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.

Again he is raking the leaves -
flimsy rusted shapes
made slick by more rain -

One of the local boys walks past -
raises a hand in
a muteless greeting

and the raker holds
a gloved palm up in return
and wonders if his former

schoolteachers are still
living. They would be a century
old now, if not more.

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.

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.

The image shows
a pink corkscrew,
confetti petals
chatter down, around
in matrimony, static
splinters that fizz at
****** junctions,
jugular welt to
frills of magenta
make a blushing cheek,
pucker trumpet that
shoots from contused
marble eye.

these four walls
better than the back of my hand,
better than the staccato of my pummelled heart.

A newspaper I didn’t buy
tells me we are going up in a yelp of smoke,
those who endure left to select a disease.

Now my nose bleeds,
the phone chirrups and there can only be
rotten syllables on the other end, whispers in the back.

With eyes daubed in lethargy,
I watch you move. Half a clock later
and you’re miles gone. I would say I’m surprised

but no, I’m not.

gives the poem momentum.’
Tuesday afternoon seminars
and your photocopied stanzas
are like ***** shots to me. I don’t
say this, a spaghetti-haired boffin
opposite mentions pentameter
but I almost drool at ‘fizzle of static
the luscious shock, / honey, think
you’d taste like candy canes / waltz
on my tongue, my ruby

Bristol for uni. Last I heard
she’d got a PGCE, cushy position
at an Ofsted-says-good secondary,
good for her. The invite surprised me.
How many years? It’s all careers
and top-floor flats now with
the parquet floors, schamncy fridges,
not villanelles and criticism
meant to be constructive, comments
spiked with jealousy, and

A minute in, a cup of something,
voice long gone among the swill,
thud of a mid-2000s track blaring
obnoxiously through the top-floor flat
of the lad who played midfield
and his glitter-cheeked missus, who,
if I recall, moved from Leeds to

Tuesday.’ A lipsticked smile,
jeans with riotous tears.
Now I know what’s coming, the
pitiful shotput for attention,
the ‘truly marvellous effort
and the use of sibilance (insert
chef’s kiss sound).’ But I dither,
muter than a French mime,
hits me for six and I know
I won’t know you, not now or ever,
there’s never enough time

when I see you in the kitchen,
expelling laughter like it’s almost archaic,
the opportunity, missed, but all right,
it was indie-rock headaches,
cold in goal in the park next to Asda,
not a time to recite my saccharine lines
to a northern delight but I wanted to,
once, then, to know what might’ve been,
if I’d waltz on your tongue.

Perhaps a new year
only exists to show
the widening gap
between the what was
and what now is

the quiet reminder
that you go in differing directions,
but they all come with fog,
an unease you'll never shake,
a gloat, an unheard word,
a point of view you don't

waste your eyes with.
You are older now,
your youth only a faded,
bitter tang.

Atop the barn
a plump flicker
on two legs,

almost rusted
but for a monochrome
wing, a reversing

arrow. As it hops
along the felt,
a glimpse of its

taupe cap,
a sort of chain mail hood,
then a piercing

chirrup, a ripple
of giggles into the air
before the flight departs.

if a violet sky night
I strive to catch your name in the breeze
hold it like a child
or a half-finished song

the only touch to start
is mental, feel you in my vessels
and let my lungs bathe
in the promise you spoke

is this electric or just
ourselves getting used  
to new furniture, fruit and yé-yé
but Christmas not for months

by twelve we beg
to crackle with anticipation
a tear stain on an open window
one of us sockless, bleary-eyed

how I have loved what I have never known

these names that glisten like stars on a blanket of night

it is silly, I know, to swim in such matters

my mind a blizzard of moments splintering

in a million intricate ways impossible to explain

my heart is heavy and my throat clear of all words

and I think of your faces like a blue sky at sunrise

so unblemished so untarnished by my hapless errors

I couldn’t explain with the right expulsion of words

but know I knew how I felt

how right here in a place I am still trying to understand

you were present known and, yes, loved

I must be in one
of those funny moods again
(if funny’s even the right word)
          the images easy enough to pick from
          whether rinsed grey
          or blooming maroon
the sky somebody else took
midnight blue
with stardust pentameter
          I’m thinking of cold water
          you don’t mind bathing in
          somewhere in Scandinavia
a voice, yours or the last album
we listened to drifting to us
as we break the lake’s membrane
          and if not that (you’ll see)
          my indecision hasn’t wavered)
          a dress, a road,
a photographer whose name matters little
in a silent stretch of land
I’m half-dreaming of
          and I wish this isn’t some
          toxic desperation with its ginger sting
          galloping to the fore
but the words already here
collapse like trains of dominoes
in my head you wouldn’t see what I can

these are
the people
we know

used to know
and we
wonder

if they
think of us
now and then

a name
in the breeze
still drifting

years later
but what
would we say

that is
to say
do we care

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.

