INSTRUCTIONS.

- Answer all questions. If you do not, please state why not. Failure to answer all questions will result in a fine of several thousand pounds (or whichever currency is used in your country), a pack of mints or a bottle of cider.
- Use black ink or black ball point pen or a purple crayon.
- You must not use a dictionary, unless the word ‘dictionary’ is spelt wrong on the cover.
- The maximum mark for this paper is 2,018.
- You are reminded of the need for good English (or whichever language you speak) and clear presentation in your answers. Illegible answers will result in a mark of minus 2,018.
- You are advised to spend between thirty minutes and no more than a period of eighty years on this questionnaire.
- Do not confer with anybody else in the room. If you find this difficult, move to an empty room or do not complete this questionnaire.

1. Can you do without your phone for twenty-four hours? Explain if you can or cannot, giving the make of your phone alongside the name of the last person you texted.

2. Is reality TV more important than politics? If so, name the last such television show you watched, its running time and the station it is on, as well as the name of your country’s leader at the time of your birth.

3. Does social media make you feel worse, not better? If not, please post a status on Facebook alongside an emoji of your choosing, explaining what you think of this questionnaire so far.

4. How many children do you have by twenty-five? If you have none, please state the number of times you have been asked if you have children yet.

5. Do you know the father/mother of each one? If you have no children yet, please skip this question.

6. Can you point out the nearest city to you on a map? If you can, well done and please move on. If not, please find the nearest atlas and leave a black dot on the bottom corner of the page that you believe shows the nearest city to your home.

7. Can you remember a time before Snapchat? If you can, explain in detail what it was like. Take care with punctuation, sentence structure, and grammar. Inaccuracies will be penalised.

8. What is love, really, to you? If you struggle with this question, please come back to it within two decades of the present time.

9. When was the last time you read a book and enjoyed it? Please note that a blog is not considered literature and you may be penalised if you choose to name one.

10. When was the last time you wrote a letter? If you are unsure, please see the attachment to this questionnaire which gives you a step-by-step guide to completing one.

11. Do you speak to people in person anymore? If you do not, please leave the room you are in and come back before the end of the day, explaining how your conversation or conversations went.

12. Do your parents know how you actually feel? Please bear in mind that, as your parents, they ought to know.

13. School’s not as bad as the real world, is it? If you are unaware of what the real world is like, you are advised to find out. If you have some knowledge of the real world, please elucidate on what the real world actually means.

14. Fishing for Instagram likes is a waste of time, don’t you agree? If you so wish, please write your social media links below, alongside the date you posted your most liked image and how many comments it received.

15. Why are you so obsessed with your looks? If necessary, please use the mirror and beauty magazines provided to produce a more accurate response. It is recommended you name your favourite Victoria’s Secret model.

16. Will you listen to a Kardashian more than your best friend? If you answer yes, please name the Kardashian you most admire and why your best friend is not as impressive.

17. Would you be able to cope on your own? To answer this effectively, ask everybody else in the room to leave for at least seven days.

18. Are you sure you know how to use a semi-colon? You should be aware a semi-colon is not to be confused with a colon.

19. Is Twitter being down the worst thing that could happen? If Twitter is down as you come to this question, please wait until it is working again before you answer.

20. Since when has fitting in been the best thing to do? Alternatively, write down your drug of choice alongside your favourite alternative-rock band active from 1992-1996.

21. Why are please and thank you now a goodbye and a gun? You are invited to search every student’s bag if you have concerns.

22. Is a cartoon character the president yet? If not, state which cartoon character would be best for the job.

23. Do you know you can’t avoid growing up? Please glue a current photograph of yourself alongside an image of yourself aged sixty in the space below.

24. Isn’t most of what you read a pack of lies? If you believe this questionnaire to be full of lies, you can scrunch it up into a ball and recycle it as soon as you’ve finished.

25. Whatever happened to that best friend of yours? The best way to answer is to find them.

26. How many people have you slept with in the past year? If necessary, use the calculator provided. If zero, please make sure that this is correct.

27. Can you remember their names? Take care with spelling, and be sure to mention their birthdate and father’s occupation.

28. Is it really depression or just what you want to call it? Please search Wikipedia for another suitable term if you stumble over this question.

29. When was the last positive news story? Tune in to your local or national news station and wait for such a story before answering.

30. How are you managing without your phone? If you are using it now, please state the number of apps you have downloaded and the current battery percentage.

31. How did you find this questionnaire? Please rate your experience on a scale of one to three hundred and fourteen, or if you prefer, on a scale of black to white, apple to orange, or Mr. Potato Head to Daenerys Targaryen.

Upon completion, unless you have choose to destroy your questionnaire (see question twenty-four), please seal your responses alongside these papers into a large envelope addressed to yourself, and post it first class by no later than nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

IV - The Lost Trumpet. (April 2011).

