Feeling like the sea,
a single wave
blushing blue,
gathering momentum
only to fall
flat
on my face,
broken and soggy
to start all over again.

Feel the beach
with my hands,
scrabble at the sand
like a dog
ready to bury a bone,
but am pinged back in
as an elastic band.
Why does that happen
and who is to blame?

You must be a dream
and yet the lines on your hand
know the lines on mine

You say we should build one,
I say we're not six-year-olds anymore
but you coax me into it
and I find myself
digging with a blue plastic *****
but you use your hands,
scooping up lumps of the stuff.
I notice how some gets stuck
in your fingernails,
how the tip of your thumb
has been stippled orange
but I laugh when you tell me
it's nice to feel young again
and I feel it too
although you, not the building
has more to do with that.

We don't stop,
we make a whole row of them,
name them after ourselves,
feel so proud of our work
like builders after a long day,
but it's still morning for us
and every-time you stand,
tiptoe up to the sea,
I get so stupidly worried
the tide might take you away.

Sometimes I only watch
the waves tumble
as a blue rug
over a flight of stairs,
other times I want them
to pummel me,
wallop into me like boulders
and smash against my ribs
again and again
and again,
feel my digits wrinkle
like a rotten fruit,
feel the water splash on my lips
and know it's alright
if I dunk down
surrounded by swathes
of aqua satin,
hear a rattling,
an amplified burble in my ears,
aware it's just me and the sea,
the sea can have me,
I'll allow it.

I watch
     clumps of wet sand
snuggle between your toes,
     water cuddle our ankles
before running away
as if it’s done
something naughty.

     You launch a grey pebble
towards the scorched horizon,
lands with a ‘plop’,
     and another,
     a plump rock
goes ‘sploosh’,
guzzled up by a wave.

Next, with a finger
     you scrape our names
on the beach,
our temporary graffiti,
   squash your hands
into the surface
like we’re at the Walk of Fame.

I listen to the candy-*******
sound as you move,
    look back and count
    the footprints we’ve created,
know by morning
they’ll be gone,
like we were never here at all.

There is nothing I know
                       about you
and yet like a peach
I want to perforate your skin,
                taste
something delicious,
find   out   what I can,
open
      your
             grotesque
                            novel,
discover all the        flaws
I can later ignore,
a sea can come
                 to **** them up,
                 leave your gems
on the shore.

I'd like your name to be sugar
                                    on my lips,
                         sink
my fingers in the     gaps
between your           fingers,
be suffocated by you,
       be drunk on you
     in the best possible way
and still be left
rasping
gasping for more.

A day
will arrive
when your wavecrashesintomine,
no clock needed,
no forward
                  slashing days with a pen,
it will happen
    and I’ll be here
sitting
on our beach    with a book
ready to fall,
fall to the edge
of wonderful madness.

Experience is limited
I could store my lot
in a test-tube

others have barrels
and barrels
and can roll them out.

If you are far out at sea
half-hidden half-showered
in sun

I am on the beach
with water licking
my little toes.

Never pushed
only nudged
as a chess piece

to where I need to be
to absorb
a hazy scene.

Tiptoeing
at twenty-one
so be it

at least I will be ready
when I hand myself
the new baton.

Wouldn’t it be great
a decade from now
when it’s bills, insurance,
married life,
to wander into Waterstone’s
and go ‘hold on a minute,
I sat next to him!’

At the counter we could say
‘Oh, I knew the author,
uni days and all that’
as we fish around
for a ten quid note
thinking ‘hang on,
I should have a signed copy!'

We’ll call ourselves
intellectual,
scrawl sonnets in cafes,
sup pints, smoke cigars,
proclaim Seamus’s work
‘just... just… it just speaks
to me you know?’

And we’ll remember
that teapot,
those guys coming in late,
dishing out slips of paper
like a croupier with cards
and still wonder
if what we’ve written is *magic.

I’ll listen to what you’ve written
but not recreate

I’ll do-it-myself, let pages
sip on my letters

let every vowel stand out
as skyscraper lights.

When I sink to sleep
I’ll lock my dreams

in a wooden chest
retrieve them

when morning strolls in
fetch the fresh post.

