somebody strikes a match
outside the corner shop

at the park the team are using
jumpers for goalposts

you put your lipstick on
in a hurry this morning

dropped your Tube ticket
somewhere at Caledonian Road

a teenager sings Dancing Queen
wears an Adidas sports bra

the old man is sleeping again
you saw him two days ago

phone’s on 22%
brother’s birthday is tomorrow

in a second-hand shop
with its own brand of smell

the spines are cracked
the pages have yellow breath

lunch is barely a fiver
the guy on the till is called Brian

if you could you’d tell
a person how you’ve looked

for this one story
but there are too many shelves

and no person
to help you look

hours where nothing glistens
liquid seconds

the picture of your voice
could be my vicious heartbeat

just a ghost with an alarm
where the mouth should be

I’d tell you if something new
was constructed

but no colourful bubbles
are trundling off from my tongue

the silence is no special treat
it is a regularity

a present transparent being
with lips sewn shut

a stranger is waiting
I’m told

but for the fully-formed
or finely moulded

think you've read the ending before
you probably have



a light switch in a dusty room
somewhere surely a hand

They have been together,
give or take, for fifteen years.

Their marriage in the clasp
of puberty, its voice deepening,
its stubble sprouting.

Not long ago, shopping.
Necessary. Kid’s birthday.
It comes around quick,
like lunch, paying for the Ploughman’s
at the self-service in town
when the clock flicks to twelve.

Her right hand on his right hand.
They still do this,
though not quite as often.

Today,
he returns from work, wrenches
the tie out from beneath the collar
of a shirt she ironed yesterday.
Son, out.
Daughter, also out.

The fridge plagued with magnets
and a list; Milk,
                  Bread,
                  Eggs?
Inside, two beers,
sweating cold.
Later, he thinks.

How’s your day been darling?
We need to be at the school at six.
Oh yes.
They need to hear
how their progenies
excel at the expressive arts.
He hasn’t been expressive in years.

Hours expire.
Now his bare feet slide
under the duvet.
The wife reads a while,
Sunday Times bestseller.

Then she hugs him,
touches the skin she has known
since she was nineteen
at Northampton, literary sponge
absorbing Shakespeare and Joyce.

It is warm.
It is something
that has not changed.
The two of them are content.
They know they can
always have this.

I simply cannot focus on my work
as all these animals have gone berserk!
Philippa, my darling girl, fill me in,
who on earth is making that awful din?

There’s an aardvark having a bath,
   and a chameleon rolling dice,
an eagle searching in the freezer
   and a goose hiding in the hedge,
an iguana eating our jam
   and a koala juggling our lemons,
a marmoset slurping noodles
   and an octopus carrying paint pots,
a quail wearing a ring
   and a squirrel making the tea,
a unicorn using the vacuum cleaner
   and a walrus playing the xylophone,

and finally Philippa, finally my girl,
   a yak fidgeting with a zip!

Where did they come from? I really don’t know,
but very soon they will just have to go!
I’ve had enough now of this awful din,
thank you Philippa for filling me in!

Somebody said
if you count to ten
in your head
while holding your breath,

as if breath is an object
with a shape and a texture,

by the end you'll have
forgotten how to breathe.

One.
Two.

And sometimes
you need to pause,
to let every black swatch
of worry evaporate
like crooked puddles.

Three.
Four.

And you feel a trickle
of something under your skin -
perhaps a calmness,
a word not yet invented.

Five.
Six.

In your mind, a clock face,
hands that aren't hands,
numbers.

Seven.
Eight.

Voices wrestle.
Your voice, your voice again.

Nine.
Ten.

Over.

Now, remind yourself
to exhale, see how the scene
becomes clean,
how it felt to hold in
such a temporary thing.

Look at this, I said.
Chalky expanse,
lonely, untarnished decoration.

Blush of cold,
branches rest as veins
atop a transitory skin.

Could be silk, maybe fur.
Winter discovery
like forgotten snowmen.

A footprint chime,
high note shimmering
through bitter liquid.

Murmurs of cobalt,
tongues of white,
our fresh heaven.

In the end
we ended up in the pub -
now there’s a surprise.

Fifteen nights out of thirty,
at least. Cheap grub
and we knew the owners,

mates of my folks.
‘All right pal?’, he said.
‘Not bad’, I said back.

