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

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.

Tonight
the stars pulsate
alone.

Our hands
twinkle with sweat,

words blend
together like clouds.

Our laughter
skitters through grass

and
I feel the lulling
throb of your blood.

The moon
glows white,

evening
loops itself around us.

Lost it.
Lost. It.
That’s what he said.
Lost it, last night, her place.
Not a phone or the house keys,
you know what.
Mutual, so that was a relief.
It was the lunchtime
that sent them all flocking.
A horde of eyes honed in on him,
excitement swimming in the air,
questions ready to hop
off from their tongues.
Nothing unexpected.
It is what it is, what we were taught.
He felt glad, a burden, a flaw
wrenched out from him
as though a sickness
swept away from within.

He said he wasn’t one of them anymore,
as though he’d moved into a new club
where this was the norm,
weekend gettings-it-on in bedrooms
riddled with indie-rock band posters
and a floral bedspread.
I asked him where he’d lost it.
Would he ever get it back,
like a football
punted into a hedge long ago?
A quizzical look.
I thought of everybody I knew
losing things, dropping that word
from their dictionaries
and scrawling something new
with a new body,
a sensation never quite like the first time.
Years disappeared,
myself the blank domino
among the pack.
I wonder if he can recall her name.
I didn’t admire him.
I was still one of them,
still am one of them
but there are no sighs.
It is only a moment of a moment
in a chapter in a story
that has yet to begin,
and I’ll decide
when the page is turned.

blue like core of ocean
blue raspberry boulder
flecked with enamel

wind-ravaged land
far out full stop
unblemished by the likes of us

plastic population
whirling ball of selfies
and self-made destruction

but Neptune, blue
like your eyes adjusting to light
like the canvas of sky post-birth of rain

I'm at the very edge of myself.
The night has arrived, my body
shocked numb, a cold
I am now accustomed to.

My reflection shows a forlorn face -
I tell it I wish I could whisper
flowers, each one delicate and white,
so they could float on a river

of dreams I made real.

Then there’s the attire.
You spend hours checking yourself out
in the mirror, the drool across the floor,
******* of your dress
and the ******* smothered in lace.

Step back, look at that face.
The realisation seeping in
like blood into a bandage
that you are almost ready.
A cast of a hundred or so
seen-once-in-two-years
with eyes on your eyes,
the cold finger ringless for
just a few seconds more.

Here it is then, the moment when
you settle down
as a child clambering into bed
for a parent-read tale.
You have chosen this man
with this face and these hands
and he will do.
The search cannot be continued.

In one month, an argument.
In one year, a child
after the umpteenth round
of relatives' questions.
The story writes itself
and oh how plain it seems,
the predictability like gone-off milk
makes you want to gag.
But, you say, it’s how it goes.
How it goes.

The woman asks if it’s the one.
You’re flummoxed for a second -
the dress or the man?
Yes, you reply.
I think so.

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

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

space between adult   more adult
the unmarried   and married
trundle through mid-twenties
roads slobbered with snow
fog-licked windows
friends skidding
into what is expected of us

invitations in the mail
like tiny sirens
reminders
of that perennial question
if not now when
is it your turn yet

it’s a cinch, really

just yanking the duvet
back over yourself

shunning
the what-could-be-fun

or actually-might-not-be
best-to-stay-in

and that mist
how it loves to slither up

silver venom
sour headache

eyeless demon
eyeing you up

for a laugh
a ripple of giggles

in your ears
a squall of cymbals

ugly vowel-less
torrent of speech

a red light
****** iris

blinks across the shore
enough for you to bathe

in blue
confused puppet

lists of missed-outs
and the trash

you opted for instead

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

taken to
  thistle of syllables
  sapphire streaked sky
and cherry blossom shiver
  liquid pastels
  lethargic car exhalations
machines with their seeds of light
  spherical shimmers
  church spire
poet-named sacred place
  nickel slurry
  flour-doused mountains
alone with myself
  just funnels of breath
  passing my refrigerated lips
reminder of time

