Monday 28 December 2015

1 New Poem

Found Houses


When sun-spires of youth darken
from overspun revelry,  I hope
we endure declines not as single points,
orbital fragments of metal flesh-bone,
but linked, devil-handed pairing
together map-making hazy pastures,
the figures being all so nervy,
stretched and made to pose,
but desire of nothing so much
as collapse.

Collapse to well-traveled arms,
enduring warm of lacquer-washed
skin.

Again, we would awaken not in
dizzy recall of dead drunken evenings,
still blank I searching passage time,
but in contented holding rooms
still, coffee cooling: home.

Wednesday 23 December 2015

1 New Poem

The Afterlife of Ideas
If we have names,
given by stars, neighbours,
passports, plastic cards
there isn’t so much more
to give, to take, but
silence, but company of strangers.

If we have homes,
crests of rose-harp
and half-sarcastic maple,
cliff and burren shorn of all
but colonial signpost to mark,
what need we ferryboats?

If we have titles,
embossments made in tusk towers
to choose between a kindly construction
of worthless parchment transformation,
squeegee wash dish platters pushed,
are not we emboldened by them?

If we have capitals,
red brick lake places in hearty cheer,
celebration of frontiers unconquered,
empires deceased, imagined, decayed,
are ever-fleeting these joys as
passing stations, professorial notions?

If we have moments,
tenderness by Turkish candlelight,
the switching magnetics of traffic
din symphony, couch-bound war cries
for struggles ever-far afield,
what use is there in lifetimes?

And if we have long evenings,
spent in tradition revival of
intellects, lovers beyond ourselves

let them last,
echo.

Wednesday 16 December 2015

2 New Poems

Building Starts
From peaks you take on EU crest
qualities, those pointillist patriot dances
when spoken as debt transactions
in back rows of designed Routemasters,
a sort of fevered plotting for the
young and crisp-thought set.

Meetings of trembled fingers,
nervous-pawing places we take between,
not physical as were the hanging vines,
not close as the slouching water runs,
but still sparking in that strange way
misfits do when burned-down dreaming.

Through bright flash sections, digits
we can’t wait for as once we did
with parchments and ink dabs for
signage timing, third string of
tin can phones for hollow speech,
it’s a scene of togethers beginning.




Cities on Fire
So I begin again, at Highgate’s steps
in placid form, stone storm shapely
as ever against the backdrop of
Marxian prose, summery nightsweat dew.

Draw out the plastic scrap change pieces,
the starring signposts of two-bit money
changer habit, grubby half-pence
sentiments clutched as wish-well piece.

Vanish the pleasantries of passion
past, supposition of royal garden
verandas, the cash-clang of Tesco
self-service booths: they make only echoes.

True, still, they burrow damp,
take a kind of parlor room’s
mystery as their fun,
forever smothering that reflected sunshine.

Monday 14 December 2015

1 New Poem

Long-Sighted 
In the grandeur lost temporal acts,
the slow-swung balletic step of
star systems, blank canvass, nothing
of this will have matter,

it becomes the tatty fragments
of memory, sustaining spots of
sun when windows close on
four-poster beds of middle-age's
drifting, free-spent regret.

But it takes time to see
in such light and

Perhaps I needed someone to protect
protect me, covered clarity from rainwater
buckets couldn't conjure any kind
of mystic's ration to take

that sort of long view.

Wednesday 9 December 2015

1 New Poem

A Finding
I dream of jet engine streams,
Mayflower propellers, anything
to cut across the azure separation
hewn of pushed-apart Pangaea ,
torn as pantheons once may
have done to us, I could imagine.

But it's not chisled tablet,
it lacks of permanence,
it spills out in thousand
directions of spattering code
in attempted conveyance, the kind
that come through in bored midnight.

And I'm sorry for even asking,
but could you find me in quilted wrap,
at the ditchside, and, indeed, infatuated?

