you are the darkest thing
I’ve ever known

gulp you like oxygen
arrhythmic tick in my lungs

static-crackling
in the pit of night

the seams bubble apart
our plot thick as blood

scrunch your eyes tight enough
and the scene will play
the way you wrote it

give me smoke
and your labyrinth fingerprints
on the throat of a bottle

brand me with lipstick stains
my own shimmering pools of ruby
straight from the angel's mouth

hop-skip of our words
like stained-glass window
dragonfly wings

swelling with colour
but careful! they'll break
if you squeeze them too hard

let's pretend the morning
sleeps on the horizon
a charcoal galaxy of days away

we'll go walking together
in the summer dark
and forget what we're supposed to do
with our hearts

Just because you have gone
   does not mean
when the bulbs flicker
the letters of your name
are no longer ablaze
the pages of our stories
do not yellow

when the night
unfurls its intense blackness
licks the houses
expunges the light
   it does not mean
we have forgotten the moments
that made you shimmer
as a glorious star
in a boundless sky

the days to come
are cracked with cold
but there is warmth
to be found
in the sound of your smile
which doesn’t go
but only echoes   on

now and again it goes
it only echoes   on

She was fascinated,
hooked as if a fish out of water.
Whenever death
was splurged across the television
she’d sit upright,
the sofa would creak,
her eyes gorging all
like globs of kitchen roll.
Two per second.
She thought she’d solve them,
bust the case wide open
or some other cliché.
Reams of unresolved stories,
of women splayed
at American roadsides
with a missing molar
or red rings around the wrist.
There had to be an answer, she’d say.
Everything has answers
because everyone asks questions.
A human doesn’t go missing,
someone always sees, apparently.
She’d talk about dying
as if she welcomed it,
as if it was a real person
with bones and a voice.
One day she sliced her finger
and just let it bleed,
the thin line then the bloom
of crimson that wept
into the sink.
Two per second she’d remind me.
I scrambled in the drawer
for a plaster.

We died many times when we first met.
They’d say electric. You provided the shock.
I was in need of repairs,
a faulty motor with a clogged-up engine,
stumbling through life
like a Slinky
yawning its bones
down the stairs.

You played me well at first,
fingers on my body,
twiddled me back into tune.
We’d die again.
When we kissed
I tasted Malboro and Merlot.
I fell right into it,
you like a glossy new balloon,
a chaos of colour on my lips
left me spellbound.
We’d die again.
Then the moment would pop.
You’d be standing with a pin.

Met your parents.
They noddingly-approved between
gulps of Heineken,
but I knew we wouldn’t last.
It fell apart, of course.
Somebody ruined the jigsaw.
Started hurling snowballs
at each other, words like razors
shredding through the air.
We’d die again.

A slammed door, gone
to the corner-shop for milk
in a huff.
An eff-you blurting
out from the phone.
The shock had gone.
I think I’m dying again.

I.
a body
embraced by stinging nettles

a mind
encased by bricks of ice

a tale
smothered by spiky wire

a voice
strangled by invisible rope


II.
hold your heart
in the flat of your hand

who’ll keep it beating
but you

or a stranger with wings
pretty

bubbles popping
from their mouth


III.
silence squashing
your rib cage

a train derailed
traffic jam

dreams don’t go
the way you dreamt them

there’s gold if you make it
over the hill


IV.
give me your life
by the mugful

aches and yawns
slide into Monday

Tuesday Anyday
minutes like piano keys

hours made of violin strings
burnt-throat laughter

where the bonfire began.
Where your golden syllables were sewn
onto the tapestry of a city.
I can imagine the swirl of your dress,
the feverish squawk of jazz
rebounding from the ceiling.
Few alive who’d remember.
Few witnesses who saw
you gnaw on his cheek, draw blood.

Sixty-one years later.
The hubbub of tourists,
a swell of shop windows.
They do not think of you, but I do.
I think of Ross, Myers, Huws,
the Weissborts and Minton,
and you two, the first lightning-white boom
that triggered a lust, a love,
a marriage.

What verses will form next?
I hope for platinum language,
dialogue free from bloated pauses.
If only a while, I’ll hold it somewhere
in the walls of my mind for life.