Our feet ached,
my arms cracking like conkers
as I stretched,

got comfortable.
And then you mentioned
the C-word again.

‘But in a few years.’
A nod. A sip. The cool slither
of lager down my throat.

We’d talked, of course,
about it before. People
expected, assumed

a kid was the next step.
You didn’t like
my quietness on the matter -

you’d kick my leg, teasingly,
as if kicking the answer
into my body, my mouth.

Honestly? I hadn’t given it
much thought. A sure thing
was my regular line of choice.

'You know, I fancy you
so much right now.'
OK, so I don’t know

what made me say that,
but it had already zipped
across the table,

buried in her ears
before I clocked on.
I really meant it though.

I think your cheeks
went cherry red -
there was a kiss, I remember.

I’d answer properly
later on, the pub
a foggy memory

and that night, I slept
knowing I’d fancied you
from the first second we met,

and that the C-word
wasn’t as horrid
as I always used to believe.

dead bee,
   broken buzz,
black ball made of limp wings,
   cardboard-tube limbs.
it’s a schism,
   a fault in the system;
what or who did the deed?
   even the amber isn’t as lurid
as one would expect,
   now just a charred spot,
the life drained out of it
  like water streaming out

through a sieve.

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

Raindrops disintegrate dully
against glass,
a tumble of thunder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

freckle constellation
clouds like wet peach wedges

Tetris-brick walls
and mint green street signs

a woman
talks on her phone
by the dry-cleaners

a chef speaks Greek
hands coated in hair
swollen worm veins

students kiss
with their rosy mouths
serve arms for a taxi

buy a gun
stick of gum

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

traffic stomach-ache
kaleidoscopic car horns

your name
like drops of honey
so good

drops of honey
your name

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

exaggeration the word
   that   skips   on the front of my tongue

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

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

the sun fits between     two of my fingertips

     conversations swallowed
behind windowpanes
or          lost in the clouds

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

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

you bruise of colour
snippet of a smile
I cannot
          hold

     postman delivers
your   wispy   ribbons
of          silence

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

wonky     syllables
make for
          a wonky
     heart

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

On the way home from work
a man on the train sneezed into his handkerchief
and a woman next to him, maybe mid-thirties,
mangled her face into a state of disgust.

Two friends were talking football
as I turned onto our street,
one in a City top, the other with a ball
scuffed with the marks of many a lashing
into the north-west of a park net.

Our daughter was doing homework,
exam season, a cocktail of notes
scattershot on the duvet, and when I asked
do you fancy a cuppa
she said yes, so I clambered the stairs
and she asked me how work was.

The game was on, midweek match.
Two goals but by the second half my head, drooping
down and again down, laden with sleep,
so I left the last whisper of wine in the glass,
undressed, brushed the last remnants
of a steak and kidney pie from my teeth,
put myself to bed, my wife a hand away.

INSTRUCTIONS.

- Answer all questions. If you do not, please state why not. Failure to answer all questions will result in a fine of several thousand pounds (or whichever currency is used in your country), a pack of mints or a bottle of cider.
- Use black ink or black ball point pen or a purple crayon.
- You must not use a dictionary, unless the word ‘dictionary’ is spelt wrong on the cover.
- The maximum mark for this paper is 2,018.
- You are reminded of the need for good English (or whichever language you speak) and clear presentation in your answers. Illegible answers will result in a mark of minus 2,018.
- You are advised to spend between thirty minutes and no more than a period of eighty years on this questionnaire.
- Do not confer with anybody else in the room. If you find this difficult, move to an empty room or do not complete this questionnaire.

1. Can you do without your phone for twenty-four hours? Explain if you can or cannot, giving the make of your phone alongside the name of the last person you texted.

2. Is reality TV more important than politics? If so, name the last such television show you watched, its running time and the station it is on, as well as the name of your country’s leader at the time of your birth.

3. Does social media make you feel worse, not better? If not, please post a status on Facebook alongside an emoji of your choosing, explaining what you think of this questionnaire so far.

4. How many children do you have by twenty-five? If you have none, please state the number of times you have been asked if you have children yet.

