Unmasked

There's a torture

hidden by the beautiful mask,

looped over her ears as though

cinched about my heart,

asking for fingertips to undress,

attend to loose strands of hair,

peel the fabric of lobe and cheek,

and chin and nose and lips,

that forbidden Eden.

Upon the naked face,

the simplest stirring of wings,

erupting from the garden.

I don't want these things to become the new norm

When you're no longer reliant on the palm of my hand to keep your head up,
When you're no longer babbling the language of babes or smiling toothlessly,
When the breast is too little and the food is too soft,
I don't want these things to become the new norm.

When your first word is your last word and I'm finally Da,
When you first use a spoon instead of spreading your food across the kitchen floor,
When you stop painting the table with yoghurt,
I don't want these things to become the new norm.

When you no longer wake us in the middle of the night,
When you stop taking anything to chew on even though it's covered in germs,
When you stop falling over for no reason at all,
I don't want these things to become the new norm.

When we dispense with the harness and first walk hand-in-hand,
When you stop running too far or standing your ground with a frown on your face,
When the puddles are no longer pulling you in,
I don't want these things to become the new norm.

When you no longer cry at the playschool's door,
When you're too tired after for the swings and the slide,
When you stop wanting everything for dinner yet eating nothing you're given,
I don't want these things to become the new norm.

When you stop asking for Paw Patrol and find it yourself,
When you stop watching me game and take the controller away,
When you no longer want a bedtime story,
I don't want these things to become the new norm.

When the excuses to keep getting out of your bed turn to instant sleep instead,
When you finally learn how to button your shirt for school,
When you roll up your tights on your own and find your foot in the correct shoe,
I don't want these things to become the new norm.

When you fall and rise up on your own,
I don't want this thing to become the new norm,
But that's me, and I'm selfish, so you be you and stand up,
And I'll pocket these things you'll never know, until you know.

Cracked

A wonder, a wander, journey adjourned,
A question, answered, questioned, adjourned,
A malted sorrow, a sour and bitter adjourned,
A path, of stone, of gravel, of mud adjourned.

Adjourned.

Bluest skies bloodied red at mourning dusk,
A boulder ground by words of wind to dust,
Lightest sunlit white-washed walls of rusting
laughter, lusting plaster, damp and cracking.

Cracked.

Status Quo

In wild and stormy, harshland blocks,

wet pillars stoney-faced and eyelid

thin, the cots within of hungry cries,

wide-mouthed to take the driving rain,

and chase away the milk of grey

from state to State to empty plate;

parents without parents in poverty;

breadcrumbs floating on a silver lake,

a spoon removed from gloopy mess

by Blue-encrusted sticky fingers,

laid bare the many needs for more,

the young grow old without growth.

Incense

I was Wordsworth's cloud;
     essence of Sandalwood, some Pine,
     resin of Aloe, condensed drop-
lets; some rising and rising
     embers in cooling blue sailing
up in windless Frankincense, parading
     o'er hills and vales, mankind.

From the ash below me you glowed,
     my Makko in the valley
     of the Tabu-No-Ki trees,
and as I grounded into your Dragon's
Blood we boiled, distilled, oxidised
     more Myrrh, Mastic, the Juniper
of the Cocoa Grasslands, then breathed.

Thicker than Wordsworth's cloud,
     our Elemi soared into the stratus
     o'er the Himalayan Cedar, the Atlantic,
the Lebanon; densing o'er Norwegian Spruce;
     sour Earth-ashes of before
fell from our budding field of lavender,
as we swelled the vales of our atmosphere.

I Miss

I miss writing without pretention;
summer holidays window-gazing from indoors,
my room yellow from radiation,
air a suit of sweat-stained gauze

from which I wrung my nubile poetry.
I miss cricket on the beach, all mobile
parents; Dad running, bowling, free
as the wind that whipped the balls for miles;

Mum free-walking, joining or laying a spread
for us five to eat; yesterday yet never,
yet today inside my heart and everyday
in memory, sand between toes forever.

I will miss that active, alive childhood
throughout the generations I survive through;
my own young or others; I have stood
in places and stand there still anew,

ghosts in my eyes of flicker-book things
all converging, building, stinging;
Dad's bare brown back in summer heat
or lawn green bowls rolling

from his bent-knee frame, then quick,
he's driving to work for Electrolux
towing a gleaming goliath trailer equipped
with cleaning machines; this as mum cooks

her speciality roast, or passes gifts
from the base of the christmas tree
in the early-hour thrill, kissed
thank-yous shy and tentative.

