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.

Thirty pages     into a thriller
when she steps     out

blue-bikinied     beauty
water clinging     to her bronzed skin

like a t-shirt     made from opals
slick curlicues     of hair

and blinking     the sea away
body     a perfect pair

of inverted     parentheses
sand populating     between every toe

wet specks     that dribble
past the collarbone     between the *******

I am looking     at a moving painting
stupidly entranced as if     this was a Picasso

improbable     as always
but enough     for me

to put     the book down
a flawless frame     radiant and alive

and just five     footprints away

these years go quicker
than you would’ve believed
five years ago

now the others
seem to be doing well
this one other

I look at the pictures
they have elected
to wallpaper

their pencil-case sized
portion of the web
and yes

between the shots
of leafy streets
meals reflected in mirrors

an emotionless selfie
one in every six
it is clear

they have gripped
the big city
or the other way around

and here
in your own mirror
straggly tufts of hair

glints of silver
sewn into teeth
thin crimson pitchforks

in the whites of the eyes
you wouldn’t know a life
like that if you walked into it

shook its hand
over a strangely-named drink
in a poky but affable bar

You know the morning comes
with the ridged mirror thumbprint
post-shower, a buffoon on the news
with his breakfast’s semi-skimmed
still lingering on his lip.          Oh! There’s a wedding dress,
white mascarpone tones put the nation
in a hellish spin… They’re miming
about this online, believe it,
their history teachers know it
and they shoot their cars up with paracetamol;
doctors say it’s the best way
to keep the numbers
down to single digits.

Girl boy something other, you’d better
check those socials because
a no-faced stranger may incorrectly spell
mascarpone, how ***!! stop it you look,
not the waxy sheen of your blemished
history, and the rain, those scrawny
black instruments are done for,
we shimmy in semi-skimmed now
because the movies said so
and you must believe every word,
each glitzy syllable is like
a paracetamol shot,
you’re missing out, you’ll forget
so I’ll say it again, not really
‘cause you’re reading, you’re missing

breakfast’s ready.

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

waterfalls
   petrified

frozen chalk
   bubble blossom

minerals slink
   between feet

white shoelaces
   milky squiggles

liquid emeralds
   clotted cream puddles

spread of forest
   green margarine

rinsed in sun
   Mexican memento

I'll hold you in this stillness
where the cusp of the world is a peach
and the distant flickers of chilled water
remind us of existence,          of a pulse.

On the way home from work
a man on the train sneezed into his handkerchief
and a woman next to him, maybe mid-thirties,
mangled her face into a state of disgust.

Two friends were talking football
as I turned onto our street,
one in a City top, the other with a ball
scuffed with the marks of many a lashing
into the north-west of a park net.

Our daughter was doing homework,
exam season, a cocktail of notes
scattershot on the duvet, and when I asked
do you fancy a cuppa
she said yes, so I clambered the stairs
and she asked me how work was.

The game was on, midweek match.
Two goals but by the second half my head, drooping
down and again down, laden with sleep,
so I left the last whisper of wine in the glass,
undressed, brushed the last remnants
of a steak and kidney pie from my teeth,
put myself to bed, my wife a hand away.

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.

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.

I.

A louse in a house
or a mouse on a blouse.
A bell that goes ****
or a gong that goes ****.
A gap on a map
or a cap on your lap.
A drink in the sink
or an ink that stinks.
A spleen on a screen
or a queen who is green.
A bow in the snow
or a crow that glows.

II.

A wash or a whip,
a lip or a lop,
a top or a tip,
a car or afar,
a bar or a war,
a door or a snore,
a bore or a nail,
a flail or a whale,
a run or a bun,
a sun or a moon,
a spoon or a bus,
a fuss or a sigh,
a cry or a cheer,
a fear or a smile,
a while or a pen,
a den or a cat,
a mat or a hat,
a bat or a glass,
a vase or a weight,
a mate or a fork,
a cork or a mop,
a cop or a stop.

III.

