Out of sequence.

On the train

I am out of sorts and out
of sequence; at York when it feels

like Darlington and sleep
has switched on my eyes.

My head corner-nods and my bags
are still. I am off the train delirious

for connections and stuffing
my face with fruit pastilles.

I can't stop listening to a certain band.

Let it hang, hairy and heavy

We have lost track of what it means to be alone.
You explain a discomfort with how it is,
hanging so permanently there. I have long since

lost a taste for whatever it would take
to get rid. I don't think I know what you mean any more,
its hairiness is legend but outside of regular experience.

I'm sure it is a metaphor for something, the unsaid
or the ignored. The lack of love, the colour of my bruised big toe.
But it is un-pin-downable, and does not give in
to any sort of pressure or persuasive technique.

Sleepy

Some Reasons

Because it transports me back to times
when it was only sudden flies I had to fear,
and fire through the night. Because

irrational attachment is a given for anyone
to something, and I'd rather have this.
Because it sends me to sleep

by making me forget everything in that moment
just before detachment. Like you used to.

Ahh, photography.

Photography

I come home to stories of light
and photographs, all packed away now.
I have no experience of flame-less candles,
but can see how a robot is mimicked
quite easily with them for eyes. And when I try
a string of blue lights on, I see the appeal.

Every photo is a profile picture now,
every moment repeated all the better
to capture it half-decayed from spontaneity.
But these lights, yes I see they are different.
How you positioned them, so precisely on her eyes.
How the others caught so tightly in her hair.

I am still away...

Metalcore

Amidst a drum beat fast as rain
there is skill, and amidst that
rhythm, and amidst that, a need

for white noise, or an equivalent
experience, like babies
who cannot sleep without a hairdryer on.

There are cars filled with it,
and dark rooms that steal your shoes,
but also bright and breezy ears

that cannot pick up the subtleties
of a tearful voice but find a tune
in tuneless noise as a matter of course.

I am away...

Bitterness

It's hard to run out of bitterness
and she is trying to wear it thin
like marmite on toast.
One day she will open her mouth
and there will be nothing
but good, even through milk-breath
or the whiff of morning through the yawns.
But for now, it is enough to say
that insulting is not
the half of it.

A couple of short'uns written for Your Messages.

It takes us longer to die
down here, as others fizz
danger like shark teeth.
Long enough to see the shimmering beauty
of the sky through a surface of water.

-----

Train Station

They say the brakes weep here, but all I hear
is metal on metal and a precise lack
of haunting; then silence. How could this resemble
anyone's grief?

Over half way...!

It is late, now, and I should be sleeping. Again.

There is sleep in my face and it is shaped
like the bed my head enjoyed for a while, deadweight
on a pillow built for support. There is nothing but sleep

in my head for much longer than is necessary
and I am finding it difficult to focus on any of this,
anticipating, as I am, the next time I can lay down

and surrender all sense to the dark and the radio.
It is World Service by the time I am ready, and sleep
is shaped like the perfect yawn just before it's time.

It's hard getting back into the swing.

Courtship

A man is singing everything to me,
from love to enclosure, but I don't watch
anything sad. I spend my time

whispering nothings, unsweet,
into the ears of those that don't care.
Those like you. I don't watch anything

sad, but I like to test my sensibilities.
I envy your broken television, aching,
as I do, over the tear from it.

Gearing up for holidays.

My shadow looms beside him every time we pass a streetlight

It is not the habit that makes it attractive
but losing himself on the street he is aiming for.
It is not the whisky, wrapped up

in a plastic bag from Morrisons, but the way
black silk clings to his shoulders and hides his ears,
even as his head tilts back to nearly catch me

staring. It is not the perfume, necessarily, that smells
so good, but the opportunity to ask; which I turn down
thinking better of it. It is not the accent he has

but the use of it directed past me
to some other strangers on the street.

Just a little apparently.

In my image

This is face down in a nightclub, knees to the floor; this
is mascara that needs to come off; this is
the time it takes to acknowledge an obsession; this is me
coming to terms with your choice of shirt; this is
mirrors and windows and reflective doors; this
is skirts that come below the knee, above the ankle;
this is an itch I can't reach; this
is a tattoo that will never be designed; this is
underwear chosen to be shared; this is holes
in my shoes I patch with gaffa tape; this is
a lack of money, or priorities wrong; this
is photography for the sake of something;
this is words everyone can understand; this
is behind; this is
an itchy nose that won't go away; this is me
missing something that resembles you.

