The rain comes as a disappointing
flourish to the night.

I would go out in it.
I'd be away from my cave

at least. Nothing
is unusual these days. A time of

crookedness and dirt.
My events bleed through the present.

Here it comes,
what we weren’t expecting.
Thankfully you have one with you
so you fish it out
before the drizzle
becomes a downpour,
press the button
and watch it pop open
like an airbag,
the spindly blue tent
to protect us
from the wet.

We huddle together
as marshmallows in a bag,
as fruit in a bowl,
listen to the spattering,
the clattering of stuff
from the sky,
rounds of applause
dropping off the edge
onto sand.

I hope it stops soon.
     Yeah, me too, me too.
You grab my dry hand
as we shuffle closer,
only able to hear the rush
of the rain.

I welcomed you into my labyrinth,
shut all the doors,
drizzled blankets across
everything, each squashy chair
where you could rest your head,
leave remnants of you
in perfume and hair
so I wouldn’t forget.
Little pictures
developed in my hands,
a simple magic trick
which made us smile
as sniggering kids.
Then they dropped to the floor,
created a collage
of recent memories,
our private history
stationary and square.
Bricks cold as frost on grass,
you danced,
I fell deep. A soporific
multi-hued haze played in my eyes
as if it was endless hopscotch.
Sunset glazed our faces
a marmalade-orange,
we lost ourselves
in towers of books
and images
which now spread
beanstalk-like up the wall.
Pinch-marks resembled
berries on my arms,
soaking in madness,
basking in your light.
I could rest in this maze forever
you said.
Then I, in frustration,
turned over in bed.

Experience is limited
I could store my lot
in a test-tube

others have barrels
and barrels
and can roll them out.

If you are far out at sea
half-hidden half-showered
in sun

I am on the beach
with water licking
my little toes.

Never pushed
only nudged
as a chess piece

to where I need to be
to absorb
a hazy scene.

Tiptoeing
at twenty-one
so be it

at least I will be ready
when I hand myself
the new baton.

I was in the twenty-four hour supermarket at close to midnight. I always shopped at that time because it was quieter and because it was easy to find somewhere to park. It was a cold time. The workers all looked sleepy and the store security eyed me up as if I had pilfered a packet of noodles.
     A girl I hadn’t seen in years was in the wine aisle, her basket fairly full: a loaf of Hovis, dark chocolate, and a packet of M&M's. When we got into the car park I made her laugh because my bag broke and the radishes rolled on the concrete like small red pupils.
     I’d got to the last-but-one roundabout when I realised she had followed me home. She parked her car and came into my house, asking if I could make her a sandwich and pour us each a glass of red. I didn’t think it was strange, but I noticed she had a ring on her finger, the signal of marriage. I put cucumber between the slices because there was nothing else even though I’d been shopping.
     She told me she liked the food but could I please go back to the car and get the noodles from the back seat. The street was empty but full of houses. Her car, a Ford, was there, but not mine. I understood my car was still in the car park six miles away, gathering frost, waiting for me to drive it home.
     When I got back inside, she was grabbing her coat.

I’ll listen to what you’ve written
but not recreate

I’ll do-it-myself, let pages
sip on my letters

let every vowel stand out
as skyscraper lights.

When I sink to sleep
I’ll lock my dreams

in a wooden chest
retrieve them

when morning strolls in
fetch the fresh post.

I wonder if there is such a thing
as drowning beautifully

I want to consume you
like that ocean water

make what I have said
gush into your eyes.

sun begins
bow to sleep

sets sky
in vermilion haze

present me
with palmful

of touch     touch
pacifies palm

could be lined
with sunshine

happy lemonade
threads

I think it’s very easy to fall.
To fall in,
and fall back out again.
It happens more often than not.
It is a very regular thing,
like slipping your socks
over your feet in the mornings,
or walking downstairs
in a still-drowsy state.

Falling in is perilous.
You may never crawl back out,
and the bruises will bloom
and never leave your skin.
Falling out is simple.
You only have to
wipe their name away,
as if it was just chalk
scribbled upon a blackboard.

There is nothing I know
                       about you
and yet like a peach
I want to perforate your skin,
                taste
something delicious,
find   out   what I can,
open
      your
             grotesque
                            novel,
discover all the        flaws
I can later ignore,
a sea can come
                 to **** them up,
                 leave your gems
on the shore.

