The makeup, gifted to your girlfriend, looks
good on you. It’s not the first time. On the carpet,
they have to comment on you, ***** approval
to stay lean, keep you cloud-floating.
                                                                ­ First,
lightly dab the eyelids with azure
stardust, glitter strings like wings out
from the corners. White shirt may look normal
but is designer baby, season’s income
on skin-clinging fabric, enhances
your slathered-on nectarine tan, abs
the Peloton made.
                                 THIS POEM
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                                         The balcony offers
an ideal view for photos, minimum of fifty.
You know it’s like shooting a plasticine movie,
moving your glossy features an inch at a time because
one bad move means one less like, one less
stranger misspelling their admiration.
Each emoji is a pellet of sugar, each five-digit
paycheque another two-page spread in the city’s
many gaudy rags, another slap in the face
to the barista making ends meet.
                                                           Oh who cares
darling? They serve, and so do you. The mirror
salivates at your sight, lips out, stench of wealth
enough to make any gaggle giddy.
Parade your brand of vain for the next-in-line,
Fahrenheit on the rise, the influence
on the ravenous nosebleed-inducing.

…Run with the first line
then decide the form,
short line
or longer and whether punctuation
will be prominent throughout.

- By this point include a colour
but not basic red or blue,
something more visual
like RASPBERRY or… BLUEBERRY;
a part of the body is a fine

idea too, so mention …  runway …
of stubble, then a line or three
about weather, how raindrops
play skinny melodies
on the windows or sunlight

flirts - between - the curtains
as you sleep (mention another
person here, you are not
that interesting). Bring in
an unclear observation;

feet of treacle
make hurdling a challenge,
mist will only sting
if static for too long.
- Bring the piece

to a conclusion now.
Make trifling edits if necessary.
Only you can stamp
the page, declare this waffle final.
Name the poem.

LGW to SYD,
flight through time,
a while to while

away the hours.
As evening begins
its inky descent

to sleep, furry
green batons
trigger electric frazzles,

icicle-blue horns
exhaling light.
All we are

singular, miniature
among a crew of upturned
magenta roots.

the flames
are engaged
in that wicked dance again

licking all spines
with buds that scald
carnival of scars

each shameless twist
gift-wrapped in yellow
every coppery belch

a steaming stench
into rust-daubed sky
its silent gesture

rampage of hollowing
tongue-heavy haemorrhage
laced with ignition

awaken
to white shroud

unblemished page
from pregnant sky

sieved silence
in languid waltz

to sigh to glass
punctuate the scrawny

exclamations
of a naked tree

as though a blessing
enamel acceptance

sorting out
the loft
in the fuzzy black
aftermath days

the owl
liquorice eyes
glares at my
torch-in-hand

you remember
the pub
used to have
a fox

mid-skulk
streak immobilised
we wondered
why anybody

would want
a stuffed body
static animal
figure of death

but somehow
handed down
to you
burnt toast wings

on wooden plinth
popped in the loft
‘till now
‘till your departure

sun begins
bow to sleep

sets sky
in vermilion haze

present me
with palmful

of touch     touch
pacifies palm

could be lined
with sunshine

happy lemonade
threads

There IS nobody to ask, you say,
when we turn our stomachached motor
up another wavy lane, temporarily
rest it as we squint at the AA Big Easy
Read Britain 2022, locate the B3220
and realise we’re in another
splodge of a town, homes in a hodgepodge,
the obligatory church. A mistake, we know now,
to leave late in the day, another hour ‘till
The Hole in the Wall where they’ll wait,
no doubt sigh, waste time spinning
the beermats as a gaggle of rowdy
just past-the-post teens blot the night
with the guzzling of spirits, their hangovers
like belches of fog come lun - Satnav wasn’t
on the blink, but it is. Now look, I say,
calmly because tempers can boil over
matters so trivial, if we take the A3124,
wriggle right at Whiddon Down
to the A30, breeze by Exeter, a doddle
down to the coast, we’ll make it by nine.
You know how impatient they are. Ten
minutes won’t hurt, the vehicle grumbling
into action, tired and miffed with our
wonky deviation. It’s then, eking back
the way we came, an image forms - a bronzed,
slippery chalice named Stella, flat cap
of foam on the rim of extinction.

