I make a mug of tea and butter a slice of toast and am not surprised by her smile, years before and right there, waiting for me with the sound of The Express being folded, crossword almost completed, as she rises for a kiss and a 'hello love', and the trusted 'I've got the kettle on'.
We hug and I sit as she stands and takes down two mugs, just as she recalls something or another that she meant to give me last visit and now wonders where she placed for safe keeping for this moment - and she's gone,
leaving me sitting in the kitchen resting in the familiarity of her calls from the other room telling me she'll find it in a sec and chiding herself, until her cry of finding and her return
with something of my dad's that she thought I'd like or perhaps a grey photo, with a young me, head sliced to fit a frame long discarded, but having left its trace with a stain of Sellotape
- and then we talk of nothing but people and happenings that left family stains we cherish for the pictures they conjure and for the bond left undiminished by time and if anything made stronger by any mug of tea and toast and the still-left-unlocked front door always ready to receive me with a 'hello love' from deep within the home that stayed open forever and now keeps a space open for memories and a silent undertaking that I'll somehow perpetuate this welcome.

Pub poetry is a form of performance poetry consisting of the shouted word which has developed in UK urban pubs, dating back to the 1940s and 50s. Words are typically yelled over ambient haphazard rhythms which are not especially chosen for the piece of poetry, rather the poetry is performed over the generic sound of empty bottles and part filled glasses and live samples of patron conversation that will be familiar to those frequenting hostelries around the UK.

Sometimes the audience will employ call and response devices to distract the poet, such as calls of "W##k-er!', with the traditional response of "F##k-You!" before the pub poet continues with his yelled out verse, often read from the beer stained back of an overdue envelope.

The pub poet usually appears on a chair or table, surrounded by immediate family or work mates cheering him on.

Invariably inebriated, the pub poet may not appear to make any sense to the uninitiated - but once you too have availed yourself of your 4th or 5th pint, the words become clearer and easier to appreciate.

No musicality is built into pub poems and pub poets generally perform without backing music, delivering chanted speech with pronounced modulation, broken-rhythmic accentuation and dramatic, though random, stylization of gestures, often resulting in the pub poet losing balance and sustaining a head injury thereby losing consciousness and bringing the evening's entertainment to a premature, but often welcome, end.

It is often noted that many pub poets are remarkably shy and retiring when sober.

I had grown out of time-outs - those imposed minutes of inward reflection, of self confrontation in wait and ponder. I had forgotten that slowing and pausing could be a productive use of time, and that eternity does indeed wait for all who have the stamina to stop the clocks and drape the mirrors.

I had instead lived for the future, passing abruptly / obliviously through the momentary present, robbing myself of the present time to consider, to discern, to consult, to learn from those like my father who had travelled further through time, having time to use the time-honoured travel method of patience.

And now, in my father's cooling presence, I stalled in an unfamiliar, unexpected hiatus between generations, and was forced to wait for what would come next.

And I paused.

I sit thinking a little faster than the speed of penning, thereby having to repeatedly press pause on my thoughts to let the ball of blue catch up with the image / the sound of the phrase in my mind / on my quiet tongue that flows fast down my right arm into my slow fingers and out into the ball point that hits the page with part-satisfied impatience

And in that pause, resisting the urge to edit / to revise / to reform the original thought that is crying out to become embedded in the page / begging to be seen / to be loved and so to sit and to stare back at its origin, safe in the curated space to stay / to settle and perhaps to become part of something bigger / longer / older, something of possibly permanent beauty.

And having gotten over that feint-ruled line, my first thoughts face the risk of being transposed / transformed by typing thumbs before becoming something that will last on a plain white screen and later be posted at the speed of competing broad bands into a world wide cloud of words.

Later, having hovered / waited, my wet words just might find a place to soak / to stain / to marinate and later be memorised perchance recitied at a more appropriate speed within a crowd of like-minded minds and perhaps for a phrase to lodge / to be recalled / to form part of something that fate redirects through a ball of blue, back out into the flow.

Sitting in the space made by her leaving, I'm far from comfy, but no-where-near lonely.

Cooking for one is far from easy and it's easier to succumb to the micro-wavable and the processed in a process that suggests sadness, but in essence is a life past survival and a start of a moving on.

Leaning on past memories for a more reliable sense of self, I walk back beyond the years of this boken partnership.

These years from the off were tainted with discomfort while threaded with laughter and it's the laughter I now follow to earlier layers that might form the start of a fresher, better fitting wardrobe and a comfort that is more than this - sitting in this space of her leaving.

More than this, I'm sure.

At your denial you were at your creative all-time-best as you added vivid detail that distracted and buried the facts beneath a story that captured our imagination rather than releasing the truth of the situation and risking the shame of a truer declaration lying a few lines beneath your masterly woven but ultimately deceptive late night conversation.
And you left us none the wiser.

What once felt an exciting,
adventurous experience
has become an annoyance
at the bruises and blood blisters
which come with each smack
of the lips.

Why must she kiss
as if it's her feast
and I'm the main course?
Especially as tomorrow
she'll be just as hungry

- something to which my lips
can give uneasy testimony.