all faith was lost in a caravan car park with seats reclined,
a family of four, small and contorted, wrapped
around a car for an uncomfortable night of no sleep,
and for the soundtrack:
                                                propeller blades of the port and a grown man weeping.

now we understand and gather and know and grasp the concept of loss,
now it's a:
                                                brother to a younger sister
                                                and now a lost son to forever mother
                                                and a lonely child to a missed father,
                                                insurance-won't-be-done-on-time
                                                because the route-master turned up late.

now loss can never be found so it stays stuck in memory,
now memory is:
                                              reverse the car into the garage and don't stop for the wall,
                                              or bend over double and crawl into the back of a van
                                              duck down because you're tall for your age.

so now you're no longer and when this is realised
i will write this up into a stage play for you
to hide and conceal and disguise the face that will undoubtedly bloom in tears.

*Earlier my eyes wandered looking for someone through a window watching the main street in the rain. It's been a year and still you've missed the refrain, we'll try again on the chorus perhaps next year sometime.

it's a misgiving feeling the thought of you leaving*

An airport terminal stretch of time
between the metaphor in my head
and the rhyme of your feet
stepping quietly on up ahead.

You said you'd be back within weeks,
business takes days, it's a climb
to the highest peak, you said
whilst walking through the gates.

It's a misgiving feeling
the sight of you leaving
you bag in tow down terminal's row
passport control, doors out,
disappearing

For the Disney print princess
who knows what she's about,
who finds fascinating worlds within dust cover jackets,
who sends smiles in parenthesis; lost love brackets
over classroom mid-drifts,
a bare silence interrupted by pure kindness;
for who walks in noise behind inaudible
commuters from this station to that station
all the way home and back out again on her family vacation,
who can match and pair t-shirts and jeans with
bowler hat crowns from the palace of queens,
who, for all we know, could eat with elbows on tables
and read not prose, but short fiction fables,
who wouldn’t hold doors open or say thank you
to bus men and their drivers,
who might smoke away her pay
with great plumes almost every day,

who might not be the girl I thought she was.

Fog over fields
that sits steady over the grass,
the blades are perspiring
whilst Ossett over the farms
sits lonesome with its spire.

Cut through the avenue of oak
with the windows down
and let the breeze run in and walk around;
altitude ears that are placed firmly on the ground
despite bursting into new forms
of sound waves, a concerning
amount of damage caused by
just the wind through the windows wide.

We’re off the hospital
to watch another relative die.

She reads Neil Gaimen
by the light through the window,
a facing forward seat on the only train in Greater Anglia
without any heat,
yet still she peruses the pages with
a flick and a ****** and her eyes begin to wander
in marvellous repeating horizontal lines.
She is blonde and reading Neil Gaimen.

Another blonde another book,
this time Mr King under her palm,
spread like her great legs, wide
and easy to read, yet not easily led;
telephone-line straight eyes
on a north country face,
buttoned up below her is a white blouse,
lace-trimming hiding last night’s pudding-
cake baked by a daughter, I heard her conversation earlier:
there was laughter.
She is blonde and reading Stephen King.

Left bank beards
in Beat hotel rooms,
a boulangerie breakfast
down the street and to the left,
and for lunch fresh baked bread and brie.
Letters sent home to fathers and mothers
singing sweet serenades of Paris
dressed up in autumn shades,
cheques for the royalties that'll
get them to Belize to write and swoon,
chat up ladies in the early afternoon;
where hotel fees that are treble those in the 5th,
bookshop stalls that'll never be found
another closing-down-establishment myth.

They were climbing with oxygen
long before we came along,
base camp poems written under
floor lamplight right before
the eyes of others.
Jett powered prose and wine in the light
sleight-of-hand punctuation and uptight
editors looking for finer narration.

your thoughts are being passed along
at mail train speeds,
no pauses or restraints
no clauses or complaints,
all with a face that would make tear gas cry.
This is a present to you,
it's everything I want to say:

*stop wanting every moment to be music video magic
because it’s something you'll never achieve,
what you say isn’t MTV,
so go head-
disagree.

your feet are falling apart again,
let me grab a new sole
for you, old soul,
sooth you down into your new low;
let me miss you and kiss you
in my head
because that’s what the books have led us to believe,
pity the painter who has to grieve.

you painted Death from the palette in your palm
as you looked up from your hospital bed calm
and delighted, but you’ve lost this fight tonight
darling.