I'd like your name to be sugar
                                    on my lips,
                         sink
my fingers in the     gaps
between your           fingers,
be suffocated by you,
       be drunk on you
     in the best possible way
and still be left
rasping
gasping for more.

A day
will arrive
when your wavecrashesintomine,
no clock needed,
no forward
                  slashing days with a pen,
it will happen
    and I’ll be here
sitting
on our beach    with a book
ready to fall,
fall to the edge
of wonderful madness.

I wait
outside the classroom
just before one.
The sun

shines down on this
Thursday afternoon.
Minute to go.
The bus will turn

the corner
and arrive. You’ll be the third
to step off.
I’ll see brown bag,

brown hair,
glasses from afar. A smile
will slowly appear
on my face

just like that.
Waiting.
Others are in class. Hurry up
please, return, it’s been too long.

Far too long.
I expect I’ll sit, swing
on my chair to look at you,
as always.

As always, I wait.
The bus pulls up,
you step off, wander towards me.
There’s that smile.

There you are.
Here we go again.
I say hello.
You say hi.

Here's to hoping
they'll make me forget about
devil-red lips,
pockets of skin I've never touched,
coils and coils of it,
delightful nightmares
set up like mousetraps
ready to chatter together
when the hour-hand smacks eleven.
Can I extract your name
like a tooth?
You slip under the door,
into my arms,
the air you've never been
but ought to be.

know that I use
that word

in that way
only for you

easy
really

to unpack
the corny lines

leak out a babe
like some throwaway term

rabbit from the hat
oh! know how it's done

not what we're used to
this submergence

into a dream made real
pool of pepper and fizz

sunrise-sky eyes
watermelon-red lips

our version
of four letters

hear it tick
in our blood

the way we
taste our names

I don’t know
exactly what it is.
There are terms
that could be gibberish,
two languages knocked together
to form a disease,
an affliction of the mind
or fluid in the lungs.
I got a list of ailments
as long as a scroll of parchment,
lolling on the floor
like a tired dog’s tongue.
Often people ask, ‘what is wrong?’
They expect you to have
something wrong with you,
a problem that rises
like the sun on the horizon,
or floating like a lost bottle
way out to sea.
If it is just a headache, it is that,
just a headache.
Would I not know
if the issue was worse?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps it is the not knowing
that kills you, or renders you helpless.
It is sad to know this will come,
this bizarre helplessness,
either in a ripple of seconds
or the space between seasons.

This, clearly,
where we studied Geography.
World map swollen with filth,
peeling New Zealand.

Exercise book half-lollops
off from a desk,
the chair a resting skeleton,
a metal limb amputated.

For Science: smashed test-tubes,
lab coats like dead ghosts.
For Maths: decades-old equations
loitering on the walls.

Throw a basketball in the gym, miss,
its smack and echo gunshot rocket.
Punctured football,
globe past the best before date.

The library a cascade
of mottled tomes,
pages that crack as twigs,
pens have cried into the carpet.

Write my name in a pond of dust.
Look who showed their face again
here, where something happened,
once.

The dog scrabbles
in the lady’s arms,
tongue flopping every which way.

‘He’s only young’ she says
as a bark coarse as sandpaper
rips through the cabin.

A man with teeth
briquette-black
chuckles at us, at the mutt,

its hair like chestnut
paintbrush strokes
slapdash around the mouth.

The lift judders to a halt.
We go one way,
the dog goes the other.

Half-mouldy stalks, some hunchbacked.
Graveyard of street lights with blown lamps
or yellows, faded, fizzing into expiry.
That is all for the year. It is over now.

Bramblings navigate the snow-drenched fallen.
Have they known the illuminations?
Scuttling, inquisitive with seeds in mouths,
alive between scrawny, spent matches.

there is
steam on the mirror
like a milky cellophane

and squiggles of water
in the bath
from half an hour ago

half-dried footprints
are a language
that leads

to where you sit
in dungarees
hair dripping and slippery

a beaming delight
with mahogany marble eyes
crescent moon smile

and we mention how we’ll walk
down capital city streets
choking on their own traffic

giggle at a fingernail
smidge of coffee that grips
my upper lip

skirt past knots of tourists
bury our heads
in a bookshop

where floorboards snicker
where we murmur a story
among many a story

and say how goodbyes
are rotten apples
if you’ve yet to say hello

I don’t mind, not at all,
just place your head on me,
let yourself become
immersed in my comfy haven.

