I'm merely a man and that's my foible.
I can't hand-pick you the stars when night just ripe
and the paleness of dusk suffocate me to sleep.

I wish I could plump pillows the dreams that fill eyes
that rich blade of brown;
or unpick wounds from the skin
you've learned to wire your bones against.
I can't will fields to gold
all I can promise is the folly of a laborious heart.

I want to see as your hair leans grey,
so I can pluck our beginnings from the roots.

Every strand holds a story,
you swear lust a madman's muse;
but love can weld your thoughts and nerves apart
and leave you falling from the bridge
you once lulled your ribcage across.

I can't plug this ache with torn pieces of your tongue,
every-moon I resurrect your flesh in my room
and watch as the ashes leap from the roof.  
​

I woke and sat,
pupils compressed against the window
like black olives;
watching where the sun used to rise.
It's cadence reduced to a vacuum,
skin sunk like eyes
in the socket of the universe
bearing all but a sign:
“even the brightest of stars
need a retreat to grieve”.
I swear you could have knitted
the end of the world
from the venom in those clouds.
So I let these nerves nest
in a bed of sorrow;
as the dawn poured me
back to sleep, indefinitely.

Lately, death is everywhere.
It sits on the rim and recites
the contrition of unburied mad.

Nectar dusted glasses.

These shards raised you.
Contoured as cells
that neat flesh together.

How far we stretch
when flavours dull
and loose thoughts the last
we push around our tongue.

Demons that swirl,
unfolded for the world
in aching concession -
how sorrow leans heavy on the bones.

Meat and sacrilege,
these apparitions scream
in a plume of citrus;
saliva like flint
drawing moths to the table.

They gauge, every ground memory;
the feeding vessels
of freshly kneaded delirium.

I'll never shake that screech.
Piercing as brass embracing brass,
the sound of death still tepid
with the scent of rotting fruit.

We circle,
a grey scar between wheels
and the unresponsive telephone.

I clawed clean every last piece of static,
served on platters once wholesome
now plunged with the ailing sunset -
our last supper.

Peppermint gum,
I handed one - half discarded;
how far we stretch when flavours dull
and loose thoughts the last
we push around our tongue.

Lately death is everywhere,
it sits on the rim and recites
the contrition of unburied mad.

Demons that swirl,
unfolded for the world
in aching concession - how sorrow
leans heavy on the bones.

It isn't the expiry of flesh,
he keeps tab between lines,
a scratched grey tally
under the lamp by the bed.

Death is the loss of love,
of all things hope
you once carnivorously indulged
with unfettered joy.

A sanctuary for the crazed and unkept
who swear by the scent of rust
that peel off old Church-bells in November.  

That bronze hue of a land less roamed,
dialect closer to home.

Death was in the bay,
it oared the shores this morning
so I braced dawn a different person
without you.

"Somewhere", spoke the grey lips in the wall.
Somewhere before sunrise,
before the first bird crows to dawn
and the apathetic are yet to uncurl
the grit that gathers like dust
between the fold of shallow eyes.
"Somewhere". A derogatory term.
Their humanity bears no resemblance to us
as skin and bone the only price to pay
for "unpeople".
Cities made of paper,
soaked in a drought. Somewhere East.
Or maybe South?
Somewhere far from the guilt
that laden our stomach with lead.
So alien to home, allotted just enough frames
for you to feel how fortuitous;
but not enough so the screams
swallow your evening meal and you swat the sound of flies
pouring through the static of your transient box.

