Prom is two days away
and I’m telling Charlie to get a ******* move on
because this equipment won’t set itself up
and that his **** guitar needs tuning
for the billionth time
and that we only have time for three songs
(the three that we’ve been practising)
in his uncle’s garage for the past month or so
and how we need to get a **** move on
because we’re faffing like stupid flies around a stupid light

I am the drummer
at the back whacking the cymbals
   Charlie’s front and centre
all Jagger-strut spit-flinging
giving the microphone an earful
   Paul’s on bass
body popping like Flea
fingers red-hot fiddling the strings
half pro half nervous tic

the staff have given the go ahead
first track’s a la Jerry Lee
beat careening off from the gym walls
rockabilly kick that’ll pull the girls
away from their ******* phones for a while
then we’ll segue into something more grunge
Kurt Cobain half-slur moan and groan
that’s if the night hasn’t slid
into some hazy hive of idle teens
awards for most attractive
most likely to end up on reality TV
doled out before the limo back home

that’s when they’ll blink at their ceilings
in the first dustings of morning
their ******* bodies aching
from robotic dancing and kebab shop crap
know the names that danced on their tongues
will vaporise before long
and you know
I’ll be one of those poor suckers
but first there is rock followed by roll
if we get a ******* move on

the coffee
is so nice. it is
so nice,

so nice,
kick of cardamom.
girls play

beach volleyball,
white globe
arching, arching,

side-fist-bump up again.
severed pomegranate,
crimson insect crunch.

forgive me,
I started drinking
without you.

you say
shalom,
your eyes the blue

of the sea,
your hair
a flood of coffee.

The night we first slept together was election night,
the reds against the blues against the yellows against the greens.
We both picked the same colour, I found out,
sipping coffee, scolding tongues at that place on the corner
where you can chuck in some scran while you’re at it.

Here’s a cliché, but true: one thing led to another.
A DiCaprio movie I barely recall, a dreich day
umbrella-sharing as we charged back down Arthur’s Seat.
I wondered if Hibs won, you thought if my hand in your hand
meant we were comfortable, easing ourselves into each other
as if trying on a new pair of boots.

There was ***, but that’s personal.
It was at your place. The sleep.
After it was over, our throats aching with lust, you went
to the bathroom in your pricy Primark knickers,
spine ablaze with light, and I revelled in the deliciousness
of your not-quite-**** body, knew we’d started something,
knocked the first domino down.

In the morning, we’d reached an impasse.
The TV blared out no surprises.
My eyes discovered an unfamiliar ceiling,
you wore an iron-soon shirt, white, nothing else
as the coffee machine spluttered its language.
A one-night thing? I thought so, eyes punctuated
with crooked red hyphens. I didn’t know my toothbrush
would be there in months, my face again in the mirror.

Spain in the core of summer
   thermometer under pressure

nosebleed heat
  skin butter-knifed with sweat

you having just arrived
   from the city with the Moorish palace

where I’d walked
  less than forty-eight hours before

do not ask me how to define love
   because it was not love

love takes longer
  photos doused in a darkroom

this was the first murmurings
  of something wildly unfamiliar

swirl of a heart
  on the roof of my coffee

when you spotted
   The Sun Also Rises

and sat before I had a chance
  to take that initial sip

hair like vanilla
   lips a tone of rust

and the city
   became the story we wrote

unravelling my r’s
   difference between perro and pollo

the switch from Picasso
   blue to pink

that first night
   I revised your body

as a saxophone
  squawked in a crowded room

the litmus test
   for what I’ve said wasn’t love

but the inaugural snapshot
   in a slideshow

of a summer
   of torso-clinging humidity

of siestas with four feet
   pecking the end of my bed

after much deliberation,
you’ve decided on eggs
for breakfast.

standing by the counter,
eviscerated yolks in the bowl
fascinate you.

I offer, you slowly
churn the lemon mush.
four hands

then tilt our concoction,
dash of pepper, full stop of salt,
into the pan.

cooking solar system
coagulates, cloudy creature
you eye up

as I flop it onto your plate,
fork ready set
to burrow in.

Here at the Riesenrad,
black Eckelberg eye
observes violinists.
There, a choir of mustard leaves,
swirls of Ich and du
clog the air, night blanketing us
in a filmic noir.

