Euphoria is only possible
by uncoupling from affray

She rolled me over so far
that I am now low – cowed

by a fear of never forgiving
her – my youngest’s mother

I lie in beds of others’ sighs
and wake to complications

I fail to recognise myself
in their bathroom mirrors

My pilferage of toothpaste
becomes my regular crime

along with naked promises
of being a polished surface

No smears from her fingering
is my implausible defence

This sweated disease
follows me – streaming
from her hip-rucking
bent-to rippled mounds

Her rusty dampness
is still felt overly sticky –
skin to skin – still fixed
by memory’s boiled glue

Should my rare time
be given over to therapy
again?
This is no rehearsal
et cetera – et cetera

I find myself stood
in a profited landscape
of farmed reclamation
and named drains

Boy racers play double dare
along reverse-laid cambers
as us much older drivers
tut tut tut at such

Here – in my Sussex gut –
is a hiding place
from her
with a rural life to drown in

Throw me off
Lower Wall Road
and let me float face down
as far as Hythe’s sea wall

To the cyclist who
nearly ran me down
as I checked my step
upon Firle Beacon –

as I tripped on
my walking stick
between deep ruts
and sheep-fresh-shit

And to the cyclist
who did run me down
as I was crossing
a road in town

I was on a zebra –
you were on a bike –
to both of you bikers –
go take a hike

For A.

Firmness re-surfaced – as if a pulled cork re-floated
to lift itself – as she drank wine

Honest blood runs in her veins – not diluted – not fluid algorithms
Her dilating pupils cannot lie

Stoic words – she kisses them – not economical with thought –
not selfish – not over-protective

Three words for love – in French and in English –
form on my lips as my mouth dries

It is easy to cheat
any marriage –
try slicing your brow
with a clean bread knife –
then forever blink
blood-spat sights

Head spinning –
slo-mo – pugilist stuff
of gob and busted teeth
from a fast fist –
upon both sides –
my glass jaw breaks

My eyes are shattered
by tears and stresses
as if rabbit-punched
and left to wonder
about rules and who
has bunged the ref?

Count your prize money
and lift your belt
with a kiss to your corner
and your proud family –
I-never-could-have-done-it-without
and leave me alone

You woke
wearing
diamonds

Under you
lay our dust
Dead stuff

You sucked
and spun me
by a cyclone

Picking us apart –
claiming
my flaked mites

weren’t on
our mediator’s
list

Did I let it slip
that I have slept
with men?

Not often enough
to have it become
my centre

Not my compass
fixed by any particular
cock

But – still – delightful times
of honest greed at
others’ thighs

More to feed
upon – sometimes
Oh – and incredible sex
(said for egos of men)

I found gold dust
in my pockets –
stolen coins
had spoiled to grit –
I was hung
for theft and bullying –
my life was spent –
worth less

Our weights were split
by lawyers
with their pounds
of flesh quick cut
You blew
your half-hard fallacies
and grinned
with every slap

Back to a quietus
under our roof

and Elton John
bared
in my dark bedroom

A few slow movements
into his played song

to be met by our dog –
I do not sleep alone

One hushed minute is mine
around our slept-still house
as tea scabs cold in my mug
beside my unloaded bed
My asset of sleep is long lost
Me – not being cocky enough
to walk naked and scratch
Me – not wanting to unearth
all that has been lost overnight
Yesterday’s choice of clothes
is such proof of my new ways
now there is no inquisition
or other solutions – I love it
Such sluttery no longer matters

We lay parallel on your sofa
as if raft-bound – beached –
rolled tight into hard intimacy –
into another urge of pushes
and pulls – you are so slight
that it seems almost fictional
An unexpected blast of verse
as rare as washed up ambergris
is our mute communion of sex

If I could lift your hair
with my good right hand
from behind you to find
our long-settled place
for one last loved time
without this revulsion –

then have you allow me
to tour round and down you –
to cup your right breast
and to pinch to your cry
your ever-hard nipple
If I could lift your hair
one last time

There are no long embraces –
no more slowing of time
by a hold on your intimacy –
or by those so-silent
acknowledgements
No unsaid understandings
by affection’s expressions –
none by a raised eye to mine

