the picture

sloshes into view

like a wave on a beach

you haven’t discovered yet

there’s a tree outside

whose leaves quiver

like green flames

and there are books

on the coffee table

worn at the middle

from finger-flicking

in a lake of boredom


you are clinging


onto a voice that radiates

out from the walls

but you don’t know

where it’s coming from

but like a note on the piano

or the branch of rain

that leaves a slippery avenue

on your windowpane

you want it to stay

so you can hear it again

the cool cadence

flooding the room

faint ****
     rise fall
          of feet
               round holes
                    where toes poke
               water wrinkles
          like little knuckles
     two three prints
sunlight swims
     subtle curve
          backs of legs
               delicate corners
                    creases in skin
               her anatomy
          sealed into dreams
     delicious whisper
and I follow

I think it’s very easy to fall.
To fall in,
and fall back out again.
It happens more often than not.
It is a very regular thing,
like slipping your socks
over your feet in the mornings,
or walking downstairs
in a still-drowsy state.

Falling in is perilous.
You may never crawl back out,
and the bruises will bloom
and never leave your skin.
Falling out is simple.
You only have to
wipe their name away,
as if it was just chalk
scribbled upon a blackboard.

The forest holds our secrets.
Light slithers a path to us,
the sound of our breathing,
crackle of a splintered twig.

There’s a gurgle of water,
flossing the rocks of a stream.
Listen, you say.   A bird’s wings
applause as we go on our way.

I stop near a tree, its bark
sharp, flecked with moss.
No words, just immeasurable years
between us, skin against skin.

The smell we’ve been walking to,
lavender, tiptoes to our noses.
My fingers brush your hand
and we step forwards again.

The flowers you bought me
are so pretty. They are
so pretty,

little gloves of colour.
The window is open -
perhaps rain

on the way. And the reds
and whites against grey,
a light breeze

that runs into the room.
I try but don't recall
all the names,

but they smell so lovely
and you will remember
I am sure.

hair like melting bronze

long and thick as honey

coagulated to the waist

mellow slosh of water

viridian wrinkles

reflect a singed tangerine

shade of the bridge

a miserable dense fug

up above her head

lips like lavender

black sweater collar

cuddling her neck

and freckles dusted

slapdash on those cheeks

little marigold flecks

but her gaze grasps you

you can’t look away

she’s detained your attention

I write your name
                              in red
   sunlight
seeps through bottles
          on a windowsill
   margarine kaleidoscopes
         on legs

naked for a change
(early summer risky business)

Floorboards yawn
     under the weight of our stories
   I take showers
        as well as baths now
   Can't be twenty-one here
older   shush you couldn't tell

   Roll my finger
   make your piano tingle
like when our wrists
    bump together
    when spines crackle
on books bought yesterday
    this city   bubbles
        all fiction

You think
monochrome
     makes you look better
     camera   snap   done
jazz sashays around the room
    head out a window
hear people as nosebleeds
                    scrabble about

You flirt
        (what a discovery)
like flowers in a vase
   orange juice   bagels
ten-plus-ten toes

     (A moment
where your eyes ache
     into mine)

I hop
stepped jumped
into this mess

     you know as well as I do
     what a delectable
mess we are in

So I walk in a little late, still high.
Groups of strangers on primary-school chairs,
no question that I smell differently.
‘We all know why we’re here’, the man declares;
forty-something glares behind her tall glass.
This week’s book, The Bell Jar, and so she reads.
A page down, ‘would you like to go now?’ Pass.
I think of my ill brother up in Leeds
as her pretentious voice clogs the room.

What a state of affairs, what a life. How
it is what it is, it is what it is -
My brother says that a lot, back at home
or he used to, at least, long ago: Now
he can barely drive through small villages.

