Mmmmmmm.....

In an age-old debate, I find myself on the side that most resembles sin.

I can’t decide which way round it goes;
should the shining fake fur be by my skin

pattern-side out, or this intricacy a secret
underneath a shimmering sensation of fur.

The other day—I was half undressed—it was spread
across my bed delicious side up. Yes this, I realise now,

is the side I favour. After all,
why just look when feeling’s so good?

Post Scarborough.

The ferris wheel is turning but it is winter still

It is definitely the sun which reminds me
there are aspects of myself that need walking.
We choose a man-made level round the bottom of a cliff ,
act as only one segment of a caravan in the camels
and deserts sense. We have the incentive
of the best chip shop in Scarborough—though
neither of us are hungry—and it is round one long corner
that deceives us into miles. It is not until we are nearly there
that we catch sight of it: a hut in a building site
with a snaking queue of all the bikers
we have been admiring under the guard of their engines,
their orderly helmets glinting in the half-strength sun.

The way back is not as quiet and goes quickly
now we are not straining to see our destination
but striding towards it. We see a man with no wish for death
being coaxed from the ocean ramparts; there is something
about how close he is to the edge that makes us look away.
Meanwhile I do not stop my chatter, step into the anarchy
of oppositeness. It is busy when we get back. The ferris wheel is turning.

An adorable truth.

A few weeks in

He’s all a-practise still with squirms
and a thumb that is elusive
even with two hands to control it.

The sound he makes is a creaky door
but still we are all drawn
to the fascination of him and his lack of control

but utter honesty; when he laughs
we are happy for hours.

Portrait of a sunset.

A distracted sort of weekend

Coiffe

He is asking for something we are unsure
how to give him. He gets offered
a combination of lengths: numbers 0-4,
or a short back and sides; a buzzcut.

What he ends up with is an appointment
at Escapism and a Hollywood haircut:
a little slice of glamour in a seaside town.

Out of sequence.

On the train

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

like Darlington and sleep
has switched on my eyes.

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

for connections and stuffing
my face with fruit pastilles.

Semi self portrait in a strange mirror.

I put it off in my head to leave room to think about something else.

Just in case

breadeggsmilkcheese
I am at work, and work for me
does not involve memory
often, but it is a gnawing sort of let-down
today that I cannot remember what it is
I cannot remember.

phonekeyspurseearplugs
it seems obvious that things
I always keep close would be there.
I know someone who keeps a special sort
of shoe, some chalk, and a whole loose outfit
in his bag, just in case.

I've been meaning to do this for weeks. You should try it too.

Self portrait in a tap.

Ah, sleep.

On waking

I have tried a sunrise alarm
but turning over is too easy and
it is no match for the sky.

I have tried four other alarms
time-staggered to trick
my mind out of expectation.

Now Enya is playing loudly next door
and I am glad for all the hours I have clocked up
as replacement for those I’m losing.

Happy Valentine's Day to me.

Cut flowers are not a true representation of my love for you because they die after a relatively short time, even if you water them.

Roses are puce, violets
are purple; I'd give
you these flowers but they'd only
go hurple.

Friday the 13th! Hoorah!

Audience Participation

I am covered in you
and I’m sure you’d think of a funnier way
to say it
but that is the way it is.
I can only guess at your smell
and the shampoo you use. But
these are details we can fill in later.
Like meeting one another
when I don’t have leave to stare. Or
acting natural. I’d like to start,
though, with your name.

I'm not sure if this is allowed, really. Maybe this is a good thing.

Correction

His voice is almost breaking
and he is late. The snow began to fall
this morning and most things are covered
already, not even casting shadows except
as white on white. I am inadequate
and need to be more inadequate
because that is how I feel. Sorry sorry
I say. What I do not say
follows me around all day: it isn’t hung;
it’s hanged.

I just noticed I am past 300.

Mutual anonymous portraiture in a café on Clayton Street, February 2009.

His hair is a friendly white and he is beige.
His drawing face is not attractive; he chews his cheek
and his pen. He keeps looking at me

but hasn’t caught me looking at him yet.
He keeps his ringbound pad on his knee
and lager on the table. His trousers are just the right length

and not quite tweed. He is angles mixed with portliness
and sketches me in ink with food in my mouth.
He sees a me that is covered in a strange small smile.

So late, it is unforgiveable.

Bicycle

My life is faster now, but also colder
and I am losing parts of myself to a numbness

that is upon me as fast as I can climb these hills
on my bicycle. It is all I can do to work the brakes

and I am still too embarrassed to ding-a-ling pedestrians,
even when they’re ambling in the cycle lane.

My seat bones do not give me jip except
in the mornings when I first sit on the saddle again.

