Mean Windows

Mean windows
Small light
Mean architect
Limited budget
& imagination
Half-light estate
Small curtains
Mean windows
Early dusk
No street-light
Glass broken
Doors boarded
Mean windows
Clint Eastwood eyes
Tagged & Flagged
Grassless
Concrete gardens
Brown and grey acres
Mean windows
Closed shops
Citizens Advice
Misery
With chips
And mean windows
With small curtains
Saving on glass
Costs light

Revelling in your
disfunctionality
Your interesting
complexity
And the one thing
You are proud of
is that you have
nothing to be proud of
And the one thing
that you value
Is that you value
nothing

I love moments like that,
when only a nod is needed.
When words would complicate
the essential understanding
that we both had,
of what can be left out,
what can be ignored;
when eyes talk to eyes
and understand
that the rest is just dressing
just unnecessary expression
beyond what is simple.

So simple that
the memory is stronger
when there are no words
to remember.

Your fragrance remains

In high corners & cupboards

Your hairs painted into

The fabric of the walls

Filigree veins

Your very skin as dust

Sealed

Stratified

Into the place

Our home



Your finger print

Clear on the gloss painted frame

Eye lashes in the mirror corners

Your broken wine glass fragment

Beneath the fridge

With my contact lens

Staring blindly at

Each other

For recognition



Your rounded buttock curve

Sits in the leather

Of your favourite place

And your fragrance

In high corners & cupboards

Paris June 18th 1940

Dear Mother,
Beauty surrounding us
daily
but never more than a
street away
from another wall
with bullet holes
and flowers

Be that little girl for longer
stay there
naivety is easy lost
once you have
smeared
the make-up
of adulthood
across your beautiful face                                          
something goes
that you will
never
regain
not in the
pocket of
your red velvet coat
or your ripped jeans
or in your toy box
revisited
with a tear
in an attic
moment
when it is all
too late

Stay the charming boy
the footballing
***** kneed
rascal
stay in your
cowboy and indian
dream
your truck driver
hinterland
before the
bubble is burst
by playground
wisdom
and peer
group poison
cherish your Christmas morning 4am’s
for as many years
as you can
before you
know too much
about too little
and find
it all banal

Are you a male or a female?
Manliness

Describe yourself:
An Obscure Writer

How do you feel?
Kind pity chokes my spleen

Describe where you currently live:
Community

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
At the round earths imagined corners

Your favourite form of transportation:
Air and Angels

What’s the weather like:
The Damp

Favourite time of day:
Break of Day

Your relationships:
A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife

Your fear:
The Funeral

What is the best advice you have to give:
Variety

If you could change your name, you would change it to:
Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus

My soul’s present condition:
A Fever

Can I ask;  

Does life trouble you?
Because your eyes
Told me it might

Do you seek out smooth pebbles,
to touch and caress
absentmindedly?
Your finger tips shine like you do 

Is this journey one
that you sought to avoid?
Your toe tapping
white knuckle grip
on that letter
gave you away  

And yes
I am bothered
By what happens
next to you
Would a chat and coffee be of help
or just another presumption?

Last night
I dreamt
I was a giant,
that I forgot
my favourite word;
that I refused
to have white teeth
and that I lost
my prize possession.  

Everyday
mixed up thoughts,
making no sense
and every sense

Snow
Sometimes at Christmas
White as a brides dress
Rare and pure
Reality suspended
Deep beneath

Snow
The crisp clean white
Linen table cloth
Spread over
A stained table
Superficially pleasing

Snow
A new shroud
Laid over a body
Stiff with cold
Frosted ground
Crisp and even

Snow
Rippled bright sorbet
Cleansing
Refreshing
But always
Just water

she
meticulously combs
her hair
for the lover
who never
came back

she
watches herself
crying into
the mirror
for the want
of a reply

she
unfolds the
picture of the boy
in her summer
both smiling
in blossom

she
warms herself
by the fire
in the autumn
of her solitary
life

she
sheds a smile
for the memory
of the fire
in his eyes
quite sublime

she
watches herself
crying into
the mirror
for the want
of a reply

The night it stayed light
We closed our conversations
Ended them
Finished what we had to say
On the very same day
That we started them

There was no hour to leave
Or a time to arrive
Curtains remained un-drawn
We could see into everywhere
And it seemed that the sun hovered
Between the hills for hours

The night it stayed light
Your eyes stayed open
You never closed them
Not even a blink
I stared into them for an eternity
And meant it completely

There was no next day or today
To separate us
The **** crowed in mid-afternoon
And we drank hot chocolate
For breakfast like the French do,
We strange cosmopolitans

The night it stayed light
The owl never flew and the bats waited
Patient in barns
And I looked at you in pyjamas at noon
With sunlight on your hair
And I felt humble
For being allowed to love you
All that long day

I cushioned your first ecstasy,
blanketed your school-day sickness,
hosted your important conversations
and absorbed your mistakes.

I was your young boy bunker,
your teenager cave,
your safe haven from the elements
and your fantasy land.

I warmed your Christmas dreams
your sorrow filled hours,
your desert island
and your solitary confinement.

You dreamt fantastic colours
in my comforting embrace,
you fled from shadows
and awoke in sunlight.

I become the particular shape of you
moulded by your years of resting,
you made me into what I am
the same gift I've shared with you.

Me & you
And that last cigarette
And that awkward moment

Me & you
And that last bottle
And that whispered nothing

Me & you
In our t-shirt glory
And our damp hair flattened

Me & you
In our diamond moment
And our cold hands holding

Me & You
And me & you

Not
Tibet
Our
England

Shredded
Coloured
*****
Flags

Railside
Tr­ees
In
Winter

Prayers
In
Disposable
Form

Flapping
Torn
From
Bra­nches

Votive
Gifts
To
Greed

Godless
Plastic
Rainbow
Church

and still
i feel
guilty
for the
bumble-bee
jarred
thirty years
past
and it still
makes
me
sad
that I
trapped it
and
left it
forgot it
to die
and the
glass
enhanced
buzzing
like
tinnitus
haunts me
and the
slowing down
dying
recurs
in my
dreams
and the
slowing down
dying
is me
in my
dreams
in a
brick
tower
like a
lighthouse
no moisture
no air
just a
spiralling
staircase
and music
and breathless
and flightless
and hopeless

and that
humble
bee
still troubles
me
and I
wish
every time
that the
memory
returns
that I
could
undo that
moment
and
twist
and
release
and
observe
and
relax

Burning a picture
On the lively fire
Of us
Two
Happy smiling
In sunlight,
It distorts
Into screaming
Dark
Monsters
Twists
And curls
Painfully
Bubbling with
Blackness
Into embers

Black confetti
Takes to
The air
And drifting
Down
In the lonely
Evening
Breeze
Takes to my
Hair
And
Shoulders
And then
Like you
Becomes one
With the night

And is gone