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

'When you grow up, your heart dies.'
Allison (Ally Sheedy) in The Breakfast Club (1985).*

look at all the ways
there are to
stay in touch
to communicate
in a combination
of pixels or a line of
finely-cut black letters

now look at all the ways
nobody does
a life you were given
segments of
shrunken to altered pictures
pipette-fed but no real words
swimming into your ears

frosted glass nostalgia
former vivid events
gone hazy with age
and you
and everybody you knew
going on with names only coming
like a balloon in the wind

This clock of ours
                                                            ­                               is hidden under ice,
                                      its hands frozen at 2.45.

                     We can hack away at the surface
    to get to him, but he might never
                                                           ­      work again.

                                                         ­                                                        Can you remember how he got there?
                                                      Some­one must have lost track of time
                                                            ­           and dropped him down.

    We can see its large black face
                                                           blurry from where we stand on
                                                              ­                                                                 fragile sheets of aqua ice.

                                                           ­     Maybe when it melts we can save him,
                       move the hands to the right time
                                 but by the time we've done that

                                                           ­                              it'll be the wrong time again,
                                       our hands will have to keep moving
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                    the hands of time

   and the clock won't like that,
                                                           ­            we'll be taking over its job.

He'll become angry and make time
                                                            ­                            go faster until we realise
it's all gone.

Forgive me
in summer
if I were
to buy you

some roses
one morning
with fraying
red petals

for they’d be
so frozen
bespeckled
in silver

so you’d know
how it felt
to be cold
just like me

Sunday morning, my dad
with the News of the World,
picking Bob’s Your Uncle at 10 to 1.
My mum in a titchy kitchen,
joined by a ***
of pongy tangerine cells,
raw tongues in a pan.
The tang of frying bread
tanned brown tickles my nostrils,
sizzles like Velcro on trainers.

Now my brother
in crimson pyjamas
walks in, plonks down for a plate
of six-hundred calories
all before midday.
Three meaty tubes
next to two yellow moons.
The mist of oil,
of grease clogs the air.
Tuck in.

I am either one person.
or the persona I created.

don't think you like
the fat. black full stops
I offer. handshakes where
the gloom seeps through.

what is this. change
of season and a mind
squeezed lime-like.
know what's on
without having to look.

oh look. help drip-fed. when
you're in the mood
but stops short. or
a faded repeat of what's
come before.

don't tell me
I'll be liking you. next
for I'll only stub
my toes. Not gold standard.
Slip into the outfit
handed out by another.

inhale. leave it.
leave it
to early morning REM
and my silly illusions. where
the comma in your breath
suggests something more,

Wake up in Östermalm,     south to Gamla Stan.
I walk,
it is a cool day with albumen clouds,
rivers of snow gloss the streets ecru.

- Meet outside the bookstore;
Pippi Långstrump grins at me from behind glass.
The blue and yellow of the Nordic cross
prods out from a shop,     primrose-skin buildings,
streets riddled with syllables,
Västerlånggatan,     Tyska Brinken,
graffiti a ****** siren on the walls.

- ’75 the first time here,     Waterloo a year before,
birth of the famous foursome
to karaoke machines from Södermalm to south Japan.
And again,     new millennium,
a second time in ’16 where love was love
and peace was peace.

- Practise the numbers.     Seven is sju,
my mouth producing rare noise,
a wispy word between show and swear.

- We walk.
Splashes of island and butterscotch-haired teens.
A girl hums a Melfest song.
I toss a Sverigedemokraterna leaflet in the bin.

- The waitress could be Lisbeth and AVICII’s playing
and isn’t it beautiful,     you,     and this,
where we have found ourselves.

Perhaps a new year
only exists to show
the widening gap
between the what was
and what now is

the quiet reminder
that you go in differing directions,
but they all come with fog,
an unease you'll never shake,
a gloat, an unheard word,
a point of view you don't

waste your eyes with.
You are older now,
your youth only a faded,
bitter tang.

at the edge of any town
evening leaks out over green tufts
trio of circular-headed
pumps with no cars to quench

grass like a smudge of butter
nudges the curbs
lights threading shadows
where a man

back to the road
waits for another vehicle
to pull up by
the unswinging Mobil

red Pegasus to signal
here is where you fill

Explain why fluorine and chlorine
are in the same group of the periodic table.

