Your buck of a builder arrives
in his sign-written truck
they belong
to your dull stepfather –
both the van and the man
and in your imagination
you have used his hands –
calloused – to fix things
in your mind – everyone knows
how these things develop
You returned from a night in Brighton
red-eyed – smelling of men –
of booze and wrecked
He had driven you and your sister
home
Such a gent
I will carry on as normal –
as that is all I have
I will listen to your requests
but not adhere to any said
I hope you approach my acts
with a more rational mind
I am not ‘heartless and nasty’
and I’m not ‘breezing around’
The situation – as it stands –
is untenable for everyone
So she said – poker-faced
not listening to anyone
Is this her ultimate
act of sadomasochism –
his rest of days of pain?
Is his reply allowed
before her face down lies –
taking it from behind
which are – for others – kinks
and well-hidden discomforts
She pleads her case of cruelty
when such cruelty was her cut
and thrust by strangers’ cocks –
no matter what it cost
Claim innocence in such art
of milking men of all shapes
She craves to smell of roses
She wears her crown of thorns
which she pulls down – tighter –
enough to make a hundred blooms
Her sweetly-bled lacerations
are red jewels adorning her skin –
also worn within as rough scabs –
to peel off by her recall’s pull
That delicacy of altered memories
is her art to serve and savour
She said she resented him
swanning around
and her wearing fears
of his limped inability
to earn that old income
no longer kept her
tied to their settle bed
Instead – she rolled over
onto another handyman
for his stiffness to press
into her loosened skin
and for his shadowed face
to take her excited stench
to feel some connection
Afterwards – she said
it could’ve gone either way
when admitting her part
She bet on a wrong result
She needs so very much –
be it a ninety-pound man
or a fat promissory note
This ripped-up body
of our scarred marriage
can still live – even now
by each reducing breath
of old vows and love
if we do not talk
if we do not scream
mis-weighted words
but instead stick
to honesty on paper
Such measured prints
can be re-scaled
through that rare craft
of self-censorship –
it will take time to bide
Seeing our lover despondent and in crisis, in tears and unable to cope can reassure us that,
for all their virtues, they are not alienatingly invincible.
Alain de Botton
Those seven slabs lie – unevenly
spaced on the gravel path
cheaply formed concrete squares
instead of hewn stone tablets
setting all visitors’ strides equal
for their entries and exits
between this falling house
and the latched wooden gate
On number three you stood
and wept too loudly
because of your recent choices
and how they will set you off
from our semi-detached weight
of bricks and faux-stone faces
out to temporary rooms
But that is your own elevation
and your tears will not dilute
my resolution to see our ending
Use those loose stepping stones
to aid your welled-up blindness
I will count out
your seven gone strides
And she complained
loudly to herself
that this wasn’t
what I wanted
This marriage of
inconvenience
since his diagnosis
and reduced income
deflecting focus
from her inherited
sense of insecurity
One passed down
from one who
got around too –
as noted by relatives
looking inwards
at her admitted acts
to keep me sane –
forever locked in place
in an echo chamber
You could be renamed
Siddhartha
by that forced passing of
your own marriage act
without my consent or seeing
your hotel-safety certificate
You had checked out exits
and did not look back
at soiled sheets and towels
which you had rubbed
I pray you find happiness –
I rename you – Kelley Lynch
We walk with affray as our guide
to find another crossing point
without repeating our last mistakes
and so putting all forms of trust
into reverberating beaters’ sticks –
our almost guileless diviners –
on stepped along routes laid
flat by others’ boots on
this meadow’s rush of grasses –
and not yet finding that stream
but – instead – standing alongside
a blown mead – a seed-top lake
of wind turned waves of green –
it talks to me of bared contact
between opposed forces –
of only compromise
in where to cross – If only
you could see
What are you all doing tomorrow?
