My head against your neck, I am breathing you in. I am breathing
                                                       ­                                             you
                ­                                                                 ­                   in
and I feel transported to somewhere that isn’t where we are, your shapes welded into my memory as though building a house where each brick is another moment. A moment. That shimmers when light slathers its face, that quivers with a sound when we speak of things that nobody else needs to know. Doorbell rings, dog bark, jangle of rain on the roof. Our spider web of memories a pearly glisten. It’s nice to be an ours and not a theirs. Sunflower voice on my lip.  This is a private matter, a fragment in the shadows where we play play play. You are my shadow. My shadow. Magic dust, body of the night. Touching you is like a snowflake wickedly intricate in my palm. Look at you in my midday dreams, a spicy smirk, bringing your own brand of pandemonium. Bloodshot eye red, a day on fire. You don’t know you do this, no no, ain’t that the way. I still breathe you in. Ain’t that the way. Inhale, inhale, I say your name as if its clockwork, regular and there, my seconds, my hours.

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

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

washed clean
for the premiere of another
year plus one

will the voices now
untangle when the tide
brushes them in

swimming through seasons
effervescent
a new glow you emit

and you tick and you tick
cast a new sunrise
into ****** waters

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.

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

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

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

Night-time looking
over the Liffey,
slate grey artery,

flurry of merry music
like a band of castanets
still in our ears.

The cèilidh at Shannon’s,
man with a bodhrán
and a pint of tar

at his elbow,
girls in skirts
a blizzard of colours.

Róisín’s at UCD
but tonight, here,
the silky lilt

of English
pouring from her
emerald throat,

her hand in mine
as a crew of mangled gobshites
stumble home.

We swim in our jollity,
BYOC (bring your own craic)
in the city

where three times
in the 90’s we were kings
of the castle.

You say your father remembers ’62,
when I look in your eyes
you say coinnigh mé anois.

What’s that mean? I ask.
Hold me now.
And I do.

Your lips taste of Guinness,
my head foggy
with you.

maybe now it begins
     the dust made a home
     on the half-halcyon years

enough easing in
     they'll be expecting you slowly
     but consistently enough

to chalk up the highlights
     that make a fulfilled life
     alone or not alone

but with an always orange glow
     flame tilts to change
     wax drips to history

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

now it’s camaraderie down
the plughole dry pint glasses
and an unstabbed dartboard

as this Parthenon of chalk dust
played host to its last epic
clash of the amateurs

baize blessed for the final time
many-houred conflict of breakoffs
and ***** shots

a throng of fortunate bespectacled
punters quiet for the final frame
all back and forth

‘til two unknowns outside of town
shook hands proclaimed a draw
MORE the crowd cried

playtime was over but they’ll always
remember this tussle for the title
in the multi-tabled hall that sleeps

where an angry scarlet sign
on the entrance doors bellows
NO ENTRY to the memories held within

morning donation
like blobs of memory

remnants of night’s mischief
sets green ablaze

with transparent poetry
transient grammar

We’d only seen her
a week before.
Appeared fine,
cradling her cuppa
as if a freshly-plucked apple,
a library book
chapter down
on the little wooden table.
You wouldn’t have thought it.
It was hidden,
like a forgotten photograph
slipped inside a fading album.
She laughed,
the skin wilting around
the fingers, the veins
like roots sprouting from within.
I was going to call
when the phone rang,
the shrill signal,
that ugly brick of tragedy.

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

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

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.

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

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.

As I wait for my name
to be called, it starts
to rain. Slowly,

stuttering at first
but then a downpour,
thick grey sheets

hammering onto the windows,
as though the whole building
is being peppered

with paintballs. A woman no older
than me enters, her coat slippery
with the sky's remains,

blue umbrella like
a dishevelled animal. The receptionist
says 'you poor thing.'

I wonder how many times
she'll say that today. The doctor
asks for me. He's running late.

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

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.

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.

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

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

So I drink
the voice from your throat.

If diamonds
had a taste this is it,

it goes down
so well. It goes down

so well
in mouthfuls that shimmer.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

oh your heart
is a space dust covered
beating rock

you want to be a comet
streaking to something
you only ever thought magical

comfort of not quite night
or the early hours
when the first stirrings

of strangers tumble
from tube stations
tiredness jammed in their eyes

let our blood swim together
delve into the day
like magnets dragging

moments in
planets among planets
searching for love

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Thirty pages     into a thriller
when she steps     out

blue-bikinied     beauty
water clinging     to her bronzed skin

like a t-shirt     made from opals
slick curlicues     of hair

and blinking     the sea away
body     a perfect pair

of inverted     parentheses
sand populating     between every toe

wet specks     that dribble
past the collarbone     between the *******

I am looking     at a moving painting
stupidly entranced as if     this was a Picasso

improbable     as always
but enough     for me

to put     the book down
a flawless frame     radiant and alive

and just five     footprints away