James Hamilton Bruce (1st April 1864 - 21st March 1907), buried in Smoot Cemetery, Wyoming. A newspaper obituary from the day after his passing stated he was poisoned by the dried plum pie he ate for breakfast. Furthermore, a piece of this pie, fed to his family's cat, reportedly killed the animal within five minutes. He was a 'highly beloved' resident of the small town and is buried with his wife, the English born Annie Elizabeth Bruce (1868 - 1961).

The car brings us here,
another titchy town
with its one-floor houses
spread like piano keys
either side of the road in
road out.

A ramshackle barn
and pick-up trucks,
green ripples
of the Star Valley
beside us.

The vehicle grunts to a stop.
You say *here’s the place
- me thinking the place for what -
but we get out,
   stretch,
a wilting American flag
by the post office
our obligatory welcome.

You breathe in,
arms wide as if ready
to embrace where we are,
keep it under your coat.
Have you been here?
   Never.

So we walk,
see no face
bar a cat that slinks its way
through a square
of overgrown grass
oblivious to us,
tired newcomers to this
scribble on a map.

And then we are in a place
full of faces six feet under,
scattershot blocks of grey
tell us who rests here.
BRUCE,
a James H.,
21st March 1907.

A distant relation?
A swift shake of the head
but a story
gushes from your throat,
how he was poisoned by pie,
loved by the locals,
a father to many.

And we spend a minute
in silence
as that’s all there is here,
thinking of a man
we never met
in a place we’ve never been,

the clouds swimming
across the sky
like plumes of chalk.

and it is this that interests them more,
that captivates their attention
for a collection of seconds
instead of contractions,

an adverb insertion.
Outside it is a stop-start matter,
from a deluge of white wisps
to a sputtering shower,

and yet their eyes swivel to the window
for a moment, then another,
as if this is more critical
than how to spell beautiful.

I brought the sandwiches,
you brought the drinks.
M&S; and cress,
cans of Coke
from the local Spar.
Kids on the football pitch,
their shouts rising like bullets.
Mrs. Smith from number 33
walked her collie - waved.
Rain came. ‘Typical’, you said.
So we bundled up our stuff
as if the end of a holiday,
then in your house
we unbundled it again
onto the living room floor
with our hair still wet
and watching E4.

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

at what point did we shed
our skins, drunkenly flutter from young
to young adulthood.

can't get it back. it's like catching
snow, blank and gone before morning
but we'll keep our eyes open

even in the mist for
a glitch, a blur of our former selves
in a shadow, a guttural voice, maybe

your own that says 'when will you
move on from this.' Oh your tears
don't taste the same now but

the television's still on.

In the morning, we were woken by thunder,
a vicious gurgle vaulting across the sky.
We watched the rain fall outside from our bed,
the windows stippled with droplets,
the clattering of water on the roof
like women dancing in high heels.

I breathed in your smell, wanting to
inhale everything about you that morning,
wanting not to forget our trickle of minutes.
I brushed my feet against yours, under the sheets.
At one point, our hands touched, I knew your fingers.
That’s what I thought then. That I knew them.

Your khaki green shirt sleeping over a chair.
Design of our fingerprints on the half-full glass.
I caught a glimpse of your Atlantic eyes
as you turned. I kept my words private,
wanting, not wanting to stitch them together.
Last night, lightning. Now this.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
The way you count things
just with your fingers, or one time counted
the freckles on my face, final count fifty-seven,
or the way tonight we count stars in your garden
except there are not that many to count
and we’ll soon count sheep in our heads instead
but you are counting from one to whatever
a list of things you count as my best qualities
and I join in and count down
what I love about you, countless memories
we store together and count as treasures,
but to count them all would take so many hours
I’d be out for the count, sleeping by these flowers.

And if we were to see each other soon
before you head off to the big city,
I know I'd later return to my gloom
because I'd have to leave you. Such a pity.

I would be really thrilled to say hi too,
not so bothered what time or what place,
my hand, it would be stuck to yours like glue,
I'd really hate to say goodbye to that face.