We are coping with disturbances
across gust-rippled dirtied ponds
and roughed-up gutter puddles
We misread momentary refractions
before off-centre concentric heights
roll into a greater tidal rise –
even in shallows where no one drowns –
not until now – Now
I want to sleep early – not to stay up late –
not to exchange tapped unpleasantries
on SMS to blast at my tired eyes
A month ago our empire was lost
to your tsunami shock –
It will be spun by folklore’s voice
whilst
we believe in love’s old ignorance
There – above taught plumb lines
and a bricklayer’s knowing eye
of gauged slaps to alignments –
parried like a joiner’s fine blade –
your men make up for your mistakes –
never measuring twice – you cut once
so badly that your deep footings flood
with run-offs from your mistakes
which I can no longer block by love –
My own eye is still good for lines
and building virtual palaces –
but my tooled efforts were not enough
to convince you of my true craft
Again – a rolled-eye look upon you – a lost lover
in muddling dreams – with me as your interloper
who pulls at those fetters you forged when away//
We had made our tugged bonds in bicycled years
when curious games stopped at bare cliff edges//
My role in this slept future is as a limping outsider
writing cinematic recall of my much-dreamt scenes
between us// Ages ago – we shared flat beer and lovers –
rounded turns as we sunk our pounds into pints
and did low crimes before spread cathode light//
Back then we had fewer things to switch between//
None feature now in my sleep’s three-part act
of sweated sheets// Now our phantom presences
are acted by sleep’s bit-part reveries –
so close to the choices we made without a script
Up at five with the ghost
who is an hour ahead –
not one for the clock’s
change – she lets light in//
She leaves her stew of scent
on my stiff right fingers –
as if marking out extents
upon me// She squats
upon my vice-set thighs –
her other working of me//
See – this sheet is stained
and pocked by blood
once a month – it is she//
Your single dice is rolled and fixes
the next move of your red counter –
and then things – like probability –
also occur by your releases –
all observed by him – Markov –
who winks at you and your tits –
We are grey with tiredness –
our dog will sleep until our gate
is pushed to allow steps on gravel
and your return from Markov’s place
with your trolley bag of dirty linen
labouring behind you – suited to city life –
There – stand and stare at bare flowerbeds
and desire for small hints of weeds
to not return to this squared garden –
Let us no longer play games of chance –
Markov has your breasts cupped
and will now roll you across his bed
For LB & JB
A lone traffic light beyond Kemptown
oscillates with near-nervousness
as it instantly switches between colours –
older-type bulbs – now made redundant
by lower prices and higher brightness –
once took time over their slow instructions –
But we no longer have that eased luxury
as we drive at our uncontrolled speeds
through a few more degrees of change –
Queen’s Park’s leaf-naked rooted troops
lift prayers for god to temper wind speeds –
it’s bloody hard work staying upright –
for plants – for people of various sizes
before rolled surges of shingle-lifting wind
and air-thrown salt kisses – rust readied –
My car cannot settle when parked up –
a moored rocking effect upon its axles
almost slips me into sleep’s slowed nod –
but my ajar window is a penny whistle
played by the gale’s fat-puffed cheeks –
and it jolts me awake to my missed cue –
bringing me back to my nervous state
about weather not carrying old-line labels
and of less comforting climate forecasts –
Within fifteen minutes I have driven us east
to Rodean Cafe and a high view out
to Brighton Marina’s rigid lines at sea level
as repeated waves crest in a broken spray
over a long curve of that rebar-pinned wall –
smug like a reinforced Canute – to stem tides
like mine – under this nameless rage
of a nervous separation and blast-tipped fixings –
I say to you both –
By love’s light – there will be a slow change
There is a story they tell
in this part of the world
about screwed-up cousins –
Of how they brought down
already-shaken houses –
for those bound by words
and not by ways of blood
lines – which they crossed
in a fixed-rate hotel room
There – an ending – a recourse – a damning
by more admissions – by reductions
& other canalisations
which can no longer be left to flow
by a misdiagnosis – by new meds
or by wearing of pulled-tight blinkers
We are drowning – we blind guides
with uncovered still useless eyes
miss each slipped & stained indiscretion
which creep like unfurled underwear
from between tightly-zipped travel bags –
Wayfarers wearied after nights
away – working – unavailable –
apart from a quick one – a filling of gaps
in hotel expenses & of endless bar tabs
everything to be removed – forever
under this title – Endings
Shriven into a repentant’s place –
readied for a cross of palm ash –
a marking – tomorrow – of believers –
Yesterday was our early Mardi Gras
of confessions – But we do not follow
those fading rules of others’ liturgies –
We cannot name their Shriving Bell
as they stick it loudly to parishioners –
I was last in a church in Birmingham –
under glass and impressive masonry –
but did I not see the work of God –
Now on this half-holiday we will feast
without you here to guide turned heat –
to sear fat and remnants of shopping –
We have given up everything
to a non-date far beyond Lent’s tests
A pint on a Monday – at lunchtime?
