The cordoned off cricket pitch,
behind orange tape long,
is waiting for the grass to grow
for when the summer comes along.

The leaves are shedding their autumn gown,
upon the grass it lays,
and in her winter-time-zipped-up coat
a small girl runs and plays.

The benches around the park border
sit solemn, scuffed and lonely,
if only someone would put them back together again
before they become broken debris

The sky lengthens overhead,
a puzzling sight to see,
it stretches forth over the horizon line
buckling past the old oak trees,

and the people walk in straight lines narrow,
concentrating on the ground,
if only they’d look up not  down,
they’d see the city’s teeth and not it’s frown

for Barry and Tina*

Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.

But I look to my father’s hands and see
all twelve-thousand morning mists
he has seen.

A gristmill heart, grained hands
and workshop walking feet are
all hidden from view.

He writes in capitals, written
with precision, and crosses the T’s
as he goes along,

So not to prolong the sentence writing chore,
making more time, conjuring up the minutes
to potter around and mend unbroken objects.
-
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.

But I look at my mother’s hands
and see remedies read about in those magazines,
all to look younger in the staff canteen.

A watermill heart, smooth iron fingers
and contoured, sculpted chiselled
corridor feet are all hidden from view.

She scrawls her sentences; they become the tide
hiding letters and numbers in the swell
of punctuation and dotted I’s,

The T’s cross themselves and she moves on,
another phone call to attend too or
a new BBC this-time-more-accurate historical drama  to view.
-
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.

But if you keep on going, stay out of strong sunlight
so not to rot, those years will pass
as a striking blur leading to coastal Big Sur
roads, where the next 50 miles
bring just as many smiles as the last 50.

They lowered him on string,
his face unshaved and the coffin unhinged,
nothing broke his fall but a green cloth dressed in
storage-cupboard-fluff,
the first death of the second month.

Around him they said silent words, empty sentences
stretching the length of derelict paragraphs: morbid monologues
for the man who used words to **** up women
and tell them they were beautiful without them ever seeing it,
understanding it,
knowing if he was legit or not.

she lent over the bed rail,
wooden and put together by her husband.

without the book she recited the tale,
word perfect and rehearsed and she quickened

with the story, picking up the pace
to the bit where she placed her engagement ring upon my face,

the nose to be precise, and it smelt
of every perfume kiosk in every shopping hall and mall.

the ***** cat said to the owl, in the sequel to the story-
and for another bedtime completely-

'you're the cherry on the tree, un-pick-able
by hand or bird, stay with me please,
I heard marriage doesn't last forever'

Trigger finger 13 is hung
from his shoulders,
though not by hooks found in the butchers book,
but with pride and a sweating brow,
one that can survey the terrain with a quizzical eye,
analysing rustling in bushes only 3 clicks away.

Bible tattoos tattooed below the tribal
ones,
and a 13 on the finger used most
when they charge and come.

New faces look through
glass, forlorn features pressed
against the panes figuring
out where this all came from.

Long gone lineage, here in this
hall, is now a pressed image
collected by a flower picker’s hand,
gloved to protect the rust and frozen
within two sheets of glass far taller than
any Yorkshire lass, here somewhere secret.

Old faces gaze at another frame
filled with someone else’s misery,
it’s pinned to another wall next to the
menu for the restaurant down the hall, first left on the second right.

Short queues form under hanging light bulbs,
it’s this month’s exhibition, the Pharaoh’s jewels,
on display all the way from the splayed deserts
of Egypt, but some given by a museum in Manchester
so it looks like there is more than there is.

Every word's a path,
each sentence a tree
and all attached to a stump of a woman
thin at the base then growing in circles,
until age is defined by height,
her illness by weight.

How can the wood of trench walls
look so lucid, perspex branches
contorting into string in the wind,
knotting air into eddies keeping them
floating right there?

Take my hand to continents only known in the books,
the blue maps on tiny tables sat in stacks
ready for the lesson on Mexico, or thereabouts- third this week because
the timetable is weak, poorly thought through and cobbled
together out of half-dressed evenings in the lounges of
teachers; ones once loved by the master and mistresses, leaders
of the well dressed and caretakers.

Take my feet and walk with them, balancing
on borders separating language and currency,
the gymnast's beam looking out over the forestry,
its taller trees than you and me standing upon toes tipping
down towards the urgent ground, urgently warning to stay
upright and stick around, with her holding your hand.