WHAT
• Oligarch
• on TV tonight
• minimum wage
• a prime number
• reduce fuel consumption
• might happen in the future

WHERE
• Treasure is
• to watch Euphoria
• hot in April
• next Olympics be held
• in Paris is the Eiffel Tower
• I can find happiness

WHEN
• The clocks change
• we were young
• I grow up
• Internet invented
• it rains it pours
• you wish upon a star

WHY
• Always tired
• feel dizzy
• eye twitching
• hurts to swallow
• I want to work here
• we should hire you

WHO
• My MP
• won the boxing
• Romans
• win Eurovision 2022
• the next James Bond
• Banksy

HOW
• The Queen
• make pancakes
• first human made
• I met your mother
• Earth created
• war end

Even though I have next-to-no interest
in borderline celebrities quickstepping
for applause, this is how your/our Saturday
nights trickle by. For others it may be
a back massage, a meal out with jazz music
slinking its way across to our table, but no,
for you/us, television, flatscreen. It’s easier, you say,
to order in, and though it’s not every Saturday
this time I made the call and I tipped
the guy ten percent, said thanks very much,
and that’s how now I’m sitting next
to you on our second-hand IKEA sofa
eating egg fried rice, chewy Kung Po prawns
in a slippery orange sauce, cashew nuts
and chicken from the steaming foil tub,
mouth a muddle of flavours as you
judge a dancer’s dress and give a score
out of ten as even I, surprisingly so,
become entranced by proceedings,
a smile appearing on your face.

What mystery magician presents
such liquid night? The town asleep,
cerulean bathed. Colour confluence
to make hieroglyph of sky, white
whirligigs with buttery pulses,
spirits in hurried conversation swim
through reeds of cobalt, past tall
cypress flame, black cloaked nuisance. This
and banana moon, cocked grin
awake but silent as dreams of people
drift like sapphire ribbons.

all the places I’ve never been
cannot exist

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

an image is somebody’s own
slant on the city

the pre-storm sky
bruise of cloud

a second-speck
that cannot be mimicked

I heard you were on the move
again

I gnaw the inside
of my cheek

the letters form
monosyllabic words

you have the real thing
I sleep with a globe

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

The father, pupils
on the tabloid
which would later

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

The mother, upstairs,
applying the swish
of crimson,

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

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

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

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

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

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

you did not suspect
but walked numbly,
shaking hands,

even the hand
of the man
who severed his breaths.

Wake up in Östermalm,     south to Gamla Stan.
I walk,
it is a cool day with albumen clouds,
rivers of snow gloss the streets ecru.

- Meet outside the bookstore;
Pippi Långstrump grins at me from behind glass.
The blue and yellow of the Nordic cross
prods out from a shop,     primrose-skin buildings,
streets riddled with syllables,
Västerlånggatan,     Tyska Brinken,
graffiti a ****** siren on the walls.

- ’75 the first time here,     Waterloo a year before,
birth of the famous foursome
to karaoke machines from Södermalm to south Japan.
And again,     new millennium,
a second time in ’16 where love was love
and peace was peace.

- Practise the numbers.     Seven is sju,
my mouth producing rare noise,
a wispy word between show and swear.

- We walk.
Splashes of island and butterscotch-haired teens.
A girl hums a Melfest song.
I toss a Sverigedemokraterna leaflet in the bin.

- The waitress could be Lisbeth and AVICII’s playing
and isn’t it beautiful,     you,     and this,
where we have found ourselves.

