all we are

The dog

(sunstained ginger)

tears cereal boxes with chortled breath

(a scrap extracted from skin-flap cheeks),

until the sunbeams are dressed in hard-cut edges.

We mirror its destructiveness,

and all our energies led to this:

a messy, drool-smeared carpet

in unlovely beige.

Slopingly, it comes to rest,

aloof and reasonless

in grey confetti flakes.

To a bouy

Displayed in ThornFest: Turning Tides.

I’ve been thinking I wanted to kiss you,

old friend,

and your laugh is the sand in my shoes.

It’s been too long for me to still miss you,

they said,

and spend salt on the paths that we choose.

Yet I still wish that I had been braver

back then,

when we really had nothing to lose,

except some subtle pride

and the call of the tide

was eternally prying us loose,

when I was like the lapping wave

of a trembling, two-tone tide

caught inbetween

the advance and retreat

with the moonlight on my side,

but you were not the cavern’s mouth

and I could not come inside.

Composed and pristine,

you were calm and complete

and repelled me every time.

And it might be then or never

now I’m rolling out to sea;

and we both might wait forever

until we can finally be;

but I’m giving my all

to a foreign shore

where you can never follow;

and they say it is easy

like giving in

to the cold dream of tomorrow.

Breakers will break us

and old bouys will save us

now that you are a Lenten dream;

and the children will make us

for the cold sea to take us

as we wait for the tide to come in.

Happiness

Monday. 8th February. Durham.

I found solitude where the hours expand

In the stale blood stains of coffee cups.

As when the pendulum

Swings past perpendicular

My increase was exponential.

Then the City

Opened its jaws

In a long, contented sigh,

And I walked in the valleys of its molars,

And I felt the warmth of its tongue.

And you know

That this cathedral

Is false hope.

Its tyrannical spires

Stretching everywhere higher.

On the way back down we passed the graveyard

And talked about death in eager voices.

You know rotting's such a bore—

I’ll stain the air with dust.

But what to choose?

A bench?

A tree?

A black smear in the sea?

'Twere now to be most happy.

‘I am happy’ is always a quotation.

The word arose

Before the cold stone

Of St. Mary’s College.

Before I was:

Giddy?

Emotional?

Not particularly sad?

But then:

Happ-eee.

So now that’s done.

But all happy families

Are not alike,

And you are not

That lost Venetian girl.

Today I wanted to ask

If you trust me.

I wonder if you know

I am of those

Too happy in their happiness

That monster their peace

With full-throated ease—

'Twere now to be most happy,

Like a train on a track,

Like a roofless room,

No turning back,

Or halting soon.

'Twere now to be most happy?

When you walk out in the morning with the sun beams on your back

And the dawn says you’re not breaking yet you still detect a crack.

And here's a performance of an earlier version of the poem (with a heavy cold!):

Changes

The scratching cries of blustering birds.

The tickling breeze that gently heaves.

The branches sway to keep the time

Amidst the soft applause of leaves.

Now comes a dying nasal whine

And rasping clearing of the throat.

The cheap-chirp birds and whisper-leaves

Could not compete with billy goats.

And if I was to add my voice

To woodland multitudes,

I’d stay my tongue and think what noise

I’d splutter forth to contribute;

What buzzwords, bywords, hand-me-downs

Would suit the tenor of my theme;

Or if a loud and bestial shout

Could wake the forest from its dream.

The time has come for artifice

To shed the shadows of the past;

To build myself from ashen blocks

And find a new self fit to last.

So come, you changes, murder me,

I’ll turn and face the strange.

Revise and ruin all you see

Erase it all and set me free.

Party Pooper

‘But I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe’

-Hamlet, Act 1, Scene II

Excuse my disinterest

But I struggle to see

What swell of occasion

Could overtop me;

What drift of disinterest

Could rally my speech

From this sullen aloofness,

My trappings of grief.

Forgive my disinterest

But who gives a toss

If it’s so-and-so’s birthday

Or our dinner is ‘posh’?

Four years with your girlfriend

Is all well and good,

But I don’t give a damn

Unless I’m understood.

So I’ll swim in my silence

Brush small talk aside,

And frown and feel hollow

Like somebody died.

If you won’t catch my moods

Then I’m out of your reach.

Though you offer a lifeboat

I'll stick to the sea.

The Parable of the Talents

'England is mine, and it owes me a living,'

-The Smiths

Joe totted up his net worth on

A dog-eared restaurant napkin.

His date was twenty minutes late

And he was hardly happy.

Joe totted up what he could give

To a vast indifferent world.

To woo uncaring multitudes

He totted up his worth.

And writing on the napkin’s right

In a cramped and nervous scrawl:

His virtues, talents, modest skills.

On the left his faults and flaws.

He started with the positive;

The things that he could do;

Like mediocre portraiture.

He used to play the flute.

But he quit karate needlessly

In a fit of childish rage.

The novel he was born to write

Never stretched beyond a page.

His French: no more than a bald Bonjour.

His verse was pretty bad.

He felt like the man who must multiply gold

But instead hid his charge in the sand.

His heart kept time in a sickly thump.

