In the dark.

Long-awaited expulsion of ego in real-time

Waking in the dark I am obsessed
with seeing. I hunt for a corner
on where I stand; where I left
my shoes when I undressed. I stand
for long minutes, trying to open my open
eyes; trying shut eyes, blinking ones;
trying rubbing eyes, slowly so as not
to rub myself out. I am on the line
of existence/non-existence.

I am still obsessed. I raise my hands
to where I'm sure I should see them,
seek cracks in curtains that have been
there every other night and day,
letting the influence in. I still cannot see,
am now obsessed with how I have lost sight
of my own eyelids that blink and blink
against the dark. I cannot be blind.

And all of a sudden it happens: I wonder
could I fall asleep with my eyes open here?
What has happened to my window to
everyone else to the sun to the universe
I have never looked upon enough?

The news is a crazy world all its own.

Some dogs are cloned in South Korea and shipped to their new owner in California, USA.

It was a picture to match a thousand others but a face
that could only be one. She'd lost her hand but waved
its reconstruction proudly clutching five carbon copies
of the dog that saved her life, once, from savagery.

Five times rescued, she was also five times caught:
Once with a chastity belt; once for bondage games
she never knew she played. Once as a nun
in the Appalachian mountains – where else? – and once
bare-breasted in a glamour magazine. She tops it off, now,

with this: soaking up chips all over as yesterday's news.
The cloners, they're today's and have bigger fish to fry.
Their sights are on camels in the Middle East.
It is where, they hear, the money is.

Junk Mail.

Be not afraid to vary and change the life, after all all becomes to the best.

Don’t doubt, miracles happen. Maybe
it's classy minutiae that will change
your life. Stop being a loser.

You are living in the worst
city; grow a horse's tail and become
the unicorn of your neighbourhood.

Find out what really matters.
Your happiness is much closer
now. Don't get ripped off

by fakes any more. Seduce her
like this. Deflagrate. Be the neon
light at the red light district.

Storm approaches

I think Billy Big Steps is coming, but I need a bit longer for it to brew.

Feelings made louder by circumstance

And there is no other time when the kitchen floor
seems so necessary as when it should be the bathroom

you're heading for. Every bathroom has a memory
like this: of falling asleeps and the colour of vodka

or coke; of hours passed bruising the breastbone
and panting sorrys into amplifying porcelain.

And there is no other time when the thought of bed
is something too comforting to bear, and the harsh

adjustment of your body to tiles is a welcome distraction
from the way you look tonight, from the way you must

have sounded, from the look he gave you, from the thought
of sustenance and breakfast which will seem so necessary

but not for twelve long hours, three of which you'll lose
except for their impact on your pyjamas in the morning.

We had a barbecue today.

Murmurs

Last night, after work, listening
to Joni Mitchell, all that roleplaying.
I moved the furniture round, inadvertently,

but the parasol is a little bit redundant.
That's why, that's why she asked you
where you were. I'm sorry, what? Who are you?

Do you know the ones that are like gloves?
I can't remember what it was called, but
as you're having a nice time, excuse me.

She told us the story. She had some
the other day but it was gone, well gone.
Yeah, apart from that; it was good

because it was really out the way
there. Isn't that the same as a trailer?
It's in the barbecue. That's the best place.

portrait of a foreign ladybird on saucer

Thanks Sarah.

The House of the Next Best Thing

I spend time thinking about this, dream up
boxes as television stands and
recordings of you playing instruments and
stairs instead of a low-key hoverboard and
Kevin Costner instead of Bruce Willis and
yoghurt instead of cheese and
flour and water instead of PVA glue and
a caffeine instead of an alcohol high and
linen instead of cotton and
chairs instead of tables and
tables instead of a mezzanine floor and
blankets instead of duvets and
radio 3 instead of BBC 2 and
lights that never turn off and
all you tell me
is I asked for a glass and got a paper cup.

Again, needs more work. Not finished worriting with it.

Proof

Have you packed the right equipment? You will need
the gear, this time. The guts. They say the first step
is the hardest but graft doesn't guarantee success.
I'm hoping whatever you've packed it is conservatively.
It won't do to carry everything with you, or expect

to share the load half way. There will be company,
but they are not there just for you; they will not be used.
They will not carry anything you should've left behind.
Dropping things, though, that's inevitable. Whether you pick
things up, well, that depends. Can you bear to carry

whatever it is until the end? Do you intend to drop them, too?
How do you know when you've arrived, you ask? You don't.
Perhaps the climate will improve; perhaps you will just be
able to deal with it better. Perhaps new friends will be forthcoming;
perhaps they will be by the wayside. If you do need to let go,

please do it gently. Bear in mind the impact on your surroundings.
Set it down gently near the path for someone else to find and realise
they have arrived. Perhaps it will be proof of an alternative, all they need
to settle down. If you find yourself having gone too far,
there is no way back. Just keep travelling until you lose regret.

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.

Edited version, sent somewhere.

Dear bird,

I am home now, black bird, the rain
is falling through trees. I am calling your name
again, though I can't remember what it is
we called you. You must never have known; or else
you're out on the wing with the wind in your ears.

I presume you are happier flying. I have heard
your kind since—song birds only by association
—taking hold of their names in their own harsh throats.
Trapped by holly thorns then and your own beating heart,
you were a question in my hands, shock-quiet.

Were you trapped, though, bird?
Would you know if you were?

You were wild and fierce out of the box.
You were meaning for long summer days.

Crete, or Cyprus. Either way.

Crete. Or Cyprus.

My memory tells me slapping and deflation,
an octopus battling with air and sand
gathering in its dampness. These are sharp

reflections blinding from the sea. My memory
is afraid and hiding, with rocks in my knees;
being seen by the boy who shouts through

a language barrier with welts on his glistening arms.
You tell me things I don't remember yet, about
washing lines and drying squid. I remember

my first taste of the rubbery flesh and eight arms
flapping. It's all become a blur, I'm sure
he wasn't there when I went back to show you

just how close I'd come to the sliding octopus fury.
I'm sure you've coloured my own understanding
but the sun was definitely shining, then, drying us out.

A couple more Crapseys

For the love of you

Watching
your feet flip flop
along the beach I find
the sand that flicks up your calves dis-
tracting.


---


I choose the neatest looking bunch I can find in the florist

Tulips,
though beautiful
here, always look better
with unruly heads in all di-
rections.

A couple of Crapseys

Paddling at Christmas we must look wild from a distance

Cold feet
made colder by
a winter sea, toes in
snowy sand we dance through waves to
keep warm.


---


Grandma is slowly going blind despite her love of knitting

Wool soft,
she's listening
to the click of needles
as her daughter follows patterns
unseen.

For Tracey, 2.

