkward angle to the road
Isn’t the prettiest sight
I could have hoped for
And yet, it looks like home

Three steps rising to a porch
That looks like a wart
Incongruous and ugly
Slapped on in a fit of
‘well, the neighbours have one’ pique

and wide, sightless eyes of windows
too much glass
in a pale face of peeling, cracking,
***** white weatherboarding

and yet, it pulls me in
invitingly beguiling
in a hideous, ill-at-ease
kinda way

old lady roses on the hallway walls
faded carpets, bare at thresholds
worn by old lady slippers
and too much pacing

and still, I venture onwards
wrapping around myself a cloak
a warm, comfort of ages
cosy in the past laughter
of fuss-less lives

simply living
a simple life
unremarked upon
by any measure of glory

some houses have a way
of turning nothing into everything
and making it sparkle
with special grace

this home, this house
has waited for me
and, while waiting,
has given itself over
unselfish and whole
to the lives of others.

Rise with a wave
And come down, hard
Water is as unforgiving
As a reluctant lover

Your boots were polished
Shining with warm fury
and silence,
like soft breezes
before a summer storm

the twist was felt, three times
hot tea burning my fingers
even with two sugars
it couldn’t have been sweet
And I saw you
standing at my back in the hallway mirror
reflecting everything I had dreamed
the night before

I rose, twice, on the same wave
My knuckles whitened to birch bark
Eyes sightlessly heavenward
I churned like seaweed, and spun
outwards, upwards into space

my skin burned with your passed-on laughter
and, Danny, I knew
it was all forgiven because
I wished to strangle you,
or perhaps I wanted to marry you.

I flicked hair from my eyes
As the tide came in
Swirling, rising to my knees.
I stared down the sun
And waited.

If you can think about it
Would it be so terrible?
The spoils of a war to be split
No-one carries the winner’s flag
And if I did, it’d break my back
I’m no rider on the storm
Any more than I’m a poster girl for you

So throw it out
Gather back the shattered remnants
Sweep up what’s left
And call it ‘art’
Or call it an experiment
A test of reserve
A nerve of steel
A way to break a heart

Or ten hearts
Who cares?
Who even knows?
or would be interested?

And, darling, what’s the worth
Of a life gone to ruin
Decay was always my favourite aesthetic
my life best lived was always gonna be a mess
it’s my way, my way, my way
but **** climbing a Hollywood hill
for a view of what coulda been

it never was a rosy tale
nor a highlight in the dark
a silly, idle freak of me
a way to break a heart
a way to break a heart
a way to keep the spirit hot
and feel as though the heat
was coming up from somewhere else
across and beyond the spires
the dreaming places of a mind
gone to hell and back

seeing in the dark
isn’t just for cats
it’s for ones who can’t abide the light
we learn to read in shadows
making sense of lumps and bumps
feeling our way along the landing
stubbing toes and cracking hips
and bending to imaginary swords

The weight of all you do for me
has made my back sore.

My muscles ache from your care.
The chafing of each deed
reddens my skin, and I scratch
quietly asking for mercy.

I cannot take another straw
of your love for me, my love.
A single kind word
would break my back I fear.

Oh, yes, I fear, locked up in my head
for days and days,
unending, unyielding
to the release of sorrow or sadness.

Why am I doing sixty crunches a night?
To withstand
the crushing, folding, suffocation
of your adoration.

Ungrateful?
Yes, I must be.
Add ungrateful to my basket of emotional shopping
I’m buying.

I should have got a trolley,
But I didn’t have a pound
and now my arms are aching
as well as my back.

If there’s an answer on the way
I heed it; faster, faster
along on feet of clay.

Love is too great
a weight
for me to bear.

Faded gilding, rubbed through to cracking, flaking wood.
A glamour of ages, sliding, flies to the breeze.

The little bird perches on a once-fine moulding;
Head tilted, one bright eye turned towards the mantle
where a half-blind mercurised mirror barely reflects
an army of creeping vines, consuming naked angels
and the God of this house.

Our hero’s velvets are ruined, dripping and eaten through.
Where riches have lived, decay succeeds.
Nature’s velvets; opulent mosses and emerald lichens
are devouring damask
and smoothing over marbled hardness.