A girl loses her trumpet
and she’s ever so sad.
She can’t find it
but a young boy does.
He searched high and low,
to and fro,
before spotting it
and giving it back.
The girl is delighted,
falls in love straight away.
They marry.
The boy stops a tormenter
from hurting his girl.
Ears bleed.
Then the girl says she is moving on.
The boy doesn’t like this
so tries to win her back;
he locates her and they sleep under stars.
They wake up together.
To be continued?

V - The Moment. (May 2011).

Bus.
Way back to school.
Can’t remember the day.
Talking as usual about the upcoming end.
P says how about doing a simple thing, not too big.
Something like chocolates or flowers, why go over the top?
Flowers, doesn’t everyone do that?
But it’s May, only a month to go.
Flowers it will have to be.
Red and pink.
Great.

VI - The Discussions. (21st/22nd June 2011).

So, are you ready? Here’s how it will go…
I’ll sit the exam, you turn up towards the end.
We’ll meet up in the common room and walk back to my town,
down to the florists, then somehow go back to school
without anybody seeing them all before quarter past one.
No, wait...

Later…

Change of plan, I’ll sit the exam still,
two and a half hours, I know, but anyway, you meet me
in the common room once it’s over, then we’ll go into town
because there’s actually a florists there, didn’t know that earlier,
buy them, make sure no one sees us,
head back to school, all before quarter past one right?
Wait for her to arrive, then you dash off with them,
I relax with a nice brew in class, and right at the end
when she’s getting on the bus I come up to you,
take them, run to her,
give them to her before she goes, mutter what needs to be said
and then it’s over. Maybe a hug, who knows?
This has to work. If it all goes wrong
there’s the envelope from the other month to hand over in its place.
Got that? Good.
She’s bound to ruin it though ain’t she?

Why do you wear that thing?
Not nice to embrace
the coarse khaki coat
wrapped round
your whole body.

I don't want to touch
your untrimmed chin,
what's underneath?

When I remove
the fuzzy item I gasp -
black pin-****** all over your chest
and grass stains
like rays of light too.

You never blink,
just stare at me with wet
creamy-coloured eyes.

The thrill of it

nicking a Twix
from the corner shop,

a lunchbreak one day
in the mid-nineties

looking inconspicuous
between the chocolate

and packs
of smoky bacon crisps.

Sam pilfered
a Snickers, a Wispa,

we dashed outside,
ran back to school,

couldn’t believe it,
looking at our stolen goodies,

not a splash of guilt
alive in our minds.

The red shirt is torn,
an eyelash ****,
your skin exposed
but no blood.
You were born for this.

I dig in my silver weapon,
sever your synapses.
With each new cut
comes a soggy cream sheet
and you sigh and you sigh.

It was inevitable.
Fixed smiles
flop from your spine,
see-saw on the board
and form a wrecked star.

Now just your teeth,
the brown raindrops.
I use my thumb
to tug them out,
dislocated, then gone.

Wouldn’t it be great
a decade from now
when it’s bills, insurance,
married life,
to wander into Waterstone’s
and go ‘hold on a minute,
I sat next to him!’

At the counter we could say
‘Oh, I knew the author,
uni days and all that’
as we fish around
for a ten quid note
thinking ‘hang on,
I should have a signed copy!'

We’ll call ourselves
intellectual,
scrawl sonnets in cafes,
sup pints, smoke cigars,
proclaim Seamus’s work
‘just... just… it just speaks
to me you know?’

And we’ll remember
that teapot,
those guys coming in late,
dishing out slips of paper
like a croupier with cards
and still wonder
if what we’ve written is *magic.

Lights were on,
you were home.

His car,
watermelon green
boot static in front,
lit up as treasure
beneath a streetlamp globe.

Snow pinched
windshield,
fingers numb,
gloves with pentagonal
holes 'round the wrist.

Got out,
cold hit me
like the train squealing up
at Canal Street
near 2AM.

That's where
you found out
who I was.

I thought you were
another twenty-something
from Greenwich Village,
discount hairband
and a wrong shade
of eye-shadow.

Eighteen months later,
I can't even remember
what colour your eyes are.

Knocked the door,
a reckless mistake.

Heard a murmur,
rowdy thump down stairs,
a ****** of glasses
(wine? Surprise.)

It had been a while.

You were expecting me.

find your hand in the mist
chasing shadows bleeding into night

strawberry juice coating the throat
kisses are like a sunrise

if this is drunk then let me keep drinking
the sight of you

the bubbles rising to the surface
like some newly-discovered champagne

I think he wrote
while you baked,
made fairy cakes
or something of the sort
while the young ones
whizzed around
like balloons
released from your fingers.

I think he was
your applicant,
not a bad fit,
frothing with wit,
a kiss made you giddy
like a girl
on their first date
in the heaving city.