I wonder if there is such a thing
as drowning beautifully

I want to consume you
like that ocean water

make what I have said
gush into your eyes.

How many have stood,
will stand beside you
in Heptonstall,
had a photo taken
next to her spot?
Students, admirers
from any nook or cranny
with drained biros,
Ariel under an arm,
her morning song spoken
again, and again.

You're the next-door neighbours
they haven't come to see.
Only a lonely cup
of coffee-stained
hunchbacked flowers
where you lie
in loving memory,
with Emily,
husband with wife,
home to the right
of the graveyard's star.

First of May.
That peach tree you planted
now blooms, flushes pink,
the cherry ones burst purple.
Umpteen types of daffodil
sprout up to gulp sunlight,
flower beds house seeds,
beans and peas in abundance
in your vegetable garden.
Plum batons of rhubarb
protrude, threaten
your little portion of Devon.
But the finest thing
is the girl, the daughter,
a great blossom skipping
from spring to summer,
beaming like a lighthouse
to guide both of you home.

Last night down Hanover Street,
that snaking backbone
  in the north end of Boston,
   you saw paper flowers,
    bursts of blood-red hearts
     and ruffled yellow fists

     and in the windows
    of limitless pastry shops,
   multi-story cakes
  slathered with icing
for weddings,
for partners in waiting.

He'd be more
than one page in your journal
this man, Yorkshire-born,
anthropology at Pembroke,
the one who wrote
about a fox and a song.
Piano music in the room,
British-bohemia.
You, enthralled,
wonderfully drunk
among turtle-necked boys,
friends of his
and then him,
the unscratchable diamond
you wanted bad.
     'Then the worst happened.'
Earrings like tears in his palm,
two accents mixing,
new paints in a ***.
Before long
he'd be chucking
clods at your window
though you wouldn't be home.
But his name would spray
from your mouth for good.

I searched for where you met.
Cambridge at Christmas.
Now a shoe store, a Top Man,
trees drooled with tinsel.
So I imagined that night
at Falcon Yard in '56
and the church-like windows.
Didn't expect a thunderclap
but it came, a bolt
through a blue night.
The red-hairbanned girl,
tipsy, she loved your work,
your raw debut words.
Amateur dancing,
brandy on your tongue,
a kiss bang smash on the mouth
from her hunky boy.
     'Ridiculous to call it love.'
Smitten, she bit,
gnawed on your cheek
to leave her own mountain range.
Her interest - peaked.
Your person - snaffled,
cast as the lead
in her American play.

My Mum owns a load,
twenty-or-so globes
collected over decades,
bought in musty stores
you won’t find around here.

Frozen images, colours
congealed in glass bubbles,
one housing a red flower,
an old-as-me rose
unable to inhale.

Christmas presents
stuck onto shelves,
hugged by a duster
so an eyelash of sunshine
can reflect from their heads.

Home from class,
into the living-room
and see a bunch of *****,
scoops of rainbows
in the back cabinet.

He picks up a twig,
a thin knobbly wand
and drops it in,
watches it turn,
twist like the hour-hand
                                    on a clock around the bend.

Now a stone,
a grey sphere
plopped into the mix,
as a magnet
sticks to the river’s tongue
and won’t budge.

He calls me over,
‘can you see our faces?’
The melting mirror
gurgles along,
doesn’t know
we are there.

and I saw you.
And yes, you were good.
And yes, you can sing.
The paper hearts fluttered down
from somewhere,
snaffled by hands
before you sank from view.
Young things in shorts
wielding rainbow sticks
seats in front and I doubt
my indie record
is cooler than yours
but I saw the sparks,
circus tricks,
dancers popping
along the stage.
But now it is Wednesday,
a four-hour memory
that is sleepily blending
into delicious red.

I don’t suppose
you remember
that day one December
when I scored a hat-trick
in the mouthwash-smeared hall
and thought I was Messi
for a couple of seconds

or when we went to the Tate
in about year eight
for a rare school-trip
with a gang of teachers
and we gawped at the art
like the cat next door
stalking a bird

or when my Dad said
that my uncle had expired
and I was on stage one night
with Joe’s coat of many colours
and wet veins on my face
for some reason
I didn’t get

She didn't want spring,
she wanted autumn.
She wanted
the butterscotch leaves
snuggling the curbs
and porky pumpkins
with fire for a heart.