The bird listens for footsteps.
The lady would scatter crumbs on the windowsill
and he would flutter, unafraid,
to peck at her sweet feast.

Once, she drew him.
Fine-lining passerine delicacy,
her pencils fetched him,
and bestowed him an artist’s nobility.
He turned, this way and that,
flashing gold-touched wings,
miming a duchess snapping open a fan.

She’s gone now,
and so have the crumbs.
The bird senses no sugar on the sill,
nor the faintest reminiscence
of lavender perfume, glittering as star bursts
at the hollow of her throat.

He sings regardless,
a mournful beauty
longing to return to a glorious, lustful age,
where light refracted in cut crystal,
danced upon frescoes
and illuminated the ugly –
- to render them enchanting.

He swoops to dance on the mantle,
answered by the mirror
and sits a while, preening.

The gentlemen and ladies are gone forever.
Ejected from history to echo as ghosts of fancy and excess,
undeserving of remembrance or pity.

The bird will never forget.
And knots up secrets
kept tightly in his breast,
committed to his tiny, fierce heart.

Give me the ***** princes
Who glitter in the dark
The ones with crooked, broken teeth
Apt to leave a mark.

Give me a fallen angel
For I can’t abide a saint
Mephistopheles, yes please!
A pietist he ain’t.

Give me sight of every scar
Each blackened bruise behold
A man by passion’s furies burned
A thousand truths untold.

Give me a heinous lover
Not a lap dog to a girl
I shan’t demand a loyal serf
For my petals to unfurl.

Give me a howl of ecstasy
A stiletto in your side
My dear dishevelled Jesus
To inverted cross be tied.

Give me up for treason
Should I question such intent
By bloodied light of dawn I rise
Unrequired to repent.

Who cares for perfect manners?
Profanity’s divine
Give me your hell-bent lust, my love,
And rapture shall be mine.

Tell a little secret, yarn away the night
Smash the atom, darling
make the darkness bright.

But darkness is as darkness does
here in which we dwell
who is counting up our sins
or sounding out the bell?

The bell which could but save us
were secrets only kisses
I'll put down my head once more
upon the block of wishes

And when your axe comes crashing down
to part me from my craving
we're ****** to hell and back, I fear
this love was not worth saving.

The truth rings out
an unwarmed bell on a winter morning.

You, dear, were never really here.
And whenever you returned
it was only for a fleeting moment:
in selfish pursuit of a long-lost ideal.

Being crushed agrees with me:
a seven-year cycle of rebuilding
renders greater strength,
in my fibrous, defiant heart.

You alight only to assuage
a need for reassurance
that I’m still as pathetic
as I was back then.

With glee you recalled
my anxiety and shyness,
and recounted scenes
I failed to remember.

You wrote a script
into which I never stepped.

Twenty-eight years later
I’m free,
unshackled
from your passive aggressive *******.

You’re looking older, finally.
Trust me when I say:
there is no glory
left for me to discover.

A bell is silent
for the greater part of its life.

To dream of you, my nose bleeds
I smell metal as I wake
another feather pillow wrecked
another day to ache.

I should sleep on only earth
give my essence to the ground
another link uncouples
as you the couple found.

She doesn’t seem so much to me
as a photo can but tell
gritty-featured, highlighted -
send me straight to hell.

How comely of you, darling,
to pick an Essex girl
it’s where I left my guts for you
mixed in with cockle shells.

I see you don’t yet trust enough
to picture your accord
trust that I shan’t murmur
the bile I can’t afford.

I shan’t waste time to wonder
at the steel of your affair
curse my spiteful stomach!
I cannot help to care.

It twists me to oblivion
and sunders me to tears
my lower lip is bloodied
as my pillow, so I fear.

Cast the feathers upwards
into the fatal blue
caught on gentle thermals
perhaps they’ll find their way to you.

(descent)
Hindered by progress, or the idea of progress:
evolution-in-waiting bellows me to hide,
tattering becomes ruination.

Animism creeps,
not-yet hands pushing at dim velvet.
Peeping one-eyed through the past
where had borne such potent promise
immutability lain intact
flumped into snowy thickness
and thrown hard against Georgian glass.

Here comes the stealth of unillumination
thankfully blanketing
they were tied at the hips
and neck,
then wrapped as old mirrors.

