Now the dark
ripples in

charcoal black
silent waves

and we are
christened by

the eclipse
mute motion

like a swallowing
gloomy deluge

but only
the day’s cessation

skin shed
installs night

brings end
to start again

I talk to you
even if I have
nothing to say.

My car sounds
like it’s got food poisoning
but I drive it to your house anyway.

I wear the same dumb boots
because I wore them
the first time I saw your face.

I pile up your laughs
in my pockets so I can pull them out
if the day turns to mud.

I hate the way you’re leaving
because everyone leaves,
but I’ll keep your poem

on repeat,
the words will cool my veins,
rock me to sleep.

I.

fog-clogged atmosphere
naked unearthly structures
loom with static limbs

---

II.

crispy chunks of spuds
gift-wrapped meat nudge sliced white bird
paper crowns for all

---

III.

to next year thoughts turn
last days unfurl post-Noel
with dawn's frosted tongue

Look at this, I said.
Chalky expanse,
lonely, untarnished decoration.

Blush of cold,
branches rest as veins
atop a transitory skin.

Could be silk, maybe fur.
Winter discovery
like forgotten snowmen.

A footprint chime,
high note shimmering
through bitter liquid.

Murmurs of cobalt,
tongues of white,
our fresh heaven.

fall out
from the back of the van,

scuttle away
like animals made of leaves.

They’ll come back
as if letters in the mail

without any crinkles
or a slit down the middle

or a welt of ink
like a bruise nudging the margin.

I’ll pick them up
and taste every syllable

before slotting them
inside empty yoghurt pots,

deserted notebooks,
ready to be revived  

so I can swallow them anew.

the [ sight ] of a couple
here is the MAN
mid - 20ies
younger at a     push
c/h/e/c/k/e/d u n b u t t o n e d shirt
lARGe looks-em   pt   y rucksack
on his back
a sort of sil very-mist colour
and black skinny jeans
every1 seems to where
I’ll admit
I have a pair - pair
but they’re not wright
for my job
he (sees) me
Ilookawayquickly
but He knows eye saw Him
arms (((locked))) in a ring
a round the waist of a gir!
exhausted and eyes <shut>
flower-crown droop:ng
down her $four head
as she drops d ee per
into sl ee p
murmurs some-thing
just muFFled syLLables
probably went to a ‘gig’
music still rrumbling
as an     empty     stomach
in her ears
so maybe not a couple
friends more likely
a girl and guy hhuggingg
friendlee
friend ship
whatever it is
the train comes
screeeeches to astop
and within a minit
they are gOne
I am gOne
and yet #goingnowhere

blue like core of ocean
blue raspberry boulder
flecked with enamel

wind-ravaged land
far out full stop
unblemished by the likes of us

plastic population
whirling ball of selfies
and self-made destruction

but Neptune, blue
like your eyes adjusting to light
like the canvas of sky post-birth of rain

On the day we move house
I am in someone’s old bedroom,
our new bedroom.

The walls need work,
panoply of circles
where picture frames once hung,
where a shelf may have slept.

I think of the books a wife
may have read, propped up in bed
in this place, her husband also reading,
the lamp-light pouring over their skins.

They had *** in this room,
people before them too,
long ago residents.
The walls have seen, have heard
it all.

A green squiggle next to the door.
A name? Or an age? Hard to tell.
The remnants of faces moved on,
our footsteps the next to grace
this sanctuary of sleep.

A duo of pots, three cylinders,
wrapped. We shall make a start soon.
The bed will go here,
wardrobe by the window.
A shout rockets up the stairs.
The wife’s making a brew.

and then you’ll have a child,
the first of maybe a trio
of slippery-skinned
shrieking new humans.
Over a bunch of months
you’ll watch the globe
inside your partner expand,
family members placing
a hand above the navel
to feel a kick, a thud
to incur a exclamation of glee,
at the idea of a person
on the edge of expulsion,
an uncooked multi-limbed being
you helped invent.

Then there will be nights of no sleep,
the traipsing to the cry
of your writhing baby,
all tears and open mouth bawl,
hoping you’ll supply
a response to pacify the mind.

There’ll be a morning
when you peer in the mirror
and see a single thread
of silvery hair
or tiny crimson quivers
in the whites of your eyes
and your child
will ****** a picture
to your chest
crammed with crude scribbles
of a sunny scene
and you’ll wonder
if it will ever be real again.