Apples and artichokes, ants and antelopes,
bees and beers, books and brains,
cucumbers and chimneys, ***** and coats,
dogs and drains, dots and dominoes,
ears and eejits, elephants and exams,
flies and flutes, files and friends,
grasses and guts, giants and gyms,
horrors and hiccups, horses and hills,
igloos and irons, irises and idiots,
jumpers and jackets, jodhpurs and jellies,
kings and kettles, kites and kittens,
lions and lamps, lemons and lunches,
mums and monsters, mosses and moths,
noses and notes, nightmares and needles,
oblongs and orang-utans, organs and oranges,
paintings and pennies, ponds and pants,
quiches and quizzes, questions and queues,
rainbows and rings, rascals and rabbits,
snakes and sprouts, sweets and salts,
trumpets and trains, tables and toasters,
umpires and ukuleles, umbrellas and uniforms,
violets and vests, violins and vials,
wheels and wings, windows and weeds,
xylems and x-rays, xylophones and xysters,
yachts and yoghurts, yards and yaks,
zigzags and zephyrs, ziggurats and zombies.

you cannot fall in love
with strangers
you fall in love
with the idea
create a filter
a sort of cellophane wrapper
dangled in front of the eyes
and everything sweeps
virus-like into colour

you’re lapping it up
a thirsty hound
making an accent that fits
as if whisking ingredients
until the texture’s correct
the two of you together
in scenarios that’ll never happen
a matinee showing
on the cinema screen in your head

you’ll picture it
and it will feel real
but you’ve fashioned a fiction
bleeding with improbable chapters
the idea a supernova
real life a distant planet

washed clean
for the premiere of another
year plus one

will the voices now
untangle when the tide
brushes them in

swimming through seasons
effervescent
a new glow you emit

and you tick and you tick
cast a new sunrise
into ****** waters

I went back.
   A week later,
everything foreign,
                                 off
the map.

Rain.

   I bought
a strawberry milkshake,
your favourite
from that cafe
we had breakfast in one time,
and you told me
   your middle name
with a mouthful of croissant.
   I still don't know what it is.
It didn't taste as good
and the price had gone up.

   Carousel was closed,
found a bench,
must've slept.
   Woke up soaked,
clothes clinging to me
like Velcro,
dog taking a leak,
watch said midday.
     Went walking.

More rain.

It took your footprints,
snatched them     away.
I couldn't find our castle,
that too had succumbed,
crumbled to pieces
like you     and     me
and     you.

   I can still smell the sea
   on your shoulder-blades,
in your hair,
on the gap
between your   nose
and your   lip.
   Didn't like being tickled
but I did it anyway...
you still laughed
and made black days
wildly red.

   A memory,
memories
trickling as bathwater
down a plughole.
   We ate raspberries,
     threw   rocks,
danced about like   rag-dolls
to songs we'd just made up.
I called you Ringo,
you called me John.

   Now the waves,
***** diamonds
scare me as soon
as they skedaddle
over   my   toes.
   You are not lost,
and yet
I cannot find     you.

Rain.

Maybe next year I'll tell you
I love you, the platonic type,
the words light from my mouth
as though constructed from bubbles
and you could be there, set to let them
pop against your tongue, maybe reciprocate.

The other type, I've heard, resembles falling,
but does that feel like floating, your body
when dancing, suspended in air for
a cluster of seconds before caught
by your sequinned partner, all smiles,
or is it more sinking,

we did this at primary school a few times,
the chilly, barefeet-plastered hall floor,
told to close our eyes and gently melt,
pretending we're chocolate in a microwave,
every boneless portion hopeless, floppy
until our teacher revived us with her sound.

Otherwise, it could be a tumbling of sorts,
a trip-on-the-first-step-smash-every-limb-kind,
skin blotches that gasp in agony with a touch,
your mistake stains in violet tones, or,
if executed with a more Wonka flourish,
just lust in the blood. Perhaps you'd bleed pink.

Like I know the feeling anyway.
If the words in my throat are
painted with truth, I'll say it, mean it
and breathe or let embarrassment
crush me in its reptilian silver claws.
You might even say it back, platonic or not,

even if I don't know you much,
even if my bedtime is your breakfast
and you handle cutlery better
and don't mind my eczema if you ever
see it on a fuzzy screen or body to body.
Even if my lips have never known what to do.

What have I learned
except to coat my tongue in sand,
incinerate what was never created.

My golden ones, you haven't seen the start of it,
the shirking and shrinking
like an aborted flower.