That door went nowhere
it always does
those Victorians, forever meddling,
will folly themselves into any trouble.

(resurrection)
You haven’t changed one bit!
I say to myself,
showing you their brand new niceness
***** as copper pans.
Go on, spit in my fire
the hiss is the thing that’s real.

We drove, down to the place where a ghost-forest slumbers as fossils on a silent beach.

To the tiny house: two-up, two down, only one way in. There may have been a piano. There was definitely a small, hard narrow sofa and the kind of paintings popular in care homes.

Playing ‘house’, we nested, in bed by eight with the portable TV - ignited into life from its hiding place beneath the stairs - balanced on a rickety, ring-marked side table, the varnish long worn through.

Watching Saturday night game shows, but not really watching.
Acutely aware of the space between us, your arm touching mine, tiny hairs meeting nervously before began the careful rituals of first interaction.

And. I never did ask you, how or why.
All sense of purpose faded with the dusk as the scythe of May’s cloudless moon unveiled herself to keep watch. Our chemicals clouded and mixed together.

Those mornings were fresher than any since, feet dappled in dew to collect the milk, with a sky so clear my heart aches to think of it now. A sense of something breaking and spilling warmth.

Flatness surrounded us on all sides in an absence of remarkable geography. A view of forever, greenly laid and pocketed over gentle Sussex’s motherly folds.  

I don’t recall us faltering upon the path, laid clear and ever-lasting.
It was to be for all time and, for nine-and-a-half months, it was.

Secrets abounded; what became of those diamond rings we shall never know. Great and glassy, boiled sweets of riches that vanished years later under a dark and terrible history.

Back then, they rested. Hatchlings of a future wealth that eventually eluded us.

I regretted every second of our hiding in that place. Each little step of second a tiny slice of time disappeared of holding you, of holding onto you.

Whenever I hear an old bedstead creak, I remember.

When hung in that moment between sweet spring and the blast furnace of summer, I….

And when the curved bone of May’s dying moon slices the speck of heaven high above me, I sleep with the curtains wide open to her voyeuristic gaze.

The fleeting, yes, my heart’s desire

the barely-there, a wraith

Ephemera, whispers on the wind,

impermanence my faith.


I tremble before the eternal

faced with nature’s stand

Beneath a soaring mountain,

being scoured and withered to sand.


In the shadow of mighty forever

I teeter above the abyss

Toes inching and sending down trickles

the landslides remind me of this.


I sleep in perfect hollows

and cut my teeth on bone

The glory of calcification

rolls in my mouth, I am home.


Cascading the ones gone before me

throughout my own blood by their dust

Absorbing a lifetime in seconds,

turning my fillings to rust.


Temporal consumption thus rendered,

my heart winds to stillness sublime

How quickly we flash to our endings,

how rapid the animal time.

The smell of the foundry surrounds you
abounds and wreaths around you.
A man of ore, born of the earth

I thought of you as Roman.
Alive, shuddering with the stress
and exertions
of recent war

The thrill of hardship
fresh upon you,
made ever-stronger by violent work
your fibres stretch then relax
to gather in quiet, resting power

Glittered in sweat,
you have raced through history
to arrive, tattered and magnificent,
heaving, and worn like a mountain

I have melted into you -
piston thighs greased with excitement!
As your black-ringed fingers
chase a whitened path,
through my pebbled steam

Our minerals mix:
salt and blood, tears and love
and the hooves of legion drum in my ears,
outpacing a gathering storm
as little death overwhelms me

You are home,
hanging suspended in a grief-cloud
above me.
And I invite you, with a succession of imagined dilations,
to rain down.

Breathing in the dark,
Chemicals cloudy
Aged and coloured,
By the breaking down
Of skin, soft tissues
And dreams.

Animals dream, too,
Here in tubular palaces
Captured and floating.
Each footfall vibrates
On singing parquet
And they stir,
Timed by my movement.

Breathing in the dark,
Heart settling to a rhythm
Swaying in time,
With these spells of ages
And a Blackbird caws
At the centre of my brain.

In dim-lit netherworld
Songbirds feast
On plastic berry Bacchanalia,
And the owl eyes a mouse
Who has yet to discover
His second death.

A fox cub
Curling infinitely about herself,
Shows a varnished bacon tongue.
Cutesy and hot-headed in her starring light.