Every night I am yours
you are mine, a relationship
that has lasted many years.
Many more to follow.

We never talk, we just lie
enveloped in darkness.
I care more than you can know.
I will never leave,

cheat on you when I have had enough.
Do with me what you like, turn me over,
drool over me, move me into
whatever position you fancy.

But then you leave me. I become
cold and alone once again.
Not to worry though, because I know
you'll return when you need me.

I should warn you
   I am made of glass
spli nters for fingers
one touch and there’ll be
                                            a wicked
                                                          ­                  
                                                                ­                                   crack

as part of me ruptures
like a wound breaking     open
   again


you can paint me
   whichever colour you like
but whether I’ll stay that way

is     another     question

and that’s all there’ll be

questions dro
                  ppi
                  ng like hail

with a thunderous          smack
and sandcastle answers

sturdy at first
but quick to cr
                         um
                          ble

in the brittle          distance

                                      ­                                                             of a second

place your ear to the Wall
it’s OK
they can’t hear

somebody’s Coughing
and somewhere
she is Pouring
a cup of tea

the steam up Ups
sticks to the windows

Stand
in a place where
the buildings are old
but New to them

you could be there
Burnt tongue
Jittery fingers

squashed by noise
encased in Foil

you don’t tie shoelaces
clear your throat
and slap a Face on
that’ll Do

the specks could be
Floating away
concerns brought
down South

their smile is Honey
your Head is baking a cake

listening?
heard Enough
Windows watch you
watch yourself
Drink

Love, the sky is blank
mist hangs like a million ghosts
car tyres splatter on a distant road
in the bedroom clocks stutter minutes slow
the vacuous writer snaps shut his book
In another place 11 years from now
I taste your breath on my tongue
you're drying your hair by the mirror
take a long sip of warm peppermint tea
your echo kisses the windows

When I tell you

   when I say what
I’ve been   meaning   to say

your     hands are   heavy
   with     cold

words   sharp
     pellucid as ice

melted in seconds
     as if never     said

our bodies
frozen   as snowmen

cheeks
     slapped    vermilion

you tell me no

   it’s     impossible
and I     don’t

but I   do
and I’ve   noticed

     the crinkles around
your   lips   when you     smile

the way   you comb your hair
   put on your     socks

but the silence that     follows
   is like a muffled   black   hurt

   in my   chest

our eyes
never   meet

I.
a body
embraced by stinging nettles

a mind
encased by bricks of ice

a tale
smothered by spiky wire

a voice
strangled by invisible rope


II.
hold your heart
in the flat of your hand

who’ll keep it beating
but you

or a stranger with wings
pretty

bubbles popping
from their mouth


III.
silence squashing
your rib cage

a train derailed
traffic jam

dreams don’t go
the way you dreamt them

there’s gold if you make it
over the hill


IV.
give me your life
by the mugful

aches and yawns
slide into Monday

Tuesday Anyday
minutes like piano keys

hours made of violin strings
burnt-throat laughter

Oh you feel it
rising inside you

filling you up
like lager into a glass

you know this all
as it’s happened before

you’re pretty sure
you know how these moments

unfold
fold back together

the colours
gleaming as if

newly discovered
the words that dribble

from your mouth
in a lacklustre fashion

and you’re telling yourself
stop it

but then you see
every little detail

or you think you do
and it’s what you want

when really you have
no idea do you

we’ve created a mess
and we don’t care
grooves in the sand
where our feet
have been dragged
in a deluge of passion
jeans sprayed a sticky yellow
trickles of sweat
a discrete tattoo
my hand on your thigh
under your vest
a ***** hair-dripping bomb
you tug me closer
the catch of the day
I touch your lips
glistening in the sun
lose a breath
and fall into a fever
a flood of red and orange
and a thousand others
heart smacking against my ribs
a ferocious rhythm
as I taste your kiss

'When you grow up, your heart dies.'
Allison (Ally Sheedy) in The Breakfast Club (1985).*

look at all the ways
there are to
stay in touch
to communicate
in a combination
of pixels or a line of
finely-cut black letters

now look at all the ways
nobody does
a life you were given
segments of
shrunken to altered pictures
pipette-fed but no real words
swimming into your ears

frosted glass nostalgia
former vivid events
gone hazy with age
and you
and everybody you knew
going on with names only coming
like a balloon in the wind

watch you go
cherry-red motor
dots that look painted on

no bigger than a fingertip
contact lens bonnet
millimetre-thin wires for legs

shuffle not scuttle
climbing the stem
before you open up

unfurl acetate wings
brisk flicker into
a speck against the sky

I like when it begins   the white
icing of a dream   and the ones I only know
with my eyes closed    glow like rubies
brighter than    raspberries in July.

