You say we should build one,
I say we're not six-year-olds anymore
but you coax me into it
and I find myself
digging with a blue plastic *****
but you use your hands,
scooping up lumps of the stuff.
I notice how some gets stuck
in your fingernails,
how the tip of your thumb
has been stippled orange
but I laugh when you tell me
it's nice to feel young again
and I feel it too
although you, not the building
has more to do with that.

We don't stop,
we make a whole row of them,
name them after ourselves,
feel so proud of our work
like builders after a long day,
but it's still morning for us
and every-time you stand,
tiptoe up to the sea,
I get so stupidly worried
the tide might take you away.

etiolated shell
ball bearings for knuckles
crimson branches
that shudder in the albumen
of the eyes

palms riddled with skinny rivers
navy straws
wrist fissures
roots of calcium
punctured silver

carrier-bag lungs
interior accordion
sack of cherry fluid
limited edition
throbbing blob

in the mirror
yourself not quite
yourself
unchosen blueprint
modified mainframe

filled with tea
and slabs of cheese
envelope of bones
cauldron brewing
on and again on

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

I'm thinking of the sea.
I think we both said it was the clearest
blue we'd ever seen. OK, where you're from is lovely
and I know the place quite well now but
April’s are generally grim though not
where we were in that month, that year.
It was only my second time on a plane
and as it was a cheap deal we both said go on then,
let’s do it, and we did. You turned twenty-two
that week. Wore red and sang the song (poorly).
We found tasteless cupcakes from the ugly
supermarket down the road.
Laughed at how silly it was. No candles. The owner’s
tabby cat for company. You went in the sea again
the next day. I can remember the way it clung
to you, dripped off from you like little jewels.
I think I was close to being in love then. Yuck.
A painless vaccine but you know it's happened.
Strange, I suppose, how the smallest thing
makes you realise the massive. I knew it for sure
when you looked at me, handing over
a second two Euro lemonade of the morning.
The clearest blue, the sea
in your eyes. Every time.

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.

Five days a week
   for six months now
I have crossed the street
   from work
to the little shop
   that sells sticky buns
pork nuzzled by pastry
   and perused the food
something for lunch
   and almost always pick
a baguette brimming with chicken
   chilled cucumber disks
a sprinkling of lettuce
   plus a muddy-coloured latte
for that extra afternoon kick

though today is different
   I’m feeling ruthless
a shimmery packet of salt and vinegar
   waits for me to pluck it
from the shelf
   squeak it open
the lady says hi and I reply
   with a we’ve spoken
five days a week for six months now
   and it’s about time I told you
these small encounters
   brighten my day
a rotten cliché I know
   so I leave quick with my grub
but a tiny grin on my face

unwrap the baguette
   take a satisfying bite

don’t run into the darkness,
your nightmares will only bleed
through the pages, into the fabric
of your desperately created new self.

ready to retch, they’ll ask, you’ll succumb
to the shot of sugar proffered to you
on a blackened spoon, signature
by the opposite hand, vacant lungs.

I know you’ll query the fingers,
cold, gaunt runes around your neck
but in time you’ll learn to love them,
their unspecific touch, the frosted tips.

with a drip of blue fizz they’ll put you
back where you came, mail you
capsules that vanish in the throat
but taste of your blood, of peppermint.

say 'love'
but you both know
it's anything but

let me tell you
about the names
I keep silent

the gap that exists
and never shrinks

could've been that somebody?

now somebody
else

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

I.

Mistletoe kisses
for the hordes of giddy folk
alcohol in blood

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

II.

Presents covered up
just to be unwrapped again
a colourful waste

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

III.