Every time I come upon it where I left it,
unmoved, I am pleasantly surprised.

The cold is beginning to haunt me.

Just before winter.

He does not ask to speak to me and I let his voice go on
in the background over the loud sound-flicker
of distraction. There is so much life around at the moment
it is hard to refocus; I talk to you of other people’s name choices,
a putting-on of weight, family traits. It is the first sign I’ve had

that there is less of him to look for, and grasp thankfully
for your gift of a winter-coat hope. I am silent.
This is not something I agree with in principle
but there are soft protective layers around my own thinned skin
and I do not fancy that persistent arctic wind.

A second reworking. I think I'm getting somewhere.

Looking after leeks

We search for him through the mould on every greenhouse;
we are not sure, but hope for a well-worn man
happiest shooing smut and thrips away.

We have been told to wait for skies to bring him out—
clear after an unpredicted cold snap, perhaps, or shimmering
with an early frost—and wait we do.

Truth be told, he is a man that gets easier as the weather cools
and darkness forces home. Most nights he watches sun-shy leeks grow
slow and useful by the dimming glow of car headlamps.
Collared and watered in, he sits until dawn drowns out the rustle of growth.

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

Seasonal Salsa workshop

To knit a winter

I.
It was never cold enough while you had sight
enough to knit, but now the winters are long and windy
and I am without the promise of a jumper, clutching
empty needles. I miss your paperskin fingers.

II.
She has learnt how it goes with wool,
and there is no-one among us
who doesn’t own a version of winter by her hand.
She can no longer decide which hat to wear, which to sell.

III.
It is the sky that freezes over when the ground does too.
It takes time to reach this idea of cold, to dress
without woollen tights when the ground is slick
and breath knits clouds in air.

I'm so sleeeeepy.

Massage in reverse

A sign for intimate male waxing;
many certificates on the wall.
A re-dressing to the soundtrack
of whales. Sanitising paper

all crumpled and displaced.
A wet patch where my head was
and no memory of tears.
The closing of a door;

hands off. A spreading of warm
to muscles and bone. Constant touch.
Walking the length of the bed
to be by my head; pressing down.

Hands cool from the spattering of snow
and the weather that means. The spread
of oil. A briefest hint of lavender
and something else.

Towel-covered feet. A comfortable
ambient temperature.
An unsure undressing. A waiting room
nestled politely between tanning booths.

For VL and T(?), by way of apology for breaking stuff.

Lonely Hearts ad for a knife

I am not just forkless but alone
and mocked. I am not one knife

but any one of many who are all alike.
I need a pairing to hold the world steady,

an anchor to work against.
Without this I am flighty. I am dangerous.

I cut and run. I am unable
to deliver the goods.

Portrait of a good time you can have in the dark

Some half memories.

Hull

Knocked back by a boy for the first time; eight times in a row
because the first was a maybe.

Scanning bike shops on the high street for bargains
only to find my dad’s fresh-stolen pink one.

Leaving the cinema, my lip shuddering
with the tears I should’ve spent in the dark.

Wincing at off-notes in Könige der Nacht
as if I could do any better.

Shovelling shit to keep warm in ammonia steam,
and move it from here to there.

Slipping into a tight cream polyester shirt; warming my voice
with vowel exercises whilst sticking on blue lapels.

A shapeless grey jumper I thought of as love
in the bin.

Driving past our old house and on the back wall
a gap where a tree should’ve been.

Potrait of a day, in snow.

I think I've hit upon a vein. Again. And it's not necessarily obvious.

My dreams become half reality when they make my waking self feel like this.

I wake up crying, and breathless
from trying to make it silent and still.

I have no idea how long it’s been
since I was in that room with a reason for it

but its fading fast. I count the blotches
of salty wet on my pillow, and two on my sheets,

but can’t stop just yet. At least this way
I don’t have to contend with

sharp dried tears in the corners of my eyes.
Only snot, and early morning composure.

Late again. My apologies... it's not through lack of trying!

Just one of the ways in which I have become my mother

I have never been a boat person
in the same way as you,
but the pull of the sea had us both that day
as we set off downhill. It was a melted-frost road
and soft underfoot with the moss and rubble of disuse
but we stopped at the sudden onset of the sea and granite coast,
the granite sky. There was a pier, we walked up on it, and by it
a boat. We were drawn to its red and shining wood, stark
against a Scotland dusking sky. There was familiarity in your eyes.

Now here we were and the boat with its toothed figurehead
was sneering. I had a dream once that I’d find her at the bottom of the sea,
it might as well have been me strapped to the front.
We are both alone without her.