5. Do you know the father/mother of each one? If you have no children yet, please skip this question.

6. Can you point out the nearest city to you on a map? If you can, well done and please move on. If not, please find the nearest atlas and leave a black dot on the bottom corner of the page that you believe shows the nearest city to your home.

7. Can you remember a time before Snapchat? If you can, explain in detail what it was like. Take care with punctuation, sentence structure, and grammar. Inaccuracies will be penalised.

8. What is love, really, to you? If you struggle with this question, please come back to it within two decades of the present time.

9. When was the last time you read a book and enjoyed it? Please note that a blog is not considered literature and you may be penalised if you choose to name one.

10. When was the last time you wrote a letter? If you are unsure, please see the attachment to this questionnaire which gives you a step-by-step guide to completing one.

11. Do you speak to people in person anymore? If you do not, please leave the room you are in and come back before the end of the day, explaining how your conversation or conversations went.

12. Do your parents know how you actually feel? Please bear in mind that, as your parents, they ought to know.

13. School’s not as bad as the real world, is it? If you are unaware of what the real world is like, you are advised to find out. If you have some knowledge of the real world, please elucidate on what the real world actually means.

14. Fishing for Instagram likes is a waste of time, don’t you agree? If you so wish, please write your social media links below, alongside the date you posted your most liked image and how many comments it received.

15. Why are you so obsessed with your looks? If necessary, please use the mirror and beauty magazines provided to produce a more accurate response. It is recommended you name your favourite Victoria’s Secret model.

16. Will you listen to a Kardashian more than your best friend? If you answer yes, please name the Kardashian you most admire and why your best friend is not as impressive.

17. Would you be able to cope on your own? To answer this effectively, ask everybody else in the room to leave for at least seven days.

18. Are you sure you know how to use a semi-colon? You should be aware a semi-colon is not to be confused with a colon.

19. Is Twitter being down the worst thing that could happen? If Twitter is down as you come to this question, please wait until it is working again before you answer.

20. Since when has fitting in been the best thing to do? Alternatively, write down your drug of choice alongside your favourite alternative-rock band active from 1992-1996.

21. Why are please and thank you now a goodbye and a gun? You are invited to search every student’s bag if you have concerns.

22. Is a cartoon character the president yet? If not, state which cartoon character would be best for the job.

23. Do you know you can’t avoid growing up? Please glue a current photograph of yourself alongside an image of yourself aged sixty in the space below.

24. Isn’t most of what you read a pack of lies? If you believe this questionnaire to be full of lies, you can scrunch it up into a ball and recycle it as soon as you’ve finished.

25. Whatever happened to that best friend of yours? The best way to answer is to find them.

26. How many people have you slept with in the past year? If necessary, use the calculator provided. If zero, please make sure that this is correct.

27. Can you remember their names? Take care with spelling, and be sure to mention their birthdate and father’s occupation.

28. Is it really depression or just what you want to call it? Please search Wikipedia for another suitable term if you stumble over this question.

29. When was the last positive news story? Tune in to your local or national news station and wait for such a story before answering.

30. How are you managing without your phone? If you are using it now, please state the number of apps you have downloaded and the current battery percentage.

31. How did you find this questionnaire? Please rate your experience on a scale of one to three hundred and fourteen, or if you prefer, on a scale of black to white, apple to orange, or Mr. Potato Head to Daenerys Targaryen.

Upon completion, unless you have choose to destroy your questionnaire (see question twenty-four), please seal your responses alongside these papers into a large envelope addressed to yourself, and post it first class by no later than nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

it begins with a voice

          intonation
               inflection
   liquid-like cadence

          whichever word glows best
at the time

and here are some words
     sculpted into a song

     floating jewels

               melody coming up roses

is this how we fall in love

     with a voice and a tune

a stranger’s face

which face it
          you can’t forget

I can only tell you
what I have told you before.

The rain drops
from the smoky sky,
pewter pellets.

It is quiet
except for the sporadic
crackle of a shout
from a neighbour.

The postman is a bloom
of red outside the window.

Straggly wires sprout
from my chin,
the phone rings
and nobody answers.

Headlines slide
across the television,
repetition.

Newspaper stains
my fingers,
a journalist’s black
perhaps inaccurate words.

Another day
becomes another day,
another month.

