What would happen if the moon leaked?
Would there be a luminous canal
that flowed with moon milk?
Would we be able to bathe in
a shimmering pool of silver?

I know there’s a blame to be had somewhere,
but you shouldn’t shout at me because they all died.

You shouldn’t have asked me to care for your houseplants.

You know I’m no good with instructions.

At least be grateful
you didn’t ask me to look after your ageing mother.

a ray of light
then the
frantic collision
of unseen forces
in smoky sadness

They met up.
She said: we’re done.
He pleaded.
She rolled her eyes.
He cried.
She laughed.
He sniffed.
She blew smoke into the air.
He coughed.
She walked away.

You may free yourself from self-righteousness
and even escape the conical wasteland
of numerous embittered moments
but you will never evade the sense that
all the while someone is plotting their next move.

You call it impartiality,

but is it the calculated coldness inside you
that creates that sense of misplaced fairness
which means you treat everyone in the same
negative way regardless of their circumstances?

I call it duplicity.

The failed kiss left a trail of lip gloss
across a canvas of unending emptiness

like a memory dragged from between the
pages of a second-rate novel.

Her cries were a tune that knocked at the door
but failed to pierce his tone-deafness.

He watched on but then sensed guilt
that he alone could have caused such a thing.

we sit in the yard
and look at
the quiet sky
while the flowers
release their scent

you say you love
the overhead clouds
but you don’t love me

so I think of
a thousand kisses
and all those moments
I now find hard
to understand

there will be other skies

I first noticed you like a fly,
through a haze of broken glass
which made you look
like a thousand different people.

She hums in quiet desolation,
wishing that I would stay.
Or maybe she thinks
the song is really catchy,
in which case
I’m the pathetic one.

I’ve noticed that despite his usual insistence on neatness, throughout the spring and early summer, my neighbour always mows around the patches of primroses, leaving squares of renegade grass surrounding the flowers. I guess he must like primroses.

The day you left
garbage rotted,
eggshells cracked,
water polluted.

The day you came back
I saw a rainbow

No moon in a milk-flavoured sky
just a feather suspended in a summer current
leaving just enough room for breathless uncertainty.

A long-play memory in a looped feedback.

Waves arrive in an endless repetition  
from an ocean full of oversized drops
as eyes open to see nothing but shades of blue.

In the skip
lies a rusty bike in faded red
a carpet stained and a broken bed
- in the skip
some rotten wood from a leaking roof
all of which is evident proof
of the transience of things

It’s a sonnet of suffering
inside my head.

You replaced the boredom
of an everyday melody,

broadcast a daily bulletin
of disparate emotions.

Then the cacophony of chaos
played out a performance.

Now the symptoms of you
mean misfortune for me.

first makes me
imagine a poem
that talks about
an ink-stained sky
and brooding clouds
and chilling air,
all of which
can be taken as
ominous signs of
impending doom;  
but that can be bad
so instead lie still
and listen to the
comforting melody
the rainstorm plays on
my old tin roof