Black treacle,
a spoonful gums your mouth shut,
makes a mind opaque.

Raindrops disintegrate dully
against glass,
a tumble of thunder.

A car door is closed,
gurgle of key in lock,
inside - vacant spaces.

Somewhere a child is doing
all the things you haven’t done,
little gatherers,

gaining what you’ve never had,
or what fell out from your pockets
when you tried to run.

On the day we move house
I am in someone’s old bedroom,
our new bedroom.

The walls need work,
panoply of circles
where picture frames once hung,
where a shelf may have slept.

I think of the books a wife
may have read, propped up in bed
in this place, her husband also reading,
the lamp-light pouring over their skins.

They had *** in this room,
people before them too,
long ago residents.
The walls have seen, have heard
it all.

A green squiggle next to the door.
A name? Or an age? Hard to tell.
The remnants of faces moved on,
our footsteps the next to grace
this sanctuary of sleep.

A duo of pots, three cylinders,
wrapped. We shall make a start soon.
The bed will go here,
wardrobe by the window.
A shout rockets up the stairs.
The wife’s making a brew.

Are you feeling the tangerine tide?
Are you hearing the squawk of sirens?

Blue Tuesdays,
a bare foot on the carpet,
another trivial tidbit
makes you feel uncomfortable.

A good six hours,
if they write words to you
they’re in invisible ink.

The front door, locked.
The paper says a reality star's
got knocked up, again.

Are you using two sugars?
The phone is a shrill instrument,
a headache your own
private hailstorm.

I thought I heard an echo
of something. A voice
saying do I know how to write.

Is it putting one foot in front
of the other? I swear I read it
somewhere, or was told it
long ago.

freckle constellation
clouds like wet peach wedges

Tetris-brick walls
and mint green street signs

a woman
talks on her phone
by the dry-cleaners

a chef speaks Greek
hands coated in hair
swollen worm veins

students kiss
with their rosy mouths
serve arms for a taxi

buy a gun
stick of gum

a book on the top shelf
third edition
pencilled-in price

traffic stomach-ache
kaleidoscopic car horns

your name
like drops of honey
so good

drops of honey
your name

In the delicate early hours,
I am thinking of myself
as a bubble,
or a series of bubbles
with flimsy skins
and hollows that wobble,
while everybody else
feels like concrete,
hard, solid individuals
who stomp about
doing what is necessary,
what is right.
They do not think of bubbles,
objects with brittle bones
or soggy minds.
Instead, they are cohesive,
set to collide head-on
with the like-minded,
faces that match their faces,
bodies with no fissures,
no anorexic cracks.

exaggeration the word
   that   skips   on the front of my tongue

a bar of orange-fizz light
   a rooftop where the sky
is a pond-ice blue

     a blush of inky flowers
shadows that drip
     down
   accordion-stairs

the sun fits between     two of my fingertips

     conversations swallowed
behind windowpanes
or          lost in the clouds

a city that   groans   in heat
   chalk-white tiles
   blood buses

trees with          arms wide
green   condensation
    and a child with ice-cream

you bruise of colour
snippet of a smile
I cannot
          hold

     postman delivers
your   wispy   ribbons
of          silence

vortex that ***** me closer to you
     but   always          further away

wonky     syllables
make for
          a wonky
     heart

I say
there is a crackle
of some undiscovered magic
when my lips close in on your skin,
fingers on your neck like touching the neck of a cello.