Hook the loops of your bag
between your forearm crease,
let it swing not lag
whilst you walk to see your niece.

Your nephew is ill in hospital,
your parents too ill to help out,
your sister is depressed, it's postnatal,
and you've been there from the beginning, throughout.

Those aren't tears, but the effects of the wind
while you walk nervous to see.
******* in your cold coat you’ve thinned,
but no one will notice nor disagree.

As you’re there to help, encourage with wise words,
short bursts of helpful blurbs will
satisfy your sister just enough
for her to get through.

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.

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.

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

Depends what your idea of colour is
or if your forever will ever exist.
Too many ink lines on one too many lists,
another reason for you to invest in one kiss.
Visit them, pay them,
lay next to them in Milan:
as there you can let every crease
unravel and unfurl,
let the block roll on,
like every Italian street.

Here, a fake friend has helped you
write a novel,
she helped you out of that darker hovel-
where you once sat and laid,
cut yourself off from
apartment rent and all the prices paid.

Creased lines in your cancer bed sheets
and red wine spills still remain
from that time you celebrated
your chemotherapy success.

Drug-blue cocktails were swapped
for beers from cans,
needles for straws and hospital-stock-
comfortable-armchairs for the advertised sofa in your part furnished floor.

Friends came with warm welcomes prepared
in the back of taxis coming from the city,
they came in wide eyed staring,
holding wine bottles remembering your once real wig of hair.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a club scene poem, so
imagine classics from the nineties
and fearless girls drinking from beer tins-
this is that night you want to omit
and not remember,
this is every night you’ve had to dance
and not wanted to.*

He dropped his drink
for the red-bra-girl;
she thought it the rain,
but instead it were a wasted
drink down the cigarette drain.

Girls in Jack Daniels
who don’t like whiskey
nor dances,
nor the sting of alcohol
upon their tongue.

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?

The air-con overhead
drowns out, not enough,
the couple on a date
next to me. His jeans have gathered fluff,
dried in a dryer, crinkled and in-a-rush.
Her shoes are clean though under the table
he doesn’t, and will not, notice,
the closest he’ll come to seeing them is
maybe on a bedroom floor in a month
or maybe two, maybe more if this coffee
date goes askew,
but for time being they gaze, stare
at one another whilst talking:
his plan is to set up an online outreach program,
take the money and run,
hers, to stay in education, an MA
in Creation Research, read and wait,
sit for Judgement Day.

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 *****.

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.

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.

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.

train lines scar them,
the trees decorate them,
slip a red watch around your wrist to hide them
in the commuter rush,
the office dash,
to wet-sidewalk-up-leg rain splash;
she's lost in the swell of New York City
with red wrists, a scissor's nettle rash,
and she'll sleep alone tonight.

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.

Hooked and hung to the chair,
tethered by a strap-
colour akin to your hair-
you sat and stared
at another essay to be handed in
by three pm, next-week-Wednesday.

A-future-whatever is another
lustful thought, failed and
let down by little taught.
Again! Why a wife is so hard to find
in brambled streets or box hedged
squares, rectangular and receipt like?

Give up and give in,
walk drunk drinking sloe gin.
That way love is but blackthorn berries
the controversial, speechless adversaries.

A leer leapt across his face,
it was not a surf smirk
that rolls up from coral cheeks,
but a snide smile that
surprised everyone there.

Coffee shop stopped and halted,
for this man fell to his knees
and asked to wed,
a girlfriend of small brunette proportions,
whom sat next to him
basking in good fortune.

Golden orbit
of metal bound
and knit,
graced her finger, slipped
down the knuckle,
fused to the skin
as every buckle ever worn.

For these two would make it,
sworn to mourn when the other fell.

Over staffed and under fed
Spanish waiters
rush around with
waistcoats of wisdom
wearing black shoes
of sordid shift-work soles.

They greet and speak to every new
tourist, and regular, as if a
brother, sister, mother, second-cousin-twice-removed
stepmother, yet really they are:

the ephemeral fodder of the
cheap, low-cost-airline,

the flash and it’s gone spine of most cities
on the map,

the ‘Sorry, I left it in a Barcelona Café, could I get it back on insurance?’
baseball cap, that most sightseer marionettes wear, back to front,

the standing in line, waiting to complain,
tourists that know nothing of decorum.

So the Spanish waiter served me my coffee
and whispered in my ear,
‘Disfrutar de su día senor’,
that was,
'Enjoy your day Sir’.

Market square died down this afternoon,
the day of trading over and over all too soon;
and the now the trolleys have been left out,
lights left on waiting for those customers to come again.