Afternoons that were once body clock mornings turned to early mornings
which became sweet evening bath time odes to rest;
they’re tests we all win at because the prize is quietness,
primary-school-hands-on-heads quietness,
so still it hurts to sleep because
comfort has wrapped every bone in
ill fitting armour making it, once moved,
difficult to find that point of paralysis once again.

Piano-flat black rooms are lit
by dark midnight suns, the bulbs
burning through, the taps in their place,
chairs thrown under tables away from the morning queue
yet to form for the day.

maps don't exist for
the hardest routes,
instead only for those green diamond
lines playing over manuscript flat paper,
long like flutes extending out over and up
mountain ridges, down across narrow
beaches leading to fisherman rooftops
taking hits from the ocean in front.

We must make our own way lost,
ending up somewhere ill and icy,
dressed up in the frost in nothing but socks, unwashed
from the running, screaming grace from the
windowsills;
it's a place most won't meet, won't want to meet,
but will nevertheless greet with wide open, French patio door
arms.

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.

Shadow coat, buttoned up to the neck,
disappears and reappears under the
sky and lamplight hanging up high, loose,
hurrying around with nothing to do; it does
not notice the suspicion walking around beneath it,
lost but going home, reaching that destination
before limbs give up, fail on the floor, found the next day
twisted in a combination no locksmith
can undo.

Look up,
they'll be fights going on
in the deepest hours of the night,
all behind pretty-born neon lights.

Look over,
she'll be mid argument with him
using uncouth words that appear blunt,
all behind a red brick front.

Peak 'round,
he'll be throwing clothes into suitcases
clearing out the wardrobe, not leaving traces,
all behind walls of places

you know.

We all want someone to hold whilst the music plays
but this is a delayed reaction to teenage hormones,

you're clutching to not-a-lot-of-nothings,
smart jeans and smart cologne, a stolen ring

from your step-father's collection tidied away,
deep, in a box under bed sheets in that drawer.

Your mum says the right one will come 'round
soon enough, but so far the results

of dressing differently have resulted in
women speaking like spray from under a van:

rainwater white noise and not a lot else;
though you're still searching, if not for you,

for your mother instead, elderly and re-married:
some else's burden, another husband to carry.

Carry out of the bottom of drunken wine glasses
and into clear meadows on weekly walks
where discussions take place, peace treaty
talks about holidays in the Mediterranean,

upon balcony ledges they'll embrace, learn
about fading stars, the history behind buildings

visit local bars to drink sober cocktails
conjured up in off-the-web smoothie makers

bought with the ambition to make a living
and help the community out.

If not now then when, your **** shouts
hiding beneath moneyed material

cut in sweat shops, washed in sweat heaps,
delivered by the sweaty mail man of the Bronx,

will women love me you'll say,
will women want a house with me, stay the night

under reclaimed, bought from thrift shop,
lights and kiss until mornings turn into weeks,

those weeks into new jobs
and before you know it, retirement plots

in allotments off Broadway?

Beyond the mountains, the mountains,
beyond over their bumps and hills and small pocket
paths tucked into the seam,
you're sleeping still,
still sleeping;
glass of water on the desk sat upright and uptight
next to a gathering of white sugar, they-will-work pills
that you've taken one of.

Before you woke the window watched
the street below, I joined in and saw
smoke and busses, taxi cab film rushes
uncut and newly coloured for the silver screen
that's too expensive to see.

That morning I tided your clothes in
neat piles and mountain tops
where the summit was socks ready
for you to wear again until you leave me lonely and go home.

It was with the sun
that they drove eighteen miles to every quarter of an hour
to the port
where they put down the car and started like petals from every dead flower they saw together.

Up the steps
he tried to steal her waist for his own,
willing his arms to stretch around widths they weren't made for,
only to cement the idea that they weren't alone.

In the cabin they fell asleep to familiar films
and woke up to see the sea out of a round window
and the guarantee they won't hit land nor port
until the captain's say so on the inbuilt radio.

They came back from a grand meal
that was of Titanic proportions, tidy suits and surreal women in waistcoats,
they made love in a bed that wasn't theirs,
and he witnessed it and saw
her new print dress that caught and tore and was reduced to shreds upon the floor.

Make the shelter yourself,
source firewood from feet away
and filter the water the way you want it filtered.

Take nothing from the word of mouth
or 'I've got a tip mate' people,
cos they'll be the wake that tips the boat.

**** email systems that connect us,
the metro transport subway buses,
the happy involved, affair ridden couples,
forget them, leave those suppressed thoughts in
and carry on your day the way you began.

Post Office:
Telegrams and Telephones

Tell me how the snow is where you are.

