melt into it
   pool of unconscious
panoply of colour
   premiere of unscripted
snippets of before
   possible after
here where names glow
   skittish fireflies
book of repetitions
    mislaid by morning
scenes that crumble
   as neglected birthday cake
into the next
   marvel of the night

of soil and water

of dirt and cries of sky

musty aroma

packing the nostrils

translucent blobs

stutter on glass

disintegrate against ground

wave of pewter puffs

and that echo again

like a million falling *****

in an vacant room

lick the sky with commas
crimson ribbons
  and shamrock murmurs
   like the crayon scribbles
    of a young child
     electric choir
     strums of colour
    make melody of night
   shifting whispers
  a new language blur
we can only open
our mouths at

begins

new jewel

almost a year

since you made it official

and now back

to the start

another year

stretching its arms

April wave

green blaze

love like the blossom

new coat

soul free

till your rise

from white sleep

invent veins of runes

frozen breath parcels

garden enamel

your morning photo flash

leaf plink and dribble

window peck     shiver

squeak and drool

off from your rooftop

there in the heart

of your hand

my noiseless bleed

goodbye

so she puts on her scratched Doc Martens with the mud-stricken laces - because that’s what she wants to wear - swish and flicks the stick so the surf of her eyes have raven wings - because that’s how she likes to do it - strikes her lips Beauregarde blue - plonks a fedora atop her tiers of panther-black hair - because it’s her favourite colour - her favourite hat - wriggles on three rings - her grandmother’s, mother’s, and the one from Amsterdam - pins the badge GIRLS DO NOT DRESS FOR BOYS on her fluff-stippled dress - because she’s in the mood to wear it - because it feels comfortable - prods a white trinket in her ear that gushes Bikini **** - because she’s feeling like a rebel - fishes for a fiver for bus fare - knows the driver will silently judge her - knows the thirty-something mother will - knows the raisin-faced cane-in-hand man will as well - knows she doesn’t care - sun javelins in from the windows - feels great looks good her version of girl - later when her friends call they call her Wednesday - her kisses tasting of blueberry pie

crimson shiver
across a herd of puddles

OPEN 24/7 ruby lights
entice

cocktails
with silly names

rusted hearts
on cubicle doors

dried blood punctures
wall of wounds

where new-born couples
spill their lust

lipstick leftovers
from a thousand calamities

raspberry dress flicker
face with no name

your kiss a delicious ampersand
on my skin

know that I use
that word

in that way
only for you

easy
really

to unpack
the corny lines

leak out a babe
like some throwaway term

rabbit from the hat
oh! know how it's done

not what we're used to
this submergence

into a dream made real
pool of pepper and fizz

sunrise-sky eyes
watermelon-red lips

our version
of four letters

hear it tick
in our blood

the way we
taste our names

before dawn
voiceless streets
rain like dropping pins

grits of sleep
tucked in eyes
throb of restless night

treacle hours
cyclone mind
morning crawling in

turn my way
back to you
underneath the sheets

heat flowers
warm smile
rises in the dark

spend a breath
sounds anew
alive and alive

think I know you
            knew you
before blue jumpers
football with tennis *****
weeping knees and benches
and reeling off hymns
            now look
at them singing the songs
of some not-quite-teen
mute squares of a life
apparently pristine
likes arriving like flies
            before
it was packed lunches
a place named Azkaban
afternoon kwik cricket
colourless pix
on Bebo
            now it's
a slurry of selfies
head-tilt lips-out
meme media excess
digital mausoleum
you've made your home
            so choose
I'll leave you to it
beeline for the Apple store
record what you can't get back
speak up **** your planet
or run

light-wisps
     tiptoe     through
gauze of green

     piccolo     chirrups
woodwind     refrain

     water burble
sweep     scattershot     rocks
     teeth of giants

pebble ensembles
     paths     buttered
with hair of Meliae

     brisk glottal     stop
pecker     on bark

     dead skin
and these taupe
     bones

almost tibias
     swell     skywards

sprout
     arthritic     fingers

that will fall
     amputate     beneath
                                       my feet