I say
there is a crackle
of some undiscovered magic
when my lips close in on your skin,
fingers on your neck like touching the neck of a cello.

Blonde after blonde,
strangers
stroll in,
no idea who you are,
not a clue where you're going.
I am among
a new wave of writers
with anxiety on the table,
pursuing acclaim for incoherency.
Some are absent
like a snowflake at Christmas,
failed to come forward
over the horizon
where rainclouds don't depart.
Naturally reserved
in our asylum of words
but it's a melee
to be heard,
to be seen,
a rising flower
on the cusp of spring.

Next door’s cat,
alone as they’ve gone away
on holiday,
slouched on the lawn,
our garden.

A monochrome tube
flops over, turns over,
liquorice eyes peer up,
a rolling pin
kneading the green.

Thinks it owns the place,
can lounge about
wherever it pleases
drizzled in June honey,
‘round ours for a week.

It knows when I am close,
a mewling baby,
rises like an overweight man
from an armchair
and asks to be loved.

And here we are,
blundering through the cold, dark
early weeks of the year,
flames from the fire
growling up
the walls
at the King’s Head,
our local.

Inside we’re the jokers,
knocking them back,
lager in
our mouths,
a bwah-hah-hah
noise
between old songs
and the lost-count-which-pint.
Questions blurt     out
but we’re on
the razz,
sozzled.     A mate turns up
the volume, which one
I don’t know, lights
swirl
to x’s, white pinpricks
and would
I like another?
I slur out a guhon then.
We’ve all got
the zest
for more.

I remember it, you
not so much. No. 10 staples,
unused, I’ve brought them.
The store is still there. You said,
regularly, you didn’t want
to sell stationery your whole life.
Pencils end up lost, pens run out,
like a lot of things. The inevitability
of it smacks you like a migraine, I got it.

Soon we became stapled, painlessly,
together. The mossy green jumper,
mine, you wore it. Your knitted-by-grandmother
scarf, sunflowers, I wore
sometimes. Routines we made
ourselves, the right shade of tea,
word puzzles before bed.
All falling into place, a quiet click,
seamless.

Then, restless. Fidgety. A classic
different directions situation. Thankfully,
amicable. Just as seamlessly, clicked
apart. Now here, the staples, leftover
silvered remnants. Still boxed. Use them?
I could, but couldn’t. What was reduced
to stationery. Runs out like a lot of things.
Inevitable, I guess, I got it.

I.

blankets of mist douse
the garden with bluish tinge
chilly night again

---

II.

another Christmas
plagued by masks and boosters though
brighter days ahead

---

III.

extraction of gifts
from their jackets of paper
hands at the ready

A month or two ago I read a book.
It wasn’t bad but I’ve read better
stories with more interesting characters in my life.
I sat as I usually did with a cup of tea
but I think my wife forgot the sugar in it
as usual. She always did this.

Halfway through I thought to myself, “This
is getting boring. I’ll put this particular book
back where it belongs, let it
gather dust. I’m sure there is a better
read somewhere on these shelves, littered with tea
stains, stains from my younger self, my younger life.”

And yes, it has been a long life
indeed. Now would you just look at this!
Surrounded by novels, lukewarm tea.
I mean, see my book
over there on my desk? Yes, that could be better
too, but when I had finished writing it

I was so chuffed. Sadly though, it
didn’t make me feel more jovial about life.
Didn’t get much praise at all. My wife said, “Better
go to bed, wake up ready to start again, a new book.
Whatever happens, don’t let this
get to you, like last time when you downed cup after cup of tea

every day.” Yeah, she got it right, down to a T.
Again and again, I always ended up doing it.
Then I’d sit by myself, plan to book
a holiday and think “It’s time my life
took a different path, writing garbage like this
is not going to make things any better.”

I needed to start afresh, anew. I’d thought I’d better
stop with my unhealthy habit of supping tea
and after months of misery put a stop to this
nonsense. The stuff in the past? Just forget about it,
move on, focus on the more exciting projects in life.
Get ready to stun the world with a brilliant new book.

