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

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

I’m in a queer mood.
The leaves make laughter,

the stars waltz into
a glimmering white stream.

Kissing is funny.
Why do we close our eyes?

Is it an ugly business?
Specks of sugar

form a hopscotch pattern
on my upper lip.

The grass throbs green.
My fingers swell

like creamy numb tools.
Am I touching you right?

Does it make you cry?
And now another feeling,

raindrops explode happily
on my skull.

I store my worries
in opaque jars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

oh
wondrous
you

among
the
wreckage

came
from
nowhere

to
my
eve­rywhere

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

the picture

sloshes into view

like a wave on a beach

you haven’t discovered yet

there’s a tree outside

whose leaves quiver

like green flames

and there are books

on the coffee table

worn at the middle

from finger-flicking

in a lake of boredom


you are clinging


onto a voice that radiates

out from the walls

but you don’t know

where it’s coming from

but like a note on the piano

or the branch of rain

that leaves a slippery avenue

on your windowpane

you want it to stay

so you can hear it again

the cool cadence

flooding the room

The Seine a tongue of midnight ink.
Montparnasse, a tepid August night,
star-bundles like quartz-splinters in the sky.
     The Dingo bar the place.
Jazz coming from somewhere, melody of mystery,
throng of conversation and smoke,
grey curlicues swaying above our heads.

Hemingway, feuillemort shirt, telling me I look rough.
   ‘You sleeping well?’     ‘Well enough.’
   ‘That wife of yours is pure mayhem, I tell you.’
The same old chatter. Besides, Isadora was worse,
cradling her drink as if a glass of jewels.
Then he was onto his Pamplona jaunt,
a heat that careened off from the streets,
undulations of warmth in the air
quivering like whispers.

  ‘Look here, we’re the best writers in this city
   when you’re not gallivanting over to your wife.
   Two women, one body, you know it Scott.’
I sighed, ordered another gin.
‘Transparent poison’, Ernest said again.

On the way home, faded trill de trompette in my ears,
night thriving to every pocket of Paris,
fields of unidentified liquorice flowers.
Young and in love - young with intimacy
skittering around our bodies
like delicate bees.

Tell me who you are

Oh I am hoping
to grab your voice

and keep it
alongside mine

so we can talk
     look how we can talk

it's not pretty
but maybe

this is how
it can be fixed

fixed enough
for everything

is just a bit
broken sometimes

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

you bring the crimson
makes a system skittish
foreign electricity
in staccato arrivals

X marks the spot
seems fact over fiction
but your code unravelable
gridlock enigma

the heartbeat knows
mystery loves mischief
though years become strangers
rainless scraps of cloud

no better should know better
adulthood in lowercase
when we meet French lullabies
may I drink from your throat

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.

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

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

After my round, Karen
leaves early. The revision
won’t do itself, she says,
and we know she’s an
all-night crammer, we’ve seen
the textbooks thick as a brick
so we groan but know
needs must. Our tongues, fuzzy
from lurid orange *****,
heads starting to pound
but we all, those left, agree it’s time
for vinegar-blotted batter,
salted sliver, steaming grease
in a puddle of papers. They’re open
till late, I say, the only one
yet to stagger as our one minute
walk begins, laughter lost
to the night. Tom asks why
haven’t we done this before. Beats
me, we just forget about time
don’t we, it’s like there’s not
enough of it. He half-drunkenly nods,
the blinding glow of the chippy
reeling us in, thirsty for money.

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.

off the plane
and the word marriage
alive on your tongue

another with
another
spilling bits and
again

you take their hand
not the other way
around

both say no
but I know yes

yes
offered silence
black water
in a bucket

drink it like whisky
scorches my

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

And there it was.
Static streak of animal,
collecting feathers of snow.

I came across it on the walk home,
frozen bite of early evening
scrunching my bones.

Almost hit him with a foot,
my eyes adjusting to the sight
of a defunct hunk of fur.

Eyes like bullets of liquorice,
slack jaw and an ice-cream scoop
wound, a flush of sickly crimson.

That night I thought of it,
fantastic, an orange flurry
between trees.

A day later, with rock-heavy eyes,
a head swollen with cold,
I walked the way of before.

People nodded hello,
the path draped in a translucent drool
but the animal had gone,

hauled from its bed of death,
its memory a blemish of ruby
on a beach of boundless white.

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

You're the one who suggested
the park picnic, obviously. We got the food
from the M&S at King's Cross after you’d arrived,
wearing the bracelet I'd bought you
for your thirtieth half a year ago.
You really didn't have to. I knew that,
but did anyway. Happy tears flashed
in your eyes. In mine too.

Although we both know, we ask
how we've been. Much the same as always.
Work colleagues fancy a drink
on Fridays - it's a pass. Skin’s breaking out
again - it's hormonal. Turns out we're both
reading Emily Henry because everyone else is.
Falling into line with the masses.
Bookish FOMO, you say. I emit a giggle at that.

A group of others play football nearby;
tote bags for goalposts. I doubt a wayward kick
but I move the share bag of cheese
and onion closer to my crossed legs.
I almost don't hear you ask really better now,
I worry you know. I know you do but again,
my throat becomes clogged. I never tell.
The light licks your shoulders and I think of drinking
the sun one day without rosy blotches
on my skin, heartburn on the hour, every hour.