Met you in the red room.
Met you in the place
where we shattered our youth.
   I came as soon as I could
in the car, beer on my teeth
and my heart thumping mad.
You had called me up.
Dropped my phone in shock,
maybe laughed in surprise.
   Sixty miles - sixty minutes.
***** the traffic lights,
***** the state of my face,
my bloodshot eyes
yawning open with each blink.
   Inside, into our crimson heaven,
curtains drawn,
glass of milk in your hand.
The room of our eighteens
where we killed crushes,
lost bets and went home
no nearer to being adults.
   You’d put on that black shirt
I’d left one time before.
I’d forgotten all about it.
Yours now. Always yours.
   It was raining.
You gave me a towel,
I breathed in your smell.
No need for words,
I knew what you were saying.
   Took a step closer.
Both of us ready to shatter
whatever this was now.

and then you’ll have a child,
the first of maybe a trio
of slippery-skinned
shrieking new humans.
Over a bunch of months
you’ll watch the globe
inside your partner expand,
family members placing
a hand above the navel
to feel a kick, a thud
to incur a exclamation of glee,
at the idea of a person
on the edge of expulsion,
an uncooked multi-limbed being
you helped invent.

Then there will be nights of no sleep,
the traipsing to the cry
of your writhing baby,
all tears and open mouth bawl,
hoping you’ll supply
a response to pacify the mind.

There’ll be a morning
when you peer in the mirror
and see a single thread
of silvery hair
or tiny crimson quivers
in the whites of your eyes
and your child
will ****** a picture
to your chest
crammed with crude scribbles
of a sunny scene
and you’ll wonder
if it will ever be real again.

when the Spice Girls came on
I knew it was time to leave

hour hand poking midnight
red cups bloated
with spit and tangerine *****

back slaps from strangers
opening and closing their mouths
like goldfishes on morphine

try to find you
through tobacco whispers
***** shots and near-**** Twister

and you're by the front
jacket in hand
we simply nod enough's enough

halfway home you ask
what a zigazig is

I think a v
oice is co
ming ba
ck to me
caught up i
n the breeze

I’d turn it int
o a song
but my words a
re like water
gone too q
uick

you know the brit
tle moments
that cru
mble as a child
crushing a flow
er in their hands

you’re the gh
ost beside me
present b
ut never
really the
re at all

I want to be the image
on a loop in your mind
a technicolor exclusive

the word that camomile
soothes your throat

teardrops of light
that speckle the walls
in dawn dreams

the little flame that melts
your frozen fist
of a heart

there'll be a ball of socks
hugging at the end of the bed

and you'll teach me phrases
my throat has never
truly felt before

Love is a funny word,
tossed around
recklessly,
thrown as if
a polished burgundy cricket ball
you’re supposed to catch
before it crosses the boundary.
It’s just a word,
no different than tea
or jodhpur or penguins
but we treat it as more,
said too little
or far too often,
a glittering jewel
seen as a trigger for something.
Use it if you mean it;
don’t mean it, it’s no use.

Back at the start for the last time.
I get our drinks before you arrive,
£1.10 more expensive than when
we began dating, which sounds strange,
that word, ‘dating’,
it was only convening for cider,
a JD and coke twice a week after work,
you correcting the spelling
of children born post-Miracle of Istanbul,
me in front of a screen
splattered with numbers
imperative to any name but mine.

Now it was amicable.
Before, not at all.
A sort of swell inside me,
a boiling kettle, the shock tiptoeing through me
when you said enough.
I wanted to hurt you. Absurd.
I felt an uninvited sensation,
a sanding of the ribs,
a brain stapled again and again.
Later, I discovered you felt it too,
if not more so. I softened
like a block of fudge in the heat,
the fury dissipating as cigarette smoke.

You walk in; I get a different shock,
a cold jolt inside me, a voice that says
within an hour it will be over,
a footnote on the CV of my twenties,
April 2013 - October 2016.
You look great, more of an effort than me.
Lately, I’ve let myself go, no surprise.
We talk and laugh. I ought to shave, I know.
Joke about late-night Monopoly,
a fraction of our love, always ours.
The realisation it is a first time last date,
the closing of the door, the final word.

For a second, I am enthralled
at the thought of you, naked,
standing in the doorway to my room,
chestnut hair shimmying down your back.
It won’t occur again, not in that room,
not in that flat, not anywhere
besides a flicker of memory.