But the waves were unalarmed, only darkening,
and they marked a calm end for us then. Your face was blue, and my hands
followed suit. I don’t remember words
but we turned around, and together climbed the hill.

For ML. And VL. And me, I guess.

The jigsaw’s beginning is completely destroyed.

She picks up a stray caribou head and sighs.
She cannot find the heart in trying again, it’s so hard, so hard.

But the caribou haunt her into corners of the room
not meant for jigsaws. I think to ask if she’s tried

the double-sided baked beans, but there is sadness
in her eyes which holds me back. I find pieces

for a conversation in the room. By the time I’ve matched the colour
they are all skewiff. I discard them one by one onto the carpet.

Winter working.

3.37pm

It is the time of day when perfume is faded
and things are lazy. Shoulders betray
emotions and, silent, people shift
in their seats like horses on straw, foot to foot.

Wherever I am feels like a steadiness
and today offers heat-filtered air.
They say it is getting colder again,
our drinking water is glass-frosting cool.

It won’t be long before the afternoon waking
but for now we are clock-watching, shifting,
waiting for the offer of hot drinks
and the first signs of darkness and home.

Just a glimpse.

Summed up, it is mostly that I want to know more

It means at once movement and music and quantum theory
and a quest for skill that anyone is capable of. I have been filling my head
with parallel existences, tracing movement from one to another as easy as this blink
I do not know enough about. There is wonder in my garden here,
and in your breath holding in cold air. But mostly I want to know more
about why this hurts;
what pain it is that presumes so much about me.
Dark matter is rushing all around us. I want to know what colour your eyes are
when they’re full of a brightening sky.

I have been reading New Scientist today. I may subscribe.

Perhaps you are closer to life than I

There are revelations: that we may have eaten
snake; that chimeras are a genetic trick
we rely on; that we are not so far away
from what we fear of our past. I am at home
in a web because trees are lonely, even
with family nearby. I secretly hope
for genetics to reveal what I should know.
I find Darwin wanting, even in his I think
sketch; I find myself wanting for life
you could be much closer to than I.

I need a telling off. No excuses.

Foreshortening

There are ways and means to demonstrate the reasons for things,
and I remember wonder in a disc spinning slower
at the edges. If only I’d known

how easy it could be to explain the illusion away.
As it was, you explained that somehow
speed is constant though you might have further to go,

and it felt for a moment, while I couldn’t understand, like I’d found your limit.
Really you were just further from the centre I held onto;
but I’m closer to you now, and yes, the speed’s the same.

A workshop with legs.

The house I did some growing up in is close-by

I am just around the corner, and from here I can tell
that it sweats with the breath of all the families it’s housed
including yours and mine. You still have our curtains up, though
I can only imagine how the constellations of cat-claw holes
must be comforting. It is a house filled, still, with the unknown choices
of a half-known past. I am just around the corner, with some jigsaw pieces
that may help. I have not stared for long, but can tell you
that you should not keep your cookbooks in the window there.

'nother workshop.

Here is sweat like nothing I’ve seen in a kitchen before

Breeze-kicked garlic skins on the floor
drift under the fridge. The pinny you are wearing

was my own delight once, but I am glad it is part
of your artful stirring now. Your hands are pungent

and last longer than the meal you take such care over,
but it's words that are permanent here:

just keep stirring through the steam; it’s the only way to be sure.

cheating, workshop poem.

A small incident seen in the street

Here is expression in a face
lit in LED-glow and stopped
in the street. You have to step around him
wondering. His breath steams
like he is a tethered animal in winter,
but he is not impatient. You
consider him a while, watch his emotions
being phone-sent into air. He will not know
he is in the way until later, when others’ puzzlement
sinks through this expression on his own cold face.

A search, perhaps?

Silence

The front gate goes like a radio
you can’t turn off, and unfocused fuzz
fills my ears. I’m trying to listen.

My newfound webcam means I am dancing
for two, and waving at you. I think you understand me,
but hope that you don’t. When I speak

the frames-per-second delay me to a series
of unconnected shapes, mute and meaningless.

minty freshness.

Ritual

The water travels quickly from the tap
and me and my shut eyes are enjoying the time
we have together in wakefulness. There is a mirror

in front but we are blocking it out. Perhaps
I look lovely, or ridiculous, with a foaming mouth.

Perhaps there is more harm than good in the mouthwash
I have chosen. I make room in my cheeks and let the tap run.

Can anybody hear the waste from the hallway?
I am ashamed and sheepish as I unlock the door,
the last bits of whitest foam already drying on my mouth.

I like feet.

My toes, still and unused here in the night.