He blunders. There’s a question
on polymers soon
so he knows he’s *******.

An afternoon in June
spent regurgitating answers

rehearsed a hundred times
in overcast classrooms.

He knows there’s a matter
of days before his mates
will go their separate ways.

Names he’s spoken for years
will decay over time,
cemented over by people

he hasn’t yet met.
Two, seven, two, eight, seven.
Seven electrons in their outer shell.

He’s surprised he knows,
the answer chiming
in his head like a peal of bells.

Nine years later I find my old
my Geography book,

Wednesday afternoons
if I remember correct and there,

faded but still visible in blue,
T.M. 4 H.S.

and I’m transported back
to 2007 and the fizzy embrace

of a crush, the two of us
running around

in a gust of e-numbers
and holding hands under tables.

My husband calls from the other room
and the image dissolves,

snapped back to the present
as an elastic band, the initials fading further.

Yes, I have the keys,
my coat pocket, left-hand side,
you know this was quite pricey
and I don’t usually go for pricey clothing
but I think the bedroom light’s still on
so I’d better check. We’ve lived here
going on for fiveyears now, the wallpapering
was the biggest issue, the light’s off remember, not
the actual slather-on-paste-job-done, no, choosing
what felt right, said ‘play it safe’ so a light blue
is what we went for my keys are gone,
they’ll be in the bowlby the door. The game
will be a *******, relegation battle, it usually is
with us, I’ve been saying for ages the kitchen
window might be open sorry, relegation
and we’ve needed a twenty-goal-a-season
striker with thebedroom light’s stillon
my keys might be in there too. If we sign
somebody in the transferwindow’s shut, I knew
it was, the link-up play’s tight, wecan move up
towards mid-tablemediocrity I think
lightisoff
mustremember that now keys
noideathough ah the bowl. I’lljust grab fastfood
for my window’s keys
fordinner, not healthybuteasy I did shut
the window I knewIhad was it bowlforkeys,
no sillyofme coatpocket, notcheap no not atall
healthy comeonhow often doIeatburgers chips
notevenvery tasty bowl, rightthen
I’mreadyifonly lightisoff
knewI’d remember.

Are you feeling caterpillars in your stomach?
Will you give me a wedge of religion to chew on?
Is it possible, two weeks after moving in
to a third-floor apartment on the outskirts of town
I’ll discover hairs in the sink
like skinny black maggots,
wounds on the couch from a spilt glass of red?
Are you going to comment on my skin,
am I going to do the same to you?
Will we share baths together,
watch our fingers wrinkle
as we volley stories to each other
like we did when we met?
Or maybe you’ll thwack me with a pillow
if I begin to snore or drool,
maybe I’ll crank my voice up a notch
if you whine about work
and we’ll sit in different seats
with the TV turned down.
Will I be just too boring? Is that it?
The whiff of my aftershave,
the shriek of my knife against
the plates we’ll buy from IKEA,
all those things will bring about a moan.
Am I going to have to dine on politics?
Would you hate it if I checked the scores on my phone?
The *** might be so disappointing
we won’t even bother to undress anymore.
We are thinking the same thoughts here,
we must be.
Are we doing the right thing, darling?
Will it ever be time for the right thing?

Running before he even knew
what had hit him,
centipede stain of blood,
staggered breaths.

The first, point-blank,
shock of bullet sound
ricocheting from the windows,
instant crumpling of a life.

The second, a swing and miss,
then the flee through a chilled
capital night, punctured by my blunder,
the headlines ready to bleed.

I assume he is dead.
These words scrawled, emaciated letters,
the weapon they can never find
burrowed into my palm.