Evening skulks along
terrible television
Quality Street tin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My head against your neck, I am breathing you in. I am breathing
                                                       ­                                             you
                ­                                                                 ­                   in
and I feel transported to somewhere that isn’t where we are, your shapes welded into my memory as though building a house where each brick is another moment. A moment. That shimmers when light slathers its face, that quivers with a sound when we speak of things that nobody else needs to know. Doorbell rings, dog bark, jangle of rain on the roof. Our spider web of memories a pearly glisten. It’s nice to be an ours and not a theirs. Sunflower voice on my lip.  This is a private matter, a fragment in the shadows where we play play play. You are my shadow. My shadow. Magic dust, body of the night. Touching you is like a snowflake wickedly intricate in my palm. Look at you in my midday dreams, a spicy smirk, bringing your own brand of pandemonium. Bloodshot eye red, a day on fire. You don’t know you do this, no no, ain’t that the way. I still breathe you in. Ain’t that the way. Inhale, inhale, I say your name as if its clockwork, regular and there, my seconds, my hours.

I put the drink to my lips,
bookcase brown,
not quite up and at them
at this mid-morning hour,
disjointed murmurs of strangers
ordering coffee,
the soft thrum of Saturday chat.

For a moment,
my eyes fixed at the map
that adorns the wall,
I feel myself shrinking back,
my head a *** of blue
nothingness, before
a flock of images

pop up like blood
from pricked fingers,
material that could be used,
a splinter of a half-told story
but no siren yowl,
more a coil of smoke,

and so it goes.
The flow stops, I thunder
back to where I was.
A child’s cry scorches the air.
I slip in and out of conversation,
picking up snippets
like the metal claw in a grab machine,

unfamiliar particles,
a peculiar curiosity,
a whirring like clockwork
of the recent expeditions,
how it felt

when you kissed her,
and the fizzy burble,
little glob of ruby
of what hasn’t been said yet,
or if it ever will.

apart at the seams
apart
        at the

yes

me split
ting

stretch of whatever
   wet
blobs     leave
a st     ain

break
ing
cra ck ing

a clay *** in a kiln

pieces of myself
fraz
     zled
myself

coarse
          to touch

making beetroot
   pentagons on thumbs

these rag ged
moments
    
   they cannot be undone
I have not won

they only go
   on

She didn't want spring,
she wanted autumn.
She wanted
the butterscotch leaves
snuggling the curbs
and porky pumpkins
with fire for a heart.

She wanted autumn
even when underground,
where seasons are unseen
except in the snow
sprinkled in a man's hair,
or heard, a sneeze and a sniffle
into a flimsy tissue.

She wanted autumn back,
like a first kiss over again,
like a childhood memory
flipped to the front of her mind
to stay there,
a vicious, intense red.

But she was stuck in spring,
writing about Octobers,
what happened back then,
how it opened like a flower,
and whether come next year
the season will breathe

orange again.

oh your heart
is a space dust covered
beating rock

you want to be a comet
streaking to something
you only ever thought magical

comfort of not quite night
or the early hours
when the first stirrings

of strangers tumble
from tube stations
tiredness jammed in their eyes

let our blood swim together
delve into the day
like magnets dragging

moments in
planets among planets
searching for love

coming home to you
our dog hopping at my feet
my hand reaching for the drool-smothered ball
lazy lob into the kitchen
a shout fizzes down from upstairs
yeah, it’s me, I throw back

shoeless into our bedroom
you half-groan into the pillow
duvet curdled
eyes punctuated with tiredness
I kiss your chapped lips
shuffle my tie free

think I mention work
something about dinner
but night shuttles in
radiator cracking awake
as I glide into my vibrant
reverie of you

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

We found the thing
  on our walk,
   vacant, drinking the waves.
You tugged it
  from the mush,
   rolled your fingers
over its wet knobbles
  like kneecaps or ankles.
   What a find.
Held it up,
  let sunlight glimmer
   from its clotted cream body,
felt the smooth blancmange
  pink interior and said
   you have it
no you have it.
  I put the shape to my ear,
   listened for the sea
but heard hushes, whispers
  whirring within a dark room.
   I had to own it in the end.
Able to keep
  part of the beach
   but not you,
not you.