it’s a cinch, really

just yanking the duvet
back over yourself

shunning
the what-could-be-fun

or actually-might-not-be
best-to-stay-in

and that mist
how it loves to slither up

silver venom
sour headache

eyeless demon
eyeing you up

for a laugh
a ripple of giggles

in your ears
a squall of cymbals

ugly vowel-less
torrent of speech

a red light
****** iris

blinks across the shore
enough for you to bathe

in blue
confused puppet

lists of missed-outs
and the trash

you opted for instead

when the Spice Girls came on
I knew it was time to leave

hour hand poking midnight
red cups bloated
with spit and tangerine *****

back slaps from strangers
opening and closing their mouths
like goldfishes on morphine

try to find you
through tobacco whispers
***** shots and near-**** Twister

and you're by the front
jacket in hand
we simply nod enough's enough

halfway home you ask
what a zigazig is

the rain is playing
its jingle again
between the trees

night unravels
liquorice tongue
pricked with stars

your fingers
look perfect
between my fingers

our language
an ephemeral blush
on windowpanes

fall into myself again

i am the pale flower
you left out in the rain

never growing

but these things take time

one morning will sing

ring-a-ding-ding
inauguration day

become yourself again

champagne voice
or a cliché of your choice

does the new year
come in April

leaves that surf the breeze
got yourself going green

soak those lungs
with that fresh air

will it come it will come

you don't think it
but know it

the fog can only cradle you
for so long

until you grow

like spring flowers

The morning after I killed him
we sat eating breakfast
at the kitchen counter.

The father, pupils
on the tabloid
which would later

leak with the news
of his youngest child's
departure.

The mother, upstairs,
applying the swish
of crimson,

a shade she'll
rename blood of son
before too long.

I won't go into specifics.
But it was simple, really.
The fingers first,

flaccid, then the arms
like sticks of broken chalk,
then the slump,

static, as if a switch
from on to off,
or a plug wrenched out.

Everything was normal.
You did not suspect.
I posted you

his glasses a week after,
wrote the note left-handed.
And yet

you did not suspect
but walked numbly,
shaking hands,

even the hand
of the man
who severed his breaths.

I’ve got a buddy,
lives in Vinegar Hill.

   Was in the city for work
   so I called him,

waiting for the early morning
zip of caffeine,

   anything to coat my throat.
   He said absolutely.

Hadn’t been since they put
flowers on the corner,

   condensation of colour
   in a ribcage of streets.

The trees were naked
skinny things;

   I felt as bare and bland.
   The truth burnt, left a scar.

Still, I found love in a whirl
on a garage door,

   trickled out three syllables
   to a pretty blonde on a bike.

Window seat, $3.50 down.
Jack knew the waitress,

   her number too.
   Crimson cherries for earrings.

The sun licked us brighter.
Rotund pumpkins, manic eyes,

   toothless and forgotten.
   A beagle sneezed on the corner

of Jay and Plymouth.
Then a lazy detour down snaking Navy.

   A headline: Brooklyn needs jobs.
   Don’t we all, I muttered.

I could see a stars and stripes
with a rip through the middle,

   flapping as a mongrel’s tongue.
   I was thirty and single,

headaches and toast for breakfast,
coffee for blood.

   When I get to 9th, I said to Jack,
   I'll give Cherry a call.

morning. again.
must be another
from your record collection
fluttering past the door,
over the bed,
butterflies of song.

breakfasts
in pyjamas,
crooked floorboard breaths,
butter-knife bark
against bread,
triple ***** of the spoon
inside of the cup,
steaming bronze.

make a home
against your body,
hair almost dry,
toe xylophone,
hearts on the sleeve,
freckles that pepper
the cheek
on which I plant a kiss,
my silent lyric
of love.

This, clearly,
where we studied Geography.
World map swollen with filth,
peeling New Zealand.

Exercise book half-lollops
off from a desk,
the chair a resting skeleton,
a metal limb amputated.

For Science: smashed test-tubes,
lab coats like dead ghosts.
For Maths: decades-old equations
loitering on the walls.