Early night for me.

...so it definitely needs more work but I'm away to bed.


Gaps

Such small concerns for such a big sky
to contain, and even the stars notice
this aspect of her posture and offer her
constellations as freckles on her feet.

The aloneness fills her like a song
everyone else is listening to with closed eyes or
discomfort. She is filling up with it like tears,
and tears do fall. They reach the floor

noticed only by the sky; still she beckons
the notes of alone. Lying to a woman
more in need than herself, she realises
it makes sense that the universe is expanding.

She walks over her own emotions backwards
in magnetised moon boots. Every feeling she
finds she looses to the universe, a little bit
of this and that to help fill any gaps.

Some notes on journeying.

Thanks.

I have been travelling for hours
please leave me be even though

most of that travelling has involved
sitting still. I have been travelling

since eight in queues and herded
like a sheep that is singular and

collective at once. Please leave
me alone I do not need to know

about your poorly knees or how you
recognise me or which your favourite

seat is or that you know the word wow.
The sky is shrinking and the only thing

I have left is the expectation of arrival
after arrival on a journey with

too many middles and a view
between seats without faces.

Notes from a long time ago..

.. and now I am hopefully at Latitude, but do enjoy in my absence.



Feet and Hands

They seem too big for you sometimes but not
as you work. I could have been a pianist you
like to say. You're too busy taking photographs
of hands, hard and brittle, ones with painted
nails to match my tights. I like instead the feet
of people, and make you test your light
on mine. I wear stilettos and teal
fishnets; that flat arch of mine teased
open with a well placed toe.

A little late... sorry!

Muse on a lover I've never met

A man's lover stays at home today
because she is ill and strokes the cat.
It is long-haired and white but these people
don't have carpets for the hair to gather.
She collects dust bunnies twice a day.
She wears the cardigan her mother gave her
to keep the warm in. She has dirty blonde
hair with split ends, but has saved it
from brittle with plenty of mousse.
She does not like coffee or men
who tuck their shirts into their patent belts
but puts up with his because of the way he treats her.

She imagines him pacing offices carpeted
in the greys and blues of the arts. She smells
the newness of funding. Tonight he will bring
home a theft of paperclips for her office space.

I am ill. And tired.

And so this is more notes than poem, and I am away to bed.


Somewhere sort of familiar but essentially a different place

Round here it's never clear whether you're safe or not.
Industrial roots, great honking trees. A sheer drop
the other side of the iron railings. Dallas Carpets
bold on the red roof below. Not the best street lights.

Viewed from the other side, we are in mist;
a long slow sea fret that stops us seeing the only thing
worth being here for: the view. It is worth supping
warm cider to wait for it to clear. It is worth the smell.

Just notes for now...

If I have learnt anything today, I have learnt this.

There is no easy way up to anything,
only easy ways down, and hands are under
pressure from all angles despite the cotton grass.

The day's efforts are echoed back in rumbles
of approval from the forest. As the wind cools,
routes that have been chalk-marked

are scored in skin which we leave drying in the sun.
Few leave with a full set of fingerprints; all
with their rubbish and a sense of satisfaction.

One month down.

More of a half-poem, really, and older than most on here so far.

The new lamp

To touch the shadows was really
to touch you. Underneath the mountain
of mistakes, we nightly avoided our own
pasta sauce, in awe of the plainness
of ourselves. This night, though,

at the nose-pressed glass of a lighting shop,
the lack of shadow lifted the mountainous dark
to our backs. Touching your face you were lit
to me anew. That night we savoured the sight
of the brightest of red tomatoes.

Holidays are not so much fruitful times.

So I haven't written a whole poem today, which is the first day this has happened so far. I haven't panicked about it, as I figure it is an inevitability. The deal, to myself, was always just to post a little something creative every day, and it is asking a bit much for that to be a poem every time, right? I'm asking the ether. It will, inevitably, only say what I want to hear.... And so, some notes. With a title.


Suspension

Out from under the lights everyone is
peach-coloured, a normal combination
of skin tones. It's hard to know,
sometimes, whether this or that is
the real, but sweating a layer of skin
off can only ever be a part-time job
no matter how good the music.
Documentation is an inevitability,
along with the pints of water.
I might be mid-air in that picture
you took, but that doesn't mean
I never landed.