And I…
I stand as still as they.
Suspended in this spirit lab.

A player just as beastly,
Mentally reanimating
Every twitching nose,
Lightless eye
And curious, scratching paw.

Hot on the tail of that wily, elusive beast
named ‘inspiration’, I travelled north.

North, where colours mute
and transformative shadow
bends in darklight,
revealing the world as it really is,
as it once was.

Hundreds of years pass,
rolling back time, boiling clouds
rushing over peaks in reverse,
a tiny tornado ***** in on itself,
and hundreds become thousands.

Rain blackens the babies of volcanoes,
engorges forces with greater purpose
and cleanses every shred of vision
from my grasping, desperate mind.

Thousands become millions
And I am stripped of incentive to try.
There is no ruination, here.
No furious nor frantic need
to imagine past lives
in this manicured, managed place.

High-vis’d toilers scuttle on mountainsides
carefully placing and re-placing rocks,
funnelling feet and discovery
on a prescribed and sensible path.

Only the rain
wreathing a secretive misted ribbon,
creeping in glacial cut-throughs,
is possessed of fanciful virtue.

Nothing shatters but the slate
and the landscape does not turn inward
to eat itself
in gnawing, atavistic need.

It says more about me,
than it does of the Lake District
that I would wrench out and offer
my super-heated heart
to see the mountains fall.

Is it schizophrenia ,
or just simple mania,
that makes me just as likely
to laugh, as to cry?
To know, as to wonder why?

Tides push and pull
washing/gritting in equal measure,
who knows?

In light and shade
contrast, I crave.
Everything must be black
(or white)
at ground level,
or lost, soaring in flight.
Motionless or breakneck
at a thousand miles an hour.
Shielding eyes against glare
or staring into darkness.

Trojans face Greeks,
we're all normal, us freaks.
Cutting a path
through waist-high meadow grass
and fallin'... fallin'....
hitting ground, painless,
on my ****!

I love how the night smells
when days are scentless,
darkness brings secrets
we're all friends here, hateless,
seeking something intangible
nameless and free.

Tell of your secret,
it's between you and me.

I use ‘oh, my god’ as an expression
not of faith, but surprise,
of wonder at beauty untouched
by ideology or dogma
as if caught, and pulled, from a dream.

I exclaim ‘oh, my god’ when stunned
not by holy ghosts, but the living,
who do kindness  as though it were nothing
unmindful of securing safe passage
into heaven, or paradise.

‘Oh, my god’, I cry, when words fall idle
or are muted to quiet reverence.
Where twisted skeins of empiric memory,
rush in crashing surf
of reminiscence and nostalgia.

I am godless, but not without reason
‘oh, my god’ being a slip of historical,
idiomatic vernacular.
Even as curiosity drives me to understand
your own ritualistic, devotional motivations.

Raise the cup, my friend
it gives us both what we need.
For you, transubstantiation
for me a divine and luscious tableaux.
For Saint Teresa in her ecstasy no doubt exclaimed
‘Oh, my god’!

They bark at cars, and howl at church bells
Mist rolls down like tears,
While smoke rises in hope.

On a thickly wooded hillside
Within a sandstone scar,
The deer with tiny horns feasts on Rhododendron.

They say there are wolves
Far away in the north
Where midwinter passes fall silent
Beneath a wedding gown of stars.

Send your daughters to the city, my merchant friend!
They will find their manners there.

I'm trying to forget you
thought by slipping thought
but my neurons keep exciting
and my gut keeps getting caught

By transmitted intervention
masquerading memory
a chemical reaction
molecular machinery

I’d blame my plasma membranes
but they're doing naturally
the things that plasma membranes do
as cytoplasmic boundaries

**** these activated receptors
and my synaptic cleft
by strengthening potentiation
without you I am bereft.

The air, superheated, cocoons us
and we drive,
northwards into the heartland
of the desert.

You, black shirted,
your smooth denims
an intrinsic part
of the landscape.
You were born into dust.

I, crisp and white,
a polarised pair
of mirrors for my eyes.

Your hands on the wheel
guide us into the belly of time.
Intent upon a road with no end.

Sunlight hits chrome,
bleeding flashes of forever
into the gaze of any who glance upon us.