Traffic cones outside, must-be-done road works completed by no one nowhere men,
patched up walls clad in grit painted cream
shutters the same, shutting out the screams.

Graffiti bridges, restaurants on ridges-
river's rising fast, finish your entrée
let's leave.

Walk linking arms looking upon                                    
glimpses of brick, of an old home,
lived in years ago by someone unknown.

squeeze you to read you,
the pores that pour out hidden punctuation
that defines and makes and creates pauses for
you to look beautiful in.

there are two velux windows somewhere
in the world that look out onto chimney pots
and rooftops and birds next to each other looking
out over a flight plan that they'll fly together.

in pub seats we'll slide into and across,
placing coats on empty chairs so not to be stolen
and you pause. And out comes a list from behind a breath and a
colon: everything you wish to achieve in a year.

White maze for the middle classes,
collect your museum passes at the door,
please
continue through into exhibitions,
photo pictures of art you won’t remember the name of
but because you’re educated you’ll hope to retain its
name, medium, date and frame size of,
and equate them with those pieces you Googled before you came.

Through the double doors
her cries walked down the corridors
whilst cradled in his hands, cradled carefully,
he stood upright in boots on the
newly polished granite, shipped-in, floor.

The art gallery Father and Daughter
are the hidden display
only found in writing in the pamphlet
for today. Some will see them
through cuts in the door,
others may hear them but assume
it’s ambient art-gallery-played-through-speakers
sound coming from the back room.

Jumps back on the ketamine and the *******
and stands in alleyways and lanes
and forgets why the stars sit and the moon stands;
who fights demons with hairdryers and backward hats.

And it’s okay to look like your Dad you never knew,
in glances through the wood would only a few see the resemblance,
but similar hair won’t make up for lost Christmases
and days away at rain safari parks.

You’ll have to leave the fox hole through the brambles
at some point in the future,
so get scratched now and bleed a little sigh
of relief,
one that you’ve broken the tie and loosened the knot
and show us all that you’re out of your cot.

Song For A Sweetheart
again being played to the one
without a counterpart,
unholy chasms forming in the shapes
of stomachs and lungs and
a gap for where the heart should be,
taken like every lost jigsaw piece
to the hand of a child, one not
yet realising they’ll have to be with someone
in the 20 years or so.
To wait would be to trust the timetable
that is pinned to every figment board
in this town,
printed in red and finished with crosses
on the bottom, shame they’re written by
the hand of her, for her sweetheart counterpart, not for this boy
from somewhere people only pass through,
not care about.
I’m with you Clayton West, a ring road
to the main show out of town.

From a platform, he was pushed
down onto the ground.

There he landed with a great cry, a lonesome sound,
where the beasts took him with teeth;

molars and canines in the form of sticks and swords for sheaths,
beat him till his lungs gave in, until they no longer heaved for a breath.

Collapsed sacks of skin in a broken body
on a broken roof
somewhere without a name,
just a news channel hook
and gambit,
theme tune and a corpse laying bare on a video screen,
shield your eyes, place a blanket over the body and boy.

Architectured backs hide secrets in their bends,
rising up from foundations built on brown tanline sands
secured with concrete cloth, tied to posts either side
of lengths and widths.

Ask the professor, he’ll know how to demolish a building:
he’s a degree in unfolding the unnatural
and his last paper was in firming up the dunes;
with wooden poles his tests were conclusive
almost allusive as he marched on at night,
but we saw him, with others under car park, notorious, car rocking
lightly in the light, light.

Due to administration cut backs his papers were never reposted to sender
and now I’m bound by glue
that leaked from their spines and lines
of the book
to you:
we’ll never not be apart
but shall remain forever not together.

Filaments fixed on your eyes all night
and the possibility of a chance, of an opportunity,
that I’ll be able to talk to you,
because the club lights are blue
stretched like animal hide across your own hide:
complexion clear cheeks still rouged
though tidal club glow is still blue.

It’s pathetic, worse than any diabetic
with their HumaPen Memoir insulin
length of pen, recording the time
and date
and precise amount of pain
they inject from the last 16 doses.

My pen is my keyboard and records
miserable times
and forgotten dates in cafes
and precise amounts of pain,
though this diabetic is a pathetic poet
and he knows it.

Half cut teens dressed in high street dreams
stand and survey the beach,
combing it for male shells, to clarify:
guys who think crucifix tattoos on their lower leg will save them from hell.