She wanted autumn
even when underground,
where seasons are unseen
except in the snow
sprinkled in a man's hair,
or heard, a sneeze and a sniffle
into a flimsy tissue.

She wanted autumn back,
like a first kiss over again,
like a childhood memory
flipped to the front of her mind
to stay there,
a vicious, intense red.

But she was stuck in spring,
writing about Octobers,
what happened back then,
how it opened like a flower,
and whether come next year
the season will breathe

orange again.

Like the loss of a limb
or a missing *****,
whether an arm, kidney
or half of a heart.

Every bone numbed,
laden with pins and needles,
every puppet-like move
languid, free of joy.

Hoping for a letter,
brandy to spike your mood,
but for now it’s Yeats on the moors
as you long for your wife.

What colour are Mondays?
Red? Well mine are.
The same colour
you’d imagine a headache to be,
tomatoes, morello cherries
or like a nosebleed.

Does that mean Tuesdays are blue?
That mouthwash shade,
brain-freeze after a Slushie.
Wednesdays? Perhaps purpley-pink
as burning potassium,
Parma Violets under your tongue.

Thoughts on Thursdays?  Fake-tanned,
tangerine skin, the ugliest orange
for the ugliest day.
But Fridays are a healthier green,
think telephone-pole celery,
cucumber truncheons and kiwis.

Saturdays then? Funeral black
speckled with brown sugar
though Sundays are white.
Hurts-your-eyes-like-snow white,
almost transparent, for they come
and dash by with no tone in-between.

Everything is blue.
Sometimes, it is blue for you
like the tongue of the sea
or the Pacific
when the sun
drools upon it.

Other times - electric.
A bright, gaudy blue
nobody can miss
as the vibrant shade of the sky
or turquoise
in your teeth.

I remember when you longed
for blue, the darkest tones.
Your mood was deep blue
like the deep red of blood,
the colour of evening,
impending midnight.

You made everything ice,
the trees, the grass,
your digits chilled baby blue.
I offered you gloves
but you knocked them
from my hands.

Then, for a moment,
a pinprick of green.

Green was a gem.
Green was a rarity
like a white Christmas.
I told you to chase,
to run after it
but the blue held you back.

I said 'how are you today?'
Never yellow, never orange,
you spoke blue,
spat sapphires,
every object, item
glazed over azure.

I wanted you green.
Avocado, mint, emerald green
but it never stayed long.
Blue waves would come
and gulp
your good food.

Now you flit between them,
cellophane
dancing behind your eyes.
One day, drowned in blue,
one day, swimming
green.

I have not injected myself, felt the pulse
of illegal things under the bonnet of my skin
or swallowed a pill and let the room swirl
in colours from the mid-sixties.

I have not guzzled ugly orange drinks
until my liver aches to talk
and I erupt pints and shots
against ***-coated cubicle walls.

I have not had the awkward first
with one of my teeth knocking on hers
or a line of saliva in my stubble
that I perhaps should have trimmed.

Instead I drink tea with two sugars
and whizz through each channel
rather than absorbing stories for class
as best I can like a square of kitchen roll.

Instead I see streams of people from 20-whatever
take pictures with berries and apples
to remind themselves who they are
and remind me they still breathe.

And instead I write what I don't know
for if not every word burns black then dies
and so I continue to fight the other me
who will not turn, walk back the way I just came.

I.

The day will soon come
when your children discover
that you are Santa.

II.

After Christmas Eve
no-one really wants to hear
Mariah Carey.

III.

Christmas is about
gifts and time with family
and then *Doctor Who.

Look at the thirty-three.
Nine years ago
in the junior school hall
and now how many miles
between you, and you
and me.

Pre-pubescent times,
bananas on our faces,
eleven, maybe twelve
with collars all tidy
and jumpers tucked in.
Say cheese.

We grew up too fast.
A few have kids
who'll study
where we once did.
But my friend is at Park
and I walk an Avenue.

This one inked their skin
and this one had drugs.
And you, third row,
well you moved abroad.
I'll bet ten bucks
you don't 'remember when?'

If I saw her, him
what would I say?
A hasty hello
or not one word.
They have far different leaves
on their trees now.

