this poem is a note on the fridge,
written in a passive aggressive language,
and it is valid humour when reading out the note
once more in social situations
to read it as if you have a grape in your throat

this poem is usually a rash decision
the typewriter can’t be…but it looks *******—
writing should be easier than this
I should have visions to draw from
and an imagination to explore

something like sand should be forming words
in my written hand like it did before,
when restraint was what was so badly called for


this poem is a girl I have met and
I bet she has conquered my sorry mind
with battleship magnificence and I, surrendering
at the very first instance of an instant

my pacifist stance has always been
consistent with my fragile optimism
I have a fondness, I have come to learn,
for chance encounters that grow
into the holding of hands
and the mounting of tension

there are mountains,
I’ve mentioned their beauty
in poems revisited since,
but now they blush and ask
who is this you have brought
to our seat in the skies?
observing the intensity
of her avalanche eyes,
and her craggy wisdom,
she was wearing a sort of deerstalker hat...

we visited the library together and read
in reading chairs side by side
this poem is a lamplight conversation and an apology
to Edgar Allen, for we laughed at his prose,
and I pretended to agree in seeing no value
do you see how I simply must be smitten?
(also because this is the worst poem I’ve ever written)

this is, as a poem, a miss/failure, about
a Miss, or perhaps Ms. I met, I miss her
I want to sit with her and her ridiculous portrait of Nietzsche
in a location [insert one here later] with potential for romance

I would relocate a knuckle,
dislocate my awkward self
and let’s drown in the quiet of the lake,
or almost drown, or almost fall in love
and almost climb to the very top of a tree

and almost spend every hour
in the comfort of what you believe


this poem is a kiss on the bridge and all
symbolic meaning that can be drawn from
bridges does not apply, we kissed on a
drawbridge when the drawbridge went up
and we zipped through the city in paper aeroplanes
kept warm by paper coats
and we have floated on lakes in paper boats

we crash landed and were shipwrecked
in the strangest and most unfamiliar places

once, mapless, beautifully hapless, we wandered
lost for hours straight,
when she recognised Community Square,
the sleeping butterfly
I keep in my heart—

    shifted its
     weight...