Until that day I shall stay here some more
and wait for a message to let me know
you want to meet up, knock on my door,
say "Hey, how's it going, come on then". Even though

the good feeling won't last long, I can't wait
to see you Alexandra. It'll be great.

So you come from this place
and you're a person I've never met
so how come I can't get your face out of my head -

it lingers like a river of perfume
aromatic and brilliant and impossible to catch -

I can see fragments of moments
in a life blissfully unconscious of anyone
someone
myself
the wind winding through your hair
a coffee-cup you clutched one Monday
all there in blocks of colour -

a smile
static
radiant
something I've seen
but not seen -

I've come to accept this as normal
that gathering a stack of names that glitter like crystals
is perfectly fine
as long as nothing is done
as long as they stay names
as long as no ingredients are sprinkled in
because then people will talk
say freak or creep
and shriek at me -

you only give a hoot about looks
but it's just not true -

but maybe it's best
to avoid a blast of embarrassment
as a cannonball to the chest -

these days compliments are met by a frown
strangers stay strangers -

what is it about making friends that is so tricky
who cares if you’re blonde or brunette
foreign or not
make videos or sing or knit jumpers for fun
what’s wrong with a hello springing up now and then
if a personality shimmers
exudes warmth through a screen -

so no
I don’t know you
may never know you
but forgive me one day if I send a hi there
it’s platonic
it’s short
I hope it’s alright

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.

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

Dog saw the fault first.
Flurry of spots like acne
sprouting on a teenager’s face.

The ground, crushed pearls,
rubbery tones under foot,
bright white blotted by an exhibition

of crimson, as if seeping
through winter’s present of gauze.
Patches of darker red,

cherryade leftovers
of a sliced finger, a chest puncture,
nosebleed drizzle. No answers,

just a dash of human leak
to be buried by more
shavings of chalk from above.

No footprints but my own,
the dog’s own code
and there, one tree over,

a welt of lemon,
the culprit obvious, waving
baton of black leading me on.

I'll take you up
on your suggestion
to dance
in spring meadows

and even if our feet
are bare we'll wear
silly smiles
on our faces

because it's this
we must remember
when the days thaw to blue
and melt to black

the ignition of a touch
familiar as a pulse
young spinning tops
in the parentheses of our love

You've done it now.
Opened your mouth,
hoping the ice starts to thaw.
Maybe you have to spell it out,
spill it out
to hit your mark.
Like a tree
I need to drop my leaves
and see if some person
catches a few,
a handful of paper-thin shapes.
Everyone moves forward.
Is that so?
The water around my ankles
has been here for years.

It lollops along
the soggy sand
in the sun,

all for a ball
its owner has thrown
towards the water,

rolling past tourists
in shorts, sandels,
sunglasses.

Its tongue *****
lackadaisically
out his mouth,

not a care in the world
on this August day
on the north-east coast.

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.

My heart is like a fatty
red vegetable,
shuddering against
my celery ribs
making aches,
making sore echoes
in the apple core of my chest,
and your fingers resemble
chocolate buttons
when I tell you where it hurts.

---------------

I take a gulp of water,
its cool clear slither
as it slips down
my pasta throat,
scurrying around
with a chilled whisper
to my meaty beige stomach
where the cold vanishes
as quickly as it came,
wedged in the side
of a potato kidney.

---------------

With a twist
my ankle made of feta
jolts just a touch,
a blast of warmth
rocketing through my foot,
blossoming in the broccoli
florets that are my toes
and then up to the knee,
a lumpy lime
that jangles anxiously
in its socket.

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.

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

caught up in a sa of altrd imags
alcohol flowing
   rd pupils
from all th slfis
   ****
scroll up /// scroll down
m8 u waz wastd
   vryon at ach othr
voics scrambl;ing
for pol position
#popularity laddr
a flck of jalousy
   slic of malic
   *fyi
grn lights signal
sombody cars rite??
hr bgins th dz-dss-
   the dscnt into pixls
primary colours
   '*** **'
night grows old
   plot unravls lik a ball of string
coagulats thick and bad
let fingrs do the talkin' 4 u
  nams bcom strangrs
bcom nams bcom strangrs
TTYL
:)

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.