Tuesday 1 December 2015

1 New Poem

Wigilia Dinners
A muddy patch on Greyhound windows,
scraping clean in claret bath lacquer
mulling heat rash ruddy amongst
the stomach pain swirls inky acidic
markers as testament to what gets
left as unburned kindle, as untested steel,
as chalkboard theory, as textbook framework.

Embrace of asphalt arms, the model
sparkling monuments to welfare states past
which guide as gilded wire to weary dawns
forward in militia march of white faced
hours, leaking pavement shades in buckets
for trenchant timing up is the strongest
suit of cardstock to have handed.

Plastic cups, plates of precious silver,
like a mismatch of Wigilia and milk bar,
wash against each as sandshore rocks
the barring remove of aparting ocean;
as still as life mural painting, stand
up personable, but it’s not the
sort of supper you have until you’re

older, able to make sense.

Thursday 26 November 2015

1 New Poem

Memoirs for Portugal

In the drying drift of Aeroflot
tail lights, I let the skycap
hum drown out a clock’s chime,
overwhelm the intrusive wavering
of even-handed consideration,
of clustered-up pricing structures,

That kind to scarcely touch asphalt,
runway pylon before scattershot shatter.

But you’re not an observation,
a phenomenon of glitter & gunsmoke,
radiance of sunshowers, or
any other soft- spun metaphor
for 20-something passion’s naively
interlocked dreamtime escape. Then,

What was I pausing upon? Rapture’s dawn?
Not, but same sort, just thinking.



Monday 16 November 2015

1 New Poem

If You Find Yourself Lonely

When people build battlements of themselves,
brick-by-brick greying stiffness,
flying up as meadow larking,
they dress it up in splendid shades
to distract.

I wasn’t so locked-away as all that,
though reserved of harpsicord tune,
hesitant of Scotian spirits,
but I hadn’t the heart to lie,
nor protest.

Still, if the strains of NYC Philharmonic
ever sound of scraping scrap tin,
and the hanging soot of Dylan’s memory
in Greenwich becomes a coughing fit trap:
do say.

And if shop front lights in London
ever turn a shade too sour,
the cuckoo clock ding-dongs of alighting
bend a clanged note of North Star’s guidance:
it’s alright.

You were stronger than to feel it,
always.

Wednesday 11 November 2015

1 New Poem

Kinetics

It’s one smooth motion of skin upon itself,
one glancing slip of colours complimentary,
Ceylonese oil portraits of grassland greenery,
of tea in Edwardian china we could have
a drink upon in sunray restraint;
all that and becalmed spirits still.

It’s fumbled in half-words, trapped braveries
that are forever tongue-tied lightness,
forever careful Catholic’s starched lip,
forever kindled warmth of hearth,
but I could picture Mitchell songs with you,
I could dream of Merchant-Ivory productions.

It’s all but key-turns, tumbling
silver hairpins, click-click stick
of laptop combinations; we don’t connect,
we spin coin dance of Moroccan tabletops
glinting in moonshine strength, lapping
repeat of water on graceless sand.

Monday 9 November 2015

2 New Poems

Mercury Liquid
It’s a shimmer, heated daze of
consciousness brought with black dress delusions,
heavy clang of emptied party tables,
bare whiskey cupboards, ever-rising AM alarms,
set like you couldn’t believe they were,
too early for what begins at dusk and lasts.

You waltz through balcony rooms,
as if amber wheat in ricepaper dawns,
as if scything swish-swirls in balletic heel,
as if you were straight off the Thames in silver,
not with some drab-dressed closeness,
in the Rideau apartment walk-ups,

where the thermostat setting broke twice.




Dousing

You’ll make some sort of splash,
a hallowed kind as baptism in
Ballymore pitch, but all the best
in ondine eruption, mythical rite
not taken, Gaelic runes unworn,
as you weren’t that, not ever.

Still somehow in spectral projections,
blinkered film canisters, you remain,
pitch-corrected as a pop song,
but in greater wonder held;
it’s a certain shame, the turn-about
of spaces light, I imagine
taking you to, crystal Sofia palaces;

not a post-communist princess,

but, still, you impress like one.

