In the room
I used to be in
but now on the other side,
a ****** on who I was
or think I was,
knees bent beside punnets
of new faces
born well after I left.
They are rising like vegetables,
some already have
in the few months
that have passed
since I saw some last.
I’m sure they recognise me
but say nothing.

Gripping their lead utensils,
digging the pointed grey
into flawless white,
today’s date,
Tuesday 12th September

a mob of letters
compressed or stretched
as elastic across
the maiden line.

This afternoon
involves castles and knigh.
I point at the page, say
‘there should be a ‘t’ there,
on the end.’

They draw, content.
I loop around the desks,
a sporadic
sliver of praise
drops from my mouth.

1.30 becomes 2.30.
I think of how
they’ll still be studying
when I am thirty,
and a string of incidents
will keep flooding in:
job, relationship, money,
perhaps, crackling black words.
These pale faces
know little of the sort,
so they shouldn’t.

I leave them to sing,
this knowledge
rowdy in my head
like a shaken sack of marbles.

You make it all go red,
bottled wine crimson.

Pictures pop like plump bubbles,
sleep clogged
with soggy might-have-beens.

I bounce my words
along a washing line
in the hope they’ll find you
looking out
at a cement-made sky,
windows lashed
with crinkled blobs of rain.

Pause. A thought.
Skinny ***** of light
javelins across your face.

A sentence built
with strawberries,
not a comma
like an ugly smudge of blood.

Look
I’m not sure
what to say here
about this picture
maybe it’s the colour
you painted your nails
or the way you are awake
but in a position ready for sleep
regardless there is something delicate and silent
about this picture and the way that you look and so
I thought that I should tell you that
even if these words don’t breathe
in the shadows of your mind
for being strangers is such
an indefinable sickness

blue like a loose carrier bag
blue like rainfall

you feel that
tight tangle
suddenly blooming bruise

inside your xylophone

a common taste
but a different language

mi dispiace, non parlo italiano

wish I knew you
wish my single syllable
was your drink of choice

blue like cracked ice
blue like brushing teeth

reach into the vegetable soup
of your mind

here! a paragraph
made from colourful buttons
and not so sticky tape

mon français n'est pas très bon

wet hair and brown eyes
will satisfy me nicely

or brown eyes and wet hair

miles and minutes
and seconds
and seconds

disculpe

and seconds

är detta rätt?

nicotine no thanks
silence will **** you
decay the veins

blue like so-called heartbreak
blue like too much space

and seconds

I don’t know
exactly what it is.
There are terms
that could be gibberish,
two languages knocked together
to form a disease,
an affliction of the mind
or fluid in the lungs.
I got a list of ailments
as long as a scroll of parchment,
lolling on the floor
like a tired dog’s tongue.
Often people ask, ‘what is wrong?’
They expect you to have
something wrong with you,
a problem that rises
like the sun on the horizon,
or floating like a lost bottle
way out to sea.
If it is just a headache, it is that,
just a headache.
Would I not know
if the issue was worse?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps it is the not knowing
that kills you, or renders you helpless.
It is sad to know this will come,
this bizarre helplessness,
either in a ripple of seconds
or the space between seasons.

tell me what it is you want,
the bits that make you tick
when the doors shush shut,

the want that scurries within
like some electrical current
making your skin tickle.

tell me what you feel
when he doesn’t ring back
and the phone sleeps,

an inept white brick.
tell me. go on, your head
a knot of faulty Christmas lights

and how you wish for someone
to grab your heart (not literally)
and make a home there

or just renovate it.

oh your heart
is a space dust covered
beating rock

you want to be a comet
streaking to something
you only ever thought magical

comfort of not quite night
or the early hours
when the first stirrings

of strangers tumble
from tube stations
tiredness jammed in their eyes

let our blood swim together
delve into the day
like magnets dragging

moments in
planets among planets
searching for love