If this is how it feels we should say so,
my head a corroded oven
and how expensive are the repairs.

between one or the other
revelling in the *****
of a moment
that has been well rehearsed
or drowsy in the clasp
of some strange blueness
that coats itself
over my skin
like a viscous
odious paint

there are tricks you know
that I don’t
sleight of hand
misdirection
tell me because I am in a stupor
tripping through the best years
repeating familiarities
friends are ****** in by the shadows
or swallowed up
in the whirlpool of marriage
or trickles of intimacy

I told you it was like this
one eye on the phone
one ear on the words
nothing is shocking
bar a ripple of a shudder
normal service is resumed
but I told you it was like this
didn’t I
oh you went silent
don’t blame you
if you forgot

Just as Matthew Broderick kisses Mia Sara
I inadvertently spill a blob of wine #2
on the sheets, the alley between
my pyjama-d arm and your **** leg
and it is then I decide I will not go
into work tomorrow, stay home with you
and continue decorating the spare room.
I know it's not relevant now but I ask if
you prefer Nordic Sky or Enchanted Eden;
the former, you say, quizzical.
I nod, smile just a touch, return to the film;
Ferris's dad almost spots him, but not quite.
You don't notice the tiny stain;
I have the best night's sleep in months.

these are
the people
we know

used to know
and we
wonder

if they
think of us
now and then

a name
in the breeze
still drifting

years later
but what
would we say

that is
to say
do we care

feel guilty spoiling your frozen heaven
looking up at roof of bronze

walls blushed with scorch marks
trees like wrong-hand scribbles

my bones chilled
your skin ice-flecked and old

where’s the red flag of the battle
shivering from the sky?

a dusty sliver of history
as my watch trips past seven

sun kissing Hermann
and the song of joy

chorus of cornflowers
blooming again

la la la la
is this what love feels like

or what I want it
to feel like when it comes
slam-bamming in

the snigger on the stairs
first saxophone note

my throat
knows the right words
speak
of succulent fruits
count the seconds
it takes
for our fingers to crumple
in warm baths

look
toothbrushes together
own side of the bed
I have a side
where I sleep
in the madness of you

la la la la
I can’t sing
but I must have swallowed a pill
or a bucketful
of elation
look at me go ha ha

does it crunch as an apple
is it flat pack furniture

cup of coffee
in the same café
steam to sip sip sip

my temperature spiking
blood thunderstorm
in my ears

coloured hair
new language
list of I’m becomings
you’re becomings

oh darling
not pumpkin never pumpkin
lyrically I’m losing it
love like this
or not at all my love

maybe a shelf
without books

maybe a house we paint
or a song
how it starts

very easy to soak in blue
as though a blanket made of shades,
the horrid, musty
smell of your own inertia,
the well that lengthens
inside, perhaps your ribcage
extending, cracking each time
you know you are breathing,
arrhythmic ticks in blue, blue,

but yellow, shapes seep
through your semi-conscious gauze,
name of the day, its contents page
slaps the window like rain-pellets
and the dust
                     trickles into
                                        a trench
                     of forgotten
history, and you can see lilies,
yellow glyphs, the way they ****
their heads  in the breeze; it is a greeting.

You're the one who suggested
the park picnic, obviously. We got the food
from the M&S at King's Cross after you’d arrived,
wearing the bracelet I'd bought you
for your thirtieth half a year ago.
You really didn't have to. I knew that,
but did anyway. Happy tears flashed
in your eyes. In mine too.

Although we both know, we ask
how we've been. Much the same as always.
Work colleagues fancy a drink
on Fridays - it's a pass. Skin’s breaking out
again - it's hormonal. Turns out we're both
reading Emily Henry because everyone else is.
Falling into line with the masses.
Bookish FOMO, you say. I emit a giggle at that.

A group of others play football nearby;
tote bags for goalposts. I doubt a wayward kick
but I move the share bag of cheese
and onion closer to my crossed legs.
I almost don't hear you ask really better now,
I worry you know. I know you do but again,
my throat becomes clogged. I never tell.
The light licks your shoulders and I think of drinking
the sun one day without rosy blotches
on my skin, heartburn on the hour, every hour.

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.

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

I watch
     clumps of wet sand
snuggle between your toes,
     water cuddle our ankles
before running away
as if it’s done
something naughty.

     You launch a grey pebble
towards the scorched horizon,
lands with a ‘plop’,
     and another,
     a plump rock
goes ‘sploosh’,
guzzled up by a wave.

Next, with a finger
     you scrape our names
on the beach,
our temporary graffiti,
   squash your hands
into the surface
like we’re at the Walk of Fame.

