The Cam passes through
behind a chain hotel belonging to the Hilton
with its lights always on, a 24 hour midnight sun,
that lasts all day until a power cut comes along
and covers bedroom maids, halfway through a job,
in complete silence.

And home I go, slight lightening in the distance and
the road remains long, bending only once
and carrying on straight thereafter
mounting another road heading south until it meets no more ground,
except a bridge over a mouth of a river leading
to somewhere safer than here ever was.

My coat's corners misses your hand
and no expanse of green, mountainous land
could ever be sold or swapped for it.

‘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.

Here comes the rain
the weatherman said would come,
and arrived just like a train.
No wait at a platform
or delay for a death,
just precipitation
and a whole lot of wet.
Wet windows and wet grasses,
moist tables left from the summers,
plant pots turned bowls,
to catch the water that floods and falls.
Here comes the rain again,
that the weatherman said would come.

The dry dock cruise ship shop
sits still, basking in the
air conditioning’s cool breeze chill.

Makeup stays clad to the skin
of the marionette workers, well presented,
ever so stick thin.

Perfume scents the room as if a wrist,
but no carpals I know have
their own stock list system.

The ugly sit in seats made for them,
wide berth for the wider *** of
greed not guilt.

John Lewis is no place to be at Christmas,
as the hounds of cosmetics
will pin you down,
deep into the laminated, pretty white
ground

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.

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.

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.

London subway
metro train station connection,
busy off-peak City rush,
escalator packed, another northern crush.
Ticket barrier blockade,
pass through tomorrow not today.
Police at the exits,
a black sea of law abiding abyss,
protectors of the peace.
Another announcement over the crowd,
“Platform 2 is closed for the storm cloud to be cleared”.

Body parts have spread
over carriage doors,
torn from their sockets,
slipping pictures from necklace lockets.

So where does she go when
she's been fingered and drugged,
abused and sexed up?
That's right, the end of the bar
where they'll never find her,
let alone kiss her.*

Tucked behind her right ear,
blonde hair fell as if a tear
from cheek to chin,
bowling ball to bowling pin;
stacked at the other end.

This poem is for you long-blonde-hair-behind-the-bar-girl, written down by paper and pen.

Your quilted jacket,
leather in material,
won't keep the cold out;
only a white-stick-arm
will warm, guide and
ignite you home.

Fill the wardrobes back up again        
with hangers plucked and picked from the
carpeted floor.
                        Lay the lover down amongst the sheets
                        only the whisper sweet thoughts and memos and
                        kind words in low tones
                        into her ear.
                                           Kiss her neck and grace the thigh,
                                           build
                                           up
                                           the
                                           courage
                                           to
                                           last
                                                 all
                                                    night.

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.

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.

Children are walking in flour again,
though these grains are the symptoms
and the symptom is pain.
Resting upon donated metal table,
this child is lifeless with only a label
around his ankle for identification.
Part time doctors and full time others
walk and pace and cry and panic around the mother,
lifeless, with a document for identification.

This is malaria.
This is infant death.
This is an epidemic of hysteria.

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.

Fingers fall down on her hook
as we watched the dog die.
A blonde beast with eyes toward the sky,
deep bark eyes that made trees double back and look.
Rows of cosy cut fences lined in front
obscuring dog and death from us,
held breaths hung  as if mist on moors
thus lingering around ‘til horsebacks hunt.
Hooves for hands fumble, tremble,
lead to the inner assembly of
organs, functions and that hidden temple-
shaped teardrop like, rains nothing quite
like the weather above.

She was a dancer,
caught off beat
by a neat little stranger lurking
in the body of the womb,
where once she strayed from danger,
within a motherly costume.

After show drinks, stage
& waits in the green room,
were pipe dreams for this
Mum without a groom.
Yet still, and continuing so,
she provides for two girls,
her blonde Monroe's; be that lifts
to school or another
big shop so the nonstop
keeps from turning blue.

But how up North can you keep from the cold,
when constant frost creates the vignette
to the serviette snow out there?
Cheap beans and even cheaper bread
won't make that meal you read and said to be good,
any better than it is.
But a text, fax, pigeon post fast, to your Mum back home
wipes clean these thoughts of being alone
and underfed,
and instead; restores your faith in everything
and anything you may do in the future,
and what you said-

to me once on that walk;
will stick with me until we next talk
or, maybe quite possibly, drink
until glasses are empty and
the wine bottles clink.

*for the Carters

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For the girl who used the umbrella as a walking stick,
this is for you.
No limp and leg slide followed your wake
just the upright roar of footsteps on pale shale-
Cambridge cotton stones that reflect and reverberate
the sound from around into the ears of the passerby.
I cannot wait, nor hold it in,
the urge to scribble 11 numbers
onto parchment paper, old receipts or
or that wilted vapour notepad paper,
that nestles in the jeans.
If I had, then we’d be at a meal now- a dining experience
just for two.

22 numbers and one letter was written,
illegible and wrong.
I forgot which phone number worked
and forgot which one you could reach me on.




**A poem from the upcoming poetry pamphlet, published by http://www.coffeeshoppoems.com, entitled "Leather Clad Warriors", available soon for £3. That's only 300 pence.

another midnight I've seen this week:
bed times have gone from books and milk
and slightly ajar doors,
to long slogs far into the early morning hours-

-did I, did I try too hard to hold your hand?
If so I didn't mean to,
maybe the excitement of being held again
made my squeeze a little too much.

