The Seine a tongue of midnight ink.
Montparnasse, a tepid August night,
star-bundles like quartz-splinters in the sky.
     The Dingo bar the place.
Jazz coming from somewhere, melody of mystery,
throng of conversation and smoke,
grey curlicues swaying above our heads.

Hemingway, feuillemort shirt, telling me I look rough.
   ‘You sleeping well?’     ‘Well enough.’
   ‘That wife of yours is pure mayhem, I tell you.’
The same old chatter. Besides, Isadora was worse,
cradling her drink as if a glass of jewels.
Then he was onto his Pamplona jaunt,
a heat that careened off from the streets,
undulations of warmth in the air
quivering like whispers.

  ‘Look here, we’re the best writers in this city
   when you’re not gallivanting over to your wife.
   Two women, one body, you know it Scott.’
I sighed, ordered another gin.
‘Transparent poison’, Ernest said again.

On the way home, faded trill de trompette in my ears,
night thriving to every pocket of Paris,
fields of unidentified liquorice flowers.
Young and in love - young with intimacy
skittering around our bodies
like delicate bees.

Rolling with my thunderstorms,
violet shifts to black
and you run ashore.

Capsized outside a theatre,
I wrench you out
from the starfish glob of mess
I made, blow the grit
off your forehead,
scrabble for a candle
we can re-light together.

One time, mud snatched
at your ankles.
You screamed but I was seeing
drains and reflections
twisted in puddles
like fuzzy lines on the old TV.
A migraine came;
I threw it up into the sink
and slept.

Lost count of the times
you've tossed me out
in the snow, garbage among
banana skins, frozen earlobes,
but who chucks a duvet
over my frost-flecked skin
but you,
with a clumsy smile
and mascara raining
down cheeks.
Every time.

Tonight I find you
in the evening fog
after searching
every subway station
my legs would allow.
My shins cry for rest.
The busker plays
Bob Dylan out of tune
but can’t blame a guy for trying.

You discover my eyes,
put your face to my coat,
mumble words like you have
a mouthful of ice.

Lookin’ for a friend?
The 11.04 towards
Borough Hall.
We get on, I catch your breath,
count the hundreds
and thousands of steps
to home.

I am looking
at my naked self

   you are looking
at it too

my milk-bottle skin
     wisps of hair buttered up
   to the wrist

this is one of those
   mortifyingly awkward
   situations

     like giving a presentation

standing all gangly

an unwrapped
   second-rate present

     that you didn’t really want

   my clothes are
a primary-coloured splash
     by my feet

     and I expect you to talk
  
to cease the blistering
silence in the room
   but you only nod

eyes on me

   slither your bra strap
down one arm

Night slinking in

blues switch from pale

to menacing navy

spiked silhouettes

in the distance

like children’s book monsters

a globe of white

here and over there

but not yet

not yet

for fuchsia streams

punctuate the sky

like a million raspberries

sailing away

before darkness

guzzles them all

before every light dissolves

just like any day

to another day

when they put it to sleep
   I am already halfway home
or already home
   my head heavy
with that strange social buzz
   that comes from
severing myself from shindigs
   but making an exception
minds skewed with alcohol
   a barefoot teen Fosbury-flopping
over a mate’s dad’s armchair

   before too long
I’ll think of their foot-long children
   caterwauling at 3am
the desk-job half-full cup
   of cheap coffee
our greetings infrequent
  dialogue Wyoming-sparse
say how I should’ve told you
   six mid-Decembers ago
my days a haze of disfluencies
   TV repeats and cold callers

As I wait for my name
to be called, it starts
to rain. Slowly,

stuttering at first
but then a downpour,
thick grey sheets

hammering onto the windows,
as though the whole building
is being peppered

with paintballs. A woman no older
than me enters, her coat slippery
with the sky's remains,

blue umbrella like
a dishevelled animal. The receptionist
says 'you poor thing.'

I wonder how many times
she'll say that today. The doctor
asks for me. He's running late.

grubby brown land
half-moon like a splash of milk
punctuation in the darkest of darks

and the dog is barking
mustard-bearded with its earbud leg
and chalky eye eying a bird

red-tailed bottle
above the ladder to nowhere
or black everywhere

a place a dog still howls
at the nonchalant moon
night-time's noiseless citizen

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

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

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

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

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

where you missed the mark
or never hit it

because the steam
that should exist does not

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

In the midst
of a fiery debate
on Christmas music.