Ache of an absence,
half gone
and seeing phantoms
in the place you used
to be,

a vacant hook
where a sunny cagoule
would slouch,
handwritten supermarket
reminders

slapped against the fridge.
What it’s like to lose
a limb, dim pulse,
futile scramble
for meaning in the missing,

and the morning’s severed
yolk bathes little but
the wicked iced side
of the bed where a spirit
disrupts your space.

rise early
mist the first murmurings of morning
and the blue
smudged by a finger
to a dusty half-purple
half-nectarine sky where the perfect
blot of post-Christmas sun welcomes us

commas of snow
like the night shedding its skin
a chill coating our throats
but each inhalation a gift
a lungful of life

at the edge of any town
evening leaks out over green tufts
trio of circular-headed
pumps with no cars to quench

grass like a smudge of butter
nudges the curbs
lights threading shadows
where a man

back to the road
waits for another vehicle
to pull up by
the unswinging Mobil

red Pegasus to signal
here is where you fill

I suppose what I mean to ask is
when will you get it,
when will the cartoon lightbulb
twitch its gift above your heads

so I can pour the little of me
into the many hands you possess
for approval, the scoring
of boxes that do it all for you,

and is it all worth it, I suppose
I should ask. Will you discard
like a bare crisp packet,
tasted and wasted, replaced

by a glossier prospect, the glass
of champagne pricked with bubbles,
and they can pour themselves to you
in a more delicious, refreshing way.

Getting back into the car
after buying
cookies from Asda,

a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
little bundle of brown,
there I say, on the fence.

Marbles for eyes,
tail like a question mark,
hair the shade

of twenty sunsets.
I point it out,
body half-bowed

as if to whisper hello
before bounding away,
swallowed by the leaves.

oh let me breathe you in
you are not the sort of flimsy thing
to be hung slack behind the cupboard door

but to be worn
even if holes interrupt your skin
or a merlot stain looks like dried blood

on the front
but believe me when I say I might
need this more than what I thought

I might have needed before
so please let me hold this hold you
inhale you from the collar and down

the cosy black sleeves and maybe
that’s enough to keep me breathing in your arms
I want to know a little then a lot and start over again

so this
is the other side

insignificant
glide among stars

light-flecked
cloud corrugation

as if milk-dipped
slippery finger

land chunks
in mottled tones

erratic flashes
with violet feathers

and I can’t see you
but you’re there

somewhere
on the other side

The makeup, gifted to your girlfriend, looks
good on you. It’s not the first time. On the carpet,
they have to comment on you, ***** approval
to stay lean, keep you cloud-floating.
                                                                ­ First,
lightly dab the eyelids with azure
stardust, glitter strings like wings out
from the corners. White shirt may look normal
but is designer baby, season’s income
on skin-clinging fabric, enhances
your slathered-on nectarine tan, abs
the Peloton made.
                                 THIS POEM
IS SPONSORED BY V/AIN. LOOK HOW
THIS APP AUTOMATICALLY EDITS
YOUR PHOTOS BEFORE YOU EDIT THEM FURTHER!
THE WALL IS WARPED? NO BOTHER! CLEAVAGE
TOO SMALL? NOW SMOOTHER AND ROUNDER!
USE DISCOUNT CODE ‘SOCALLEDINFLUENCER10’
FOR TEN PERCENT OFF.
                                         The balcony offers
an ideal view for photos, minimum of fifty.
You know it’s like shooting a plasticine movie,
moving your glossy features an inch at a time because
one bad move means one less like, one less
stranger misspelling their admiration.
Each emoji is a pellet of sugar, each five-digit
paycheque another two-page spread in the city’s
many gaudy rags, another slap in the face
to the barista making ends meet.
                                                           Oh who cares
darling? They serve, and so do you. The mirror
salivates at your sight, lips out, stench of wealth
enough to make any gaggle giddy.
Parade your brand of vain for the next-in-line,
Fahrenheit on the rise, the influence
on the ravenous nosebleed-inducing.

sorting out
the loft
in the fuzzy black
aftermath days

the owl
liquorice eyes
glares at my
torch-in-hand

you remember
the pub
used to have
a fox

mid-skulk
streak immobilised
we wondered
why anybody

would want
a stuffed body
static animal
figure of death

but somehow
handed down
to you
burnt toast wings

on wooden plinth
popped in the loft
‘till now
‘till your departure

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

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

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

I'll hold you in this stillness
where the cusp of the world is a peach
and the distant flickers of chilled water
remind us of existence,          of a pulse.

what is the space between something that could be love,

isn’t love, the word for it, something that is just your own mind

playing a trick, telling you that yes, you are, for want of a better word,

falling, body tumbling down the very steps to your Technicolor dream,

where, in reality, the world turns a shade of beige, bruises erupting

like little violet volcanoes, and you realise it was all a vision,

your interpretation of what you so desperately believed to need,

but on it goes, your staggered fantasy, your ingredients for love

but there is no word for it, love that isn’t love but you feel it so,

like a hard squeeze in the chest, that elusive, addictive make-believe.