I presume you have read this. What do you think of it?
I turned to poetry. Better than the mush I wrote before when tea
played a part in my life? Who knows? One day, you might read it in that book.

abandoned soles
floppy dog tongues
yellowed by the sun

limbs of the limbless
sprouting scarecrow
or roadside Nike angel

many miles worn
left to be laceless
twins made orphans

or just one
dusty rubber
where nobody's home

On the TV
at the azure blue
Olympic Hockey Centre
in Deodoro,

our keeper’s
saving everything,
the Dutch careless
when faced with pressure,

the gold medal
swaying the way
of our women.
It’s the first time

I’ve paid much attention
to this stick-wielding sport
but when Webb swerves, turns,
clouts the yellow ball into the net,

I’m chuffed for us
as a cheer detonates
and there’s an ecstatic
bouncing circle of red.

oh look
              how you run
the desert today’s playground
              in your head
oceans
              of possibilities

fawn undulations
              of sand
yawn to the distance
              tracks temporary
telling the story
              of what was
of what
              you won’t forget

the sun
              cupped in your hands
orange disc
              kisses the horizon
and there are miles left
              moments
that will emerge
              as if breathing
through the map
              on your wall

to pulse
              to play to the beat
of your heart
              this is the light of desire
this is the light
              of hope
going
              only to return
again
              like your favourite song

your opal flowers,
strings that nick the side.

watercolour ribbons
far out, to the rim.

marbles I am lost in,
window of delicate threads.

spider-web of you
I hope leaves space for me.

dislodge myself
tighten my jaw
summer is not
our season of bliss

choke on your flowers
swallow your sirens
the air is lethal
with nightmares

rise early
mist the first murmurings of morning
and the blue
smudged by a finger
to a dusty half-purple
half-nectarine sky where the perfect
blot of post-Christmas sun welcomes us

commas of snow
like the night shedding its skin
a chill coating our throats
but each inhalation a gift
a lungful of life

oh
wondrous
you

among
the
wreckage

came
from
nowhere

to
my
eve­rywhere

Unusually
in a pub
a mid-July evening

clutching a Coke
the tangled strings
of conversation

peppered across the room
and loitering about
for faces

I haven’t seen
in perhaps four years
to breathe

through the door
to begin
that mawkish process

of reminiscing
over protracted days
in carpeted classrooms

naturally chat
about the lukewarm now
present partners

jobs if we have one
and upon arrival I speak little
letting the cool

surf of familiar voices
refresh me
as some mysterious

but quite delicious drink
and there is laughter
delicate chatter

before we disperse
like youthful bees
to our own slices

of existence
separate but always
aware of what was

pulse of 80s music
     conversation
swirls
between   drinks

bubbles rolling
     under
   the   tongue

bank holiday getaway
beermats

not getting any   younger
   doesn’t mean
you have to feel   older

people
   stream in
   shadows pour
across   the     floor

names that haven’t spilt
from my lips
   for years

   and you wonder     how     long
the   puddle   will last

names scribbled
by a   dartboard

the faint    
     clunk
   of potted   pool *****

dialogue   fizzles
like   tablets
   in water

voices
   dripping
coming     then going

wilt into
the cool   spring   night

Time and time again
rose petals unspool from your chest,
floral television.

Even the starlings know by now
what’s being done. Drips of another
world, an eastern tongue, like

syrupy pills, not prescribed
but there’s enough to go round.
Wash down with ginger ale, a sugar plum

for the road. Afternoon’s bleeding on.
Boy, call again when you can
in discreet tones. Don’t need me to say

it’s better when names are unknown.

Now I am in/tense -
hy-per-activ-e sand-pit of at/oms,
     Take these breath Flames,
   paint the wa-lls with them,
your rauCous redec-oration.