The sun rises
and falls,
indecisive light.

how do you stop them,
these pipette-fed ruby furies?
it is the escape that paints itself
in a shade of night,
a chain of palms away.
thinking makes it so,
   so right.
look how they stay silent,
mouthless ghosts,
floating
     and
   never
          fully
     formed.

let me tell you this
the numbers increase
then restart and you change
in increments
like the yellowing of a book
or erosion of a stone
if you must talk sit comfortably
with a beverage of your choosing
and say plainly
here I am
here’s the story of it all

let me tell you about music
about how Boys Don’t Cry
how I sit and let the melancholic
twang of a guitar
and ripple of drums submerge me
like a wave on a winter night
how the syllables of erstwhile years
still hit as hard as cricket *****

let me tell you about the television
the what we don’t need and reality
warped past the point of reality
breathing out the same few sentences
at midday and rat-a-tat of gunfire
on a street of sixteens
or in a dusty ramshackle of a town
now bounding into the spotlight

let me tell you about anxiety
about the bending extending
of my fingers
the inbound heatwave
at the front of my skull
the potentials that rattle
rainmaker until I hear my voice
telling my own voice off

let me tell you about the online world
the vanity that froths across the screen
strangers trying to be strangers
the illusions blow-dried primped
glazed over in a calorific gloss
or the pitter-patter of a criticism
that will unavoidably come
because it can
because this is how you open your mouth
when you can’t be seen

let me tell you about motivation
how it trickles like sand out of me
how it is steam on a windowpane
silvery and ready for me to play
but gone before the first curl of a word
is poured into place
I find naked envelopes everywhere
what is needed concealed under the bed
at the end of a lines-are-busy call

let me tell you about intimacy
to me an outline of a ghost
or an unidentifiable shape
like a face caught in a puddle
there goes a couple
in the first swirl of not-quite love
there are two teens
photographing the evidence
that they are a serious business
thank you very much
condoms instead of pick ‘n’ mix
holding a phone instead of holding a hand

let me tell you
this is how it is
or my version
different from your version
but the roots are the same roots
the premise about the same
do you have questions
It’s not a surprise and I told you
the numbers increase
then restart and you change
in increments

And this is who she is,
dancing in the space between shadows,
making squiggles on the windows,
singing when the toast sneezes
out the machine for me,
a bloom of strawberries in her bowl
ready for breakfast.

She calls me on my lunch break,
I ask how the painting’s coming along
and when I come home
she greets me with colourful fingers,
a shout of cherry on her cheek
and a cobalt wrist.

And she is the one
who puts up with repeats on TV,
feigns interest in football
but makes a great cuppa
at halftime, barefoot walking
back to me with a grin.

I know the blueprints of her skin
like my favourite book,
or a song from my youth
on the radio one morning
but I still know all the words.
It sounds good, just like it used to,
like it still does.

here’s the clunking throb of my heart
and you walk in from work
your hair a fluster of black strands
heels flicked off and keys
tossed into the bowl with a clatter

you flump onto the sofa
say nothing
but listen to the clunking throb
of my heart
and I know we’re both thinking
something has to change
but the answer is hidden
like a note under a stone

we breathe
and the traffic continues outside
we sigh
and the phone shrieks by the door

So this is how you
love,

hearts split
and shared -

if half apart,
            half together,

magnets that retract
into place,

the shape of your version
of us.

In a tunnel of darkness
you bring cascades of light,

lipsticked kisses
and your shoulder of choice.

There will be days in bed,
the languid yawn of sun

slithering across your skin,
a glint off the rings,

the shine in your eyes
as bright as the first time.

In your first, second house,
a toothless child wobbles on the carpet,

you’ll say
look what we made.

A son drips out monotone answers,
a daughter with her first serious boy

and you, as parents,
will proffer nuggets of advice,

as if spoon-feeding the tools
you have and they’ll need.

But, all to come.
It is the rise

and fall
of your song,

the hive of desire,
heartbeat buzz,

forever now
your diamond word.

And I, I clasp a glass
and you take what I’ve written -

here’s to us, my love,
our love,

the yesterday and tomorrow,
the painting we will create.

On the day the first of my friends marries
I am in my father’s car with another friend,
his partner, on a stretch of the A6
between our hometown and the hotel
where the wedding will occur.

