After beating
the brick shit
out of this tired
last-leg house
I met my ghost-set wife
on the steep stairs
of lost-love’s slough
but we did not embrace
because new rules say
we will not touch
less so each day
Category: LOVE
I wear it like a suit
It’s always your quick precedent
You will be angry with me
It makes me to be a monster
A cruel judge of misfortunes
Is it said to put me in my place
And I succumb to an absolution
with my assurances of serenity
to douse your flagged fuck up
and to hide my furthered frustrations
The Player
In our comedy of errors
I played the lead role
as the foil to your fool
my cruel lines were doled
This device was the prompt
which whispered off stage
The fixed words recited
because that was our play
Un
We will discuss disconnections
such things we must trust
in this poker face card place
of our marriage discourse
We will flip expectations
like a shark wrists the deck
We will turn the dealt hand held
counting down to slow death
Our marriage is skewered
on the spun-turned spit
here both parts are scorched
now the heat has ripped
Our future fixes divide
to avoid offspring hurt
No one to blame
as the pain turns to burn
Paradox of Choice
Division of everything
can be undertaken
only of that with worth
it comes down to shutting
off the reversible
or taking the nearest horse
as Hobson would say
The Card
A cut up credit card
does not remove a debt
or explain missed payments
in these days of scores
It was shown as proof
that the imbalance
had been addressed
I saw him emasculated
his balls in your hand
that white-edged flesh
like sliced up fish
But the smell will remain
in your palm
no matter how scrubbed
of plastic and cuts
No Dance
We had no dance record
no undulated score
to offer a vinyl track
to our lost time
of lookings-back
The dog lies untouched
her stroke mislaid
like a forgot chorus
of a heightened itch
I broke the news
at O-one hundred
with shipping news
and ‘Sailng By’
and your phone died
a battery death
as if
we could recharge
The View
The future stares
like my fifth child
her shortened view
no more beguiled
The paths of priests
churn to mud
robes scabbed to black
in souring blood
Love is fouled
left to burn
her spin
her shaft
is now
slow-worn
The High Street slopes
to rain-washed grey
which I take
now
adante
My coffee is
as her warm flesh
the taste
last kissed
of latte breaths
BST
British Summertime
day one
as seen from this flint field
high above the Winterbourne’s
estate dictated course
above the rush of the bypass
that continuos inland tide
Here I listen for the reduced birds
as seagulls are distance summoned
by the hip-jiggered tractor’s
turn of furrow
You have walked on
with me left here
above this valley landscape
with an extra hour of light
as if the clocks had stopped
Mother’s Day
Our youngest watched
as his present was pulled
from the naively-wrapped package
knowing that this year he had done well
because his mother’s face mirrored his
more than on every other mother’s day
that had passed
this year
The Laughing Fish
A late Friday lunch
of stale crisps and ale
Sorry the kitchen shut
2.30 today
Our dog tugs for crumbs
under the table
as lunchers and drunkards
pay for their pleasure
You are moored by the lead
so I get my second pint
a tall glass of ale
which will make things right
Text
A brief message
was enough
for the moment
but it opened old ways
I had tried to ignore
and it took me off
in less idle thoughts
and brought me a sense
of another course
Snake
A blonde hair spun
from the towel
like a flying snake
that leaping wonder
but this spin in Sussex
was slow motion gathered
by the early sun in bathroom
and in this marriage
there is no certainty
who is Ishah
with whom I fall?
Vows
She sleeps on her side
as I turn to mine
under the covers
with our adjustments
we are a couple
unlike all others
which the wed believe
in short woke moments
ความรัก (Love)
This Thai beachside paradise
of dribbled concrete streams
and well-kept swept lawns
is like the constructs of love
which also require maintenance
of surfaces and hid beams
which too need an ear to creaks
and underfoot complaints
Left unattended
even for a day
and the autumn leaves
will fill the pathways
The beach will rustle with plastic
and the drains’ stink will stay.