I.

The day will soon come
when your children discover
that you are Santa.

II.

After Christmas Eve
no-one really wants to hear
Mariah Carey.

III.

Christmas is about
gifts and time with family
and then *Doctor Who.

Second-hand smoke
thrums within my ribcage
and I notice every atom
from top to bottom
crannies and nooks
mahogany lava
flooding over shoulders
blue-streaked toes

I can't look away
I don't want to look away
at the way
she holds a cigarette
lazy between *******
and the impish half-smile
that says everything perhaps
and perhaps nothing
a Picasso masterpiece
but it's only lips
it's only the girl
they all call Alaska
a walking storm in flip-flops
from room forty-eight

the static we have
simmers upon my tongue
or is it just Mountain Dew

words belonging to Vonnegut
drop from the leaves
sparkle like drizzle
and kiss every clover
good evening goodnight
goodbye

I have plunged into her pool
of wine and waterlogged literature
I see it I know it I want
to take a drag of her
glide inside her nirvana
hear her smile
with a crush of emeralds
wild in my eyes
a throb of electricity
that rockets through
my crooked veins
and I want a taste
as if squeezing a lemon
and the sugar cascades
liquor-like down my throat
straight and fast
to the last frontier

I see a chain of daisies
gush from her chest
crash at her feet
to be continued
I hope I hope
a phone is ringing
what country is calling?
is it where her vanilla whisper
leaves me wondrously numb?
a fuzzy echo hums
inside my ears
I ask is it over?
Is it done?

and then ****
I'm awake
and her name
has vanished
as fast as a ghost
disintegrated
like the cigarette she held
lazy between *******.

it begins with a voice

          intonation
               inflection
   liquid-like cadence

          whichever word glows best
at the time

and here are some words
     sculpted into a song

     floating jewels

               melody coming up roses

is this how we fall in love

     with a voice and a tune

a stranger’s face

which face it
          you can’t forget

It was lust we were building.
Moving in the dark, all elbows and ankles.
Found each other’s lips, leaned in for a kiss,
the first of what would be countless that night.
Your mouth tasted of strawberries and wine.
On the stereo, our favourite song.

You said ‘I love this song’,
peering out the window at an opposite building,
one hand clinched around a glass swollen with wine.
We still wore our socks, cuddling our ankles,
and we kept them on throughout the night.
In my head, replaying each previous kiss.

We’d never wanted to kiss
like this before - as soon as one song
ended we did it again, the night
oozing like a wound into early morning, the building,
our bodies alight with desire, ankles
knocking between sips of wine.

We soon finished off that bottle of wine.
Drained my glass of red, placed a kiss
on your shoulder, shuffling my feet, my ankles
into a more cosy position as a new song
kicked in, swirled into the building,
a hot breeze of music disturbing the night.

I didn’t want it to be just one night.
There was more to discover and plenty more wine,
every word we spoke echoing through the building.
I could savour your smile with every kiss,
loved your freckles, the daisy tattoo near your ankles.
It felt like writing our own story, the lyrics to a song.

But you didn’t want to hear our song.
At the end of the night
you went cold. I wrapped my arms round my ankles.
I felt sure you’d gone off me. Maybe it was the wine.
My lips were anesthetised from every kiss -
when I asked what was wrong, you said 'get out this building.'

Something had changed; I didn’t know what. Night dissolved into day. We stopped listening to Kiss.
Your lipstick stains the colour of wine on my neck. Was it the final time I’d see your naked ankles?
I took a mental photograph of the building as I left, though I’ve forgotten it since. But not yet our song.