Near a decade later,
the photo back on my shelf.
Here's to you,
what we were
before nowadays
snatched our hands.

A hum among our tall crowd of flowers,
a small cylinder in feeble sunlight
hops along a rainbow before showers,
tin clouds now suffocate the yolk from sight.

Dressed in a garish old knitted jumper,
I watch as it slurps every face dry
and can you hear? The grumble of thunder
but still the bee murmurs, fizzes on by.

Sun covered up, a cloak made of metal,
not long until all drains choke, gutters leak,
this insect sits on a topaz petal,
looks out for a first silver drop to break.

Now the bee jumps, has committed its theft,
a blur in a downpour, exiting left.

Sunday morning, my dad
with the News of the World,
picking Bob’s Your Uncle at 10 to 1.
My mum in a titchy kitchen,
joined by a ***
of pongy tangerine cells,
raw tongues in a pan.
The tang of frying bread
tanned brown tickles my nostrils,
sizzles like Velcro on trainers.

Now my brother
in crimson pyjamas
walks in, plonks down for a plate
of six-hundred calories
all before midday.
Three meaty tubes
next to two yellow moons.
The mist of oil,
of grease clogs the air.
Tuck in.

How weird
I am here
and you don’t know it.
Sleeping they say,
in a better place.

George on my right
has been gone for years,
even the flowers all brown
gave up God knows when.

I wonder if you knew
your neighbours
before the batteries stopped.
Did Edith know Agatha?
Did Frank chat over the fence?

Chris was seventy-two,
moved here mid-nineties
when I couldn’t yet hold a pen.
Now just a name
on a slab of stone.

There’s a spot near a tree,
no stone no dirt.
I think ‘that’ll be fine,
a place by myself.’
I shake my head.
They’ll stick me
somewhere else.

These aisles go on and on,
one giant Tesco,
nobody at the tills.

If you could speak,
the stories I’d hear,
the chapters spilling out
like salt from a shaker.
But you can’t talk
and I can only walk past
and wonder how you went.

My clock has stopped.
It says eight forty-four
but it's nine thirty-eight.
It stopped when I wasn't looking
or was looking but didn't notice
a few days ago,
the knobbly black fingers
frozen, pointing west.

I take time off,
feel its chilled curves
dig into my palms,
another river among many.
Held up to my ear
a soft heartbeat,
my thumbs squash
numbers three and nine.

On your back.
The old red tube removed
with my nail
like flicking a splinter
out with a needle.
In snaps the new guy.
With one spin of the white wheel,
a new breath.

I.

A louse in a house
or a mouse on a blouse.
A bell that goes ****
or a gong that goes ****.
A gap on a map
or a cap on your lap.
A drink in the sink
or an ink that stinks.
A spleen on a screen
or a queen who is green.
A bow in the snow
or a crow that glows.

II.

A wash or a whip,
a lip or a lop,
a top or a tip,
a car or afar,
a bar or a war,
a door or a snore,
a bore or a nail,
a flail or a whale,
a run or a bun,
a sun or a moon,
a spoon or a bus,
a fuss or a sigh,
a cry or a cheer,
a fear or a smile,
a while or a pen,
a den or a cat,
a mat or a hat,
a bat or a glass,
a vase or a weight,
a mate or a fork,
a cork or a mop,
a cop or a stop.

III.

Apples and artichokes, ants and antelopes,
bees and beers, books and brains,
cucumbers and chimneys, ***** and coats,
dogs and drains, dots and dominoes,
ears and eejits, elephants and exams,
flies and flutes, files and friends,
grasses and guts, giants and gyms,
horrors and hiccups, horses and hills,
igloos and irons, irises and idiots,
jumpers and jackets, jodhpurs and jellies,
kings and kettles, kites and kittens,
lions and lamps, lemons and lunches,
mums and monsters, mosses and moths,
noses and notes, nightmares and needles,
oblongs and orang-utans, organs and oranges,
paintings and pennies, ponds and pants,
quiches and quizzes, questions and queues,
rainbows and rings, rascals and rabbits,
snakes and sprouts, sweets and salts,
trumpets and trains, tables and toasters,
umpires and ukuleles, umbrellas and uniforms,
violets and vests, violins and vials,
wheels and wings, windows and weeds,
xylems and x-rays, xylophones and xysters,
yachts and yoghurts, yards and yaks,
zigzags and zephyrs, ziggurats and zombies.

