On the ceiling
or creeping out from behind
the radiator,

six brittle legs,
a body round as a
black Jelly Tot

or a miniature cylinder,
just enough to make you          jump
or eject

a shriek from your mouth,
this one double-clawed
creature you scoop up

with a cup, delicately
in case of a sudden scuttle, pop
back outside among the marigolds.

The night descended to that.
You, sunny side up,
queasiness inhabiting you
as if a change of season,
eyes damp with lethargy.

We planned to depart,
myself, a few others,
spilling well-wishes through the door
to your sanctuary,
dreamcatcher holding your reveries,
books like sentences of teeth
on your shelves.

I left, passenger seat,
with my language a glue in the throat.
The episode quite gone,
thunderous concert of silence,
only windchime giggles that filtered
through the dark.

It is what has become customary.
The bullet-point reeling-off of events,
each spark with its own named shade.
My hollow words missing the yolk
of conversation, vacant bottles
lost to the ocean, skin flecked with rust.

I ought to love you more,
this platonic, solid love.
Perhaps I should **** myself free
from the shipwreck, dust off
my catastrophes and breathe,
revel in your odysseys, let you know
my spoke of mishaps,
let us accept each other with clean hands.

There IS nobody to ask, you say,
when we turn our stomachached motor
up another wavy lane, temporarily
rest it as we squint at the AA Big Easy
Read Britain 2022, locate the B3220
and realise we’re in another
splodge of a town, homes in a hodgepodge,
the obligatory church. A mistake, we know now,
to leave late in the day, another hour ‘till
The Hole in the Wall where they’ll wait,
no doubt sigh, waste time spinning
the beermats as a gaggle of rowdy
just past-the-post teens blot the night
with the guzzling of spirits, their hangovers
like belches of fog come lun - Satnav wasn’t
on the blink, but it is. Now look, I say,
calmly because tempers can boil over
matters so trivial, if we take the A3124,
wriggle right at Whiddon Down
to the A30, breeze by Exeter, a doddle
down to the coast, we’ll make it by nine.
You know how impatient they are. Ten
minutes won’t hurt, the vehicle grumbling
into action, tired and miffed with our
wonky deviation. It’s then, eking back
the way we came, an image forms - a bronzed,
slippery chalice named Stella, flat cap
of foam on the rim of extinction.

And so,
as if the final
of the feline high jump,

our neighbour’s pet, piebald,
getting on in years,
sits on her side,

surveys its challenge.
Then, as if the crumpling
of ink-splodged paper,

she crouches, half
Fosbury-flops herself
up to the post, plops down

into our garden,
merrily saunters
across the rain-tickled grass.

I’ve displayed twenty different colours
                                                        to you

set myself aflame
or dunked myself in cold water

no not you
who makes the selection

myself making the choice
as though a t-shirt in the wardrobe

what you get
either side of a coin

take my apologies
in advance

never one
but often the other

You make me miss something
I never had, every crushing syllable
like a wave from a faraway place,

our footprints the day’s tale,
curling as though ribbons
into a drenched chasm of lost stories.

Just like all things, this must end;
photograph-faded, awkwardly torn,
smudged by a briny thumb

so the memory half-warps
and could we remember it anyway?
Maybe this is supposed

to be, just now, one of us
to explain with crimped fingertips,
the other gone before it began.

My father is saying nothing.
I know it, he knows it, and it is here,
the inevitable farewell but not quite.

I have told myself I am ready for this.

That I shall not be wrenching Bombay Bad Boys
from the shelves of an alien Tesco
to gorge on while On The Road remains unread.

That I shall not be downing shots of lurid liquid
with friends whose names do not yet exist
in warm bars where the toilets are pockmarked with sick.

I have assured him, and my mother,
and the punnet of mates I’ve accrued
this will not be my life circa one month from now.

The luggage has somehow trebled,
the back seat obese with a calamity of items,
an unboxed IKEA lampshade, unused cups from home.

In a second, a pat on the back,
a proud of you son, perhaps, isn’t that what Dads say?
He will worry, but mustn’t.

