is this what your voice is
voice is
a teardrop in the space
where a puddle should be

television static
you know
I’ve tried
to get a picture to form

shapes and colours
and delicious sound
but still only
on the screen

moving talking
a time that isn’t now
I want you present
with your mouth

breathing out
words I can swallow
a real wrist arm elbow
real clock

real time

Then there’s the attire.
You spend hours checking yourself out
in the mirror, the drool across the floor,
******* of your dress
and the ******* smothered in lace.

Step back, look at that face.
The realisation seeping in
like blood into a bandage
that you are almost ready.
A cast of a hundred or so
seen-once-in-two-years
with eyes on your eyes,
the cold finger ringless for
just a few seconds more.

Here it is then, the moment when
you settle down
as a child clambering into bed
for a parent-read tale.
You have chosen this man
with this face and these hands
and he will do.
The search cannot be continued.

In one month, an argument.
In one year, a child
after the umpteenth round
of relatives' questions.
The story writes itself
and oh how plain it seems,
the predictability like gone-off milk
makes you want to gag.
But, you say, it’s how it goes.
How it goes.

The woman asks if it’s the one.
You’re flummoxed for a second -
the dress or the man?
Yes, you reply.
I think so.

Find it in the sound
of the crick of your wrist

the crinkle of an eyelid
drooping by the gravity of sleep

there is laughter
to be found burrowed
down the back of the sofa

but people who live
in static images alone

headaches dissolved
in purplish juice

it is so easy
to dance wickedly in the dark

look how it holds you

right through to the bones

I.

Pringles are eaten
as gifts are slowly unclothed
might be pairs of socks

----------

II.

The Queen makes her speech
pigs in blankets passed around
crackers house trinkets

----------

III.

Adverts for sales
folks queue up hours before
for a new TV

Tell me who you are

Oh I am hoping
to grab your voice

and keep it
alongside mine

so we can talk
     look how we can talk

it's not pretty
but maybe

this is how
it can be fixed

fixed enough
for everything

is just a bit
broken sometimes

Am I an eagle
with aluminium wings
in the electric night
or the mad man
watching mosaics
melt into stained-glass puddles?

Look into my bloodshot eyes,
speak to me in that Spanish susurro
and tell me to fly,
          tongue of lightning /violet horizon,
or I’ll be seeing colours in bubbles
dancing a marinera,
a manic stalactite-white grin
I’m not in control of wriggling
across my whiskered face.

I was in the twenty-four hour supermarket at close to midnight. I always shopped at that time because it was quieter and because it was easy to find somewhere to park. It was a cold time. The workers all looked sleepy and the store security eyed me up as if I had pilfered a packet of noodles.
     A girl I hadn’t seen in years was in the wine aisle, her basket fairly full: a loaf of Hovis, dark chocolate, and a packet of M&M's. When we got into the car park I made her laugh because my bag broke and the radishes rolled on the concrete like small red pupils.
     I’d got to the last-but-one roundabout when I realised she had followed me home. She parked her car and came into my house, asking if I could make her a sandwich and pour us each a glass of red. I didn’t think it was strange, but I noticed she had a ring on her finger, the signal of marriage. I put cucumber between the slices because there was nothing else even though I’d been shopping.
     She told me she liked the food but could I please go back to the car and get the noodles from the back seat. The street was empty but full of houses. Her car, a Ford, was there, but not mine. I understood my car was still in the car park six miles away, gathering frost, waiting for me to drive it home.
     When I got back inside, she was grabbing her coat.