It is an uncommonly warm evening in April,
no breeze. I am in a checked shirt
and corduroy trousers, an envelope
in my hand that contains a little something
I wrote just a few days before.

It is less than a decade since school,
sixth-form afternoons, but now my friend
is settling into what is expected of us -
a person to love, nuptials in a room
brimming with those I don’t know,

the obligatory search for a home,
the space between kids and no kids.
Two nights ago we went to the pub,
me and him. We laughed, he fretted
about the speech he hadn’t yet written.

He is a happy man, a ring on the finger.
I will leave them to it, to bask
in the first pumpkin glow of married life.
Tonight is about them, so it should be.
Look at our lives, how we move on.

you seep into my core

there’s my heartbeat
you know
as regular as blinking

the swatch of stubble
and Adam’s apple

the vanilla tinge
to your skin
as I drop a kiss
on your clavicle

there’s my heartbeat
you know
as regular as blinking

watching shadows
maypole along your cheeks

sun illuminates you
this is no illusion

the kerplunk of our pulse
inside our chests

there’s my heartbeat
you know
as regular as blinking

more bronzed

rectangular packets
of muscle
almost visible

underneath
another white tight shirt

the stench of deodorant
or aftershave
or cologne

or a cocktail of three

enough to send
a throng of blondes
in my direction

eyes like sapphire halos
cheeks that shimmer

phones infested
by a palette of pictures

all samey
all shots of a head
tilted this way
that way
back again

and if only
a little more funny

pouring jokes
in with your drink

giggles reverberating off
from the gaudy lights

looking so Instagrammable

we’d have fan accounts
by Monday
our own personal emoji

ITV wanting us for a series
and a blue tick on Twitter

you see it too
you must

and if you say

look babe
we look good together

I’d smile and say

yeah babe don’t we just

I walked along the shore,
   orchestra of shushes
as water slopped
                        across my bare toes,
jangle of pebbles
as I placed one foot
                                 in front of the other.

In the distance
                         the orangeade tang of neon lights
                         punctuated the view,
electric hyphens
from the arcades
crammed with Irn-Bru-skinned tourists
   there for a week
on this comma of coast.

In the winter          it is different.
A silver fug that sweeps the streets
     like the cocoons of a thousand ghosts,
machine jingles muzzled,
cafes only drip
                        fed with regulars
                                                     from around the corner
coming in to pick the horses
for the 2.10 at Uttoxeter.

The phone quaked in my pocket -
   my mother, calling me home.
I passed the sandcastle rubble,
   slobber of seaweed
   like the drool of a kelpie,

my socks speckled with sand
as I texted back
on my way

doing it
something
     something
the best word
for the indescribable

the way we dance
in the parentheses
of our love but not quite
     love
is what we have
never poked our toes into

oh it’s beanie hats
and plaid shirts
and your pearly body
in the bathtub
forgetting to sleep
     sleep
with our faces
against the 5am light
on the pillowcase
that cradles your smell
like treasure from the deep

     deep
into it
a game but not quite
slotting ourselves
into what we’ve said we want
     paint pots of want
and not the calendars
of our next time on

on we sail
coffee-shop babble
wet Wednesday afternoons
timid ****** of rain
on the windowsills
our twenty toes
fluttering in front of the TV
     TV’s a bad box of doom
we blot it out with our breath
the excitement that follows
our hundredth comma

fingers corrugate
wet footprint runes
waltz on the floor
L word
is lunch not love
the way it’s look
and not touch

dancing is dancing
     is dancing
is daffodil petal hair
is the half-smile of midriff
is the half-filled cup time to top up
is the knot of a hug
is dancing

strange hands
familiar cities
it is doing it
indescribable

haven’t mastered kissing
love
the way we imagine it
     imagine

The man rides by,
gas mask on mouth,
another man at the back
in the air-quiver heat.

Debris sprinkled
like an upturned board game,
unreadable dominoes,
Jenga bricks,

skeletal wires
that wriggle from
used-to-be floors,
a building pinched in

at the waist or flattened
by the palm
of a foreign hand,
now a crinkled newspaper migraine.

Three time zones away,
the crackle-static from the radiator,
low drone from the TV
as they frantically jiggle

their pamphlets
at a river of horses
that chug past in person,
on a screen.