I like when it   unravels as a scarf
the people   clearer than cellophane  
the speech fresh as juice   here it pours  
into each eye   I like to swallow each second.

I like to wallow in    the shadows of strangers
until light   slinks under the door come morning
and I like the very spangled thought of    you
too close not close    enough to my arms.

I like the buzz of my blood   flowing quicker
when you talk   knowing your bones
disorderly network of navy veins   I like
to feel the static crackle and fizz   between us.

I like the bench   in your back garden
and us on it   I like the heady loveliness of it all  
inhale the flavours   brush your cheek
cling to the seconds ’til I wake   and you go.

The man who scored a hat-trick
is having a baby. OK, he’s not,
his girlfriend is. A baby.
They’re all having babies.
A twenty inch squirm
swaddled by a blanket,
eyes like marbles. All having them.
It seems so. Either that
or they’re getting married.
The biggest day of big days, apparently.
Soon there will be invites. Maybe.
Showing off the calligraphy.
I can picture it,
a suit creased once, a glass of fizz
as a stranger takes photos
to be tucked inside albums
I’ll never take a look at.
Those I’ve known know others now.
They are settling into a life
that writes itself, like a book
never moved from its place
on the shelf. There will be
a triangle of kids kissing
before you ever did,
hands fumbling as if the other person
is a button, noses bumping.
There will be a house
with a dishwasher and pictures
on the walls from the honeymoon
in Greece you didn’t know about
- perhaps don’t care.
Soon you and they will be thirty
and forty and fifty
and their squirm will grow
before you’ve even blinked
or had time to toast the bread.
Some already have.
The hat-trick man is smiling.
I should proffer congratulations,
type out ‘bundle of joy’
at the pencil-esque ultrasound,
the shapes that will become human.
We’re the same age, miles apart.
They’re all at it, it seems.
The girlfriends that is. Having babies.

splash into it -
   blue raspberry universe,
sugar stars skin-drizzle
   a frisson - you generate
  
a thousand deliriums,
   delectable therapy,
web-caught but purified
   by bubblegum ellipses -

a secret (let's keep it),
   a fantasy I dare
not name as I taste
   the alphabet on your tongue -

I had never tried honey before,
the sweet tang
slopping along my tongue.

I’d never felt your hand
flowing around my waist
until your wrists connected,

locked me into place.
I took a few mouthfuls,
you’d rattle the spoon

into my mouth
and I’d streak it off,
the viscous orange gloop

like a strange toothpaste.
People use honey
as a term of affection

but we said it’s hackneyed,
a cloying label.  
Now whenever I call you

honey I always think
of that time in your kitchen,
the half-empty jar.

I didn’t want to.
He’d just got in from work
and flung the keys
into the bowl
so the clatter rattled
into the kitchen
where I was taking out
the chocolate fingers
from the Sainsbury’s bag
and I still hadn’t shut
the fridge door
so my right arm
was going cold.

He came up behind me
and groaned
and I assumed it meant
he’d had a long day
except everybody’s day
is the same length
but he put his arms around
my chest
subtracted the bottle
of Gordon’s gin
from the bag
and said we’ll be drinking
some of that tonight
I could do with it.

Then it came.
He asked if I’d called.
I said no because
what am I supposed to say
it’s too far to drive
on a Friday night
and they’ve got roadworks
on that roundabout still
but he butted in
like a cough in a quiet room
and said fish
and chips for tea then
been a while.

Picked up the phone
offered it to me
as though a pig’s ear
to a Labrador
and I thought stuff it
as he shut the fridge
so I reluctantly poked
at the numbers
and heard the bloop
again and again
and said to my mother
how’s this evening.