A search for something brings me here

You are trying too hard, I say,
listening to her internal dialogue
as it appears to me out here. Try not
to force it. Finally she succumbs
to the rhythmic three three three
of sudoku logic and that's enough
to know she's forgotten I'm listening.
Next she hums a song I can't hear
for easy listening jazz playing
over the coffeeshop speakers.

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.

Travelling is fun.

Uprising

The anger of this man seethes through the wall I lean on
and the smack of his flesh on the vending machine
is powerlessness. He is contained only by the firm grip
around his wrists and, at his back, precisely chilled chocolate.

The soft glow of the machine is calming through mockery;
people gather, necks craned. Check him outs turn the hum
into accusation but he contains another uprising with the muscles
in his jaw. The security guard, bemused, repeats himself.

Unsure as to whether the lull is real, he does not let go.
The vending machine is tilted backwards with the weight
of two. The man, quiet now, still does not know what he wants.
I just got caught up, easy, easy. I'm all right. It's all right.

101, and superstitious tendencies.

The Black Cat Imparts Some Luck

It was just a cat. Being, as it was, bereft
of ownership in immediate proximity
it did not have a name, beautiful though
it was. The cat was all black without a whisper
of another colour in any of its fur. This was,
of course, a rarity noted by its owners
who had spent hours grooming, hunting
for some all-feared glimmer of white or pink.

I was not to know this, as the just-a-cat
ambled over the quiet road, shrugging
its shining shoulders with every step, the weight
of it rolling this way and that way, its black-skinned feet
padding firmly on the ground. I couldn't help but watch,
enthralled by the beauty of its everydayness
and the wonder of the universe—which
it looked like, funnily enough, black as it was.

The black cat saw me watching with
its great green eyes and, without any sort of fear
crossed in front of me, leaving, with each pad of its feet,
the tiniest piece of luck. I walked on my way, gathering
the pieces nonchalantly by crossing its path. I didn't trip
once, then, until the last of it wore off precisely
one week later when I fell with some force onto my elbow.
I don't hold that against anyone:

Nothing lasts forever, I just wish
I'd used the luck better, while I had it.

100 down! A milestone of sorts.

Pigeon prints on an outward journey.

Last absent posting.

Back for real tomorrow.


The way things move not what they're made of

Like the water puppeteer
who used silk for fish scales
and dressed wooden mermaids
in the finest until it rotted,
strand from limb, and cost
a fortune to replace; so the plastic
on the trees just goes to prove a point.

Another that hasn't had an airing yet.

Yep, still at Latitude. I'm waving. Hello. Hopefully it's stopped raining by now.


I didn't realise circular breathing worked for saxophone players

We both stood swaying to jazz rhythms except
you were thinking about the music and how your
pianist fingers could work like this and I
was thinking of the purple coat I didn't buy;
how well it would go with my fingerless gloves.

We talked a lot of triangles that night. The confessions
I'd fielded, the folk, the apologies; a whining sitar,
my infatuation, the saxophone jazz. It's all enough except
I can't take my eyes off the saxophone player and his puffy-in
puffy-out cheeks: the control he has.

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.

Def Leppard A-Go-Go

...this is a bit of a falsification. I am in fact in Nottingham preparing to ROCK. \m/


Luftballon.

From nowhere.

Emeralds aren't right, nor is a simple leafy green

And he kept trying to find a better way to explain
the colour of her eyes. He pointed at the top I wore,
it is, he said, similar; but it lacks a quality of light.

I found myself offended, though I understood exactly
what he meant. They are, in the end, mossy ponds
with the sun shining through them, endless.

It has taken him this long to find a place this might be true,
but here he is now at a stagnant pond and pointing.
I am waiting for a revelation of glistening frog-skin

to snap him out of the obvious: can hear instead
only the false shutter-clicks of a digital camera
in the throes of duty and whirring.

flying dragons 'n' that.

Trapeze Artist

You are not gaudy but power movement
with your heavy blue thighs. There is daintiness
only in your toes, wrapped tight as a bud in black
trainers. There is not much room for training now.

Your grip is chalked and dusts on contact.
Your most important movement is a silent nod
of your upside-down head. This happens
often and always when the others are ready.

There must be pain behind your knees
where you hold the weight of twice gravity.
You dismount steadily down a wire ladder.

When it comes to your turn to bow
you cannot bend but allow the others another
moment; all eyes but mine on the sequins.

Fantastical.

Embrace

The man I am hugging is decidedly taller
than I'm used to and wearing a trenchcoat
in a fetching shade of beige. It almost reaches

the floor. We are skewiff, my head towards his shoulder
out of line. We are not alone, but I feel our own hearts
beating. I am encapsulated, in possession of his shoulders.

My arms tighten, my grip is stronger. I test myself
against his ribs; he responds by breathing. Our breaths
stretch us out, give us purchase for the deepening

hold. It is not just his heart I feel, it is the veins
themselves; tissue fluid whooshing between cells
all calling for combination. There is no way out

but through. It feels for the longest time like
stalemate. My arms are shaking. I am lighter than blood
through his head through his knees through shoulders

I am lost in a singular us. I hear his silence as now
and break out. We turn to each other. His coat is open
where a button is missing; on my chest its imprint fades.

Detail of a crane viewed from a window.

Back to Salsa after a break.

My keys drop to the floor and are accidentally kicked under the sofa at home

Caught unawares in the moment of losing,
my pockets are imperceptibly lighter.
All of a sudden I do not belong here and
without a way in I am unknowingly
unfastened. I shrug off the weight of home.

My feet begin to lift; I could go anywhere.
I have packed light with no belongings
to choose from; so light I do not need
a plane. My big toes are the last to leave

the ground. I am glad I wore leggings
as envious glances skyward see me billowing,

untethered, heading high above the rain.

Perhaps this gives too much away...

I would like to set myself up as some sort of opposite

I am listening to the Rocky soundtrack and it is hard
to separate from love. My life in montage before me;
I am no screen icon, I have no speech problem. I have no desire

to box; or for the chap himself. Here is the day-to-day
we never learn of him: I like coffee and muffins, get athlete's foot
whether I run or not, and prefer being bendy to strong.

But when I run a race in the name of charity, I know
which tune will be trickling through my brain; that at the finish
it will take all my strength to restrain my arms.

High-powered lunch break moments.

There is a meeting going on

Only I hear the gasps
of despair when one guy leaves
for the toilet. Figures bounce,

two hundred, twelve hundred.
There are divisions down the line,
in equal measure. He is being

straight-up, up-front; the brand
is what's important. Cool as fuck.
A need for dumbing down.

In receipt of the pitch, the other man
stops to take a phone call; confesses
to a parental divorce costing his mother

one million pounds. There are intricacies
and positioning; there are beginnings
of many things.

A digression.

There is never enough to go on

The rain was falling but you weren't to know.
I was cold, even there on my bed, but you

couldn't know that either, wrapped up,
as you were, in yourself. Perhaps

conversation came back shortly after that.
Perhaps we were drinking wine again

the next day. I am not sure. Water fell
and the air was sharp.