And we showered in prison sized cells,
white tiled and PVC clad,
the B&Q; recommends it!-
hells.

And we died in those showers
that were prison sized cells,
white tiled and PVC clad,
doors-are-broken-again-
hells.

And we were saved by the
eat again yellow doors,
peering through blind black windows
into the clear streets at dawn.

And they yelled with a siren mouth
***** blue profanity and
you left your mark with a ****** white tee,
wet with the water that
hurtled down from the
shower head, unclean and *****.

carrying Kalashnikovs on their backs,
the rebel mules have panic in their eyes
and resting at the back?
fear filled pupils that dilate
with every corpse seen vacating itself
of tissue and blood,
smell the perfume of gun barrels
and those lonely enough to be culled,
picked off by a trained eye
and a government lie and
a man laid down in an apartment block out of sight up high.

civilian fathers laying spread on the back of a flatbed,
cinderblock walls that offer no protection but that of protecting the dead,
sharpen another knife for another internet viral video of another guy without a head
and finally, cat walk model rebels wearing beaded shrapnel necklaces, gorgeous and chrome red.

and they’ll try give them away around,
a daily sound of the everyday
so they can have a price that they can pay
for the ordinary,
for the sane,
for America’s definition of the lame.

Catch her before she lies,
twist her back over and tell her not to lie,
face her and plead with her not to lie,
forget what they said and listen to her lie,
hear her odes peppered with lies,
hear the static between her lies,
hear those terminal marks stop that lie.

Run for the terminal, wait to fly.

so what do we do
when the buses become blood clots,
stationary auction items up in the next lot,
nails placed firmly within the traffic’s trail,
beads on an already beaded bracelet
fit for a wrist as thick as yours;
delicate slips of skin wound around a bone
that glides along the air?

so what do I do
when we’re lost mid-city
consult and ask the commuter committee
that pumps around us in a lunchtime break
or walk on further just past mid-city lake
and look out for lost landmarks?

arrange me in an arrondissement,
unfurl me and curl out into a quarter,
lead me silently down another street,
kiss me in another alley and call me mine,
take a holiday with me, cross that line.

Sober in the ****** light
sees me looking out over an empire,
the chimneypot stacks pointing towards
gray weathered skies
and my clock lies,
it’s an hour ahead of time,
near six to be precise,
and my head is soldier like:
vigorous, vigilant and abled to strike.

Drunk in the ****** light
sees me looking out over disappointment,
a recollection from last night-
let me dance in an awful club with a girl whose eyes know what I’m on about,
and that my dancing is only a dance- not performance art nor a joke-
-and the chimneypot stacks are early with their smoke,
I am cold in this jumper
and my I lie,
it's an hour behind the rest,
just past four
and my head is all over the place,
unsteady and unsure.

Under the eaves we’ll be dryer,
sat down in those chairs so not to tire;
there’s a fire in the back slowly smouldering.
            It reminds me of your desire last Spring.

Below the light we’ll embrace once more
beneath the bed sheets that pour over us like tides offshore,
but you were different with your Trojan war, Iliad heart.
            The snow has fallen, outside is the core and we’re now apart.


Inside the cabin we’ll be warmer
laying loose on the couch like lost foreigners:
you used to be a charmer back when it mattered.
            Now the ground is firmer and the leaves are scattered.

Celluloid cells of candid smile fun
printed in race track, river-run stems,
the 120 down to the 35mm
fold it over to form the hem.

You can be my New York
that never sleeps
or that Venice Beach
with bright, chiselled high cheeks
or
the more probable
lesbian lover I’ll never get to meet;

meet properly for a drink.

I'm going home,
leaving the pack unknown and unsafe
and my eyes strafe, swoon and sigh at the holy display
of the pure 9-to-5,
walking away from her place of pay,  
to go home like me tonight.

A swift above carries on home,
food for its young carried between teeth and tongue.
A family walk from the local school,
with song being sung from the cooler two of the sons.
A car reverses nearly knocking and smudging the woman in blue;
a jacket atop a blouse, pristine shop-bought-new.

