Northumberland: land of wonder!

Portrait of a hedge as stag head

Northumberland, land of the thundercloud farm.

A tyre, a bumper, a shoe

Even though each object curbs speculation,
when we find a shoe stuck in mud
under a barbed-wire fence it doesn't take long
for theories, like footsteps, to settle. Especially in the presence
of a thunder-cloud farm, and storms escaping
from the very ground we walk on. And those horses
who wear leg-warmers and bristle our outstretched hands;
and that bridge only fastened at one distant end;
and those questions that ask themselves over again;
and those donkeys whose feet look like Persian slippers
that we swear we'll report when we get home
just in time for a nap, for a pizza, for the dark
to settle round the car like sleep.

Tosca does strange things to a girl.

The hairs on the back of my neck will not lie flat

I forget myself and am in love.
That rare feeling that creeps up spines
on the words or first touch of a lover, here
captured by voice. I am surrounded

by scrolls and interval theorising
but the hairs on the back of my neck will not lie flat.
I want for better positioning but it is rare
to afford it. From up here I can see

exquisite dust in the folds of velvet curtains.

Edited, sent somewhere.

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. I stand
for long minutes trying to open my open eyes;
trying shut eyes, blinking ones; trying
rubbing eyes, slowly.

I raise my hands to where I should see them,
seek cracks in curtains that have been there
for nights and days. I am obsessed with how
I have lost sight of my own eyelids that blink
and blink against the dark.

And so it happens: I wonder
what has happened to my window
to everyone else to the sun to the universe
I have never looked upon enough?

An amalgamation of experience doesn't necessarily = truth.

Orange

I shield my eyes in the attic room from clouds
that are plastered with sun. I am in half-sleep
and just-yellow trees are meaningful but not yet
beautiful. I have lost perspective, turned
into the smallest amidst the experience of children.

Later, I feel naughty at the bar; drinking coffee;
at the metal-detector entrance of a county court;
waiting in an interview room painted
in the colours of the sea. Size is relative,

it seems to me, but I only know that now
after seeing what I did: at midnight,
a single orange underneath a parked car
in the rain; its orangeness lit by headlights
one way, by brake lights another.

From an outing.

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.

Thanks, George.

Lost

I am small. And you would think
that this means lots of things

I am not about to name. But truly
there was perspective missing

that I find corrected now.
I know precisely where I am, but

have no idea how far I am from home;
or even whether home is home
from down here.

Train journeys... are mostly ace.

Six hours and it is dark outside.

I am in a predictable fug of orange,
though not Strongbow twitchy
like the chap next to me, and

I would like to say that here
there are shadows of us, following.
But it is without light-source, and context,

that I sit feigning knowledge
of the next stations, waiting
in my purple coat, like everyone here,

for the next stop in light from every direction.
There is only reflection here
and I am in it just like everyone else.

Crackley pop.

This day has been historic. But also; firewooks! Woo!

A telling-off

Sourfaced, even the firework-light
is not enough to brighten her. But
they bang even louder this happy day,
this historic day, and whether she stops
our sparklers or not the sky reflects
the green like colour means something.
It is the mist, they'll say in later years,
that makes them vivid like that.

But colour means something today, and
even the pink of the sparkling showers
is enough to make you dizzy with it.

Already?

After-hours at the Fenwick christmas window.

They are not puppeteers but still
they control where we look. Stringless
we are manhandled.

We only tell a small part in a tale; rock
back and back, smile on an oversized
bridge, chase an ill-proportioned mouse around a lamp.

They are trying not to be seen here;
they wear black, and black shoes.
They do not look at you who looks at them.

Partiality.

An absence of counterpart

I have cleaned for you
the whole weekend
when you were not even here

to see it. Now crumbs
have settled on the surfaces
you could've licked pink yoghurt from

and a whole life in Mariokart
and snoozes has happened
to the front room.

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?

Vultures.

A contrasting experience of vultures divides us

It is for me the breath of almost-touch
peculiar to feathers; you describe burning and blood.

They are stooping grey greatness, magnificent,
and yellow desert is a given; desert with an edge
of captivity. I have a panic-lack
of photograph, though there was a camera poised.
My memory does not contend with experience
and the darkness of beating wings around your head.

It is for me the breath of almost-touch peculiar
to feathers; you describe the talons in your back.

Happy Hallowe'en.... and 202!

All Hallow's

It is the bloodcurdling scream that comes after a knock on next door
that makes me realise how context changes everything; and just how sweet
fake blood is always surprises me. Three layers of latex and a hole picked in it,

some maroon nail varnish, or syrup with red, coffee and a drop of green.
The verb zombify, or clothes torn anywhere but the seams. The obvious disdain
at obvious costumes and sudden admiration for two-faced makeup and a real-life raven.

All of these things make me decide on a costume I've already worn once,
with a concentration on blue and lack of fangs. Though it would be cool,
to have temporary fangs like that. To pretend to sap sugary blood.

Oh me oh my.

When the birds squawk

It is much as when a fire alarm goes off
at 4am and you're standing outside
in your pyjamas and a coat and you can only
dance along. It is amusing at first
until the deaths begin; waving tragedies.