What I'm trying to say is

I want that     jolt

that sudden   judder
   of something

you'll give me
without thinking

I want to feel it
throb in every   bone   of my body

I want to be     blown
backwards

   as if kissed   by lightning

I’ll see you
   but want to see you
again   and   again

like a sunrise on a cool morning

   your face being the     sun

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

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

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

slapdash rush
collision of lips
that open like flowers
eyes acorn-brown
red lust flush
blooms from fingers to toes
tingle of fire
licks through veins
like dripping water
skin on skin flickers
and hot sleepy breaths
quirks and delights
together as one
potent potpourri
taste of oranges
and cinnamon
something entirely
new

the bees engage
in their erratic dance
again

black ball jive
skedaddle round
flowered flutes

rippled heat brings
drink of summer
under sky blue

forks against turbulent sky
vivid cigarette flicker
like a stifled disturbance

the water holds what's high
fluvial duplicate shivers
in orange and jasmine

and the fog - great belches of it
day’s first gesture of mischief
by the house of power

the sun signifies
a deep bloom of affection
radiant in the heart

a kiss miles in the making
geography of your love
an extra horizon away

eager heartbeats
the ache of a touch
electrifies every nerve

warmth of a lemon embrace
light swims in
now watch how you glow

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.

Eleven thousand
            three hundred
     sixty one miles away
in a place   I’ve never been,
     you are thinking
          of all the places
you have never   been
     or haven’t   been,
some for seasons,
          some for years.

A Paris   pomegranate   sunrise
     from the Pont des Arts,
     bright     colours     shimmying
at the   pulse   of romance.

The   blood   cell   rush   of Shibuya,
   Tokyo at night among
a river of     strange symbols,
   blinking   TV   screens.
  
Prague dredged in frost,
   feet-chatter   on cobbles
          past the Jan Hus memorial
under a   cool   periwinkle sky.

Glossy tulips in Bilbao,
   metallic curves,
   trill   of   syllables
     by the teal Nervión.

I think of you,          far away,
   same planet, different   spot,
the future washing towards us
   full of scrambled   images
and     white     noise,
a trickle of hope at your   toes,
   through my screen.

The air dense with the prospect
of something quite dangerous
but delicious, the way
a body sways in shadow, memories
on the floor in a many-limbed
black knot                    but someone’s skin and
someone’s skin touches in
the space between strobe lights
with a movement fluid, sensual,
snap of a signal,
electrical, audible pulse and temples
in sweat sets them in motion,
a parallel language
spoken with the eyes,
fingers on waist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

things never said before

my sentences
plagued with stutters

pockets of smoke
my temporary desires

it's when you
strike the match

your orange apostrophe
that keeps me up for hours

lungs bursting
with out-of-season flowers

but it's a fix
cruel trick

the lyrics of you
lost into another

irretrievable night

the sun is just
lovely. just lovely.
tennis

with cheap racquets
in our white
slip-on

shoes, pauses for fizzy
liquids, to swipe
branches of sweat.

so lovely
the sun and I could
let you captivate me

here for the rest
of the summer, then another
summer if we

keep doing
the things we love
to do now, if we poorly

play tennis in the sun
and don't forget it is lovely.
this. summer.

I'll ask you not to turn off the lights,
I want them to blind me
with their brilliant filaments
until the bulbs break
like a vase on a tiled floor,
the walls, the door go back
to being charcoal black
as they have been so many times before.

I have started to abhor
the roads that define me,
the words that describe me
and my traits,
the way I must walk in wintery air
to a migraine inducing wilderness
to be squashed into old moulds,
will this be adequate for you now and when?

What is this fall,
does it affect you, your actions,
your jumbled jigsaw piece thoughts?
These bruises are purple,
this brain is strained,
inject me with zest
until my wrist pains
so much it must combust.

Out of the glass is nothing,
a candyfloss cloud, a tree, a lawn,
it bores me,
an artist is needed,
paint a new canvas
swathed in colour
and things from my weekend dreams
lucid and intense.

I am a ******* up ball
of paper, unfold me, still legible?
Fold it again, an airplane
chucked into an angry breeze
or please,
if the lamps are tough enough,
watch my words illuminate,
drool across the table.