You've got yourself a cold one from the fridge when I call.
It's April again and the clocks changed again
didn't they and I haven't heard from them
in months now. I think they're all caught up
in their own personal knots or weeds as the time’s gone, going,
that hour away to the clouds. Those I knew I wouldn't know
now in Marks and Spencer, the multi-storey. Any memories
like puddles, warped. They, too, going to the clouds. It's lighter
in the evenings but much is the same; the chickens
with their sore throats, cheers from a distant football pitch. Something
is different though. Indefinable. Condensation on a window.
I agree, you say, as I hear your wife's muffled
voice in the background.

perhaps all we do

express

confess in droplets

or tsunami


and how many

to confess to

divulge the innermost

secrets from our sanctums


new decade crashes in

with your colour eruptions

what miles

seconds separate us


what to be said

said carefully

as if glass

in a child’s hands


confess our truths

at the time

await answers

like overseas mail


pen ink drunk

set for disclosure

answers to spark

for minutes for years

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

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

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

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

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

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

After Hungary and Hong Kong
they arrive at last, and the crowd
stir from their somnolence to greet
the thirty-five behind one flag.

A splotch of blue on a ripple
of white, all ice-hockey players
in snowy coats and bobble hats
waving to the fans, to the world.

Euphoric pop as the athletes
soak it in, absorb the notion
of unity, of millions
of invisible eyes watching.

And does this mark the beginning
of an end? Perhaps          perhaps not.

Somebody said
if you count to ten
in your head
while holding your breath,

as if breath is an object
with a shape and a texture,

by the end you'll have
forgotten how to breathe.

One.
Two.

And sometimes
you need to pause,
to let every black swatch
of worry evaporate
like crooked puddles.

Three.
Four.

And you feel a trickle
of something under your skin -
perhaps a calmness,
a word not yet invented.

Five.
Six.

In your mind, a clock face,
hands that aren't hands,
numbers.

Seven.
Eight.

Voices wrestle.
Your voice, your voice again.

Nine.
Ten.

Over.

Now, remind yourself
to exhale, see how the scene
becomes clean,
how it felt to hold in
such a temporary thing.

Mentally I am at Phillies with my final
coffee of the evening, milk
frothed to perfection, a woman
in a cerise blouse who greets
my eyes with a noiseless hello

but this is not 1942, no
salt shakers and once-
bitten sandwiches.
There's a child in a red puffer
who waddles absentmindedly,

the spittle of his bearded father
I can almost feel fleck
my cheek. His tired cherry-lipped mother
pointing a finger, then
another, mouths opening

as if operated
by an unseen string and strangers
who scoff at the hawks in the room,
both jolted by each other's next barb,
with a toddler oblivious to art, to

shades, to the thorns his loved
ones drape across their throats,
this spat like a blot on the canvas
of my afternoon reverie
where I need a stronger tipple

and to make it home before the rain.

apart

two segments
rolling down the hill

little rockets
spurting off heat

I'm cracked eggs
brittle eyeballs

creak in the neck
like a sodden floorboard

splash of blood
off again

blinded by meaningless
droplets of triviality

twist of stomach
tight knot

ice when I type
know it by heart

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

So, another day of it.
The clock an instrument that ****** you
with its skeletal finger,
and now the night crawls up, covers
the town before dinner, the cold
licking your skin the way it can
every October.

You haven’t been yourself.
You’ve been stumbling,
legs like lead pipes, head
pulsating, unmissable signal.
Stand -
a conker crack scurries
     across the skull.
Sit -
pulse in ear, gut gurgling
     just as a long-blocked sink.