The world is not a controllable beast
much as these birds will not shut up
because it is your morning.
When the squawking takes over the sky
there is little to do but shut up, or sing along.

Excellent words, this stems from, though only two appear.

Words, opinions

And we begin to draw up an inventory of all things excellent
in newspaper margins. It could be anything, really,

a collection like this, but we resort to making it up.
It turns out we can't decide what was true

and what was not. Suggestions fly.
There is always awry, or meticulous. Someone

thinks of the longest word but we do not write it down.
It is hard, when it comes to it, to think of things to say.

It was mine first.

Where there is no door

I think I am awake but the logic
of how I got in escapes me. Perhaps
this is one of those moments of wakefulness

that eludes wakefulness, the time of day
as irrelevant as what I'm not wearing. Either way
it takes time to locate the lightswitch and

feel my way across the floor. I can't remember
where I left myself, or my shoes, and dread
the trip that reveals them, but no.

It is the door I miss the most; its easy use
and reliability. I check for the logic of it,
but find the whole room wanting

in no other way but this: escape.

An exercise plucked from nowhere, and somewhere,

Stannington Place

It was a green as spinach day
the day I meant to tell you.

Your hair was sprawling and
the toaster had just popped.

We could always see the street name
but today it loomed large

from the kitchen window.
Something stopped me. Perhaps

it was the butter
I was just about to spread

or the clash of colours
I was dressed in all of a sudden

coming clear in the sun. It had risen
earlier, but I only just noticed it then.

Hmm, not sure.

You have sent me a postcard of you as goodbye.

Something tells me this, but it isn't you
who stares placidly. I can only see your contours
and nothing of your colour.

You are younger than I remember, with your arms like that.
Perfect. It's been a long time
since I touched you; but you know that of course.

You are not looking at the camera, or me. I note this
as an exercise in delivery and take heart
that the stranger is a woman which goes to either
prove or disprove a point. The t-shirt you're lifting
is one I bought you. That memory must stay now
as I am; an exorcise in black and white postcards.

They have long ceased to be me.

Self portrait as an object of thought

Yes, I am
pretty, but only because you say so. I may be
fat instead, but why should it be either? I am

this, and that. I am next door and moons away.
I have hair like that one off the telly, I am mean
with my smiles, but only for you. I am a tease,
half-dressed, on my way, at the end of a long

long night. I am good at it, but rubbish
at what I should be doing. And now I am changed,
but how would you know

from over there?

Oh, Frank!

Slightly late, My apologies.

You wonder where he got to, with a bollock like that

The memory you have is of its outline on the chalkboard
in your form class at school. But I remember the hilarity
for you; how he pulled his trousers down, weighing one
against the other with sweaty hands; finding one wanting.

There was a darker side, of course, how everyone turned
their heads and kept shtum when the teacher came in,
his head framed, when sitting, by the shaky chalked line.
No-one embellished the picture with wiry hairs, or legs.

No-one suggested a visit to the doctor, assumed
it was under control. But where is he now, with a bollock like that?
How long has it been, for the swelling to fade?

Edited version, sent somewhere...

My mother and her sister watch 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,
secretly admiring body parts and underwear
in sudden flashes of sea wind.

We were genetic opposites, this cousin and I, and well aware
of our mothers' shame. In a moment of doubt
we turned the distance from our mothers into an excuse
and tucked our skirts into our knickers. We got our whole selves
wet in a rocky stream-slide, stopping just before the waterfall each time.

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

Oh Frank.

You were right there

The night was something to remember
if only for the lights, colourful and on our faces
like emotion, unbridled and clear. I tried

to take pictures but the red light left us blurry
and the purple too dark. And you were
right there, but far enough away to be elsewhere:

smiling but not for us. We could touch you
but you never stayed still. The lights

lit you up and they kept shining until sweat
was everywhere and every word spent.

Another poem from another city.

The Golden Fleece

Drinking coke in the oldest and most haunted pub in the city
we sweat in the heat of over-compensation and await the chill

which does not come. And even when the quiet fades to quieter
whilst we sip through lime and ice, other people's attempts at fright

are not enough for fear. It is all far enough away
that we do not plan a return for psychic evenings and ouija boards,

though the myths and scratched black illustrations on the walls
resemble stories we have told in the dark.

On contemplating colour.

Your Facts of Bracken

Smothered, I see the mountains now
enduring coolly; occasional sheep do not eat it
but gather ticks from it into their ears.
It glows russet, casting its death already at the height
of summer: comes back green, like I do, year after year.

And you have recast Scotland for me,
where carcinogens become the only colours
I remember, the only texture of countless walks;
walks that now, I find, I can't recall.

A poem from another city.

Hoovering

Someone has to do it, but only she proves the rule
in her striplit first-floor office with a perfect view
of York Minster. She wears a navy pinny, does not glance
up, avoids the window and contemplation.

Or perhaps she has had her fill of the history
that must follow on from this; she is more in awe
of the technology for suction than the brick on brick
that brought God to such a city. I think I caught her once
sweeping the wide stone floors inside, walking backwards,
her navy pinny next to lime green and golden robes. I looked again,
and though the floor was clean, she'd left no trace.

giggidy giggidy

drumming

I've been far too busy.

Environment conscious, my rubbish is sorted by strangers.