Things must be bad – Michael –
And so they are – but I only offer lies
above salted crumbs on my table –
small pieces – but shiftable boulders
to summer’s soon-invigorated ants –
able to heft such burdens of others’
relative insignificance – of leftovers –
But that is a season away – along with
beer-swilling wasps and longer days
of enough light to keep me
from the pub and beer on Monday
Here is a heel-scrape
of composite on tarmac –
it announces my approach –
punctuated by my stick’s click
of loosenings – of turned threads
on its retractable –
snappable –
black shaft –
And – by the way –
how can I hold you
with my love now limped
by other indiscretions?
It is hard only in my gut –
enough to be sick
because of turning thoughts –
of you opened up –
and me still limping
This time – this very moment –
is a loose leaf notebook –
not a dense hardback tract –
edited – then embossed
by a binder’s weight of craft –
given a numbered significance –
and set immutable by dried ink
but not to be – as you re-code
it with your notes –
in red – in black – in the margins –
your later new translations
of that which was set in blocks –
This very moment will not be open
to such interpretations
One way to want
to be somewhere
is to not be there –
to be sitting at
a distance –
All good marriages
encounter difficulty
which stew into
common indifferences
and then sour
as spite and low esteem –
that being the natural order
of such things –
but we have halted nature –
we can squeeze and rub
our chemical emollients
on each raised rash –
on rage-blemished skin –
and invent new ways
to hold ring-bound hands
and still travel together
Held by a red signal in south London –
in a balloon of wifi – of library silence –
this being a price-hiked compartment –
a restricted remnant of empire days
still served up by rail franchisees
as our ticket collector mis-quotes WS –
Juliet’s soft words as cuffed banter
towards serving staff –
parting is a sweetest sorrow –
and he then regrets these modern times
of –
changes to language – to luv cld b not bad –
Then a roll forward like a sneaking suitor –
an incline takes us without that rumble
from diesel complaints – this carriage sways
over switched points – under lopped trees –
those leaf-spill hazards
alongside a thousand-thousand
other prunings met behind drawn curtains –
those many lovers’ shop-cut flowers
presented in cellophane in south London
on this Saint Valentine’s Day
EDITED 170219
Am I not uxorious enough?
I just read you my last poem
and it was met by a hush –
as if I had said nothing –
I know you said nothing –
You are a tough one to peel
like a thin-skinned Valencia
which refuses to avail
its tight pith to my digging nails –
never one to loudly respond
to my wagered words on paper –
these verse observations
of the spinning of things
in the near space we share
by our legal agreements
Clasped – a cold buttock –
dipping to thoughts of others’
comforts – way before zeal
had become sloth-by-illness –
Working a younger body –
thinner – stiffer – bent to those
exacting tasks of hard love –
before this exhaustion set in –
Then visiting foreign suburbs –
eating with a woman and her family –
years before her daughter was born –
before we screwed –
before furrows of motherhood –
those folds of parenthood –
Old positions – long exertions
are no more first weapons of choice
She serves our meal as ritual –
common to others’ habits and grace –
Even with confusions under Hebrew
my understanding is here –
All records are coded recalls of sex –
of finding what had been lost –
then dug by honed ploughs –
all will be turned over once more
E160219 – Edited in Anthony Anaxagorou workshop at Verve Poetry Festival 2019
The dog was away with his eldest
so there was no scurry-to alarm
with her return after midnight
She ghosted down the hallway
to find him sober at his cold desk
pinned by weights of late designs
He met her bloodshot eyes to find
how well they answered his enquiry
about the evening out in Brighton
And then he let his other senses work
out her night’s eyed-up dialogues
and her lent-into clandestine touches
Did she taste of others’ tongues?
Had her lips had been scored by stubble?
Did her neck bear a robust cologne?
She awayed to bed and drunken sleep
as he shifted the aspect and constructs
of the lines of his worked-at scheme
Sometimes she lies unknown
without a weathered headstone –
his fingerprints have been struck off
in rages ‘gainst Mytholmroyd’s son
Ted was – just once – Daniel Hearing –
not yet un-spelt by strangers’ chisels –
no – they remove his Hughes adjunct
as if they are pummelling his smug face
And did he sever her crown of braids
in some overt – rash – cut and grab?
Was her estate of words – not enough?