On a red day
I think you sighed
when hearing boots
in the hallway but beamed
on a blue day
when he strode
through the door, a tie,
another rough wool jumper.

When he rode
those capsules home
I think perhaps you
wished to nick
your thumb again,
see the crimson seep
and weep as a child
over their father.

I think you wore
the smile of accomplishment
on day forty-two,
enough had bruised you,
pinched your skin
so it hurt and burnt pink,
stung a cheek
and left a tender spot.

I think you didn't want to
but did anyway,
felt all your words
had charred and bled black
so inhaled the haze,
swam under the jar
for the last time, before it fell
and cracked on his floor.

It’s the one
I’ve heard a hundred times before
track number twelve
belching out the stereo.
It’s either six or five AM
anyway the horizon is orange
like a papaya
and I’m next to your window
with a glass of flat 7-Up in one hand.
No alcohol all evening
but tipsy somehow
maybe the music got some hormones
smiling inside me
or your dancing in next to nothing
gave my brain a vinegary kick.
Now you ask again
I say I have two left feet
you pull an I-couldn’t-care-less face
so it’s settled
I’m dancing but not really
and my arms are thrashing about
so much I worry I’ll belt your lampshade off
and then you jump on the bed
and Teddy goes flying
and somehow I’m quickly up there with you.
We’re teenagers at our first festival
location - your bedroom
headline act on stage
and we’re going effing nuts
at the front shrieking lyrics
hoping our sweaty faces are on BBC Three.
I’m totally knackered so I pant to you
that I’m totally knackered
and you lean in for a kiss
but bump my nose instead
and laugh just as you’ve done all night
so loud so lovely so couldn’t care about
what comes next.
We lie down now
to catch our breath
except you don’t catch your breath do you
it’s just a thing people say
and our four feet are together
naked red sock naked blue sock
you say the song listen it’s ending
so it is
fading away like every night
that comes and then goes.

and we’re back there again,
moved some seats around,
why change something
not broken I said.
Your eyes,
topaz ovals watch me
as I take off my hat,
a treat for a change
from that shop
on the high street.
Conversation,
a roll of sticky tape,
the novel,
your very first
with chapters, a title
and a pretty front cover
is moribund, liquid words
that don’t mean what they did
six weeks ago.
I tell you I write
but the pendulum wobbles
between A* and a C,
if nothing much happens
there’s nothing much to say.
The coffee bites my tongue,
flames zip along my bottom lip
like the strike of a match
as you talk
about these names
with no faces
in your life, bubbles
on the scene.
I know before long
they will pop and be gone
but keep quiet
for I am one of them,
floating around longer than most.
The water
still hasn’t boiled for us yet,
it probably never will,
what I have to say
stays stored in my head
sealed up as Christmas knickknacks,
DO NOT OPEN
in black marker
on the side.
You’ll read, you’ll see,
you’ll no doubt laugh,
once a pen pecks my page
what has started
must end.
You kick me back awake
under the table,
I must have half a book
already.

She longs for home.
Stuck in this town
is taking its toll
on her.

Her flatmates
just don't give a ****
and students shout
outside her window

after a few.
She can't tell
if that boy likes her
or that guy

isn't interested.
All this hearsay
burns her ears.
Needs to get away,

relax in a more familiar
place with more familiar
people, pretend
that things aren't different.

She can remember
the good times,
outside the English room
on a warm June day

even though
she was revising for Science.
It'll be OK again soon.
Soon it will be back to normal.

A chalky body
tainted with sticky ruby,
acne-riddled, dark spots.
Digits
spill out
over your tongue
onto the red floor.
Clatter,
now spin.
Watch through your dried blood fringe
as it revolves,
let the good times roll,
isn’t that what you say?
Now this is out of your hands,
out of your mouth,
blurred blackness,
your choice down to chance.
A low rotating sound
and it lands
next to crimson painted nails.
Your number is up.

She’s not here.
She’s not with us.
She’s in another world
full of desperate humans

and disorderly sights.
Her eyes, wide,
stare at the screen.
She falls

deeper into a trance.
Clap your hands,
she won’t even know
you are there

because she’s on another planet,
addicted like a man on forty a day
and she can’t break the habit.
I wish I could help her

but I’ve a bus to catch.
She sits alone with her phone,
in a complete trance.
She’s not with us.

The meal is lovely, yes,
I’m glad we came here.
The questions are arriving, not too heavily,
but drip-fed between mouthfuls.
Chew. Answer, a ladder of sentences.

Maybe I should be telling you
about the seasonal affective disorder,
or the fibromyalgia that attacks my back.
You’ll need to know this going forwards,
I'm sure.

You have already mentioned depression,
the gurgling storm in the brain.
I nod, offer empathy even though
I didn’t mean to.
The meal is lovely.

There’s a cherry birthmark blotch
on my right thigh you’ll see.
I don’t say this. It’s not appropriate.
We hide things
so we can make a game of it later.

