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

and that’s exactly right

we are made of filaments and zips

old buttons blue cheese and cheap glue


all we do is try to keep each other fixed

the fragments together as if we are vases

our pretty flowers severed and useless


I am swallowed by your dialogue

cool pool of letters and jet black gags

my throat muffled again squashed dictionary flat


what then the word for love among friends

perhaps no word only the sensation

the differences that swell similarities that chime

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

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

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

the bees engage
in their erratic dance
again

black ball jive
skedaddle round
flowered flutes

rippled heat brings
drink of summer
under sky blue

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.

almost a year on,
still our communication thin, brittle,
as if glass going back to sand,
our dialogue meagre, the words we use
overused for nothing new
has developed, our images ashen,
the corners curled up like petrified animals.

doubtful of a deluge,
doubtful of a return
to the occasional face-to-face
chatter of current affairs,
our throats dry from news deficiency
and the awkward drives home,
our hibernation preparation.

trying to sleep in our gyres of silence,
clocks with their ugly faces
like lurid sirens on the walls - 
tell me you'll come back to me,
in some way, some form, for I am almost
limbless in these fantasies,
the words you use as iridescent.

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

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.

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.

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.

when your arms form
a garland around my waist
I am unpacking the toiletries

first the electric toothbrush
with its accompanying charger
then the half-empty

lurid green bottle of shampoo
aftershave in its glass phial
cheap razor and deodorant

I tell you this feels like
one of those cheesy adverts on TV
and you say yes it’s just like that

so what
and I say so what back
and close our cabinet door

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

How typical that I have come to you late,
as if almost missing the capture of a spectacular
snowfall of notes,

a journal splayed open just
enough so I can memorise,
breathe between your fine lines.

- If I am to collide into autumn,
bruise my head with throbbing bolts and arrows,
you couldn’t possibly know

how I want to absorb your disclosures
from a speck of planet I’ve never been,
the words healing me like tears of silver medicine.

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.

If pink
is the softest colour

I shall bathe in carnations
every morning

the steam from my herbal tea
dancing out the open window

I.

blankets of mist douse
the garden with bluish tinge
chilly night again

---

II.

another Christmas
plagued by masks and boosters though
brighter days ahead

---

III.

extraction of gifts
from their jackets of paper
hands at the ready

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

pastel puffs
cloud dust like green fish ghost
somnolent in water

under violet bruise
twinkle-stippled
mirror to elsewhere

where brown murmurs
unearthly exhalations
and crimson dagger

punctuate unimaginable space
****** drip glow
as stars take their first blinks

Once again, stranger, I am thinking of you,
atop that hotel in Catalonia
on the cusp of a new wave, 
sun blazing, streets like a hive,
the fizz of euphoria.

The first time you ever held a gun,
made in Oviedo, the M1916 Mauser
slung over one shoulder, a glint 
of a smile on your face saying nothing but 
more than enough nine decades on.

Crow-black hair,
uniform with the sleeves rolled up,
face of anti-fascism
but you didn't know it,
nor did you know the hotel

your feet graced would be gone
after bloodshed, your later years
in the French capital,
the photo of you stored
inside the crucibles of time.

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.

splice of sky
like a nerve pinched
to nick the horizon

     temporary fissure
     thorns that blind
     make the whitest tears
    
storm illuminate
with electricity lick
missable schism

    but for its remains
    protest from beyond
    as though disturbed sleep

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.