Now I am nebulous, standing fog, canines of ice, vacuum me up in one brush so I sleep, sleep, sleep

Now I     am iridescent
rainbow of     unnamed shade
ribcage glow     and  letters
that hum     along doorways
as though     injected neon

Now I am sog
gy
wet dog
cheek
to your wh
irl
pool of whis
pers
that salt smell
net
tle sting

Now I am drowsy,
arid mind makes tumbleweed night,
digestion dilution,
an absent something;
bathroom mirror memories,
green fraction of a voice,

you get thirty likes for one line

-----

love is banana pancakes and pyjamas

keep quiet in the graveyard, I say, for they can all hear us

falling is only falling if your head goes before the heart

breath is the unwrapping of a memory

your eyes are the rainbow kind of blue

I'd say I hate myself again but hate is a strong word

shakespeare, yeats, keats, plath and eliot laugh over breakfast

the clock cannot talk but tells me everything

sleep is the wicked playground of echoes and black eyes

do I like this what me you like me this

Look
I’m not sure
what to say here
about this picture
maybe it’s the colour
you painted your nails
or the way you are awake
but in a position ready for sleep
regardless there is something delicate and silent
about this picture and the way that you look and so
I thought that I should tell you that
even if these words don’t breathe
in the shadows of your mind
for being strangers is such
an indefinable sickness

I am thinking of the last time I saw you.
Six months ago, but feels longer.
Your threadbare jumper, certainly
unsuitable for August but one of your finer thrifts,
straggles at the left wrist, beige as porridge.
As such, I have sheltered my skin
in somebody else’s unwanted fabric
so we can be second-hand together.
  
You have moved the furniture, you told me,
in your flat, you said, a few phone calls ago,
the TV with its back to the window
so there’s no bleed of light blanketing the morning news.
The table, IKEA of course, coasters
I helped you select too long ago now,
sandy halos of many a midnight coffee
still there, I’m guessing, soon to know.

I'm warning you, don’t buy me anything.
I considered, dithered, made my decision.
A late Christmas present, in my luggage,
haphazardly wrapped as if done one-handed.
The shape, pure giveaway. A novel. Crime.
Books above your double bed like piano keys,
compendium of slit throats, of bumps in the night.

I repeat the plan. Riksbron, seven-ish,
all the way until I face the place, and you,
anticipating my approach from another direction,
hair a flood of cappuccino-brown.
As my suitcase stomach-rumbles, an audible gasp.
You whip out a cardboard sign, à la Thunberg,
my surname capitalised in dark Crayola.
A snicker hiccups from my throat. We hug.
Lift off. I taste your smell, my arms around your waist
as if holding something precious.

Ain’t that the truth, I wonder, as we spill our lives
into the refrigerated air, smiles thriving on our faces
where, I think we both know, they’ll rest for days.
At your flat you point out my Potter socks,
I ask if you’ve moved the sofa, knowing full well you have.
God’s sake as you begrudgingly, smilingly, unearth your gift
as a candle sheds cinnamon through the room.
I am sodden with tiredness but still we talk,
in person, a rare, valuable feast,
the endless almond sleeves of your jumper over your fingers,
touching my hands.

You take a picture
of a woman taking a picture
of the view
you can see,
the pastel tones sloshing
into one another,
synchronised just right tonight.
Steel blue that gives way
to tufts of lilac,
to a pink grapefruit wave,
the reflection glazed
to the glass beside you.
Slurry of chat in the air,
tourists and locals
hugged by coats,
sharing the same space,
silver breath that idles
before it scarpers.
Minute cubes of light
**** out across the water,
your city painted
in beautiful shades.

All our friends are leaving
so let's tie ourselves
together with orange ribbons,

watch the strangers
in their sandals eat
freshly baked bread

and say isn't the weather
just glorious today, I could spend
the whole afternoon outside

letting the sun hit my body,
a gift for the skin,
or is it us saying that

in a European city sometime
in July, eating oranges and accepting
whatever form of love this is.

And there it was.
Static streak of animal,
collecting feathers of snow.

I came across it on the walk home,
frozen bite of early evening
scrunching my bones.

Almost hit him with a foot,
my eyes adjusting to the sight
of a defunct hunk of fur.

Eyes like bullets of liquorice,
slack jaw and an ice-cream scoop
wound, a flush of sickly crimson.

That night I thought of it,
fantastic, an orange flurry
between trees.

A day later, with rock-heavy eyes,
a head swollen with cold,
I walked the way of before.

People nodded hello,
the path draped in a translucent drool
but the animal had gone,

hauled from its bed of death,
its memory a blemish of ruby
on a beach of boundless white.