Yet another letter. Thanks James.

Dear you

We have never met. Because of this
I feel no need to apologise for this letter
but by means of explanation: hello.

I have been told you are nice, except
that is only because I have come to expect
that this is what people say.

You must be flattered to be chosen
like this. It was your name – It means
wisdom – and your 13th place.

The number has no significance to me
but here are some confessions
to get us acquainted:

I wish more people would notice
my colour coordination. I once weed
in my bedroom. It was cold and night.

Most things are more important to me
than I let on. This letter is not
one of those things.

When you reply, do not think of it as dialogue
except in the larger sense. I attach
no return address: look someone up.

You will never know if I am the first
or twenty-seventh (this number also
means nothing). This is not a chain letter.

I have no control, through ideas or CCTV,
over your life and this letter
should not influence your decision to write.

I feel I know you well enough now to share
the only piece of advice that has been real
to me: It gets no worse than this.

Another letter, this time from an exercise of sorts.

Dear bird,

I am home now, black bird, the rain
is falling through trees. I have called your name
over again, though I can't remember what
we called you then. You must not have known,
out there on the wing, and now you are most likely dead.

I have heard your kind since, with the wind
in your ears, taking hold of your voice.
I have heard you are happier flying. Trapped
by holly thorns then and your own beating heart
you were our rescue and startling for it.

Were you trapped, though, bird?
Would you know if you were?

You were wild and fierce out of the box.
You were meaning for long summer days.

After an exhibition.

My life for a moment is observation.

I am digesting papers. Taxi drivers
in a static queue talk through open windows

and gesture through closed ones. Three flags—
Scottish, British, EU—wave similarly but out of sight.

A women with large hair struggles past. Her heels
are taller than my thumb is long. There is a ladder

I have never noticed before. A man who has had
a full Sunday yawns past trying to fit it into his mouth.

The world in a digital viewfinder skims past
in the hand of an enthusiast. Newcastle is at an angle.

There are seats outside but no-one's in them.
I catch someone's eye in the window I had forgotten was there.

There are lots of flowers, gaudy and brilliant.
And now a yellow car and no-one to punch; I am reading

about tennis and missing the best match.
I have no plans tonight.

And again. It's a weekend thing.

Letter to —

I am thankful to be the first but cannot reply
in kind due to a lack of technology; gun-metal
heavy and courier grey. Take instead my hand.
My mistakes will be visible. There are things
you won't learn from me this way but they are far-between.

I appreciate the time you have taken not spent
over steaming conversation and coffee cups. I am flattered
you would think me worthy of four and a half pages
of meticulous tippex correction and mistakes left
for my own imagination. Please do not count mine.

I must admit I read your words in an unconventional position:
my hips now hurt and this translates into a wonky r.
I am indeed smiling—how would you know
but to make me do so with flattery? My hair, as an aside,
is growing as normal and is due to be cut tomorrow.

Well done on the job. I think it is not luck but courage:
I will bring my own when next I'm south. I'll try not to infringe
but bear in mind the pub you promised. Please can we carry
the typewriter with us and clickclack letter-lessons in the sun?
I will happily exchange for an education in verse-types.

Yours, —

A man sleeps sweating in the sunshine.

Observations.

On litter-picking

It comforts me to know I have been your discarded
as well as handled it. In this way, the relief

of the unchanging is inevitable. You are weather-
proof and predictable, you berate my parking

but pay for it. You have not seen me until now
when there is nothing but what is left

and who will rid you of it. Here I am, handling
your history, dazzling you out of sight, visible

to invisibility, touched by you and other strangers
through hypocrisy and uncrushed pizza boxes.

Things I cannot do, 3.

How to record sound

To start, pick one you don't mind hearing
constantly. This might mean for days

or hours, depending on the size and location
of your album. The sound will become static

so don't rely on progression, only tone.
Do not try to capture it secondhand:

it is not like wind. It is not interesting
to hear the emotional response: see

dancing like trees swaying or vibrations like clouds.
We are not talking soundscape or radio.

Try first with the metal spank of flagpoles, or
wind whistling through late-night trolley lock-ups.

Think of it as a picture of moving air. Waves
and particles. Try now with a beat of your heart.

portrait of berwick upon tweed

I was just passing through - twice - and it struck me how many of these birds nest on the rooves there.

Things I cannot do, 2.

How to speak to your mother

Do not approach her in dreams; she may speak
but it is an inaccuracy, and you are likely to falsify.
Do not address the sky; she was scattered in the sea,
but nor will the waves talk back in their immensity.

Starman is not a true account of where she went,
but nor is any place she stood once. Living around
from the house she called home is no guarantee;
walking her streets could take you miles for nothing.

Write, instead, and lay out all her words
as if they are a conversation you control.
List some things she would definitely have said:
other people's memories are no use any more.

Start with a family saying, move on from there.
She may appear from just a comment on the colour of her hair.

A Glasgow poem, sort of, for coming home.

Going back

There is sun now I'm leaving with an aching neck
but it has been there all along amidst the falling rain.
I saw a man pissing in it. While starlings

pecked at fresh vomit in the light, the perpetrator was nowhere
but always the marvellous green on the necks of the birds
was wonderful. Thrown off the bus, we walked the grid-map streets

in this sometimes-rain paying no attention to the direction of the wind.
There was sleeping in silence and club-footed pigeons I have named
Byron, all three. There were plenty things to admire

and extra security. There was sun all along but hard to see
for the misting rain and music. There was music we will never move
on from. There is sun now I am train-bound in the giant fading sky.

A view of Glasgow

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.

An older one but still needs some work.

Somewhere along the years the abattoir film's gone missing.

I think of it as the contrast between bright
paint-red and the need for black and white;
the change from shaving your everyday face
to watching the shavers finish the pigs'
bollocks in two neat bare-blade swipes.

You speak of this lost film in the abstract
with all the routine that brings, but I notice
the noise in the raising of your voice;
the jittering bloodied heads above
in your clatter-stirred milkless coffee.

And so the story travels over Radio Two
from setting out your awe for
huge carcass rollers to dead pig-weight
to the drip drip drip of blood-red blood
and how easy it was to slip.

My grandpa speaks of his death too
as if he had been with you in the making,
just another interview to complement
the colourless bloodied aprons—a hammer
to the head, a spike straight through, his own role

as brace to stop them bolting—but your stolen film
holds all the mystery for me: as art and archived footage
treads a fine bloodied line; as the contrast
between the bright paint-red of loss and the tang
of theft that's on your tongue amidst the music.

Things I cannot do.

How to change your name

Start with your old one – you cannot get anywhere
without it – and suspend it in your mouth
until it is no longer a word. Surround
yourself with it. We will get you unacclimatised

but we need your help first. Say your name now
as if it is the first time you've been called it.
Bring a photo you have labelled of yourself
as yourself. Your old name is old news now.