I think of my mother peering out the living room window.
Her eyes are flustered with tears.
The car seems to have stopped talking. I open the door.

At dinner I am retying my shøelaces
when yøu say ønce møre
gø øn, again
is what I hear
   what the waitress hears
as she dumps
anøther blønd-haired pint
in frønt øf me with a grin that clearly states
she’s telling yøu høw tø say that phrase is she
the three-wørd term
unsayable tø øutsiders

høp step jump
øf a phrase
the language fluvial
like a lake sluicing weeds
cønsønants like dripping water
vøwels that huddle tøgether
as if the cøld is cøming in
the irregular phlegmy intønatiøn

there are candles here
whøse lives expire in silence
a glut øf armchairs
where what cøuld very well be
the wøølly Jumpers expø
før the year cøngregates
triplets øf fingers running
thrøugh their straw-bløøming chins

despite the side-track
I still døn’t knøw why
the ø’s are impaled
my møuth and tøngue
haywire as if tøssed in the wash
the demøn shibbøleth
øffered tø me
and that tablespøøn øf mucus with it
rull grull mel fluøl

the wørds dribble øut
bunch øf slushy søunds
she laughs
says I’m a løst cause øn the matter
and that I’d be better øff with hygge
which is surely the søund made
when løng yawning in the mørning

What I have learned
is your body,

the fluidity of it
like drinking

a burgundy glass
of pinot noir.

   Forgive me for this February
   pink rainfall

   but the stars of you
   make an exquisite ellipsis,

   your touch
   my private voltage.

I dream
your eyes at night,

sea-sprayed freckles,
salt-blessed lips,

your smile a welcome echo
on my own face.

   Is love
   only learning?

   If so, teach me
   so I learn and learn again,

   hand be the compass,
   the heart an atlas.

I’d just returned home from the supermarket
and had put the bag-for-life on the table-top
when my mobile trembled. When it’s been that long
you do that silent slight stagger back action, at least
I did that Thursday afternoon, not quite able
to register the white pixels that had formed
your name, the jumble of numbers assigned to you.

So I answered hello and you spoke; I’m surprised
you kept my number all this time. You’d moved.
No, how would I know this, I said, sloping my neck
with phone sandwiched between cheek and shoulder,
draining the bag’s contents, when this is the first
communication in half a decade, if not more? Sorry,
but life got in the way. At that I could’ve yelled,

really let rip. Not one moment to call? Sixty months?
I knew what would unfold from your mouth next,
predictable as a non-White Christmas. I let you ramble,
I nodded though you couldn’t see, put bananas
in the bowl, grunted with each elucidation;
baby, job, car, sleep, money, partner, virus, repeat.
Then you said look, I’ll be in town, a few hours

to catch up over a pint, if you want. I could’ve said no
but actually, why not? Why not dip the toes
into that vast loch of nostalgia, memories like
jellyfish swirling below the surface? Could’ve called
you out on incompetency but maybe we’re all the same.
A Friday then, in two weeks, I said fine. I’d be sure
to remember. Just like you had remembered.

Now I am in/tense -
hy-per-activ-e sand-pit of at/oms,
     Take these breath Flames,
   paint the wa-lls with them,
your rauCous redec-oration.

Now I am nebulous, standing fog, canines of ice, vacuum me up in one brush so I sleep, sleep, sleep

Now I     am iridescent
rainbow of     unnamed shade
ribcage glow     and  letters
that hum     along doorways
as though     injected neon

Now I am sog
gy
wet dog
cheek
to your wh
irl
pool of whis
pers
that salt smell
net
tle sting

Now I am drowsy,
arid mind makes tumbleweed night,
digestion dilution,
an absent something;
bathroom mirror memories,
green fraction of a voice,

Down to this,
exposure that we, or just I,
never saw coming, for this did not exist

when I acted, chaotic and clueless
so long ago the memory
has puddle-warped around the edges.

Who for? To titillate the roving pupils
of a stranger, to express for a transitory
thrill, the static image your donation.

