Friday the 13th

Somewhere between
Clapham Junction and Balham
I suddenly grew old.

Middle aged man in shorts
opposite a cautious pretty blonde
both wearing the same shoes.

She was reading a book
which wouldn’t sink in a box of air
and picking at a nose ring.

I was writing a poem about my cat
with a fountain pen
and listening to Philip Glass.

Call me a dozen ambulances,
pick up my dozen pieces
bear me hence.

It is Friday the 13th.

Let us eat the insane root
and understand finally
what all these years must mean.

Mouser

On kitchen top
she dreams of blood - 

clotted blood
and how it could
be eaten.

Full moon eyes,
a churning mind - 
evolution’s sharpest blade,
my ragdoll wrath of God.

She is the koi-filled pond
designed to drown a child,
the valley of chrysanthemums
where a prison camp was built.

She is the woodland rise
whose swaying pines are teeth,
the drowsy dog-day churchyard
where all the death was dumped.

She is the busy river 
bringing bodies from upstream,
the glassy lake whose surface
is a sucking wound.

She is the mountaintop
of dead anoraks,
the icy wind
that purged the col.

She licks her paws.
She cleans her fur.
To the little things
that live outdoors
the whole landscape is her.

Ghosts

I am a ghost
in a house of dry flowers
where a piano once 
was played.

Now no floorboard creaks
for stockinged feet
and a soundless hum of light
plays in every glass.

We calculate in years.

Cabinets broken by the clumsy
tools of time,
empty as dead wombs,
save a feathered fox
fit only now
for Halloween.

I haunt these halls
where silent parties sit
alone,
clasping and unclasping
small unpainted hands
alone,
her fleeting treasures thrown.
A pile of unwaxed fruit.

And now I lock
my fingertips in empty air
to turn the key of time.

Upstairs
beneath a tidy bed
a dreaming watch awakes
runs counter clock
and as the tilting planet
falls upward to her feet

I see her smile at me
the flaming sun
once more arising
from her hair

then
through a mouth
of scalding stars
we might disappear.

A Prayer Before Sleeping

Curl with me tonight
across these countless miles
as we lay
tuned to each other’s stations.

Find me in your deepest breath.
Find me in your inner ear.
Find me in your sweat.
Find me in our gestures
that rhyme across oceans.
Find me in the inexplicable
technology of love.
Find me right here
in the palm of your hand.

Curl with me tonight,
tight as a fist,
carried on the night
toward the light
of a sweet and lasting
friendship.

Out here, in the molten dark,
I’ll comfort you.

Out there, beyond vision,
out beyond belief and science,
your love is indistinguishable
from magic.

A Diary Entry

Six ten.
Awake again.
Stay calm.
Slap the alarm.
I just feel completely empty.
Six twenty.

Seven oh five
I’ve come alive
Board a train
in drizzling rain,
find a seat that’s not too dirty.
Seven thirty.

Nine.
Avoid the Victoria Line.
I’ll walk instead.
Clear my head.
I’ll be late but I’m feeling naughty.
Nine forty.

Eleven.
My little creative heaven.
Feel pretty sweet
in my edit suite.
Let’s order flat whites again.
Eleven ten.

One.
We’re having larky fun.
I’m paid indecent rates
to giggle with my mates
but we’re bloody good at what we do.
Lunch at two.

Slow afternoon.
End of play can’t come too soon.
Up sticks
on the dot of six.
Cross the park to catch my train.
Six ten again.

Ah, none of this is really true.
This is all just what I do.
None of this is who I am.
None of this says ‘love sick man’.

In truth, at six and ten, and noon and two
all I do
is think of you.
Whatever I do at whatever time,
I’m mostly wishing you were mine.

Every hour of every day,
every day of every year,
I’ll spend it wishing you were here.

You’ve already read my real diary
posted here as poetry.
The time of day’s irrelevant
compared to what those poems meant.

And I meant every word I said.
Ten thirty.
Off to bed.

Amour Fou [A Sonnet, Interrupted]

Last night I heard a knock upon my door
I welcomed you but you were....

Wait, let me start again.
This sonnet is BULLSHIT.
Here’s the truth:
I’ve kidnapped you.
I stole you and
nobody noticed you’d been taken.
Nobody saw you were gone.

They think you can still
walk and run and bathe and dress
but when you walk, you walk with me
when you run...
you run to me.

And when you bathe, you bathe for me
and when you dress,
your clothes sit differently
on a different body.

You’re gone. You’re here.
You’re in this poem.
This poem is a magic spell.

Abracadabra!
The vampire bat has been.
Your mirror has emptied,
your shadow has run away
to meet mine at high noon
and together
they make shadow plays
of love and life.
They leave footprints
for us to follow,
dance step diagrams
in the dust.

These days I’m only happy when
somewhere somehow
connected through
this web of words
I feel the spooky action
of your love.
I feel it when I cross your mind.

Okay, proceed with your boring sonnet.

....of this ‘amour fou’ and how it started;
separation’s not for the faint-hearted.

Carbost

High above the farm
fat-handed with drink
muttering fuck,
loose cannon
among skedaddling sheep.

Loch Harport
soggy now below
a tidal marsh
a mud mirror
for butterscotch dark.

Across a buffalo’s back
toward the spilled paintbox
of the sky
a scarecrow learns lessons
from a humourless wind.

Below, beside the lamplit hearth
children are learning Scrabble
tasting peat in water
doodling their Loch Ness Monsters
missing Daddy

while I, wild crow against
a Turner sky
rage in silhouette
search on and on
never finding 
the sunset.

My Beard

I know the whole idea is rather weird:
GraceK and Baytown wanted me to write
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

I guess I let it grow because I feared
my face was looking old or some such shite.
I know the whole idea is rather weird.

My wife just shrugged, the children loudly jeered
so now I pen, more angry than contrite,
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

I shaved it off but then it reappeared.
Eventually I just gave up the fight.
I know the whole idea is rather weird.

A facial growth like mine should be revered
so ladies, learn by heart and then recite
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

A literary genre pioneered
and now abandoned at its highest height!
I know the whole idea is rather weird;
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

Present Perfect

I have gone for ages now
wanting to express my sense
of how I have been feeling, how
my past has felt like present tense.

I have dreamed that time’s arrow
could send the past into the past
and make all of the “I have”s go.
Now I have seen it doesn’t last.

It has won all arguments
while I have lost my common sense
and have been plagued by past events,
trapped in the present perfect, tense.

The Anchor

You dropped an anchor down into my blood
then drifted on the surface high above.
Your little boat does not face any storm
up where the sky is bright and sun is warm
but every move you make comes down the chain.
A simple smile can cause me complex pain
for, down below, I harbour secret love
but cannot share it with the world above.
I want you to forget me and have fun
for you deserve the glories of the sun
as I belong beneath the silent sea
the only sound my own soliloquy.
I know someday you shall tear out my heart
when you pull up your anchor and depart.