Friday 6 November 2015

1 New Poem

Dowry Letters

You and I: we could do
some sort of damage, set fire to
brackish drifting cedar,
light up ice-night starring roles
with wording parchment,
with rushing creak of rivers' aged bend.

Something might have caught like
copper cable signals, struck up
the glassy-growing shadow theatre,
from crept light in corner's rooming,
could have blotched out from spilling
drywall finish, tin-metal shading.

We, you and I, could be
a sorted construction, bare bones
and winding bedsheet twine, but,
then, it's already tomorrow in Hong Kong
and the days pass in lotus flower
tinting, maple-sap slow in retrospect.

Tuesday 3 November 2015

1 New Poem

 Painting in Bright Colours

The slow-hand draw of punch-card
collective, soft batch radicalism
pitched to the dress-nines, fabric
distress breaking against paper weights:

being too literal with time,
too symbolic with wording.

It lights up as petrol-soaked
tinder rag in parents’ house
burns down as dreams of cross-streamer,
illusory illustrations of calendar headings:

being too eager with company,
too restrained with love notes.

Monday 2 November 2015

1 New Poem

Returned Sender
If I found you in Berlin,
where they kiss main roads
and make love in post-Soviet swirl
of mid-dusk firework shows,
you fall close as ever,
green-growing as arks at dusk
and, I’d hope, in my tired arms.

If I found you in Paris,
where they smolder-smoke with café pastry
and philosophize on napkin clothes,
on rickety tables with pretensions’ past ghosts,
you’d outshine the swimming starlets,
your memoirs of King’s college,
my holding on for a footnote.

If I found you in Madrid,
where you spoke of sunshine
in Gaelic accent, watery resonance,
you wouldn’t be a synthetic muse,
a hang-lamp for teenage passions,
but some brighter star to chase,
in Albion poets’ style grand.

If I found you in London, though,
that was all: just the meeting.


Tuesday 27 October 2015

1 New Poem

As Follows

The cedar silhouettes’ drawing,
shade curtains, velveteen cutting
in boisterous shapes same-styled
as before, but somehow lighter, somehow brittle
communion wafer in sea shanty tune.

If I could have you in my wilderness,
sheltering from winter’s flurries, summer’s rainfall,
it would warm as hibernation’s burrow,
cheek-to-cheek clasping: a desperation,
but still-life together, dentist office portrait.

If you’d let me, I’d take care of you,
trilling piano chord, but then it isn’t that
easy, just hold and shaking, just down from
ledge-cliffs; it wasn’t climbing so much
I enjoyed as the cross-fall to end.

Monday 26 October 2015

1 New Poem

Newcomers

We're not so different,
our bumpkin bumper crops
like he thousand scattered stars
spilling dust-dawns across
our 4AM videographer scratchiness,
but entangling, knotty as the tall ship
ropes.

But, then, we're slowing, half-cast
in blue drowning liquor lights,
heat of breaking moments in cheap linoleum
kitchen countertop lamentations, spun
across the criss-crossing of talk
there always is in these reason
lapses.

It reads like myths on legislative
paper, the coming design of mosaics,
steeple and temple artworks mingling
as teenage footsteps softly hushed,
sleepy-headed; I could wish lying
each others' across for dawning
anew.

Friday 23 October 2015

1 New Poem

Knives and Swords

You cut through the humid house parties,
the false streamer flags,
the wavering digital bass,
with some sort of old world's grace,
with some sort of 30's film stock shimmer,
moving like a pre-Hayes vixen,
moving like a star dawn horizon,
from East to West, nervous hand tics.

And then you pierce wish-washy
downmarket club smoke greys,
rays of coloured cotton,
prismatic places far gone,
with a kind of ever-binding charm,
with a kind of new-found beauty
spinning like a drunkard's left feet
spinning like a lit fire's ceremony,
from West to East and back again.

You're surgical: precise without meaning,
tools of night-shade dress fabrics, stiletto
but not even those, no, never needed,
your blades' glints are yours alone.