Here, the chalky bracket of the Hofburg extends its arms
as if embracing us.
Inside: glinting-finger chandeliers,
ensembles of books
like lungs of rust,
children toddling past
with goldfish mouths.

Here, a café, early morning,
lemon light sweeping through the windows,
gurgle of students, old men
with a steaming großer Brauner,
a wrinkled Die Presse on the table,
****** of tablespoons at breakfast
and simmer of strings at evening.

And it was here, in ’67,
post-they-think-it’s-all-over,
where a barefoot brunette
sang a tune about puppets;
now our hearts tick
to an orchestral melody.

So here, under a periwinkle sky,
students with Zweig on their minds,
sizzle of German on their tongues
continue on their way, as do we,
footsteps waltzing through
the heart of Europe.

I will post you my name.
I’ve been meaning to.
That way I can stain you

like blackberries would,
a fresh, juicy punnet of them
bought that very day,

your lips stippled violet
and the single syllable you read
the dizzy sprint of sugar.

I swallow your silence,
the one ubiquitous drink
in this maelstrom of ambivalence,

see-saw of coming and going
as if elastic bands
snapped back

before we clinch what we need.
If I think, submerse myself
in the small pool of memories

in a sixteenth of the brain
occupied by you, I can almost recall
the waves of your voice,

each inflection, and your face;
now that, honestly, tricky somehow.
The weeks become a sludge,

each day with its own
carcinogenic tint,
pollution plumes.

What date shall I red-circle, our reunification?
We’ll clutch at our throats,
gasp at how little has passed.

At it for five minutes, maybe six,
and we’re watching them both
from our go-to spot in the King’s Horses
across the street, transfixed
by this unscripted drama unfurling
before our eyes, a right old spat
between, presumably, students
on the lash, straight outta Camden.

I’m clutching my last fifth of pint
as if it’s the final swig I’ll ever savour,
the rest of the pub’s regulars and stragglers
oblivious, minds on the mundane,
such water-cooler coffee-machine gabble,
but we’ve tuned into the action,
silent theatre, much gesticulation,
coatless girls impervious to the chill.

I blink, I turn, a rookie blunder
for in that barely a second speck
you’ve flung the ready salted to one side,
a gasp spilling from your cherry-red mouth
as the chick on the left has arched back,
propelled a fist, thwacked her prey,
one hit and I missed it, the evening’s highlight
unrecorded with no live rewind.

Ten seconds pass. I have birthed a long sigh,
both felines having scarpered,
one nursing their wound, bruise to be.
I let the last, flavourless dreg of Carling
slide past the tonsils before we make to leave,
recover from the unexpected, single wallop
to the chops, Friday night morsel of excitement.
I chuckle about it, privately, as I head for a wazz.

Oh say,
what a shame,
wooden shrine
coated with the breath of ghosts,
carpet of fingers
snapped, or arthritic,
wrenched from the wrist
in some grisly surgical procedure.

Tumble of rock, a table
out for the count,
a lone chair with a prime view
of what has become,
become of the place,
crumbling, stale,
wood daggers a derelict alphabet
dormant on stage.

The tunes, long gone,
harmonies engulfed by the breeze,
auditorium left almost lifeless,
state of half-eclipse
with the punctuation of a thousand strangers
and just the first strands
of spring sunlight bleeding
through the windows.

and here,
stream of hemispheres,
primary shades panoply
for a ceiling.

deluge protectors
with their many spindly fingers,
fronds of blue, of green,
colour wheels bobbing

in an early spring breeze,
innumerable tails
with curls like little grins
down the street, and beyond.

I am thinking of the last time I saw you.
Six months ago, but feels longer.
Your threadbare jumper, certainly
unsuitable for August but one of your finer thrifts,
straggles at the left wrist, beige as porridge.
As such, I have sheltered my skin
in somebody else’s unwanted fabric
so we can be second-hand together.
  
You have moved the furniture, you told me,
in your flat, you said, a few phone calls ago,
the TV with its back to the window
so there’s no bleed of light blanketing the morning news.
The table, IKEA of course, coasters
I helped you select too long ago now,
sandy halos of many a midnight coffee
still there, I’m guessing, soon to know.