The roof pulled down,
my hat is given up
to a vortex of spinning air,
whipping tiny tornadoes
of grit and long-dead weeds
into a dancing frenzy of celebration.

We have no gold on our fingers.
Our teeth shall not itch
with the sugar of a wedding cake.
And we’ll never look back.

Slowly she goes
winding her black art,
twisting the rope,
and conjuring bonds
of instant loyalty
within your close-****** heart.

Carefully she studies
adjusting the fetters,
moulding a psyche
and bending your wiles,
to her own ideals.

Gently she treads
for speed is all ruinous
to this harm she does,
and sweet cruelty bestows
infinite love, between lovers.

I went down to the ocean
an excuse for killin’ time,
an’ I found time already dead
floatin’ on the brine.

Her face was pale and lifeless,
her dress been torn to shreds,
I hitched up a sorrow
that it wasn’t me instead.

I stayed well after nightfall
just to watch her nudge the shore,
‘cos I think there’s ways of justice
and ways around the law.

I ain’t one for mercy,
I have no light inside,
but I can rise and fall, my love,
just like the turning tide.

If anger finds me wanting,
I switch to gentle peace
the dogs of war snap at my heels
straining at their leash.

Now I’m running from the ocean,
but there’s no place to hide,
this prison cell is closing in
where I will be tried.

For crimes against all comfort,
and ****** of sweet time,
I’m not the one you’re lookin’ for
the dagger wasn’t mine.

Please don’t think me restless,
there was no other way,
to separate my heart from yours
and live to fight another day.

Some are cast in metal
others chipped from stone
yet more are shaped by hand in clay
what you sculpt, you own.

When your arms wrapped around me
I felt a process start
to render me defenceless
'gainst your sacred art.

I yielded to your motion
gave my skin up to the blade
had no cause to resist
the image you had made.

My essence pooled in trickles
flooding indents as you pressed
your fingertips into my flesh
there in rapture, I was blessed.

I yearned to feel the pitcher
every split an evolution
each fetter of the holy rasp
my growing absolution.

I stand in gleaming marble
posed by you alone
forever on this pedestal
inert upon my throne.

In fatal love I slumber
and wishes are for fools
in luminescent, aching stone
naked of your tools.

Each tapping point a petal,
the slamming maul of lust
where once caressed by chisels
now I gather dust.

I dream of you approaching
to polish me anew
so I may shine in constant thanks
at being made by you.

I'm not sure there is anything left to say.
Months of tumbling words have passed,
and I've been wringing them out like
hand-washing cashmere:
gently squeezing, and certain they would never stop dripping.

Then today, I sit here, seemingly worded out.
Testing myself with prodding feelings,
using memories as a nerve-stimulator:
waiting for the heartburn.

Perhaps time is chalk, after all.
Smothering the burning acid
of longing and regret
that I thought would never quieten.

Then again, acid tends to etch its pattern
wherever it touches.
So, although the twist of pain
no longer catches me by surprise,
the ripples
of its movement across me
will always be evident.

Dusk seeps and blurs the skyline
come the close of day
a pinky lilac ribbon
heralds night unto its stage.

The journey is a long one
clouds heavy, threaten rain
drops fall, refract a tiny world
and get wiped away again.

Yawning motorway before me
the lamps lick overhead
tarmac seams provide the beat
and keep my conscious fed.

Driving through the velvet hours
with widened, tearless eyes
I could be the last one left
under orange studded skies.

The rear view mirror silent
no followers in sight
the road ahead deserted
blank darkness left and right.

The headlights kiss a pilgrimage
from Dartford all the way
up into the Highlands
where ghosts of old clans play.

The cast of fading reason
blindness gives me bliss
mechanically motioned
riding the abyss

of barely wakeful notion
'cross the bones of England's spine
inverted patterns play upon
the windscreen all the time.

Punctuated by reflections
blue signs winking in the black
past Sheffield, Leeds and Darlington
where I'm never going back.

Driving through the darkness
steeped in rayless calm
rouged by dashboard luminesce
atramentously embalmed.

A window down to rouse me
night air beholds a trace
of perfumed secrets, blown on wings
that dance about my face.

'cross this scarred and sceptred landscape
it's said all roads lead to Rome
except the ones we love the most
that always take us home.