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

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

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

morning donation
like blobs of memory

remnants of night’s mischief
sets green ablaze

with transparent poetry
transient grammar

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.

Look
I’m not sure
what to say here
about this picture
maybe it’s the colour
you painted your nails
or the way you are awake
but in a position ready for sleep
regardless there is something delicate and silent
about this picture and the way that you look and so
I thought that I should tell you that
even if these words don’t breathe
in the shadows of your mind
for being strangers is such
an indefinable sickness

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.

I put the drink to my lips,
bookcase brown,
not quite up and at them
at this mid-morning hour,
disjointed murmurs of strangers
ordering coffee,
the soft thrum of Saturday chat.

For a moment,
my eyes fixed at the map
that adorns the wall,
I feel myself shrinking back,
my head a *** of blue
nothingness, before
a flock of images

pop up like blood
from pricked fingers,
material that could be used,
a splinter of a half-told story
but no siren yowl,
more a coil of smoke,

and so it goes.
The flow stops, I thunder
back to where I was.
A child’s cry scorches the air.
I slip in and out of conversation,
picking up snippets
like the metal claw in a grab machine,

unfamiliar particles,
a peculiar curiosity,
a whirring like clockwork
of the recent expeditions,
how it felt

when you kissed her,
and the fizzy burble,
little glob of ruby
of what hasn’t been said yet,
or if it ever will.

One day
you'll turn over
in the bed you bought together
in the bedroom you rent together
surrounded by items
that are now 'ours' and not 'mine'
as the first light
stutters across her cheek
and you'll wonder
if this is how
it will always be
the grey familiarity
infecting you
like a go-to drug
that doesn't do the job
so well anymore

You're off again
and I'm left with residues
like fingerprints on a frosty window

I see bubbles everywhere
all too temporary
awaiting their rapid deaths

you're part of the transparent clique
glistening - unavailable
another noiseless vanish

(her name washes up on the shore
my private shipwreck
except I'm not the only one
who knows
there's no blue smudge on my thumb
from where she spilt her breath

blossoms elsewhere
stop yourself before the vowels
bleed through)

and you choke on the smoke
of your past

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.

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.

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.

When I think of you

I think shampoo and strawberry ice-cream

weekend tangerine sunrises

atlas of freckles and new rain on cheeks

my hole-strewn t-shirt against your skin

so it’s like I’m there with you, almost

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.

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.

so this is it
jumped ship
or whatever it's being called
these days

I feel myself
falling
Alice like
into a murkier space
than before

where the silence
gnaws at my brain
splinter of a twinkle
heavens above

quite obvious
what's happening
ignorance that flares up
like a blanket of acne

an excuse that drips
quick from the fingers

your game is peeling
from every corner
and rolling the dice

ain't as easy
as I found it
when you spoke
with an actual voice

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

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

life
segments
through the letterbox

a horrid shriek of sludgy colours
or always cooking
in the oven

friend to stranger
words to page
quiet to quieter

Am I an eagle
with aluminium wings
in the electric night
or the mad man
watching mosaics
melt into stained-glass puddles?

Look into my bloodshot eyes,
speak to me in that Spanish susurro
and tell me to fly,
          tongue of lightning /violet horizon,
or I’ll be seeing colours in bubbles
dancing a marinera,
a manic stalactite-white grin
I’m not in control of wriggling
across my whiskered face.

who's crumbling?

is it me
not me

who's running?

not the man
drenched in the dark
his feet don't move well
don't work

who's moving?

maybe every person
who isn't you
doesn't have chains

who's talking?

unknown voice
they might not
have spoken before

who's answering?

ghosts perhaps

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.

say 'love'
but you both know
it's anything but

let me tell you
about the names
I keep silent

the gap that exists
and never shrinks

could've been that somebody?

now somebody
else

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.

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'll take you up
on your suggestion
to dance
in spring meadows

and even if our feet
are bare we'll wear
silly smiles
on our faces

because it's this
we must remember
when the days thaw to blue
and melt to black

the ignition of a touch
familiar as a pulse
young spinning tops
in the parentheses of our love

Mentally I am at Phillies with my final
coffee of the evening, milk
frothed to perfection, a woman
in a cerise blouse who greets
my eyes with a noiseless hello

but this is not 1942, no
salt shakers and once-
bitten sandwiches.
There's a child in a red puffer
who waddles absentmindedly,

the spittle of his bearded father
I can almost feel fleck
my cheek. His tired cherry-lipped mother
pointing a finger, then
another, mouths opening

as if operated
by an unseen string and strangers
who scoff at the hawks in the room,
both jolted by each other's next barb,
with a toddler oblivious to art, to

shades, to the thorns his loved
ones drape across their throats,
this spat like a blot on the canvas
of my afternoon reverie
where I need a stronger tipple

and to make it home before the rain.

After the water’s tantrum
the colours

begin their seduction
of the sky,

blurred crayon arch
pouring into trees,

cloud flossing
before the tumble,

choir of shades
to marvel the young.

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

Ten years on, he left flowers where
she rests. Said the same as he's said
every year since.

When his eyes stopped stinging
he came home, fed the cat,
pulled the old green motor

out from the shed, began
swimming the lawn. She would be
on the bench now with a lemonade

and one of those puzzles she liked
to do. An ordinary afternoon, and if
she got stuck, he'd silence the machine.