For balance, but slightly ridiculous, I am unsure
how the nails have been bruised. I note
slow growth and ridges of protest, their flex.
It will be painful in the morning, when I replace them
in their shoes. But for now, I stretch them wide
and separated, then curl them tight and wait for clicks.
It is moments before sleep and they are still and sure.

Puppetypuppetypuppetypuppety

She is no marionette

Do not let her fool you into anything but a shadow puppet.
Intricate and purposeful, it is support from below that dances her

and the right background. Sometimes she is painted where you can’t see
but it is the dark she casts that you are watching.

She is no marionette. She does not look up for validation
or to you, but into light she could be naked and basking in.

Yet another wonderful gig.

Bits and pieces

He broke many glockenspiel beaters tonight,
but it was searching for puppet terms that inspired me to this.
And now, he’s asking what else he can do with a broken chair
and other bits and bobs. Sometimes it seems
that these songs might have answers—I am finding new ways
to find new favourites—but there is no official term
for the wooden cross controller, and lyrics are just poems
with longer arms and fingers that cling tighter than they need to.

Salsa inspiration.

In blackest night and on my way

It is an iron-shod horse that carries me

across the moonwort, and superstition that worries me
to slowing down, to thoughts of vision through the black.
I can almost see the horse’s eyes steady through its skull;
the movement of hair in the night.
The moonwort is crisp on the senses I have left,
and despite what they say of loosening iron
the horse is unconcerned and firmly set.

All four shoes ring soundly on the road.

Wondrous

A yellow heavy moon at the end of our road

It didn’t wait for you
but got smaller as I walked
towards it and home.

I thought of texting to let you know
how close it was, but got caught up
in the speed of its retreat

and the wonder of a stilling earth,
a shrinking moon and my own
small steps.

A pint down.

Donor

I am not kept waiting long; my own warmth leaves me
through the tube taped to my arm. I open and close my fist,
field startled looks at how fast I bleed
and chat about my busy day at work, the nurse’s wish
for a foot pedal to raise us. I am late in the day

but later drink tea to quell the nausea I’ve had since the bus-ride here.
I realise now there is a guilt about me; frisk my health for lies
I had no way of knowing I would tell. There is a headache coming on.

reworked, sent somewhere.

Looking after leeks

We are searching for him, a man
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 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. 

Another one from Mark Doty's workshop.

Rat

You fit in my pocket. It is this fact alone
that wins me over. Your front feet are hands-quick

with pasta twists and apple cores. Your bareface lack of fear
startles. Sometimes you groom my ear. That must be strange

from your perspective, and such large features to contend with.
Sometimes when I groom yours you pause and rest your chin.

A very fine Random Hand.

And the dancing

It gets later and later and the lights
which are mostly red seem to have a bright white beginning

and you say that the weather will be sprinkles
which just makes me think of breakfast and the news

on the radio is grim and unthinkable, so much so
there’s no sense to be made. But the music tonight was good

and my back feels stretched though that also means sore
and all the people I saw were having such a nice time

and the dancing.

Illness abounds.

A sudden need for hot toddies

It could be the weather, but mostly
I blame the swollen throats everyone compares
under the lowslung kitchen light.

As if in response, I have washed my hands a lot today,
cooked a cobbler and only left the house
for the Sunday papers. And lemons.

Late, again. So sorry.

I will steal a corner piece of Yoko’s sky today.
after Stanley Spencer

There is theft, and there is a painting
that holds me remembering something
someone said about it once.

I am late, but shoulder time
to stare at him by sacrificing future
contemplation with a sky.

His naked face is ageing and alone;
he offers time to me and I drink of it
though I know only trouble will come.

kind of an old one.

You teach me a lesson in coming of age

Out here where the effort of it
reduces me to shaking, I am overall
grey. We wear our hardships like badges

here; I relate the suicides
the bullying the death
the death and we stare at each other

trying to remember if the weight
is on this time or off. I am the alternative
had you been privy to something more.

I list your hardships like a price comparison site:
the violence the abandonment the death
the frogs in the blades of a lawnmower.

It's a small world. Especially in Newcastle.

I didn’t know we’d been so close

There has been much talk tonight of how I’m over the road
from someone we don’t have in common. I peer
out of my window and spy the right coloured door

and we laugh. I am watching now, though, for signs.
I have my eye open for you. You must’ve walked right by me
yesterday; my bed is right by the window.

I did tell you the number I lived at once.

not as chilly any more...

More ways to be warm

It is not all about temperature, and I find myself
under covers but cold, or warm in the coldest room.

Do not ask me how, it is not something I have instructions for,
but know this: happiness is not part of it, nor is revenge.