Perhaps you play the flute,
collect comic books,
are an expert at knitting.
Weeks to trickle by treacle-like,
facts set to spring up as flowers.

Sip of drink to shut me up.
Our truths floating like shuttlecocks
across the table.
The meal? Yes, it’s lovely.
I am thinking of later, of tomorrow morning.

The guitar is out of tune
and the pillow frowns at him
on this cold February morning.
Books lined along the walls,
Spanish poetry, lonesome travellers
wait to be read on halcyon nights,
have their spines cracked by weary hands.
Solemn Jazz filters out from somewhere,
blue in a room where blond light
pours onto the floor.
Asparagus eyes struggle to stay open,
so much to do but no zest to get up,
crispy buttered toast lies half-eaten on a plate,
ochre tea still needs to be drunk.
He has plenty to say but does not know how,
his intellect cloudier than any lemonade,
track two begins and there are still no words.

mornings become   afternoons
   become nights
two   jobs     I juggle
     just so I can say
   fresh   money in my   purse
     for things I do/don't need
a mahogany     umbrella stand
gorging     bottles of beer
     chest of     drawers
   from that vintage store

     guy at the window
fancies a macchiato
   any second now
   whatshisname     from the bank
   loose tie yet   again
will come in
     expect an     espresso
not in the mood
   only   thinking
     about   rent this month
     some dude     last night
clattered into me
a drunken   haze of words
    sticky kiss   on my fringe
    slapped him     so he grabbed me
   rectangular ****
migraine like     Vesuvius

     clean a table
   know he's looking at me
     turn   around
hides     behind the Times
latte latte latte
     chuck it over some   Asian’s lap
sorry   about that
   I'll get you another     one
so not with it
   all I can     see
spread out as items
     at a flea     market
snow umbrella
rent   ***
   book kiss
milk     orange
     blood   money
alone
coffee

I searched for where you met.
Cambridge at Christmas.
Now a shoe store, a Top Man,
trees drooled with tinsel.
So I imagined that night
at Falcon Yard in '56
and the church-like windows.
Didn't expect a thunderclap
but it came, a bolt
through a blue night.
The red-hairbanned girl,
tipsy, she loved your work,
your raw debut words.
Amateur dancing,
brandy on your tongue,
a kiss bang smash on the mouth
from her hunky boy.
     'Ridiculous to call it love.'
Smitten, she bit,
gnawed on your cheek
to leave her own mountain range.
Her interest - peaked.
Your person - snaffled,
cast as the lead
in her American play.

I. (The Bubble).

Now, I don't like it.
The coming, the going
on four wheels
to the building
where we all drift,
told what is right
and how to write,
the same stories
in disparate voices,
A B C fail.
What is obscured behind the names,
cherubic female faces,
men from various places?
Who are you again?
We talk
but know little
about each other.
It's about you,
how to waft into
the social triangle.
We are transparent bubbles
that float and collide
and pop,
an insignificant extinction.
I do not like it.

II. (The People 'Just Like Me').

It fell into your lap
like warm spilt tea.
You took it,
the first,
of course,
but me?
Not a thing,
not a person I mean
on the other side
of the decrepit fence.
Forget, forget they say,
pick someone from that place,
figure them out
like a thousand-piece jigsaw.
But they are no good,
diluted colours
visible but not stand-out.
Where are the similar shades
of green
to paint themselves to me?
There could only be one
but forgive me,
I cannot see
for the steam in my eyes.

III. (The Resolutions).

These are the silent days
between pigs in blankets
and bangs in the sky.
Wet weather,
lights on.
The resolutions,
who keeps them?
Write better,
fair enough.
Be less inept,
but I am not anyway.
Cut down on complaining,
take each day
s t e a d y .
Breathe, move forwards,
only on occasion
delving into the sack
to pull out
unwelcome shards of the past
or vibrant memories
soon to vanish.
Are you sure you want
to delete this file?
Yes/No?

How many have stood,
will stand beside you
in Heptonstall,
had a photo taken
next to her spot?
Students, admirers
from any nook or cranny
with drained biros,
Ariel under an arm,
her morning song spoken
again, and again.

You're the next-door neighbours
they haven't come to see.
Only a lonely cup
of coffee-stained
hunchbacked flowers
where you lie
in loving memory,
with Emily,
husband with wife,
home to the right
of the graveyard's star.

think I know you
            knew you
before blue jumpers
football with tennis *****
weeping knees and benches
and reeling off hymns
            now look
at them singing the songs
of some not-quite-teen
mute squares of a life
apparently pristine
likes arriving like flies
            before
it was packed lunches
a place named Azkaban
afternoon kwik cricket
colourless pix
on Bebo
            now it's
a slurry of selfies
head-tilt lips-out
meme media excess
digital mausoleum
you've made your home
            so choose
I'll leave you to it
beeline for the Apple store
record what you can't get back
speak up **** your planet
or run

This clock of ours
                                                            ­                               is hidden under ice,
                                      its hands frozen at 2.45.