Our friends are getting married.
We’re not.
I think we both knew
it would crumble before long,
our relationship a headache tablet
dissolving speck by speck.
Pool, like we used to? you say.
Sure. Three games, I win two one.
Could we restart? Turn it off then on again?
I dare not ask.

I leave you to get the tube from Chalk Farm
as the half-blotto strangers
blare delight at an Arsenal goal.
A hug is too awkward,
shaking hands even worse,
but a hug is the gift. No kiss.
Seven seconds.
The back of you is how
I’ll remember you, walking away,
hands in pockets,
not looking back.

my answers are mossy pebbles

take them
clean them

peg me to the line

and let the breeze ransack
this body

bones tightened with wire

muscles that scrunch
as carrier bags

there are puddles
they’ve existed longer

stop the rain
flowers don’t sing

they chatter in colour
if you paint them in

In the midst
of a fiery debate
on Christmas music.

John says Mariah, hands down,
‘what a voice,
always have a shimmy to that
at the work do.’

Mike thinks Band Aid,
‘number one
for six years
but the original’s the best.’

Sharon believes Wham!
because if you can’t
have a bit of cheese
this time of year when can you.

I put forward the Pogues,
fist on table, ‘it must be the winner’,
and before I know it
we’re calling each other scumbags.

saffron wings
sleeves of copper
vanilla ice cream heaven

which was
a carnival of stars
in the first yawns of morning

which was
the first tepid trickle
of something returning

yourself
behind the wheel
sand snuggling your toes

which was
yourself with arms open
breathing again alive     alive

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.

Are you feeling the tangerine tide?
Are you hearing the squawk of sirens?

Blue Tuesdays,
a bare foot on the carpet,
another trivial tidbit
makes you feel uncomfortable.

A good six hours,
if they write words to you
they’re in invisible ink.

The front door, locked.
The paper says a reality star's
got knocked up, again.

Are you using two sugars?
The phone is a shrill instrument,
a headache your own
private hailstorm.

I thought I heard an echo
of something. A voice
saying do I know how to write.

Is it putting one foot in front
of the other? I swear I read it
somewhere, or was told it
long ago.

snowfall and stars
you shove gloved hands
into pockets
to warm them faster

the shimmer of ice
splintered by a slew
of children
and now us

touching you
my private ghost
body like smoke
thrill of a dangerous taste

what night
crawls into our heads
drips its silence
between the wind

what names
trickle into our throats
form like frost
on unfamiliar windows

I say
there is a crackle
of some undiscovered magic
when my lips close in on your skin,
fingers on your neck like touching the neck of a cello.

potent blue sky but ground laced with blood
stench of death in the air and on that August day
he joined the deceased Spaniard in the sun outspoken
generation of ’27 with the taste of poetry on his tongue
called a socialist partaking in abnormal activities
never found a single shot or several nobody knows
during La Guerra Civil the voice of a nation
quenched in the blink of a second

like the cellophane wings of a dragonfly
torn from its body so the whirr vanishes
or fire strangled out of someone
drenched with bullets of water

como las alas de celofán de una libélula
arrancadas de su cuerpo
para que desaparezca el zumbido
o fuego estrangulado afuera de alguien
empapado con balas de agua

new melody I drink
disco fizz on my tongue
to strawberry ballet

chime of magic
down my spine
when you bless me with whispers

first time swimming
cathedral where echoes
make new constellations

handful of sunset
hundredth bouquet of thanks
look how you made room in your shadows

(     for me     )

at the back of the shop

   gawping around
   like a little lost boy

     you
trying on a dress

****

     a bit revealing

but not too revealing
and an utter bargain
for what it is
  
   you said

   I see your feet shuffle
under the curtain

Christmas is coming
so I think don’t buy it
   I’ll get you it for Christmas

     your face will shine like tinsel
a gigantic grin
job well done from yours truly

     but you step out
into the light
   body wrapped in blizzard-white

a blaze of lipstick
and my heart

roly-polys

twirl
   gorgeous

really
   yes

     you think so
as you check your exquisite figure
   in the mirror
  
yes yes

   wear it all day
   all of tomorrow

oh my
   steady now
yes yes

presenting
my next initiation
3D spectacle

in spectacles
language of rust to be wiped away
sand letters by sea

one day   as planned
I'll be the prism
my colour chart sprayed

on the walls   fruit salad
of a room made familiar
your mouths a shock of smile

my fingers un-twitching
the precise words unrolled from my throat
not these but

it is an especially warm day -
you drink orange juice
straight from the carton -

like many - a time for legs
on display - off and on
buses - but inside

a nametag states Harmony -
provides me with
a throat-cooling solution

before you sit in silence
with music I cannot hear -
drinking juice from the carton