I just did something I enjoyed and held my face close.
It could have been something in the glow of it, or something

unmentionable residing in my system. A hang-up
of metabolism, or an emotion like the most discreet of radiators.

Chilly chilly

Ways to be warm

Cold feet are not easily cured
though tales of robberies and bus rides
that take over an hour go some way towards it.
My pink cardigan reminds me of home; my green hot
water bottle of Christmas. I have thought for a long time
that my radiator was broken; it turns out
it is not, now I think to turn it on again. Perhaps
neglect has cured it of petulance; or now
I don’t take it for granted it has realised how,
all along, it only ever wanted to be warm.

Hoorah for January sales.

A new laptop is no small thing.

Purpose has been lacking but it is back
and just in time for chocolate. I have been saving
my favourite in the treats jar until occasion
for eating it. My new laptop is so quiet
I can hear subtleties of music I’ve been missing
for years; I never knew there was such intricacy
left in electric guitars. I have been listening
with my mouth open for hours, and purpose is back.
Chocolate tastes good at any time, but now especially.

Who knew.

A transportation

Cuddling my green hot water bottle cover
I hear that Gordon Brown likes poetry;
knows several modern love sonnets by heart.

Wool warm turns to fireside as I imagine a moment
of recitation; with that shuffle of his mouth
and his eyes half-closed, standing at the hearth.

Back.

Three types of muffin

I am home from home today
but it only feels the right way round
because I have been baking.

Chocolate always has a habit of falling to the bottom,
but I have faith in blueberries and bananas.
The smell lingers but I have not tried them yet.

sky meets beach

Self portrait in a baubel in the woods

Happiest of 2009s to you.

Cheating, leaping, time

Destined now to be a second early
I am reminded of a one-second time machine
we saw once in a film. We loved the way

it seemed plausible at first, but going forwards
turned into prediction, and by definition,
was wrong. The presumption of this second

has left me lagging in my year, wrong-footed.
Some try to tell me that the earth isn't slowing,
that it's us who are fundamentally wrong

but time is so slippery nowadays that it feels like cheating.
I haven't changed my own clocks, but long to hear
the pips on Radio 4 as infallible again.

Truth veers destitution.

Resolutions for some other year

A sharing of bodyweight, and just in time.
Eating breakfast, heads on knees.
A restoration of flexibility. A record of time
and the plunge, taken. Not just the one

and no more bruised toes. Some dancing.
A dog lying down when you tell it to.
The nature of things, firmed up, and kings.
A quantum understanding of the sewing machine.

I heart Joseph Fiennes.

The inevitable fade

I am wrapped in a pink blanket and Shakespeare
is on the telly, making love in cream cotton

with a cross-dresser. It comes upon me like this:
there is nothing new about the way we love

and lose love, only I have work to do and am glad
for my suspension through the inevitable fade.

Christmas comes and goes.

Between holidays: a sort of limbo

There is false movement across the valley tonight.
I am waiting for a new beginning and I have one on order;
bigger and brighter, faster and bluer than anything

before it, and more than half mine. For now, though,
the noise of the old is comforting. In a chorus
with phasers and warp speed it could be taking off

itself. I am tied to a history that is recorded
as someone's noisy vision of a future
but my present is still lights, red and gold.

Crow in flight

Self portrait in a puddle

Some Christmas for you.

An Ingredient.

...and a merry Christmas eve.

Some Christmas eve

Pastry cutters with handles; a homemade white dove
on a silver string; a leaf-green metal tree-stand.

The tree we walk past in the forest with a bauble;
forgetting any of three stockings I have; sticky spoons.

Skyward bells; a golden fairy playing saxophone;
remembering the words to a distant fairy tale.

Happy Christmas Eve Eve.

In the vain hope I have pinpointed the reason

Tonight I have been laughing alone
at the television, analysing the noises I make
for air-disturbance and toning it down.

But Simon Amstell has been doing his usual
and waving his silly head. And when I run through
old texts at the same time it's almost like much

hasn't happened, and I have my chance over
to impress with my laugh, just on the right side
of cute. Still, I practise inflection. I think I am improved.

It's not as cold as it should be.

Midwinter

Teddy anonymous will have to have his eyes replaced tomorrow
with baby-proof stitches. Christmas takes an awful lot
out of everything, but my sewing machine is repaired and
snow on the telly counts for more than the imaginings

we usually make do with. The cat was sick yesterday
but he missed the carpet; there is a guinea pig losing weight
back up north; my own self is shedding pieces as we speak.
I am steadying images as they rush through my head.

The tree this year is the greenest green
and the lights, like berries, catch the pine cones just right.
It has taken this many years for me to see what you were getting at
when you bought so many of those. It has been dark for hours

but those cones still sparkle and the green, oh, it is relentless.