-

another morning afternoon I've seen this week:
primary education routines of get dressed
and ready for school have been lost to
fading light showers and foaming shampoos-

-did I, did I not follow the Curtis rules?
Should I run a bookshop? Be late time and time again?
Runaway to the continent and write a novel no one wants?
Lose a wife and fall for a model?

if so, I'm sorry I'm not that.

Time called,
it wants its watch back.
So too did love,
it wants its fake relationship back.
Literature left a message for you,
the book you stole should be returned.
Oh! You’ve just missed music,
it said that album you murdered is pressing charges.
Time called again,
just to make sure you got the message.
Check the machine,
there’s one from Platform Eight.
Bonfire night 2011 just hung-up,
it wants you to know never to return.
An email just came through,
from that film we knew every line too.
What was that,
you use people?
Oh! Politeness dropped by,
he said he’d like to slam every door he ever opened for you
back into your face.
Wait a second,
I’ll put him through-
it’s time, he wants to speak to you-

Warmth is a jumper,
a knitted, sewn and cross stitched bunker
in which we exist and sweat in, let out sighs of
I am okay or  I'm always this upset,
and behind those patterns we see the world
through a window the size of a pea, an out-of-focus
key hole where we can watch and wait
and be warm in the thought that
we've no work tomorrow.

Warmth is a blanket on a bed,
a mass produced widespread piece of material
in which we can dive under and have serial sleeps
that carry on into the evening;
and the light coming in through the wide window
hits the Hiroshima shadow-damp on the side wall
making it dance with the commuting-home-traffic.

for Beginners*

imagine a disposable razor
on the oldest face you know,
deteriorated and dropped,
the sun's shadow in the cropped crowd

               we forget he's there sometimes, they'll say.
               he always shaves on a Sunday, they'll pray.
               the dog died not long back, some'll whisper.

imagine a week's worth of beard
down a plug hole, some bits black
some bits gray,
some bits there 'cos he pressed a little hard that day

                              we forgot he was there, they'll say.
                              he always shaved on a Sunday, they'll pray.
                              only a week ago he went, some'll whisper.

imagine no one holding your hand
down the stairs, across the road, into
cheap 24 hour corner shops,
imagine no one holding your hand when it matters,

                                               or mattered.

It’s winter
and the radiators make for hot summer bedrooms,
fake heat for a false season,
high humid air in the canopy,
a western, British, Tunisian bazaar.

But outside the window frame into
the rooftop mouth
of chimney teeth and foggy breath,
a pair of speckled starlings,
with deep coffee eyes and rings
of white for plumage decoration,
nest in the wound of this building.

Surely if they migrate,
to warmer climates, past
the Spanish-African gate, they’d
be able to bask in the dawn desert
sun that’ll drift slowly overhead,
raise their young their instead.
I’d like to migrate too,
leave this town for
somewhere new.

Break your arm again,
mould it a new cast,
sleep, rest, dig up your past.
And  this all comes from down near my heart, to the left,
where you’ve pitched camp in the forever sun of the forever nest.
Birds don’t perch there like they used to,
instead they flew south in
belly pains and stomach cramps,
another reason to sleep under lamps.
See the bowl, throw up in the bowl,
rub your nose with child like hands,
that swept hills from above moles-
back when playing in sand was accepted and fun.

When we wake from such anguished
pasts
memories waver and do not last,
nor do they retain any hopeful longing,
as they disappear out into the morning.
You are gone and you are forgotten,
but the rings in the candles tell me we share the common.

We left the Summer too long,
that is ran off and absconded,
turned to Autumn,
made blue skies red.

I got told that
there’s a girl for every thought,
by a man with brown eyes.
He took a train South at
nine fifteen with a bought
bag of lies tucked between forearm
and chest; below the neck but still high enough.

Hide behind new names
devised by haircut disasters and
***, gin and past-their-sell-by-date jokes,
thought up in hotel lobbies
in front of a front desk clerk,
oblivious to everything but hotel work.

My tummy stood still; a statue of a stomach that paused as she passed by
to get into the used bookshop line to pay for her basket of titles and authors I'd
no idea existed, but I'd be willing to learn and read and not breathe until I had
enlisted the use of Wikipedia to find out a one fact about each of them so to break the ice
and breach that border of conversation, because I'd want to tell her in some Woody Allen
way that her eyes were nice and that Cambridge could be ours tonight if she wanted to.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I’m the son of my Mum,
product of Dad-
just with his mid seventies look instead.

Sown and grown in a house
from the past,
fixed by the full swing of
the can-do and will do,
not by the we’ll get through
or the *******.

****** by the plum tree
because its root system
sat lower than the toilet seat,
in the downstairs bathroom,
working radiator- never any heat.

Tantrums on the second step
because bad-mannered children
never want what they get.
But in hindsight, and I’ll admit,
they were doing it good, doing it right,
doing it by the book
printed in black and white.  

Nothing but rocks and stories where I’m from:
pebbles in the path
between the herb garden grass;
box hedge borders that’ll protect
and last;
stone walls hiding cancers and dangers,
unwanted gifts from door-to-door strangers;
postmen in shorts
with their all-weather legs;
women up the road
with their cool-box eggs;
neighbours behind curtains
hiding help not guns;
children in the street,
they’re somebody’s loved ones.

I’m the son of my Mum,
product of Dad-
just this time round
tall, grateful and glad.

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.

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.