The journalists are poised, ready to sting.
I already know the grim language
they will use to blame,
allegations flying like agitated wasps.

Is this my confession?
Perhaps, to myself only,
my closing calamity, my sugar-rushed finger
on the trigger. Reckless.

And her shriek, a shriek of horror
like a chimney of bees, my body
halfway up Malmskillnadsgatan by then,
your husband wheezing his last.

Take my truth any way you want,
they’ll be chasing me forever.
If they come, I shall admit;
I know ****** like the back of my hand.

You are the sunrise
that illuminates the twisted roads ahead.

The photocopier
that seems to do what you didn’t want it to.

The branch
that sways precariously in the wind.

The clock
that stops, starts, stops, starts.

The froth
that dangles a little too far over the side of my cup.

The peach
that contains a solid stone under the façade.

The book
that always ends with unanswered questions.

The confetti
that looks glorious but doesn't stay for long.

The nosebleed
that stains my pillow at night.

The boomerang
that flew off in the distance, yet to return.

In bed

     for the first time
I am watching you
  
   in the bathroom
     brushing your teeth

just the right chunk of light
     enough to see

a magenta vest

your only tattoo
sneaking out from the top
   of black shorts

your clock notifies me
   it is ten past twelve

a dog yaps in sporadic bursts
   outside a siren whines
only to die seconds later

     but I am captivated
by your shape

the backs of your feet

   a little fraction of skin
     under the belly-button

   and if this is to become
commonplace

an ordinary event

   I will sleep every night
with a smile

     painted over my dreams

I found her sprawled on the stairs
with no shoes,
plum-coloured bruise
on the back of her leg,
I ask, how did she fall?

Hand slumped over a step,
a young girl climbs to sleep,
now still on these stairs,
all dreams wrapped in black,
bumped her milky-haired head,
but how did she fall?

I heard no commotion,
no 'ouch', no '****!',
no cry cutting the air to my ears,
I only opened the door
and saw you on the stairs
and I can only wonder
how did she fall?

Was her mind swimming in drink?
Eyes droopy and weak?
Unable to reach
her soft pillow in bed?
Now as the clock dongs
throughout our house
I still think
how did she fall?

I say aloud her name
but no breath, no movement at all,
she remains sprawled
near the top of the stairs,
close, not close enough
and I look at her there
unconscious, mind strolled off elsewhere
and I continue to ponder,
how did she fall?

I.

unlikely there'll be
a white Christmas once again
when was the last time?

---

II.

streets are quite empty
but inside trees remain up
Brussels sprouts steaming

---

III.

socially distant
but there's a sprinkle of cheer
at these trying times

So I give you a memory
made of water.
Is it malleable? Will it freeze?
Perhaps it has already,
a block of opaque white.

There’s a language caught in my throat
that isn’t common.
I think it suits you better,
phrases that rise like helium-filled balloons.
You can roll them out

to anyone willing to listen.
I shall continue with the clogging
of my veins, my pulse another
could’ve-been, thick on my wrist.
Bathe in the sunlight

in a place that isn’t home
but you could learn to call home.
The roads I know curve
into the next, where I started
the end result.

How weird
I am here
and you don’t know it.
Sleeping they say,
in a better place.

George on my right
has been gone for years,
even the flowers all brown
gave up God knows when.

I wonder if you knew
your neighbours
before the batteries stopped.
Did Edith know Agatha?
Did Frank chat over the fence?

Chris was seventy-two,
moved here mid-nineties
when I couldn’t yet hold a pen.
Now just a name
on a slab of stone.

There’s a spot near a tree,
no stone no dirt.
I think ‘that’ll be fine,
a place by myself.’
I shake my head.
They’ll stick me
somewhere else.

These aisles go on and on,
one giant Tesco,
nobody at the tills.

If you could speak,
the stories I’d hear,
the chapters spilling out
like salt from a shaker.
But you can’t talk
and I can only walk past
and wonder how you went.