A man in a fluorescent coat sifts through as we pull away
and half my life is spread out on the skip edge; the chef

puppet I used to not play with catches the breeze in his hair,
the Don't Be a Mug mug cracks as it's thrown in with the ceramics.

I am not sad, but there's something about the way they smile,
these men, as they pick up each thing and consider it

for itself. Half my life, context-free, and all I can see are the reasons
diminishing through the wing-mirror with an echo of hilarity

over the sand-filled lizards I used to weigh things down with.

Good gig, good gig.

Errant knee

Sometimes it's all it takes to express a moment;
your knee is unconstrained and wild. It aims high,

and gets there. It gets us there, in time and
distraction free. It is the only part of you that is the music

though the rest of you creates it. You are nice,
on the whole, but your knee demands otherwise:

sharp, sexy, in control. But you are nice, and your knee
is just a means to a beat; and errant.

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.

Scarborough Harbour

Blame the wine.

Viewpoint

You have had me about as much
as you've had this view, and in as many ways.
There is only one viewpoint but we
have never been there together,
and there was no-one watching when it came to us
I think. I remember you here
as I gaze out, flowers behind
and mist in front. Two facts that obscure
the truth of it.

Do you remember, too?

Rag & Bone

There's a time I would rush
from the other side of the house
just to see the horse walk past,
blinkered and dusted with graft.
I envied the boy, dressed in shorts
and a white shirt, riding up front
with his legs dangling as cars shined past.
I envy him now, as I'm sure he does
his past, for I haven't seen a team like that
in as many years as I can think.
The rags, the bones, gained worth
and the pony's services too risky
in the cloying fumes of summer.
I would find something for them, now,
if I were to hear their holler.
I would offer my own bones, perhaps, as something
they could try and sell for profit
from the back of the wagon.

gah.

Every time I turn my back on myself

I have gone and changed state again.
Something is tense and now
something else saggy. I have lost all sense
in my posture and my toes are bent.
My fingers know more about typing without me.
My hair is all curls
and in my face, but before long
greases again. I am relaxed but my arms
are too floopy, my chin to my chest.
Even my shoulders are all wrong, at once
a definition and structure of self.
Every time I turn my back on myself
I am changed. It is all in the showmanship.

I'm in Scarborough and it's windy.

Seafront regeneration

It has worked; sandstone
emulates beach that we aren't walking on
and the benches look like boats.
Treat yoursel' love suggests a man
with little tubs of fish on offer,
before he sees the greasy paper bag I carry,
with a 60p donut cooling in it.

A man with a walking stick has icecream
smeared all over his top lip. Further up,
on the harbour wall, a woman lies in the recovery position
on decorative gravel that emulates pebbles.
The distant Fantasy Forest plays us four types of music
to ignore her by. Her friends
seem calm. The ambulance is silent both ways.

Someone else.

Portrait of a train-rider in coversation

And soon scabs will form
on his right-hand, and the conversation
he isn't having with me will
stop. He isn't bleeding
at the moment but his palm is swollen.
He tells some other traveller
of his daughter and no worries there
and it could be me, except this dad
has his eye on his bike. This dad
is not invincible when it comes to fine rubble
and a corner. This dad was fascinated
by utility vehicles set on checking
telegraph poles, when he should
have been looking at the road.
He had forgotten about his hand, but now
he tries to use it for his coffee
he is reminded.

Yes. It's still interesting. To me, anyway...

By the time I return

I am not me and before long
I am gone again. The nights are longer
and they take their toll, even
when the sun is bright and my cheeks
take the brunt of it.

Idyll is unattainable, but respite
is not. I leave the dust to its gathering
again, but without my skin to form it,
what will it be? The gathered storms
of housemates; even my own dust is not me.

Before long, the smell of something else
will be where I was, and my clothes
will not fit. I am not above growth.
I carry something with me that is changeable.
Perhaps it will deliver me from where I've gone.

Portraiture is interesting. Are they really me?

Self portrait taken from a mobile phone

There is nothing of me here: only
response and request; times and places;
an odd draft of something, long out of date.

I do not keep everything I should; you
are long lost, even that photograph of us with
the Tyne bridges glowing. It is years old now. And gone.

Anything here is loose in its understanding.
I do not keep sent messages, only those
received. I am blameless, and absent;

a bundle of thoughts towards me
that almost converge, except meaning
is lost. Ah, but there, see? A photo, of me in red.

I am trying to find my way from a field to
somewhere. I don't recall where from,
or my escape.

Self portrait from a different angle.

Self portrait in Legends's toilets

For ignoring someone once I find myself
reflected in their makeup here. My skin creeps
to meet my eyes; they are hollowed and smudged
black. They see me harder looking back, meet
my surprise with sheer disdain. I understand.

I wait for a cubicle, lock the door and force my mouth
fish-open with a long silent laugh, ugly and grudging.
Mirrors are not on me here. I keep my trousers
out of the piss on the floor, watch party-boa feathers
swimming in it. I hold my pants, and laugh.

My reflection disappears as my composure
settles. Too soon I am dancing again. Pink
feathers fly from my feet and clipped explanations
from my smudged-out eyes. I have left
everything somewhere, and somewhere it laughs.

Portrait of a holiday

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.