Sleep is a taste of petrol,
appetite so far gone
you expect postcards.
But at least the night crawls up,
delicately, coldly.

there is
steam on the mirror
like a milky cellophane

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

half-dried footprints
are a language
that leads

to where you sit
in dungarees
hair dripping and slippery

a beaming delight
with mahogany marble eyes
crescent moon smile

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

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

skirt past knots of tourists
bury our heads
in a bookshop

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

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

you seep into my core

there’s my heartbeat
you know
as regular as blinking

the swatch of stubble
and Adam’s apple

the vanilla tinge
to your skin
as I drop a kiss
on your clavicle

there’s my heartbeat
you know
as regular as blinking

watching shadows
maypole along your cheeks

sun illuminates you
this is no illusion

the kerplunk of our pulse
inside our chests

there’s my heartbeat
you know
as regular as blinking

So I drink
the voice from your throat.

If diamonds
had a taste this is it,

it goes down
so well. It goes down

so well
in mouthfuls that shimmer.

now I must rediscover myself again

stretch the muscles, crack the bones

set the synapses back into action


what dazzling names will now come

to paint my throat, to whisk the mind

into some new year tornado


and the gap growing between us,

the existing handful, pinches of dialogue

that filter through the lightning cracks


sleep peppered with age-old blunders

what’s to come, a dull game

plagued with fanciful guesses

Ten years on, he left flowers where
she rests. Said the same as he's said
every year since.

When his eyes stopped stinging
he came home, fed the cat,
pulled the old green motor

out from the shed, began
swimming the lawn. She would be
on the bench now with a lemonade

and one of those puzzles she liked
to do. An ordinary afternoon, and if
she got stuck, he'd silence the machine.

Because Mondays are
bulging bowls of satsumas,
first nugget of sunrise
or an apostrophe of flame,

and Tuesdays are
a row of blooming hydrangeas,
tall glasses of blueberry juice
or a last swatch of sky before night,

then Wednesdays are
a chubby lavender bush,
Parma Violet streaked teeth
or punnets of plump plums,

so Thursdays are
a pile of squashed rubber ducks,
frozen smile bananas
or the hemorrhage of an egg,

but Fridays are
a grass clippings mountain range,
eczema-skinned avocados
or skinny grasshopper limbs,

whereas Saturdays are
a ladybird’s speckled coat,
spoonfuls of pomegranate blobs
or a mushroom umbrella,

while Sundays are
a snowman’s **** belly,
globes of vanilla ice-cream
or a candle’s last word.

doing it
something
     something
the best word
for the indescribable

the way we dance
in the parentheses
of our love but not quite
     love
is what we have
never poked our toes into

oh it’s beanie hats
and plaid shirts
and your pearly body
in the bathtub
forgetting to sleep
     sleep
with our faces
against the 5am light
on the pillowcase
that cradles your smell
like treasure from the deep

     deep
into it
a game but not quite
slotting ourselves
into what we’ve said we want
     paint pots of want
and not the calendars
of our next time on

on we sail
coffee-shop babble
wet Wednesday afternoons
timid ****** of rain
on the windowsills
our twenty toes
fluttering in front of the TV
     TV’s a bad box of doom
we blot it out with our breath
the excitement that follows
our hundredth comma

fingers corrugate
wet footprint runes
waltz on the floor
L word
is lunch not love
the way it’s look
and not touch

dancing is dancing
     is dancing
is daffodil petal hair
is the half-smile of midriff
is the half-filled cup time to top up
is the knot of a hug
is dancing

strange hands
familiar cities
it is doing it
indescribable

haven’t mastered kissing
love
the way we imagine it
     imagine

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

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

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.

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

through a sieve.

Something about gunfire.
Somebody says religion.
It’s an opportunity for the TV
to screen the same scenes,
the blinking blue and reds
of a bevy of cop cars
and the spooling headline
that assumes, then confirms
the worst.

And so strangers from all corners
spew their pennies’ worth
like bees fumbling for honey,
thousands of hypotheses
replete with exclamation marks,
the name of a Floridian city
swelling as a violet bruise
in the aftershock,
plunged into uninvited limelight.