At one
with the wind
in a midnight dress
a necklace
dripped around her throat
   like raindrops
I didn’t buy
but should have
and

how she adored
the water-lily pond
I’d paint her
in delicious shades
myriad   colours
but only an image
in the end

static

solid complete
now

heading
to Bemelmans
down Fifth Avenue
she dances
          a dragonfly
in the winter dark
I catch her
   twirl her
and the trees
don’t seem so empty

savour her voice
like fine caviar
study the   liquid   flow
of her legs
heels   clicking on cobbles
my left foot
     twists
and I     wobble
breathe in her laugh

a detour
a walk into the park
skips   along
   snow-sieved   paths
her hair
a merry   jazz
in the bitter air
the strangers
think we are weird
and we find Alice

motionless in moonlight
a kiss on a cheek
sway     circularly
until everything
smashes into a blur

and we spill

giggle like kids
seventeen again
can’t drink enough
of the evening
I ended up
     in Wonderland

The wallpaper in your grandmother’s front room
is appalling. Old bible yellow pages,
bevy of bubbles joining,
thickening like arteries beneath the surface.

And what is that? The daily brain teaser,
printed patio of letters.
Five down - ‘state of being alone’.
I think I know it. I am sure of it.
Pack of hard-boiled molar-breakers covers the rest.

I do not know why
you have brought me here.
We stand like soundless instruments.
Wrenched from bed so had to dress,
brush my lips ******, rake my hair.
Presentable? Presentable.

Your gran, almost ninety, concrete
cracks lightning strike on the cheeks,
specific smell that comes
with the accumulation of decades.
She does not know me, will forget me.

Syllables will stagger out
from the mouth, words, whole sentences
watery or gone. Instant evaporation.
A shuffle. And another shuffle.
A loudening shuffle.

Enter. Oh, how sorry I feel!
Hands quiver as frightened leaves,
cup quickstepping on the saucer.
You dash over, take control,
steady the shake of brick-ish tea.

My name comes, tinged with a lisp.
Your grandmother looks at me
with her eyes, jelly-rolled marbles,
a smile creaking across her face.
You know it. I know it. She knows it.
A woman caught in the icy fist of winter.

She sits. Sighs. I know the feeling.
I bend down, say slowly,
enunciate clearly.
Solitude.
Five down, my dear? Yes, correct.

Wouldn’t it be great
a decade from now
when it’s bills, insurance,
married life,
to wander into Waterstone’s
and go ‘hold on a minute,
I sat next to him!’

At the counter we could say
‘Oh, I knew the author,
uni days and all that’
as we fish around
for a ten quid note
thinking ‘hang on,
I should have a signed copy!'

We’ll call ourselves
intellectual,
scrawl sonnets in cafes,
sup pints, smoke cigars,
proclaim Seamus’s work
‘just... just… it just speaks
to me you know?’

And we’ll remember
that teapot,
those guys coming in late,
dishing out slips of paper
like a croupier with cards
and still wonder
if what we’ve written is *magic.

There was almost a fight once.
I say almost, because it was.
I saw it with my own eyes,
in the bus station
that isn’t there anymore
because they blew it up
and everyone cheered.
I don’t remember it much
because this is years ago
and I hadn’t finished university yet
but I was standing in line, as you do,
avoiding eye contact,
like the cucumber
sandwiched between a grey old lady
and a pregnant ******* her phone,
waiting for the X4
or whatever it was called.
I was eating something
and then the black man stood up,
not too far away,
went up to the elderly man,
told him to move, got in his face
like an optician inspecting your eyes
except with more venom.
You could see it in the way he moved.
I don’t know what words were spilt.
I didn’t hear. I said I only saw it.
Then he, the black man that is,
kicked the other man in the shin
with the tip of his boot.
I just stood and watched
like everybody else
because it’s an unexpected moment
in an unexceptional place
as a brief scuffle began,
a thrashing of arms, a spell of aggression.
It ended.
The old man sat down again,
rubbing his leg as strangers spoke.
The black man looked riled.
Cops came out of nowhere
as if they magically transported
to a bus depot by mistake.
I don’t know what happened next
because I got my ride home
and got on with my life,
but I like to think they nicked him
for causing a minor ruckus.
But they probably didn’t.
The buses don’t go there anymore
because they exploded the station.
I might’ve said that earlier.