A mother whose job it is to look after surfboard and parasol,
yes you the mother looking my way,
you should ditch the marriage and get on the road,
hug the coast with tire squeals,
hug men with body sacrificing screams in
cheap French roadside hotels that don’t clean their bathrooms that well.

Girlfriend left to sit the sun out whilst boyfriend joins husbands in the surf,
reads but really she’s breathing,
passing the hours and folding over page corners,
don’t let him see that you don’t love him.

Tablet kids who watch the sea on screen, in apps,
when behind them is a torrent of live data swells and boils
causing swimmers to tumble and coil up close to the sea bed,
some parents, increasingly the same,
forgetting why they came to the coast in the first place.

Chicago, where the rails become streets,
where the wind winds around corners to double tier trains that rain down with thunder below
cloudbursts of snow and slow traffic

Chicago, where cars and trucks stop at lights on the bridges, resting wheels on wet tarmac and men pass by wearing cagoules and flat caps: bohemian grandparents on northern fronts.

Chicago, where every building is a flat iron or a pencil windowed and widowed of safety net architecture,I look up from the window and flutter as she does, the suicide shipwreck standing atop a roof looking up and falling down, into river and rail track wakes.


If the dial-up allows it and this note finds its way through the orchestra, let me tell you this:

*You look lovely in your flower tattooed white dress.
I shall write about  you until you read about yourself and smile, the rest has
been thrown into the wind and has come to settle in the tidal flow, sit tight and see where it goes.

RE: an open letter to the sciences

                To the laws of science, physics and attraction,

it's the reaction when I wink
that I'm worried about, it's my weak link,
my loose link, a failing eye that cannot blink
in a ****, discreet, try-and-compete-with-this,
way.
In bars and upon streets is where I wish to catch the eye
of a woman walking the opposite way, on a wind
that makes her walk a little quicker than usual,
it's then, at this point, just as she passes,
that my left lid would close is a gentle flash
and I'd swoon into her memory
as, that-guy-who-gave-me-a-non-weird-completely-in-context-wink.
This­ is where you come in laws of science, physics and attraction,
I'm failing to achieve such a goal, I'm a gimmick;
they'd probably use it against me to appear the better person
in a conversation they may have without me,
help me laws.
I know you're just textbook pages stored in classroom drawers,
but you must be filled with information about casual flirtation,
maybe a how-to chapter on how to capture the eye of someone
or a section on how to practice the wink in a reflection, in a mirror,
somewhere else that isn't here.

Science. Physics. Attraction. I know my grades
in you were less than perfect, abysmal I will admit,
but I'm asking for your wisdom.
Yours,

Tim Knight
Age: Inadequate

In an arcade
a couple choose an engagement ring,
through a window they peer and grin
for this is the beginning of something new.

He, the larger of the two-
tshirt clad and cool-
stares with nose against the pane.

She, the rounder of the pair-
dressed for work but doesn’t care-
looks to her lover and smiles.

In an arcade
a couple chose their engagement ring,
through the door they came out
for that was the first domino to fall.

I carry on with this coffee
and think to the day when
I’ll be in an arcade choosing a ring.

They got dressed that morning
to go out and protest,
though whilst running
a bullet entered their back,
split their spine into shards and out spilled
blood as wine flowing from their oak made cask.

Now they lay and lie and cry silently
in a room where a man counts the corpses
and wraps them in linen,
hiding faces from families making them hidden.

Close their mouths with tissue bows
tied at the forehead for purchase and extra tread,
cover stomachs of starvation up
and say words that shouldn't be misread.

Photos of the deceased to send around the globe
from camera to probe, back down to internet villages and news room towns.

Outside the demonstration continues with howls
and flags made from sweet cotton thread
and the march continues being walked by
those with barbed wire legs.

She carries keys in her hand
though she dropped her car off
underground and across land
over an hour ago,
it’s a status symbol,
as is her tight dress
and higher heels than the rest,
her handbag too is money defined
lined with faux fur she thinks is real
with a teal exterior that, well,
is the cheapest colour on her person.

She sits in between the
no-purpose-at-all-walls,
studded and wrong and placed
at angles in the room that
throw light from shade to gloom.

The foundations are first to go
in a collapse of brick not known in this lifetime,
only that long ago,
though many people will try to reason it in rhyme.

We used to knock bottles off walls
throwing cancer and heart attacks
to watch the glass shatter
and fall,
break into jigsaw pieces on the floor

and now,

we weep into cups so not
to ruin the carpets the deceased gave us
and gave up.
Turkish yarn and rugs from town
and never knowing quality when we see it.