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.

Tied back hair scouring the bookshelf,
a second hand smile reaching around her cheeks.
Her lips hugged her sad face,
cold with winter white that sweeps across with haste.
Look at the cut of her coat.
The way it enfolds the shivering body,
it falls down to her knees as if praying-
the natural antibody to her faithful mistake.
Ring twisting on park benches
won’t relieve your post-marriage pain,
in fact the film will come
and wash you away with the rain.
Get off your mark and go backstage,
cup of tea for the wounded actress.

Northern light eyes
born in a northern town-
south of the river, dense
in flood creeping higher,
hourly by the night.
Another thousand horses charge down
canyon stream, to much applause
and to many a scream.

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.

Hello chimneypots and aerials,
the birds sitting on the rooftops,
window ledge, hello to you too
and to the flower *** that sits atop you-
hello.

You don’t have to wait
in line behind the boys in the band,
just to kiss that one girl’s hand.
Birds, you know nothing of the
subtleties of the relationship. Our
legs can’t fly in like yours, swoop
a female off her feet to
reside in your nest for one night.
How we have to learn the ways
of the woman, find out their likes and dislikes,
what flowers they enjoy and not hate.
Aerials, you’re strong willed and
stay tall in all weathers. All that channels
through you are the fake love affairs
that show up on pixelated squares.
Chimneypots, how I want to be you-
to smoke all day and still last a lifetime.
I’d be around for a century or two
and see suns, skies and moons
both come and go-
get destroyed by man
and his Average Joe.

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.

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.

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.

Egg cell boy was
nurtured in a
test tube home.

What he was rested
on shelf after shelf,
a museum to himself.

Hawk eye dreams
stayed stale in a thick rimmed
case of glass and class,

though he never
saw what was in
front of him:

a blind love that
would not materialise
into anything but,
time wasted under sheet and cover,
and some lies to warm that
comic book heart of yours.

we stared at it for a good five minutes,
children around a rope swing body too afraid of the drop, so he jumped.
One of us poked at it, jabbed it 'til its petals fell off:
thrown flowers from the overpass above,
lightly dropped, not a touchdown distance here,
well,
whoever misplaced them was distant, over horizon line, past Joey joke,
they were stumbling upon well written blurbs of people
rendering all reading pointless, we're all the same, these flowers don't matter,
or they'd seen their other tired and said
please hide your luggage, dear, it's slowing us down
then stormed out and off, flowers in tow, Elizabeth's got her Way, let's leave everything here.

For this show of all things cute and affordable from Clintons
was an IMAX, Nolan Cameron's *** crack screen-shot of despair,
another pop at the small guy
kick him whilst he's up,
don't let that year 2000 pip of pulp sitting hammock in his stomach fool you,
that's perfectly normal,
carry on,
a meal for one in a **** themed restaurant,
this evening's more pointless than a mortgage on a salami,
sharpie on whale skin, what's the point in that,
probably something.

We weren't a we, but we should've been,
that would've been fun, something to talk about later on.

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.

And we carried that mattress
as if it was coffin;
high above our heads
so the stench of cat ****
would travel down to another
Sunday-night northern family,
probably watching some ****.

Don't think there's a lot of this
going on regularly,
but when your cat has bladder problems
it's best to get on with it.

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.

One day our spines’ll tesselate under sage soft duvets as storms sweep across us and no one will cry;
not one noise shall slip from tongues
‘cos strength comes from keeping quiet
or carrying on.

You’re a now realised kindness that doesn’t know what breath is
or how the north circular works in festive rush hours home,
but I’ll kiss the answers upon your tender carbon tapered chest and hope the toner never runs low
(your dad would’ve handcrafted every thing he knew in semaphore if he’d have pulled through,
but you’ll learn in time, too, that time does not ruin fewer experiences than being).

I lean in. Whisper this (above) across your one body,
three eighths the size of a coffee table hardback book:
the result of patience pined for
that I mimed along to motherhood the best I could for nine months
and now, here, I lift the hood and work out what to do next       in this rush to settle down and sit,
sip until you snooze off into silence.
Here I carry you and do not notice the weight,
stare at the gape of you, my newly framed little one held in the palm of my hand,
squat full four pinter named after someone we knew.
You landed lunar surface side up,
smoothed new to the toes
and I wonder how I’ll meet you
I wonder how this goes.

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.

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.

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

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.

When home feels like
a hotel and
forcing water down
like its wine in a glass,
warmed by a MDF fireside-
you know your real bed
is a world away.

Cars that laugh
wait at the lights,
as they become
just another set of traffic,
set into the night-time tarmac.

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.

You've bruises on your thighs,
both sides of skin beat and red.
If this is how he says hello to you
then maybe it's time leave, or is
it time to relieve yourself with
hits and smacks and colourful
comic-book thwacks back so his
****** nose can complement those
he gave you that time in spring.

Take your glass slippers and be
one of those girls in red dresses;
dance, twist, and twirl as well as
the rest of them, churn up that
dance floor ring and take time
out for more drinks, rehydrate
before looking for another long-
term date to be a tactile touch-er
with, another involved and committed
lover.

Take note from the pint husbands
and their half-pint wives around you,
pen a note to yourself for the future
beginning with,
Listen,
then moving swiftly on with,
If you find another man that hits
before he kisses you than you've picked wrong,
ending with,
*You've plenty of time left, stay strong.

Grab a coach home heroes,
sit amongst the somewhere men,
the here and there women
and the growing up fast kids,
with lantern phones, magic tones.

Everyone here is going somewhere,
winter’s bare
and home awaits.

Fantastic lips and red sense in style,
a lady reclines in front.
She texted Rhys, lengthy in characters,
whilst the plot remained precise.
‘I have to agree with you, let’s take it slow’
fantastic fingers itched her fringe.
Was she confused about love
and its rules and regs,
or was he a staller,
‘the old car won’t start again’ kinda feller?

There are no heroes on this coach tonight,
we’re Sheffield bound and
all without a fight.