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We could be closer than skins
Touching
On an unmade bed

But we
Pause before speaking
And the spell is broken

oh fucking hell
fucking fucking hell
oh fucking hell
fuck fuck fuck fuck
fucking fucking hell
fuck it

Under the vaulted limestone light
same as ever mantled
Jude
and other backs
You strode, and were seen to

In shadows above
gargoyles
angels
fear and fantasy in stasis

Below
in amongst the chatter
a still moment
seen child
lauded
loved and now part unknown
in another light

All the sweeps and days
of unbreathed angels
in their hanging over
are grains to that moment

(for T)

All those Springs
before
and some yet to come
On tiptoe at the
cill
of this Winter

Rolling over the
hard
solstice
stone
uncovers nothing save the
yet ungathered nuts
heeled, unseen, into soft soil
that should not be so

Disparate clouds finding purpose, forming
slate scrum and
dulling the bright moon to an
echo

Letting comets pass by
blind
in their haste to know everything

Given back unanchored days oh I pledge
the ship yours, skulled and boned
the mast high
the deck sound
the horizons distant

And you!
I have too that corded pink
the paint
the lodged purpose

If you hold me or not hold me
to those meant promises unfulfilled
will you, in return
set me out upon a simple ship
of flamed sail and the wind astern?

For I have a sea in me more than
Life to vessel it

Sun through leaf, autumn leaf
dead leaf yet unfallen

unblinding tan filter and open skeleton

the sound of your shod steps
heard unheard heard again
narcotic dance woven
into the
downpour’s dopplered drops
beneath neck,
wrist,
brow
beats the tempo of parting
blossom pulse of a wordless song
kind light, kelvin shift to blue on touchless skin

Scanned, speared
Mischievous walnut
Strangler
Unsettler, quietly
Threatening
Going about your work unseen
Garrulous gland

Having taken me to drugs
Stirrups, penetration and piercings
I wait upon you
Hanging at your intent unfathomed

Everybody’s shadow
Sat down next to me
We looked at some
Numbers
Charts
Websites

Together

It was all a bit grey
A bit
Who can say? A bit
Seize the fucking day

But in the mirror it was only
The shadow smiling

He left
Expectation
Future version
Hauling back the past fishline, gone

It doesn’t matter it matters it
Doesn’t

Matter on a table thing

What is it? A what?

Dead grey
He drove me to school
[was it duty?]
He left bruises
He left words
He left echoes and the noise he used to drown them

He often drove past me homing

Too young celebration frozen fingers clamped on broken glass,
We dreaded, hated and loved

Too many confused looks, too early flinches

He threw up in a bowl
Two sheets of cardboard from me
He never watched me play

I watched him, shirt sleeved over the spade, court
The Irish girl next door, she too young

There was such a fury when the line would
not hold that I clung to mother and wept
and was shamed and again shamed for it

I learned, though not my fastest learning

Demanding

Food nor grease nor the aired words of beyond him
Could be enough. enough.

If he could have seen
The heave of his mother’s bosom
Heard that catch in the throats of the women:
They held him whistling to work
On his bike when his hair fell thick and black
And the broken watch forgiven

Now that you’ve died all these years
What are you?
You left me sails
And some vistas
And gravel where I should have sand
You left
And when you left you left me grateful
And thank you
For the sails and the summits
But you were still a cunt

Like the leaf
Cling
Creatures
Wild
Touch, touch, sound, touch me, you, life begins

All
Don’t you know

Now they give me
Some other journey (or I
gave)
Without leaving or destination
Excepting the destination

Eye crammed ear crammed
I run my tongue over tired
and badly tended teeth
I watched
a spider belly full of spittle
stretched over the space between us
screen and I, line taut

From my unfeeling to the gloved hand
And I curled in embarassment
Like my insides were on show

Turn away from this shame that
cocoons
She read me a letter I thought
bore another name
I asked, and was answered

Souls I cannot believe in but
Are true
Noted loss
There is pain that cannot be lain on words
To await a match, a
Deliverance

To be them, to be her, to be
to be, to be her, to be them
to be her, to be, to be, to be, to

To not be

Gathered armfuls of tear and song; no
A procession of bowed heads
A garlanded silence
darkening, now
Colourless

I like this poem
It begins with confidence
And gives away no secrets