I miss standing in the old places,
filling my old spaces with my size;
will miss the passing faces
and wear each one at times.

Crave

It's too much, yet not enough
to sate my burning
eye-lust for you.
~~~~~~
Above an ankle sock
a flash of pink,
curves of skin unpeeling
to calves and knee-pit g-spots,
the range of thighs and butt
like a bronze sea
undulating its
wavy candleflame-
flesh, firm but giving
in my grasp, releasing pearls with my tongue
until I capsize, no air
beneath you.
From toe to head I drown.

From head to toe I drown
beneath you,
until I capsize, no air
in my grasp. Releasing pearls with my tongue-
flesh, firm but giving
-wavy candleflame
undulating- it's
like a bronze sea;
the range of thighs and butt
to calves and knee-pit g-spots,
curves of skin unpeeling
a flash of pink
above an ankle sock.
~~~~~
Eye lust for you
to sate my burning.
It's too much, yet not enough.

Pause

It's easy to start with something substantive,
for it's you;
you place your head on my chest
where your tears are laid to rest;

you smell of work
and bus stops, the premature night
in your conditioned hair, crescent
of frustrated grief.

I wish I could fast it forward,
I wish I could pause it all,
(30, 40, 50, 60,
when is old? A death expected?)

- here in our private darkness,
practicing the at-once universal
and inalienable personal
truth of truths; a fist smacks down

so I hold your shaking close,
closer, closest I've ever held;
and for a while I feel the tears meld
the seconds into hours,

our beats unify and slow,
slower, slowest I've ever felt;
and for a while our latticed fingers melt
the hours into years;

this could be now,
this could be then,
this could be it.

I See The Dead

Watching old films,
I see the dead;
Kissing on the screen,
White lips, grey eyes,

Hair of ash
And worms and earth,
Their essence breathed
Into breezes that connect

With one another,
Generations chained
By celluloid, burned
To dead pixels

Painting a future
With a past,
A past with a future,
An endless reel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I see the dead
Staring back at me,
There will be fire
In my pale blue eyes,

In my pale blue eyes
There will be no fire;
There will be a fire
Melting my pale blue eyes;

A fire, gas-blue,
Boxes of my image
And images of me
On paper, in light,

A digital fingerprint
Too, boxed, driven
Hard into memory
Like coffin nails -

Not too much heat, please,
And do not shake
Or drop me, I am
Susceptible to deletion.

Heathrow

Sitting by a window at Terminal 4,

I can feel the fuel at my feet

flow up through the legs of the seat

as it fills Delta’s snub-nosed belly.

Everywhere, everything rolls with this;

everything replacing something

like tides of internal pumping

in an external clockwork orange –

yes, I was reading but now I am writing;

of the strrrr-dump strrr-dump of wheels

riding tiled floors on prams and trollies

and undropped baggage to be crammed

as crammed as us into sections of gut;

we are molecules – we depart and die

in Heathrow’s exhaled sighs,

churning screams of turbine lungs.

-------------------------------------------------

Then of the majestic grounded, stately

berthing with wheeling gates;

through the glass its size awaits,

an uncanny monster at rest.

Others roaming, roaring, rearing their heads

soon soaring into the distant clouds,

even as new alphas are inhaled,

to rumble and strip clean their bowels.

You

In that way how it takes over-
whelms the forefront brain

daily functions fail flat face-
first it's what are you doing

where are you who are you
with why aren't you here, here

you always yesterday smile
ambiguously a body tight hug

thinking would you could I de-
clothe you in more than head-

first question skinkissed then in-
side to each others' sides

be us just us just desires' sigh
lent breath cooling skinshine.

Sediment Sentiments

The day was warm with a windy cold
airbrushing our faces; the sun drying
its rays in our eyes through fronds
of grass and cool sea on sandy feet.

We grabbed a stick of salt-rimmed
carbon, and wrote in the particles
of tumbled time, tanned as ageless
as our sentiments in the sediment.

Inductees of Schrute; our initials
pencilled down and frozen in frame
as hickeys rose; before the cloth
of the sea made it all flat again.