Take a deep breath from your toes to the crown
of your head. Do not speak. The fee is minimal.
Don't speak until your new name
is all you are. This is your only chance.

Keep breathing, there is no pressure of time.
In. Out. That's right. We are not experts,
we do not know where they come from.
I see; good choice. We don't get many of those

but it seems to suit.

I am still ill. Rubbish.

Whistle practise

I practise the notes around mi with too much
time for the lack of mastery. My lungs today
have kept me going and still they work,

a miracle all their own. I craft them into bellows
for notes in air, notes that don't exist except
as half-holes sliding. I am distracted by the thinking

wheel of an email programme until it becomes
my own factory setting for thought. The notes
keep my lungs in order and though I am without

relaxed hips it is enough to stop me for a while
and suddenly I am having to travel back in the dark
from the furthest music to my own heartbeat to here.

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.

I got distracted by toes.

Self portrait.

I like storms.

After the strike

the cat remains. The phone will not hang up
but keeps an inviting tone. She doesn't dial,
but checks on the dog who has given up

under the table. The house is unscathed.
It steams. She is hesitant around objects
which could connect back to the sky's

temper but eventually dials her home from
home: there is nothing but layers of notes
in one long insistent tone. The cat remains.

Earlier than usual.

Musician

His fingers were a trick of the light and altogether
everything his parents could want. The banjo
would twang to him its four-stringed passion, cracking
and splintering for love of him and competition.
It would have done anything he asked, or so we're told:
he chose his own switch when it didn't happen like that.

He switched banjo for bouzouki when choices became
movable and real. It feeds his yearning for the natural.
We hear half-truths of regret in the notes. He bears no
obvious scars, but wears his hair long and black
all down his back. It catches the light and hides his face;
at once performance and everything that's not.

Old notebooks are ace.

Batspeak

We have lost our vespertilian ears. Those silhouetted
flitterers, eating midges before they get around
to eating us, making soundscapes that, like our own
conversations, will echo around endless space
getting fainter by halves: they are lost to us now.

It is not just vampire preference: bats are lucky in Poland
but they still cannot hear them there. And it is not only there,
despite the reputations, that people angle boxes
to lower the sound from clicks to whistles. Everywhere
there is loss and nostalgia for half-heard sounds.

Under 300 days to go!

Development

Preoccupied by a flutter in her diaphragm
and a tendency towards sneezes she finds it hard

to hold a valid point when really all there is to say
is yes. She is not convinced she is immune

to an elaborate hoax of rhyme. There are connections
she is not aware of; the lack of context

is telling. She has cheated it so far but
there is no way to stay like this forever.

She hasn't been herself yet here: she is her own
guinea pig, wholly unformed and firmly whole

alone. She is in their hands.

This evening's events will no doubt appear over the next few days as poems...eep..

but for now...

Flight Risk

He was a flight risk, liable to disappear
at any moment; but it was you who raised
your hand precisely as a pigeon took to the air
from the ground beneath your feet; or
did it come from your sleeve, a physical expression
of what you wanted to say? In my face, the wingbeat
air; in my chest the panic of collision.
In your face the glee and disappointment
of the world going to lengths to prove a point.

For P.M.B.

In an orchestra of limbs

You cannot help but skip on every other beat.
Your steps are a measure of notes, your hands
accents and crescendos; violas of movement
in an orchestra of limbs. Precise moments see you
wholly in air, prepared only for descent and timing.
There is no despair in your movement
and freedom is as envied as it is necessary.
You are a rare anatomy of music and
you never fail to make my night with that.

Searching each other's movements
for the meaning all we ever find is each other
and the urgency of drums. It is starting to fragment:
my arm is your keyboard, please be content.
The air is my trombone; the air is your guitar.

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.

Salsatastic.

On the shoulders of boats

Her map is as well-travelled as she is
but wears the thumb-worn texture easier.
Each time she returns the sea wrinkles differently
and is glorious—each route she has travelled never the same.
The drift this time makes each mile two
but that just means more time with the blinking stars
and their sea-bent reflections; a particle history of space.

There are miles that pass quickly under momentum-hum wheels,
a flash of twittering and I-spy; the click click of cats eye drift.
These miles she takes at half-speed on the shoulders of boats
cradled by the rise and fall; a journey in three dimensions.
These miles she floats over with a precision that defies the assumption
of water. She is looking for pieces of things she has lost
that must be in the waves, or have at least passed through.
She is gathering strength.

Just before I rush out...!

To photograph a first born

The absence of me is distinct here
in its purposefulness. It makes
for an unusual shot. From this point
no-one need know. I, who have been
named three times for love;
I would not recognise my mother
who cradles me here before
she has seen my face.

From then it would be thirty years
before she knew it again, before
I would introduce myself
with my only chosen name;
née the replacement; née hers.

Teehee

A girl plays with a pencil unnoticed in Starbucks

Soon we will disappear
under bouncing blonde curls
and two-year-old speech patterns;
under attention lavished by everyone
except who can tell her off.

Soon we will disappear
through cute-as-a-button coughs
and tinkling pink cardigan tassles
or because chocolate is spread
all over our faces too.

Soon we will disappear
because her mum will be
telling her off in three languages
and trying to snatch the pencil
from the tiniest hand here.

Soon we will disappear
as the careful outlines of spots
on signs become frantic black
swirls and we are all
scribbled out in a passionate rebuff.

Thanks Dave.

Two years in we find a cellar

Buried under the moving earth, all that's visible
is the keystone of an arch and the sound
of a hollow filled with dirt. It awaits
its purpose; is poised empty of ideas.

Like a beaming photograph that lasts beyond
its context, its hollows and conversations
are long gone. We need plants, now, to fill it.
We need history but we are all running out.

There have been deaths here; there have been
deaths everywhere if you are looking. Deaths
in clothes, in streets, in shoes and rooms.
This cellar had them but they are lost.

Bring your deaths and music. We will tap our feet
along to whatever you play, planting rhythms
and roots for the cellar to cling to. There is nothing
more fearful than a house without ghosts.

There's a cellar, too. Tomorrow's post perhaps.

Invitation to a thought shower (plus guest)

Three months in and settled, we have found a hidden room.
Please come and help us fill it: we have no more stuff

and want no more. All we need is thoughts and you can even leave
them at the door. Here are some examples to get you going:

the last time you smelt your Grandmother; when your mortality
was realised; a bicycle ride. Please allow for detours

though the room is square. Maybe all you have is time
you do not have: we will welcome things you'd like to do.

There is plenty of space for considered tango lessons, yoga,
learning shorthand. Anything will do, it's just the walls and floors

are empty and we are out of personality and paint.
Please, no physical gifts; we are unable to accept.

Grim.