                     We can hack away at the surface
    to get to him, but he might never
                                                           ­      work again.

                                                         ­                                                        Can you remember how he got there?
                                                      Some­one must have lost track of time
                                                            ­           and dropped him down.

    We can see its large black face
                                                           blurry from where we stand on
                                                              ­                                                                 fragile sheets of aqua ice.

                                                           ­     Maybe when it melts we can save him,
                       move the hands to the right time
                                 but by the time we've done that

                                                           ­                              it'll be the wrong time again,
                                       our hands will have to keep moving
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                    the hands of time

   and the clock won't like that,
                                                           ­            we'll be taking over its job.

He'll become angry and make time
                                                            ­                            go faster until we realise
it's all gone.

Drinks at the White Horse,
a round of alcohol
painting my throat red
and my words black;
I even spat some out
on the sidewalk,
watched them trickle
in a river
of nonsensical sentences
down the drain.

This pain - temporary
like the night,
bruises I invented
in a flurry of fury,
plum seahorse shapes
coil around the backs
of my legs,
join the dots,
one dollop next to another.

I’ll say I was attacked
by a motley clan of kids
who couldn’t even smoke
cigarettes correctly.
Oh these? Just a scuffle
from three Thursdays back,
I see the Giants lost again
what do you think about that?

Streets,
a swarm of phlegmy students
pouring out a hive of bars,
hacking into handkerchiefs
like broken motors.
Perry Street passes by
in a red-brick blur
and I think I stick
a few fingers up
when a cab shouts
a foreign word at me.

Some wizard
on Waverly Place
***** a girl’s face
so I snort, maybe giggle
a little at how lust
in Winter
is a myth to me.

Earlier in the cinema
I managed forty minutes
before sleep hit me,
no idea if the clichéd ending
came around
but the darkness was nice,
first hug in ages.
My MTV tells me nothing
I didn’t know before -
I live in my fridge
and the bin’s far too full.

The girl at twenty-seven’s
drawn the drapes,
doesn’t know I saw
her husband drop coffee
when the waitress
leant over to swipe clean
a table at Joe’s,
a lime-green bra
or perhaps it was blue,
it was thir- four-
fifteen hours ago?

She’s barely left college
and I’d bet my last four dollars
his son’s pushing
for Ivy League
(probably Cornell).

I fall under the arch,
groan as if I’ve received
a Christmas present
I already own,
feel a tinge of beer
fuzz on my tongue.
Strangers look at me
and know I’m not
no undergraduate guy.
A Labrador
skips past.

I salvage my phone
from the shipwreck
in my pocket,
dial her number,
let it ring
and can’t be bothered
with it all again.

She was fascinated,
hooked as if a fish out of water.
Whenever death
was splurged across the television
she’d sit upright,
the sofa would creak,
her eyes gorging all
like globs of kitchen roll.
Two per second.
She thought she’d solve them,
bust the case wide open
or some other cliché.
Reams of unresolved stories,
of women splayed
at American roadsides
with a missing molar
or red rings around the wrist.
There had to be an answer, she’d say.
Everything has answers
because everyone asks questions.
A human doesn’t go missing,
someone always sees, apparently.
She’d talk about dying
as if she welcomed it,
as if it was a real person
with bones and a voice.
One day she sliced her finger
and just let it bleed,
the thin line then the bloom
of crimson that wept
into the sink.
Two per second she’d remind me.
I scrambled in the drawer
for a plaster.

and again
that cool delectable taste
of a moment

assembly line
of conversation
rolling out

all manner
of topics
with a candle on top

each one
tumbling as a domino
under the table

subtle twinge
of single life
pushed aside

to volcanic laughter
and the put to sleep
of another year

but we sip the syntax
let every vowel
soothe our blood

My clock has stopped.
It says eight forty-four
but it's nine thirty-eight.
It stopped when I wasn't looking
or was looking but didn't notice
a few days ago,
the knobbly black fingers
frozen, pointing west.

I take time off,
feel its chilled curves
dig into my palms,
another river among many.
Held up to my ear
a soft heartbeat,
my thumbs squash
numbers three and nine.

On your back.
The old red tube removed
with my nail
like flicking a splinter
out with a needle.
In snaps the new guy.
With one spin of the white wheel,
a new breath.

It would be easier, I think,
if my nerves were not so jittery,
wriggling under my skin
like small electric shocks

every time I nervously approach
an unknown thing,
a child handed a glossy new toy.
Is this how it is meant to be?