When the time comes
to prise open the plastic
tomb that encapsulates your three
tiers of soft biscuit-toned sponge,
the creamy middle stratum
with pinkish strawberry streaks
I take a crew of old plastic
candles used for this occasion only,
lit, wished and blown upon eight times
previously when poked in cakes
of yesteryear, **** them in the snowfall
sugar cloak, spaced out, baptise them
with flame until their flickers
extinguish and your ninth birthday
burns on, mutely drips into a pocket
full of your own past.

Yes, I have the keys,
my coat pocket, left-hand side,
you know this was quite pricey
and I don’t usually go for pricey clothing
but I think the bedroom light’s still on
so I’d better check. We’ve lived here
going on for fiveyears now, the wallpapering
was the biggest issue, the light’s off remember, not
the actual slather-on-paste-job-done, no, choosing
what felt right, said ‘play it safe’ so a light blue
is what we went for my keys are gone,
they’ll be in the bowlby the door. The game
will be a *******, relegation battle, it usually is
with us, I’ve been saying for ages the kitchen
window might be open sorry, relegation
and we’ve needed a twenty-goal-a-season
striker with thebedroom light’s stillon
my keys might be in there too. If we sign
somebody in the transferwindow’s shut, I knew
it was, the link-up play’s tight, wecan move up
towards mid-tablemediocrity I think
lightisoff
mustremember that now keys
noideathough ah the bowl. I’lljust grab fastfood
for my window’s keys
fordinner, not healthybuteasy I did shut
the window I knewIhad was it bowlforkeys,
no sillyofme coatpocket, notcheap no not atall
healthy comeonhow often doIeatburgers chips
notevenvery tasty bowl, rightthen
I’mreadyifonly lightisoff
knewI’d remember.

I’d just returned home from the supermarket
and had put the bag-for-life on the table-top
when my mobile trembled. When it’s been that long
you do that silent slight stagger back action, at least
I did that Thursday afternoon, not quite able
to register the white pixels that had formed
your name, the jumble of numbers assigned to you.

So I answered hello and you spoke; I’m surprised
you kept my number all this time. You’d moved.
No, how would I know this, I said, sloping my neck
with phone sandwiched between cheek and shoulder,
draining the bag’s contents, when this is the first
communication in half a decade, if not more? Sorry,
but life got in the way. At that I could’ve yelled,

really let rip. Not one moment to call? Sixty months?
I knew what would unfold from your mouth next,
predictable as a non-White Christmas. I let you ramble,
I nodded though you couldn’t see, put bananas
in the bowl, grunted with each elucidation;
baby, job, car, sleep, money, partner, virus, repeat.
Then you said look, I’ll be in town, a few hours

to catch up over a pint, if you want. I could’ve said no
but actually, why not? Why not dip the toes
into that vast loch of nostalgia, memories like
jellyfish swirling below the surface? Could’ve called
you out on incompetency but maybe we’re all the same.
A Friday then, in two weeks, I said fine. I’d be sure
to remember. Just like you had remembered.

So I’ll let your garland of notes
glide over, heal me as if
the pinnacle of medicinal
discovery, vibrato in my arteries;

even the bass, its storm-cloud
laconic dialogue
can be a remedy, prescription-free
pipsqueak blue drops,

each cymbal hiss
a swig of thick ginger fluid
will calm the throat but
keep my heart revving over;

the glass is raised, melody
you give in waves, a tincture
applied to cool, a salve
to channel salvation.

You don’t know how long it’s been,
a leftover, how many times
my chalky residue, the what remains
after the batteries run down,
has glided through these rooms,
liquid silk when you’re sleeping.

Pearlescent appendages,
no junction of veins, heart-clunk,
see through what once was
a sac of odd-shaped blobs,
viscous memories gone to condensation
as if fiction, recycled in silence.