The snows of un-illumination
settle gently on my breast
aimed towards the mountains
running north, then turning west.

Though a social creature
I crave the company
of oneness in transition
just the road and me.

Humming, ceaseless through geography
with resonance my friend
dreaming while I'm wide awake
from beginning until end.

The shipping forecast soothes me
singing songs of gales
and this machine is just a ship
with tyres for its sails.

Out upon an ocean
of blacktop, good and firm,
through slow and haunted moments
with no need to turn.

One immeasured here to there
one simple action: drive
unknowing of the distance
only sure I will arrive.

And though dawn will surely seek me
for now I'm content to hide
among the blessed darkness
clasped by shadow deep inside.

I'm compelled to move forever
through ghosted, unlit time
the road ahead unhindered
the solitude sublime.

I think of you and want to smoke
ingest a grateful lung
of tar and air and nicotine
all good intent undone

I think of you and deep within
somewhere lost to time,
a tiny little death occurs
'cos you're no longer mine

I think of you because to not
would stretch my soul deplete,
as starfish grow another limb
my heart ticks off a beat

Eating tears is painless
and in reaching for the moon
I’ve built around myself a cage
and to dig, I need a spoon

take down each mouthful, dirt and stones
‘til by light I see escape
curse my indecisiveness!
I wouldn't know the path to take

I could reignite each death
but would chance occur,
smoke again, and **** the need
of addiction I am sure

So? What if I’m addicted?
each one of us is cursed
or wear the scars of something,
but at least I was the first.

I recall, until my head pounds,
by the tides I shall be led,
the landscape of your body
in the ocean of our bed.

Among terraforming bedclothes,
old fires leapt anew,
my scent was freshly salted
by the minerals of you.

Blood catches pace and thunders
this sea is not so kind,
the ancient powers rise to claim
all the helpless they can find.

Headlong unto the harden'd shore
by joyous, raging speed
carried into ecstasy
my nose begins to bleed.

Small roses bloom upon you
as you wipe the scarlet spots.
So I will lie here, shipwrecked,
'til the pounding stops.

I cannot see another spit
of coast or island land
from the vantage point of head tipped back
ceiling sky and pinching hand.

The creaking timbers echo
with the lifting of your chest,
"ssh, don't move, it's stopping"
so I close my eyes, and rest.

Awakened from a slumber
without dreams or care,
I find a lonely rosebud
dried within my hair.

Your eyes contain the oceans,
shifting immortality
your fingers are still bloodstained
salt and blood, that's you and me.

I can’t help but love it here.
The desolation elates my melancholia,
swathes me in haunted clothes
and comforts a need for loneliness.

To look upon desiccated cliffs,
trickling down to meet
the emulsifying waters
of a serious North Sea,
makes me yearn to offer myself up
to the ravages of tide and time.

How smooth I would become!
Worn to my bones
by ceaseless motion,
wearing the patina of eternity.
I would sigh upon the mud
settling into a shape of my own making.

In my heart I know
I’m just a fossil
same as all the rest,
who lie in wait
to be picked over –
anticipating selection
or discardment.

I hope to be discarded,
sent back to the mud
and the incessant ****
of sand and stones.

I shall try, very hard,
not to be afraid
when black night falls.
For I have always been afraid
of that which creeps and calls
through unilluminated hours.

But, if this place
is to be called home
I’ll get used to the dark,
bunk in with shadows
waiting for the trickles to quicken,
heralding the next great landslide.

I have a secret pastime
more an idle, sometime whim,
to kiss with deep intensity
someone who isn’t “him”.

Now, a kiss may be a little thing
I’m not talkin’ with a guy
but within the lips and tongue of one
who’s double X, not X and Y.

I don’t seek all Sapphic pleasures
though adore the light diversion
of seeking out a lady
to satiate my sweet *******.

Within her scented aura
as her lips begin to part
and our fingertips entwine
sends a flutter from my heart.

The flutter blooms within my breast
as my stomach flips and ties
a satin bow within me
when I look into her eyes.

Two girls, pressed together,
generate a special fusion
gentle, warming wetness
a red lipstick collusion.

Our slipping mouths well watered
her hands within my hair
my arms about her yielding waist
a fleeting love affair.

A tableaux of our queenly ***
lost in transitory joy
of mutual female adoration
momentarily sans boy.