So young, so young,
life full with gaudy possibilities
at the arrival of another birthday,
presents losing their allure,

the rattling mystery beneath the paper,
my sweet cluster of friends
revving off into the distance
and I am left to wonder

who will fill the white, sad gaps.
I see you, I remember.
I see you, I remember you too.
A lengthy list splattered with letters,

wiry and black like a belch of string.
There is only so much
one person can do
when their hands are ravaged

by a peculiar numbness,
when their syllables and sentences
begin to stick together,
form a blood-red thick lake.

A night in mid-August
and you can hear them
from your house,
the drums begin
and brass sounds follow
like quietly excited children,
like the two who walk with you
over the hill.

The sun sinks
into evening’s quicksand,
your soggy clock
of adolescence
ticks faster than ever.

Scent of popcorn
excites your nostrils,
grey couples talk soft, slow,
and once your blanket
is draped upon the grass
you see an orb of hollow green
drift sleepily
up, up, over everyone’s heads
and you wish
you were that tiny balloon,
floating far away
toward something new
as each teenage summer
blurs into your brew.

The blackcurrant words
     seemed grotesque to you
     on the vast tarnished landscape.
Letters curling as October leaves
     pricked your old silver eyes,
     slapdash lines
and glitter thoughts
     splurged upon your paintings.
     You were a poppy,
a dark, minute dot,
     but every idea burst in gaudy red
     from you.
The poems would arrive,
     would come eventually,
     leap from your fingers,
punch onto the page
     and would it be good enough?
     Your product, complete.

We spent our first night as far away from each other in his lounge.     I was on the squashy coffee-coloured chair his father always sat on; you seemed continents away, on the couch on the other side of the room.     We did that thing where we look at each other but turn away as soon as the other person notices. It wasn’t flirting with no words. The air was swollen with shyness.     The television was on. We drank whatever fizz was placed in our hands.     You were awkward and quiet and I liked that - maybe we are fascinated by people just like us. I wanted to wrap my arms around you like a blanket, but I didn’t want to close you away and vanquish the light, I wished you could have opened up.     I followed you into the kitchen, my mind whirring with the possibilities, each one more unimaginable than the last.     The list of ‘things I now know’ grew at a reckless pace; the chocolate mole beneath your left ear, the glint of a piercing, the Irish tinge to the accent that lodged in my head and played endlessly for hours. Then the inescapable silence. The inability to instigate.     I threw a lukewarm answer back at you as if a shuttlecock barely flopping over the net. You said something about you weren’t staying long. You left the kitchen, and then I did.     On the chair in the lounge we went back to snatching glimpses of each other for a handful of seconds. And I bubbled full of frustration, annoyed at my cellophane-made response, wanting to punch myself in the jaw for not being better, for not being normal in a rather normal circumstance.     My eyes were sacks of rocks. You kept twiddling a strand of your hair, and the night sank like a kid dunking a plastic ship in the bath.

the ink may pulse
from your fingernails
be seeping out your toes

cold and thick
azure puddles

chalk skies
banana lines

leaves outside
flutter in conversation
hush-hush

interior (red) / exterior (grey)

a thin transparency
between you and them
like squares of clotting water

what do you see
see what can be made

slosh of vehicles
in some sickly vernacular

muffled thrum
of the city
millions of windows

one of you

The delight of it all -
rain splattering skin
like tiny knives,
back of my hair
a throng of wet
sinewy stems
plastered to my neck.

I scoff blueberry
after blueberry,
perforate each
little indigo shell,
let the taste
swell as an ulcer
at the front of my tongue.

Snow becomes slush -
graphite clumps
sliced through by bicycles,
footprints of strangers overlap,
undulate as ECG lines
down alleyways,
into dimly-lit side-streets.

A couple kiss,
their lips
a strange pinky knot
of flesh and breath
outside a bar
bunged with get lucky
guys from across the bridge.

Find a bench,
allow the metallic cold
seep into my hands
like a morphine injection,
count every dull grey building,
tighten my scarf
a bit more, a bit more.

Now you are married,
may you spend several years
happy together.

I don’t have to make much of a sound.
I can let the sentences coalesce
in the air, a dual carriageway of words
interspersed with a laugh.
The names I store are few.
I don’t have to yank them
from the chest, swipe off clumps of dust -
they glow when they need to
like fireflies swaying in the night.
I dribble out my current affairs,
watery vowels from my mouth.
Am I boring you?
Voice like an elderly hoover,
interest tumbling down the stairs.
You’ve done more in five minutes
than I have in five weeks.
I blink, then I sink.
It’s OK.
The days of rapid chat
are six feet under,
flaws knocked out of shot,
not as blindingly bright.
I wonder where you were years ago.
We’d know more;
my gawky movements less present,
my mind not pulsing
with impossible possibilities.
Still I shudder at the distance between us.
Pauses plump as bubbles
that can’t be popped.
The flow halted
by my wodge of insecurity.
No bother.
I swallow what I can,
let the taste coat my throat.
If you sparkle
you can help me too
without being aware.
The sludge will vanish for a while.
You don’t even have to make
too much of a sound.