No wonder you feel the chill.
An anaemic blur down the stairs
unsurprisingly frightens but know
it’s only my gaseous way
of trying to live, the only way
to breathe to leave ellipses of smoke.

gives the poem momentum.’
Tuesday afternoon seminars
and your photocopied stanzas
are like ***** shots to me. I don’t
say this, a spaghetti-haired boffin
opposite mentions pentameter
but I almost drool at ‘fizzle of static
the luscious shock, / honey, think
you’d taste like candy canes / waltz
on my tongue, my ruby

Bristol for uni. Last I heard
she’d got a PGCE, cushy position
at an Ofsted-says-good secondary,
good for her. The invite surprised me.
How many years? It’s all careers
and top-floor flats now with
the parquet floors, schamncy fridges,
not villanelles and criticism
meant to be constructive, comments
spiked with jealousy, and

A minute in, a cup of something,
voice long gone among the swill,
thud of a mid-2000s track blaring
obnoxiously through the top-floor flat
of the lad who played midfield
and his glitter-cheeked missus, who,
if I recall, moved from Leeds to

Tuesday.’ A lipsticked smile,
jeans with riotous tears.
Now I know what’s coming, the
pitiful shotput for attention,
the ‘truly marvellous effort
and the use of sibilance (insert
chef’s kiss sound).’ But I dither,
muter than a French mime,
hits me for six and I know
I won’t know you, not now or ever,
there’s never enough time

when I see you in the kitchen,
expelling laughter like it’s almost archaic,
the opportunity, missed, but all right,
it was indie-rock headaches,
cold in goal in the park next to Asda,
not a time to recite my saccharine lines
to a northern delight but I wanted to,
once, then, to know what might’ve been,
if I’d waltz on your tongue.

The silence stops it
from burning out, from you
snuffing out the dream,
the pile-up of scenes
isn’t a newsflash catastrophe
but a merry-go-round
of luminous make-believes,
could-soon-be-reals.
     It all depends on what you fancy, really,
     whether it’s my form, my dyshidrotic fingers
     knitted with yours on the maiden date
     (I’m free whenever)
     or if the typecast appeals more,
     Mr. Fifty Abs with his thousand followers
     chiselled for reality TV
     in a way we’ve seen before, creosote tan
     and judging others in the gym; even his speech
     could be made from sweat.
If this is how it will stay,
so be it. The seasons will squash
the unreal, allow us both to swim
in the ignorance we already bask in,
my mouth bereft of sound
when you approach, my name
never the bead of sugar
on your tongue.

You know the morning comes
with the ridged mirror thumbprint
post-shower, a buffoon on the news
with his breakfast’s semi-skimmed
still lingering on his lip.          Oh! There’s a wedding dress,
white mascarpone tones put the nation
in a hellish spin… They’re miming
about this online, believe it,
their history teachers know it
and they shoot their cars up with paracetamol;
doctors say it’s the best way
to keep the numbers
down to single digits.

Girl boy something other, you’d better
check those socials because
a no-faced stranger may incorrectly spell
mascarpone, how ***!! stop it you look,
not the waxy sheen of your blemished
history, and the rain, those scrawny
black instruments are done for,
we shimmy in semi-skimmed now
because the movies said so
and you must believe every word,
each glitzy syllable is like
a paracetamol shot,
you’re missing out, you’ll forget
so I’ll say it again, not really
‘cause you’re reading, you’re missing

breakfast’s ready.

Ache of an absence,
half gone
and seeing phantoms
in the place you used
to be,

a vacant hook
where a sunny cagoule
would slouch,
handwritten supermarket
reminders

slapped against the fridge.
What it’s like to lose
a limb, dim pulse,
futile scramble
for meaning in the missing,

and the morning’s severed
yolk bathes little but
the wicked iced side
of the bed where a spirit
disrupts your space.