Complaint never kept the Laureate at bay
At an unkept distance – from the graveyard –
there the old stench – a sharp stink of fox –
still lingers above the farms and streets –
The rest is posthumous – as was once said
Should I scratch my own existence
off my wronged lovers’ lost graves –
from my past – as if erasing myself –
perhaps that’s the right thing to do
My first marriage slunked like a low sea fret
over Kemptown’s slippage of wet roads –
it rolled onshore above the piled shingle –
her washed stones should fill my pockets
That struck image of my children waiting –
their mother told me at the time –
I could not fix the view from the window
as they waited for Daddy to come home
At an unkept distance – from the graveyard –
there the old stench – a sharp stink of fox –
still lingers above the farms and streets –
The rest is posthumous – as was once said
I am being squeezed from the middle
like a sink-side tube of stale emollient
or that holiday-returned toothpaste –
and you wonder – out loud but wordless –
why I smile less – as if I am a dullard –
a Charlie Brown kept in his place by you –
an always right Lucy van Pelt
It is as if I am being ineptly operated –
I am being used in the wrong way –
That will make my face difficult to read –
dried out – until you grudgingly comply
with the simple set of instructions
and see that you were not doing it right –
then you note my pithy grin – torn off a strip
I stand – alone – at an open gate –
I have missed midnight’s kisses –
then – me-the-fool – fleetingly lost
the worked-at vows which we set
on our half-recalled wedding day –
a ceremony thirteen years earlier
where we sliced up a countdown
to the last hour’s holding of hands –
with our slid rings on held fingers –
our bind to the old laws of the state –
silver and gold bands of such weight –
I stand alone as this New Year sings
He really did not know
for how much longer
he could hold on to her
and still be dishonest
He had walked far more
than he had drunk –
but still staggered
along the loose path
off which his love for her
dipped like a slunk ghost –
then she was there –
caught by a car’s high beam –
then she was inverted
like a shadow between trees –
as if his recall of her
had been politely dimmed
as if they were long-divorced
from each other –
that common vote for failure –
which is the wedded norm
She is giving me lessons
in love without hate –
but my teacher is failing me
for my schoolboy mistakes
The morning was fractured –
my compass wouldn’t twist –
I failed to find answers
and she would not assist
My notebook is ink-stained –
I scribe off my left –
I crib her taught words
but I always forget
The air is mite-lighted
as I pull from her mind –
this classroom is silent
as my learning unwinds
I sought the purport
of a four-letter word
after coming across it
in a loan long-expired
I looked to definition
in its Wikipedia entries
of disambiguations
in need of citations
But do not believe
everything with labels
not even a short story
of four vocables
Love is an impact crater
on the far side of the moon
Love was a film
starring Salman Khan
So she tipped – like a slipped-off creature
under the water – tilting back – to arc
below – to birth a falsified richness
of twisted mist – of dry-cold-on-wet-heat
and I held no appall at her staged nudity
which I stood over – there her magnified skin
of yet-kissed white – of yet-sucked circles –
and that interruption above her turned legs
She let my eyes dry her raised limbs
with an idiot’s roughness – back then
such was her kick – in and out of the water –
she lifted a leg and I was ineffective
Before the gig I had been couch-anchored
as she stood just-wrapped in her towel –
with unfitted – with flirts – with a glimpse –
and me on the guest list for her show
You sit
and you listen
to this –
he says to –
which you hear
as you kiss
You wonder
why you stay –
as he stands
to walk away –
and I want
such distances –
too far –
we shall never kiss
Old lust – our ragged plot
of strangling weeds –
of poisonous shrubs
turn to interleave
I no longer prune hard –
here they still grow –
even tool-turned beds
take foul seeds
as true
You employ a man –
whom you poorly pay –
who digs in hard
with hands-on-spade
He labours for hours –
the rough cover he tears –
as he clears the unloved –
you taste his turned air
There’s a fishing boat off Galway –
it bears
your maiden name
The fisherman don’t know you –
yet –
but will
by close of day –
you were mounted on my stemhead
your bared breasts fixed my course
I sailed with you
and your fishermen
through rages
and dark squalls
Am I rebuffed by your cooling love?
I tremor under naked phone lines –
oscillating – now wind-touched –
Silent are our words in the wires
which we strung to allow such whip –
Without voices they are set to squinch
and tighten before a snapped mishap
of misunderstood tensions – of speech –
No text – no reveal – such cold harm
here – left open – rough translations
like the coded language of telegrams –
Are muted signals your intention?