Now the ache in the stomach, latent
for years, spreads again, dull and stubborn,
my silly heart bruised in a way

these words cannot explain.

****
a finger on glass
as two animals

in the tank
begin to dance,
sepia tong-like claws

moving every which way,
an aquatic side-step
or frenetic tango,

slimy bodies
as though mossy rocks
come to life

before settling again,
their pin-***** eyes
on your giant irises.

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.

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

Every time a resuscitation;
what you have given me, always as if new,
the gift of a pulse to trigger mine,

your touch a rare, true thing,
exquisite among the dust
of a thousand expired days,

like a flame that scolds the frost,
your kiss the echo
in my creaking crucible.

If this is to be the rest of it
then your fingers
must be against my skin

like I am a delicate instrument
you are handling as though
it is an unexpected present,

but you already know
the correct notes, in the right order,
how to awaken me.

I swallow your silence,
the one ubiquitous drink
in this maelstrom of ambivalence,

see-saw of coming and going
as if elastic bands
snapped back

before we clinch what we need.
If I think, submerse myself
in the small pool of memories

in a sixteenth of the brain
occupied by you, I can almost recall
the waves of your voice,

each inflection, and your face;
now that, honestly, tricky somehow.
The weeks become a sludge,

each day with its own
carcinogenic tint,
pollution plumes.

What date shall I red-circle, our reunification?
We’ll clutch at our throats,
gasp at how little has passed.

what has become of this,
maybe to arrange the words before me
attach them as if a jigsaw with
no picture or meaning,
no analysis necessary
for before you know it,
they dry, start to crumble
as if made with the cheapest materials,
not to be seen again
by any pair of tired eyes,
minds wasted on what could’ve been.

On the first day,
there's a Pink Floyd prism, instant coffee,
the kettle at the back of the room, walls
with their primary-coloured displays with frilled edges,
words like 'spectrum' and 'clauses'
in a cursive font.

Someone is set to call. At this time
(8:36), I am alone, glue sticks suffocated
in their ziplocs, coloured spheres on a screen,
a board with the date, numbered.
Then, chatter. Tenerife is mentioned.
Somebody is blossoming.

It is the glassy unknown, mornings
to birth with breaths of fog, seeing the Co-Op
at the end of the road instead
of the bedroom ceiling. I am thinking
of seven years ago, autopilot, a dip in a park,
all of it, the years gone, time going on.

I will post you my name.
I’ve been meaning to.
That way I can stain you

like blackberries would,
a fresh, juicy punnet of them
bought that very day,

your lips stippled violet
and the single syllable you read
the dizzy sprint of sugar.

I capture you,
upturned blur,
feet pressed to the panels
that now hold
your moving murmur,
like a separate soul
in a dimension caught cold.

Shout and a sound
lost to the elements,
snaffled by the breeze
over snow-dipped mountains,
sky washed eggshell,
grass an uproar
of unlit matchsticks.

With a crack and a glimmer,
glass floor fissures,
feels the weight of our stirrings,
your red boots ablaze on the surface
of this something fragile,
frosted imitation, almost
as if it really knows you.

You've got yourself a cold one from the fridge when I call.
It's April again and the clocks changed again
didn't they and I haven't heard from them
in months now. I think they're all caught up
in their own personal knots or weeds as the time’s gone, going,
that hour away to the clouds. Those I knew I wouldn't know
now in Marks and Spencer, the multi-storey. Any memories
like puddles, warped. They, too, going to the clouds. It's lighter
in the evenings but much is the same; the chickens
with their sore throats, cheers from a distant football pitch. Something
is different though. Indefinable. Condensation on a window.
I agree, you say, as I hear your wife's muffled
voice in the background.

how much longer must I miss
what I never knew

twisted nostalgia like a drop
of lemon on my tongue

sent sugar-dizzy
   by the crystallised

thought of you
in that black dress

rainfall we knew   was coming
like another disappointment

   days become water
maybe they   already were

their silence     bruises me
in new yet   unsurprising ways

I am assaulted
     by their     idiocy

you wouldn’t believe     me
if I said   this was a     slip

     my head the     forest fire
   the drought     to     come

you the     flood
     I foolishly   crave

Prom is two days away
and I’m telling Charlie to get a ******* move on
because this equipment won’t set itself up
and that his **** guitar needs tuning
for the billionth time
and that we only have time for three songs
(the three that we’ve been practising)
in his uncle’s garage for the past month or so
and how we need to get a **** move on
because we’re faffing like stupid flies around a stupid light