The sweat sprang from his skin

And left damp marks on the feeble start

Of his feeble offering.

He crunched the list in his clammy hand.

‘This isn’t all of me!’

‘But,’ said the absent place of his absent date,

‘This is all that I can see.’

Palm Sunday

Sunday.

The trees swallowed me up

And cogitated me softly,

With the leaves falling down in a vertical march,

Like the weeping of trees, a procession of palms.

They were not gold

But pale and brown,

Though far away

They shone like stones.

So as you were sinless you cast them at me

To bloody my body with loss of belief.

Now nothing remains of the lies that I weaved,

But I don't want to see.

So I shed my skin with muffled cracks

A constant, gentle breaking

And shift this flaking, wasting corpse

In one painful act of waking.

Now turn your eyes away from me

For I don't want to see.

And take your tongue and bury it

My covered ears still bleed.

And take this light away from me

For I don't want to see.

For I don't want to see.

Boyhood

It started with substandard films

And Hollywood explosions.

Manhattan burned, we faced our doom

From comets, drones or Martians.

Guy Fawkes demands an audience

When he gives himself to flames.

And violence is a boy’s best friend

In bloody playground games.

When British Bulldogs led the chase

That scrapes the skin from knees.

When infant fists stroked supple skin

It felt like a release.

When we learnt about the birds and bees

The teacher looked so serious.

It terrified my childhood friend

Who asked if boys have periods.

When my crush whined grass was in her bra

I scrunched up summer leaves.

When she started dating my best friend

Milk teeth made chapped lips bleed.

Perhaps the joy when tissues burn

Wasn't worth the wasted dust.

And perhaps the half price shoot-‘em-ups

Were never right for us.

Still, flowers once were shattered seeds

And fractured eggs makes birds.

And silence must be broken with

Artillery of words.

What harm was there is throwing stones

At Spot, the neighbour’s cat?

And insects feel no pain when scorched

With a magnifying glass.

So you will feel no hurt when I

Visit your lips too roughly.

And when I step across that line

You’ll damn well cross it with me.

And I Was Eyes Alone—

And I was eyes alone—

A curious departure.

‘Til thoughts reflect inflections

Of the voyeuristic laughter.

To disappear completely—

This aimless body’s aim.

The selfless self alone could help

To fill the world again.

Now drifting out the window

As the daylight starts to fade.

Do you spy it through the glass beyond

Your thin translucent shade?

To look and feel will fail

To know your memory-ridden face.

Now I see without direction

With a cool diffracted gaze.

Everything and nothing fill

The shrinking streets below;

And sleepers trapped within themselves

Still drag their worlds in tow.

Above, the formless fingers stretch

To grope towards the stars

Blind in their bliss to inward depths

Expelled in cosmic fires.

The light below is failing fast,

And with no light of its own

This voiceless voice is rising still.

Invisible. Alone.

Whitby

Seven years later: I'm back here again.

Is this the same town that I cherished before?

Is this the same sand? Is this the same shore

Where I danced to the pulse of the waves?

The silver framed photos are all that I have

To bind me to this quiet beach

But the pictured sand has left the land

The grains of me lost to the sea—

Before the hoping doting groping

Chocking with hurt

Feel like filth

Feel like dirt

Dad calling me ‘sod’ and carpet burns

And yellow paper fantasies—

Clifftop graveyard,

Ruined abbey,

New-sand seashore,

Nothing stays.

Pirate golf course,

Cliff-lift eyesore,

Salt-smell, seagulls,

They remain—

The grey sea claims me

Lately, they say

Insides echo,

Hollow, let go,

Touch me, tell me

I could matter;

Break me, fell me,

Idle patter;

Feed me, lead me

Back, back—

It rained so we stayed inside the car

And swallowed chicken sandwiches

The windows steaming

Dreaming

I would

Never leave there

Breath in

Leaving—

My Whitby where did you go?

The waves beat on while I was home.

Repeated breakers

Shape us

Make us

Longshore drift

Shall dislocate us.

I tried to dance with two left feet,

But quickly stumbled out of time.

The waves beat on, the tide encroached,

My loved ones said it would be fine.

So Whitby: home of vampires

And Goths and jet-based jewellery.

All I recall is that I loved

Those gentle memories truly.

So love me, Whitby, though I may

Have known the taste of failure.

I’ll find my head, then I’ll return

If you can’t be my saviour.

The sea is always calmest in

The space between the waves.

I’ll never leave that steamed-up car

The wind won’t bite my face.

The abbey perfect once again,

The seagull in mid-flight,

And there I’ll be;

The static sea

Will not know day nor night

My Whitby and Whitby's me

Together for all time.

Find me beneath the whale bone arch

A child again: alive.

Perhaps We Are

Perhaps we are

The ripples on

A stagnant pond

Underneath the algea;

Like veins within

Your oblique skin.

Perhaps we are.

Perhaps we are

The gaping fish

That gasping slip

And slide back in the water;

Try to taste air

Which is not theirs.

Perhaps we are.

Perhaps we are

Just amateurs

With metaphors

All a size too small;

Can’t comprehend

Our complex ends.

Perhaps we can't.