And I’ll sit by my phone – as if
your voice is the waited-for-gift
As disordered pages
I read back my life –
until you – as Ludmilla –
entered mine
The creak of shined floorboards
from the weight of us
and of ten thousand books
under ten kilos of dust
You as Ludmilla
mark my book with your touch –
your stroke of the spine
is a pleasure to watch
*If on a winter’s night a traveler
The tall bay window
is our empty white frame –
on the front of this home
of unshuttered shame –
but now winter-battered –
past my amateur repair –
the paint has flaked off
through changes out there –
The weather has whipped it
in layer-thrashed strokes –
like the blistered hull
of a forgot-turned boat –
with a peeled underbelly
for so long undressed –
it has been left unsealed
losing sea-worthiness
No sensible man
would sail in her –
he would never return –
she is so unfair
Women slip from winsome
under their senescent faces –
their hands steal the looks
off youth’s eyed-embraces –
They pleasure in pastimes
of tease-tricks and flirts –
they command your heart –
their hard rules will subvert
I want to reach out
and trace your lined beauty –
of furrows and laugh lines
worn freely at forty
I will kiss your eyelids
of stitch-tightened skin –
because here is your beauty –
it is still within
There was a plan
doing the rounds
to destroy my love
and us –
I was the worst
of the plotters
and now that scheme
is crushed –
I pissed on
fizzing fuses
and broke the glass
to press
the alarm
and her breathing –
so crushing
her sweet neck
From this hill top distance
above the slope of the estate –
there – in thinning October light –
almost aligned to your rooftop –
I see that solitary oak still in leaf –
forever isolated – also cast out –
under which we took our shade
and where my laggard fingers
gripped at your then-bared skin –
slipping below your blue shorts –
flimsy attire suited for sunshine –
but now the cool dew counters
such all out abandonment –
our laid time remains in summer
I found value in my love for you
under Aurelius and Epictetus –
so I purchased a one-way ticket
to end my lonely sojourn abroad
I wasn’t tempted in empty deserts –
no fingers took my potent virtue –
no foreign lips encouraged sin –
But I saw mirrors on their pages
and I watched myself translating –
framing – like Christ – opportune times –
I saw my mouth speak in tongues
telling you to taste my poison
Now I unpack my emptied bags
having brought back nothing more –
I left behind heavy possessions
which I no longer wish to share
I don’t believe in God
but I think she hears my prayers
I can only hope to touch her face
if she deigns to ever care
We don’t talk much about politics
it bores her more than sex
We drink red wine and compromise
on what is truly meant
I woke to judgement nightmares
and a terror in my heart –
with an empty wine glass by my bed –
that brittle bodyguard
So she dug up my soul –
I have a price on my head –
she pulled it from my skull
because of what I said –
Quoting Aristotle –
in accordance with virtue –
she showed me my old failings
as they formed a ragged queue
Jealousy and mistrust
once mine to sculpt with ease –
I’d struck at our confidence –
I’d cut her blood with tears
She placed her prize on scales –
held high by a blinded hand –
and claimed the inside of my head
was hers to now command
There’s now a looseness
of my limbs –
my flesh is tidal-tugged –
my skin’s forgotten fingers –
it doesn’t get their rub
She slugs her way through cities
knocking back – inside pubs
Testing weights and measuring –
she seems to get enough
I spit blood into my bucket –
they don’t say why it drips –
and I wonder if old Jesus
felt the nails as they ripped
Morning is my saviour
telling me that I’m not dead –
I wake her with my stiffness
but she’s not inside my bed
I’m spitting out my words
I do not like their taste –
I’ve been thinking too much lately
now I’m fat around my waist
I’ve been seeing the small hours
without sleep’s dead embrace –
I’ve directed thoughts to work
on your holes and your disgrace
I’ll wash my mouth with alcohol