Once a little sun,
black walls drooled over
by pumpkin light,
soaking the furniture.

We knew you were ill,
every hour dissolving
to a lukewarm puddle.

You began to weep
white chocolate tears.

Couldn't be helped,
the heat gobbled you up
in segments like a boa constrictor.

We said goodbye
as you slipped down in the earth,
a trickle of smelly grey smoke left,
all you were, melted.

Explain why fluorine and chlorine
are in the same group of the periodic table.

He blunders. There’s a question
on polymers soon
so he knows he’s *******.

An afternoon in June
spent regurgitating answers

rehearsed a hundred times
in overcast classrooms.

He knows there’s a matter
of days before his mates
will go their separate ways.

Names he’s spoken for years
will decay over time,
cemented over by people

he hasn’t yet met.
Two, seven, two, eight, seven.
Seven electrons in their outer shell.

He’s surprised he knows,
the answer chiming
in his head like a peal of bells.

Here come
pairs   of   legs
   riddled with cellulite
   accents
     stuff the air
Neuwcassul
   Burmingum
stores     reek
of cheap   tat
   bargain   last-few-quid   items
Irish music
no-one gives a     jig     about
    Mr. Whippy's
for sale every seven/six
   make that     five     cafés
women   packed
   like bubblewrap
     into denim shorts
     middle-aged men
plagued with     tattoos
   Irn Bru tans

back at the chalet
     kids thwack
   plastic     *****
with plastic racquets
   next-door neighbours
   puff on their nineteenth
*** before midday
come   night
karaoke floods towards us
   like a murky tsunami
don't stop believin'
     hold   on   to   that   feelin'

but the   girl
in the museum
   had a ponytail
   another one
dipped in gold
   like a fancy chess piece
and I walk   around
in a   Norwich   shirt
lick sea-breeze
     and know
   this isn't
home

Look at the thirty-three.
Nine years ago
in the junior school hall
and now how many miles
between you, and you
and me.

Pre-pubescent times,
bananas on our faces,
eleven, maybe twelve
with collars all tidy
and jumpers tucked in.
Say cheese.

We grew up too fast.
A few have kids
who'll study
where we once did.
But my friend is at Park
and I walk an Avenue.

This one inked their skin
and this one had drugs.
And you, third row,
well you moved abroad.
I'll bet ten bucks
you don't 'remember when?'

If I saw her, him
what would I say?
A hasty hello
or not one word.
They have far different leaves
on their trees now.

Near a decade later,
the photo back on my shelf.
Here's to you,
what we were
before nowadays
snatched our hands.

The snow comes.

White apostrophes
glide to the ground.

Footprints sleep
outside homes,

along paths
glazed with cold.

Our cheeks
bloom strawberry,

our breath whispers
into the night
and kissing you

is like handling ice.
Our frosted lips

melt together.

dead bee,
   broken buzz,
black ball made of limp wings,
   cardboard-tube limbs.
it’s a schism,
   a fault in the system;
what or who did the deed?
   even the amber isn’t as lurid
as one would expect,
   now just a charred spot,
the life drained out of it
  like water streaming out

through a sieve.

You called me up.
I was expecting to hear
from you again.
I put down the remote,
seized the car keys
and drove.
I was beginning to think
I was the only number
in your phone,
winding my rickety vehicle along
neon-drenched streets.
What was it going to be this time?
I’d seen the words
drooled on your hands,
the frowning duvet
ten times or more before.
You’d bathe with your clothes on,
leave fingerprints on hotel windows.
I went along with it all.
Yes, of course I did,
our silver thumb stamps
wedded in a hundred rooms.
When I arrived
you told me about knee-high socks,
vowels slinking out your mouth
like each one was made of wine.
3am.
I touched your nose-ring,
you tugged at my shirt.
Yes. Yes.
I drove you home.

My Mum owns a load,
twenty-or-so globes
collected over decades,
bought in musty stores
you won’t find around here.

Frozen images, colours
congealed in glass bubbles,
one housing a red flower,
an old-as-me rose
unable to inhale.

Christmas presents
stuck onto shelves,
hugged by a duster
so an eyelash of sunshine
can reflect from their heads.

