Nervousness speaks true thought
turning fresh air to gold as it travels
across the pub interior ether from
rough pale lips to your rouged
set, sitting tidy in front of me.

Shaking fingers shake hands with
thoughts and nothing, melding something
of answer to your question you asked
I think twenty-five minutes back,
I know not of Richard Feynman, please explain though.

Come the occasion of a plane crash or
shipwreck, can I sink with your voice
running soft laps around my head?
At least then your intonation's tread
and heel's step of educated well-read
can offset any pain caused by a wing in my thigh
or a timing belt leaving my tongue tied and wrapped.

I didn’t see the moss at the foot of the white-clad border walls
because I was holding you by the edges,
so to not crease, rip or crinkle you.

The road is always long, but this street
takes the ****. The same trees grow and repeat,
twisting up into great nothings acting as a canopy,
but not quite pulling it off as the rain broke through.

You looked comfortless in my arms, as though you’d
rather be somewhere different in a lot less clothing, and asleep
waking to a familiar ceiling nearer to the weekend than this weekday
in May.

Sometimes, if the wind is right and ushered correctly,
the crane lights of the night highlight that moss
and only those searching will be aware that
it lives at the bottom of a white-clad border wall
just over there.

For the girl with the bow in brown hair,

            the heat from the upstairs
restaurant cures the street where we walk,
            the freight’s in on the track,
you can tell by the horns,
            I from the diesel smell below the
afternoon clouds, faint above,
            sometimes when we speak a heart rate
somewhere peaks,
            another graph pinned to an office wall
shows this clear,
            sometimes when we talk tense chests
fear the answer you may say,
            the graph strays past paper and onto
those office walls, in red with a palmed
            smudge where you forgot where
the words ended.

            For the girl with the bow in brown hair,
your eyes are theatre-light reflections in twenty-four hour
window panes sat packed neatly off the corner of West 47th
and 7th, for you’re my central Times Square.

You’ve paid for somewhere pretty to smoke
yet not realised that your decorated,
thin cold icing and sweet to taste, lips
will be ruined from every second cigarette ****.

But I forgive you
because your eyes are olive,
tried and tested and true.

Five children, a sixth on the way,
the eldest around 7,
the others barely walking.

The Dad looks like a Kevin,
heavy arms bringing his shoulders down
to the top of his daughter’s head,
he feeds and is fed on
nothing but steak, pan fried and
broiled
for succulent juices to run down his shirt
uncoiling and picking up the pace
from face to stomach, a slight overhang
so his belt never sees the light.

The Mum stays quiet,
a Kate or Collette,
but she says nothing,
just stands there carrying his sixth baby
keeping it away from the narrow traffic to the side of her.

Five children, a sixth on the way,
the eldest around 7,
all waiting to start another academic year.