The bag is half empty.
All evening, my right hand
swimming with cushions.

I pop in another
pink cylinder, squash the shell
with one bite.

A tinge of strawberry
coats the ceiling of my mouth,
swirls under my tongue.

Like scoffing
a miniature sponge, its insides
weld to every back tooth.

Once down my throat
I reach for the next softy.
Just one more.

You've done it now.
Opened your mouth,
hoping the ice starts to thaw.
Maybe you have to spell it out,
spill it out
to hit your mark.
Like a tree
I need to drop my leaves
and see if some person
catches a few,
a handful of paper-thin shapes.
Everyone moves forward.
Is that so?
The water around my ankles
has been here for years.

It started when he drove me in
and the teacher couldn't help.
After that, four years passed
like water sliding into a gutter.
What a shame the last days
are remembered the best.

A page, written on a whim,
given to her by my friend.
That was long ago.
The new wave came, swept me up
in a chilly embrace.
Thursdays, a corridor,
a newspaper for the bus.

It would never have worked.
How could it have worked?
One-sided, the colours didn't mix.
Two seasons later,
a new shade in the light.
I stumbled down invisible steps,
almost said your name wrong.

Meant to leave
but still you stick around.
I went to the new place, grey place,
new names, stories to stick
to my tongue.
A challenge in itself.

Now words I use
are used for a reason.
The waves don't shatter my ribs,
drown my lungs as much.
This phase, this pinch of time
is almost complete
but as for the rest I don't know when it

The red shirt is torn,
an eyelash ****,
your skin exposed
but no blood.
You were born for this.

I dig in my silver weapon,
sever your synapses.
With each new cut
comes a soggy cream sheet
and you sigh and you sigh.

It was inevitable.
Fixed smiles
flop from your spine,
see-saw on the board
and form a wrecked star.

Now just your teeth,
the brown raindrops.
I use my thumb
to tug them out,
dislocated, then gone.

Autumn’s still yawning.
Sunlight seeps between
a few trees and leaves pools
of yellow drool.

A crow nearby looks up,
a black speck
climbs the steps
but then, as a bullet, it’s gone.

Moss, like acne
tiptoeing up the track
around my feet
stains the ground green.

A broken-bone crack,
a twig split in two
joins other brunette arms and legs
strewn everywhere.

Clouds begin to blush
silver above my head.
I hope I get home
before they start to weep.

I. (Girl.)

Young girl with blonde hair
peers at her phone once again
to see if she's loved.

---------------------------------------

II. (Black Umbrella.)

A black umbrella
even though it's not raining
to anyone else.

---------------------------------------

III. (September.)

The clock crawls to nine
as autumn comes to students
for an awkward hug.

Well, you're in a good mood.
Those friends left and right
could learn a few things,
how not to whine as a kettle
until I notice the gold body,
black pearls for eyes.

To me it's a forest,
first breath of March,
winter locked up
and now leaves bleed green,
snow switched to slush.

Who wants to be raucous,
get sloshed, go hoarse,
slur every word?
With you each syllable
twirls through the air,
hopscotches from note to note.

We may cough/choke/sneeze,
as the curtain rises
but when you choose to speak
spring skips to my ears
regardless what month.

and we’re back there again,
moved some seats around,
why change something
not broken I said.
Your eyes,
topaz ovals watch me
as I take off my hat,
a treat for a change
from that shop
on the high street.
Conversation,
a roll of sticky tape,
the novel,
your very first
with chapters, a title
and a pretty front cover
is moribund, liquid words
that don’t mean what they did
six weeks ago.
I tell you I write
but the pendulum wobbles
between A* and a C,
if nothing much happens
there’s nothing much to say.
The coffee bites my tongue,
flames zip along my bottom lip
like the strike of a match
as you talk
about these names
with no faces
in your life, bubbles
on the scene.
I know before long
they will pop and be gone
but keep quiet
for I am one of them,
floating around longer than most.
The water
still hasn’t boiled for us yet,
it probably never will,
what I have to say
stays stored in my head
sealed up as Christmas knickknacks,
DO NOT OPEN
in black marker
on the side.
You’ll read, you’ll see,
you’ll no doubt laugh,
once a pen pecks my page
what has started
must end.
You kick me back awake
under the table,
I must have half a book
already.