Even though I have next-to-no interest
in borderline celebrities quickstepping
for applause, this is how your/our Saturday
nights trickle by. For others it may be
a back massage, a meal out with jazz music
slinking its way across to our table, but no,
for you/us, television, flatscreen. It’s easier, you say,
to order in, and though it’s not every Saturday
this time I made the call and I tipped
the guy ten percent, said thanks very much,
and that’s how now I’m sitting next
to you on our second-hand IKEA sofa
eating egg fried rice, chewy Kung Po prawns
in a slippery orange sauce, cashew nuts
and chicken from the steaming foil tub,
mouth a muddle of flavours as you
judge a dancer’s dress and give a score
out of ten as even I, surprisingly so,
become entranced by proceedings,
a smile appearing on your face.

I ask you
what you fancy,
Hawaiian or a Texan BBQ.

I mouth
‘hurry up’,
the guy’s dawdling
on the other end,
the phone pressed
against my ribs.

A raised finger.
‘Just a second’.

Sigh.

So I say BBQ Meat Feast, er,
a Pepsi,
(we’ll use the profiteroles
in the freezer for afters),
and, er,
‘Go on, Hawaiian then’,

and I know kissing
her later will be fine
because she doesn’t ask
for garlic bread on the side.

Oh you feel it
rising inside you

filling you up
like lager into a glass

you know this all
as it’s happened before

you’re pretty sure
you know how these moments

unfold
fold back together

the colours
gleaming as if

newly discovered
the words that dribble

from your mouth
in a lacklustre fashion

and you’re telling yourself
stop it

but then you see
every little detail

or you think you do
and it’s what you want

when really you have
no idea do you

I capture you,
upturned blur,
feet pressed to the panels
that now hold
your moving murmur,
like a separate soul
in a dimension caught cold.

Shout and a sound
lost to the elements,
snaffled by the breeze
over snow-dipped mountains,
sky washed eggshell,
grass an uproar
of unlit matchsticks.

With a crack and a glimmer,
glass floor fissures,
feels the weight of our stirrings,
your red boots ablaze on the surface
of this something fragile,
frosted imitation, almost
as if it really knows you.

Just because you have gone
   does not mean
when the bulbs flicker
the letters of your name
are no longer ablaze
the pages of our stories
do not yellow

when the night
unfurls its intense blackness
licks the houses
expunges the light
   it does not mean
we have forgotten the moments
that made you shimmer
as a glorious star
in a boundless sky

the days to come
are cracked with cold
but there is warmth
to be found
in the sound of your smile
which doesn’t go
but only echoes   on

now and again it goes
it only echoes   on

The meal is lovely, yes,
I’m glad we came here.
The questions are arriving, not too heavily,
but drip-fed between mouthfuls.
Chew. Answer, a ladder of sentences.

Maybe I should be telling you
about the seasonal affective disorder,
or the fibromyalgia that attacks my back.
You’ll need to know this going forwards,
I'm sure.

You have already mentioned depression,
the gurgling storm in the brain.
I nod, offer empathy even though
I didn’t mean to.
The meal is lovely.

There’s a cherry birthmark blotch
on my right thigh you’ll see.
I don’t say this. It’s not appropriate.
We hide things
so we can make a game of it later.

Perhaps you play the flute,
collect comic books,
are an expert at knitting.
Weeks to trickle by treacle-like,
facts set to spring up as flowers.

Sip of drink to shut me up.
Our truths floating like shuttlecocks
across the table.
The meal? Yes, it’s lovely.
I am thinking of later, of tomorrow morning.

What colour are Mondays?
Red? Well mine are.
The same colour
you’d imagine a headache to be,
tomatoes, morello cherries
or like a nosebleed.

Does that mean Tuesdays are blue?
That mouthwash shade,
brain-freeze after a Slushie.
Wednesdays? Perhaps purpley-pink
as burning potassium,
Parma Violets under your tongue.

Thoughts on Thursdays?  Fake-tanned,
tangerine skin, the ugliest orange
for the ugliest day.
But Fridays are a healthier green,
think telephone-pole celery,
cucumber truncheons and kiwis.

Saturdays then? Funeral black
speckled with brown sugar
though Sundays are white.
Hurts-your-eyes-like-snow white,
almost transparent, for they come
and dash by with no tone in-between.

first flutter of like
becomes lust becomes a love
Thursday is date night

the palladium
their fizzing potential leaves
a stitch in my gut

My Mum owns a load,
twenty-or-so globes
collected over decades,
bought in musty stores
you won’t find around here.