The Inherited

Generations have died before they've had a chance
to tell me how I'll go. One sudden death after another
they keep giving up the ghost but not leaving one behind
to let me know. How do I prepare? Perhaps they do not know,
I hear you say, perhaps you'll go like they did: in the morning
unable to sit up for fear of fading consciousness, pooling blood;
in hospital, a pink swab mopping saliva from the sunken parts
of face where dentures go; eight weeks from diagnosis.
I could carry round whole heaps of hows to stop it, but slings
and plasters will never be enough. Every pain I have could be
my mum's ghost pointing at where things will loosen first,
every limp and yawn a last hurrah, a sign of things to come.
My oblivious heart is tapping out the truth on my love-torn ribs:
b-bum, b-bum, b-bum—I think hear correctly: all is well yet, all is well.

First draft of one from a workshop with Michael Symmons Roberts

The moon is green

he says he has proof. Can't you see
where they've doctored the image? I say it is closer
to me than anything else that big will ever be.

Naming other vague conspiracies under my breath
to keep perspective on him, it is hard to grasp
in daylight the wonder of what it is itself.

I plan tonight to take him out and we will count
on our own unsteady eyes to pace the moon across our sky.
Perhaps tonight is when the flight of our own earth will taint

it yellow or harvest red; perhaps tonight it will be new
and disappeared. Either way it is as normal as
a question, or cheese and onion hula-hoops.

In this distant room under arguments of greenery
it is abstracted. Not until later will we see the pock-marked
face of a regular stranger; one side turned, always unseen.

Has anyone noticed.....? I think I got away with it...

Walk to work

Start with make-up in your eyes
and an increasing paranoia
about your skirt and the wind.

It is downhill at first but prepare
your new-woken hips
for the approaching incline.

Rid your face of indifference
when the man with a dog says morning
and yanks too hard on the lead.

Acknowledge the boy on a scooter,
the usual bickering birds and the bench
and sign that were painted pink one day.

The person behind will get a shot
of your arse (again) and the traffic lights
will take forever to let you cross.

Walk a little faster to check out that guy's walk,
then feel a little older, perhaps wiser,
than most of the students on the bridge.

Your shoulder-bag is heavy with lunch
you'll appreciate later; your music
is irrelevant here because of the traffic noise.

The Frenchman will be smoking
and there are people queueing
to get into pubs at 9.20am.

There are still back streets here to take,
however small. Stop for a coffee—you'll be
a little late, but it's worth the risk.

You're nearly there. Slow down
a little but run up the stairs. Avoid the steps
to nowhere on your left; head down, to work.

Smut and thrips. There is still work to be done on this one.

Looking after leeks

We are searching for him, a man who can't be seen
through the moulding glass of any greenhouse.

We imagine him happiest shooing smut and thrips away.
Truth be told, he is a man who gets easier as the weather cools.

He must take sandwiches, always, but that is all; his body
best lean with tender fingers for the delicate leeks.

The growth is slow and useful. We wait for his perfect skies
after small travesty—an early frost, an unpredicted cold snap, showers

to keep the ground close—and yet have never caught a sight.
Most nights he watches sun-shy leeks grow by the dimming glow

of his car battery. Collared and watered in, he is sitting somewhere
until the dawn chorus lullaby drowns out the rustling growth.

It is the same sky, the same chorus, and the leeks we eat are blanched
like his, and yet; and yet. We have not seen him and do not know his name.

I have had a small slow patch but there are some poems growing again.

Down the front at Flogging Molly

I heard it called the bear pit once,
this place where everyone smells of Lynx
and heaving and sweat that isn't yours
runs down your back and thighs.

The mohawks are falling and soon
blue dye will be trickling down faces
of people whose ears might as well be leaking
from the unbridled passion of banjos.

A jumper over an alleyway in Manchester

An old one that's never had an airing.

the things we forget

I. bacon

We were stuffing our faces with palindromes,
and with those huge chewy over-wrapped palindromes
we E-numbered through the night. Miles and miles
of time we gained between us, though the sky came up eventually,
when my head was resting hard against the window.

II. insect repellent

Once we had arrived it was clear ideas spread like ant-nests there.
Watching for grasshoppers like they were shooting stars,
I spread my eyes across the grass to catch them.
I couldn't hide the quiet smile as I captured one's music
with the supermacro setting on my camera.

III. something to wee in

Admiring the false privacy of tents we caught a man,
kneeling and pissing onto his own undersheet. We made
poems of him and Jaffa Cakes, as if no-one could hear.
It's strange to say but I savoured the experience of
long-drops and other people's retching, peeing, retching.

IV. a different pair of shoes

It was easy to capture other people's Google-searches for wellies
and oh how people frame their momentary obsessions
in the neat digital age: fields of people all with arms raised and Jarvis
in their sights. One man took picture after picture of a sleeping girl;
every image the same but for the songs changing behind her.

More thoughts on magic tricks.

Stooge contemplates their existence

Lying is a physical inescapability as me, but I tell no-one
that. Every night I dress as if it's my last—or my birthday—
and I do remember times when that could have been true.

I move in sections of the stalls for the necessity of discovery.
It amazes me how he can place me every time, but it's only small
things like that now that do. He does have one trick I don't know

so I have something to watch for every night. Every night everyone
assumes my dream come true, and in a way they're right.
I can't get enough of his beautiful face, his sleighting fingers.

I got into this game when sawing was all the rage, and have lost
my legs often enough. They always come back in the end.
Always. He can still surprise me with it sometimes.

The greasepaint, the dressing rooms, my name in lights:
all reasons I started and everything I am forced to ignore.
My face is an ever-changing carousel of normal smiles and blushes.

See if you can spot me, one day. My name is discrete.
I do not fiddle with padlocks and leotards. I am stooge and silent.
I often do not recognise myself.

Self portrait with spotty skirt

Thoughts on magic tricks

Stooge contemplates a law of physics

An accident of gravity, I am hovering above
stage planks in the Theatre Royal when
it dawns on me how long I have lain expressionless
for him. I have pored these hours over
recreational mathematics trying to figure it out;
the wonder for me is not in the floating but the falling.

Sometimes I drift off and my dreams are of waking
naked. I've learned to know these for what they are.
This act usually spells the end of something.
They say gravity is from a parallel dimension;
I dare not think what that might mean for me.

There's lots more I want to do to this so watch out for updates to it.

Lovers on a bench

We are gathered at the end
of the coffee shop that gets the most light
away from the fridge. We transfix our gaze
at pictures on the free WiFi
internet and smile at static smiling faces
of people we once knew
or feast our eyes on magazines
in primary colours selling brand new
mobile phones. We chat to friends
about mutual friends and breastfeeding
habits, clasping frantic air to ourselves,
or work our tongues around
caramel waffles and drink coffee while it's still
too hot to taste. We sound
out ideas on our phone and make
our conversations match our face
or tap our feet to jazz at just too fast a pace.

The windswept lovers sit on a bench away
outside sharing one large sweet latte.

Freshly brewed.

Fighting, maybe dancing.