I.

cold winter morning
windscreens glazed in silver dust
pavements and grass wet

---

II.

crew of coloured shapes
clamour underneath the tree
concealed for now

---

III.

and the food comes in
steaming green vegetables
spuds like chunks of gold

Спорти́вная
- My first thought is how clean the place is,
how swanky, perhaps that’s the right word.
- This isn’t London or New York that’s for sure,
marble walls that could be made from banoffee pie,
blue and white quadrats for the floor,
patchwork of tiles making up the ceiling.
- Eight hundred rubles for a week, barely a tenner,
Moscow’s take on the Oyster, just cheaper.
- My mate of fifteen years has Henderson on the back,
I’ve come as myself.

- A crew of fans gush out behind us,
- flags made into capes.
- Two own beards, great hedgehog-type beards
taking over, stippled ginger,
another has a drooped trophy slapped on a cheek.
- They are already singing, if you can call it that,
adding that extra syllable, a staple of the patriotic chant,
IN-GUR-LAND.
- The Croatians in their classic tablecloth-type tops,
 (Modrić x2 and Mandžukić x1)
look aghast, probably whisper their own version of plonkers.
- Congested, headache already brewing,
needing fresh air before the Mexican wave.

- Лужники
- My first thought
is that the view isn’t actually that bad.
- We’re fairly high up, middle row,
sandwiched between Brian from Bolton
and a foul-mouthed Mike
from Welwyn-Garden-City, I think,
but I’m getting into the spirit,
my mate already shuttlecocking half-xenophobic jibes
across the pitch, a paper aeroplane or two
gliding, colliding into backs of seats.
- Anthem is maudlin, Croatia’s more jaunty,
and then the players are moving like felt-tipped beetles
across the tongue of grass.

- The free-kick goes in after a while,
cheers a chorus of roars
that zip into the cold Russian air.
- Strangers shoulder-shove, voices sandpaper coarse,
that blasted tune ringing out
from the mouths of a raucous English bunch
in many an old Umbro kit
swamped with sweat and blots of beer.
- My mate can’t believe it, he’s got a tenner
on 2-1 to us, a modest bet.
- Mike from Letchworth Garden City
is bellowing out the scorer’s name
each word croakier than the last,
one hand crushing the lions on his chest.

- дополнительное время
- Our first thought is that penalties
are coming up, our foe, our football swine,
but on 109’, the guy from the back
of that earlier guy’s shirt flicks out a limb,
pokes the ball past our keeper.
- Mate goes ballistic, his face
on the brink of full-blown beetroot,
while Brian from Bolton appears mid-coronary,
too whacked to crank out a sigh.
- A bloke to the right, a few rows down
jokingly mentions Hurst.
- This brand of heartbreak we know well.

- Later, surrounded by smokers named Dmitri,
shots of Smirnoff and the dull ache of knowing
four hours back to Heathrow awaits,
we’ll reflect on the could’ve-beens.
- Mid-sloshed in Red Square, more my mate than me,
(he’s a tenner down after all),
mumbling Qatar in four years under our breaths
while Croatians tumble through
this giant cyst of a city.

Then I am eleven
playing Asher,
a cricket-ball-stung
hand, swimming pool
trepidation when
everybody else bounds in
with shouts that rocket
off from the tiles.

Then I am sixteen
and our deputy head,
on the brink of expelling
tears, leaves when we do,
an exercise book graffitied
with wish-you-wells,
faded shirt acrostic
in blue marker.

Then I am eighteen
complimenting a stranger
on their coat (now they
are a poet), stitches
for buses in the place
they demolished,
first attempt at a villanelle
in a room of twenty.

Then I am twenty-six
and a friend starts
to share a life
with a signature, online
ultrasounds, letters from
America, a manuscript,
library-printed, spiral-bound
posted north for a score.

Then I am twenty-nine,
coffee in hand,
reeling off names that haven’t
lined my throat for a decade,
reduced to pixels on a screen,
you doing the same,
wondering where they went,
where we are going.