The Christmas tree is up

Watching you in the night from across the valley

I am singing here but my own words come back
to me from windows. It must be a sight
from where you are, lights flickering

off and on through open curtains. It is the sky
I see most of, but if I'm thinking of you
all I ask is that I fill your thoughts too.

You do not search back. You look to me like you're reading
but perhaps it is sleep that fills you.
That would be your only excuse.

For SM.

A lesson in flirtation I am trying to learn

You have bought the same watch four times,
you tell us, and four times given it away.

It is only cheap, you say, and not worth
worrying for the loss of. They take them,

though, which is more extraordinary to me;
fasten them quickly on their own loose wrists.

I hope it becomes found.

Loss. Perhaps Stupidity.

I recount my steps to here twice;
try and be on the safe side. I find nothing,
but reevaluate everything I've packed
until now; shove it back in bags;
mourn the loss of something that hasn't been mine
for long enough that I should even know I've lost it.

There one minute, in another
it wasn't. My failure
is not to be able to pinpoint the change.

Routine interference.

Yesterday

Overdue and sickly, words find it hard
to escape tonight, and I am trapped

without them. It is cold outside and the wind

has taken a stance against us;
rocking doors and chimney breasts.

It is supposed to be yesterday but I am trapped
in what that means today. And all this wind.

Aftermath

My hands tonight

My hands are cold-dry, and the patch of skin
missing from the peeler on Sunday will not let me forget.

I can always tell where I've been from the soap-smell on my hands;
now, though, there is only ginger and jojoba

whatever that means. I'd like to think it was home;
but the soap has changed, and I've lost track.

Merry Fakemas II!

I enjoy washing up, seriously.

All the aches still ache and sleep is still important
but at least there is another day done, another
fakemas eaten. Pork and chicken fridge-cools

alongside foil-covered bubble and squeak, and excess
is a state of happiness we all aspire to. I can't face
another mini roast dinner for my lunch, and tell you so.

To your credit, your face doesn't fall at the news.
I dread to think what the sink will be like tomorrow.
I have left it hot, soaking, but still nurse my own wrinkled fingers,

Crafty crafty!

The aftermath of an evening of craft

It is an ache that will take days to get over.
There is no escape, and even good posture
has its limits. I am hunched and weighted,

my back is bearing the brunt but it is not
the only casualty of love. Last night my cheeks were warm
and through duvet openings into dreams I witnessed

what it might actually take to get to where I'd want to be:
by your side, but underneath. Giving just to give
and always being for you. Too much.

Awwwww!!!

He tends to the water all night

And you, you sleep with your fingers
in bowls of water to soothe the blisters from the oven dish,
worrying about needing a wee in the night
if the water gets warm.

I am not there, but count the plasters the next day:
sure enough, there are ten.
One for the worry, one for practicality,
and eight to remind you of love.

Salsa workshop with foody words.

Thinly veiled.

Glossed with rain we walked
from Haymarket to somewhere else,
our brollies in our left hands, right hands
softening in pockets. You told me
it had taken all your strength not to ask
the question that morning.

The soupy road swilled round my yellow wellies,
glistened with all the things I must have said
to persuade you to delay.
Even now, slightly on the wet side,
I am dreaming of the words you might have said.

It got cold, didn't it?

A night after a film I should've loved

With my left hand I'm holding on for vibrations,
but my head is waiting for ends of sentences
which never come
in songs I must know inside out by now.

It's two-duvet deep, this warmth,
and wholly necessary when the wind whips up
snow like that. There are gaps
I don't know how to fill.

The answers will arrive in my left hand,
because that's the side I favour
for good news. My right hand closes
the duvet round my back.

The lamp on the sewing machine keeps my face warm.

The gift of giving

The whirr of an intrepid sewing machine
is stitched into my heart tonight,
and I have given my all to you all.

You will not know it yet, but wonky lines
are endearing and the odd dropped pin

is just transient, just one little pain in the toe.
This is nothing compared to the holes I've pricked
in my own thumbs, though there's been no blood

Wine wine wine.

Chinwag

Now we share aspirations
as well as hairy legs,
and we have talked the world out
of its own self, come full circle,

had our eye on the same man
who we're not sure if we recognise
or if he's just so attractive we think we do.

Yep. It's that time of year.

You try for silver alone

But it's supposed to be crass,
all-colours and tasteless. Eclecticism
is a strength at this time of year.

We drape sparkling expressions
of extreme opinions all over the tree.
And there are caged men on the telly pumping up,

pumping up; and a little black cherub presides
over pinks and golds and greens;

and that balding bit of tinsel left over
gets unsubtly wrapped round the standard lamp.