I remember her sunglasses.
I remember her eyes from behind her sunglasses.
I remember her staring me down through the lenses
melancholy and blue,
knowing that this was a passing
break-through affair.

Shift work nurse, where do you go?
Is it to another ward, to another wound,
that is in need of stitches to be sewn?

Potbellied tarmac man, where do you go?
You’ve left the stove frothing at the lid,
can your couple of quid not wait for lunch?

Gym, mother-of-one, where do you go?
Your son is sat still with a coffee,
whilst you’ve gone to buy another toffee, poppy seed, frothy beverage- surely that’s not fair, is it?

Big-Issue-seller-of-the-precinct, where do you go?
Your Yorkshire Terrier, alone in the South,
is terrified from the traffic, moist at the mouth.

Market stall second-hand book woman, where do you go?
Lines of used literature are waiting to be read,
why have you left them to help your hash-head son on his second come-down of the day?

Shift work nurse and potbellied tarmac man,
big issue seller and gym mother-of-one,
market stall second-hand book woman,
where do you all go?

you were the Christmas everyone regrets
those mornings of madness when you get what you didn't guess
and it remains forever ingrained on your brain,
that Christmas you want to forget.

you gave me a kiss without a contract or hiss
near the bikes locked up by the laundrette hut
and it remains forever ingrained in my brain
that you'll be the only kiss on the only list that ever matters to me.

you're reduced to whispers now; a holy scripture:
that woman in our conversation who we shouldn't mention,
but you'll remain forever ingrained as the main character in my brain:
that  woman of whispers.

*So I'll see you around and I'll see you in those pictures

I see timber, I see my Dad.*
The wrinkled grain grin
sits lost on his face,
he’s selling his timeless record collection:
the finest midlife crisis since records began.

Lined bits of paper with a pen and plan,
bass players and guitarists are all being sold,
including the front man,
microphone, monitor and stand.

Under the slim light, what’s
going to be sold is exposed
ready for a thorough cleaning
of the black gold moulds.

None of us are allowed near, we have been told,
this is a strict operation and it’s under control,
he starts spouting tiny liner note quotes
none of us understand, we need a translator- grab your coats.

We returned to a mess of a man:
he did not go through with his midlife crisis plan.
His extra 3000 children in their sleeves
can sleep safe tonight knowing that everything will be all right.

There is no road,
though Frost told us so
and it is cold tonight and
I have no place to go.

Home is but a ride away,
cigarette’s are in the ashtray, dried,
and I do not smoke them each day
not since my last try.

My bed is clean; white and tidy,
that’s the third time since Friday, I’ve planned
ahead this week but not taken it lightly,
they’ve left me lonesome and unmanned.

‘I was too young when I fell for God’, she said
‘I heard you’, I said, ‘I said I could hear you’.

The train was busy, far louder than usual,
and we sat together, fingers wound together. Rough cuticles.

What were we doing so young,
getting married before the eyes of our Son?

Twenty-two and not a thought for the future,
though maybe you’ll be slimmer and I’ll be cuter.

‘I know about you two and your motorbike miles’ I said,
her face turned around, tired. It was Dulux paint-chart red.

‘How did you? Did he? I am sorry’ she said,
‘Oh that’s okay, really it’s fine, not to worry'.

Tube train doors opened and I filed out in no line,
she followed behind, slow. Karma had taken her spine.

‘You could wait to hear my explanation’ she said, tired.
Across the tiled platform floor, I carried on uninspired.

‘It was a stupid weekend away, we took the scenic route. Are we okay?’
Full stop pupils and an open mouth comma, what else could she possibly say?

‘It’s only recent, not all that frequent’ she said,
‘Well who knew that Winter was the season of unfair treatment?’ I yelled.

Reached the escalators and walked out single into the fresh air,
turned left onto the street and went looking for the nearest bar.

Movie ticket,
cinema stub,
two halves torn apart
by the fickle fingers of the screen attendant:
he looked up at me with a smile-
one learnt from a handbook compiled by the words of some corporate type,
who dislikes his job, you can tell from his vibe.