I'm warning you, don’t buy me anything.
I considered, dithered, made my decision.
A late Christmas present, in my luggage,
haphazardly wrapped as if done one-handed.
The shape, pure giveaway. A novel. Crime.
Books above your double bed like piano keys,
compendium of slit throats, of bumps in the night.

I repeat the plan. Riksbron, seven-ish,
all the way until I face the place, and you,
anticipating my approach from another direction,
hair a flood of cappuccino-brown.
As my suitcase stomach-rumbles, an audible gasp.
You whip out a cardboard sign, à la Thunberg,
my surname capitalised in dark Crayola.
A snicker hiccups from my throat. We hug.
Lift off. I taste your smell, my arms around your waist
as if holding something precious.

Ain’t that the truth, I wonder, as we spill our lives
into the refrigerated air, smiles thriving on our faces
where, I think we both know, they’ll rest for days.
At your flat you point out my Potter socks,
I ask if you’ve moved the sofa, knowing full well you have.
God’s sake as you begrudgingly, smilingly, unearth your gift
as a candle sheds cinnamon through the room.
I am sodden with tiredness but still we talk,
in person, a rare, valuable feast,
the endless almond sleeves of your jumper over your fingers,
touching my hands.

Two women, we think,
are on a date,
leaning forwards
across the wooden table
in this restaurant
called ‘ood’ because
the lights outside
are not all working properly.

It is that day after all,
the day of much gushing,
duvets peppered with flaky paper hearts,
florists raking the money in,
and in this instance,
two women having a meal,
maybe getting to know
each other’s little quirks,
the idiosyncrasies that make them them.

We can only assume.
The journey home,
the tension turning bonfire red.
What will become of them tonight,
in the morning, a double bed
actually used for two,
a bathroom mirror stealing
a newcomer’s face.

I turn to you
in my drizzle-flecked coat,
say maybe it’s just a business meeting,
no flirtation, just figures.
Not everybody does dates.
Except these women do,
or will do, we assume,
in the ten seconds it takes
to walk past
on our way back to your car.

Dog saw the fault first.
Flurry of spots like acne
sprouting on a teenager’s face.

The ground, crushed pearls,
rubbery tones under foot,
bright white blotted by an exhibition

of crimson, as if seeping
through winter’s present of gauze.
Patches of darker red,

cherryade leftovers
of a sliced finger, a chest puncture,
nosebleed drizzle. No answers,

just a dash of human leak
to be buried by more
shavings of chalk from above.

No footprints but my own,
the dog’s own code
and there, one tree over,

a welt of lemon,
the culprit obvious, waving
baton of black leading me on.

The room
in a state of disintegration,
sense of an ending,
names, first and last,
pouring from our mouths
for, perhaps, the final time.

Tears like transparent worms
stuttering down cheeks,
a merry-go-round of hugs,
black jumper to black jumper,
white shirts plagued with marker-pen,
scribbles of our teenage selves.

Summer before change,
locations that will develop
into a second home, new faces
blooming into existence
as if undiscovered flowers, bedroom walls
riddled with our personalities.

There are those who cannot wait
to depart; maybe they already have,
the years crushed to dust
in the silence between goodbyes.
I stand, useless as a faulty lamppost,
the horizon an onslaught of fog.

they walked together

having never kissed

having never confessed

in a Friday night fug

of second-hand smoke

and discounted *****

that one loved the other

a deep love with many roots


they held hands when crying

as if another’s warm palms

would stem the flow somehow

but it never went further

never tiptoed past the threshold

no dates in restaurants

with pricy wine and staggered chat

no letters professing  

a long-gestated love


they watched movies

recited lines for a hundredth time

laughter rebounding from the walls

uttered secrets in whispers

said they’d be friends forever

knowing they would be

because sometimes that happens

What have I learned
except to coat my tongue in sand,
incinerate what was never created.

My golden ones, you haven't seen the start of it,
the shirking and shrinking
like an aborted flower.

If this is how it feels we should say so,
my head a corroded oven
and how expensive are the repairs.

The night descended to that.
You, sunny side up,
queasiness inhabiting you
as if a change of season,
eyes damp with lethargy.