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

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

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

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

almost a year on,
still our communication thin, brittle,
as if glass going back to sand,
our dialogue meagre, the words we use
overused for nothing new
has developed, our images ashen,
the corners curled up like petrified animals.

doubtful of a deluge,
doubtful of a return
to the occasional face-to-face
chatter of current affairs,
our throats dry from news deficiency
and the awkward drives home,
our hibernation preparation.

trying to sleep in our gyres of silence,
clocks with their ugly faces
like lurid sirens on the walls - 
tell me you'll come back to me,
in some way, some form, for I am almost
limbless in these fantasies,
the words you use as iridescent.

the water grips my reflection

all wobbly head
     quavering legs

a swathe of hillside
     like an avocado slice

trees squashed together
     in a bristly embrace

gluey splodge of cloud
     on a periwinkle sky

shimmer of sunlight
     across the lake

illuminates your face

unpack my dreams from the chest

unfurl the cardboard tubes   haul up the old honey jars

place them in a row on the well-worn table


in order of colour or order of shape

do they shrink with a tap   do they froth from the top

which one is your delicacy of choice


now offer a hand   feel it slither across the fingers

a temporary burn or just-melted ice

when was it when you assembled this story


take your selection let night tumble in

the tale stirring   the curtains rising

a dream of sleep and fabricated magic

this evening I drink the stars with you
never has the night tasted so delectable
as when our heartbeats sit side to side
when the music slumps
into an indistinct muffle
until we hear our own breaths

flicker of a twinkle in the distance
city populated with insecurities
lungs of smoke and veins of coffee
but you in your striped socks
me with my tea-stained jumper
just enough just enough

You called me up.
I was expecting to hear
from you again.
I put down the remote,
seized the car keys
and drove.
I was beginning to think
I was the only number
in your phone,
winding my rickety vehicle along
neon-drenched streets.
What was it going to be this time?
I’d seen the words
drooled on your hands,
the frowning duvet
ten times or more before.
You’d bathe with your clothes on,
leave fingerprints on hotel windows.
I went along with it all.
Yes, of course I did,
our silver thumb stamps
wedded in a hundred rooms.
When I arrived
you told me about knee-high socks,
vowels slinking out your mouth
like each one was made of wine.
3am.
I touched your nose-ring,
you tugged at my shirt.
Yes. Yes.
I drove you home.

the rain is playing
its jingle again
between the trees

night unravels
liquorice tongue
pricked with stars

your fingers
look perfect
between my fingers

our language
an ephemeral blush
on windowpanes

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

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

let every vowel stand out
as skyscraper lights.

When I sink to sleep
I’ll lock my dreams

in a wooden chest
retrieve them

when morning strolls in
fetch the fresh post.

I wonder if there is such a thing
as drowning beautifully

I want to consume you
like that ocean water

make what I have said
gush into your eyes.

Oh if you don't stretch you'll rot
and if you don't talk you'll sink

what a predicament, a quandary
with that rainmaker sound
counting down to the final trickle
when you offer nothing that glows

there'll be faces drenched in confusion
and you'll taste the shadows
so familiar but like oil in the veins

give me that dynamite answer
stop the gurgle of decay
leaving you with a limp

let the responses pour forth
a fountain of spot-ons
or close enoughs

We died many times when we first met.
They’d say electric. You provided the shock.
I was in need of repairs,
a faulty motor with a clogged-up engine,
stumbling through life
like a Slinky
yawning its bones
down the stairs.

You played me well at first,
fingers on my body,
twiddled me back into tune.
We’d die again.
When we kissed
I tasted Malboro and Merlot.
I fell right into it,
you like a glossy new balloon,
a chaos of colour on my lips
left me spellbound.
We’d die again.
Then the moment would pop.
You’d be standing with a pin.

Met your parents.
They noddingly-approved between
gulps of Heineken,
but I knew we wouldn’t last.
It fell apart, of course.
Somebody ruined the jigsaw.
Started hurling snowballs
at each other, words like razors
shredding through the air.
We’d die again.

A slammed door, gone
to the corner-shop for milk
in a huff.
An eff-you blurting
out from the phone.
The shock had gone.
I think I’m dying again.

We used to play billiards
and fight all the fire.
We'd drink tea
from cheap mugs,

read The Economist
or newspaper,
chat about boyfriends,
girlfriends,

what was and wasn't a rumour?
The printer munched on paper,
lounge about on scratchy chairs.
50% revision, 50% laughter.