Vive la difference!
Contrast, in everything I do,
the slide of long French kisses
I’d sure enjoy the taste of you!

Ladies, I encourage you
seek out a willing playmate
forget all sexuality
and bend a little on the straight.

Who wants to travel through their life
without succumbing to the wine
of all those luscious, juicy girls
who want to mix their juice with mine?

I think of it as simple fun
no rules or lifestyle choices.
When I scent that perfume on her neck
desire flames, rejoices!

So, embrace the little pleasures
as your path of life unfurls
come on, get close, and pucker up
‘cos I love kissing girls!

Even as I close the door
I'm stripping off my clothes
discarding all the fetters
from my head down to my toes.

Throwing off the shackles
of decency prescribed
'cos writing when I'm naked
leaves me no place to hide.

Relieved of every stitch am I
free in heart and mind
all except my spectacles
without them I am blind.

The mirror smirks above me
reflecting all I am
just a little human
born of woman, taught of man.

Cheerful, unencumbered
by the threads of etiquette
a more effective custom
I have not found, as yet.

Though, sometimes in need of character
out come the hats and bows
bare as night beneath a tippet
inspiration flows.

Who cares for mere habiliments
throw your trappings to the floor!
But, oh, where is my dressing gown?
Someone's at the door!

Conceive the atom of beauty
translate an essence divine
elevate every movement to the meaning of art
thus fashion transcends tide and time.

Distill one pure thought to its substance
as folding the steel for a blade
from the forge of aesthetic perfection
a Goddess’ armour is made.

Condense of three graces their spirit
creativity, nature and charm
here in the realm of the maker
the cut is the cure, not the harm.

Compress me in structure and format
anatomy pressed to the frame
or running unhindered, abundant
to all of my costume lay claim.

For you are the authors of wonder
transform me and cover my shame
my simple shape for your substrate
come, dress me again and again.

Obsession, you’re my ***** word
my secret, wanton lust
for I can think of no-one else
to have you, oh! I must.

But when satiated
shaken to my core
obsession ups and leaves me
I don’t want you anymore.

So, call me fickle, darlin’
just as you always do
I’m not fickle, just bedevilled
occasionally by you.

Though, you ain’t my only hang up
don’t go thinking that you are
I’ve a lifetime of obsessions
and you’re not the best, by far.

Not all are made of flesh and bone
some have no soul at all
but I host their hauntings just the same
always at their beck and call.

I’m helpless to their honeyed charms
so easily am I led
take me by the hand, my love,
keep my obsession fed.

Come, wrap me in your many limbs
pour your magic in my ear
captivate, infatuate
for as long as I am here.

Then I twist my form unshackled
alight and fade away
and you must wait, unknowing,
for only time can say.

If I shall visit you again
one small fancy of my flights
but keep my name upon your lips
‘til my next obsession strikes.

I am undone -
resonating, thrumming
with feelings out of time.
Suffused with the scent
of orange, clove and cinnamon.

The house on Folgate Street
has me, whole,
powerless against an eternity
of mutating, shifting
happenings and moments.

Twice, the black cat followed me.
Dully gleaming fur
reflecting a landscape
of bunched bedclothes,
that it batted
then bunched some more.

Between the rooms,
landings captured me -
miniature palaces
hung with candied fruits
and mercurised pools
where I dove in naked longing
into both our pasts.

Huguenot shadows
writhed and climbed,
in faded effervescence.
The motes permitted not to utter
a word of breath.

With freshened eyes
I farewelled an age of deeds
in whispered thanks.

How long I stood at the corner
I cannot say.
Rising from a dream
has never taken so long.

I am screaming
into a silent abyss
of longing and regret.

I am smiling
at my own reflection
believing you
are on the other side of the mirror.

I am placing my hands
either side of my head
blocking my ears
to the truth.

That you have flown
as you always do,
as I knew you would.

I am shrugging my shoulders
to obscure the simple truth.
My love grows
even as it ebbs away.

I walk among the quietened beasts
soak up their ancient sorrow
for lives suspended evermore
there can be no tomorrow.

I think we are quite like them
for we may never  be
forward-thinking, pursuant
nor together, you and me.

I hand my heart unto the sacred
dagger'd through and split usunder
a choice made in perfect honesty
now rolls in me like thunder.

