Never write
about your sweated dreams
or sleep beyond each sunrise
You will not shake off
those fallacious night beads
There are no secrets left
in my head
And waking late
to such a foul mouth grog
does my humour no good
Good God
Do not listen to this shit
We ran painless and fluid
We were wanton again
Do not return to me
in my sheet-damp dreams
I am abraided at five AM
to another sung summoning
of loud bird light beyond
my night-bared sash panes –
but was thankfully deaf
in those dark hours earlier
to returning songs of drunks
on their way back from clubs
with their waved polystyrene
trophies of spilling chips –
that mayonnaise trail of fun
runs drip-drip-dripped away
Let me slip from this long itch
and find release from stiffness –
as it was in my lost night
of splendent working dreams
Instead – only a cooling rinse
under that wide shower head
and then a return to this bed
and cold emollient for my skin
Last night there was
an uncured intimacy
between three old lovers
of common threads
These damaged nights
are my fluid playground
of sex and rekindled
offset stuff – old urges
and displaced motives
which will take this day
to loosen off and unknot
from that second place –
reached far too early
when nightmares broke
whilst I was still dressed
and bound by my state
of delayed readiness
for those long night’s game
of subconscious plays
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
I am riven by my overblown
irritants of untouchable
itches
and rise to the night’s
blindness to avoid your
disturbance
but fail into disgrace –
and so meet your bed roll
with my low apology –
I see some of this
from my dim dressing room
as your annoyance turns
away