They'll hurry into their jumpers the traders and customers of tomorrow,
weather'll kick up and run up the coast in a rainy fuss.

Temporary clad walls that are there all year round
are dressed up from the ground every day, tied at the ear
of the frames that hang over corridor of cobbles,
scuffed with the muck from Armani plimsolls
and the heels of this week's Alexander McQueens.

*When the rain comes trading will cease and
they'll flick out their notepads to calculate this month's lease.

Starbucks for the beach sleeper,
cigarettes for the cruise ship worker,
around the world a further three times more
with a six-a-day job, one on shore.
She smiled with Gatsby glare.
She smiled with  fair, tied back hair.
She smiled.
And how her love for Poe and Wilde
found its way to my ear a mere three year veer
around time itself.
Turkish delight is not a food nor a sweet
but a lady who gives a discreet smile to those she meets.
My cafe in my street has you across from me
and the books I read have you printed in an uppercase key,
black on the white and bound by the spine
for you are the cruise ship lady, the lover of mine.

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.

“I wish that I could see the light,
before you put the blinds down
on the edge of night”

She packed an overnight bag
for her next day flight
back home to somewhere
where climate exists,
another girl from the Tennessee state, kissed.

Appalachian Mountain eyes
with summit mist
smokers eyes,
deep brown pupils
drowning among the whites of her eyes:

*it’s the eyes that I remember, as well as our last encounter in street-alley December.

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.

This body is a poor man's idea of grandeur-
and Talk To Frank says that confidence doesn't come in tubes,
pills nor injections, but when tomorrow morning you
feel like **** with a stomach-pit of methylamphetamine
and a head craving caffeine,
you'll disagree and say to him,

*Look, I talked to a girl I wouldn't normally talk to and we kissed.

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.

Were we not once love stood in abbey shadow and sun,
were we not once lovers at the top of bowling alleys
holding, having fun?

As you showered, I
bathed in the oeuvre of your
aura opposite,
thought of
midnight scrambled eggs
     then bed
and the coffee to keep it company.

It’s then we woke
to the Sunday cacophony of avocados on post,
head to the second supplement in
to learn of the best twelve coasts where good lovers go to live,
where good lovers go to hide and give,
where good love exists.

If only the car wasn’t broken:
second hand, forecourt pile of ****.

on the way back
met every man and his dog,
but leaden skies persisted
and the hills, up above,
got lost in the fog.

with a halo of snow,
just tipping the brim,
gray-clouds-tumble
and fall at the knee,
the limping limb, of
the deer stood in front
of me.

eyes of forests-yet-to-be-
discovered stayed in focus
not getting lost, nor twitching
for the frost nor
the freezing droplets that
cease to progress down
fur and neck.

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.

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

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.

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.

When we got back together for the first time, in that
field after Christmas,
I still remember the cold.
Although warm from chasing a dog,
white as snow,
I was cold.
Winter’s air whipped against my cheeks
and you were there on the phone.
It was cruel.
He was sent to the abattoir
and we were happy.
And now you say you like men in denim jackets
and thick rimmed glasses.

Sorry my eyes are perfect. Sorry I like practical coats for the winter. Sorry I am not ginger.

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.

What did you do to your hair?

It is not fashion or regarded as a
good sight, for sightseers whom fight
for the best sight to see.

Nor is it complementary to your main meal face,
no condiment would ever accompany you,
let alone a boy in a start of the month, moon-a-new,
relationship-race.

It is not natural, nor be it an attempt to
blend into your surroundings at large,
as a red and blue fringe
will never be camouflage.

So, what did you do to your hair?

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.

Let soles touch floors
on hills, in bars, between cafe terrace doors;
beside scarred walls that bleed paint
of the young, naive, those who cannot wait;
only to be scrubbed down by the thick bristled
brush of the Gendarme in white.

I’m 22 in the 18th,
with a one bed roomed house
high above the wake.
Next door is a wafer thin, paper thin,
not-that-thick-let’s-the-sound-in
wall; the portal through
to another war, of words exchanged
by a relationship estranged by
lies, cheats, drug filled leaps, missed-another-call
in Tuesday’s heat.

Here we take tea without milk,
waste time on the Pigalle, free of guilt.
We let warm metro, subway air
melt our faces,
as we stagger back a few several paces
not to be knocked down by taxis, brimmed with cases of
those visiting and leaving, staying around until the end of the races.

When will you calm down Paris?
When will your children lose their
keys to their cars and cannot drive
quite as far?
When will the tourists leave, so to uncover
the real autumn leafed workers, stretched
inside suits and dresses, only to be late
to that members meeting starting at 8?

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.

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.