I am the drummer
at the back whacking the cymbals
   Charlie’s front and centre
all Jagger-strut spit-flinging
giving the microphone an earful
   Paul’s on bass
body popping like Flea
fingers red-hot fiddling the strings
half pro half nervous tic

the staff have given the go ahead
first track’s a la Jerry Lee
beat careening off from the gym walls
rockabilly kick that’ll pull the girls
away from their ******* phones for a while
then we’ll segue into something more grunge
Kurt Cobain half-slur moan and groan
that’s if the night hasn’t slid
into some hazy hive of idle teens
awards for most attractive
most likely to end up on reality TV
doled out before the limo back home

that’s when they’ll blink at their ceilings
in the first dustings of morning
their ******* bodies aching
from robotic dancing and kebab shop crap
know the names that danced on their tongues
will vaporise before long
and you know
I’ll be one of those poor suckers
but first there is rock followed by roll
if we get a ******* move on

The silence stops it
from burning out, from you
snuffing out the dream,
the pile-up of scenes
isn’t a newsflash catastrophe
but a merry-go-round
of luminous make-believes,
could-soon-be-reals.
     It all depends on what you fancy, really,
     whether it’s my form, my dyshidrotic fingers
     knitted with yours on the maiden date
     (I’m free whenever)
     or if the typecast appeals more,
     Mr. Fifty Abs with his thousand followers
     chiselled for reality TV
     in a way we’ve seen before, creosote tan
     and judging others in the gym; even his speech
     could be made from sweat.
If this is how it will stay,
so be it. The seasons will squash
the unreal, allow us both to swim
in the ignorance we already bask in,
my mouth bereft of sound
when you approach, my name
never the bead of sugar
on your tongue.

after much deliberation,
you’ve decided on eggs
for breakfast.

standing by the counter,
eviscerated yolks in the bowl
fascinate you.

I offer, you slowly
churn the lemon mush.
four hands

then tilt our concoction,
dash of pepper, full stop of salt,
into the pan.

cooking solar system
coagulates, cloudy creature
you eye up

as I flop it onto your plate,
fork ready set
to burrow in.

I see you awkward dancing

and somehow I am thinking of myself

two to three decades ahead of time

rainbow strobe lights and 80s synth-pop

headaching in my mind as though the first time

a missed opportunity like trying to catch

the sun before the horizon snaffles it first

and here,
stream of hemispheres,
primary shades panoply
for a ceiling.

deluge protectors
with their many spindly fingers,
fronds of blue, of green,
colour wheels bobbing

in an early spring breeze,
innumerable tails
with curls like little grins
down the street, and beyond.

Take me where your voice
is diamonds
but not diamonds, not really,
not as hard

but hopefully you know
what I mean,
a place I can smilingly float on
your lyrical clouds,

where I can taste the stardust,
where rain murmurs
on my tongue like a hundred
secrets

and Saturdays could be Sundays
or midnight
is our daybreak, orange crescent
sunlight on your cheeks,

so I can inhale as though
it’s something new,
an invention my body just made
and how delicious

to have your daisy-chain of words
or some other’s words
but from your throat, you know,
to breathe in,

sanctify my lungs, my brain,
I’ll thank you for it,
tell you they remind me of jewels so
I can keep on getting by.

If you are to know the shell
of somebody else,
the taste of their mouth
as familiar as breathing,

     you are to swell
     with the installation of life
     within a fistful of seasons,
     (they’ll use words such as ‘glowing’),

and you will raise a hand
to shield yourself
from the gush of paper hearts
we’ll drizzle without a second thought.