“The receipt's in the bag”,
I requested it to be in my hand,
customer service fingers are always painted a day-glow green,
hideous talons of the fake queen,
traced from the princesses of the TV-silver-******-fake-TV screen:
she looked up at me with a smile-
one learnt from a magazine of ink,
nothing more than lies disguised within the wholesome typography imprint.

Carrying nothing but a wallet,
“would you like a bag sir?”
I am carrying nothing but a wallet, of course I would like a bag,
what do you take me for:
she looked up at me with a smile-

Wait.

Her intriguing trapdoor smile concealed
perfectly straight teeth that,
through the gap in her mouth,
spat out the shop floor script,
as if a Shakespearean soliloquy
equipped for the stage,
not this retail trade.

Like a magician,
my suspicions were correct:
you’re an Esmeralda and very rich.

How could I tell, well:
            your stitches are sewn by money,
            the hair you possess falls as if honey,
            your tall cappuccino, three-extra-shots, is mixed with cinnamon,
            don’t get me wrong, you look lovely, but please floss,
            homemade bread is not attractive when lodged in pink, smoker’s gums,
            does your Father know you smoke
            or is choking fun?
            Cancer cannot be undone like your lower than normal blouse,
            so button up and stop with the arousing, ‘cos
            everyone here is doing work not listening
            to your fabulous conversation about Billy and Meg,
            cosy in the thought of love, playground love.

Like a magician,
my suspicions were correct:
you’re an Esmeralda and very rich.

Your tilted head
shifted your waterfall hair
to the left.

In a stream of beguiling blonde
ripples,
your chest was met with a dry splash of gold,
real gold.

Technology at your fingertips,
HTML scripts morphing
into long sentences, bouncing in grammar and not stopping
until you take another breath, another
sip from your coffee cup of bitter death- one sugar, no less.

Daunt Books bag beside your chair’s side,
the faithful mute mule carrying
your words and notes and probably an umbrella too,
it’s raining outside and I wish for you not to get wet.

A summer’s hand on bewildered torso chest,
her love: the best kept secret since their escape
to Brest that time in Spring,
Northwest France with its untamed waves lapping at the
hull of The Sea King in the harbour, half mast.

But with every try, harder than the last,
he did not respond to her see-through glass
appeals for an apology-
over two-hundred-and-seventy-minutes
wasted on the TGV back to Paris,
a holiday cut short by her wandering knees,
wide apart in another man’s apartment.

For money was passed in sweating palms
for a day’s encounter with her good looks and charms,
though the men never knew
about her man back at home,
designing the new tourist information
for a cheap weekend-stay in the heart of Rome.

What he bought to the marriage:
stability, safety, security and their baby.

What she bought to the marriage
mainly tears and daily anxiety.

But they both knew the complications
and the clauses of her contract,
agencies would delve deep into the contact’s history
to make sure they were legit,
but it never hid the fact that she had
intimate encounters in hotel honeymoon, champagne, new linen suites.

And we rang along those river banks
against the light cast as shadows,
fleeting past mournful dark windows-
timid in the evening's morning.

And you whispered into my eyes
the words you wanted me to see,
and showed them to idle ears
who waited for something else appear.

Open internet bookmarked pages,
creased and cut newspaper pages
and what do you find laying there?
Lies! Written and typed white lies
that can change the minds of men
and the diet restrictions of nervous, plump women.

I know what is real, I think:
          1. Gradient blue skies that are swiped across the Cambridge ceiling at night. They are real.
          2. The feelings you feel for those you have felt feelings for. They’re real
          3. Falling hail and wet shoes, socks moist with Spring’s choice of weather. That was real.
          4. Falling shrapnel of the Boston Bombs that embedded themselves into the tired thighs of  marathon runners running upon high. That was real.
          5.  This poem may well be real, but I haven’t the guts to say in concrete-words that it matters in the grand scheme of things. This might not be real, I regularly think.

May many more manuscripts
find their way to your hands,
your pen,
that slightly chewed pencil sharpened down
to its end.
            Let emails fill and grace and glide into,
            and over, your mailbox,
            all for you to wake up in
            sheer ecstasy’s shock,
            because you’ve just found out
            there’s work to be done.
                        Allow this doing to be your undone;
                        go out conscious and naked into
                        the hazy summer’s sun
                        and dance, for goodness sake,
                        dance woman! as if a newborn
                        locked away in your womb depended on it.