Sorry yes sorry
what yeah OK
no better right I see
yeah my fault I know
that long right yeah
so half seven
yep OK half seven.

It’s just I don’t like
the idea of monitors
and plastic-y tubes
and doctors with PhD’s
spurting words
buried in a dictionary’s depths
but he put his hands
around my chest again
and we said nothing
for a moment or two
until he said
I’m going for a shower babe
alright.

I. The Black Eyed Peas.

I told you a fib.
It was six years ago
so I doubt you’d remember.
Regardless, during one lunch-break
on the cusp of summer,
a matter of weeks before
we all exploded away from each other
you somehow had your legs
wrapped around my waist,
an unusual unexpected embrace.
A joke.
We were teenagers
and we mucked around more then.
Pulling me in yet
you seemed to lose magnetism;
strange - you always shone bright,
your laughter coiling round the room.
I stuttered for too long,
barely delving under the surface,
missing the sparkle, your diamond delights.
You are miles gone.

----------

II. David Guetta.

Not enough.
A corridor, a sprinkling of minutes.
My head in a whirl,
as anyone’s would be.
Like a firework, your white tendrils
splattered across my dark sky.
I couldn’t even call it trying.
I fumbled my words
as if fastening buttons
with my lesser-used hand.
Falling deeper into filthy water,
unable to hear your eyes
or see your words.
A loss.
A bout of crushing shame.
You deserved more,
not my faulty lines.
It couldn’t have worked,
it closed with a groan
not a radiant shout of ecstasy.
What are you saying?

----------

III. Example.

The grand peak of my weakness.
A clumsy rush of flower petals
smothered inside grey paper.
I burrowed further than before,
the soil dusting my fingers
but no more than that.
Swinging in my chair
for another look,
spouting brittle jokes
that melted in the heat.
I knew what I saw and I liked it.
You threw slivers of something;
I caught them, a hopeless
unknowing scarecrow.
Time sneaked away from us.
Naturally - it happens.
Your name has never left,
a crash in the air
like the blast of a trumpet.

----------

IIII. Miley Cyrus.

I repeat myself so many times
I want to cough on my fingers,
chuck it all on the side of a wall.
Every adjective worn down
to a rancid pulp on the ground.
There were moments
fizzing with optimism, the potential
for colours to rush back in,
to drizzle across my page
and slap a smile on my face.
We know what happened.
The string grew in length
and snapped,
my body jerking every which way
as if attempting some dreadful dance.
There wasn’t a sigh,
more a sound of acceptance,
the knowledge that again
I had missed the mark,
a bullet leaving the gun,
screaming the wrong way.
It is over now.

Nine years later I find my old
my Geography book,

Wednesday afternoons
if I remember correct and there,

faded but still visible in blue,
T.M. 4 H.S.

and I’m transported back
to 2007 and the fizzy embrace

of a crush, the two of us
running around

in a gust of e-numbers
and holding hands under tables.

My husband calls from the other room
and the image dissolves,

snapped back to the present
as an elastic band, the initials fading further.

You must be a dream
and yet the lines on your hand
know the lines on mine

I’m running out of steam
not really running
or out
it’s just the steam I have
keeps pouring
from my ears or some other place
my mouth perhaps
stuttering white plumes
into the immeasurable air

I see these words
they are not mine
but I ****** at them
like a needy child
who wants a drop of sugar
on their tongue
avoided opportunities
line up in the mailbox
or come through
in a current of pixels
another wave
here’s another wave

and you cannot catch waves
they fall to rise
in the space it takes to say
what are we doing here

they won’t know who you are
unless you tell them
they won’t ignore you
unless you feed them the chances

your breath
rattles in the throat
your head a swarming oven
of half-baked phrases
and burnt segments
of many a yesterday

where you missed the mark
or never hit it

because the steam
that should exist does not

you grab at open doors
knowing you wouldn’t step
inside

blue like a loose carrier bag
blue like rainfall

you feel that
tight tangle
suddenly blooming bruise

inside your xylophone

a common taste
but a different language

mi dispiace, non parlo italiano

wish I knew you
wish my single syllable
was your drink of choice

blue like cracked ice
blue like brushing teeth

reach into the vegetable soup
of your mind

here! a paragraph
made from colourful buttons
and not so sticky tape

mon français n'est pas très bon

wet hair and brown eyes
will satisfy me nicely

or brown eyes and wet hair

miles and minutes
and seconds
and seconds

disculpe

and seconds

är detta rätt?