We planned to depart,
myself, a few others,
spilling well-wishes through the door
to your sanctuary,
dreamcatcher holding your reveries,
books like sentences of teeth
on your shelves.

I left, passenger seat,
with my language a glue in the throat.
The episode quite gone,
thunderous concert of silence,
only windchime giggles that filtered
through the dark.

It is what has become customary.
The bullet-point reeling-off of events,
each spark with its own named shade.
My hollow words missing the yolk
of conversation, vacant bottles
lost to the ocean, skin flecked with rust.

I ought to love you more,
this platonic, solid love.
Perhaps I should **** myself free
from the shipwreck, dust off
my catastrophes and breathe,
revel in your odysseys, let you know
my spoke of mishaps,
let us accept each other with clean hands.

perhaps all we do

express

confess in droplets

or tsunami


and how many

to confess to

divulge the innermost

secrets from our sanctums


new decade crashes in

with your colour eruptions

what miles

seconds separate us


what to be said

said carefully

as if glass

in a child’s hands


confess our truths

at the time

await answers

like overseas mail


pen ink drunk

set for disclosure

answers to spark

for minutes for years

I.

cold winter morning
windscreens glazed in silver dust
pavements and grass wet

---

II.

crew of coloured shapes
clamour underneath the tree
concealed for now

---

III.

and the food comes in
steaming green vegetables
spuds like chunks of gold

now I must rediscover myself again

stretch the muscles, crack the bones

set the synapses back into action


what dazzling names will now come

to paint my throat, to whisk the mind

into some new year tornado


and the gap growing between us,

the existing handful, pinches of dialogue

that filter through the lightning cracks


sleep peppered with age-old blunders

what’s to come, a dull game

plagued with fanciful guesses

is it happening again?
am I expelling my tears, a rare, ugly act,
my head crumpling at the thought
of stepping on, then off,
my slapdash navigation through unfamiliar streets,
the hours as red as crushed cherries.

at that age I should’ve been better.
at this age, surely, better,
or not? Soon the questions will pour in,
indigo sky thunderstorm, discovery of love
jump-scaring up as through bread in the toaster,
my conversation sieved with droll ripostes,
a flame of humour, laughter clasped in your hands.

I feel a change coming,
tastes like liquorice on the tongue.
Crumbled at eighteen, but what of twenty-six?
My flaws still surface like bottles from the ocean,
rusty reminders that I still, I say, lag behind.
Will I need your hand? Do I want it?
Tell me history has not become present again.

on the day that marks
his fortieth year
a doctor informs him
that his arthritis is worsening,

digits more like twigs,
mashed potatoes for knees.
the news is no surprise,
more expected mail.

when the band begins,
the cymbal sizzle
like vegetables in a pan,
crow horn squawk,

he places the mouthpiece
between his chapped lips
knowing that any day
could be the last day now,

so he thinks of Coltrane
and blows, hard, all he’s ever known,
eyes of a gaggle of strangers,
ping-pong ***** in the dark.

Water nuzzles ankles again
     sliced pomegranate sunset
footprint glyphs
   like our own Hebrew letters

legs half-bare is a rarity
   sand is orange zest
stippled against our fingers
   hair overflown champagne

down your spine
   thin ribbons of un-tanned skin
the sea like a wildfire of hushes
   each wave urging us on