If we leave the litter behind,
and run until our legs become a burden and our heads start to swell and come loose like a white-cloth-Arabian-silk turban,
we can make it home before 5.

Past the market that only makes sense in the sun,
along the terraces slipping from their foundations,
skip on-top of walls before falling back into our run
behind the street of seared spice smells, conjured up by different nations.

We’ve left the litter behind.

We’d run further than these cities and their boundaries,
take transport to the tops of heavenly high hills,
cause havoc amongst the machinery of the foundries
and make it home for five if we run through those mills.

We’ve left the litter behind.

Holding hands we’ll remember the brush of the grass on our thighs,
farmer’s fields and the dark brown cut-throughs we took,
our pockets full of receipts and chewing gum supplies
and the look of your pale blue eyes amongst your fresh air haircut.

I hope the litter don’t mind.

She said she liked her coffee cold and dark
like the seas separating her bed and Denmark:

harsh and bitter and brown in the largest
cup we own, so when drinking it
your nose would drown
into an abyss of cheap-coffee-granule-
buy-one-get-one-free ****;

and delivered with it upon the stolen tray,
taken from that shop's Kitchen Must Haves display,
was a plate with two triangles of lightly toasted
toast laid out like the ankles of my late Grandma
(but we weren't together then so, to you,
it just looked like some toast arranged nicely on a plate for us two);

also on the stolen tray from that shop's Kitchen Must Haves display,
was a lovely array of cut of up fruit arranged liked
canapés at every cheap-wedding-buffet:
grapes cut into unfathomable shapes
and slices of kiwi our fingers could never negotiate
and avocado which was there just to cure invisible
weight gain and bad morning breath,
but that's what Google told me so
I can't take it as a guarantee;

and in all of this I was apparently making a fool of myself
because serving you a delicious breakfast
to the sound of Frank Sinatra's Moon River
is not what we discussed, ever- even last night or last week,
in fact, we never talked about this horrendously
unique breakfast.

Happy Anniversary.

No thoughts were thrown around,
let alone conscious decisions bound
in clear evidence and concrete fence-post facts.

She was awake before the frost settled,
and my how her eyes showed the time:
Lengthy red lines pretending to be hands that chimed.

The parkland grasses awaited the
speckled dappled, sunlight shade,
to warm its back in the morning masquerade.

-

Only her body was thrown around,
alone across a car bonnet
in a clear honest, beautiful smudge of fashion and blood.

She would never awake the same again,
and how the nurses soothed her pain
with modern miracle, clear liquid rain, medicine.

The parkland grasses still await the
speckled dappled, sunlight shade,
to warm its back in the morning death march masquerade.

Seats sat around standing tables
void of conversation,
whilst waitresses danced around the homeless
clearing up their desperation with no fuss-
just a cloth wipe across the surface
and a smile to a lonely face;
hard wood walls closed in like
coffin-lid, coffin-hinged cases.

One man alone in the corner held hands with his coffee cup and looked up hoping for familiar faces.

And his finger snapped around the rim,
for this cup of coffee
was his only drink of the day.

And his fingers broke around its handle,
for this cup of coffee
was his wick and leathered-spine candle.

And his fingers melded to the cup,
because this cup of coffee
burnt like coughed-up cigarette ****-stubs.

And I saw spectres sway
in smoke and smog,
hazy gray, secretive fog.

And from the wings
of the checkerboard dance floor,
I stood, saw and adored.

And in fine finesse, finish and form,
you tore me up from the dance floor depth
and whispered odes I shall never forget.

*And what fools we were for not saying yes.
I am sorry.

Service station blues:
another meal beside the news
station stand, and as Tuesday
clicks into Wednesday
I wait in no queue to be served
by no one.

From behind the
confectionery battlement,
decorated with the money-off-percent
products below,
a professional service station stalker
walked closer,
(hopefully to queue in the no one
queue beside, behind, next to and near
me).

We waited together for some
service in the service station queue,
as midnight became morning,
black sky to blue.