Throw a basketball in the gym, miss,
its smack and echo gunshot rocket.
Punctured football,
globe past the best before date.

The library a cascade
of mottled tomes,
pages that crack as twigs,
pens have cried into the carpet.

Write my name in a pond of dust.
Look who showed their face again
here, where something happened,
once.

apart

two segments
rolling down the hill

little rockets
spurting off heat

I'm cracked eggs
brittle eyeballs

creak in the neck
like a sodden floorboard

splash of blood
off again

blinded by meaningless
droplets of triviality

twist of stomach
tight knot

ice when I type
know it by heart

liquid silhouette
exposed toes
echoes that swim
through the room

apricot flame
candle burns
as do we
with each breath out

mist hush to windows
morning muscle crackle
stretch as roots
yawn into place

and with a flick
bend back
boomerang of the spine
arms like pillars

in a trance
birth of a wave
woman upended
moves her bones

chain of inhalations
human triskelion
little quivers
but steady soul

then retreat
from the shore
float away
flat again

a shuffle
before repeat
ready to go metronome
take off

this evening I drink the stars with you
never has the night tasted so delectable
as when our heartbeats sit side to side
when the music slumps
into an indistinct muffle
until we hear our own breaths

flicker of a twinkle in the distance
city populated with insecurities
lungs of smoke and veins of coffee
but you in your striped socks
me with my tea-stained jumper
just enough just enough

The meal is lovely, yes,
I’m glad we came here.
The questions are arriving, not too heavily,
but drip-fed between mouthfuls.
Chew. Answer, a ladder of sentences.

Maybe I should be telling you
about the seasonal affective disorder,
or the fibromyalgia that attacks my back.
You’ll need to know this going forwards,
I'm sure.

You have already mentioned depression,
the gurgling storm in the brain.
I nod, offer empathy even though
I didn’t mean to.
The meal is lovely.

There’s a cherry birthmark blotch
on my right thigh you’ll see.
I don’t say this. It’s not appropriate.
We hide things
so we can make a game of it later.

Perhaps you play the flute,
collect comic books,
are an expert at knitting.
Weeks to trickle by treacle-like,
facts set to spring up as flowers.

Sip of drink to shut me up.
Our truths floating like shuttlecocks
across the table.
The meal? Yes, it’s lovely.
I am thinking of later, of tomorrow morning.

you’re telling all I’ve heard before.
ugly bubbles of language,
sentences spool out like half
torn cassette tape.

I’m as salty as the sea,
aubergine bruise drinking my shin,
my phone on 2%
and my watch five minutes slow.

and you go, Mr. Yo-Yo,
leaning in, backing out,
eyes like mucky puddles,
crescent moon split lip.

what a way to trigger
a new age, tobacco kisses
on my skin, mud blotch on my skirt,
Your gift, love you.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of stepping on,

fingers bent into palms,
knuckles milky white,

the typically British palaver
of locating a seat

with their tasteless patterns,
a table with the sticky

residues of fifteen coffees.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of zoning out,

reels of fields.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of a phone turned on,

a book with the spine
not quite fractured.

Of course, of course,
perhaps it is simply a case

of not stepping on,

of wallowing in your ragged
safety net fashioned

from string, from dead skin.

But, of course,

you shouldn’t, but you will,
but you can’t, but you can,

but you want to,
but you won’t do.

Perhaps then, it is simply a case
of one foot in front of the other,

stepping off, fists unclenched,
pulse regular and thumping

at the wrists,
your own language of success.

these are
the people
we know

used to know
and we
wonder

if they
think of us
now and then

a name
in the breeze
still drifting

years later
but what
would we say

that is
to say
do we care

I tried to tell the sea what I was thinking.
It simply unfurled its blue vowels at me,
a slippery blush at my feet.
   So I asked again; a similar response,
cauldron of murmurs into nothing.

Close by, a dog followed its owner,
a lady, lobbing a tennis ball,
the animal a black exclamation.
It panted excitement at me,
pink ribbon tongue sloshing about
like the sea when it sidles
back to where it came.