a wodge uh Wrigley’s
  ‘ard an knobbly on thuh underside
uh desks

shufflin’ tuh DJ Caspar
  in thuh ‘all
unduh thuh gaze uh
  year three’s

it were
  packed lunches,
dislodging mi brace
  from thuh roof of mi mouth
like extractin’ a tooth,
  scoffin’ bars uh white chocolate

years-old Blu-Tack
  stamped black intuh carpets,
grey plastic-y chairs,
  writin’ learnin’ objectives,
underlinin’ dates
  with shatterproof rulers,
I upgraded tuh a pen
  in year four

same time
  remember listenin’ on the radio
in Scottish Clark’s mobile
  when it wuh Ingland v Brazil,
summer uh ‘02,
  thuh likes of Sheringham, Beckham
in audio only, no picture,
  and thuh TA came in
  ‘alfway throo a lesson,
said ‘we’re out’

and the time
  I cort that cricket ball,
dived and it stung mi hand,
  a crimson-drizzled palm,
throbbin’ ring

and the time
  we played football wi’ tennis *****
and I blurted intuh a trio
  uh eager classmates,
a tumble-shirt compote,
  knee flecked wi’ grit, mi own spit,
skinny whispers uh blood

and thuh time
  I plagiarised Potter
around Azkaban,
  got a Woolies notebook,
ragged Pritt-Sticked cuttins’
  of Watson in the pink ‘oodie,
but it wuh the seed
  for thuh next decade and more,
standin’ up,
  tellin’ a story,
somethin’ or othuh

Experience is limited
I could store my lot
in a test-tube

others have barrels
and barrels
and can roll them out.

If you are far out at sea
half-hidden half-showered
in sun

I am on the beach
with water licking
my little toes.

Never pushed
only nudged
as a chess piece

to where I need to be
to absorb
a hazy scene.

Tiptoeing
at twenty-one
so be it

at least I will be ready
when I hand myself
the new baton.

so she puts on her scratched Doc Martens with the mud-stricken laces - because that’s what she wants to wear - swish and flicks the stick so the surf of her eyes have raven wings - because that’s how she likes to do it - strikes her lips Beauregarde blue - plonks a fedora atop her tiers of panther-black hair - because it’s her favourite colour - her favourite hat - wriggles on three rings - her grandmother’s, mother’s, and the one from Amsterdam - pins the badge GIRLS DO NOT DRESS FOR BOYS on her fluff-stippled dress - because she’s in the mood to wear it - because it feels comfortable - prods a white trinket in her ear that gushes Bikini **** - because she’s feeling like a rebel - fishes for a fiver for bus fare - knows the driver will silently judge her - knows the thirty-something mother will - knows the raisin-faced cane-in-hand man will as well - knows she doesn’t care - sun javelins in from the windows - feels great looks good her version of girl - later when her friends call they call her Wednesday - her kisses tasting of blueberry pie

who's crumbling?

is it me
not me

who's running?

not the man
drenched in the dark
his feet don't move well
don't work

who's moving?

maybe every person
who isn't you
doesn't have chains

who's talking?

unknown voice
they might not
have spoken before

who's answering?

ghosts perhaps

another chalk-written name

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

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

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

Snitch-catcher.
Cauldron-stirrer.
Wand-waver.
Quidditch-player.
S­tone-retriever.
Riddle-killer.
Buckbeak-rider.
Triwizard-enterer.­
Phoenix-member.
Snape-hater.
Voldemort-fighter.