The chief claims a ‘lone-wolf’ attack,
a man who loathed rainbows
then wiped his own life.
Talk swiftly turns to guns,
the increasing frequency
of wicked bloodshed,
the how, the why, the ‘this day and age’
and ‘the world isn’t safe’
and the nothing, still nothing is done.

Just one night before,
another tragedy,
a young singer shot
while signing their name,
fans left to clasp
the musical remnants
of a life snatched away,
the acerbic word ‘******’
in a nonsensical second.

Something so horrid
became something so common.
How many more gunshots
must shatter a night?
How many more families
must crumple like newspapers
peppered with headlines of the recently lost?
They are asking for answers.
We wait for them to come.

Oh say,
what a shame,
wooden shrine
coated with the breath of ghosts,
carpet of fingers
snapped, or arthritic,
wrenched from the wrist
in some grisly surgical procedure.

Tumble of rock, a table
out for the count,
a lone chair with a prime view
of what has become,
become of the place,
crumbling, stale,
wood daggers a derelict alphabet
dormant on stage.

The tunes, long gone,
harmonies engulfed by the breeze,
auditorium left almost lifeless,
state of half-eclipse
with the punctuation of a thousand strangers
and just the first strands
of spring sunlight bleeding
through the windows.

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

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

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

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

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

my head
must be
the boiling kettle

my voice
a series of stuttering
tufts of steam

my god
I think of you
as some sort of sun

my dreams
tell me so
they can't be wrong

You make me miss something
I never had, every crushing syllable
like a wave from a faraway place,

our footprints the day’s tale,
curling as though ribbons
into a drenched chasm of lost stories.

Just like all things, this must end;
photograph-faded, awkwardly torn,
smudged by a briny thumb

so the memory half-warps
and could we remember it anyway?
Maybe this is supposed

to be, just now, one of us
to explain with crimped fingertips,
the other gone before it began.

when your arms form
a garland around my waist
I am unpacking the toiletries

first the electric toothbrush
with its accompanying charger
then the half-empty

lurid green bottle of shampoo
aftershave in its glass phial
cheap razor and deodorant

I tell you this feels like
one of those cheesy adverts on TV
and you say yes it’s just like that

so what
and I say so what back
and close our cabinet door

on the day that marks
his fortieth year
a doctor informs him
that his arthritis is worsening,

digits more like twigs,
mashed potatoes for knees.
the news is no surprise,
more expected mail.

when the band begins,
the cymbal sizzle
like vegetables in a pan,
crow horn squawk,

he places the mouthpiece
between his chapped lips
knowing that any day
could be the last day now,

so he thinks of Coltrane
and blows, hard, all he’s ever known,
eyes of a gaggle of strangers,
ping-pong ***** in the dark.

wouldn’t it be great to learn Greek
she says
quickly riffling
through the phrasebook
with a thumb and her tongue out
while I try to discover what
‘to speak’ is in Dutch

everyone uses English
you know I say
spluttering ‘ik spreek, jij spreek,
hij spreek’,
trying to nail the pronunciation
like the book tells me to
‘ick sprake, yigh sprake, hi sprake’

but they might appreciate
tourists knowing a bit in Crete
like ‘efcharistó’
or ‘ti ypérochi méra’ she mutters
but it all, literally,
sounds Greek to me
and we can’t visit everywhere

besides, she wants warm weather
but I’d be fine in, say, Sweden,
‘Där är den närmaste Ikea?’
or in Iceland, but I can’t
pronounce anything
the way the phrasebook
wants me to

so Greece is probably best,
and anyway,
she’s too busy
informing me that
‘monókeros’ means unicorn
and it’s 575 quid each
if we book now

The image shows
a pink corkscrew,
confetti petals
chatter down, around
in matrimony, static
splinters that fizz at
****** junctions,
jugular welt to
frills of magenta
make a blushing cheek,
pucker trumpet that
shoots from contused
marble eye.