Where The Sea Sprays

two-tone sand                  
mercury murmurs                  
out as far                                  
as the world
flips over
throb of a downpour
in the ripple
of a watercolour
mist-swabs
that prickle a cheek
chill nicks the lips
miniature blades
incisor eruptions
basalt cacophony
could be a chalk-like welt
with a thousand tiers
leave one foot
another mark
ephemeral label
on a foreign land

----------

four walls
spider’s thin sentence
the scene’s fracture
tree that used
to breathe
a wonky spine
hours-old blobs
corner huddle
on the other side
of a fire bullet
melting cherries
rainbow hoop
detains a web
of mouldy dreams
bar one pentagon
where foam
dazzles milk white
over jet black rug
where the trail
continues ad infinitum

Ad Infinitum

very easy to soak in blue
as though a blanket made of shades,
the horrid, musty
smell of your own inertia,
the well that lengthens
inside, perhaps your ribcage
extending, cracking each time
you know you are breathing,
arrhythmic ticks in blue, blue,

but yellow, shapes seep
through your semi-conscious gauze,
name of the day, its contents page
slaps the window like rain-pellets
and the dust
                     trickles into
                                        a trench
                     of forgotten
history, and you can see lilies,
yellow glyphs, the way they ****
their heads  in the breeze; it is a greeting.

if no answers, the sea calls.
watch how it rushes in to greet,
its translucent syntax spilling
over the toes, splashing the ankles,
leaving its transitory glisten for you.

a tepid breeze between fingers,
count each intake of breath,
every time the waves respire
and become reborn, and you sigh
along with them, coastal air

loading your lungs, the blood orange
sun on its indolent slide
to the horizon’s other side,
your language of logograms
the response, to keep going.

what has become of this,
maybe to arrange the words before me
attach them as if a jigsaw with
no picture or meaning,
no analysis necessary
for before you know it,
they dry, start to crumble
as if made with the cheapest materials,
not to be seen again
by any pair of tired eyes,
minds wasted on what could’ve been.

Take me where your voice
is diamonds
but not diamonds, not really,
not as hard

but hopefully you know
what I mean,
a place I can smilingly float on
your lyrical clouds,

where I can taste the stardust,
where rain murmurs
on my tongue like a hundred
secrets

and Saturdays could be Sundays
or midnight
is our daybreak, orange crescent
sunlight on your cheeks,

so I can inhale as though
it’s something new,
an invention my body just made
and how delicious

to have your daisy-chain of words
or some other’s words
but from your throat, you know,
to breathe in,

sanctify my lungs, my brain,
I’ll thank you for it,
tell you they remind me of jewels so
I can keep on getting by.

I’ll go AWAY AWAY
           sensation of growing up
AWAY for regeneration        razzle-dazzle new me

            migraine thunderbolt     give way
            AWAY to cold air
                                      gulpfuls under
stars   AWAY   nightfall’s unreachable token

if AWAY means AWAY means new
   faces
   means I’m not the I
I was   cannot be   anymore

   it’s cherry fizz     between synapses
burbling blood      AWAY   with
   my intimate thrill

                got to get AWAY
like properly AWAY
                rid angsty clots
years leak if
                        you let them

AWAY is the way
     must be a planet
           whose only frosted   touch     is     mine

   stagnation is   a no
AWAY to fresh   sensation
like skin     of     a stranger

Maybe next year I'll tell you
I love you, the platonic type,
the words light from my mouth
as though constructed from bubbles
and you could be there, set to let them
pop against your tongue, maybe reciprocate.

The other type, I've heard, resembles falling,
but does that feel like floating, your body
when dancing, suspended in air for
a cluster of seconds before caught
by your sequinned partner, all smiles,
or is it more sinking,

we did this at primary school a few times,
the chilly, barefeet-plastered hall floor,
told to close our eyes and gently melt,
pretending we're chocolate in a microwave,
every boneless portion hopeless, floppy
until our teacher revived us with her sound.

Otherwise, it could be a tumbling of sorts,
a trip-on-the-first-step-smash-every-limb-kind,
skin blotches that gasp in agony with a touch,
your mistake stains in violet tones, or,
if executed with a more Wonka flourish,
just lust in the blood. Perhaps you'd bleed pink.

Like I know the feeling anyway.
If the words in my throat are
painted with truth, I'll say it, mean it
and breathe or let embarrassment
crush me in its reptilian silver claws.
You might even say it back, platonic or not,

even if I don't know you much,
even if my bedtime is your breakfast
and you handle cutlery better
and don't mind my eczema if you ever
see it on a fuzzy screen or body to body.
Even if my lips have never known what to do.

