O’Silky smooth ballsac
Stuck to my leg
Ever-presence defines manhood
As tree defines fruit
And as fruit defines tree.

Ne'er such a sense
Overwhelmed my hot-spot
As this dangling (oval, skin and nerves of)
Oily pouch

I cream.

Yet
A line as destructive
As the San Andreas
Fault- O divine chafe
You reduce me
You erode me

As if we rented *******
Bikes

Like a kid in an ice cream store
Lips bitten, eyes widened
With only one free taste spoon
Where do you dip your spoon?
In the sweet and nutty tub of love?
In the sour and exciting tub of career?
In the chunky and loaded tub of travel?
In the melt in the mouth and comforting tub of family?

Tell me which one do you scoop?

The ice cream van
Has today reached
The melancholic realisation
That the only kids who
Chase clocks for Mr Whippy
And lick the exhaust fumes
In nostalgia
Are the kids who are not kids
But who prematurely aged themselves
With lipstick kisses
And cigarettes
Lowered themselves into nooses
Of sweet-sixteenths
From the age of six

We are a generation of
Peter Pan inversions
We ran ashore
And beached ourselves
Beyond the lure
Of Neverland
We are a generation of
Failed cloud-catchers
Aspiring rainbow-clinchers
Secretly slipping our hands
Back into a dead air
Of former innocence
In the hope we’ll be able to
Retrieve the pieces we left there
We queue and scramble
Like gulls for
Inches we can claw back
Preserving our age in
Wafer cones
And bleeding snows
That glue between our fingers
Each 99 flake
Is a time machine
Which we spin like a music box
And wait for the rewind
Copper coins and sea stains
And we hope we’ll find
Some of the things we lost
But we cannot predict or realign
The atoms or twist ourselves
Back into them
So we sit and watch
The incorruptibility we once possessed
Perished
Sexualised
Corrupted
Pool in the March drizzle
Someone once said
That youth was a process
Of being torn in half
By the past that pulls you back
And the future that tempts you
Being too big and yet too small
Longing but fearing
But an ice cream van tells me
That youth is a process
Of trying not to drown yourself
In what you’ve never had
And when that ice cream van tells me to
MIND THAT CHILD
I can’t help projecting echoes
Of its wisdom
On to all who pass me by
Mind that childhood
Before there’s nothing left to mind

Like ribbons of smoke dancing in the air
You were beautiful
You were the Northern lights
Important enough to be watched in the freezing cold
You were fleeting and sweet
Cream swirling in coffee
Ripples in a pond
I loved you
But like all ephemeral things
Eventually you left too.

I trip but not in the physical sense
and my mind stutters phrases of unthinkable
from pillows and water
to smiles and ice cream
which is the best

Chris, a boy whose smile
Can make your heart melt
Like Ice cream on your face

Him:
Do you want to share my ice cream
play footsie?
Inch by inch
I’ll climb up
You eat

Her:
I want to go horseback riding
By candlelight
With a bottle of wine
squeezing with my thighs
I want a stallion

I am walking towards a park to feel a sense of life and to await my companion. I walk past countless familiar faces and potential kindred souls only to end up here at a red light waiting to cross.
"Why, how and when?"
The park was alive on this cool October Thursday evening, well, almost evening. I walk across the grassy field, under the trees and upon the fallen leaves which decorated this ground. It once was green and now its an unpleasant brown. I walk and I kick the leaves, feel a breeze and I pull my coat around me. Squirrels are hoarding, birds are chirping and a sole singer is singing a song about Moondances and October skies. This grassy area is surrounded by benches occupied by loners who while the day away with pen and paper.

School children, set free from the prisons they occupy 8 til 4 every day - run wildly, some singing, some screaming, some crying and some laughing. Parents are all in otherworldly mindsets filled with questions...
"Why, how and when?"
I walk towards an empty bench and sit there with my pen and paper. Whiling the time away 'til my love gets here hopefully right on time.

A lone ice cream truck playing a familiar tune hoping to hypnotize the children into begging for a cone, or a cup of Italian ices...but even the kids know its too cold and too late for that and he starts his engine and drives away.

I've been a loner, I have been a loser and my heart has been broken, taken out, cleaned and put back in...with nothing but a scar that runs down my torso as proof. But I stand tall and I stand proud - "I do it my way." I smile to myself. I hear in the next bench a couple speaking and the woman begins to cry...


"Why, how and when?"