Mobiles are hooked
out from pockets,
a choir of beers
hoisted and sloshed

between pancake-hat girls.
They have their own world,
as does the child
leaving school,

the bartender wiping a pint glass,
the single mother
driving out the multi-storey.
The news makes

a big deal
but all I can think
is we’re the same and so different,
so different yet the same.

Every afternoon on their way back
from school, they get a ball
and start booting it
across the park opposite
my house,

****** crimson ties slack around their necks,
black uniform untucked.
Kim comes at half three,
asks if I’m doing ‘all right’?
Not bad.

An episode of Minder’s on the box,
teeth popping globes of green
grapes bought when in town.
Then, an electrocution,
a name.

Ted. His features start to swim in my head.
Next week marks fifteen years.
He used to play once.
Striker. He’d score a belter.
I’d cry.

they don't notice
   but in this playground of love

as you smile
   into the lens
      and I take the shot

that captures a segment of a second

this is our beginning
   and middle

the moment when we mesh together
   the way magnets clap together

or spaces between fingers
   for another person's fingers.

I am afloat in the flame
   we have made

the touch of you
   again
      
      and then again

my favourite melody

sing so the words
   are flowers in your lungs

give me your gold

   you are golden to me.

He’s already in the room
when I walk in.

He can see me wringing my hands
and a grin half-bananas on his face,
as if he knows precisely
how our conversation will go,

because everyone who’s ever met him
ends up the same way,
with a tempest in their skulls
and an avalanche in their guts.

He’s ordered me a black coffee -
knows it’ll keep me up tonight.
I crumple my fists under the table,
ready for the comic-strip moment

where I overthrow the baddie,
B O S H ! right in the chops,
but it’d be like punching concrete.
I’d come off worse, of course.

I tell him to stop playing,
that it’s gone on too long.
He sees me wringing my hands again
and a guffaw ejects

from his chest,
an ugly-bird sound.
How many times I’ve turned
down an opportunity,

how many times I’ve said
I’ll think about it
only to pass and watch the night
eke away as treacle down the sink.

He’s the blister in my life.
I dismiss the drink, get up to leave,
my only remark, ‘are you leaving too?’
That disgusting smirk.

‘Don’t be silly. We’re friends.’
Outside I breathe fast though
not out of breath,
my palms raspberry-pink.

He’s already waiting
when I get home.

We are waiting
at the foot of the stairs.
All afternoon
you have been hidden from sight
as women fidget with your hair,
paint your face with the latest brands
to make you more beautiful
than you already are
but say you are not.

The boy you have chosen
for tonight, this season, this life,
fiddles with his wrist,
impatient as the clock scuttles
towards seven, when you’ll
and he’ll be free.
The evening unfilled,
but no doubt dancing
will be involved, a kiss
under the lights.
What you could be doing
may keep me up half the night.

I shall not judge him.
I know his folks
and they’re good people.
I think over dinner once you said
he was on the basketball team.
A Bulls fan if I recall.
We don’t speak much.
He is merely doing what I once did,
eyes on the time,
suit and tie and the shimmer
of gel scraped through the hair.

When you arrive
the obligatory pictures are taken.
A smile, wide, a drizzle
of jewellery, a cyan dress.
He’s beaming, and why wouldn’t he.
Goodbyes charged with meaning
flicker in the room like lazy moths.

It’s seven when you depart
and on the sofa in the front room
I know this is the beginning
of the end, when you’ll say to me
you are no longer a kid
but of course, we both know,
you haven’t been for a long time.

and it is this that interests them more,
that captivates their attention
for a collection of seconds
instead of contractions,

an adverb insertion.
Outside it is a stop-start matter,
from a deluge of white wisps
to a sputtering shower,

and yet their eyes swivel to the window
for a moment, then another,
as if this is more critical
than how to spell beautiful.

these years go quicker
than you would’ve believed
five years ago

now the others
seem to be doing well
this one other

I look at the pictures
they have elected
to wallpaper

their pencil-case sized
portion of the web
and yes

between the shots
of leafy streets
meals reflected in mirrors

an emotionless selfie
one in every six
it is clear

they have gripped
the big city
or the other way around

and here
in your own mirror
straggly tufts of hair

glints of silver
sewn into teeth
thin crimson pitchforks

in the whites of the eyes
you wouldn’t know a life
like that if you walked into it

shook its hand
over a strangely-named drink
in a poky but affable bar

I’m running out of steam
not really running
or out
it’s just the steam I have
keeps pouring
from my ears or some other place
my mouth perhaps
stuttering white plumes
into the immeasurable air