Come quarter to ten,
sleepyhead, time for bed
with brother close by,
what awaits you up there
at the top of the stairs?

As night unfurls
each step groans
like an old gentleman,
you ask what will greet us
when we’ve scaled this mountain?

A monster, a ghoul
or nothing at all?
Something he says
different from the rest,
a sight quite like no other.

Before the clock strikes bedtime
a marvel for you two
that won't be forgotten,
the oddest thing you've ever seen;
the feast, the beast and one jelly-bean.

Many evenings, the curtains drawn,
you slept restless
as a new-born accepting
their life and the world.

Quilted in night
but come morning
you'd rise again,
write the branches of your tree.

Black upon a fresh page,
every word still in the breeze
long after your roots
were destroyed.

When the rain came
he liked to watch it from indoors,
clouds, distraught,
dripping their tears down every window,
filling every drain
until they overflowed with woe.

When the fog came
he liked to dissolve into it,
pretend he had faded from existence,
strolled into a new life
where everything was coated
in the most brilliant shades of rainbow.

When the hail came
he liked to hear it on his roof,
bang, thwack, smack,
fill the plant pots
with frozen white spheres
like pearls tossed from the sky.

When the wind came
he liked to stand in the garden,
let it swim through his hair,
make it a mess
and wonder what would happen
if he flew up, away, and gone.

When the snow came
he liked to jump in it,
make a haul of snowballs,
throw them at no-one
and scour for footprints
that looked just like his.

When the sun came
he liked to smile a little,
only a little,
look at the view
and see the painting blend
from Prussian blue, to peach, to marigold.

The beautiful scar
deep in green,
peaceful question mark
loops through the field
in which I stand
on ground
soft as a soap-drunk sponge.
The sun,
a lit matchstick-tip
burns all shades of tangerine
and saffron.
The water I hear trickle by,
the water I see
flossing the weeds,
a turquoise flow of blood
from this vein
to the beating heart.

A black force erupted into your sight;
male, small and wet, it would be the last.
The candlestick kid at five to midnight.

Nurse came around nine, you felt some delight,
ready to relive the pain from the past:
a black force erupted into your sight.

Time dribbled by and then with all your might
cried for the child to arrive and fast:
the candlestick kid at five to midnight.

Years before, a thought, ‘Will mine be alright?’
Like Christmas Eve, a present in the post:
a black force erupted into your sight.

No wave of love upon him in the light,
what you wanted now here, but at what cost?
The candlestick kid at five to midnight.

Come morning the daughter, intrigued and bright
meets your son, awake after his first rest.
A black force erupted into your sight,
the candlestick kid at five to midnight.

That Saturday
when they pulled your teeth,
he came at nine,
the smoker, the drinker,
the one with hard black pebbles
for eyes.

Your aim? To ******, to thrill,
the American ******
with daffodil hair.
Out from the rain and into a bar,
dialogue on birthdays
and becoming old.

A speck of seriousness,
your mood, spiked,
each 'conquest' you called it
so fabulous,
always this way;
you knew it would be.

Hand on waist,
you gasped for air
as if drowning in ginger ale,
one kiss,
light as a feather,
the first.

Positive,
it's only physical,
this lovely magnetism
but his burning voice
you clung to
like a thin cigarette.

Past fuzzy lights,
through a summer shower
that fell faster and faster,
just like that, another one gone,
another name
maybe thinking of you.

I still have
the note you wrote,
kissed with your raspberry lipstick,
licked with your bedtime ink.

For years, left to dry
in a drawer, inhaling the dark,
I found it, like a stale apple,
blushing yellow.

I understand the words now,
the loops, the curves, a fairground ride,
that's what we were
before the carpet scorched our knees.

Did you keep the one
that I wrote you?
No, maybe, torn at the top
and stuffed somewhere.

I let your message breathe again,
swallow the days,
this red stain rages upon my eyes,
a note with no writer, how it all fades.