When the time comes
to prise open the plastic
tomb that encapsulates your three
tiers of soft biscuit-toned sponge,
the creamy middle stratum
with pinkish strawberry streaks
I take a crew of old plastic
candles used for this occasion only,
lit, wished and blown upon eight times
previously when poked in cakes
of yesteryear, **** them in the snowfall
sugar cloak, spaced out, baptise them
with flame until their flickers
extinguish and your ninth birthday
burns on, mutely drips into a pocket
full of your own past.

You don’t know how long it’s been,
a leftover, how many times
my chalky residue, the what remains
after the batteries run down,
has glided through these rooms,
liquid silk when you’re sleeping.

Pearlescent appendages,
no junction of veins, heart-clunk,
see through what once was
a sac of odd-shaped blobs,
viscous memories gone to condensation
as if fiction, recycled in silence.

No wonder you feel the chill.
An anaemic blur down the stairs
unsurprisingly frightens but know
it’s only my gaseous way
of trying to live, the only way
to breathe to leave ellipses of smoke.

you get thirty likes for one line

-----

love is banana pancakes and pyjamas

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

falling is only falling if your head goes before the heart

breath is the unwrapping of a memory

your eyes are the rainbow kind of blue

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

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

the clock cannot talk but tells me everything

sleep is the wicked playground of echoes and black eyes

do I like this what me you like me this

So I’ll let your garland of notes
glide over, heal me as if
the pinnacle of medicinal
discovery, vibrato in my arteries;

even the bass, its storm-cloud
laconic dialogue
can be a remedy, prescription-free
pipsqueak blue drops,

each cymbal hiss
a swig of thick ginger fluid
will calm the throat but
keep my heart revving over;

the glass is raised, melody
you give in waves, a tincture
applied to cool, a salve
to channel salvation.

and it says plenty
enough now
placed ahead
of a breathing soul

what odd limbo
to be drenched in
though a *****
of expectation

makes a private
red welt
or silent sinking
for your second best

now I must rediscover myself again

stretch the muscles, crack the bones

set the synapses back into action


what dazzling names will now come

to paint my throat, to whisk the mind

into some new year tornado


and the gap growing between us,

the existing handful, pinches of dialogue

that filter through the lightning cracks


sleep peppered with age-old blunders

what’s to come, a dull game

plagued with fanciful guesses

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

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

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

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

I.

unlikely there'll be
a white Christmas once again
when was the last time?

---

II.

streets are quite empty
but inside trees remain up
Brussels sprouts steaming

---

III.

socially distant
but there's a sprinkle of cheer
at these trying times

In the space between
the slab of land I am from
and the place you’ve never been

I have tugged the rental car
with its hoary exhaust
to the side of the road

the heat assailing me
like a faceless boxer
with flames for fingers

and I see a trio of vehicles
windows wound down but unfilled
the drivers inside

this tumbledown café
the sort with a plump waitress
gnawing gum and spraying flies

but the drivers, yes
wolfing down a hastily-half-cooked
brekkie and a sand-coloured cuppa

before trekking the countless miles
to whichever terminus
they’ve fed to the sat-nav

and outside I inhale hot air
my lungs leaden somehow
as though you clasp my ribs

from a distance
to let me know you wait
and I am another seventh of the way

to you
in your air-conditioned apartment
with the cupboard teeming with tea

That’s what they called this place,
flaking crucible,
immemorial immobile figures
gawked at by a deluge of tourists.

A German man sidles past
as we edge towards
the main attraction,
multi-limbed citadel.

I imagine the Propylaea
pricked with stars, the dagger of light
that cracked it open,
awoke the commas of fire.

We circle round.
Like a chalk house.
Here, where Athena,
frame of ivory and gold

surveyed all,
Phidias’s maiden
with Victory shimmering
in the heart of her hand.

Soon we discover
the Theatre of Dionysus,
lemon wedge
of staggered steps,

chipped thrones of marble.
Now, the thrum of many tongues,
the words of Aeschylus, Thespis,
inhaled by the Athenian sky.

will try to be good
hold your hand in thunderstorms
lightning in your name

---

will try to be good
ask the trees to yawn their limbs
reside in shadow

---

will try to be good
sync hearts to rhythm of night
drizzled desire

---

will try to be good
set our ellipsis alight
tomorrow’s burning

---

will try to be good
repeat as though private prayer
breathe holy sunrise

At it for five minutes, maybe six,
and we’re watching them both
from our go-to spot in the King’s Horses
across the street, transfixed
by this unscripted drama unfurling
before our eyes, a right old spat
between, presumably, students
on the lash, straight outta Camden.

