I sit and try and be a lotus
after killing the third fly of the evening
with a pocket book of recipes and a
thirty centimetre ruler stolen
from bathroom **** measuring contests to our knees.

Young professionals tread these boards
and I watch, trying to paint them lotus.

I listen and learn like I was told to do
then clock watch, mop, cycle home to you;
I am still trying to be a lotus
even in wet shoes and no socks.

With less than five-hundred pounds to my various names,
an office-chair-***-clothes-horse, eight USB charging ports
and a future that stretches to Sunday’s last reluctant second,
I am sitting, trying to be lotus figuring out the professional path
David Attenborough heard in his gentleman’s class: that son of a-

- I walked into an army recruitment vault with dreams of being Gulliver,
though was asked to leave out the cat flap cathedral door back into war
as they’d got their laugh and didn’t applaud.

Perhaps I should’ve been better at maths
where apparently a career can be predicted on a scatter graph,
and the pigeons of today were the pigeons of next year and the months that’ll follow the century after that.

I am still trying to figure out the hoo-ha of *******
and ring fingers and collar sizes and the inner circles
of hyenas when the winter solstice splits the seasons.

There is no reason for this lotus procrastination
when what’s there to live for but a crooked world
and one bandage left.

Along with the last moment to complete any homework,
one was instructed to etch name, number and form
upon the tag that lurked within the rim of each new polo shirt,
every pair of trousers and that stretched, sleeved jumper
(better than any other in the house that were just the same).
Without those legal details properly stated you’d run the risk of losing them to lost property,
that orchestrated tub, dead sea stench, of pre-pubescent potpourri.

Now, all we wear is the earned income of a bestowed cognomen
and it embellishes the backs of our necks
and we mustn’t forget it’s all we have;
that, and our teachers.

Were we not once love stood in abbey shadow and sun,
were we not once lovers at the top of bowling alleys
holding, having fun?

As you showered, I
bathed in the oeuvre of your
aura opposite,
thought of
midnight scrambled eggs
     then bed
and the coffee to keep it company.

It’s then we woke
to the Sunday cacophony of avocados on post,
head to the second supplement in
to learn of the best twelve coasts where good lovers go to live,
where good lovers go to hide and give,
where good love exists.

If only the car wasn’t broken:
second hand, forecourt pile of ****.

Determined to have left by half-eight,
cats fed and plates away,
they were late.

This raconteur of the recce,
part time life model to Rosetti (among others)
had corralled cagoules onto arms,
thrown shoes their way, warmed up the car,
had marched across driveways, crossings, marshlands to playgrounds
and so far had lost none.

This was him without coffee, a fifth of his repertoire,
and they weren’t even his sons.

She clung to his waist as if the last fisherman pitched around a lake.
She was not gonna let go until evening
fell,
until they’d made their hotel;
eyes on the autobahn ahead.

They'd once trickled into terraced tributaries hankering after hidden
held waists on corners, continuously,
as they learnt of not letting go,
kept the sense of cologne pecked necks,
fuliginous chimney pots
and the fume of hollowed out leaves on rain soaked trees
stacked next to each other on the latent apothecary's patent leather shelf,
safe in the old factory of a shell.

Their single cylinder sang along the road,
and she did not hear him singing.

I dreamt of travel disruption last night
and haven’t woken up since; know that though,
a whole ****** of crows hidden along
the hemline of a coat was not the
reason I was late, nor were black stamps spat
out through mirrored windows, panes unmoored from
frames in the wake of two late goodbyes: one
said at a check-in desk disguised as point
A; the second, central, wrapped around an
orbit of children where they now lay.

This news- again, it is news- is an air-
bag of ears, of interviews, listening
so we don't have to, colouring pallor
in post so the ghosts of aftermath do
not go unnoticed when we believe it
may not of have happened.

I'm going to buy out the sky right of
tragedy and skywrite,
                                     vandals of companionship are not tolerated below this message, or above.

A fortnight ago an Algerian masseuse anointed each note of my joints,
spread thumbed cursive over my shoulders and
back around to my chest;
she spelt out how I'd be shivering now knowing you were leaving.
And last week you led me to an acupuncturist where he said,
Rob Frost had quit his job on point duty to become a receptionist instead.
I knew it was ******* by the way you barked in the background.
I knew it was wrong from the rumble through the stud wall,
sound of timpani, of gusto's drawl ringing in my ears:
the resonance of windfall if saved 'in the best ISA for years!'
This has been the best February since records began
and I thank you for being a friend.