I listen to the candy-*******
sound as you move,
    look back and count
    the footprints we’ve created,
know by morning
they’ll be gone,
like we were never here at all.

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.

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.

it’s a peck of dust
but that’s all it takes
     you have seen years scuttle
     into the shadows
     because you’ve filled them
     with recurrent words
sighs and optimism
draining from you
as if your life
is a crumbled sludge in a sieve

how long before you drink the sun?
     you scurry from one
     knotted dream to another
     like a confused mouse
     a dog chasing its tail
circles are your shape
they fit around you
red and rusty
as if only smothering you more

A powercut.
Lights go out.
  Fetch some candles.
   Fill the blankness.

    Minutes pass.
     Eerie solitude.
      See that flame?
       It flickers.

        It flickers like us.
         Uncertain, unsure.
          Left, right.
           Sometimes neither.

            Rain outside.
             Wet windowpanes.
              Sad little droplets.
               The sky is crying.

                Wax burns.
                 Time burns.
                  It drips away.
                   Like the rain.

                    Like our lives.
                     Unless we change.
                      Be positive, fresh.
                       A new outlook.

Illuminated room.
A dazzling new glow.
  The lights tripped.
   Now back on. Fantastic.

You're off again
and I'm left with residues
like fingerprints on a frosty window

I see bubbles everywhere
all too temporary
awaiting their rapid deaths

you're part of the transparent clique
glistening - unavailable
another noiseless vanish

(her name washes up on the shore
my private shipwreck
except I'm not the only one
who knows
there's no blue smudge on my thumb
from where she spilt her breath

blossoms elsewhere
stop yourself before the vowels
bleed through)

and you choke on the smoke
of your past

gives the poem momentum.’
Tuesday afternoon seminars
and your photocopied stanzas
are like ***** shots to me. I don’t
say this, a spaghetti-haired boffin
opposite mentions pentameter
but I almost drool at ‘fizzle of static
the luscious shock, / honey, think
you’d taste like candy canes / waltz
on my tongue, my ruby

Bristol for uni. Last I heard
she’d got a PGCE, cushy position
at an Ofsted-says-good secondary,
good for her. The invite surprised me.
How many years? It’s all careers
and top-floor flats now with
the parquet floors, schamncy fridges,
not villanelles and criticism
meant to be constructive, comments
spiked with jealousy, and

A minute in, a cup of something,
voice long gone among the swill,
thud of a mid-2000s track blaring
obnoxiously through the top-floor flat
of the lad who played midfield
and his glitter-cheeked missus, who,
if I recall, moved from Leeds to

Tuesday.’ A lipsticked smile,
jeans with riotous tears.
Now I know what’s coming, the
pitiful shotput for attention,
the ‘truly marvellous effort
and the use of sibilance (insert
chef’s kiss sound).’ But I dither,
muter than a French mime,
hits me for six and I know
I won’t know you, not now or ever,
there’s never enough time

when I see you in the kitchen,
expelling laughter like it’s almost archaic,
the opportunity, missed, but all right,
it was indie-rock headaches,
cold in goal in the park next to Asda,
not a time to recite my saccharine lines
to a northern delight but I wanted to,
once, then, to know what might’ve been,
if I’d waltz on your tongue.

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.

for God’s sake
     the plot well lost

moths back in my head
                                 flappity flap
   worries
     quickstepping against the light

they’ve got it easy
   when I think about it
the kids at the school I mean

     know of the swarming
                 strange desire
                                to impress
   with altered pictures
     but no notion
   of depleting tenners
        raindrop-like friends
        that slip through fingers

my agitation a snare drum
     everybody else
          out of tune violins

I’ve never been good at jigsaws
     give me the next chapter
     of my damp-speckled twenties
     fully formed
with a warm glow

what was the question
                                       again

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.

Not for the first time,
clusters of heads
turn in her direction,
pupils dazzled by a mannequin
in high-heels
click-clacking down Lexington
one September.
Spilt your drink.
Close that mouth
and remember to blink.

Every trail of sentences
a sultry whisper,
steam billowing out
from a red teapot
while whorls of hair
whipped up like meringue
glisten in sunlight.
Teeth as white as opals,
she’ll give you a wave
if you hand her a smile.
Watch the step now.

Two legs,
a dress,
enough on show.
Trains of men
topple over
into a pool of lust
like helpless little dominoes,
catching her giggles
as they trickle
along every avenue.