You make me miss something
I never had, every crushing syllable
like a wave from a faraway place,

our footprints the day’s tale,
curling as though ribbons
into a drenched chasm of lost stories.

Just like all things, this must end;
photograph-faded, awkwardly torn,
smudged by a briny thumb

so the memory half-warps
and could we remember it anyway?
Maybe this is supposed

to be, just now, one of us
to explain with crimped fingertips,
the other gone before it began.

I.

blankets of mist douse
the garden with bluish tinge
chilly night again

---

II.

another Christmas
plagued by masks and boosters though
brighter days ahead

---

III.

extraction of gifts
from their jackets of paper
hands at the ready

Paris, it could be, but for all you know,
London. A hotel room, four-poster, the sheets
clotted cream but for a Fool's Gold lining.
The en-suite, your bare feet
chilled.  A shampoo bottle left open, water blobs
that tiptoe across a grubby mirror. Then the blue eyes
discover yourself, wide and quite alive
but the morning has barely grown up. Teeth brushed,
face scrubbed, mobile on. Messages from all corners,
a yellow smile, a midnight memory
like an unearthed polaroid.  A trilogy of knocks.
The man, whose name you’d like to remember
for next time, brings twenty shades of breakfast.
The phone quivers again. A tanned brioche, little
butter rectangles too fiddly to exhume. You spot
a bruise on your arm, a wonky plum beneath
the surface where there wasn’t one before,
yesterday hits you now, strobe lights, a headache
that cracked as glass across your skull. Now this.
Bad breath, black coffee to blister the tongue.
And the message. Somebody wants you,
it seems, but you won’t want them back.

the snow flirts with you better than I can
when we walk back from the bookstore,
where books are discounted for one week only
and we passed recommendations
between the shelves and said
I heard this one’s good.

there’s discarded masks by the subway entrance
like malformed *****, mouthless and obsolete,
a whiff of Korean food that meanders
out from the takeaway
and I offload corny joke after corny joke not even worthy
for the back of a beermat
or graffiti-besieged toilet cubicle but you laugh
anyway out of pity I suspect,

the sack of books (Vonnegut, Glück, Didion) seesawing
by your side, our footprints a transitory
punchline behind us.

if a violet sky night
I strive to catch your name in the breeze
hold it like a child
or a half-finished song

the only touch to start
is mental, feel you in my vessels
and let my lungs bathe
in the promise you spoke

is this electric or just
ourselves getting used  
to new furniture, fruit and yé-yé
but Christmas not for months

by twelve we beg
to crackle with anticipation
a tear stain on an open window
one of us sockless, bleary-eyed

oh let me breathe you in
you are not the sort of flimsy thing
to be hung slack behind the cupboard door

but to be worn
even if holes interrupt your skin
or a merlot stain looks like dried blood

on the front
but believe me when I say I might
need this more than what I thought

I might have needed before
so please let me hold this hold you
inhale you from the collar and down

the cosy black sleeves and maybe
that’s enough to keep me breathing in your arms
I want to know a little then a lot and start over again

Because Mondays are
bulging bowls of satsumas,
first nugget of sunrise
or an apostrophe of flame,

and Tuesdays are
a row of blooming hydrangeas,
tall glasses of blueberry juice
or a last swatch of sky before night,

then Wednesdays are
a chubby lavender bush,
Parma Violet streaked teeth
or punnets of plump plums,

so Thursdays are
a pile of squashed rubber ducks,
frozen smile bananas
or the hemorrhage of an egg,

but Fridays are
a grass clippings mountain range,
eczema-skinned avocados
or skinny grasshopper limbs,

whereas Saturdays are
a ladybird’s speckled coat,
spoonfuls of pomegranate blobs
or a mushroom umbrella,

while Sundays are
a snowman’s **** belly,
globes of vanilla ice-cream
or a candle’s last word.