It was always imminent.

There are no mountains here.

Except I build them myself and drive them
down from the sky. Everything has turned

in the time it's taken to return and hat weather
has begun. I have unpacked, it was

the first thing I did without you. I have washed
everything I own, removed the dust of my absence,

cleared my inbox. And so the lists
begin: to do, urgent, remember. I have torn up

any hope I had about forgetting. I forgot – I
always do – and yet survived, only pennies poorer.

I is back.

Whisky-dead moth smear.

A rediscovery..but I'm still not here.

Thought I'd lost this forever.





in absentia

Still not here.

A young boy chasing gulls and other birds

A distant woman winces at every step, a test
of the muscles she made unknowing

which grow and develop a memory
of stairs right before her eyes. These

are treacherous times and the oystercatchers
know it, fleeing his golden curls

with pupeep-pupeeps; and the gulls know it,
in and out of flight as easy as the concrete

steps will be for him in years to come.


in absentia

Things I'm missing: IV

in absentia

Things I'm missing: III

in absentia

Things I'm missing: II

in absentia

Things I'm missing: I

in absentia

Yes, yes I am.

I am absent

There is blank space, an empty bed.
No toast toasted in the mornings. My heart

does not beat here, but is mellow
wherever you find it. My toothbrush
has been removed, my lights are off,

my washing awaits its watery spin alone.
I have left mostly everything, including you.


in absentia

I am packing now.

…and so away

is a state I am unused to, find myself
preparing for the worst and forgetting
that it could be best; forgetting everything
essential to the task. Packing is lists

and compliance in place of sense;
putting off fixing until a return of sorts
becomes imminent. There are things to miss
but they are few, and memories that fit

into pockets. I stuff some bathroom into bags
and hope for the car's room on motorways
though we are not going far. I listen
to music that could help; or it could hinder.

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.

Portrait

Musical feet.

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.

roadworks

Coming of age

It's the hole in the road that does it,
makes him test the ground at rest.
It seems firm but no longer can he know

the impact of his weight or the weight
of the sky. He clings to the fence that holds
him back from falling in; anything,

he thinks, to make this day something
more. A revelation like this, though,
takes time to settle. It will be years

before he remembers the fury of his own
ignorance; how he cast it off with the tethers
which no longer held sway tied to anything

upon the movable earth.

They did, it's true.

My parents taught me the word procrastination pretty early on

It is late and the cold is creeping
past my pyjamas and the shipping forecast
is on its way through Sailing By and
I am trying to think of excuses.

It is late and I am told again what I am listening to
while I listen to the one-note whine
of my old laptop and
tick off to-dos.

It is later than I think and my eyes
are telling me what my immune system
already knows: too many
late nights.

It isn't stopping, this clock, and still
I have things to do and time
to waste thinking
of reasons not to.

a lesson in composure

Self expression

It was not her hair but still
something about the choice
conveyed a sadness
that was more than a wig.

Her coat was buttoned up
to her chin, and fell
to her knees, past a skirt
or something unseen.

The shoes she walked in
were built for strides,
not steps, but all
she managed were baby ones.

Mascara did not run
down her cheeks though
it was raining quite hard
and she wore it openly.

She looked straight
into my face, and told me
something with an expression
hidden by each of these things.

Some Salsa editing.

A woman counts alone in flat 33.

We have exhausted all the usual explanations.
Too fast for days, hours, minutes, it is not time
she measures except in her own ageing face, bleating
numbers back at her in the dark mirrored window.

There is no click-click of an abacus, but what abacus
could fence this in? How does her mind remain on track?
Maybe she's the world's swearbox, earning millions while
we speak carelessly on. It has become a lambswool comfort,

slowly humming numbers. We can all detect the change
in tone when she reaches a significance. It could be
a quest for infinity, or that we have all been allocated
a number in her scheme. We do remember

a time when she wasn't counting. We do not like to think of her
in a version of hell, that she's ticking, unable to stop.
We sleep now but notes of panic are rising. Sometimes in my dreams
I see her counting the end rather than the beginning,

forging her own kind of immortality by denying us ours. Is this all
Death would do? I have my suspicions. I think she is obsessed
but not possessed; that she adds one onto the last onto that
and cannot stop. Even her dreams, I'm sure, count for her

when she can sleep. I bet she wakes with a new
beginning, carries on through toast: One onto the last onto that.

The Imperative, 2.

Cry in the Street.

Turn away from any friends you might have
or run towards them. Overemphasise the dramatic

version, but do not wail. If you wear glasses,
remove them. Refuse all help;

demand a taxi home. State your intention.
Do not let them get away with it. Or

let the tears fall and walk home
briskly, head held high. Either way.

The Imperative.

Plait her hair.

Each hair you touch will tug her scalp
and cause a chain reaction reaching
to her toes. It will be longer than you think,
and softer. The smell will stay on your fingers;
accents of Essences, hibiscus and peach.

She wants to look like a sister
from Pride & Prejudice – make it happen
but only by the third arrangement. Fasten
and unfasten until then. Three styles for love,
three for care. Three for the touch of another.

Salsatastic...

Portrait in a series of moments

She eats a plum: it is easy because
they are in season. The string of the flesh
gets stuck in her front teeth, but that always
happens. She waits until she gets
to a mirror before picking it out.