Tuesday 13 October 2015

1 New Poem


Tea Stains

You leave as red clay to
pristine china, chipping bits and bobs,
alabaster rubbings, fault wire steel,

Christmas day trimming scissors crackle paper
dawning, torn errant in bracing sickness,
plate-cups on pikes, but aren’t spinning,

aren’t calling for release, youth’s folly,
but greying, retreat to pale shade draws,
nothing more having passed to lip,

but clinging in unwashed sink tone clamor,
the kind that never cleans quite:
overused corporate coffee pots,

British buildermen’s mugs.

Sunday 11 October 2015

1 New Poem

Cascades

In the running cloud running,
painted spaces for here, forever ago,
in grand expanse of oceans' tide,
cascading crush of eroded eons,
sediments and spaces between,

it never did matter.

It never did that you live
near Astoria Park now, spinning
about with East River glass water
with bottles and cups and cap-cans
scattering in concrete heat, bleating,

it simply didn't.

It's simple to say you
don't talk of bitter clovers
again, that fluttering typist ribbon,
inky parchment, smoke sticks on
fire escapes with reconstructed Bolsheviks,

caught your fancy instead.

Instead of Midwest archways,
nervous jitter-jatter of North Country hands,
untrained for love's surgical nuance,
unused to ribbon cuts' clarity,
instead of, frankly, my drinking shadow

it isn't all that.

All that meeting of glowings wonderous,
those things deserved from hair curls down,
those things spoken of small town girls
who follow dreams to spires spun gold,
turn to ashen trust for bitter fingers

just watched the cascades roll in.

Friday 2 October 2015

1 New Poem

Percentages

The build-up of blank pages,
grid line determination, ruled-out
and truthful agreement,

it was the first of wishes,
balanced breaking waves,
toss of blue-green shade,

what we could have signed to.

We could have been
Iosif and Winston, divvying up
Yugoslavia, ticking parchment,

dipping ink quills in each our
sweated feints at denial,
at principled diplomats

before falling

once again to settled logic;
two empires' demarcation,
surrendered nations' terms.

Wednesday 30 September 2015

1 New Poem

Something Greater

It is to long for something better,
apart and far from bruising of brushfire,
in Birkbeck bricks and King’s colleges
though the grindstone teeth, nightcap book pages
burning oil thousands off miles,

in hope of greater fortune coming.

It is to be for something grand,
apart and far from shaking crowd’s scorn,
the blue-orange light of sloping bottle pill
mornings, staining windows and chalk dust
scrambles in dark corners, needle glint,

in dance of struggle, placards, colour red.

It is to want for something greater,
apart and far from sun-piercing shadows
how you water mouths for reckless-remembered
scar tissue, and the heart takes what it will,
but then isn’t in so convenient,

to be loved in closer manners?

Friday 18 September 2015

2 New Poems

Clean Corduroy

White shirt pressed,
steaming, wish to
disguise, fracturing:

there is slight literalism
to your skin shade,

slight hanging hesitance
to your one of work,

dressing scissor slices,
but you don't hang in
ribbons and bows,

not nearly, not nearly.
But I fail one to judge,

taking drubbings from
temperance,

taking illusion from
coloured glass,

taking freedom from
sallow smiles,

but, at least,
pressed, cleaned.



Toi, Tu Pars

Like Americanized Chinese,
Japanese-to-English back translation,
stage management, shuffled decks,
hiding in velvet curtain calls,
slight of hand,

when we're gone as air,
in light reflection,
half-making of darkness,

but I'd make it up,
do something with
teacup ivory, with broken Cadbury
bars to mend,

and still it's heady,
cloud-covered, seeming
undefined, yet not shadowed,
speaking,

unheard echo, wooden.

Sunday 6 September 2015

1 New Poem

Jazzy
You were jazzy,

tempered drummer's pitter-patter
on Transatlantic window screen,
knocking to-and-fro on wingspan
bathing in blue cabin light, taking on
a carcinogenic haloing.