I’m clutching my last fifth of pint
as if it’s the final swig I’ll ever savour,
the rest of the pub’s regulars and stragglers
oblivious, minds on the mundane,
such water-cooler coffee-machine gabble,
but we’ve tuned into the action,
silent theatre, much gesticulation,
coatless girls impervious to the chill.

I blink, I turn, a rookie blunder
for in that barely a second speck
you’ve flung the ready salted to one side,
a gasp spilling from your cherry-red mouth
as the chick on the left has arched back,
propelled a fist, thwacked her prey,
one hit and I missed it, the evening’s highlight
unrecorded with no live rewind.

Ten seconds pass. I have birthed a long sigh,
both felines having scarpered,
one nursing their wound, bruise to be.
I let the last, flavourless dreg of Carling
slide past the tonsils before we make to leave,
recover from the unexpected, single wallop
to the chops, Friday night morsel of excitement.
I chuckle about it, privately, as I head for a wazz.

After we have sweated the night away
it has come to this, myself, yourself,
a lamppost on the corner of Handler and Wilde
stained with the **** of many a dog.

Your cheeks, rivulets of black,
happy tears you said, your friends
for now and perhaps time to come, dancing,
heels like typewriter keys on the gym floor.

All Macarena-d out, panting
as though a Collie after a sprint in heat,
your found me two-thirds of a diet Coke down,
lopsided bowtie, pentagon hole in the shirt.

No kiss, but small talk. A botched triple jump
into the limo, hands linked, already spooling
back through the hours, the slow dance,
the walls dappled blue, a memory like all before.

Now the kiss. Brief. Nothing more.
This too, a memory. For a second,
marriage and children lucid theatre in my head.
The reality something else. I head home,

you wave and we're gone.

and it rings, and rings,
each shrill chirrup like a triumph;
your defeat, multiplied.

This is my own unanswerable riposte. A month,
almost, has passed. I know it’s you.
Once, accidentally, in a frantic, slapstick
dash from the bath, I made the blunder
and your voice slipped into my ear.
Your pitiable way of saying it was a mistake.
I presented you silence, gift-wrapped for free,
dripped back to the tub, each wet glyph
another step away from our despicable was.

Still, it rings.
I imagine them as punches to you,
not soft blows but great, leaden thumps,
a ricochet of knuckles on cheeks,
of these rings off from the walls
I deliberately, deliciously ignore.

Every quarter hour, a jolt,
a quick think of is this childish.
After all, at this hour and age,
must I resort to letting this black reptile
hark for my attention, coffees
gone cold, the LPs supermarket-queued
on the table we bought
with your mother's vouchers.

But yes. It rings, again,
I have lost count now the times.
I know it’s you.
The hour hand
pokes ten, the dog twitches
in its pool of sleep.
Still, darling, I provide my answer.

Over a year, close to two.
I am passing through for work
and to see a friend,
our communication meagre,
reduced to pixels on a screen.

Rue Sigefroi, one of the city’s arteries.
Clotted cream buildings,
concrete mugs clogged with flowers.
I see French, German,
the country’s own compote of the two,
umlauts sprinkled like confetti.

He has invited me for coffee.
There is a gangly embrace,
smiles blooming on our faces.
Wine bottles, maybe empty
tickle the top shelf,
books half-blotto behind the sofa
where I sit as he orders, my face in the mirror,
all wiry hair and pips of stubble.

The cup comes accompanied
by a dice of brown sugar.
Immediately he invites me for dinner.
A gasp hurdles out of me, stupidly.
I accept. He tells me this is excellent news.
We fill in the spaces
of our ever-growing crossword puzzles.
As you do, a lot is glossed over,
metaphorically kicked under the carpet.
He has no intention of moving back
but his father, he says, is unwell.
His image cabasa-rattles to the front of my mind,
the man who introduced me to Prufrock.

- The meal this evening is pleasant.
His wife plonks a quetschentaart before me,
galaxy of singed plums,
a star in Van Gogh’s view over the Rhone.
An occasional judder of laughter between us.
The evening begins its routine for sleep,
the sky embarrassed with clouds
over the Alzette, our stomachs content,
our friendship granite-solid.