Many moon-less nights festering,
tucked with the glass and cloth drawn shut.
In confinement a vacuum
against the all-consuming hollow of modern.
Oh how we scramble,
"too busy" to catch me a glimpse
so we'll leave it to chance on the Underground circuit.
Carts of death, on which we're wheeled
like lambs to the end of the line.
If our spine uncurls and blessings conveyed
fall to bitter silence, let these words
embellish our story.
For fury may burn holes in the gut,
but crumpled parchment and black X'ed out pictures at the eyes
long transcend the ideologue.
That white speckled hue, the hum of neon boards
worn but audible. Somewhere between the dim
of Old Street and Whitechaple,
the sound of lonely echoed in departed steps.
I plead forgiveness,
if not claw at the thread that knots a stomach tight
and loop it like a noose instead.
There are no combinations, no literacy codes to re-write history
when actions speak in a universal slur.
I'll do it over, scratching memories from the surface
of old Polaroid photos,
finger balanced like the needle on a buckled vinyl
poised to screech one last note.
So come now, let us meet
on shores our lips spoke the promises of;
let us not shallow graves
where not a single petal bloom in our name,
our egos are too big to return to the dirt.

"Somewhere", spoke the grey lips in the wall.
Somewhere before sunrise,
before the first bird crows to dawn
and the apathetic are yet to uncurl
the grit that gathers like dust
between the folds of shallow eyes.
"Somewhere". A derogatory term.
Their humanity bears no resemblance to us
as skin and bone the only price to pay
for "unpeople".
Cities made of paper,
soaked in a drought. Somewhere East.
Or maybe South? Somewhere far off relevant,
so alien to home, allotted just enough frames
for you to feel how fortuitous;
but not enough so the screams
swallow your evening meal and you swat the sound of flies
pouring through the static of your transient box.

Her words hung to frost
in the Moon-White air.
There I fell,
steel-cold in their presence.
The allure of longing
a familiar solace
only February bring.
​
An empty tongue,
bent to hiss all the shapes of
unripened promise
that burden green on a winter tree;
behind torch eyes
that bleed memories
down to the wick.
​
I could lend ear
never tire of our solitude.
​
I yearn for that colourless sun,
where streets not blushed pink
from summers lick
but wind cuts brick grey
and windowpanes orange with laughter.
​
For in such black months
we birth anew,
flowers breathe colour
to dead roots
and the busy people
calm to a welcoming halt.
​

War by means -
not where nations play chess
flex dispensable might.
Not where metal sears flesh
in man-sized graves.

Or in hollow trenches
where the political class
bear not a crumpled tie,
unscathed from the
scourge of skirmish.

War by means -
not where children sombre,
set free kites, for frayed cotton;
carried in acrid wind
the only freedom they'll know.

Or midst crumpled towns,
where mothers weep
bleeds the river dry;
cautious sorrow
shake not the dirt
for landmines prey.

War by means -
one whose cause
cannot be sourced,
for its fire that consumes slow,
internal, across fields
where strewn roses
breathe their last.

Left to wilt,
under blackened heat;
for this unyielding ache,
unreciprocated.
My love for you,
a great conflict
- a war by other means.

I concede.
This iridescent mask has sheered.
Melancholic holes breed a home,
a numb unwelcome coax cracks
in a frame so familiar.
The comfort in self, picked from marrow;
left all but a carcass
in the shadow of chipped smiles
hung from walls torn with cadence.
A weathered translucence,
where light fails to flood
rich in the poverty of hope.
A hope that tomorrow brings
the chance of remedy,
birthed from a purging kindle
to char the taste of sorrow brown -
until I'm softened to sand
and reshaped in former image.

We voyaged with contented vigour,
not a second glimpse to the blackened moon.
Bodies numb, fallen stiff to the chill
beneath dim urbanity -
only the warmth of us
thawing glacial palms.

Fractured hearts ruminate,
filling scars where voids once evident.
Further the night wandered,
I embark its goading path -
tantalised in speech
from such copper-buttoned eyes;
steeped with stories
of a past torn from its flesh
and dressed to resemble me.

Our ghosts confide,
beckoned forth in rich exchange;
the currency of gilded tongues.
Stitched as testament to brick fabric,
where apparitions tucked rest;
those musty Shoreditch steps.