I asked, once more; there was no reply.
A glossy breath,
in and out, like all of us.

I.

fingers are ready
for numerous unwrappings
disposed colour clumps

---

II.

blink-and-miss applause
******* snap jokes tumble out
steam quivers on up

---

III.

everything exposed
fairy lights still flickering
night unrolls black tongue

And when you say love,
as if the first chilled sip of champagne slapping your tongue,
I know you know I know. You, thinking of summer walks
in the park with a pet we'll soon own, a whisky sunset
and a John Legend song, strawberries half-licked
in molten chocolate. We'll kiss - fireworks.
*** to make us sweat.

I smile, because what else would I do?
I think of bags for life sleeping beneath the eyes,
black apostrophe hairs on the brink of the sink.
Perhaps splashes of blood on the sheets, scrunched stomach,
arguments that sprint out our mouths,
temporary electrocutions.
We'll kiss - loose knot. *** to make us fret.

waterfalls
   petrified

frozen chalk
   bubble blossom

minerals slink
   between feet

white shoelaces
   milky squiggles

liquid emeralds
   clotted cream puddles

spread of forest
   green margarine

rinsed in sun
   Mexican memento

Old school, gymnasium, Christmas fair, Thursday night.
Hoops at either end. Tables. People. A woman carries a baby,
could be the PE teacher’s. A Ugandan flag. Jars of dark purple
jam next to jars of chutney, perhaps. The youth, us once,
flit between here and the hall. A choir, maybe thirty strong,
sing Santa Baby. Parents watch, as do we. Half a minute.

The head. Still a towering, suited figure. Handshakes all round.
What are we doing now? Voices like knots of consonants.
Geography man. Flecks of grey stubble. Procedure repeated.
Finger pointed. Scrabble for a surname. Exclamation.
Years rattling back to the front. He remembers, as do we.
Head of sixth seven years ago. Instant recognition. Repeat.

Half an hour. The place, no longer ours. Never was.
Friends the same. Memories. Dust between dark and light.
Car. Back seat. Barely two miles. Little traffic. Turn
into street.  Step out. Chill drizzles the face. Handshake
again? Again. Time and place discussed before home.
See you tomorrow then. Yeah. Yeah. Front door key.

my head
must be
the boiling kettle

my voice
a series of stuttering
tufts of steam

my god
I think of you
as some sort of sun

my dreams
tell me so
they can't be wrong

The wallpaper in your grandmother’s front room
is appalling. Old bible yellow pages,
bevy of bubbles joining,
thickening like arteries beneath the surface.

And what is that? The daily brain teaser,
printed patio of letters.
Five down - ‘state of being alone’.
I think I know it. I am sure of it.
Pack of hard-boiled molar-breakers covers the rest.

I do not know why
you have brought me here.
We stand like soundless instruments.
Wrenched from bed so had to dress,
brush my lips ******, rake my hair.
Presentable? Presentable.

Your gran, almost ninety, concrete
cracks lightning strike on the cheeks,
specific smell that comes
with the accumulation of decades.
She does not know me, will forget me.

Syllables will stagger out
from the mouth, words, whole sentences
watery or gone. Instant evaporation.
A shuffle. And another shuffle.
A loudening shuffle.

Enter. Oh, how sorry I feel!
Hands quiver as frightened leaves,
cup quickstepping on the saucer.
You dash over, take control,
steady the shake of brick-ish tea.

My name comes, tinged with a lisp.
Your grandmother looks at me
with her eyes, jelly-rolled marbles,
a smile creaking across her face.
You know it. I know it. She knows it.
A woman caught in the icy fist of winter.

She sits. Sighs. I know the feeling.
I bend down, say slowly,
enunciate clearly.
Solitude.
Five down, my dear? Yes, correct.

and they are ready to pull,
   a crew of pinkish wands
sprouting from the ground,

clouds of green
   flecked with mulberry veins,
the soil quite soggy

from last night’s rain,
   grass tickled silver,
pewter-rippled sky.