When she mixes paint, she only uses
one brush and aims for shades that don't
necessarily work with orange. They usually
come out brown, but she doesn't worry
because she likes brown anyway.

Applying mascara, she uses even, curving
strokes to accentuate her lashes.
She doesn't mind if it isn't black, or that the tears
will wash it away later. She doesn't count
the hairs, but clumps them.

In the shop she chooses a yellow umbrella
because of the grey day it will be used for.
It cheers her face. She opens all of them inside
the shop first; affirms her lack of superstition
by fretting other peoples' into leaving.

She slams a door, gets it out. Only once,
and with no preamble. It feels good
but seems lacking after Albert Square's.
She does not look a fool by going back
for seconds. She answers no questions.

For Tracey, 3

The Return

Sashaying home it is the sugar
from the homebrew that has filled you
up with glee, you think. It is glee

that will last you another twelve hours
but you don't know that yet, and test
each street for its home-feel, settling

on two before the numbers don't add up.
Your sashay has turned to sway before
you realise you are home, finally, and we

are waiting, so pleased to see you
smiling in a way that says it'll last.

Sunshine? Eh?

Aftermath of adverse weather conditions, III

We are all dressed for it, now, see downpour
in every cloud that lopes across the sky.

Today is weather enough to leave your umbrella
and forget you ever had it with you, no matter

how appreciative of its colour you are. Still,
we sceptically eat outside, with heaters angled at us

under a tent without sides and cross our fingers,
sweating over tapas in our wintering clothes.

I return from an evening of poetry to break your heart.

Just me and thee.

It takes me to add and everyone else,
except it is all about what we don't have
and have lost.

The radio is staple because they talk
of abstract things that remain
unimportant and we all pretend

we are listening to music and radio plays
instead of thinking
about an unknowable end.

It is cold, but I do not remember that
until later. It is only the wet of things
that is normal for a while:

your jumper; her coat; my pillow;
endless tissues. My eyelashes,
gathered and dark.

Nigella Bites.

Italian Syllabub

Your wrist was whisk-loose
from the whole tub of double cream and
there was far too much glee when it came
down to it, with regards to the Amaretto.
I would've preferred the crunchy biscuits
but the soft ones will do. I heard you
making up another fact about the syllabub
just so you could say it again: syllabub;
with an ending like an kiss.

mmhmm.

Aftermath of adverse weather conditions, II

The only water that hasn't made it to here
is the stuff we have caught in tubs
in the bathroom. All of the sky has fallen
only to be muddied and gushing, carrying
itself with itself in a roar of acceleration.
It is this water that killed you, then,
and this water that saved you in the end.
The sound of it fills me to powerlessness;
despite towels and sandbags and plastic bowls
we are unable to hold onto ourselves.

Perhaps a sequence brewing. We shall see.

Aftermath of adverse weather conditions, I

The conkers have been rained off
their branches. They remain
unclaimed. I pick one up; its spikes
are soft. I place it beneath my foot
and bear down. The muddy shell
splits to reveal two conkers, naked
and uncooked, still attached
to their umbilical cords. I collected them
years ago, treasured the conker brown.
I never could let them go; even when
they shrivelled and left only memory of
my own face in them; leather-brown
and beaming. I toss the raw conkers down
with the others I hadn't noticed
until now: a graveyard of the milk-white
unborn. A feeding ground.

Our lights have been rained off.

cooking by candlelight

Living in a tower block.

A woman counts alone in flat 33.

We have exhausted all the usual explanations:
it goes too fast for days, hours, minutes; too slow
to be seconds. It is not time she measures, except
for the lines on her face. We assume that, as none of us
have seen her outside of what we dream at night.

Perhaps she is counting her lucky stars; or her chickens;
she must have many, all hatched. There is no click-click
of an abacus, but what abacus could hold these numbers?
How does her mind remain on track? Maybe she's
the world's swearbox, slowly earning millions while we
speak carelessly on. It has become a comfort now,

slowly humming numbers. We can all detect the change
in tone when she reaches a landmark. It could be
a quest for infinity, or that we have all been allocated
a number in her scheme. We do remember a time
when she wasn't counting. We do not like to think of her
in a version of hell, that she's ticking, unable to stop. We sleep

now but notes of panic are rising. Sometimes in my dreams
I see her counting the end rather than the beginning, forging
her own kind of immortality by denying us ours. Is this all
Death would do? I have my suspicions. I think she is obsessed
but not possessed; that she adds one onto one onto one
and cannot stop. Even her dreams, I'm sure, count for her
when she can sleep. I bet she wakes with a new
beginning, carries on. One onto one onto one.

Uh-oh

A sudden inability to navigate in my everyday life.

Blame my empty wheel-expectant hands.
No-one responds to threats
out here and I cannot force you off
the path. I do not know how it is
we are supposed to overtake except
to force retreat. At least I cannot be
shrunk out of contention and actual
oblivion does not lurk beyond the curb.

The blame lies with no-one, or someone.

Accountability

You insist it was your fault – a mistaken docility
meant laying your own face open
to the kind of teeth that shred on impact.

I know a man who has recast his life
so that everything is reversed: whole
swathes of time and imagination gone.