Perhaps they will forget,
have already forgotten
with their yellow jackets
and marker-stained fingers, ready-set
for another unfamiliar face
with their first aid kit,
strings of terminology to engage the meek
and mute, the absent without leave.

They have left me
a failed apprentice with stationery
in my pocket and an out-of-tune song.
You might well ask
where I flicker next. My polka-dotted mouth
says nothing, the answer deep
in the hole they dug, or wedged on the roof,
the last unobtainable golden jigsaw piece.

I do adore that jacket, its sleeves, its hood,
the way it envelops me in its temperate cocoon,
that jacket has been through a lot, put up
with my escapades way back when and then some.
I remember the way I first held it, delicately
like a handful of jewels, wore it next day
to a rendezvous, they all mentioned it in banter,
that jacket, its sleeves and its hood
look good on him is what they said.
It's black and red, never whinges
about where we go, what we do,
if it could speak it'd say it needs me
to fill those unoccupied holes in winter
when snow whirls around our arctic-like bodies.
Its cuffs are tarnished with tears for you
from over a year ago when I was so blue,
but that jacket's seen happy times too
with many more to come I am sure.
Later I will wear it yet again,
through the door I will walk,
it'll hold me closer than you ever have,
clinging to my arms like an itchy disease.

what is the space between something that could be love,

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

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

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

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

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

your interpretation of what you so desperately believed to need,

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

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

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

It got so bad
he couldn’t sleep.
Frenzied bedsheets,
pillow a swamp of sweat.
He’d swig milk
from the carton,
eyes a crush of crimson
and wouldn’t say a thing.

Then he’d mention he could hear them still.
The duh-duh-duh-duh of bullets
zooming towards strangers,
the thunderous stomach-rumble
of an erupting grenade.
I’d grip his hand and he’d cry,
shake his head, trickle out names.
I couldn’t help so I cried too.
The therapist would ****** tissues at us.

I’d be careful with noises.
If I dropped something
he’d shoot up like
an electric-shocked puppet.
Body at home,
mind at war.
He smelt death in the air,
the energy sapping from his body
as if a pin had perforated his skin.

I had to drag him up
from the bathroom floor,
as if a putrid corpse
wrenched from a river.
     Why is it me?
     What did I fight for?
That’s what he asked me.
I didn’t know, wouldn’t know,
and we cradled each other
as the shower spat out water
for a minute, for an hour.

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.

He’s already in the room
when I walk in.

He can see me wringing my hands
and a grin half-bananas on his face,
as if he knows precisely
how our conversation will go,

because everyone who’s ever met him
ends up the same way,
with a tempest in their skulls
and an avalanche in their guts.

He’s ordered me a black coffee -
knows it’ll keep me up tonight.
I crumple my fists under the table,
ready for the comic-strip moment

where I overthrow the baddie,
B O S H ! right in the chops,
but it’d be like punching concrete.
I’d come off worse, of course.

I tell him to stop playing,
that it’s gone on too long.
He sees me wringing my hands again
and a guffaw ejects

from his chest,
an ugly-bird sound.
How many times I’ve turned
down an opportunity,

how many times I’ve said
I’ll think about it
only to pass and watch the night
eke away as treacle down the sink.

He’s the blister in my life.
I dismiss the drink, get up to leave,
my only remark, ‘are you leaving too?’
That disgusting smirk.

‘Don’t be silly. We’re friends.’
Outside I breathe fast though
not out of breath,
my palms raspberry-pink.

He’s already waiting
when I get home.

A black force erupted into your sight;
male, small and wet, it would be the last.
The candlestick kid at five to midnight.

Nurse came around nine, you felt some delight,
ready to relive the pain from the past:
a black force erupted into your sight.

Time dribbled by and then with all your might
cried for the child to arrive and fast:
the candlestick kid at five to midnight.

Years before, a thought, ‘Will mine be alright?’
Like Christmas Eve, a present in the post:
a black force erupted into your sight.

No wave of love upon him in the light,
what you wanted now here, but at what cost?
The candlestick kid at five to midnight.