There are no looks in poor light
between slowly rolled reveals –
none from behind your kabuki’s drop
to show last acts and dull speeches
by your poor choice of leading man
to your bloodied hack of a queen –
an actress dressed by quickened lies
wearing arsenic in her makeup

As if we two are met
strangers on our stairs
and each and every time
you exclaim a quick shock
as if these passed moments
are pricks of static picked up
from unexpected surfaces –
and we both step aside
under our new set of rules
of cold disengagement –
when once we embraced
This dance on the landing
is tiring – for me – for sure

In this year – so far – we have agreed
to annul our two-hander – your play

to not to be wed – to let go of – to lose –
to admit your need to be fulfiled by others

This you had inverted when it served your
reversal from vows and our long history

You morphed – not frigid – fearing your age –
of being your mother’s fat-arsed daughter

with her own cast of doubtful lodgers
and other blood-tied historical sniggers

You have dragged our experiments
and failed-at tests from our turned bed

out into the open – as your buried pain –
when your bared pain makes you come

I am now awake to such hard nudges –
ones once ignored – filed away for ages

My black pair of boots
sit as new – highly buffed
by Dad’s old shoe brush
readying me to step out
with a reflecting dignity
to that lawyer’s beige room
of divisions and other cuts
She will not get my sympathy
or my tin of polished gloss

My body distrusts
any sweet arcs
of attraction
and maybe-arousals

not allowing myself
second glances
or catches of my eye
in another one –

having been bloodied
by a weighty hammer
and now aching
with that castration –

a combination
of low forces
by her hammer blows
off her lie-weighted tongue

Do not be unkind
with your truths
on your future visits
to old friends
who will not want
to know me
after your dog walks
and dinners
over spilt wine
and complaints
after all
with your track record
of rutted lies –
do not be unkind
with your truths

My souring undersongs
seem to scald me
by bloody detestation
at more coughed-up ugly gobs

Swallowed pride rides low
on my short gnawed-at list
of to-dos and do-nots –
as advised by my reviewers

Another plug was pulled –
it was tugged far too hard
Do not mix running water
and rewired metaphors

Is it still right to imagine
one’s other-half sucked
from this too-loud life –
stuck in a pipe to drown?

Then a body would slop
into the plumber’s pail
And he would turn to say –
There’s yer problem, mate

I would then tip it out
among such beloved flowers
and let our neighbour’s cat
choose whether to devour –

or play – with that wet corpse
But such afternoon fancies
are too sweet for my teeth –
my only solution is self-denial

She lifted one of his pillows
to fill her long-emptied space
Another shift to save her blushes
before an observant estate agent
stood before their split double bed

His leaning tower of to-iron
had been put away and hidden –
nothing stands for long enough
He will return his pillow to his side
and his sleep will be disturbed

I’m reading Lorca’s poetry
whilst Leonard sings to me
on the hottest Easter Monday
since nineteen-sixty three

My poorer verse dissipates
dispelled by blows of blame –
She vaulted ‘cross my body
on her way to another game

He’s old enough to be her father –
she was fool enough to be his wife
Their papers have been posted
He typed out her loving lies

He will see her in that lawyer’s room
who’ll be paid to watch them fuck –
his hourly fee is twice as much
as she was paid to suck

Ariadne’s ball of thread was called a clewe
that word being of an Old English source –
cliewen – which can mean a skein of thread

Now – no trial and error among your words –
instead my art is gathering your scatterings
of clues and insinuations – of what you said

before your lies fermented to find you drunk
Our shared bottles of removed inhibitions
took us both into a playground of sweated beds

They oiled your snare – your sour smell of sex –
your perfume to attract others under bindings –
those you bought to find pain without blood

I found your lace and black bits curled sullen
in a hard-knotted bag – One item – a mouth gag –
admits your desire for ill-use outside your head

Under such circumstances
as these in which we live –
an old skill of mine – of gauging

by tipping
chiming barrels in cellars
or more likely cold side rooms
of ex-forces drinking clubs
to blindly assess levels left

Under such circumstances
my senses should be well-attuned
to any watering of truth
in unsighted places

By eye and by hand – in
old weights and measures –
my work was to balance stock
and it was never greeted well

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