I am not so sure about you. I consider pictures
of your steri-strip trust as it dawns on me
that blame is not a mantle you can claim like that.

He did not bludgeon you, or me, but
by association this is true. He cannot save himself
this way; the blame remains immovable.

It is fierce in its steadiness around the decision
as it was made. The man-in-reverse does not deserve
your pity. All this blood takes it out of your hands.

How do you give empathy for someone to use
who has never had the practice?

Books get everywhere.

Paperback

The stationary taxi-driver mouths the words
through his open window. He is not looking at me

but at his book, which yellows so that I can almost
smell it from here. He is not for distracting

even when a man, perhaps a customer, approaches
and shakes his whole body in emphatic conversation.

Perhaps the taxi-driver is obscured to me
but I get a sense of his impatience, so much so

that his position has not changed when I can see him
again. The novel is perhaps a King, perhaps

a Conan Doyle. It is not, I think, a Herriot
with a typeface like that; in a city, so far away, like this.

Vegetable box deliveries are perilous.

Moth dreams

I have been in the fridge for days now.
My blood has slowed in the folds of lettuce,
which have contained so much in the way of
water, of time. It has all slowed. I have lost
all hope of taking back my normal life, exiled
as I am from the cropped fields, the gentle
rolling earth. There is not a scratch on me.
As soon as I have the legs for it—yes, six,
all there—I will choose a cubby-hole
nearby and head for upside-down, mothblood
will gather in my mothbrain. I wonder what it is
I've missed. I have been dreaming cold
in the depths of full fat moons and irresistible
light. My dreams have not been of terror
but of chasing, my thrilled mothheart beating
hard against the window; my wings through air.

Is it anyone you know's?

This bike

It has been chained to the lamppost
for two weeks now. Manhandled from standing,
from lying, to standing, it still has its slip-on gel seat-cover
and shine in its silver despite the weather

we've been having. I have considered slipping it off,
the seat-cover, and more: its handles are a shape
I prefer to my own; the reflectors in the wheels
are much more glowing. Clearly someone has parked it

and forgotten which lamppost gleams its frame
from night to night. I feel sorry for it,
though it hasn't begun to rust. I can see it
from my bedroom window. It is a new constant in my life

but I could be mistaken. Its owner, perhaps, leaves
and arrives before I do; unlocks and locks the chain.
Keeps the saddle clean, like a neighbourhood cat
whose feeders ignore the number that isn't theirs on its collar.

I almost took the brake levers today
and have had to take myself in hand. The lock
is sturdy and besides, I have no cable-clippers to my name.

I want to be fierce like the saleswoman when I'm older. I am starting today.

A woman bribes me with a free SJP umbrella to buy Paul Smith perfume and sample Stella McCartney

Names do not worry me – you're laughing – but
packaging is everything. And how to reconcile
a love for umbrellas with the fate of the planet.

I smell now like a tart's handbag and am considering
bathing in the luxury of petals it would take me
years to grow. I can hear my mother. I can't tell

whether she's delighted or not but either way
I am powerless in the hands of a saleswoman
who smiles just like her and expects, just like her, a yes.

Mmmhmm.

Hiccups

I have left traces of mascara
on my arm and have been curled up
waiting for something that could match

the stories I've been told today that are not mine
to tell. And there is song after song
of Radiohead, and it is weather for staying out

of duvets, and I am nearly away with the cool breeze
that drifts in with the moths and knocks
my lightshade. I have hiccups, but they will fade.

Hehehe....

Caught in the moment of saving the toast

There are four things worth saving
in this situation, all of which are worthy.
The choice you make says everything

I need to know about your priorities.
In the long-run it turns out you are not
after money, possessions or comfort,

but temporary satiation and this is where I'm at:
ethereal and everchanging; satisfying;
never wholly yours but wholly consumed.

Been a while coming. True story.

I meet a fashion mentor on a bus-ride to town

I have sewn pennies into the hem to weigh it down. It has pockets
that often catch on handles, it is torn and fixed at two seams.
It is brightest orange and this is the detail that catches your eye;
makes you stare until I sit next to you and smile.

Thank goodness. Now I can tell you that I wasn't really staring:
that it's just your skirt, it's beautiful and matches the green you're wearing.

I am taken aback by that and your name, which I don't find out
until you're up and leaving, your own bold skirts swaying in the aisle.

Rushed introductions hover and mingle with the journey's facts:
that you're tickled pink for your tutee's standing ovation,
that she was dark-haired and starved by her parents,
and her dresses—oh her dresses—are divine.

One word for writing doom. Mariokart.

You won't know who you are before long because I myself have lost track

When I moved in here the smell of paint had
moved in before me and taken root.

Bathed in egg-splashed light from my bedroom window,
I woke up to the confession that you'd given your parrot

to the gas-man. The only impact left
to me is other people's reaction to the news. I keep

moments of us still, hoard the stuff you gave freely
from over the road once, countless minutes ago.

The city is alive I said once alive with everything at 5am except
chicken fried rice and that's the only thing we want.

I haven't seen you since but always consider you
when your birthday comes round. You must be dreaming

of elsewhere in America/Manchester/Edinburgh
/Brighton by now. Never anywhere I can trust.

Drafting.