Your breath in my mouth, just for a moment,
and that is how it starts. That and spinning.

We are close enough to count regrets, they say
we are dancing and clap along,
you say there's no driving before you've learnt how
and kick the air by my head for effect.
I'm on the floor, you say, nice try and aim
for my contortionist's feet. Skipping over you
my eyes are not off yours: what now I say
and you are weighting my silence, hovering
closer to the floor with every pass.

Cartwheels and broken noses do not do us justice but
are possibilities we don't mind from this position.
There are some who lose the will to clap along,
but, your leg over my head, all I see is your beard
and the lengths I've driven you to.

There is a capoeira poem brewing, I promise.

A girl wearing matching accessories adjusts her scarf knot in a car mirror

I often correct myself by wearing
things that purposefully do not match, have holes
at the cuffs or smell some. I test myself with headstands
that taught me tucked in shirts; by eating chicken feet
with no regard for leaving fowl nails in my teeth.

If you see me walking along the street, please don't ask
me to do the splits. I can do it, but the challenge to show you
there, with no regard for the bag I'm carrying or how
the damp will curl my hair, would be too much to resist.

Star & Shadow Cinema, Tomorrow, 7.30pm. Be there, or miss me reading.

Farmer's Market

A man sold me pork today, and sausages
with apples in. The poetic perfection would be pears,

of course, or figs. Whatever he said it made me
into a blundering fool: they are what they are

or I've had them for years. Expecting, him staring at my lips,
the pain question, what he actually said meant nothing

but it always comes back to this. I thanked him
and walked away, pig blood seeping through my bag.

A revisioning and clarification.

The Gifts

Here, for you, a long slow sky at first; a flight
for you into spectacle. Feel it open you up
like a thirst. Bring this morning to your snow-dead
untouched toes, to each body part slowly, on its own.

Take next the sliding acceptance of horseback,
the horse's own gait into your spine. It is my
gift to you. Use it to fend off the unwanted taste
of long-dead clouds, the rough lips of another.

You've shut your eyes by now, I can tell.
Feel the grave-walker bring you back
to life with a finger-tickle up your spine.
I'll count the hairs I've raised there one by one

whilst you escape the panic of a striptease
of feelings down to bone. Stay with me, I still
have a few things to offer. Ignore the voices
out of reach through the white noise; don't fish it

for the one you think you know. Let the sherbert
betray its own pastel colour and shiver your head out
of alone. There, you can speak now. I'm so pleased
to see you. There's still a lingering smell

of pine-damp picnics here for when you're ready:
I think you are. Eat of it until you're full;
don't stop until your glowing cheeks
match the colour of a shepherd's delight.

I got stung by a nettle the other day and it tingled for ages.

Fresh from Salsa.

My mother and her sister with their children, Scarborough 1990.

Not one of us was dressed for the summer wind,
all hippy skirts and billows with our hair caught in our mouths.
They weighted the blanket with their own selves
and secretly admired each others' body parts and underwear
revealed by mischievous gusts of sea wind.

We were genetic opposites, this cousin and I, and well aware
of our mothers' shame. In a moment of doubt
and faced with a rocky stream we remember as smooth,
we turned the distance from our mothers into an excuse
and tucked our skirts into our knickers. We got our whole selves
wet and squealed stopping just before the waterfall.

Walking up later, our dresses wet through, only the dog
was still carefree in the breeze, her fur parted at her flank
and flowing like fields of corn. Our mothers covered us
in towels with their own skirts firmly tied, and we ate eggs
looking out to the wind-tossed sea.

Intermezzo is back!

The position I'm in.

Making excuses for others is a full-time job
he takes on in his lunch break, his face turned
away as he lies. Each call is a delicate

intricacy between friends all over Newcastle
who will meet tonight and know because of him
too much, or not enough. I will go to where they sit—

a cat among city pigeons—point to every one and name
them and what they do; know who is not there
and the excuse she gave; declare the only truth in it's untrue.

Patrick Street

The Bouzouki's a little bit loud, Tom

You'd think there'd be a formula
for knowing these people in the street
but there is not. Instruments
get flashed here as currency
for seats more than for fun.

And why so still in a place like this?
It is a room of unmoving beige but the notes
are effortless from the stage. Tunes are forming
an orderly queue through my own fingers
who think they know it already.

What I want more than anything is this music.
This music, and the people all with their arms
high for the sheer tune of it and everyone
tapping so the band have to play
an inkling louder, instead, and turn it up.

I am an unreliable narrator.

Downpour

We are walking along a straight path,
you and I, though no end of it is visible
from the other. It goes to somewhere
you think I'll like, though we'll sit outside
for the dogs, the weather close
on our faces. We will feed the cold
to ourselves in white wine spritzers,
and the dogs will not settle on the planks
where they are expected, tied up, to lie.

For now, there is much to see
on either side, though I do not know
the species without hindsight.
There is nothing usual about us,
though we are just the same. There is rain
in the air but it hasn't reached us yet:
we are sceptical of it now but will soon think
we knew it was coming; blame each other
for not fearing darkening skies.

We pass the temporary landmarks
that we will count on later as proof
we are travelling homewards in the rain:
a goose trips into the water that will be standing
with dry feet, its wings spread wide; a tree
where we checked paws for thorns; an open
lock in the canal that will be closed. The dogs roam
ahead now but will stay close when damp sheep speak
through suddenly quiet hedges.

Guardian Poetry Workshop a-go-go

Hand-turned bowl

The conservatory is cold, he says. Too cold for hands
half there from the toil of years that have to manage
still to turn this wood. Once done it represents something
hard to grasp and is the perfect shape for that. It is felt-
bottomed and well finished; everything is true
about the shapes it makes between my own plump fingers.

Every other block of wood holds onto its potential
nut bowl, gathers dust to its damp in the spider-corners
of the conservatory. Each swells and cracks with
the progression of rain. It takes the expense
of an extractor fan to make this bowl the last.
It is stocky and smooth with my earrings in it.

The Tyneside Cinema is very grand now.

Three brass elephants

To me they were all the same elephant separated
only by age. Not for me then the collapsible
string theory of time but a basic acceptance
that things do not remain.

Each elephant's legs were scored with dirt in wrinkles
that got deeper with size. The heavy existence of each
in the Serengeti of the footstool eliminated the need
for the other two: except every need they had
was formed from generations waiting on the carpet.

A tragedy of theft, the three brass elephants
will not now be left to the children.
I entertain others' stories of them, but quietly reject
the porridge-bowl neatness of a family of diminishing size.

It is colder than it looks today.

In the morning

The pain of the night was recreated in sleep
that was deserved but hard to come by
after hours on my feet and four cans
of Red Bull. There was shagging at work
last night on the back stairs, and collecting
plastic glasses from the dancefloor
was as ever dicing with manhandling
from men not able to see the difference.
It is not a space that is hard to comprehend
but still it surprises me sometimes. Every step
I took was being replayed at 5am with every beat
of blood gushing vessels back to life
that had been forgotten in the rhythms
of Love Me Tender and Agadoo.