Frozen images, colours
congealed in glass bubbles,
one housing a red flower,
an old-as-me rose
unable to inhale.

Christmas presents
stuck onto shelves,
hugged by a duster
so an eyelash of sunshine
can reflect from their heads.

Home from class,
into the living-room
and see a bunch of *****,
scoops of rainbows
in the back cabinet.

dans une ville de ténèbres
peut-il y avoir de mille feux
de susciter l'espoir ne pas peur

-----

in a city of darkness
may there be a thousand lights
to spark hope not fear

Paris, it could be, but for all you know,
London. A hotel room, four-poster, the sheets
clotted cream but for a Fool's Gold lining.
The en-suite, your bare feet
chilled.  A shampoo bottle left open, water blobs
that tiptoe across a grubby mirror. Then the blue eyes
discover yourself, wide and quite alive
but the morning has barely grown up. Teeth brushed,
face scrubbed, mobile on. Messages from all corners,
a yellow smile, a midnight memory
like an unearthed polaroid.  A trilogy of knocks.
The man, whose name you’d like to remember
for next time, brings twenty shades of breakfast.
The phone quivers again. A tanned brioche, little
butter rectangles too fiddly to exhume. You spot
a bruise on your arm, a wonky plum beneath
the surface where there wasn’t one before,
yesterday hits you now, strobe lights, a headache
that cracked as glass across your skull. Now this.
Bad breath, black coffee to blister the tongue.
And the message. Somebody wants you,
it seems, but you won’t want them back.

when the Spice Girls came on
I knew it was time to leave

hour hand poking midnight
red cups bloated
with spit and tangerine *****

back slaps from strangers
opening and closing their mouths
like goldfishes on morphine

try to find you
through tobacco whispers
***** shots and near-**** Twister

and you're by the front
jacket in hand
we simply nod enough's enough

halfway home you ask
what a zigazig is

it’s a cinch, really

just yanking the duvet
back over yourself

shunning
the what-could-be-fun

or actually-might-not-be
best-to-stay-in

and that mist
how it loves to slither up

silver venom
sour headache

eyeless demon
eyeing you up

for a laugh
a ripple of giggles

in your ears
a squall of cymbals

ugly vowel-less
torrent of speech

a red light
****** iris

blinks across the shore
enough for you to bathe

in blue
confused puppet

lists of missed-outs
and the trash

you opted for instead

before dawn
voiceless streets
rain like dropping pins

grits of sleep
tucked in eyes
throb of restless night

treacle hours
cyclone mind
morning crawling in

turn my way
back to you
underneath the sheets

heat flowers
warm smile
rises in the dark

spend a breath
sounds anew
alive and alive

when all is said and done
whose body will be next to my body
this unexpected wondrous being

to pilfer kisses
blemish a cheek with a breath
and say it will only ever be me

and I will cup the words
as they slip from your tongue
pretend they are strings of pearls

Here come
pairs   of   legs
   riddled with cellulite
   accents
     stuff the air
Neuwcassul
   Burmingum
stores     reek
of cheap   tat
   bargain   last-few-quid   items
Irish music
no-one gives a     jig     about
    Mr. Whippy's
for sale every seven/six
   make that     five     cafés
women   packed
   like bubblewrap
     into denim shorts
     middle-aged men
plagued with     tattoos
   Irn Bru tans

back at the chalet
     kids thwack
   plastic     *****
with plastic racquets
   next-door neighbours
   puff on their nineteenth
*** before midday
come   night
karaoke floods towards us
   like a murky tsunami
don't stop believin'
     hold   on   to   that   feelin'

but the   girl
in the museum
   had a ponytail
   another one
dipped in gold
   like a fancy chess piece
and I walk   around
in a   Norwich   shirt
lick sea-breeze
     and know
   this isn't
home

Your fingertips
are icicles,
doodling
figures of eight
on my cheeks.
I see your breath
like little white clouds
of smoke
drift in the winter air
and vanish,
as if you didn't breathe
out at all.
The branches
of the nearby oak tree
sprayed
in whipped cream,
the ground sprinkled
with a vanilla ice cream-like
layer of snow.
And as it slowly
starts to melt
you lean in for a kiss,
the frosty blast
of mint
infecting my teeth.