Stars Compilation

We are heading for the black that makes us less
likely to take risks. It is not until he knows
precisely where to go that we stop. The car
cracks and fizzes in the cold beach-quiet.

Lying down, looking up, there is no eye contact,
even after sighting our only shooting star.
Filament bright and bigger than we could have known,
it flashes through the gap in blanketing clouds. We hang on

for a while, but it's pea soup and hopeless past eleven.
There is only the unseen sea with its whooshing whooshing.
In the car journey home he keeps on Stars Compilation
but sets our hearts on different dreams in the dark.

Ascent, descent.

Look down; Don't look down.

Stranded here we are halfway
to the end and there is a decision
that needs to be made. Always
the decision-maker you are frozen
with no fear of falling just a beating
in your chest and time
silent and still until you know
you are allowed to go down.

I am trapped by indecision but phobia-free,
and study, in this moment, each bolt
for each step that suspends us
over the likely outcome. I find them
strong and immovable. I find
no need to cease my own breathing.
The decision, I realise, was taken
out of my hands before I realised
it existed: I had stared through the gaps
on every step up. I was only surprised
by your reaction to the smaller world.

Decisions made, you retreat to where
your weight is held only by your own legs
on the earth, and I keep climbing
to my own struggles of perspective.
No postcards to reminisce, no photographs.
My descent is unremarkable, but fast.
The earth reappears through the gaps
in the metal. You are getting bigger,
concern in your eyes, but your breathing
is back to normal and your knuckles
are pink with fearlessness again.

Salsatastic.

I am not Madeleine Smythe

but I have taken control of her emotions
and they weigh me down now, dripping

water through my cotton-thin skirt.
The interflora van drives off, gives me

no reason to believe I can ever get caught.
Still, I snip and separate the stems into three

vases: one for tragedy, one for love, one for guilt.
I am not Madeleine Smythe, but maybe, in pretense,

I have saved her from this: Dear Maddy,
I am sorry for your loss.

I got a new book today. It's ace.

CCTV makes you cooler than me

We hear it whizz in our direction as I flash
all sorts of images through my head for it to see.
I skip ahead to the final conclusion

of whoever is watching: harmless. I think
of all the things we could've done to persuade them
otherwise. All I can muster is a furtive glance,

straining to make myself look shifty. You stop;
turn slowly; look it straight in the lens for
an age. By the time you look back to me

I am walking again and you are smiling.
The camera remains and I don't know why
but I wish I had thought of it first.

The problem with listening to medical programmes on radio 4.

Dr Woodbridge, Assistant Deputy Coroner for the District of Cherwell

You won't remember the weight of it held
in your soft gloved hand. I am going to ask anyway.
I suppose this is an inevitability, dealing
with death as you do. I don't necessarily want

an answer, or if I do, I want a lie. I don't want
it to have been as heavy as mine, nor its beating
to have stopped because of a misplaced sense
of defiance. Perhaps it beat on, bloodless and baggy,

but I want you to say only that it weighs as much as
you'd expect; no more, no less. That a heart is nothing
more than chambers, holds nothing more than
blood. Beats for nothing but itself until it stops.

A tweak in time, a tweak in fact, a tweak (or three) in language equals:

Unlove

I don't love you like the heartbeat
I can see in the tear in my eye
in the concave spyhole drilled through
a solid wood door which is the only thing
holding my weight pressed against it
that leads to the world where you
sit in the car ringing her
or your brother I can't decide which.

I don't love you like the hug
I approached you for when we stood
awkward pavement-bound while your car
engine hummed and indicators blinked
in the moment you unlocked it as a hint
that it better be quick though you sat
in the driver's seat for an age
after I shut the door on your back in your face.

I don't love you like the muscle-memory
that made me want to play footsie with you
even though I knew rightly you
wouldn't play back having trained your own
memory to ignore me in favour of her
who talks more meaning problems
like this are sorted out so much quicker
than we ever sorted out ours.

These things spring too often from nowhere.

A lesson in stuffed toys

Polyester, cotton, nylon—they all stuff the wardrobe
at my dad's house now, piled in boxes avoiding dust or
played with rarely by a youngster I won't relinquish ownership to.

In a box in a wardrobe in a house it is all contained
and rarely frisked: except when one comes out they all do,
and there's no escaping the old-smelling dust.

If you pack them right, they disappear to almost nothing
but when they're opened, they're allofasudden back.
They take up much more space than you remember.

Coffee shop coffee shop, I love you....

Today I avoid another's eye

A man who is balding and wearing braces
talks to me of directions we were over here
and now we're over there and we were always
over somewhere and I realise I think he's crazy
now but actually I was too engrossed in today's
news (as good as it is bad) to even know
the beginning of his sentence, never mind recite
to you the colour of his hair. Later he is talked at
about police and motorbikes and warrants
for arrest but it is hard to glean useful information
from two one-way monologues conducted
in the style of a conversation. I ponder the skill
of this as I consider doing the crossword
of a communal paper. I am not strong enough
to hold onto the sense he's lacking and do not catch
his eye when he roams the room for an escape.

Marks.