You slipped, though, gentle
from sleep and rubbed the life away back
into them with cooling hands, perched
at the end of the bed. Secret tears of mine
faded to sleep except for the crystals
now I wake. And my feet, oh my feet,
on pillows; your head on the bed.

The picture that everyone in Newcastle has a version of.

Alphabetty Spaghetti was great.

Here's a short one to wind down from the wonders of the poets I've just seen.

Luftballons

I only needed one balloon but
was cajoled by the German word for them
into a merriment of seven. I don’t know
where they think I'm going to put them,
except I like the way they make the world sound
when they're gathered round my ears and
I like the way they bring orange
to the faces of strangers and I like
the way they take sides in the wind.

I figured once I've finished running the streets
with them bobbing from my wrist,
I can suck the helium or set them free,
or let them deflate slowly in my front room,
undignified and baggy behind the giant TV.

Don't believe everything you read, 3.

A lesson in the Apparently Personal for you all.

Stammerer

I see her on her horse boldly golden in the Cyprus sun
riding the complex rhythms of speech in the sweating stride
of a canter and feel the marked absence of sun on my back

as we walk headlong towards each other; me going one way
you the same, then back again. These steps, for a moment,
seem like a way to make my point: that words just escape

before I'm ready sometimes, that they force their way
out of context. Meanwhile, in my constructed memories
of then, my mum is learning word games

she'll later play with me, coaxing consonants out of repetition
through repetition, chasing red lorries and thicket thrushes.
I never wondered before where she learnt so many,

never caught the smile saved for my own miraculous speech.
My first radiator, delicate and confident, would never have betrayed
its intentions back then, when every word was meaningless and free.

Uh-oh

On your own again.

They're closing the Guardian Soulmates site tonight,
so gather up all your faces and save them elsewhere.

No longer are your preferences important, no longer
will anyone be able to tell if you're interested in men,

women or friendship; whether you prefer the carrot
or the stick. Since when did you have to choose anyway?

All the love you thought you'd find is being released
from the words on the page; finding piercings attractive

is back to a personal quirk, a penchant for erotica
left again to late adventures under covers

in the dark. Your eye colour won't be narrowed any more
to blue or green, but can remain comfortably

in between. And your preference for Greek cuisine
will be revealed only after he's discovered for himself

that you're curvaceous by putting his hand around your waist,
and that your favourite sort of film is really whatever

he wants to watch that makes his face light up like that
so you can fall in love all over again each time it does.

So pack up all your faces and save them away out of sight;
keep your TV habits and retirement plans close to your chest.

Save conversation for conversations and let yourself do the talking
until it's light. They're closing the Guardian dating site tonight.

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.

You heard it here first.

The Expense

The bowels of Haymarket Metro station are finished tonight
or so I overhear from three middle-aged men in linen suits,
one of whom has an accent that hides behind his tidy moustache.

All three have immaculate tans or cultivated sunburn lines
and can afford never to have set foot in the earth themselves,
expensive as the sun is. It would explain a lot

if it was done. I've been hearing rumblings for a while now,
have felt Newcastle waking up and learning how to breathe
out the flapping glory-lists of fare dodgers.

Pictures of these tunnels have passed through all of these
men's hands. The men rise to their well-brogued feet
to compare ideas and mention landmarks like Top Trumps cards.

I make myself remember walking the length of every bridge
they name, admiring each bolt for its semblance of permanence;
waiting for the brisk Tyne wind to shake every one out of place.

It's a lovely place to be in the sunshine.

A little boy takes his red tricycle to the top of the hill and sets off down it

And past the smell of dog pooh and evening picnics
in the clouding light the whole park applauds. Someone
even whoops when he pushes his steed back up.

His trousers have fallen down with the effort; other boys
are trying their luck on four wheels or two, taking refuge
from speed halfway on the grass or stopping altogether.

Four times he soaks the claps until on the fifth,
right at the bottom, he wobbles and falls.
The sky is suddenly full of balls and quiet

conversations between friends, just as it will be
later when he returns with his ride to the top
holding hands with a girl in a yellow patterned dress.

Jumbly goodness, and an exercise in monologues.

Thanks to Daljit Nagra and the Guardian Poetry Workshop for this exercise.

At St Teresa's on a morning, doors just open.

It's the jumble sale, love, it brings it out
of people. You know what I mean, the money,
the tat. People are willing to pay anything
for that. And who knew Flo still had matching
Wedgwood sideplates? Her dementia, see,
she hasn't a clue what Bert's taken and sold
for the church—well, for all of us dear, who come here.

Even those dirty baby clothes are hers, duck,
can you imagine? Whatever would she want
those for, still, but for memories she can't hold
on to? Who knows whose they were exactly,
except Bert of course, but they're part of the smell
that's forming. Well yes, that's what I think:
there's nothing like that smell but a jumble sale, love.

Did you say you were thinking of the lettuce spinner,
dear? That was Flo's, too, you know, but Bert, bless
his soul, doesn't use it any more for all those
microwave meals. Even these vinyl discs – 50p each –
even these were Flo's. Can you picture it, pet? Her rocking
out to Whitesnake on a Tuesday afternoon? Bert tells me
Def Leppard is very rhythmic. I didn't like to ask what for, duck.
He had that look in his eye that all the young girls complain about.

No we don't have any cakes this year, pet, I'm afraid.
That was always Flo's department. Poor Bert hasn't any idea
what to do with all the sugar and baking things. He says
all he can remember are the times after she'd finished
and would put The Carpenters on, dancing round flowery buns
and silver balls, singing while she cleaned. Fat lot of good
that's done him, eh? Someone's already bought The Carpenters
I'm afraid, but those you've got there will be £2 please.

I wouldn't get the lettuce-spinner either, dear,
you never know what a sort like Bert's put in it since.
I'll send her your regards for the ACDC, yes.
Not that she'll remember, duck, but yes, I'll let her know.

Don't believe everything you read, 2.

UPDATE: after a lot of fiddling, and some feedback:

At the sink, with La Traviata on the radio

It would be annoying at first, this commandeering. It meant tuts
and elbow dodging for a glass of water; that filling the kettle
was unfeasible for hours. Even she went without for the time it took.
This was an uncommon ritual, a cleansing of pens neglected
from long hours of drawing even the most basic of figures sitting, perhaps,
or bending. It took as long as the notes of opera and was put off each time
for longer, but tempting her back to the page only took a suggestion
of waterproof ink, a well-placed question about the pens or the terracotta
pot they stood in, as still and silent as art. She'd used them before, of course;
the ink was always suspended mid-thought and dried in the trappings of nib
and well. This too would succumb to the gentle swooshing in hand-warm water
where she'd bathed me once too, small as I was then. The sink would deepen
to lichen green or summer blue. Only the red would stain her wrinkling palms
as the stubborn brown gave way to those gentle hands rocking
back and forth in a humming of arias.