I grab the first,
   press down, listen
to the burst of a crackle

like the spine of a book,
   tug it out
as if a tooth.

When I carry them
   to the kitchen I think
of the crumble to come,

the smell, the spoon
   diving in, exhuming a pool
of amethysts beneath.

you get thirty likes for one line

-----

love is banana pancakes and pyjamas

keep quiet in the graveyard, I say, for they can all hear us

falling is only falling if your head goes before the heart

breath is the unwrapping of a memory

your eyes are the rainbow kind of blue

I'd say I hate myself again but hate is a strong word

shakespeare, yeats, keats, plath and eliot laugh over breakfast

the clock cannot talk but tells me everything

sleep is the wicked playground of echoes and black eyes

do I like this what me you like me this

that’s what you said,
matter-of-factly
in the bar on the corner

where we’d drink
our Friday evenings away,
uncover our bodies

like the first time all over again
until the early hours,
a fingernail of light on the bed.

My bed, first. Then ours. Now mine
again. The space where you’d sleep,
spine facing me, dreamcatcher

on your back you got before we met.
I dreamed of you. I knew little else,
your words melding with mine

to form a succulent, secret language.
I took a sip of my drink,
spoke with care -

you want. to see. other people.
Not a question, a stagger,
the disintegration of something.

We parted with a pinch of tears.
That first night I became hollow,
head foggy with the feel of your skin,

your breath on my neck.
Now I think of your body
with another body,

doing the same things
you did to me.
I write your name

on the bathroom mirror
with a raisin-like finger.
It exists, like you did,

then runs, as if
your name is too harmful
to linger anymore.

You don’t choose to go into bookshops anymore,
you don’t read much,
you hear about calories and five-a-day but you don’t stick to it,
you say you’ll exercise but you never seem to do any,
you notice a blossoming paunch but choose to keep it,
you lose friends and rarely gain any,
you don’t make much of an effort and rarely care,
you don’t sleep as much as you should,
you don’t like the job you’re in,
you don’t know what job you should be doing,
you only work for the money,
you don’t have enough money,
you buy things you don’t need,
you don’t talk to your parents enough,
you don’t talk enough,
you spend too much time on your phone,
you care more about technology than your friends,
you don’t look where you’re walking,
you moan about the youth of today,
you aren’t as mature as you could be,
you still live at home in your thirties,
you see your friends getting married and having kids,
you watch too much *******,
you haven’t travelled as much as you’d like,
you are quick to body-shame,
you don’t understand what LGBTQ+ means,
you can’t tell the difference between Conservative and Labour,
you wear the same clothes day in day out,
you are not the best driver,
you have social media pages but aren’t sociable,
you sigh when girls you like get into relationships,
you know you never stood much of a chance,
you have too many fillings,
you don’t celebrate birthdays much,
you are getting lazier all the time,
you haven’t had a long conversation in ages,
you hate your neighbours,
you don’t know your neighbours,
you get angry playing video games,
you order takeaway food rather than cook,
you say this is my year when you know it won’t be,
you haven’t told anybody this,
you haven’t even told yourself,
you are not sure you need to.

So I give you a memory
made of water.
Is it malleable? Will it freeze?
Perhaps it has already,
a block of opaque white.

There’s a language caught in my throat
that isn’t common.
I think it suits you better,
phrases that rise like helium-filled balloons.
You can roll them out

to anyone willing to listen.
I shall continue with the clogging
of my veins, my pulse another
could’ve-been, thick on my wrist.
Bathe in the sunlight

in a place that isn’t home
but you could learn to call home.
The roads I know curve
into the next, where I started
the end result.

Her mouth was really
the one real thing I’ve ever known.

I knew her mouth better
than the alphabet, days of the week.

Every word that spilled from her mouth,
a potent, sparkling-new alcohol.

Often I thought of how her mouth
moved against mine, our private dance.

One kiss and we’d be drunk,
a love frothing from her mouth and mine.

Years pass. The taste of her mouth washed away
by toothpaste, a thousand coffees.

The one real thing I ever knew,
her mouth, really.