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

Oh if you don't stretch you'll rot
and if you don't talk you'll sink

what a predicament, a quandary
with that rainmaker sound
counting down to the final trickle
when you offer nothing that glows

there'll be faces drenched in confusion
and you'll taste the shadows
so familiar but like oil in the veins

give me that dynamite answer
stop the gurgle of decay
leaving you with a limp

let the responses pour forth
a fountain of spot-ons
or close enoughs

between one or the other
revelling in the *****
of a moment
that has been well rehearsed
or drowsy in the clasp
of some strange blueness
that coats itself
over my skin
like a viscous
odious paint

there are tricks you know
that I don’t
sleight of hand
misdirection
tell me because I am in a stupor
tripping through the best years
repeating familiarities
friends are ****** in by the shadows
or swallowed up
in the whirlpool of marriage
or trickles of intimacy

I told you it was like this
one eye on the phone
one ear on the words
nothing is shocking
bar a ripple of a shudder
normal service is resumed
but I told you it was like this
didn’t I
oh you went silent
don’t blame you
if you forgot

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.

Now the dark
ripples in

charcoal black
silent waves

and we are
christened by

the eclipse
mute motion

like a swallowing
gloomy deluge

but only
the day’s cessation

skin shed
installs night

brings end
to start again

Yes, I have the keys,
my coat pocket, left-hand side,
you know this was quite pricey
and I don’t usually go for pricey clothing
but I think the bedroom light’s still on
so I’d better check. We’ve lived here
going on for fiveyears now, the wallpapering
was the biggest issue, the light’s off remember, not
the actual slather-on-paste-job-done, no, choosing
what felt right, said ‘play it safe’ so a light blue
is what we went for my keys are gone,
they’ll be in the bowlby the door. The game
will be a *******, relegation battle, it usually is
with us, I’ve been saying for ages the kitchen
window might be open sorry, relegation
and we’ve needed a twenty-goal-a-season
striker with thebedroom light’s stillon
my keys might be in there too. If we sign
somebody in the transferwindow’s shut, I knew
it was, the link-up play’s tight, wecan move up
towards mid-tablemediocrity I think
lightisoff
mustremember that now keys
noideathough ah the bowl. I’lljust grab fastfood
for my window’s keys
fordinner, not healthybuteasy I did shut
the window I knewIhad was it bowlforkeys,
no sillyofme coatpocket, notcheap no not atall
healthy comeonhow often doIeatburgers chips
notevenvery tasty bowl, rightthen
I’mreadyifonly lightisoff
knewI’d remember.

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

the sun is just
lovely. just lovely.
tennis

with cheap racquets
in our white
slip-on

shoes, pauses for fizzy
liquids, to swipe
branches of sweat.

so lovely
the sun and I could
let you captivate me

here for the rest
of the summer, then another
summer if we

keep doing
the things we love
to do now, if we poorly

play tennis in the sun
and don't forget it is lovely.
this. summer.

The air dense with the prospect
of something quite dangerous
but delicious, the way
a body sways in shadow, memories
on the floor in a many-limbed
black knot                    but someone’s skin and
someone’s skin touches in
the space between strobe lights
with a movement fluid, sensual,
snap of a signal,
electrical, audible pulse and temples
in sweat sets them in motion,
a parallel language
spoken with the eyes,
fingers on waist.

Love me in twenty-seven different ways

your selection box of methods

each one as tantalisingly exciting as the next


what blue words are pouring forth

oh I have done it again doing it again

your ruby red downpour could stop this


splitting egg headache but I know

you know how to call a truce

call the whole thing off


paint my skin in whispers

that you shouldn’t be afraid to tell

and I shouldn’t be afraid to hear

You know the morning comes
with the ridged mirror thumbprint
post-shower, a buffoon on the news
with his breakfast’s semi-skimmed
still lingering on his lip.          Oh! There’s a wedding dress,
white mascarpone tones put the nation
in a hellish spin… They’re miming
about this online, believe it,
their history teachers know it
and they shoot their cars up with paracetamol;
doctors say it’s the best way
to keep the numbers
down to single digits.

Girl boy something other, you’d better
check those socials because
a no-faced stranger may incorrectly spell
mascarpone, how ***!! stop it you look,
not the waxy sheen of your blemished
history, and the rain, those scrawny
black instruments are done for,
we shimmy in semi-skimmed now
because the movies said so
and you must believe every word,
each glitzy syllable is like
a paracetamol shot,
you’re missing out, you’ll forget
so I’ll say it again, not really
‘cause you’re reading, you’re missing

breakfast’s ready.