to remove the lines I hate –
whilst the bitter hit of whisky
sets my mind to sleep awake
And if we survive this winter
without a thaw across the lake
then we will skate more fearlessly
since the ice will take our weight
When I touched the button
and killed our discourse
I ripped with emptiness
then filled with remorse
I cannot handle
these telephonic wars –
I start thinking out loud
my unspoken thoughts
I struggle with distances
logged by servers and silos –
those creeping tendrils
gathering ones and zeros
But my ear is pressed
to heed numbers you say –
of your long hours awake
and your days still away
We have lost the buttons
and slow rotary dials –
these phones are devices
which hack our denials
This is my time of day
with the door wide open –
just clock ticks and the dog
to keep me company
I am untouched by anyone
whilst the alerts and alarms
are switched off – for now –
I do not think about you
I steer my thoughts around
this selfishness of silence –
I would not explain myself
to any visitor to this moment
In this capsule of my remove
I am so strong – now capable
of stopping time and breath
by not thinking about you
I leave clues in the bathroom –
empty blisters of pills –
Leonard is everywhere
singing of stiffening thrills
Affection is not infecting
the bodies in the beds
and children speak in whispers
because of what is said
All I want from your presence
is engagement and thoughts
instead we stare at screens
and read others’ fingered words
My weight is dropping daily
whilst the world fattens up –
I would pray for forgiveness
but I’d be praying far too much
I ran my dipped fingers
through unscented hedges
as I tried to leave the rings
of your invisible traces
from our long afternoon
of deep interrogations –
the footpath steepened
to demand some attention
but I flipped my focus
back to that gratification
which I had deposited
on the untrimmed hedges
of the respectable tenants
It was never about being held
until it stopped
and then my redrafted scenes
were all that remained
The unbalanced intimacies
of being in love
were ours to upset –
to greedily grab and pull at
until their weight combined
and collapsed
without a bed or shelter –
under the spire we stood naked
and blushed at foolishness –
or so it appeared –
because the mass of it all
was too much for us to bear
I pass through the graveyard
where our bench was set
and still cannot read
those upright names.
You share too much
on Facebook –
that communicable disease –
With whom and where
you lay your bed
so everyone can see
They’ll envy
your immunity
from their own genetic shame –
you exude a happiness
as they nurse
their low disdain
Always third in line –
never really intended
such was my birth –
I am long disinherited
Time is our slipway –
greased for each build
It is a steep incline
for those low on love’s skills
Champagne in ribbons
burst on the bow
and then a spunked wave
to please the crowd
‘How long will it float?’
is not to be whispered –
‘Don’t curse the crew
an’ all who sail on er’
Their shouldered terrace –
my parents’ first home
still waiting to slip
into the port’s lapped foam
Across that hinterland
a tide of just-weds –
the wives of submariners –
a choice none understood
One night of holding
before his boat steamed –
it was sweated and lugged
til he heard her scream
The rude gulls returned
when ships broke the Atlantic –
they pull from tipped bins
a seamen’s tossed prophylactic.
The intimacy of it
has been shelved –
I use the phrase
side-lined as well
The heat reduced
is also true –
I woke to the shunt
of a drunkard’s spew
A four AM throw up
of booze-necked shit –
the uniformed kids
will side step it
These hours are mine
before any one else –
No opened eyes
in my unslept house
Hide me away
with a tumble of words
and do not release
the briefest of hugs
Under thickening armour
that won’t be removed
you wear that breastplate
of hardening blood
And I picked the wound –
pulled back half scabs
which makes you flinch
at this offer of love
The slice across us
is deepest when drawn
by your quick furled edge
of blunted retorts.