Atop the barn
a plump flicker
on two legs,

almost rusted
but for a monochrome
wing, a reversing

arrow. As it hops
along the felt,
a glimpse of its

taupe cap,
a sort of chain mail hood,
then a piercing

chirrup, a ripple
of giggles into the air
before the flight departs.

****
a finger on glass
as two animals

in the tank
begin to dance,
sepia tong-like claws

moving every which way,
an aquatic side-step
or frenetic tango,

slimy bodies
as though mossy rocks
come to life

before settling again,
their pin-***** eyes
on your giant irises.

Getting back into the car
after buying
cookies from Asda,

a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
little bundle of brown,
there I say, on the fence.

Marbles for eyes,
tail like a question mark,
hair the shade

of twenty sunsets.
I point it out,
body half-bowed

as if to whisper hello
before bounding away,
swallowed by the leaves.

On the ceiling
or creeping out from behind
the radiator,

six brittle legs,
a body round as a
black Jelly Tot

or a miniature cylinder,
just enough to make you          jump
or eject

a shriek from your mouth,
this one double-clawed
creature you scoop up

with a cup, delicately
in case of a sudden scuttle, pop
back outside among the marigolds.

And so,
as if the final
of the feline high jump,

our neighbour’s pet, piebald,
getting on in years,
sits on her side,

surveys its challenge.
Then, as if the crumpling
of ink-splodged paper,

she crouches, half
Fosbury-flops herself
up to the post, plops down

into our garden,
merrily saunters
across the rain-tickled grass.

As you launch
the mottled sphere
(no longer luminous yellow

after many a capture)
with a flick of the wrist,
all the neighbours would see

is a streak of black,
a charcoal bullet
between the trees

as your friend on four legs
fizzes after its prize,
jams it in the mouth,

lollops back to you with rapid pants,
clump of slobber, a monosyllabic
can I do it again.

we eat strawberries at the table
in our underwear and the television
tells us we’re at war again, by which
I mean not specifically us, but you
know what I mean. I have left last
night’s still half-full glasses by the sink
because we might go back to them
and the drink itself was expensive
enough. As you pick another ruby
***** from the bowl I think
I get it now, how not to be
jealous of others, of their closed doors
intimacy. It’s different when you’re in it,
head-first, sugar-rushed, red-mouthed.
There is rain forecast for today;
already pewter clouds are behind
the windows which means any plans
we might have made are almost certainly
scuppered, but at least the two
of us are together, for now if not forever,
I suppose you can never really tell.

I must be in one
of those funny moods again
(if funny’s even the right word)
          the images easy enough to pick from
          whether rinsed grey
          or blooming maroon
the sky somebody else took
midnight blue
with stardust pentameter
          I’m thinking of cold water
          you don’t mind bathing in
          somewhere in Scandinavia
a voice, yours or the last album
we listened to drifting to us
as we break the lake’s membrane
          and if not that (you’ll see)
          my indecision hasn’t wavered)
          a dress, a road,
a photographer whose name matters little
in a silent stretch of land
I’m half-dreaming of
          and I wish this isn’t some
          toxic desperation with its ginger sting
          galloping to the fore
but the words already here
collapse like trains of dominoes
in my head you wouldn’t see what I can

This,
the confirmation
of the already known.

The cementing of your love,
your own vivid blizzard
of it,

multi-sided shape
birthed from the collision,
theatre of hearts

that followed.
Now the premiere
of a new novel,

pages snow-white
to be set alight
by your shared language,

chapters written
by no other half,
but your whole.

don’t run into the darkness,
your nightmares will only bleed
through the pages, into the fabric
of your desperately created new self.

ready to retch, they’ll ask, you’ll succumb
to the shot of sugar proffered to you
on a blackened spoon, signature
by the opposite hand, vacant lungs.

I know you’ll query the fingers,
cold, gaunt runes around your neck
but in time you’ll learn to love them,
their unspecific touch, the frosted tips.

with a drip of blue fizz they’ll put you
back where you came, mail you
capsules that vanish in the throat
but taste of your blood, of peppermint.

Perhaps they will forget,
have already forgotten
with their yellow jackets
and marker-stained fingers, ready-set
for another unfamiliar face
with their first aid kit,
strings of terminology to engage the meek
and mute, the absent without leave.

