poem

GOOD MORNING

Everyone is on the scale, I’m told and that’s enough- sometimes contact with an eye scolds like a plate hot …

AT HOME

I wake to a shoal of empty beer bottles- scale-less green fish sitting in summer romance along my window-sill sunk …

CHRISTMAS EVE 1996

Years ago I heard him- I swear I heard him I swear I heard the brass bells dull and grey …

DO YOU REMEMBER

Do you remember the soles of my feet saluting the sky? Do you remember when I kicked the moon with everything …

I CAN’T HELP YOUR DAUGHTER

I felt somehow guilty for what you’d done. You’d hurt yourself and now they knew. Now there was nowhere for …

VOICES

I find myself leaning into the earth after twenty four years staring into a sheet of glass thick with mist, …

MISSING

She had come this far, against the odds, tottered down the long, wide road where she walked alone amongst the …

LIMITLESS

The fine hairs that trace her temple have snatched the weak radiance from up above, like a school of shattered pearls in tune …

LOVERS’ DEAFNESS

He’s close enough to sink into the swirling galaxies and worlds of her pores, close enough to struggle in the whirlpool and …

For Auntie Janet

The infinite shining sun of my childhood is where you sleep, our history fifteen years past, passed faster than can …

EVERY MOMENT

I spied it in your eyes, caught grey and wistful and dangerous spluttering I pulled, pulled as if trying to …

CONFETTI

One less face at a leaving do, two fewer eyes to blithely scan the epigram ‘you’ll be missed’ later, the …

TEEPEE

This teepee could be a circus tent home to paint lacquered clowns, off-duty, brutishly short, with square jaws and raw …

LIBRARY IN A STORM

Go gently forward, these doors move for you; don’t rush. Your presence in that air-lock; that two-and-a-half feet of empty …

CAMPFIRE

We were sat ’round what seemed to me a pirate’s skirmish, the booming cannon balls of hot ash popped in …

A MOMENT AT EDGWARE ROAD

I saw you running- your legs so thin like two toothpicks in a cherry I feel like if I coughed …

Suitcase

I get up to take a piss glancing haphazardly at my suitcase leaning forlornly against the wall the colour of …

BOAT

Momentarily my boots met the night sky so I kicked the moon with everything I had I waded through the …

Of men everywhere

I don’t know how you do it; don’t get overwhelmed by the smog of sudden silence like fingers on your …

An agonising rate

Everything is falling apart at an agonising rate. Just the other day I heard a girl screaming silently drowning in …