another chalk-written name

thunderclap behind the eyes
no time to count the stars
that dance
or should that be burning

brush me in a language
unfamiliar
like a splash of a kiss
or smoke in the throat

tell myself what I think
you would say
know I won’t soak
in your roguish potion

Cat food is
a high priority
shopping list item.

A fly dies
its useless body
a pimple on the windowsill.

The pub is not an option
you know the man
in the cornershop quite well.

Your car has had
a toothache for
the past six years.

A phone call
is never good news
only your sister’s white noise.

The TV’s used
just for the lottery
but you’ll never win

and the cat meows
wondering where her
food has got to.

In the chair.
That’s where he was,
an unpleasant present.
Eyes shut,
feet up,
miniscule pills scattershot
on the plastic tray
to his right.
Could’ve been dreaming
except not this time.

We were entering a room
pregnant with death,
the newspaper
splattered with miserable headlines
unread and uncrinkled,
a streaky fingerprint
on a glass
left after his last mouthful.
I half expected his head
to loll forwards,
his face to **** awake
and say he simply nodded off.

I turned to her and said
I didn’t want to touch a thing.
This is how it is now,
an unremarkable date
stamped into our histories,
a silence only known
in the presence of a body
expunged of life,
of a pocket of breath.

the air is dense
with guilt

smoke we made
that threatened
to devour us both
has gone

but our exclamation marks
still loiter
like unwelcome
dinner-party guests

we’re red-faced
and aching
from the tsunami of garbage
hurled franticly
about the place

but our eyes connect

our apologies
ready to float like balloons
from our mouths

liquid silhouette
exposed toes
echoes that swim
through the room

apricot flame
candle burns
as do we
with each breath out

mist hush to windows
morning muscle crackle
stretch as roots
yawn into place

and with a flick
bend back
boomerang of the spine
arms like pillars

in a trance
birth of a wave
woman upended
moves her bones

chain of inhalations
human triskelion
little quivers
but steady soul

then retreat
from the shore
float away
flat again

a shuffle
before repeat
ready to go metronome
take off

You taste the birth
of winter on your tongue,
that smack of cold.

Grass slobbered
in frost,

streetlights on
at half six,

stars like splinters
of glitter
in the night.

If we could touch them
they’d feel soft
as pillows,

glow bright as torches
to guide us the way home.

you are the darkest thing
I’ve ever known

gulp you like oxygen
arrhythmic tick in my lungs

static-crackling
in the pit of night

the seams bubble apart
our plot thick as blood

light-wisps
     tiptoe     through
gauze of green

     piccolo     chirrups
woodwind     refrain

     water burble
sweep     scattershot     rocks
     teeth of giants

pebble ensembles
     paths     buttered
with hair of Meliae

     brisk glottal     stop
pecker     on bark

     dead skin
and these taupe
     bones

almost tibias
     swell     skywards

sprout
     arthritic     fingers

that will fall
     amputate     beneath
                                       my feet

breeze in hair
   cool whispers

   sand on hands
slinks between fingers

old band shirt
   silver bangle

   cobalt nails
watermelon eyes

footprint hieroglyphs
   sleepy pulse

   pineapple sunset
ribbon clouds

winter beach
   fresh love

   just a touch
sea-hush

It’s a heat that skims
off from the ground
and soaks the bones.
Music burrows
into the ears of suited men,
eating calorie-clogged burgers,
dripping onions
and then you’re in
a restaurant with blue tiles
hugging someone you haven’t seen
in six years
and time slips as treacle
under lights
in the bowl you sit in
with UFO’s blooming on the ceiling
like mammary flowers
and there’s a woman
with a bra on her head,
blonde hair like a mini blizzard
as for a moment
a throng of teenagers
in stripy socks
share sweat to Fleetwood Mac,
bees shimmying at something pretty.
It’s a scene you couldn’t picture,
except you could,
everybody has their phone out,
a flurry of colours
and drumming that drums
into your skull
like a shot of adrenaline.
Businessmen outside
swallow wine,
sit on the tube with blue ties
and rustle
the Evening Standard and its headlines
streaked with gloom.
Ticking towards Tuesday,
another man
eats another burger.
The hours pass,
the heat stays,
the music remains.