I used to reset my watch
when flying over la Manche
An engineered engagement
of small clicks and twists –
spinning hours from the east
to Greenwich Mean Time
Our first rented house
was about a hundred yards
from that scientific mark
which cut a line through
my old school atlas
of blushed exaggerations
and empirical remains
This trip was a reset trick
of handheld smart devices
which knew the differences
and needed no fingernails
to lift the watch’s crown
and turn back lost time
We are existing on two shifting continents
still being dragged apart by the slow forces
of nature – her spiteful ways have set us asunder
through more than time differences and flights
This borrowed bed is without the weighted duvet
which you may have reclaimed in my absence –
I sleep under a single sheet and the turning fan –
I am woken on work days by tipping trucks
I am here to consider my place in the world
with the set distance fixed like a short sentence
from which I will be released – but still without
any solution to deal with my mounting crimes
A long call brings neither of us new insights –
only the confirmation that the future is foul
and my recent behaviour is another indicator
of everything that is wrong on our edged shores
I shall return weighted down by foreign gifts
to home soil – I will not step well across that space
which we cannot pull back together –
because the landmass drift still exists
If you wrote poetry
I would read it
because I need
to know more
But my typed words
are lost to you –
the one person
who should consume
these lines
of half-honest reflection
which are set out
for any browser’s eye
They will not reach
between heights
unless they are clicked
and read
There is no word for this foreign heat
but under the dapple-shadow plantation
I find a ten minute retreat from our star
Here I sit and consider my options –
as a bead of sweat rolls from my chest
to track like an insect under my shirt
This is a playground for absent kids
with still swings and slides anchored
between picnic benches on which I rest
I consider my options with no haste –
for now relocated to this middle east
of loud relatives and small children
We are not sheltering in the same land
and I wonder if this half-turned separation
is my way of seeing the other side of the sun
I have to measure my responses
and weigh the more foul energies
against those that lift me to you –
a conversion to a way with propriety
I should sacrifice for the lost dead
and keep their spirits at a burnt distance
and so find equilibrium in the overhead
tug and pull of ghosts and lost gods
but not give in to the religious fervour –
the lies of any other life but this one
That exotic coin
which sits on the sill
has no value here –
a measure of nothing
It has no function
now it is removed
from foreign change
for goods
for food
My recall of the heat
and sweated steps
have an equal value
being worth nothing
unless exchanged
He would pay in cowry shells
and barter for love with time
as they exchanged such currency
the lies they laid made lines
She lay outside the liberty
of the clink and London’s wall
reducing down the value of
his late night wide-net hauls
The orders placed by princes
through their messengers and men
took her eyes from their line
and back to Bankside friends
‘Slumped’ would be a good description
of my state after the coffees were delivered
I cried as little as I could as we dissected lives
which crossed and recrossed around us –
like those thousand circling aircraft overhead
with thousands again also slumped in the sky
The restaurant was empty enough for tears
and for private speeches about why I cry
I am now the sad old man in this odd kinship
Other men arrived
so many times
finding a night
in wide open lies
I was made surplus
by your choice of lust
One return to the past
was never enough
That unholy spirit
descended to hell
as retold by Luke
and the Acts you tell
John’s head demanded
The Baptist was bowed
as he prayed over you
you took him as well
I am driving slowly to your place –
well under the national speed limit
because there is no more rush
to arrive – to park up – to be there –
I am returning with the fourth nail
which a poor blacksmith forged
for a death and his condemnation –
but I cannot deliver it now
I step from the car with less art
because I no longer bear my weight
without a graceless poke of a stick
combined with planned landings
‘The sharpest will pierce his lung’
his feinting mother was told
of those tempered metal pins –
one of which I now hold
I had sliced open my thumb
peeling flesh to fish-white bone –
but the unexpected incision
refused to well and bloom
Caesar took over twenty cuts –
and may still have survived –
but the one knife that killed him
stopped his heart – and then his life
I was stabbed by your fingers
and by your loud blunted tongue –
I pressed at my open wounds
to catch the crimson run
Then I raised my whetted blade
to your bared narrow back –
and plunged it so deeply
that your spine was duly snapped
Two contrails cross over Croydon
as a childish whispered kiss
a wedding party walks the aisle
of this train to London Bridge
The bride is dressed all in black
carrying a bunch of flowers
and her rich perfume fills the train
as she necks a bottle of cider
The twenty minute reception
of small talk
of drunken laughs
of the booze flowing as water
to her lips and to her heart
Se una notte d’inverno
n viaggiatore
As disordered pages
I read back my life
until you as Ludmilla
entered mine
The creak of shined floorboards
from the weight of us
and of ten thousand books
under ten kilos of dust
You as Ludmilla
mark my book with your touch
your stroke of the spine
is a pleasure to watch
For JMAB
It is as if
you were delivered to us
to bear witness –
You brought a book
about fatherhood
which I read –
I cannot hear your words
because you murmur
more than speak –
but I see how you shy
even at six-foot two –
You are my child
I keep waking to the space
where contact has moved
to an impossible flight
I now stretch under the duvet
with no hope of one more
of those seven thousand nights