Come morning the daughter, intrigued and bright
meets your son, awake after his first rest.
A black force erupted into your sight,
the candlestick kid at five to midnight.

As you launch
the mottled sphere
(no longer luminous yellow

after many a capture)
with a flick of the wrist,
all the neighbours would see

is a streak of black,
a charcoal bullet
between the trees

as your friend on four legs
fizzes after its prize,
jams it in the mouth,

lollops back to you with rapid pants,
clump of slobber, a monosyllabic
can I do it again.

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.

I. (The Real Poetry).

All these notions but nothing on the page.
Haven't we heard it all before?
Impetus from departed greats
wash ashore in our brains
but when confronted with an void white meadow
our hands go numb,
glued to the roof of a freezer.
This idea of mine is big, challenging,
but so far only a few thousand letters
have made ***** snow angels.
In its place, poetry.
Swifter to write, to read.
No rhymes usually,
just haphazard feelings lurching out my head
like a turquoise waterfall.
Sure I pace round the room
waiting for the next line to evolve
but who doesn't?
I write about real people,
people I speak to, people I know.
Do they know it's them when they skim my work?
Perhaps yes.
Perhaps they don't read them.
Perhaps best for all of us.
The book remains unseen, incomplete
while real poetry rushes into the world
like another superfluous boy band
playing more vapid pop.
Numb them instead.

II. (The Wind).

On a bench
in the garden
I sit with her
as she rests her frizzy Goldilocks
on my shoulder
and says I shouldn't go on Sunday.
A few years younger,
sweet and out of bounds.
Out. Of. Bounds.
So why am I holding her hand?
Doesn't mind from what I can tell.
She likes me.
No she can't.
When does 'the other side' ever like this?
I've told her about the one back home,
how she could be superseded.
I'll disclose, for a while now
I've seen photographs
and wondered what if,
what if the same way too feeling
snaked up the ladders
and throttled me?
What would her sister say?
'He's only been here four days
and look at him, cuddling
the queen of yesteryear.'
Her sister comes out, surprise, joins us.
Say no words, look at stars overhead.
The direction of the wind is altering.
Must be.
I unzip my eyes.

III. (The Sun and the Moon).

Half eight
a year or so in the distance
on a Wednesday morn.
A car.
Neither of us can drive as I write.
One of us is about to though.
London.
Why?
To meet friends.
Another reason?
A show.
A show of sun and moon.
A sporadic delight like a white Christmas.
I say to P it's one of those events
that must be attended.
I'm what, twenty-one?
She's gotta be twenty-four, five?
When will this ever come about again?
Have to acquire this chance.
He says if she'll be aware of the poem,
the one I scrawled down some time ago.
Doubt it, but you never know.
You never know.
Maybe it's true.
A young, beautiful girl
with a hat and a guitar.
There's something you don't see every day.
To the city.
*Rejsen begynder.

In the end
we ended up in the pub -
now there’s a surprise.

Fifteen nights out of thirty,
at least. Cheap grub
and we knew the owners,

mates of my folks.
‘All right pal?’, he said.
‘Not bad’, I said back.

Our feet ached,
my arms cracking like conkers
as I stretched,

got comfortable.
And then you mentioned
the C-word again.

‘But in a few years.’
A nod. A sip. The cool slither
of lager down my throat.

We’d talked, of course,
about it before. People
expected, assumed

a kid was the next step.
You didn’t like
my quietness on the matter -

you’d kick my leg, teasingly,
as if kicking the answer
into my body, my mouth.

Honestly? I hadn’t given it
much thought. A sure thing
was my regular line of choice.

'You know, I fancy you
so much right now.'
OK, so I don’t know

what made me say that,
but it had already zipped
across the table,

buried in her ears
before I clocked on.
I really meant it though.

I think your cheeks
went cherry red -
there was a kiss, I remember.

I’d answer properly
later on, the pub
a foggy memory

and that night, I slept
knowing I’d fancied you
from the first second we met,

and that the C-word
wasn’t as horrid
as I always used to believe.