     You are to settle in
     to bargain supermarket wine,
     the infrequent date night
     with no toddler caterwaul

and I will say what I always believed,
that the moment you disclosed it
was the moment that I felt it, again,
start of a sever, a languid dissolve.

Ponte Sant’Angelo,
my thumb brushes
her crimson emblem.

Images slosh in my head of her
cycling, channelling
her inner Hepburn,

sleep and poetry on the steps,
talcum swirl of a *** and raisin gelato,
tiddlywinking a Euro into the Trevi.

This is stop four
on her grand tour,
gap year girl

glugging the lingo. I touch again
her Ciao in curly black,
her **, her airmailed red peck.

I’m sure I was once told about the ocean floor,
now believe me, I see it,
am living there in the unfathomable blue
and black, as though the wasted ink of the world
is a swarm meant to hold
the very lost, the going and gone.

If my throat is dry, forgive me,
for there is little left that shines,
has been rubbed to an almost-new sheen
for my language has shrivelled like fallen roses,
the dreams, waterlogged, a charcoal tinge
creeping in at the corners.

Perhaps it is the next necessary,
to douse the lungs in the spent blood
of everybody who has come before,
for there is no swimming, just floundering,
a fallen mannequin with a hyphen of light
one stretch too far away.

I'm thinking of the sea.
I think we both said it was the clearest
blue we'd ever seen. OK, where you're from is lovely
and I know the place quite well now but
April’s are generally grim though not
where we were in that month, that year.
It was only my second time on a plane
and as it was a cheap deal we both said go on then,
let’s do it, and we did. You turned twenty-two
that week. Wore red and sang the song (poorly).
We found tasteless cupcakes from the ugly
supermarket down the road.
Laughed at how silly it was. No candles. The owner’s
tabby cat for company. You went in the sea again
the next day. I can remember the way it clung
to you, dripped off from you like little jewels.
I think I was close to being in love then. Yuck.
A painless vaccine but you know it's happened.
Strange, I suppose, how the smallest thing
makes you realise the massive. I knew it for sure
when you looked at me, handing over
a second two Euro lemonade of the morning.
The clearest blue, the sea
in your eyes. Every time.

the coffee
is so nice. it is
so nice,

so nice,
kick of cardamom.
girls play

beach volleyball,
white globe
arching, arching,

side-fist-bump up again.
severed pomegranate,
crimson insect crunch.

forgive me,
I started drinking
without you.

you say
shalom,
your eyes the blue

of the sea,
your hair
a flood of coffee.

Sadly, the balloon leaves you,
its featureless, almost silken face
wobbling like a toddler in the cold,
the sorry string devoid of hand.

I am not the only one to notice.
Up, and further up, this hollow
blue-skinned sac rises,
a rogue comma against sky.

Now you only know what left you,
cheap, fleeting colour blush, nothing like
what will leave you in time to come,
how your cries could pierce the night.

we eat strawberries at the table
in our underwear and the television
tells us we’re at war again, by which
I mean not specifically us, but you
know what I mean. I have left last
night’s still half-full glasses by the sink
because we might go back to them
and the drink itself was expensive
enough. As you pick another ruby
***** from the bowl I think
I get it now, how not to be
jealous of others, of their closed doors
intimacy. It’s different when you’re in it,
head-first, sugar-rushed, red-mouthed.
There is rain forecast for today;
already pewter clouds are behind
the windows which means any plans
we might have made are almost certainly
scuppered, but at least the two
of us are together, for now if not forever,
I suppose you can never really tell.

It’s probably best

to keep matters simple

and say that I love summer

because you are it

the tall cool glass of lemonade

sunflower with its happy lemon petals

somebody set it on fire
somebody ripped the match

trio of wedges
Irn Bru orange

speckled with cherry
on a canvas of night

I am calling
from the flag square

near the building
constructed from crystals

this could be London
migraine of chalky lights

a revolving iris
far out across the bay

I’ll be home soon love
I know it’s strange

that work has dragged me
to this unpronounceable land

sweating skeleton
spilt milk network of streets

upside-down e’s
c’s with çurls of cable

and I hear the muffled diction
of EastEnders through the phone

can picture you
in strawberry-lace-

shade-slipper-socks
glass half-swollen with wine

the space on the sofa
where I should be

Four nights a week, one thing only: pool.
The cloth ain’t great, ***** scurrying to the cushion
every time, cues skewed high as we feather the white,
chalk up another foul.