The solution is simple
no need for spreadsheets
just my summary removal
For LB
First the shuffled shopper’s fanfare
that rasp of chair feet on pavement
and then finding a place for my phone
whilst not spilling my lip-high coffee
which measures
like a spirit level
my ability to perform the simplest things
In that fifteen minutes of talk
your beautiful honesty made me admit
that I have been a slowed down fool
The loud gulls swept around us
as they have always done in Sussex
those opportune white vultures
which pick and steal the best bits
You said that girls had been feeding them
down in the Pavilion Gardens
I have been feeding mine for too long
They say that there is a ghost
in every old house
That frigorific forms will rise
to meet with warm blood
and damp bones
an attraction
almost a magnetism
It is beyond any control
Love is a heavy haunting
which we meet unexpectedly
in bars and dark bedrooms
The ghost I knew was cold
which I did not tell the kids
She troubled the shadows
of our chattering family home
Late in the night I would run
three flights of stairs
Yes
me
the adult
fucking scared
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
It is 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 shroud
my own frustrations
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
We will discuss disconnections –
such things we must trust
in this poker face card place
of marriage-discourse
We will flip expectations –
like a shark wrists the deck
We will turn the dealt hand
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 is to blame
as the pain now burns
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
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
We had no dance record –
no undulated score
to offer a vinyl track
to our lost time
of looking 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 ‘Sailing By’
and your phone died
a battery death
as if
we could recharge
E270219
Here – a future lost
like a still fifth child –
her shortened view –
no more beguiled –
as paths by priests
churn to mud –
their robes now scabbed
in soured blood –
All is fouled –
left to burn –
her spin – her shaft
is now slow-worn
The wide street slopes
to rain-washed grey
which I take now –
adante –
the coffee sips
are her warm flesh –
her taste last kissed
of latte breaths
EDITED 170219
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 continuous 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
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
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
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
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?
She sleeps on her side
as I turn to mine
under the covers
with adjustments
we are a couple
unlike all others
which the wed believe
in short woke moments
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 need an ear to creaks
and underfoot complaints
Left unattended – even for a day
and the leaves will fill the pathways –
The beach will rustle with plastic
and the drains’ stink will stay
E100119
As if I were Crusoe
or you
with our footprints
but me three legged with my circles
my ringworm imprints off my bloody stick
and other differences
like weight and bearing
I read into each indent
with my father’s forensic hand me down observation.
For Beth & Samuel
Under wind-tipped red umbrellas they take midday shade
laid out behind sunglasses
flat down on sand-itch sunbeds
hiding from the equatorial burn
which catches us
the unblocked
out
They are separated
for now
by the short array of kindly shadows
between palms and the sky
set in another timezone
they submit to sleep’s distorted demands
to dream
to reset their love and lives
With your old lover
are you revisiting
playgrounds left empty –
gripped swings and see-saws
of a groped adolescence –
of snucked-suck kisses –
behind rusted bike sheds
and lonely youth huts?
Then a quick-lifted skirt
to his stronger fingers –
Now replaced
by a sureness in him
EDITED 170219
I am itch-rolled
curled on my side
of our double bed
my head sandwiched
between pumped pillows
whilst you are spread wide
elsewhere
until that breakfast tray
arrives at your door
and the cooled order
is admitted
Six collies stitched
an unseen thread
among the table legs
of the public bar
more dogs than drinkers
but the pub was good
and the beer sat well
as we touched again
Then on the forecourt
we pressed mouths
in a guilty kiss
tasting of bitter and gin
Your ripped scent
lingered
and returned
off my fingers
a metallic remnant
to rust here
I am still weighted by the dream
of a house being built
by my long-dead father –
but it wasn’t him – but some stand-in –
and the details in the windows –
where colour was etched to capture
the hills and home of deer –
so that the past could be lined-up
with the correct view and angle –
A small leak in the high roof
and paint trod into the carpet
and cut timber remained
and an improbable kitchen –
which we mentioned lightly –
and was likened to a shooting range –
he had been a good shot
E030119
I removed your top
folding it over the chair
and knelt below you
to your call to prayers
I kissed your hips
and praised your skin
you fed on my breast
as I thickened again
And these awakenings roll
from stones into movement
of cruel stretches to unlock
my fixed hands from the straps
of an accelerated illness
as my skin crawls with insects
within the scratched at tingled layers
and no tablet on earth can fix
the inner unrubbed itch
no cream can offer emulsion
enough to bleach the nettle beaters
except for her mouth on mine
and a foreign breath to confuse
Shall we be honest with this matter
and talk like adults
but those antique sentiments
which we have stored up in the hope
of increased values
or something to hand down
our accruals
sit
weighing on our lives
something for someone else to dust
Buried in your bag, the excuse,
that modern cord, the line,
to the centre of us,
you would not have heard
notifications, and such,
as the weight of this end,
anchored, fixed in the bed,
felt no tug (or pull) from your end.