They have left me
a failed apprentice with stationery
in my pocket and an out-of-tune song.
You might well ask
where I flicker next. My polka-dotted mouth
says nothing, the answer deep
in the hole they dug, or wedged on the roof,
the last unobtainable golden jigsaw piece.

Seven years later
the first thing I mention is
how your glasses are different.

The barista, chestnut hair
and weak masked smile
is biding her time, for uni beckons.

I scald my tongue,
you un-knot the evaporated events
I never knew existed,

condense them into digestible chunks.
That boiling ring of honesty
like a blister in the throat,

to tell you I’ve filled my life
with farcical reveries, sleep
that stutters like a lorry in traffic.

A child, plaster-wrapped finger,
***** on a purple bottle.
I wish they’d stop looking over.

I would tell you but I treat this,
stupidly, as though a date,
our initial, perhaps last tête-à-tête.

You haven’t heard from them.
Exactly, I think, almost say.
Why would we.

Just as Matthew Broderick kisses Mia Sara
I inadvertently spill a blob of wine #2
on the sheets, the alley between
my pyjama-d arm and your **** leg
and it is then I decide I will not go
into work tomorrow, stay home with you
and continue decorating the spare room.
I know it's not relevant now but I ask if
you prefer Nordic Sky or Enchanted Eden;
the former, you say, quizzical.
I nod, smile just a touch, return to the film;
Ferris's dad almost spots him, but not quite.
You don't notice the tiny stain;
I have the best night's sleep in months.

when your arms form
a garland around my waist
I am unpacking the toiletries

first the electric toothbrush
with its accompanying charger
then the half-empty

lurid green bottle of shampoo
aftershave in its glass phial
cheap razor and deodorant

I tell you this feels like
one of those cheesy adverts on TV
and you say yes it’s just like that

so what
and I say so what back
and close our cabinet door

Once again, stranger, I am thinking of you,
atop that hotel in Catalonia
on the cusp of a new wave, 
sun blazing, streets like a hive,
the fizz of euphoria.

The first time you ever held a gun,
made in Oviedo, the M1916 Mauser
slung over one shoulder, a glint 
of a smile on your face saying nothing but 
more than enough nine decades on.

Crow-black hair,
uniform with the sleeves rolled up,
face of anti-fascism
but you didn't know it,
nor did you know the hotel

your feet graced would be gone
after bloodshed, your later years
in the French capital,
the photo of you stored
inside the crucibles of time.

these four walls
better than the back of my hand,
better than the staccato of my pummelled heart.

A newspaper I didn’t buy
tells me we are going up in a yelp of smoke,
those who endure left to select a disease.

Now my nose bleeds,
the phone chirrups and there can only be
rotten syllables on the other end, whispers in the back.

With eyes daubed in lethargy,
I watch you move. Half a clock later
and you’re miles gone. I would say I’m surprised

but no, I’m not.

almost a year on,
still our communication thin, brittle,
as if glass going back to sand,
our dialogue meagre, the words we use
overused for nothing new
has developed, our images ashen,
the corners curled up like petrified animals.

doubtful of a deluge,
doubtful of a return
to the occasional face-to-face
chatter of current affairs,
our throats dry from news deficiency
and the awkward drives home,
our hibernation preparation.

trying to sleep in our gyres of silence,
clocks with their ugly faces
like lurid sirens on the walls - 
tell me you'll come back to me,
in some way, some form, for I am almost
limbless in these fantasies,
the words you use as iridescent.

Perhaps a new year
only exists to show
the widening gap
between the what was
and what now is

the quiet reminder
that you go in differing directions,
but they all come with fog,
an unease you'll never shake,
a gloat, an unheard word,
a point of view you don't

waste your eyes with.
You are older now,
your youth only a faded,
bitter tang.

rise early
mist the first murmurings of morning
and the blue
smudged by a finger
to a dusty half-purple
half-nectarine sky where the perfect
blot of post-Christmas sun welcomes us

commas of snow
like the night shedding its skin
a chill coating our throats
but each inhalation a gift
a lungful of life