Psychology was me
with a group of girls.
How many people, where, when,
and what was it Freud said again?

Spanish was the same,
me, L, C and E.
Picasso's view of war, a bull and a flower,
grammar overload in the afternoon.

And then there was English.
Can you hear me Fitzgerald?
On a row of females (not just one),
roses, four stories and a single trumpet.

On the garish bus
to see the Manor or the specialists,
to walk up and down aisles in Asda,
talking music with baguettes and meatballs.

Two years came, two years went.
Exams, goodbyes, brown envelopes arrived.
After tapas and a holiday
came sly September.

Here I was with fresh men,
different faces from different places.
So I walked up the steps
into the next avenue.

Feeling like the sea,
a single wave
blushing blue,
gathering momentum
only to fall
flat
on my face,
broken and soggy
to start all over again.

Feel the beach
with my hands,
scrabble at the sand
like a dog
ready to bury a bone,
but am pinged back in
as an elastic band.
Why does that happen
and who is to blame?

What I have learned
is your body,

the fluidity of it
like drinking

a burgundy glass
of pinot noir.

   Forgive me for this February
   pink rainfall

   but the stars of you
   make an exquisite ellipsis,

   your touch
   my private voltage.

I dream
your eyes at night,

sea-sprayed freckles,
salt-blessed lips,

your smile a welcome echo
on my own face.

   Is love
   only learning?

   If so, teach me
   so I learn and learn again,

   hand be the compass,
   the heart an atlas.

That Saturday
when they pulled your teeth,
he came at nine,
the smoker, the drinker,
the one with hard black pebbles
for eyes.

Your aim? To ******, to thrill,
the American ******
with daffodil hair.
Out from the rain and into a bar,
dialogue on birthdays
and becoming old.

A speck of seriousness,
your mood, spiked,
each 'conquest' you called it
so fabulous,
always this way;
you knew it would be.

Hand on waist,
you gasped for air
as if drowning in ginger ale,
one kiss,
light as a feather,
the first.

Positive,
it's only physical,
this lovely magnetism
but his burning voice
you clung to
like a thin cigarette.

Past fuzzy lights,
through a summer shower
that fell faster and faster,
just like that, another one gone,
another name
maybe thinking of you.

Midnight
  crashes in
thunderclap   headache

darkness     spreading
a virus
black   skin   infection

     hear the sea
cannot see it
mumble in   sigh out

night of sonnets
melting to   haikus
couplets     nothing

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

     you

made me faint
   made my (day)dreams
Technicolor

whispered villanelles
     buried them
broken bones   in sand

     inhaled your language
stored stories
   for next time

twenty-six   things
twenty-six   letters
play   pause   repeat

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

in eyes lost
backs of   knees
fingers on      spines

   eleven fifty nine
     fifty nine
reality soaks through

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

   you sway away
fictional     fading
   closed

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

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

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

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

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

you bring the crimson
makes a system skittish
foreign electricity
in staccato arrivals

X marks the spot
seems fact over fiction
but your code unravelable
gridlock enigma

the heartbeat knows
mystery loves mischief
though years become strangers
rainless scraps of cloud

no better should know better
adulthood in lowercase
when we meet French lullabies
may I drink from your throat

talk

cupping conversation
in our
hands
like cool water

slipping giggles
into
pockets

caught in
the current
accepting the twists

noticing it
all

they said you couldn't miss it
how it sprouts volatile
blood-built demon flora

or chain smoker’s inflamed lung
messy web of charred arteries
drips singe ground to orange

skinny hooks like sky fissures
a seeping wound that sullies
evening’s cobalt gauze

and no, you didn’t miss it
leaves well gone on winter's
vampiric apparition

Everything better simple.
Everything better with words sliced to size.
The chasm between
waking and not being waking,
all moments minute
and colossal lined up,
delightful in their plainness.
The making of friendships,
a cinch, interests shared
and food eaten,
laughter that ricochets from wine glasses
with a shrill giggle.
Then the maintenance work, a doddle.
Dialogue runs as blood through a body.
Time to see each other.
Time to make an effort
to make time to see each other.
Clutching onto loves
before sell-by dates.
Labels disposed of
before they are even affixed.
No rise of an eyebrow
when the different ones
open their mouths,
revel in the spaces
where they don’t fit in.
Decisions made without
a flutter of uncertainty,
a bubble of anxiety
that bounces round the brain.
Everything better simplistic.
Everything delightful in their plainness.