You were off-trilling,

when I something flourish
in primes of stolen letting,
leaving pound pints to their task,
the dancehalls in North of England.

You were balladeering,

when could have passed,
nothing more than train announcements'
placeless drawl atop bleached clatter.

When could not have been but
falling's immortal melody in lullaby:

you were.

Sunday 23 August 2015

1 New Poem

Ode to DLR

You and I should meet on air,
in these whirling hyperloop palaces
of all burnished steel, treated glass,
Polish plumbers' expressions of effort
possessed of a breaking cold becoming
strangely humble,

as if you could meet anyone,
from anywhere,
when next break light chimes.

You and I should make an affair,
bathe in serendipitous twinkle of
Alexandra Palace hill light,
click heels and wish to tune
of Turkish butchers' instrumental clatter,
seeming soundtrack of Haringey

as if there could be anything,
all desires,
in off-beat pulse of gig space walls,

in the grandeur spiral of 8 million
we sometimes find ourselves

as two points alighting the same.

Wednesday 12 August 2015

1 New Poem

Steel Sometimes Bends

Errant heat sparks the clashing
clatter of tea cart trays, straining
rail spikes, ties to
cement casing, careful poured:

how still, how silent, all,
but for those first unfelt tremors:

wheel turning once too fast, too often
a day, running ice cooled to
crevice shape, inching degrees imperceptible

until a swift stroke comes to bear.

But this was a metaphor, and now you
are “art”,

and I'd ask how it feels to be heat,
to inhabit steel,

but if you are so sincere,

I thought you'd hung the stars,
angled lunar shimmer so well, too.

Sunday 9 August 2015

1 New Poem

Kinder Words

I am wearied by all this just talking politely,
these Victorian vagaries of restraint, temperance
leavened with pint glasses, with half-steps
to mannered worldliness, to suit jacket sophistication
to cold cover made in confidence.

Wishing to crash against as South Pacific storms,
confront in steel shaping the drawing room distinctions
between our tics of movement made in absentia,
cabinet decisions we make collective, and
the deeply uncooled passion of placard placement slogans
beyond Downing door frame.

They'll be soon starting in
with the kebab shop clatter,
an eager retrenchment sandbagging
various laments stolen in hour
unspent on treetop dawns,
champagne spills fizzing

and made to so much mulch by
untalented tongue.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

1 New Poem

Take That Waltz
It is the rosewater left untaken
off-wave tone of blinking midnight clocks
in musty hotel rooms, beaten in blinkered
cross-eye stance

for unspooling rooms, could be
drank in darkly as Tudor beam
ceilings a party conference decision tables,

ever-weighting between blinded scales
and lost in years as all.

Still, you stain,
port dark, wine deep:

the wish to have taken up some sport
of gentlemen's hours, drivers at dusk
across coattail creases, distraction in
letterhead pitches, in grinding peacetime.

In hours entranced by garden trestle vines,
shuttering possible pasts behind doorsteps' flutter,

it is ever the better a dance to take.

Sunday 2 August 2015

1 New Poem

Three Pence

Copper coin shimmer lines speckle-spatter
along well-wishers banks beneath
Islington's club gig smoke for the
name of some 90s indie band,
none could exactly remember,
none could quite forget.

I glow, untrammeled, haloing
Primark dress shirts in black light,
but for shock of uncertain divisions
and

the lack I am of figures assured,
neither Chancellor nor another great
figure a state one day sets in bronze.

For promises of rock & roll America,
places wild of youth, ease, never did
a single stroke for cold running hands
and

answered what I'd give for touch:
oceanic deliverance, partial to your
frame, shaking, waiting maiden memorial fantasy,
as you tame-keeper wilderness of telescopic time.

Remind

what once there was to gain,
now lost for want of a three penny nail.