Y'know there's those buildings you see
when escaping over the motorway and fleeing the country;
those same pitched roofs along the line,
streetlight tall like eager broken spines;
many-a architect's hand has been there with their
continuous ink, connecting that brick to that corner link,
drawing straight edge drain and eye sore pain,
those red doors and white doors and those PVC ***** doors that always
stand rigid,
though their locks stay locked until they're next visited.

Well those buildings are what you see
when you're fleeing from someone who hasn't let you free.

Last night I danced like my dad
with a girl who resembled a dictionary definition
I read not long back.

Graceful eyes that could
stop traffic with a blink
and engaging lips that
would smile to sooth the pain of
the midday, gotta-get-back-home-now,
commuters whom step
on pedals with haste.

I lied. My dad can’t dance, so last
night I made a fool of myself
in front of a girl who resembled
a dictionary definition I read not
long back.

Decorum is corrupt, decorum is dead, the books we told were good
            have all been read.
Fitzgerald has been bled dry by institutions, teachers and those guys in
            red chrome cardigans.
Those Pennine walks have turned to drunken talks in the eaves of the night,
            high above conscious thought and the cold glow candle light
The long haul flights back to the heavenly sight of tyre black
            tarmac have become tedious meditations;
though those lamentations still exist within my wrists,
            a yearning for your riverside kiss.
Bus journeys along roads and routes I already knew are
            changing without consultation,
it’s temporary probation, an experimentation, a test
            of time well spent.
Time well spent in ground floor, high rent, properties,
            fading away into a slack attitude disease.
Needles and fluid, *** and Cupid won’t lift you from this
            perpetual stall,
nor will anything at all; though maybe plans scribbled down on
            napkin edge corners will.
With thought, white paper vertices can quickly become
            mountain range peaks.
Throw politeness out of your transport’s window
            and become a widow to the road,
black veil eyes, cold and grainy, lost in your endeavour
            to find somewhere new to feel safe and clever.
Take those books that you thought were good to tear
            into the new prose of the year.
Rip title pages and dedication pages and index pages
            from the spine
and throw them in the air
            to make a new line of literature and pain.
Take also your pencils and strip them of
            their back bone lead
and shave them into clean kindling for fire start
            shavings for a warmer lonely camp bed.
It’s there and then, in your fake polyester,
            four season sleeping bag womb
that’ll you’ll experience the darkened tomb
            of unbound freedom.
But like paragraphs of small print found in the back of the squint-again-magazines,
            freedom comes at a price, as if long hair and lice or poverty and bedroom escapade vice.

It’s a forever New York out there,
with high rise chimney tops
and siren's scare
that wakes the birds from their sleep.

It’s a endless Chicago beyond the roofs,
bitter and fierce;
wrap up warm let not
the ice penetrate and pierce.

It’s a waiting Washington way over there,
where the ***** tubes of the
Potomac, Anacostia meet and kiss.

It’s my land where every day
is a day out.
No one holding you back
telling you that you can’t walk about.

for Denim McLein

The car had jumped the curb at speed,
it was gray and dull and 2 foot high.

On Thursday, 12 men with guns on their thighs
took notes and talked and looked around and choked.

Tears fell from 24 eyes on Friday at the station,
for a 3 year old was mowed down in a moment
of miscalculation.

The 18:45 four-door sedan has blood
on its hands.

Pin up nurses in blue and
black,
automatic manual doors grow
and contract,
windows that mist and condensate,
bells that annoy for no apparent reason
other than to be late.

Hospital beds.
Child's dead.
The mother's dread.
Just fake a smile. Just fake a smile. Just fa-

-send forth the balloons, cards and grapes
in an attempt to sew the stitches of
one broken womb:
a womb where the roof was torn
by precision tools and an expert eye,
though the doctors said the kid would live,
I believe they lied-

A rock around her neck
for a star sign birth:
another necklace bought by
another sandal-sock boyfriend.
Time for a new piece
of jewellery, don't you think?
One that’s classy, studded, anything but pink.
It might hang loosely lapping up
the line of air,
that will linger past you when walking to
train station, work station, another day
of painted creation.

Keep the brushes close
and the oils closer,
canvas in the post, ready for closure.
You’re the score and the baton, the lines of manuscript,
my composer.