Retrospect.

A Knife, a Fork and a Plate in Still Life, 12/9/01

The sudden calm of cutlery:
you can't see the gaps of air
between the pieces as they fell the forty feet
at different speeds, or the sound they made
on impact. It's impossible
to note the time it took for the crash to subside,
before the ripples of clatter faded into air.

It makes the layer of dust that must have gathered
slowly seem impossible as if
it absorbed the sound itself, a softened world
where every step is like a moon-landing
in fast-forward or reverse.

Another old one, mightily reworked.

Self portrait hanging somewhere

The moments of detail take time to get right.
To catch attention is to hold them by your own hand
for as long as it takes. Sometimes

that's a lifetime, as they read the sway
of a fingernail, your following eyes, or the beat
of your heart in conflicting 6/8 time.
Sometimes, though, it's seconds.

It's these attentions that will
make you, fill you out:

when the moments of detail blur
and curve to imprecision;
when they smooth over doubt.

Christmas crafts have been eating my creativity from within.

Big hands like a mole

It's strange what sticks, and this
is a description with staying power.

This and your eyebrows, pale
and quite unlike the rest of ours.

I can't stop listening to a certain band.

Let it hang, hairy and heavy

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

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

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

Stay hungry, stay free and do the best you can.

It feels like I have you here in my wardrobe with me.

You can be everywhere when you're like this,
distilled. But I can see you now, there you are

through gaps between strangers who smell
like my wardrobe; who create an intimacy

that could never really exist. But here I am
observing your face at a moment in your life relived

with everyone else. They see you like I do, I'm sure,
but perhaps they also see whatever else is going on

and that is where I have the edge,
alone, with you, in my wardrobe.

Old old old. I've been a-trawlin'.

Advert for a Poem Like This

I didn't know that pain only stops
with an application of beer. I didn't know
the limitations of wine, or that a smell of flowers
in your armpits could cure problems so deep
they are woven in like stains.

Games we played as kids turn
to gambling with snakes; classic songs
are hacked to fit a time-limit; you are told
you are too old just now for that: it's then

you wish you could have that crunchy breakfast
for your lunch, or that your world could only bend
a little bit to fit you in, or break your fall.

Them dawgs.

Kennels

You fell into the heart of yourself,
even with all that yelping.
Here was charm in a lazy extension
of paw, a sideward glance.

I see allowances being made.
The sudden lurches are just a reaction
to a cacophony of jealousy, the smell
soon washed, scabs circumstantial.

And the money is always worth it,
with a free ticket for a snip. You say
there is plenty of room in the boot
for a new piece of yourself to travel home.

Some workshop or other.

I'lI look you up later in a Collins book of birds

You are not fooling anybody
and we know you cannot fly
from there, despite your showboating,
wingspanning the waves.

We watch you a while, cannot settle
on cormorant or shag, but know
you are trapped by your own feathers and the tide,
and there is nowhere near enough sun

to un-ink your blackness into greasy fluff.
The oystercatchers are wont to taunt
with pupeeps and legs ablur; they flee
dogs sent into waves for slaver-thick balls

but it is not dogs you fear, spreading your thin wings
high, chest tilted. I have you in my sights, record
you and your burnished fearlessness as equals
bright against a great grey sea.

It's pretty bloody cold.

Out into the frost

It is the tickle of each hair pulled taut
for the fraction of a second it might take you
to see me in this light; or your ribs on my cheek
or your dressing gown against my own,

both naked underneath. I imagine you here
but so often you are not, or not yet, and really
what is love but hope? I watched you
through hoar frost on my window today,

not looking up as you walked to the bus.
I hope it was because you hid a smile,
and in that smile, love. But I've heard nothing
from you since; I don't even know if you're okay.

Another hark, and Bunker late.

I keep a herd.

Welcome to the moment of pure creativity.
I used to approach it with the latest laptop
wherever the mood might strike;
words lashed out unthinking.

I bought a desktop, it was unmoving.
I thought it would make things harder,
make me watch my fingers. I resented
that. I bought a typewriter. No 'delete',
but a monumental waste of trees as mistakes
built up – I bought a pen, wrote to here,

biro then fountain then pencil, quill and ink—
it's easy to get stuck on the smaller steps, delay
the inevitable. I slaughtered
my first goat, stripped its skin,
dipped my finger in its blood, used my hand.

It took time, but time enough to consider
what I wanted to say.

Retrospective.

Bristol Cathedral

I don't feel the power of god
in this place, just people's

intentions in stones,
though they’re not buried there

but in unmarked mass graves
in the garden. Those

who laid brick by brick
the might and lifted it up

through air and light
to the sky. Who groveled

for it at feet draped and dripping
that didn’t know how to walk the slabs

level with a firm and steady weight; only how to shuffle
above them.