Monday 20 July 2015

1 New Post

The Thing About Dreams
Everything lost along the highway at night
reflects, sparking, torrential, eyes of
landlocked Midwestern states turning in sequence
to battered tomes of ages past:
memoirist typefaces, laggy second-pressing
covers in watercolour fashion, kind to
find in gas station spin-racks between pulps
and Harlequins, beneath fading sun heat of
still water, exhaustion pills and greater motion.

How ever-crossed-up are means with ends,
subtle clanking of pens for wordsmiths,
a glancing glint for shots in the dark,
straining adolescent sentiment for passion;
who can blame for that,
with the tales of freeway freedom spinning
around airwaves' brusque light brigade?

If those wonders held truth, the thought
of leaping right over wood and wire laminate
of these knock-off Starbucks tables to
kiss you
wouldn't seem so distant,

you'd be the breeze between lampposts at dawn.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

1 New Poem

A Dialectic

Always distrust the almost-the-same,
the not-quite-there, the sugar substitutes
and waxy imitations of skin contact,

always distrust that moment when reality melts,
when concrete of sidestreets seems to bend
with sea air and Proms string swells,

they never do measure to life as it is:
a choice amongst poisons where it
takes to a kiss-mark of swirling ink,

and you dance on pen tips,
a mixed metaphor of still spring
love that calms even as rushing,

untamed, eroding what little was there.

Sunday 5 July 2015

1 New Poem

Dots and Dashes

It's telegraphic, scribbled on fence posts,
newspaper bylines, sign signals that
something should be passing through
this way again, some somebodies in
the hip-swing 60s, in the coke-strung banker days;
that feeling you never are first at
doing whatever it may be.

Still:

let's trace faulty wiring to the beneath stars
of Hyde Park's firing fountain reflection,

let's hum melodies to the clang-clamour of
trainers and stilettos on plastic bits of Underground step-up,

let's drink in mock-Shanghai of Shard bars,
pretend we're rich as Russian oilmen twice over,

let's flood the riverside patios in Shoreditch
with a thousand sparks of dancing shoes

let us live, and be young, and be with the Thames.

Then even if it is just

dots and dashes, dashes and dots,
they'll be ours alone.

Monday 22 June 2015

1 New Poem

Konkret

Humdrum humming of gradient steel,
chewing gum pavement, cut with lye glass,
Radioshack mock boomboxes blaring deep house
in past-work hour mocking a fool's
panoply of bright-checked shirts, stetson
whistles and views of billboard bylines,
gave you some placement, anchor in
two-slice five-dollar ticket counters,
the hard-sell donation box merchants,
the 888 Craft Market lead paints fumes.

But I can't fault it,

when I fell back on despondent's jeer,
pretended sophistication for someone used to
facade accents, half-stories of life, embellishments,
to get through the morning's perception,
to get past an urge of collapse.

The Bellwoods maples, whacked together
hammer-chisel with art pattern invisibility,
with white fence sophistication, never did
a great deal more than sights of entangled
arms on Church St. alleyway bottles,

but, then, for you:

I fall hard, I fall fast
to parchment, to concrete.

Monday 15 June 2015

2 New Poems

Smoothing Stones

A ripple is an echo by other names,
in other tongues, other epochs;

it is a chosen stone, careful dropped
as quill ink on fresh-printed parchment,

but lesser permanent, lesser meant,
blind but to its writer, by terms.

Listen closely, it can be heard:
the hesitance in verbage of tea-time blandness,

though content with flattened verse, it stirs
of deeper longing in private hours,

it cries between pine needles' space
to come back to spaces where

you and I ripple upon each other.
Or is it echo?

Could Be All Yours

If I could freeze clocks on you,
the glacial porcelain facades of
Swiss maker's hands could finger-count
all hours running out my youth in cold,
in unaired hotel rooms, in library benches,
I'd settle on love's birth in a single metaphor:

you were reading Kundera
in a room of light banter's banality,

every impulse to crafter's wine,
dusty bookshops, thesis work in
the Sunday pubs of suburban London.

Still, the bottle dust, the record books,
the hard-parcel pieces, the Guardian default news-tickers
give way to clicking the same three Chait articles
to smirk slightly at their headlines.