I traipse along fractured slabs
to get away,
away from worn floors
to a place
of haunting silence -
just cope with it I say.
From the cavern
to the cave,
beneath ***** dishcloth clouds,
a monochrome Rubik's cube
of a mind,
sluggish and masses
of ******* ideas,
there
then forgotten.
Rummage around
in the green sack,
pick out a dream
to dream
tonight
before it melts
like Red Leicester on brown bread
into an image
hard to decipher,
a TV dotted with white spots -
smack me on the back
'til a picture returns.
Blindfold me
until I cannot see,
give me another sliver
of suspect perfection.

He came over,
all blue eyes black jacket
dark boots.
I had my fingers in my hair
when he said hello,
twisting a strand
and standing open-mouthed.
Who are you
and where did you come from?
I didn’t say that.
He flung a smile my way,
I caught it like an excited puppy.
Then we had drinks,
just something out of a can,
cheap corner-shop crap.
He told me I smelt
of vanilla candles.
I told him he smelt
strongly of aftershave.
Don’t mind the dry skin he said.
Didn’t even notice that.
I was too busy biting my lip
like stereotypical girls
in stereotypical movies.
His palm went on my thigh.
I said not really it’s my time
you know what I mean?
He said what a shame.
So we drank and slept
and probably kissed,
I don’t remember.

For at least a week now,
shrivelled leaf-like globes
of heliotrope and platinum,
umbilical cords
caught on the top
of a lamppost's ***** finger,
jostling, huddled together
in the breeze
like players in a scrum.

I go past on the top deck,
see those wrinkled baubles
skirmish, wish to leave
and drift in mist
before rasping
with a whimper,
an out-of-breath splat
of colour caught
in some tree.

baby of rust
bloomed from the womb
tether to the lost

lone orchid
by the too-big bed
memory left red

dream out in tears
odd choir of charms
sing a quiet awful song

I searched for where you met.
Cambridge at Christmas.
Now a shoe store, a Top Man,
trees drooled with tinsel.
So I imagined that night
at Falcon Yard in '56
and the church-like windows.
Didn't expect a thunderclap
but it came, a bolt
through a blue night.
The red-hairbanned girl,
tipsy, she loved your work,
your raw debut words.
Amateur dancing,
brandy on your tongue,
a kiss bang smash on the mouth
from her hunky boy.
     'Ridiculous to call it love.'
Smitten, she bit,
gnawed on your cheek
to leave her own mountain range.
Her interest - peaked.
Your person - snaffled,
cast as the lead
in her American play.

I’ve got a buddy,
lives in Vinegar Hill.

   Was in the city for work
   so I called him,

waiting for the early morning
zip of caffeine,

   anything to coat my throat.
   He said absolutely.

Hadn’t been since they put
flowers on the corner,

   condensation of colour
   in a ribcage of streets.

The trees were naked
skinny things;

   I felt as bare and bland.
   The truth burnt, left a scar.

Still, I found love in a whirl
on a garage door,

   trickled out three syllables
   to a pretty blonde on a bike.

Window seat, $3.50 down.
Jack knew the waitress,

   her number too.
   Crimson cherries for earrings.

The sun licked us brighter.
Rotund pumpkins, manic eyes,

   toothless and forgotten.
   A beagle sneezed on the corner

of Jay and Plymouth.
Then a lazy detour down snaking Navy.

   A headline: Brooklyn needs jobs.
   Don’t we all, I muttered.

I could see a stars and stripes
with a rip through the middle,

   flapping as a mongrel’s tongue.
   I was thirty and single,

headaches and toast for breakfast,
coffee for blood.

   When I get to 9th, I said to Jack,
   I'll give Cherry a call.

So this is how you
love,

hearts split
and shared -

if half apart,
            half together,

magnets that retract
into place,

the shape of your version
of us.

In a tunnel of darkness
you bring cascades of light,

lipsticked kisses
and your shoulder of choice.