the tales of our todays
   splash into     tomorrow
my veins appear     bluer
     my joints creak louder
as if anxious for attention

hours pass while in some strange
     autopilot   stupor
paddling     among     memories
that bleed monochrome
   feel like sand   slipping
painlessly     from my ears

bright   names have grown   grubby
as years dribble     away
   from my hands

it must be universal

what’s the   medical   name
for over-reminiscing
   coupled with   too   much     thinking

sad hellos   float   in the wind
   goodbyes punch harder
     and occur too often

our misery clings to the windows
   like April   raindrops
     the language of young     manhood
smudged together in the mist
   incoherent     grey clouds
we remember   this but     not that

my spine   aches
I     misplace things
and next   week and next   month
     stumble into view
blurry as a frozen drink
   dangerous to     touch

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

your kiss
is my snowflake

no two the same
and yet to fall

like a word nobody utters
in case they say it wrong

the others are like kites
tiny blue specks

blending in with the clouds
or a car in the fast lane

watching countryside
***** by in an avocado slush

there’s a lexicon
to be discovered

while fragile words
stain friends like coffee

if they’re not careful
or allow themselves

to be cracked
as a lightbulb on the floor

Every afternoon on their way back
from school, they get a ball
and start booting it
across the park opposite
my house,

****** crimson ties slack around their necks,
black uniform untucked.
Kim comes at half three,
asks if I’m doing ‘all right’?
Not bad.

An episode of Minder’s on the box,
teeth popping globes of green
grapes bought when in town.
Then, an electrocution,
a name.

Ted. His features start to swim in my head.
Next week marks fifteen years.
He used to play once.
Striker. He’d score a belter.
I’d cry.

twenty years
since the days of maroon
jumpers tucked in
black shoes
golden time
and a thin blonde fringe

I look into the still
second circa 1998
faces of future
troublemakers
a lesbian
an ex of a friend

words non-existent
that would become
existent
like flowers
bursting
into the millennium

and long ago
split
marbles that roll
in different directions
same names
another age

century before
a time not sure
ever lived

tell me what it is you want,
the bits that make you tick
when the doors shush shut,

the want that scurries within
like some electrical current
making your skin tickle.

tell me what you feel
when he doesn’t ring back
and the phone sleeps,

an inept white brick.
tell me. go on, your head
a knot of faulty Christmas lights

and how you wish for someone
to grab your heart (not literally)
and make a home there

or just renovate it.

I can only tell you
what I have told you before.

The rain drops
from the smoky sky,
pewter pellets.

It is quiet
except for the sporadic
crackle of a shout
from a neighbour.

The postman is a bloom
of red outside the window.

Straggly wires sprout
from my chin,
the phone rings
and nobody answers.

Headlines slide
across the television,
repetition.

Newspaper stains
my fingers,
a journalist’s black
perhaps inaccurate words.

Another day
becomes another day,
another month.

The sun rises
and falls,
indecisive light.

The man rides by,
gas mask on mouth,
another man at the back
in the air-quiver heat.

Debris sprinkled
like an upturned board game,
unreadable dominoes,
Jenga bricks,

skeletal wires
that wriggle from
used-to-be floors,
a building pinched in

at the waist or flattened
by the palm
of a foreign hand,
now a crinkled newspaper migraine.

Three time zones away,
the crackle-static from the radiator,
low drone from the TV
as they frantically jiggle

their pamphlets
at a river of horses
that chug past in person,
on a screen.

Mobiles are hooked
out from pockets,
a choir of beers
hoisted and sloshed

between pancake-hat girls.
They have their own world,
as does the child
leaving school,

the bartender wiping a pint glass,
the single mother
driving out the multi-storey.
The news makes

a big deal
but all I can think
is we’re the same and so different,
so different yet the same.