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

is this what your voice is
voice is
a teardrop in the space
where a puddle should be

television static
you know
I’ve tried
to get a picture to form

shapes and colours
and delicious sound
but still only
on the screen

moving talking
a time that isn’t now
I want you present
with your mouth

breathing out
words I can swallow
a real wrist arm elbow
real clock

real time

Old school, gymnasium, Christmas fair, Thursday night.
Hoops at either end. Tables. People. A woman carries a baby,
could be the PE teacher’s. A Ugandan flag. Jars of dark purple
jam next to jars of chutney, perhaps. The youth, us once,
flit between here and the hall. A choir, maybe thirty strong,
sing Santa Baby. Parents watch, as do we. Half a minute.

The head. Still a towering, suited figure. Handshakes all round.
What are we doing now? Voices like knots of consonants.
Geography man. Flecks of grey stubble. Procedure repeated.
Finger pointed. Scrabble for a surname. Exclamation.
Years rattling back to the front. He remembers, as do we.
Head of sixth seven years ago. Instant recognition. Repeat.

Half an hour. The place, no longer ours. Never was.
Friends the same. Memories. Dust between dark and light.
Car. Back seat. Barely two miles. Little traffic. Turn
into street.  Step out. Chill drizzles the face. Handshake
again? Again. Time and place discussed before home.
See you tomorrow then. Yeah. Yeah. Front door key.

Fad leis seo a thagadh cairde agus lucht gaoil an té a bhí ag imeacht chun na coigrithe. B'anseo an scaradh. Seo Droichead na nDeor

Family and friends of the person leaving for foreign lands would come this far. Here was the separation. This is the Bridge of Tears

so let us go to Falcarragh
where I kiss you by the corner
with salt on the lips
and a mouthful of chips

where my ma wants me home
by eleven at the latest
and the neighbour’s dog slobbers
its love against our cheeks

where we meet on the beach
with braids of seaweed by our feet
and the wind begins to jive
through the tangles of your hair

where we share a drink (or three)
and *sláinte (more than once)
on the crossroads of yesterday
and the rest to come

say goodbye by the bridge
with my hands in your pockets
our tears specks of memories
we scrunch hard to keep in

I.

fingers are ready
for numerous unwrappings
disposed colour clumps

---

II.

blink-and-miss applause
******* snap jokes tumble out
steam quivers on up

---

III.

everything exposed
fairy lights still flickering
night unrolls black tongue

I.

Morning pyjamas
presents between Bucks Fizz sips
new clothes to try on

--------------------
II.

We’re pulling crackers
the grab yank snap little bang
result - flimsy hats

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

III.

Afternoon Queen’s speech
television show repeats
sticks of celery

pigs in blankets
endless plates   vegetables
a rapid bang
   (spark)
crackers open   spill miniature
gifts   wrapping paper
in tatters
   whiff of fresh books
fizz of spines
when my finger hits page   one
thank you very much
fifty times   from everyone
moment to sit   reflect
no job   grey skies
   no worries
sleep in ( eyes )

Baby, you know I get lonely,
like now I’ve turned the stereo off,
heaved the car into

a slot by the pumps
but I have your name, its letters
in your marque of handwriting

upon my irises,
so when I go to feed the
snow-baptised vehicle

I think my hands work but no,
heavy numb from an absence,
there’s water in my mouth

or a little blood, a man
stupidly asking if I’m all right
but I can’t make out his face.

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

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

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

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

somebody set it on fire
somebody ripped the match

trio of wedges
Irn Bru orange

speckled with cherry
on a canvas of night

I am calling
from the flag square

near the building
constructed from crystals

this could be London
migraine of chalky lights

a revolving iris
far out across the bay

I’ll be home soon love
I know it’s strange

that work has dragged me
to this unpronounceable land

sweating skeleton
spilt milk network of streets

upside-down e’s
c’s with çurls of cable

and I hear the muffled diction
of EastEnders through the phone

can picture you
in strawberry-lace-

shade-slipper-socks
glass half-swollen with wine

the space on the sofa
where I should be

Some say a first kiss
is like a firework

so when I hear
that needle-sharp shriek
the wait for it
     b o o m
of amber drizzle
in the sky
I ask you
if that’s what it’s like

and you said
‘like that, but all of the colours
and all at once.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

first time swimming
cathedral where echoes
make new constellations

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

(     for me     )

I think he wrote
while you baked,
made fairy cakes
or something of the sort
while the young ones
whizzed around
like balloons
released from your fingers.