-------


At the sink, with La Traviata on the radio

It would be annoying at first,
this commandeering. It meant
tuts and elbow dodging for a glass
of water; that filling the kettle
was an unfeasibility for hours.

Even she went without for the time
it took, this ritual cleansing of pens,
neglected from long hours of drawing
even the most basic of figures just
sitting, perhaps, or bending. Tempting

her back to art only took a subtle buying
of waterproof ink, a question about
the pens or the pot they stood in.
She'd used them before, of course,
the ink was always suspended

mid-thought and dried in the trappings of nib
and well; but even this would succumb
to the gentle swooshing in hand-warm
water where she'd bathed me, once,
small as I was then. The sink would turn

a deepening shade of lichen green or summer
blue. Only the red would stain her palms
from the last of the pens as the stubborn
brown gave way to those gentle hands rocking
back and forth in a humming of arias.

You know who you are.

A few years on

I am simultaneously with and without
the possibility of you here, such is the nature
of mobile phone technology and our relationship

now. Despite all the time we spent touching all
we have to show is the indelible mark of birthdays
on the years. Perhaps I'll need you for memories

of my mother. I'll parade you in front of my children,
along with all the others, and there you'll be: an engineer
among cinema-goers, a cyclist among dancers, a doctor

among doctors and you'll say her hair was the colour of blood
oranges; she was all at once breathtaking, never scrimped
on wine and she cooked the meanest Tarte Tatin I ever tasted.

I heard something in a cafe today which made me write this

And you don't want to see me every day in case it spoils it

The first time I caught you with your eyes closed
watching your favourite programme there was something
about the way you were sitting, almost startled, which made
me ask. You told me it was some sort of compromise

for the time its possible to waste in front of the TV screen,
wearing your eyes out needlessly and shortening their life
inside your head. I didn't ask, then, any more of your
explanation but I've often wondered if it works. I test it

especially at work, but find it difficult to stave off sleep
without a particular strength of coffee first. I wonder now
whether it works for other things, and often stop myself
from seeing you at all, in case what we have runs out

before its time, before we're old enough to pluck each others'
out-of-reach grey hairs. It's too easy to sneak a peek for all
your stoicism on the sofa. Sometimes I catch you blinking
back the sight of characters who've aged consistently without you.

Mostly, though, I watch your closed-eyes vigil with my own eyes
open, wearing them out on you and your quiet, secret, snoozing.

And here is Sandra. This may be the last in the sequence for a while as she's scared me off.

The Black Clock Arms

V.

Sandra feels the territory of The Black
Clock Arms as clearly as her own home
marked out in B&Q fences, except here
it's harder to define, and easier to fight for.

Her white tracksuit betrays more than just
the blood of her rivals, and she'd wear
the clumps of hair in her fists if only she could
clutch a vodka simultaneously. She is scared

of other pubs, of the trouble that is only ever
conducted outside, but would never admit that.
She has been coming here since Dan's
star-turn was the up-and-coming Spice Girls.

She's seen it all but is never asked for an opinion;
she has none except what's fought with fists and hair.

I started a brand new notebook today.

Where before there were birds

While you wondered how many times someone's
thrown a pair up only to get more than they bargained

for, I teetered on the edge of a fallen rock to get my angle
on the picture that everyone has. The sky was white

but somewhere up there, uncaptured against it,
was a first shoe, or a last: you'd run a sunny marathon

in yours long lost to the bleaching rain. I saw the multitude
of dances playing out to the wind, and wondered if someone

was still going round creating shoe trees to declare again
their potential. In Shieldfield shoes have begun to take flight

of their own accord, their owners taking to walking firmly past
lest their feet lose control and rush up to the branches,

creating meaning where before there was none but birds.

Bank holiday weekends are good inventions.

The Black Clock Arms

IV.

Babs knows she's only there as the inevitable
namesake and revels in the attention lavished

on her by the rough old queens: it's all natural,
duckie! ringing sharp through the karaoke notes

night after night. She flashes her puce nails and works
there on the basis that she only pulls pints. She enjoys

the power she has in the hour before opening,
and exerts it mostly over Karen. The mop

slopping is only pleasing when it's outside and she has time
and pride to herself to shine the plastic pulling handles.

She is wary of newcomers, who see through the rouge
with a clarity not befitting the dim strip-lighting; prefers instead

the company of the regular strangers, who don't even see her face
any more, but who never fail to compliment her immaculate nails.

I got up at 3am this morning.

I am Sylvia atricapilla in the half-light

As varied as birdlife we appear to each other
here. The contrast between us is as hard to detect
as bat-calls but eyes are on the silhouetted branches
for the moment anyway. A squeaky tit or the sub-song
of a chiffchaff are all we need in these moments
for mirth, poised as we are for the details.

Straight from sleep we appear changed. It doesn't take much
to know each other: we swap animal tales and sheep-worrying,
all ready to admit we're not mushroom people but would love
to see a dog stinkhorn; that we're not into sea birds but have
a shine in our eyes for the pair of lesser black-backed
gulls alighting in unison on the lake. There is time, later,

to contemplate the others' unknowing bird affinities.
I want to be a starling all balls and cheek and karaoke car-alarm,
but in the cool of the pre-day we've created I feel closer
to the gurgling blackcap and its quiet variety, its lack of depth.

Meet Geoff. He's my favourite so far.

The Black Clock Arms

III.

Geoff's shined velvet seat, black with polished
dirt, cools in the almost-night Black Clock Arms
now, but he feels the sun out here. He'd lost touch
with the flesh of himself until it started to brown.

He sits several feet from the people he recognises
but can't place the names of; their stories aren't enough
out here in the light. His pint and his arse reach a unison
of temperature: one warming on the bar, the other

cooling on a bollard, while he realises how little
he cares about the barstool now the only place
he's allowed to chain smoke is here. The only thing
really missing is a place for the smaller papers, spread
open and every sentence read and repeated over again
to kill the time he dreads and has more of now to himself.

More sequence.

The Black Clock Arms

II.

Karen takes a dirty rag-mop to the front of the Black
Clock Arms before opening: the extra half an hour she
has to work now is enough to kill her, what with her back
and knees giving her jip, but she does it anyway.

There is a slop and trickle every half metre for the kicked
up rain and boot prints. She doesn't bother scouring the dimples
in the paintwork, and almost thinks how strange it is to have
pride about this sort of work; but she does it anyway.

The punters queue a full twenty minutes before opening
and they all have the pain of sleep in their hair and cardigans.
Karen takes her rag-mop to the front of the Black Clock Arms

around them and hardly thinks these things before she's back
staring into pint after pint of mop-bucket beer, listening for rain
and fights and readying herself for tomorrow's dirty walls.