Next door’s cat,
alone as they’ve gone away
on holiday,
slouched on the lawn,
our garden.

A monochrome tube
flops over, turns over,
liquorice eyes peer up,
a rolling pin
kneading the green.

Thinks it owns the place,
can lounge about
wherever it pleases
drizzled in June honey,
‘round ours for a week.

It knows when I am close,
a mewling baby,
rises like an overweight man
from an armchair
and asks to be loved.

'Ten years from my successful seventeen, and a cold voice says: What have you done, what have you done?'
Sylvia Plath - journal entry Wednesday 4th November 1959.*

Now, like a typewriter ribbon,
worn-down and weak
as a shrinking pencil,
but there are white days
among those fruitless, bare ones,
spasmodic,
where the machine
gorges on characters
you create.

Multi-coloured rhapsody,
confident stories
have upped and left,
what can you do,
what have you done.
Feast on unknown delights,
astrology or foreign waffle
and wait for them to come.
They will come.

Ten years, ten calendars gone,
now your hair is up
rather than tumbling down,
need some buoyancy in a bottle,
medicine again,
take twice a day.

What you need,
crave, long after seventeen
sleeps inside you
silent
and will come alive,
your small siren,
as will every pitch-black word.

It was a Wednesday,
the postman in glorious blue,
a horrific thin letter
in your mailbox.

Across the street
the plump woman watched,
you tore it open,
birthday present in June.

Rejections, maybe.
But no. Instead
black words
said something other.

Happiness crashed upon you,
jumping up, up and down
as if on a trampoline,
a fire, smothering the dark.

Accepted.
You called it a creative wave,
rising, frothing wildly
and falling again.

I. (The Gone).
They have gone.
Why does it bother me so?
A truth,
only a handful of gems
stay bright,
all others
faded
like pencil on paper
until a faint mark remains,
what was, what now is.
Names in conversation,
a drive down the alphabet
then and now,
clotted recollections
breaking apart
each time, stalled
in silent traffic.
A few, needles I suppose,
a shot in the arm
again, again,
I cannot believe
how many times
their voices
painted everything,
but long gone,
no abrasion or impact
to consider, to revise.
On occasion,
a stretch into fog,
icy melancholies
but not always
a echo,
moments to inform
me they can return
if they wish.

II. (The Bare Feet).
So, it is night.
Whorls of cream
came through the door,
sleepyhead next to me,
ragged, tired,
out of juice.
I can only say
‘I knew you would.’
This is not your home
but we’re not far away.
Lipstick less rosy,
sound of drums
still throbs in our ears
but it was worth it,
for confetti,
flecks of gold
whirling around
you, the crowd.
Peachy lights
spray across
your face,
piano black eyes,
warm bare feet.
It is not real
but we can touch,
we can speak.
On our knees,
we look at each other,
I hold you,
the minutes
stutter past
and for a moment
only silence,
silence is all
we need for our words
are used too much.

III. (The Next.)
It took
over a year
but we saw
each other again.
Since the end
of a grey June day,
two years
elsewhere,
forty miles the difference.
He quit,
the right choice
he tells me
as we reminisce,
that’s what it is
these days,
now he looks
for the next stage
and soon
it will be me
who must fully
step into adulthood,
like a foot plunged
into a bath,
too hot, too cold.
Did we expect this?
If we could see
next year
would we smile
or scowl?
Tell ourselves
it’s just the way
things go,
on, on, on.
Now, as I look
out my window,
the faintest tinge
of orange
descending,
I know, he knows
we don’t know
what comes next.

The one with the
         crack
along the middle,
dark and so thin
words could fall through
like water in a colander.

Under the grand chandelier,
a slew of sheets
spat with confident blue juice,
cardboard-covered notebooks,
a team of paper ***** to be tossed
towards your wooden jail.

Sketches of mice, polar bears,
a recipe for rabbit at his right elbow,
red Shakespeare
and a well-read thesaurus
as scruffy
as recently rinsed blonde hair.

You always ***** the lid
on your own *** of ink, black,
sleeping silver scissors
near your French dictionary
and shells over a plastic
sunglasses case.

The table
in the room
in the house on Tomás Ortuño,
serenity bathing you,
a golden spark
of solitude.