There will be days in bed,
the languid yawn of sun

slithering across your skin,
a glint off the rings,

the shine in your eyes
as bright as the first time.

In your first, second house,
a toothless child wobbles on the carpet,

you’ll say
look what we made.

A son drips out monotone answers,
a daughter with her first serious boy

and you, as parents,
will proffer nuggets of advice,

as if spoon-feeding the tools
you have and they’ll need.

But, all to come.
It is the rise

and fall
of your song,

the hive of desire,
heartbeat buzz,

forever now
your diamond word.

And I, I clasp a glass
and you take what I’ve written -

here’s to us, my love,
our love,

the yesterday and tomorrow,
the painting we will create.

Her mouth was really
the one real thing I’ve ever known.

I knew her mouth better
than the alphabet, days of the week.

Every word that spilled from her mouth,
a potent, sparkling-new alcohol.

Often I thought of how her mouth
moved against mine, our private dance.

One kiss and we’d be drunk,
a love frothing from her mouth and mine.

Years pass. The taste of her mouth washed away
by toothpaste, a thousand coffees.

The one real thing I ever knew,
her mouth, really.

Oxford one Thursday before Christmas.
Down Ship Street for lunch,
sticking to what we know.
Inside, into warm familiarity,
away from the chirp of bike-wheels,
tuba players and cold latching
onto our cheeks.
A trio of guys, one female at the back,
preppy students sipping coffee,
crumbs scattered like sesame seeds
over white plates and laps.
Smashmouth on the stereo,
a choice between Coke or pink lemonade
(Coke it is),
a flapjack for one-seventy if I wanted.
My stomach growls for grub.
I think of winter drizzled everywhere,
scrawl all this upon a scrap of paper
using my father’s pen.
Then a black-haired girl
with a sincere smile hands over
my baguette, chopped in two
and I think of her until we are finished,
well out the door
with my coat zipped right up.

Once again, we have returned.
Lunch in a side-street café,
window seat,
watching students
huddled together in duffel-coats
venture into this Christmas commotion.
George Michael’s voice emanates
from somewhere as a girl with golden
hoops in her ears
and fingernails the colour of lava
takes our order.
A stranger’s drained cup,
a torn open sachet of sauce
oozes wound-like,
then removed.
Two minutes pass.
A toasted baguette in a basket,
Coke pasting a fur on my teeth.
I could have had Earl Grey
or Breakfast tea or Camomile
but no.
I stick to what I know.
The blonde waitress
greets more people.
I do not know who she is.
And I have finished,
ready to be bruised
by the wind’s invisible fists.

I have not injected myself, felt the pulse
of illegal things under the bonnet of my skin
or swallowed a pill and let the room swirl
in colours from the mid-sixties.

I have not guzzled ugly orange drinks
until my liver aches to talk
and I erupt pints and shots
against ***-coated cubicle walls.

I have not had the awkward first
with one of my teeth knocking on hers
or a line of saliva in my stubble
that I perhaps should have trimmed.

Instead I drink tea with two sugars
and whizz through each channel
rather than absorbing stories for class
as best I can like a square of kitchen roll.

Instead I see streams of people from 20-whatever
take pictures with berries and apples
to remind themselves who they are
and remind me they still breathe.

And instead I write what I don't know
for if not every word burns black then dies
and so I continue to fight the other me
who will not turn, walk back the way I just came.

He'd be more
than one page in your journal
this man, Yorkshire-born,
anthropology at Pembroke,
the one who wrote
about a fox and a song.
Piano music in the room,
British-bohemia.
You, enthralled,
wonderfully drunk
among turtle-necked boys,
friends of his
and then him,
the unscratchable diamond
you wanted bad.
     'Then the worst happened.'
Earrings like tears in his palm,
two accents mixing,
new paints in a ***.
Before long
he'd be chucking
clods at your window
though you wouldn't be home.
But his name would spray
from your mouth for good.