Of time and tide, I waited
believing bright in your return
the hands ran down eventually
but will I ever learn?

For yet I chance my dancing luck
balanced on the edge
to tumble into history
or stay within my pledge.

I am split right down the middle
as these taxidermy dreams
my insides on the outside
coming loose unto my seams.

I gaze into their marble eyes
dare to touch a proffered paw
I am locked in here, forever
disbelieving what I saw.

Your face came in from the ages
and I tumbled, caring not
of promises I had made
the moment time forgot.

Just as I thought you gone, forever
there you are again
and now I'm living with the beasts
my winged heart aflame.

Fill me up with chemicals
to float, suspended, in my jar
my other life is dying
gazed only from afar.

An actress of reality
I am wholly in pretence
unable to exert myself
I sit upon the fence.

Just as do the quietened beasts
whom my secrets I shall tell
I love you, darling, just as much
as I did the day I fell.

In my pose'd capture
of grotesquerie divine
I am strangely whole again
myself, outside of time.

So, come and walk these rooms once more
pass around my tortured form.
Organs draped and ribboned,
complete, I am, when torn.

Take my body-blocks apart
to only you I yield,
and every little shred of me
wrap around you for a shield.

My parts protect in constance
each step upon your path,
in bits of broken wonder
I shall burn upon your hearth.

For love is all that I can give
and in pieces there are more
sides to coat with blessed pain
oh, love, rip me to the core.

The beasts gaze at me so oddly
I think they feel me vain
for I don't wish of being whole
just of pieces, torn again.

My destiny is tableaux
if I cannot be with you
and, thus arranged, my pieces
show only what is true.

That I may never find sweet peace,
in this body, only strife.
I must be smashed to smithereens
to be brought back to life.

Dear beasts, please let me stay a while
you're my family.
And this old house is comfort
my safe menagerie.

All day, I turned you over
in my mind.
Consulted my essence
and found nothing wanting.

Eight hours,
full to bursting -
but telling myself
"don't get hooked".

You, being the truest of men,
have cut me to the marrow.
Where, transparent in your presence,
all pretension expires.

All day,
I felt your sapphires upon me.
Eyes sent to watch over,
and guard every move.

I said this wasn't gonna be
a Greek tragedy.
No sit-com of labours
or dramatic show.

Your voice
turned every little red fibre
of my central nervous system
to trembling coral.

Underwater, captured in the swell
I'm breathing you again.
As though I were born to it,
and have lived every moment
with you... with you...

I wrote your name on a cigarette.
And smoked it on my balcony.
Each lungful, thus ingested,
lets you reside in me.

Across the water
Allhallows gleams, unknowing.
Where, at some previous point
we were separated by simple geography.

If cigarettes were wishes
I'd have died soon death,
in rattling, emphysemic pursuit
of long-lost love.

Simple geography
can never trump
the complicated, honest reality
of time and place.

The cigarette glows in my hand
reminding me that, as love,
time veils promises
however potent.

There are only eight cigarettes left
in the whole world.
Perhaps I'll leave them, growing stale
in their hidden box.

Or, maybe, I'll smoke them all
today.
Then forget
what I ought to have forgot.

For sake of placid honesty
and goodwill, told in truth.
Time is a lying healer
and I'm on a liar's oath.

I went to bed last night
and true
closed down the day
with thoughts of you.

Regret is not
what fills my head
I wonder at the words
unsaid.

For years gone by
are lost to truth
that part of me
remains in youth.

And though in all
my lightened soul
there is a corner
black as coal.

Where no sun touches
less your embrace
you were my loss
my fall from grace.

I miss you now
as ever more
my heart, the apple
you, the core.

I pick a pebble
from our beach
and keep it safe
beyond harm's reach.

Now in fate
by turn of tide
regret dwells here
not by your side.

Place your eyes upon me, love
for all that time has taken.
I am, in constant truth, your girl
who never was forsaken.

Two decades and the quad of years
has twisted not your sweetness,
and I must sit upon my hands
lest I reach for your completeness.

Come, stay close, take my life
it's yours in every breath.
Side-by-side, beneath this tree
in tableaux unto death.

There starts a flutter in my heart
where I know my future stands
within the solace of your love
and held in your two hands.