Tonight though, an epic night.
The culmination, attend one and all,
old guys with dodgy hips, teenage mothers
with their children’s cries high among the elements.

Final few frames of a marathon encounter,
the east coast’s known nothing like it.
I select a gleaming cue, send the white
careening into the triangle of notes.

Crucible of sweat. Back and forth
between swigs of squash. Left-hand side,
a smashing *** to the top right leaves the black,
my opponent seeing defeat like a neon Vegas sign.

Stick between thumb and finger, the kick
and slip into pocket. A cheer leaps out my mouth,
claps echo between the grab machines.
I meet my opponent's eyes. Another tenner

is tossed across the baize.

Baby, you know I get lonely,
like now I’ve turned the stereo off,
heaved the car into

a slot by the pumps
but I have your name, its letters
in your marque of handwriting

upon my irises,
so when I go to feed the
snow-baptised vehicle

I think my hands work but no,
heavy numb from an absence,
there’s water in my mouth

or a little blood, a man
stupidly asking if I’m all right
but I can’t make out his face.

when all is said and done
whose body will be next to my body
this unexpected wondrous being

to pilfer kisses
blemish a cheek with a breath
and say it will only ever be me

and I will cup the words
as they slip from your tongue
pretend they are strings of pearls

the
     children
          in
     the
park
     are
          chasing
     stars
again
     the
          dog
     lolloping
along
     all
          tongue
     flopping
spit
     chucking
          sky
     is
a
     tapestry
          of
     blueberries
and
     giggles
          fill
     the
night
     hunting
          all
     the
teeth
     the
          fairies
     pinched
before

October 1888. Oil on canvas, 72 x 90 cm

Slaapkamer te Arles. Not really.
‘His own ear?’ she says, a twentieth time.

A Wednesday, fortnight before Christmas.
Her idea. Evening flight out of Gatwick.

I’ve been before. Amsterdam that is,
with the lads, before the grind of Year 13.

Pure banter? Far from it. But the chemicals
jived in our lungs, made us all skew-whiff.

This week it’s been Anne Frank,
koffietijd and stroopwafels five at a time,

a bartender called Luuk plying me
with Heineken. Liquid emeralds.

Anyway, the painting: forget-me-not walls,
golden bedframe. Then onto

Sunflowers, or in French, Tournesol.
Turning with the sun.

‘His own ear?’ I hear again. I say really. ‘But why?’
I sigh, wonder where the knife is now.

Honest? I chose at random.
Got the grades, managed to squeak
through the door.

After three days, I had a girl.
Well, I say had. She weren’t convinced
but I’d got time.

Her name: Rhiannon.
Yeah, like the Fleetwood Mac song.
She loved that one, typically.

I was more a Zeppelin fan.
This was pre-punk, pre-White Riot,
pre-kids, house, diagnosis.

Runny eggs at the caff for brekky,
hungover Saturdays after a Seagulls defeat
at the Goldstone.

I smoked, quit, smoked again.
She got a peace sign stabbed
on her right shoulder-blade.

Some point later, I’m in a white room,
white man. Oesophageal.
I got the one I can’t pronounce.

I’m pinged out of the reverie
by two girls, one humming Waterloo.
Unmistakable.

I can give or take it, you know.
Like I said, I was into Led Zep.
ABBA’s more an acquired taste.