I have spat out these words
so many times I have lost track

enough is what I tell myself
except this is not quite enough

still I stumble and search through it all
like some restless fox in the dark

but the goal one sleeve away
simple to grasp but too far gone

and that’s exactly right

we are made of filaments and zips

old buttons blue cheese and cheap glue


all we do is try to keep each other fixed

the fragments together as if we are vases

our pretty flowers severed and useless


I am swallowed by your dialogue

cool pool of letters and jet black gags

my throat muffled again squashed dictionary flat


what then the word for love among friends

perhaps no word only the sensation

the differences that swell similarities that chime

Love me in twenty-seven different ways

your selection box of methods

each one as tantalisingly exciting as the next


what blue words are pouring forth

oh I have done it again doing it again

your ruby red downpour could stop this


splitting egg headache but I know

you know how to call a truce

call the whole thing off


paint my skin in whispers

that you shouldn’t be afraid to tell

and I shouldn’t be afraid to hear

how I have loved what I have never known

these names that glisten like stars on a blanket of night

it is silly, I know, to swim in such matters

my mind a blizzard of moments splintering

in a million intricate ways impossible to explain

my heart is heavy and my throat clear of all words

and I think of your faces like a blue sky at sunrise

so unblemished so untarnished by my hapless errors

I couldn’t explain with the right expulsion of words

but know I knew how I felt

how right here in a place I am still trying to understand

you were present known and, yes, loved

what is the space between something that could be love,

isn’t love, the word for it, something that is just your own mind

playing a trick, telling you that yes, you are, for want of a better word,

falling, body tumbling down the very steps to your Technicolor dream,

where, in reality, the world turns a shade of beige, bruises erupting

like little violet volcanoes, and you realise it was all a vision,

your interpretation of what you so desperately believed to need,

but on it goes, your staggered fantasy, your ingredients for love

but there is no word for it, love that isn’t love but you feel it so,

like a hard squeeze in the chest, that elusive, addictive make-believe.

I’ve displayed twenty different colours
                                                        to you

set myself aflame
or dunked myself in cold water

no not you
who makes the selection

myself making the choice
as though a t-shirt in the wardrobe

what you get
either side of a coin

take my apologies
in advance

never one
but often the other

unpack my dreams from the chest

unfurl the cardboard tubes   haul up the old honey jars

place them in a row on the well-worn table


in order of colour or order of shape

do they shrink with a tap   do they froth from the top

which one is your delicacy of choice


now offer a hand   feel it slither across the fingers

a temporary burn or just-melted ice

when was it when you assembled this story


take your selection let night tumble in

the tale stirring   the curtains rising

a dream of sleep and fabricated magic

saffron wings
sleeves of copper
vanilla ice cream heaven

which was
a carnival of stars
in the first yawns of morning

which was
the first tepid trickle
of something returning

yourself
behind the wheel
sand snuggling your toes

which was
yourself with arms open
breathing again alive     alive

presenting
my next initiation
3D spectacle

in spectacles
language of rust to be wiped away
sand letters by sea

one day   as planned
I'll be the prism
my colour chart sprayed

on the walls   fruit salad
of a room made familiar
your mouths a shock of smile

my fingers un-twitching
the precise words unrolled from my throat
not these but

wish you could extract the words right out my throat

not the clusters of dust I often proffer

but little glittering jewels every time


I don't know how I'm supposed to run

is this body a clock

is this mind a million-piece puzzle


told to do it alone

but still submerged in a lake

chilled under a cracked translucent shell


so pop me back into my sockets

drizzle me in sentences

as if private rainfall on a summer night

blue like core of ocean
blue raspberry boulder
flecked with enamel

wind-ravaged land
far out full stop
unblemished by the likes of us

plastic population
whirling ball of selfies
and self-made destruction

but Neptune, blue
like your eyes adjusting to light
like the canvas of sky post-birth of rain

floating
   tapestry of infinities

sparkles like the distance
   is sprinkled with apostrophes

lilac ribbons
   teal condensation

and somewhere
   in the middle of a middle

our spherical mass
  of wet paint-brushed clouds

blobs of rock
   brimming with us invisibles

find your hand in the mist
chasing shadows bleeding into night

strawberry juice coating the throat
kisses are like a sunrise

if this is drunk then let me keep drinking
the sight of you

the bubbles rising to the surface
like some newly-discovered champagne

when he opts for the obvious   again
this time   I think   will be the time
I finally pipe up and say what needs saying

that while I hope this fish dinner
satisfies you   the taste of the sea creature
on your lips   that salt and vinegar mixture

it ought to be me next to you   on the sofa
smiling or laughing at some ****** TV repeat
fork skewering the gone soggy chips

tips of our fingers stricken with grease
but worth it because our hands
will be a ruler’s width apart

and so   while I wrap your golden gift
slip the fiver into the till
as you puncture a Coke