Hmm.. little bit late, and no excuse (except wine).

Abstraction

The ATM alone is enough to set me off.
The angle of the screen is designed to exclude me,
I give away crucial numbers with a sweep of my hand

I stand with my forehead pressed against the top
where the long list of colourful jigsaw logos brag
freedom! accessibility! I wonder whose skin

has left a calling card of grease.
Perhaps it was inadvertently mine.
The lines of the cash only, balance enquiry

never match up to buttons that dictate
an abstract nature of wealth. I'm not designed for these machines.
I stare blankly each time at the numbers and think

what would happen if I wiped the lot
to zero, cut and run, took the money home and counted it
out in fives and tens; but I know. I'd take it back

to my bank in an enveloped wad, thick as my sweaty fist.

Achoo.

I prefer to go unblessed.

You tell me it says a lot about a person,
depending how they sell it: I prefer
to internalise, and though I am not superstitious
I close my eyes, cover my mouth. One posey
short of something from playground rhymes.

There is plenty of drama to be had
in the experience, and even space for words
if you have warning. I know some who do
and even you have anecdotes
of the noisiest kind, of violence unleashed.

Mine come upon me as quickly as the sun from clouds.
We sneezed into light from dark together once;
it took days to convince you that the odds
hadn't changed; that two in six was just the same
as one in three, the way you'd always been.

Ah, memories.

Old corner-shop with more space than stock

I am sweet-shop counter mad for you
and take time to recall what it was
I came for. Mildly unformed jelly shapes,
or silk-smooth chocolate cigarettes
wrapped in edible paper? It is an old cabinet
I peer through, its thin dark-wood frame
barely enough to hold the weight of my hands,
of my nose, smearing their consideration.

I am chewing yesterday's gobstopper
but it is absent-minded. The magazine racks
are behind and I do collect stickers, but
this is not why I'm here with my own stash of money.

No, I am sweet-shop mad for you.
I take my time. I make my choice.

Hmmm...

Preparation

In one room, such silence
and blamelessness. Our clock
has not stopped but reversed,
sucking seconds out of air.

Heavy curtains absorb; even light
betrays itself in corners.
All else is off at the root;
even my blinking has slowed.

My hips ache to sit like this but
I cannot move for fear.

Just some observations.

It is hard not to read anything into this, but truly there is no connection to be made.

A man guards his truck
of equipment wearing a hat
fashioned from a bright red scarf.

The same day, a man stuffs
cider down the front of his trousers
which are tucked into his socks.

Later, a man rests his eyes whilst eating
and creates work for someone
by depositing crumbs on the floor.

Inspiration from a desktop image

Lonelinessless

Nerves bottled into muscles you didn't know you'd lose
so soon, and so much hiding. How I remember you then

has nothing to do with this, I know, but it helps
me to get here, to get to you, to get to the end.

How silence conjured us into each other
never fails to amaze me, even with all that music.

I miss your contours and finger weaving
on hot days. Sweat mingling on our palms.

Sleepy

Some Reasons

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

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

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

Some things just beg to be written about.

The Intercontinental UFO 61 by Viscount

The only other place was by internet auction
where hoards of them gather in Italy
collection only. An ideal proposition of itself, this one

had its whawha button still, its solid wooden box.
It had rained outside the Baptist church
but still it worked, still it begged your organist fingers.

How strange to think of notes of ceremony
drifting from this and your long-gone double,
the marriages it must have been a soundtrack to.

How strange to see it here at first, and the glee
it still had power over in your attic room.
The precise square of sellotape

you used to keep a constant C
is bequeathed with all the stick gone out of it.
Sometimes I put on your song and play along,

conjure you into this thin air I breathe
so high up here without you
and your skilled eclectic fingers.

A remodel,

Tourist Information

A gift of place and purpose
to fill with my own slow stroll,
he tears it off a pad of similar ideas.

He hands me my day drawn in biro
and I am in awe of the simplicity
of here to there.

I follow his uncertainty, retrace my steps
where there's a double line; walk it twice
and look for something new each time:

graffiti, or a familiar face, or moss
between the cobbles, or the sky
as reflection.

Ahh, photography.

Photography

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

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

For P.M.B., 2.

Herding as metaphor

I hear your worry for my farm animal preoccupation
over lists I'm making of sheep, cows, goats.
I say it is herding these wayward animals
that could really set you free.

I reckon I'm too manic for you to see
that the whole metaphor would be wrong
in relation to cats, and though I laugh
I hope you never think of your negativity as that.