Home from class,
into the living-room
and see a bunch of *****,
scoops of rainbows
in the back cabinet.

and your     electricity
will propel   through me
   jolt me     ALIVE
make my skin   tingle
                                    this and your fingers
twirling until midnight
   chilly   trail   along   my   back
bones  I own
     played as a     silver harp

kiss me (pink)
and I’ll   sip   your smell
   like white wine
slip it under
my sleeve
   breathe easy
if you have     stained     me
with a [quick] shock of lipstick
watermelon juice
as a burn on my     neck

kiss me (red)
and my veins will i g n i t e
     a sunrise
between-our-toes
cauldrons for mouths
   burbling bits     of us
fat   happy   glistening   bubbles
wrench me
from the river   you know how
    rinse me in lilacs

kiss me (black)
and I’ll   crackle
spl int er as glass
be swept            along in neither here
               or there
lose my   taste   to the wind
fill milk-bottles to the     brim
   with inane bOO-hOOs
those bluespinksreds in-betweens
     **** me gently
(with a smile)

I am not drunk you will have
to have me like this
and I’m sorry about that
with my teeth pumped full of silver
my toes like awkward twigs

now my hand is on your shoulder-blade
where I taste honey
and I find the scar you said you had
a misty oblong splash on the back
of one arm

then I seem to lose control of my lower face
the biology out of whack
it is moving about as if
yawning but not yawning
more chewing a wodge of sickly toffee

you are on me
touching me like this happens
to anyone with a wonky pulse
a gurgle in their gut
that sounds like a faulty washing-machine

have I made this up
am I zipping seamlessly through
each lucid scene without so much
as a blink
a sour cough

does it matter
you are playing me
as your favourite guitar
twanging the strings
to make me sort of sing

I have miles just miles
of words to spill out to say
but I don’t know how
to rotate them together
just yet

You don’t choose to go into bookshops anymore,
you don’t read much,
you hear about calories and five-a-day but you don’t stick to it,
you say you’ll exercise but you never seem to do any,
you notice a blossoming paunch but choose to keep it,
you lose friends and rarely gain any,
you don’t make much of an effort and rarely care,
you don’t sleep as much as you should,
you don’t like the job you’re in,
you don’t know what job you should be doing,
you only work for the money,
you don’t have enough money,
you buy things you don’t need,
you don’t talk to your parents enough,
you don’t talk enough,
you spend too much time on your phone,
you care more about technology than your friends,
you don’t look where you’re walking,
you moan about the youth of today,
you aren’t as mature as you could be,
you still live at home in your thirties,
you see your friends getting married and having kids,
you watch too much *******,
you haven’t travelled as much as you’d like,
you are quick to body-shame,
you don’t understand what LGBTQ+ means,
you can’t tell the difference between Conservative and Labour,
you wear the same clothes day in day out,
you are not the best driver,
you have social media pages but aren’t sociable,
you sigh when girls you like get into relationships,
you know you never stood much of a chance,
you have too many fillings,
you don’t celebrate birthdays much,
you are getting lazier all the time,
you haven’t had a long conversation in ages,
you hate your neighbours,
you don’t know your neighbours,
you get angry playing video games,
you order takeaway food rather than cook,
you say this is my year when you know it won’t be,
you haven’t told anybody this,
you haven’t even told yourself,
you are not sure you need to.

Jolts me
like a jump-scare
in a ******* movie

stepping out
of Tesco
and wham bam

she pushes the trolley
towards me
the burr of the wheels

a man I haven’t seen
alongside her
like a magnet

thank you mam

attracted to what
I was attracted to once
and my stomach simmers

the truth revealed
like a relic
emerging from the soil

and I swear
I hear the milk curdle
in its carrier bag.

You take a picture
of a woman taking a picture
of the view
you can see,
the pastel tones sloshing
into one another,
synchronised just right tonight.
Steel blue that gives way
to tufts of lilac,
to a pink grapefruit wave,
the reflection glazed
to the glass beside you.
Slurry of chat in the air,
tourists and locals
hugged by coats,
sharing the same space,
silver breath that idles
before it scarpers.
Minute cubes of light
**** out across the water,
your city painted
in beautiful shades.

When I woke
                      you were gone.

A bowl in the pillow
where your head   slept,

   six     hours
   pouring what passes for coffee
these days.

In a text
you told me

you burnt your hand,
     showed me

     a pomegranate splash that danced
between your fingers.
     Ouch, it still hurts you know...

Didn't hear you come in,
                            silent angel

but your perfume
   lingers like a   delicious poison
  
and I notice flowers
   are starting to crumble
as snowballs     on our window.

   No mirror
   so I cannot see

whether you've  left
     a cherry   lipstick birthmark

on my cheek
   or a note which says
didn't want to wake you!

Got this feeling,
   jet lag maybe

   but I haven't     moved,
haven't   flown     anywhere.

I flump my arm
   into the blank     space
where your   body ought to be.

Si   lent
             fig   ures
                           un   der   a   du   vet
I do not know them
                            the pic   ture is not clear e   nough
                            I simp   ly can't
i  ma   gine   the   breath
              on a   no   ther one’s skin
                             crack   le be   tween   fin   gers
and so - called sparks
                             but I would dis   cover
                             the wi   res that con   nect us
und   er   stand our net   work
              like a be   guil   ing lab   y   rinth
                             quick blink - touch   es
qui   et   ly
                            crad   le your name
                            as if it were
a snow   flake