In other terms,
to lonesome.

Saturday 13 June 2015

1 New Poem

Feverish

You run my hands together,
five fingers in grand combat
with the other: chess boards,
Cold Wars played out in
millimetres, half-seconds

when they stare across the way,
catching glance on bike-lock bridge,
atop nervy intonations, hard swallow
sea waves, follicle grease stringiness.

They are alight with distractions' air,
kind making visa appointments,
train ticket plans, impossible to keep;
shamrocks weaving in patterns with jasmine.

Some calm, cooling, collectivist cure,
crushed and reformed in super-pharmacy plastic,
some thing to throw these irrational temperatures,
that buckets from the garden hose couldn't.

Friday 12 June 2015

1 New Poem

A Dialogue On Alone

“You'll know one day,
when you spend your last fourty forints
on one-way crosstown trolley tickets,
tracing fingers on red line maps
with no way backwards through the
Warsaw pact cables and Ascension Treaty steel,

with no real plan except for saying
you love like a Sainsbury's Christmas ad,
like a 3-star hotel lobby hymnal.”

But, will you, did you ever?
Having never seen the building sides
in Bucharest, the shoulder-wide shimmer
of Gatwick train tracks?

“How would, too, yourself,
bereft of all shading, ambition, embittered,
but for the longing of fractured hair strands;
does it not make the same, in the end?”

It does, a bit;
I care not.

Saturday 6 June 2015

5 New Poems

And Fate

The call of blessed emerald,
casting spell of salted sea,
first tipsy-drawn mood of the fishing boat
captain in rosewater supple,
shades of graceless gods, lore of
ticking clock face ever-believed for its
boldness, how you find your heart again
between the Thames banks, beneath
suit-cut clatter of City call-men and
silent disco goers subtle flicks of
wrist.

What some say to sagebrush sapling,
the just-bloomed bud of restless connection
greening this way, that, root-tapped,
is smothered in the coal fire of knowing
better than belief, better than constellation maps,
better an horoscopes and untamed incantations:

that theirs is no destiny,
only the bricks of Highgate.


One Week That Summer
I never knew I was a dancer
until Lebanese liqueur and loud places
between the canals showed me just how
time can spill, tendril in ink sky as
stamping shoes give way to nervous
sock feet in kitchen chairs.

Still, in the bleary whir of electric
musicians, ghosts casting presence,
hoping for sure-spoken magic,
something more secure than this
rippling of flesh in low-light.

It frees from duller hours,
from places of silence where
minds can run free as steppe,
chase own tails in lifelong spiral,

but throb dull as dishwater
brackish, course with headache
crimson, confuse with genuine

shoulders to deem worthy of
gilded lily cry, that I never

knew myself to be.



Someone's Conquest

I was never a challenge,
in slumping pound shop dress shirts,
not some untouched citadel slippery
with vine cover, shape of ancient deities
imposing.

Was that the problem: you longed for
climbing hooks, false footing, the traps
and pleasures of new world overcome?

When it was only the ever-smooth steel
motion of Rideau Chapters escalators
I had on offer?

No, no, too wallowed in the realm
of sections in bookstores we never
went: Harlequins and self-help?

But, then, what is Rosa Luxemburg
to Sunday morning's lovers?

Only a memory of things
left away.

Conversing With Shadows

On those days the sky was wine-dark,
oozing blackened blood in the flaying cut;
it preoccupied wire-crackle sparks
the notion of infinite harms,
milestones of sheet bedding taken with
tear-filled eyes, but at least taken.

Talk through tea time and 2AM,
of how broken heritage was to come
down to smashed compass pocket watches,
how none of everything makes you real
some cosmic sense of its everlong embrace:
untouched, unknown as first sunlight's touch.

But more how to immolate ever-pledged freedom,
the glories of oaken flame setting stage,
bringing a Northern snowfall's certainty,
making ourselves into shadowboxers, and
perfectly matched.