I am torn galactic
evolution in your pocket
the fight for fight’s sake

born and we immediately
start to die
this piece of us
of the divine in us
is giving
the order to burn and change

giving colourfades
to cut clear our own path
but chained Andromeda
dear
they may never believe you
unless you can tell them
where
this would be embodied

if it were real
and ask the monster in the water
ask me
to rip apart everywhere I might touch
were we wrapped together
I would

the side of your ribs, your thigh, your shoulder

were we wrapped together in womb or in worship

There is a new roof fitting itself to the sky,
sea-roughened and grey as the vast paving
I dropped teeth on as a child, lightheaded

and living faster. Outside, a steep hill drops sweet
like the dip of a spoon, and in this life I see
my own reflection. It may come from narcissism.

It may come from gut. But its momentum is trapped,
a statue on one foot, it asks to be uprooted. How can I
carve this future into something soft and creaseless?

If I was an artist, I could catch its outstretch—
I would pull the army by the hand, out from the dark
intrusive damp, and ask it to stay.

On the line, a white sheet takes hard gulps of air.
I'm quick to learn its rhythm.
But in the morning it has lost its breath;
in the morning there is a small damp circle
under my cheek.

The sun beats,
splits your skin.
Underneath
you’re heated till ductile;
you yield to the day.

The day is bloodhot.
A fish in a fist; you feel it
like a clot
in summer’s vein.
It drums the city dry.

You stay
in sungripped rooms
too small to compete.
Too soft with sweat,
you splinter and dash.

You happily waste the day.
Now nothing
has the energy
to raise itself
far off the ground.

There is a place
in you
that needs a name
but you're an absolute beginner
at naming things.
Centred in this pathos, I've never known

whether to create stillness or bitter passion.
In this, there is a sacrifice,
something to see through to the end.

The openness I sometimes extract
can break me down.
Is it better
to find a way to say it?
Would it be better to hang for it

or to forget
how the fig is fertilised?
In its sweetness,
to forget
the distaste of undermining friendship.
I have stretched myself into the past.

I have stretched my body
to see the places it could end.
Vein bubbles
from where it started,
wet bloodgasps;
sorry smear of a poem

they write your name next to.
History repeats, all that's left;
neutrality at the cost of
a better passion,
and the count of
how many ribs you have and how many you've lost.

I abuse my fingers
and still expect them to carry me through.
There's always a way
to see trauma as something to crawl into.

Every time, you hold onto
the words for too long.

The words rot under
your tongue, where you left them;
you pretend you meant to,
savour,
a compost for more —
but it only ever makes it
hard to speak.

Logos is the thing
you might be able to put a finger on,
but if you leave it for too long it
will burn through.
It’s brittle and brutal in ways
you can’t imagine.
Reasons
have bloomed for two years
like a headache, swelling water,
like an argument
that only leads one way.

Write it out, don’t
try to fit it or fight it.
The more perfect state of us
would be what exactly?

I’ve developed a bad habit
of leaning towards you
and sometimes I think you
encourage it.

**** me up, why don’t you.
You’ve seen it happen
the opposite way around. Every time
you hold onto my wrists
I feel
the cracks
built into my bones,
the things I haven’t explained
to you

in so many words.
It takes
a while to take
but once it
does

thought i could move you by handfuls
could sweep into you somehow
this mountain i despise
to share could slip you into
a feeling like mine air thin
weaker at height

safe for me is to defer
i sit statue and deny
what nobody knows should feel
like inhale
mintmouth—
curves time in a way

once we talked romance
told how to do it wrong
i took that on board
crave a kiss to thorn my tongue
any touch to burn
deeper than i can heal

Here she is with soulful eyes telling me
I'm ancient, I'm precious, but she's wrong;
I'm pale, sickly lithium
and she's gold, she's the sweat of the sun.
It turns out every word I think I have
is foreign to her. Hammered out,
inscribed with triple negatives. Each
leaves its meaning to be moulded.

It's not a way to be forgotten;
always thought freckles would be red, a spark
not soot, not post holes on a new land.
A discovery, not something
I'd feel so wrong for noticing.
There was no red in her. I'd stripped it out
like thread through teeth, solid ache;
not like how you’d expect.

I am not careful, while she pretends
not to need any care. Until now,
never exposed to each other;
we’re left with this red in our hands, too
mudded like closing eyes to the sun.
Seeing ourselves stretched thin,
buried bronze in the river, an offer to what?
To make it hold deeper, the very start of us.

“Like a drowned man, a fool and a mad man:
one draught above heat makes him a fool;
the second mads him; and a third drowns him.”
— Feste, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare


Pulling into Colbert on a mid-week afternoon,
I stride through drifts of passengers falling
from each carriage.
Inside, they deck the station out
in wait like chess figures. I leave as soon as I arrive.

Blessed with rain again,
pestering the roof tiles, great sweeps
of grey water
dash each street. Across,
a building's squared face, chipped bottle green.
Namelessly familiar,
my hermitage.

I enter half-drowned.
I place myself on mark at the bar,
flanked by fellow veterans. To my left, a lowered head,
the dark hide of a colt
retired early from his race.
Right,
a creased face and suit I dimly recognise.

Before my eyes adjust, I limply
raise my hand —
few fingers outstretched, Christlike. A head bows
in response. He moves
to draw a black slick glass;
a tarred trickle, foam-topped like stormed wave.

The first.
A swash against my lip, my mouth
a vacant cove.
Bitter, it gathers in the pit of my tongue
— my pleasure,
I swallow half in one surge.