The way they catch the light is almost beautiful

I'd like to say that the silvering is a way in
to loving what is already mine, but it is not.
All it means is a lack of blood supply,

cut off at the root—no way back. It is too easy
to trace their expression as a map,
or the sadness of learning; the distance

you have to come. Really they only lead
from themselves to themselves.
They do not make routes, or define me

except I know where they do not appear:
my fingers, my ankles, the front of my legs.
My lower arms. My face.

cowboy and consequences

A Cowboy





What happens when you use waterbased ink.

Excuses excuses.

Because

my hair's the wrong colour; I don't want to risk
a disappointing friendship; I prefer to point you out

to people knowing fine well you'll catch them staring;
speculation is a sensation I enjoy; no-one

deserves these complexes; I'd miss ignoring your friends;
you wouldn't suit hats; someone you know once

hurt someone I used to know; of the risk; I miss
someone else; it shouldn't always be

me; I'm not hung-up enough; my life is risk-free;
I am accustomed to time alone; your name

is something I would never have come up with; I prefer
not to believe; you're too good for me;

there are dreams, of course, and there are excuses.

(kind of) true story!

summer compilation

Hoping along to stars compilation our dreams
for clear skies are decreasing in magnitude.
We are heading for the black that makes us less likely
to take risks. It is not until he knows precisely
where to go that we stop. The car
cracks and fizzes in the cold beach-quiet.

Lying down, looking up, there is no eye contact,
even in the excitement of a shooting star,
filament bright and bigger than we could have known,
flashing through the gap in blanketing clouds. We hang on
for a while, but it's pea soup and hopeless past eleven.
There is only the unseen sea with its whooshing whooshing.

In the car journey now he takes out stars compilation;
sets our hearts on different dreams in the dark.

Not based on actual events. Really.

Lecture on a book I've never read.

The astrophysicist speaks encouragingly
of many things. I have no control
over my muscles which twitch wildly.
It takes this man—no English lecturer

at soft-hearted 18; no poet-philosopher
at hardening 20—all upper-class education
and lack of meaningful eye contact; all
power-point slideshow and brogues,

to make me see the attraction.
Perhaps, I wonder, it is the Eagle Head Nebula
he has on in the background, its cock-eyed
angle in American Frontier golds and greens.

It is weightless and directionless, but altogether
non-existent now, he tells us, despite its shape.
He points to a shockwave in the picture
that struck, sure as eggs, 7,000 years ago.

How does he find space, I think, to care?

Rediscovery. What I should be doing.

Reckless Sleeping
after Magritte

Instead of dreams she finds a bowler hat
all felt and black as hollows
in the ground, matt and matted. She tries
it on, tucks it all the way down
round her ears and instead of dreams
she hears the muffled world as if
in sleep. She wonders where
the black crows sleep, imagines
uneaten crumbs abandoned
in the light of dusk, wonders if
they take some home in beaks
and sleep on their food for softness
in the dark; wonders whether they have dreams
to miss. She looks in a mirror,
but instead of dreams she finds the black
shouted back and sees herself whispering
at the crows she knows are sleeping
in the sky. She lights a candle, wax tumbling
the curve of a figure carved in heat and light
and it leaves shadows on her face that chase
her thoughts that could be dreams if caught
in daylight. She crosses her legs, feels
a loosening of self and pushes
her finger through the hole in her pyjamas,
admires the creeping darkness of a felt
black rim above her eyes. She closes her eyes,
and instead of dreams she tucks her hair up
in the hat, reminds herself of songs sung
Au Clair de la Lune and hears them rolling from
her tongue like crow breath. Instead of dreams she lies
on quilting with the hat cocked over her eyes
and thinks of cowboys until morning.

Self portrait: toes.

Hundredth poem.

Hitch-hiker

I have been trying to write of your thumb
but I am failing; I keep slipping into the status
of my own which has been crushed and sucked,
jointed and double-jointed, sliced with glass
and loved in equal measure. I am forgetting yours,
and how far the top joint arched back. I only have one
picture, the one with berets. I am envious of a time
when one photograph could sum up a life on the road
like that. My thumb arches back a little, too,
but not enough. I am holding it up: if someone
passed by at speed and only had my thumb
to go on, how could they possibly know? How long
did you find yourself stranded on wide roads in the sun,
even with the exaggerated curve you bragged about?

Another letter.

Dear the disappeared,

I am still here, in my old office chair.
The desk is the same. My hands
are the same. You never had my number
but that is the same. My email address,
that ethereal creature we always relied on
too much, yes, it remains. I am writing

you this because I can't believe
you're not there. I know I said I wouldn’t,
but there's only so much silence I can take.
I don't know what you think I might say.
I don’t know if you know me, but here I am
again, and my words are like summer
downpours, drying off quickly.

I'm sure you're still eating olives,
their grease keeps them fresh.
You must have less of a beard
by now; those jeans you wore
still fit, I'm sure. I remember the details
you never did mention. They squatted
between us, silent. Still do. I remember
the camera you were too scared to use.

I've heard you're still out there, working
and playing, always just round the corner
from here. I've heard you don't talk
about anything now, that you're the same
and disappeared, writing bad poetry.
I don't know who to believe, or how to beat
this just-out-of-reach.

Did you ever want me? You don't know
what it means, but I won't wait any more
for our worlds to collide.

I'm not yours, but sincerely, —