Still, I find myself humming it too
when the wife returns,
fish in batter like a ***** of gold.

or anywhere

abacus of Amstel lights

cube-stacks drizzled citrus

behind the iris

funnel of fauna

propped up by charcoal arms

violet grapes

avocado stone

raspberry drupelets

visible from here

market on a Monday

the hard ‘g’ of Maandag

a guttural language

my throat warms to

orange not my shade

but do as the Dutch do

plump cylinders of Edam

coated in red rind

oysters in their cots of silver

shrimp galaxies like tangerine hooks

Japanese tourists

taking snaps for the ‘Gram

everybody passing over the King

sun proffering a hand through the glass

Two years,
but will we make it to three?
   Pimple a stipple of red paint
   on my chin,
mouth scarred pink with the last deposits
of lipstick.
   I am making an effort
   for myself, then himself.
He has booked it all,
a mildly impressive stat. A restaurant
   where a bottle of ooh-la-la French wine,
   sweating its chill, costs both arm and leg,
where meals take up a sixteenth
of the plate, christened with a garden leaf.
   I do not speak of my concerns.
   His face is awash with tiredness,
his eyes somehow a darker sea-blue
than our first meeting, several iPhones ago.
   Our speech is exhalation brief,
   each syllable like a book
falling in an empty library,
everything written, little said.
   The wine dyes my inner cheeks,
   but the food: Greek salad, crescent moon tomatoes,
vinyl cucumbers, feta cheese slabs
and tang of onion burning back of the mouth.
   His, souvlaki, fish cadaver on the side,
   wine also white, extortionate, though I haven’t paid.
I look at him, assuming this is our last meal.
If I tell the sea, will she wash it away?
   How lovely he is. Really, I mean it.
   He must believe we are forever and ever.
I count the mouthfuls, the tiles on the floor.
His chair squeals when he leaves for the loo.

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

Spain in the core of summer
   thermometer under pressure

nosebleed heat
  skin butter-knifed with sweat

you having just arrived
   from the city with the Moorish palace

where I’d walked
  less than forty-eight hours before

do not ask me how to define love
   because it was not love

love takes longer
  photos doused in a darkroom

this was the first murmurings
  of something wildly unfamiliar

swirl of a heart
  on the roof of my coffee

when you spotted
   The Sun Also Rises

and sat before I had a chance
  to take that initial sip

hair like vanilla
   lips a tone of rust

and the city
   became the story we wrote

unravelling my r’s
   difference between perro and pollo

the switch from Picasso
   blue to pink

that first night
   I revised your body

as a saxophone
  squawked in a crowded room

the litmus test
   for what I’ve said wasn’t love

but the inaugural snapshot
   in a slideshow

of a summer
   of torso-clinging humidity

of siestas with four feet
   pecking the end of my bed

Here at the Riesenrad,
black Eckelberg eye
observes violinists.
There, a choir of mustard leaves,
swirls of Ich and du
clog the air, night blanketing us
in a filmic noir.

Here, the chalky bracket of the Hofburg extends its arms
as if embracing us.
Inside: glinting-finger chandeliers,
ensembles of books
like lungs of rust,
children toddling past
with goldfish mouths.

Here, a café, early morning,
lemon light sweeping through the windows,
gurgle of students, old men
with a steaming großer Brauner,
a wrinkled Die Presse on the table,
****** of tablespoons at breakfast
and simmer of strings at evening.

And it was here, in ’67,
post-they-think-it’s-all-over,
where a barefoot brunette
sang a tune about puppets;
now our hearts tick
to an orchestral melody.

So here, under a periwinkle sky,
students with Zweig on their minds,
sizzle of German on their tongues
continue on their way, as do we,
footsteps waltzing through
the heart of Europe.

Where The Sea Sprays

two-tone sand                  
mercury murmurs                  
out as far                                  
as the world
flips over
throb of a downpour
in the ripple
of a watercolour
mist-swabs
that prickle a cheek
chill nicks the lips
miniature blades
incisor eruptions
basalt cacophony
could be a chalk-like welt
with a thousand tiers
leave one foot
another mark
ephemeral label
on a foreign land

----------

four walls
spider’s thin sentence
the scene’s fracture
tree that used
to breathe
a wonky spine
hours-old blobs
corner huddle
on the other side
of a fire bullet
melting cherries
rainbow hoop
detains a web
of mouldy dreams
bar one pentagon
where foam
dazzles milk white
over jet black rug
where the trail
continues ad infinitum

Ad Infinitum