They all want a sip
of her delicious potion
she carries in the breeze.
A smudge of cherry lipstick,
a dash of pink glitter,
a lethal glimpse at you
and a wink,
enough to make you say
what's her name?
and forget your own
until you slowly, slowly,
turn back the other way.

This,
the confirmation
of the already known.

The cementing of your love,
your own vivid blizzard
of it,

multi-sided shape
birthed from the collision,
theatre of hearts

that followed.
Now the premiere
of a new novel,

pages snow-white
to be set alight
by your shared language,

chapters written
by no other half,
but your whole.

and I never knew you
and you’ll never know me
but when I think

of you it’s your name,
like the clouds
cradle your memory,

over Star City or as
far as England,
or maybe flying,

sunlight signal,
a teenaged smile
never not alive,

forever with your
future years at the
tips of your fingers

horns squawk
   rainforest avenues
  
  exoskeleton
of cars
   arteries clogged
with unlovely   taxi cabs

fat  green  fruit
for sale
     five languages
merge into a knot
hisses    kiss    vowels
   kiwis apples pears

   black guys   basketball
debt rises like      blood pressure
stocks tumble
    but we walk
brogues clop on concrete

count  brick after  brick
sun cascades
   over roof slates
mind cracks in slabs

   (you say
Monroe      stood here)

   heat quivers
men are dominoes
suits    for the office
   a funeral

designer sneakers
   daddy paid for
pigtails   cheap thrills
  violet octagons
  on a stranger’s neck
(behind the closed doors)

today
I drink purple water
     aubergine lips
remind me
of a Tuscany Superb

   list the names
Houston   Charlton
Leroy   Sullivan
Perry   Cornelia
Dominick and Jane

(ladders lead
                away from me
                close to
you)

and back again

Find it in the sound
of the crick of your wrist

the crinkle of an eyelid
drooping by the gravity of sleep

there is laughter
to be found burrowed
down the back of the sofa

but people who live
in static images alone

headaches dissolved
in purplish juice

it is so easy
to dance wickedly in the dark

look how it holds you

right through to the bones

He picks up a twig,
a thin knobbly wand
and drops it in,
watches it turn,
twist like the hour-hand
                                    on a clock around the bend.

Now a stone,
a grey sphere
plopped into the mix,
as a magnet
sticks to the river’s tongue
and won’t budge.

He calls me over,
‘can you see our faces?’
The melting mirror
gurgles along,
doesn’t know
we are there.

sorting out
the loft
in the fuzzy black
aftermath days

the owl
liquorice eyes
glares at my
torch-in-hand

you remember
the pub
used to have
a fox

mid-skulk
streak immobilised
we wondered
why anybody

would want
a stuffed body
static animal
figure of death

but somehow
handed down
to you
burnt toast wings

on wooden plinth
popped in the loft
‘till now
‘till your departure

they walked together

having never kissed

having never confessed

in a Friday night fug

of second-hand smoke

and discounted *****

that one loved the other

a deep love with many roots


they held hands when crying

as if another’s warm palms

would stem the flow somehow

but it never went further

never tiptoed past the threshold

no dates in restaurants

with pricy wine and staggered chat

no letters professing  

a long-gestated love


they watched movies

recited lines for a hundredth time

laughter rebounding from the walls

uttered secrets in whispers

said they’d be friends forever

knowing they would be

because sometimes that happens

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

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

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

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

Thumb digs in,
removal of skin,
gashes expose closed fist
of moon wedges.

   Tug and tug,
   **** but for a sinewy
   plaque over the shell,
   a balled-up animal, perhaps.

Then the split,
extraction of organs,
furrowed foliage
all the same,

   a little damp
   in your palm,
   pouches of muscle and blood,
   broad, toothless smiles.

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

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

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

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

cooking solar system
coagulates, cloudy creature
you eye up

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

Tonight I met a boy with wild green eyes.
Tonight I met a boy.
Tonight I met a boy.

October 1888. Oil on canvas, 72 x 90 cm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The beautiful scar
deep in green,
peaceful question mark
loops through the field
in which I stand
on ground
soft as a soap-drunk sponge.
The sun,
a lit matchstick-tip
burns all shades of tangerine
and saffron.
The water I hear trickle by,
the water I see
flossing the weeds,
a turquoise flow of blood
from this vein
to the beating heart.

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