The flowers you bought me
are so pretty. They are
so pretty,

little gloves of colour.
The window is open -
perhaps rain

on the way. And the reds
and whites against grey,
a light breeze

that runs into the room.
I try but don't recall
all the names,

but they smell so lovely
and you will remember
I am sure.

The forest holds our secrets.
Light slithers a path to us,
the sound of our breathing,
crackle of a splintered twig.

There’s a gurgle of water,
flossing the rocks of a stream.
Listen, you say.   A bird’s wings
applause as we go on our way.

I stop near a tree, its bark
sharp, flecked with moss.
No words, just immeasurable years
between us, skin against skin.

The smell we’ve been walking to,
lavender, tiptoes to our noses.
My fingers brush your hand
and we step forwards again.

it’s a peck of dust
but that’s all it takes
     you have seen years scuttle
     into the shadows
     because you’ve filled them
     with recurrent words
sighs and optimism
draining from you
as if your life
is a crumbled sludge in a sieve

how long before you drink the sun?
     you scurry from one
     knotted dream to another
     like a confused mouse
     a dog chasing its tail
circles are your shape
they fit around you
red and rusty
as if only smothering you more

And it happens.

For a moment, a silence
that encloses us,
a cool, transparent blanket
for a second of a second.

Then his body, limbs, flailing,
drunken puppet,
small spheres of mud
drip off from his skin.

An ankle trembles
in its socket,
a foot spins the opposite way,
a crack nobody hears.

There’s a whistle in the ears
as his torso judders
into newfound positions,
death already in the bloodstream.

Nothing can be done,
you knew this could happen,
my voice says in my head
as blood erupts from a wound.

I know it as soon
as his body smacks the earth,
his life evaporated,
his name floating to the clouds.

breeze in hair
   cool whispers

   sand on hands
slinks between fingers

old band shirt
   silver bangle

   cobalt nails
watermelon eyes

footprint hieroglyphs
   sleepy pulse

   pineapple sunset
ribbon clouds

winter beach
   fresh love

   just a touch
sea-hush

So, another day of it.
The clock an instrument that ****** you
with its skeletal finger,
and now the night crawls up, covers
the town before dinner, the cold
licking your skin the way it can
every October.

You haven’t been yourself.
You’ve been stumbling,
legs like lead pipes, head
pulsating, unmissable signal.
Stand -
a conker crack scurries
     across the skull.
Sit -
pulse in ear, gut gurgling
     just as a long-blocked sink.

Sleep is a taste of petrol,
appetite so far gone
you expect postcards.
But at least the night crawls up,
delicately, coldly.

Woman, name unknown,
     I think of your marigold hair, marigold hair
and bare feet in the grass.

There was a voice: do I ask?
   Do I disrupt a pleasant scene
or would I ***** like a thorn?

The dream, to speak your name,
   become accustomed to its taste,
like drinking the sun through a straw.

Alas, if only I’d thought before,
   my mind wandering, thoughts bouncing
conker-like, hard and loud.

I wished to cradle your smile,
   a great beam, lychee pink,
dismiss the crowds.

The chance, sinking, my body
   stifled by unseen vines,
your name a hush of water in my hands

but your hair, bare feet,
   like a summer breeze
in the freezing core of winter.

At some point
before dawn

I navigated my hand
into your hand

and now we swirl
like shiny balloons

from one lucid invention
of the night to another

It is easier to imagine
than feel the real thing

but the real thing
is not your imagination

swell of a voice
like a bullet of sugar

too much and you’ll sink
in a lake made of smoke

a blueprint of love
splashing on your tongue

If pink
is the softest colour

I shall bathe in carnations
every morning

the steam from my herbal tea
dancing out the open window

all the places I’ve never been
cannot exist

they are just curls of ink
repeated tens of thousands of times

an image is somebody’s own
slant on the city

the pre-storm sky
bruise of cloud

a second-speck
that cannot be mimicked

I heard you were on the move
again

I gnaw the inside
of my cheek

the letters form
monosyllabic words

you have the real thing
I sleep with a globe