I see these words
they are not mine
but I ****** at them
like a needy child
who wants a drop of sugar
on their tongue
avoided opportunities
line up in the mailbox
or come through
in a current of pixels
another wave
here’s another wave

and you cannot catch waves
they fall to rise
in the space it takes to say
what are we doing here

they won’t know who you are
unless you tell them
they won’t ignore you
unless you feed them the chances

your breath
rattles in the throat
your head a swarming oven
of half-baked phrases
and burnt segments
of many a yesterday

where you missed the mark
or never hit it

because the steam
that should exist does not

you grab at open doors
knowing you wouldn’t step
inside

I write your name
at the back of the book
because I know
you’ll flick to the end first.

Endings are the real killer, I say.
I have said before,
they are only ever coming
or artefacts of the past.

Don’t think about that, you say,
look at the clock,
its hands stammering on,
the time lost and now

lost again.
What will we become
if not whispers
in every hundredth conversation?

Here is now -
cup it in your hands,
or like so many things
it will be a forgotten echo.

After Hungary and Hong Kong
they arrive at last, and the crowd
stir from their somnolence to greet
the thirty-five behind one flag.

A splotch of blue on a ripple
of white, all ice-hockey players
in snowy coats and bobble hats
waving to the fans, to the world.

Euphoric pop as the athletes
soak it in, absorb the notion
of unity, of millions
of invisible eyes watching.

And does this mark the beginning
of an end? Perhaps          perhaps not.

James Hamilton Bruce (1st April 1864 - 21st March 1907), buried in Smoot Cemetery, Wyoming. A newspaper obituary from the day after his passing stated he was poisoned by the dried plum pie he ate for breakfast. Furthermore, a piece of this pie, fed to his family's cat, reportedly killed the animal within five minutes. He was a 'highly beloved' resident of the small town and is buried with his wife, the English born Annie Elizabeth Bruce (1868 - 1961).

The car brings us here,
another titchy town
with its one-floor houses
spread like piano keys
either side of the road in
road out.

A ramshackle barn
and pick-up trucks,
green ripples
of the Star Valley
beside us.

The vehicle grunts to a stop.
You say *here’s the place
- me thinking the place for what -
but we get out,
   stretch,
a wilting American flag
by the post office
our obligatory welcome.

You breathe in,
arms wide as if ready
to embrace where we are,
keep it under your coat.
Have you been here?
   Never.

So we walk,
see no face
bar a cat that slinks its way
through a square
of overgrown grass
oblivious to us,
tired newcomers to this
scribble on a map.

And then we are in a place
full of faces six feet under,
scattershot blocks of grey
tell us who rests here.
BRUCE,
a James H.,
21st March 1907.

A distant relation?
A swift shake of the head
but a story
gushes from your throat,
how he was poisoned by pie,
loved by the locals,
a father to many.

And we spend a minute
in silence
as that’s all there is here,
thinking of a man
we never met
in a place we’ve never been,

the clouds swimming
across the sky
like plumes of chalk.

we have travelled
to the place you go to
to get away

     this time
I have been reeled in
your thumb

   on my wrist
as we step off     the train
into a city

that isn’t home.

In the museum
the sunlight
paints your face

cobalt eyes
   catch mine
between the     echoes

of our words
and if there’s ever peace
   I believe

   it is this
among strangers
and paintings

in the place
you go to
   to get away.

So I walk in a little late, still high.
Groups of strangers on primary-school chairs,
no question that I smell differently.
‘We all know why we’re here’, the man declares;
forty-something glares behind her tall glass.
This week’s book, The Bell Jar, and so she reads.
A page down, ‘would you like to go now?’ Pass.
I think of my ill brother up in Leeds
as her pretentious voice clogs the room.

What a state of affairs, what a life. How
it is what it is, it is what it is -
My brother says that a lot, back at home
or he used to, at least, long ago: Now
he can barely drive through small villages.