nicotine no thanks
silence will **** you
decay the veins

blue like so-called heartbreak
blue like too much space

and seconds

Forgive me
in summer
if I were
to buy you

some roses
one morning
with fraying
red petals

for they’d be
so frozen
bespeckled
in silver

so you’d know
how it felt
to be cold
just like me

Midnight
  crashes in
thunderclap   headache

darkness     spreading
a virus
black   skin   infection

     hear the sea
cannot see it
mumble in   sigh out

night of sonnets
melting to   haikus
couplets     nothing

rubies on my lips
   jewels   I've never known
on my hand

     you

made me faint
   made my (day)dreams
Technicolor

whispered villanelles
     buried them
broken bones   in sand

     inhaled your language
stored stories
   for next time

twenty-six   things
twenty-six   letters
play   pause   repeat

play   pause   repeat
   craved you
smoke/drugs/*****

in eyes lost
backs of   knees
fingers on      spines

   eleven fifty nine
     fifty nine
reality soaks through

a ****** wound
   as the message
in the bottle

   you sway away
fictional     fading
   closed

They said
don’t go into the tunnel
but I did
what a rebel.

They said
it wasn’t safe
but I didn’t listen
such a rebel.

Marks on the walls
looping letters
like strawberry laces.

Names of strangers like vines
spewing off
in every direction
submerged under dirt.

Alone and loving it
when I screamed
the echo whooshed around me
like a posse of wasps

and when my mother rang
I didn’t answer
the darkness took over
covered me up.

abandoned soles
floppy dog tongues
yellowed by the sun

limbs of the limbless
sprouting scarecrow
or roadside Nike angel

many miles worn
left to be laceless
twins made orphans

or just one
dusty rubber
where nobody's home

They are bringing the curtains
down over you,
the thick, viscous velvet curtains
and your story will end,
a final cut that runs
drunk away from the page,
as if you almost wanted it to happen,
like ‘here are my last words,
leave them raw and unfinished’,
a stream of ink your last remark.

Now, they all go fishing for something.
An ugly clutter of hands
picking at the pieces,
a hunt for golden titbits
to fizzle blindingly in their eyes
and bring about a shout,
a revealed mystery
which knocks them out.
Fifty-two years
of nit-picking through
the word-filled marshes
left behind
to last another fifty-two.

They have up-dug
silver slivers of your history,
re-heated them and rewound the tape
so they can swig your accent,
watch you unravel back
from thirty to twenty.
Book-club talks on your hair,
your scar,
your marriage,
every drop like a pinch of acid.

With a crackle, a drag,
it is said.
Is it done?
Is playtime over
with their favourite
aging marionette?
Maybe time has passed,
enough so they’ll only **** you again,
between the phone ringing
and the cup on its coaster.

December, end
of year, end of something,
my acquaintance will be forgot.
Ode to divorce, if we were hitched,
but hey! To a new beginning.

Night like charcoal
on windows. Out of bed,
coffee, new machine, shiny black
juddering awake,
spurting caffeine
into the vacant cup.

   You’re doing my head in, you know that?
Yesterday’s game, lobbing
words, ping-pong tiff, oh
you didn’t think I’d forget?
Regret it? No. I was on top.

A dog barks.
I think of my grandpa’s Alsatian,
bounding tennis-ball-in-mouth
when I’m fifteen, hands sticky
with slobber, for a second,
when you were unknown.

I sip, finish, got new batteries,
make that gawky move
with the jacket, slip on trainers.
I take my Soviet Kitsch, Sigur Rós,
and your Killers. After all, the latter
is how it began, ‘it’ being us, your lips laced
with lager, my Dr. Peppered self
gushing with excitement
at being out of the house.
  Didn’t peg you for a fan…
   I guess I’m not what I seem…
ain’t that the truth darlin’? Everything
will be alright. Look

at me now, opening the door so quietly,
cold latching onto my skin
like I’m a magnetised substance.
I like how you don’t know.

Ginger cat scurries from under a car.
I think it’s running away too, running
from us. Right idea ****.
You know ‘****’ means kiss and ‘tom’
means empty in Swedish? I think of that
now, funny how a strange thought
can leapfrog to the front of your mind.