I concoct my line of choice
something about fish
or how I’ll batter your wife

dislodge myself
tighten my jaw
summer is not
our season of bliss

choke on your flowers
swallow your sirens
the air is lethal
with nightmares

another chalk-written name

thunderclap behind the eyes
no time to count the stars
that dance
or should that be burning

brush me in a language
unfamiliar
like a splash of a kiss
or smoke in the throat

tell myself what I think
you would say
know I won’t soak
in your roguish potion

new melody I drink
disco fizz on my tongue
to strawberry ballet

chime of magic
down my spine
when you bless me with whispers

first time swimming
cathedral where echoes
make new constellations

handful of sunset
hundredth bouquet of thanks
look how you made room in your shadows

(     for me     )

things never said before

my sentences
plagued with stutters

pockets of smoke
my temporary desires

it's when you
strike the match

your orange apostrophe
that keeps me up for hours

lungs bursting
with out-of-season flowers

but it's a fix
cruel trick

the lyrics of you
lost into another

irretrievable night

coming home to you
our dog hopping at my feet
my hand reaching for the drool-smothered ball
lazy lob into the kitchen
a shout fizzes down from upstairs
yeah, it’s me, I throw back

shoeless into our bedroom
you half-groan into the pillow
duvet curdled
eyes punctuated with tiredness
I kiss your chapped lips
shuffle my tie free

think I mention work
something about dinner
but night shuttles in
radiator cracking awake
as I glide into my vibrant
reverie of you

pick phone up   put it down again
take a selfie   no another one   and again   light isn’t right
what’s on Twitter   scroll for twenty minutes   pause   basically
PREGNANCY PRANK [GONE WRONG]   add to playlist
oh how can he be the president   like   says it ‘coz he can
love the warm weather   global warming maybe   but oh well
Starbucks for breakfast   lunch   Spotify playlist
like   red heart   blue thumbs-up   share   like
that inspirational quote   you know   basically   I can relate
CHEATING PRANK [GONE WRONG]   add to playlist
election   couldn’t have told you there was one
have we left it yet   like   what are we leaving again
petty crime rise   stay vigilant
something about Brussels   a royal up the duff  
but did you see what Kim was wearing   like   did you hear
what her sister did   with that guy   you know   that guy
look  she’s uploaded   why we broke up   shame
oh yeah   oh well
retweet

watch you go
cherry-red motor
dots that look painted on

no bigger than a fingertip
contact lens bonnet
millimetre-thin wires for legs

shuffle not scuttle
climbing the stem
before you open up

unfurl acetate wings
brisk flicker into
a speck against the sky

when they put it to sleep
   I am already halfway home
or already home
   my head heavy
with that strange social buzz
   that comes from
severing myself from shindigs
   but making an exception
minds skewed with alcohol
   a barefoot teen Fosbury-flopping
over a mate’s dad’s armchair

   before too long
I’ll think of their foot-long children
   caterwauling at 3am
the desk-job half-full cup
   of cheap coffee
our greetings infrequent
  dialogue Wyoming-sparse
say how I should’ve told you
   six mid-Decembers ago
my days a haze of disfluencies
   TV repeats and cold callers

told us it would happen
didn’t believe them

our biggest capitulation
end of civilization

last orange blink
final carpet of stars

Asia first
then the rest

toppling dominoes
stripped streets

lead-less dogs
and hollow televisions

kick your history
to the kerb

man-made oven
own fault

must be time
to update my status

space between adult   more adult
the unmarried   and married
trundle through mid-twenties
roads slobbered with snow
fog-licked windows
friends skidding
into what is expected of us

invitations in the mail
like tiny sirens
reminders
of that perennial question
if not now when
is it your turn yet

taken to
  thistle of syllables
  sapphire streaked sky
and cherry blossom shiver
  liquid pastels
  lethargic car exhalations
machines with their seeds of light
  spherical shimmers
  church spire
poet-named sacred place
  nickel slurry
  flour-doused mountains
alone with myself
  just funnels of breath
  passing my refrigerated lips
reminder of time

etiolated shell
ball bearings for knuckles
crimson branches
that shudder in the albumen
of the eyes

palms riddled with skinny rivers
navy straws
wrist fissures
roots of calcium
punctured silver

carrier-bag lungs
interior accordion
sack of cherry fluid
limited edition
throbbing blob

in the mirror
yourself not quite
yourself
unchosen blueprint
modified mainframe

filled with tea
and slabs of cheese
envelope of bones
cauldron brewing
on and again on