Fad leis seo a thagadh cairde agus lucht gaoil an té a bhí ag imeacht chun na coigrithe. B'anseo an scaradh. Seo Droichead na nDeor

Family and friends of the person leaving for foreign lands would come this far. Here was the separation. This is the Bridge of Tears

so let us go to Falcarragh
where I kiss you by the corner
with salt on the lips
and a mouthful of chips

where my ma wants me home
by eleven at the latest
and the neighbour’s dog slobbers
its love against our cheeks

where we meet on the beach
with braids of seaweed by our feet
and the wind begins to jive
through the tangles of your hair

where we share a drink (or three)
and *sláinte (more than once)
on the crossroads of yesterday
and the rest to come

say goodbye by the bridge
with my hands in your pockets
our tears specks of memories
we scrunch hard to keep in

twenty years
since the days of maroon
jumpers tucked in
black shoes
golden time
and a thin blonde fringe

I look into the still
second circa 1998
faces of future
troublemakers
a lesbian
an ex of a friend

words non-existent
that would become
existent
like flowers
bursting
into the millennium

and long ago
split
marbles that roll
in different directions
same names
another age

century before
a time not sure
ever lived

And here we are,
blundering through the cold, dark
early weeks of the year,
flames from the fire
growling up
the walls
at the King’s Head,
our local.

Inside we’re the jokers,
knocking them back,
lager in
our mouths,
a bwah-hah-hah
noise
between old songs
and the lost-count-which-pint.
Questions blurt     out
but we’re on
the razz,
sozzled.     A mate turns up
the volume, which one
I don’t know, lights
swirl
to x’s, white pinpricks
and would
I like another?
I slur out a guhon then.
We’ve all got
the zest
for more.

slowly          slowly
then in the space between   seconds

cerulean morning
shade of silence

my throat
or rather all of ours
on mute

raindrops
with their stop-start
arteries
on the window

it is an age
of invisible money
trickling into
strangers’ hands

burgundy bedsheets
box-sets

names that flicker
on and off
as if shouting them
across a lake
in high winds

twenty-five
a week before
the year of the dog

should be bounding
into things
with electric fingers

but they’re at work

and slowly          slowly

snooker’s on the box

are holding hands.
I think
they think they are
in love,
in the eye
of a glorious storm,
with aisles of x’s
in text messages,
a wink that suggests
anywhere but here
is better.

The babies of
this century,
maked-up more
than the generation before,
flecks of snow
in a blizzard
of pimples and kisses,
condoms and phones.
There is no jealousy,
just a shift in the times,
a jolt in the system
of snotty noses and whispers.

They look happy, at least.
Love, or something like it,
a blossom in their lungs.
Now, I wonder,
walking,
if they know what comes.

dipped your locks
     in a *** of gold,

beautiful as a haiku,
                                 cryptic as a silent night.

I’m the clock with
a faulty second-hand,

my days made
          with rings of mist.

          now,

I picture your voice,
          hear your skin,

names pile up
                       like a tower of cards

                       but the hearts aren’t real,
they never have been.

     sing all the colours
     the rainbow forgot.

I dip in my pen,

          write the words

                                      you’ll never see.

is this what your voice is
voice is
a teardrop in the space
where a puddle should be

television static
you know
I’ve tried
to get a picture to form

shapes and colours
and delicious sound
but still only
on the screen

moving talking
a time that isn’t now
I want you present
with your mouth

breathing out
words I can swallow
a real wrist arm elbow
real clock

real time

Then there’s the attire.
You spend hours checking yourself out
in the mirror, the drool across the floor,
******* of your dress
and the ******* smothered in lace.

Step back, look at that face.
The realisation seeping in
like blood into a bandage
that you are almost ready.
A cast of a hundred or so
seen-once-in-two-years
with eyes on your eyes,
the cold finger ringless for
just a few seconds more.

Here it is then, the moment when
you settle down
as a child clambering into bed
for a parent-read tale.
You have chosen this man
with this face and these hands
and he will do.
The search cannot be continued.

In one month, an argument.
In one year, a child
after the umpteenth round
of relatives' questions.
The story writes itself
and oh how plain it seems,
the predictability like gone-off milk
makes you want to gag.
But, you say, it’s how it goes.
How it goes.

The woman asks if it’s the one.
You’re flummoxed for a second -
the dress or the man?
Yes, you reply.
I think so.