I think he was
your applicant,
not a bad fit,
frothing with wit,
a kiss made you giddy
like a girl
on their first date
in the heaving city.

On a red day
I think you sighed
when hearing boots
in the hallway but beamed
on a blue day
when he strode
through the door, a tie,
another rough wool jumper.

When he rode
those capsules home
I think perhaps you
wished to nick
your thumb again,
see the crimson seep
and weep as a child
over their father.

I think you wore
the smile of accomplishment
on day forty-two,
enough had bruised you,
pinched your skin
so it hurt and burnt pink,
stung a cheek
and left a tender spot.

I think you didn't want to
but did anyway,
felt all your words
had charred and bled black
so inhaled the haze,
swam under the jar
for the last time, before it fell
and cracked on his floor.

will try to be good
hold your hand in thunderstorms
lightning in your name

---

will try to be good
ask the trees to yawn their limbs
reside in shadow

---

will try to be good
sync hearts to rhythm of night
drizzled desire

---

will try to be good
set our ellipsis alight
tomorrow’s burning

---

will try to be good
repeat as though private prayer
breathe holy sunrise

and I saw you.
And yes, you were good.
And yes, you can sing.
The paper hearts fluttered down
from somewhere,
snaffled by hands
before you sank from view.
Young things in shorts
wielding rainbow sticks
seats in front and I doubt
my indie record
is cooler than yours
but I saw the sparks,
circus tricks,
dancers popping
along the stage.
But now it is Wednesday,
a four-hour memory
that is sleepily blending
into delicious red.

bodies under a light
  nothing on our feet
green tea past midnight

lips spell catastrophe
  I reek of calamity
speech drops out slow

fogged-up glasses
  crackle of a packet
of chocolate biscuits

soft fingertips
  seconds swallowed
stuck in traffic

pathetic
  catch her eyes
self-induced electric shock

burnt tongue
  there sing the clocks
she lets me in

In the delicate early hours,
I am thinking of myself
as a bubble,
or a series of bubbles
with flimsy skins
and hollows that wobble,
while everybody else
feels like concrete,
hard, solid individuals
who stomp about
doing what is necessary,
what is right.
They do not think of bubbles,
objects with brittle bones
or soggy minds.
Instead, they are cohesive,
set to collide head-on
with the like-minded,
faces that match their faces,
bodies with no fissures,
no anorexic cracks.

Why do they laugh at me? Guffaw until hoarse
as I walk through the fog?

Little copper feet strut across woodwork,
sherbet white feathers extend, retract.

A mob stands on soggy grass, wheezing
like old men on twenty a day.

Some yawn, open orange castanet beaks,
a boring morning for those who remain.

Clouds turn a grimmer grey shade
over me and these gulls.

Two of them spring up, higher than every tree,
wings glide through air as satin through fingers.

Tiny eyes will continue to scour this park
for another stranger to deride.

In the middle
of a predicament

picking flowers for   you
   just because

rows of unusual names
green tubes dipped
with delicate baubles of colour

I’m eyeing up
   a volcano of roses

as a fuzzy aroma
   tickles my nose
   swirls into   my mouth

but aren’t roses cliché

aren’t bouquets the go-to gift
   for girlfriends
for friends   who are girls

I groan at the price
   but do it   just because

and because the woman said so
I choose a squad of others

so later

when   you place them in a glass vase

every time you smell that   funny smell

   you’ll think of roses
you’ll think of me

and us

I’m in a queer mood.
The leaves make laughter,

the stars waltz into
a glimmering white stream.

Kissing is funny.
Why do we close our eyes?

Is it an ugly business?
Specks of sugar

form a hopscotch pattern
on my upper lip.

The grass throbs green.
My fingers swell

like creamy numb tools.
Am I touching you right?

Does it make you cry?
And now another feeling,

raindrops explode happily
on my skull.

I store my worries
in opaque jars.

my answers are mossy pebbles

take them
clean them

peg me to the line

and let the breeze ransack
this body

bones tightened with wire

muscles that scrunch
as carrier bags

there are puddles
they’ve existed longer

stop the rain
flowers don’t sing

they chatter in colour
if you paint them in