I can’t drive, you can, but you’re asleep.
Boy, you’ll be wondering
where I am, but I was never
there anyway, really, I don’t think.

Hours from the shock of me, gone,
for reasons unknown,
a magic trick with
Carbon Monoxide in my ears,
your Brightside too.

my head
must be
the boiling kettle

my voice
a series of stuttering
tufts of steam

my god
I think of you
as some sort of sun

my dreams
tell me so
they can't be wrong

you’re telling me something
yes

     I know

this is a game you play
and I’m caught up

a scrap
    
     of debris

in your Kansas storm


each move we make
is dangerously
exciting

or the other
way around

or not exciting

     at all

words like cracking eggs

enough for weeks


your story changes
every time

truth

lost in the wind

ghosts don’t scare me

     real people do


if I’ve gone quite mad
you’ve fixed me this way

a wodge uh Wrigley’s
  ‘ard an knobbly on thuh underside
uh desks

shufflin’ tuh DJ Caspar
  in thuh ‘all
unduh thuh gaze uh
  year three’s

it were
  packed lunches,
dislodging mi brace
  from thuh roof of mi mouth
like extractin’ a tooth,
  scoffin’ bars uh white chocolate

years-old Blu-Tack
  stamped black intuh carpets,
grey plastic-y chairs,
  writin’ learnin’ objectives,
underlinin’ dates
  with shatterproof rulers,
I upgraded tuh a pen
  in year four

same time
  remember listenin’ on the radio
in Scottish Clark’s mobile
  when it wuh Ingland v Brazil,
summer uh ‘02,
  thuh likes of Sheringham, Beckham
in audio only, no picture,
  and thuh TA came in
  ‘alfway throo a lesson,
said ‘we’re out’

and the time
  I cort that cricket ball,
dived and it stung mi hand,
  a crimson-drizzled palm,
throbbin’ ring

and the time
  we played football wi’ tennis *****
and I blurted intuh a trio
  uh eager classmates,
a tumble-shirt compote,
  knee flecked wi’ grit, mi own spit,
skinny whispers uh blood

and thuh time
  I plagiarised Potter
around Azkaban,
  got a Woolies notebook,
ragged Pritt-Sticked cuttins’
  of Watson in the pink ‘oodie,
but it wuh the seed
  for thuh next decade and more,
standin’ up,
  tellin’ a story,
somethin’ or othuh

I.

season of goodwill
exchanging of gifts beneath
artificial tree

-----

II.

time for family
trinkets spill from cheap crackers
exhausted punchlines

-----

III.

time for tradition
same old movies for children
naff celeb specials

somebody strikes a match
outside the corner shop

at the park the team are using
jumpers for goalposts

you put your lipstick on
in a hurry this morning

dropped your Tube ticket
somewhere at Caledonian Road

a teenager sings Dancing Queen
wears an Adidas sports bra

the old man is sleeping again
you saw him two days ago

phone’s on 22%
brother’s birthday is tomorrow

in a second-hand shop
with its own brand of smell

the spines are cracked
the pages have yellow breath

lunch is barely a fiver
the guy on the till is called Brian

if you could you’d tell
a person how you’ve looked

for this one story
but there are too many shelves

and no person
to help you look

there’s something about
   boiling kettle lungs
     words slopping from your mouth
like clumps of mashed potato
     the way you have this river of dialogue
   made from papier-mâché
     and haphazard glitter
so easily breakable
   it’s best to start afresh
that makes you stop
     and place your head against
   the cool windowpane
and say you cannot do this
   you might but you can’t so no
the umcomfortableness diverted
     scribbled over with a Biro
   so ignore the sandpaper taste
     on your tongue
or the jacket of heat
     that smothers your chest
   focus on a pinprick of positivity
like a streetlamp in another town
   let the steam from the tea
     guide you to safety

Knocked into each other
in the travel section
of Waterstone’s.
It had been years.

A cluster of seconds
where you scrambled for a name,
like fingers fumbling
for stray egg shell
out of a bowl.
Then the realisation.

We exchanged how are yous,
mentioned jobs, kids, life.
Doing well I see.

My teenage memories defibrillated,
began throbbing at an ludicrous pace
I thought I’d never feel again.

You mentioned Madrid,
I drooled out Wellington.