Because Mondays are
bulging bowls of satsumas,
first nugget of sunrise
or an apostrophe of flame,

and Tuesdays are
a row of blooming hydrangeas,
tall glasses of blueberry juice
or a last swatch of sky before night,

then Wednesdays are
a chubby lavender bush,
Parma Violet streaked teeth
or punnets of plump plums,

so Thursdays are
a pile of squashed rubber ducks,
frozen smile bananas
or the hemorrhage of an egg,

but Fridays are
a grass clippings mountain range,
eczema-skinned avocados
or skinny grasshopper limbs,

whereas Saturdays are
a ladybird’s speckled coat,
spoonfuls of pomegranate blobs
or a mushroom umbrella,

while Sundays are
a snowman’s **** belly,
globes of vanilla ice-cream
or a candle’s last word.

Just as Matthew Broderick kisses Mia Sara
I inadvertently spill a blob of wine #2
on the sheets, the alley between
my pyjama-d arm and your **** leg
and it is then I decide I will not go
into work tomorrow, stay home with you
and continue decorating the spare room.
I know it's not relevant now but I ask if
you prefer Nordic Sky or Enchanted Eden;
the former, you say, quizzical.
I nod, smile just a touch, return to the film;
Ferris's dad almost spots him, but not quite.
You don't notice the tiny stain;
I have the best night's sleep in months.

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

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

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

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

I’ll go AWAY AWAY
           sensation of growing up
AWAY for regeneration        razzle-dazzle new me

            migraine thunderbolt     give way
            AWAY to cold air
                                      gulpfuls under
stars   AWAY   nightfall’s unreachable token

if AWAY means AWAY means new
   faces
   means I’m not the I
I was   cannot be   anymore

   it’s cherry fizz     between synapses
burbling blood      AWAY   with
   my intimate thrill

                got to get AWAY
like properly AWAY
                rid angsty clots
years leak if
                        you let them

AWAY is the way
     must be a planet
           whose only frosted   touch     is     mine

   stagnation is   a no
AWAY to fresh   sensation
like skin     of     a stranger

I.

fog-clogged atmosphere
naked unearthly structures
loom with static limbs

---

II.

crispy chunks of spuds
gift-wrapped meat nudge sliced white bird
paper crowns for all

---

III.

to next year thoughts turn
last days unfurl post-Noel
with dawn's frosted tongue

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

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

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

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

the flames
are engaged
in that wicked dance again

licking all spines
with buds that scald
carnival of scars

each shameless twist
gift-wrapped in yellow
every coppery belch

a steaming stench
into rust-daubed sky
its silent gesture

rampage of hollowing
tongue-heavy haemorrhage
laced with ignition

monochrome tragedy
scene-piercer see
shock eye

by cube’s dawn
hand of flight
drown fire

with petal of light
ashen funnels
double phantom

from sword splinter
flower birth
trampled soldier

prism-chasm
horse nostrils
quotation mark

baby pale
for anguished mother
vision droplets

pyramid ear
white bull
dagger-tongued

Seven years later
the first thing I mention is
how your glasses are different.

The barista, chestnut hair
and weak masked smile
is biding her time, for uni beckons.

I scald my tongue,
you un-knot the evaporated events
I never knew existed,

condense them into digestible chunks.
That boiling ring of honesty
like a blister in the throat,

to tell you I’ve filled my life
with farcical reveries, sleep
that stutters like a lorry in traffic.

A child, plaster-wrapped finger,
***** on a purple bottle.
I wish they’d stop looking over.

I would tell you but I treat this,
stupidly, as though a date,
our initial, perhaps last tête-à-tête.

You haven’t heard from them.
Exactly, I think, almost say.
Why would we.