Engagement

When they ask the question why,
and they look into our eyes,
when we tell it to them straight
with our hearts in our mouths.

Love can cross an ocean,
its borders ill-defined
and we'll stain the waters red
with the blood of mankind,
to find each others' bed.

Is it beetroots, Mrs Schrute,
or an abstract of ideas,
we harvested our taco love
with shells of tortillas.

Love can cross an ocean,
this depth of purgatory,
and we'll stain the waters red
with the blood of insanity,
to reach each others' bed.

When dreaming is no more,
the destination here,
the horizon of our life
together will be near.

Love can cross an ocean,
on transatlantic flights,
and we'll stain the waters red
with the blood of fading nights
to say what must be said.

To the Young in Black

There is in me the blood and the meat;
this skintight force of breath and light
that in breathing, breathes, in breathing, beats,
the perpetual machine unwinding tight.
Born on rewind we spool apart
our entangled ribbons of hearts and hands,
playing the play and repeating the start,
each dawn is secondhand.
Until death - we uncouple,
before the last uncoupling,
wherein the heat of meat turns cool,
with breath unwound departing.

Tangle

The pen leaks all over the page as
usual ink cradles the dentures
pregnated molecular frozen rivers of
nothing this far in, far out this nothing
seen and sent and understood by
readers my stress de-valued unspun
into an ocean I cannot reel in or
frame this as is more garble than
sense, like life entangled threads of
thought, she is missed more than other
thoughts.

Slow Suicide

"For all we know it's just a lie,
scare your son, scare your daughter."

Invulnerable delusions
sparsely seen
curl heaven-wards, words of
ash, grey flowerbeds
climbing blue veins
buds fed on oxygen suck light
pluck petals from twisted thorns
on branches of blood and air.

An horizon nears with each puff
the tar on the road thick black
thicker blacker
pedestrians crossing sticking
sinking
brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, daughters,
sons,
sinking
just crossing pedestrians
thicker blacker
with each puff
an horizon nears

of vulnerability
delusions reality of pain
a slow blue-faced suicide
wintry sympathy buried in the
ash, poisoned water
salted falters falls fails
to breathe, anger tainted tears
full branches of blood and air.

Higher Numbers

It's not mortgages or jobs
responsibilities or children
- achieved with the detachment of inevitability;

the material implements of age
checked off
- that's another XP level reached -

like the games we play online
with other 'kids'

- it's our hands becoming strangers',
wrinkles around childhood friends' eyes.

Blossom Falls

The blossom falls,

the people walk

through canopies of pink rain,

soft-touching against skin,

down cheeks, across blind eyes;

brick on brick on earth,

asphyxiating slabs of stone, a hard sheet

for the duvet of colour above it,

as their soles stamp upon the nothingness of it;

like the truth

of our evolution from that hairy unclothed ape,

like the tails of beach-wind

from off the adjacent sea whispering to your spine;

the grassy runners

stapled down in aesthetic squares dark-

light that could grow long to tease

their skin as they lie and roll unclothed absorbing

sun, that Vitamin D, preferably

miles from urbanity to better health,

but cotton and wool covers them,

the petals stick in pockets.

And they stare as I had stared at them,

looking with shame upon my naturalness,

but they don’t feel that pink rain,

soft-winded and swept against

my hairless skin.

Six Weeks

     No ‘and a half’ for us,

and three weeks short,

     the calendar of May and June

a black hole condensed under

our mutual weight, of sweat on skin,

sweet kiss sorties lost in light;

I cannot see from this event horizon

     how time got lost;

proof of it is memorised in balls of clothing,

the plaid bag and vinyl art we made together;

     what charity-shop finds couldn’t fit home,

a robe left behind in a wardrobe.

     Starfished in my bed,

planked on the sofa, thrusting in the kitchen;

here air you have parted, air we have shared,

     and if the glimpses of scent turn inwards,

I will still discern in places our six weeks,

and remember there will be more.

Pt 3: City with late lights for the kids

Crashing

eyes to the pavement

where I want to rest my inner ear

from the drumming tarmacadam chorus

and be blind to shop-lit concrete, porous

to the rainbow lasers in the beer,

bare feet on cement

dancing.

Yet

even as I try to sleep,

as those in sleeping bags succeed,

I see both of you amongst the other kids,

holding on as though I somehow undid

the slab-cracks and tore the weeds,

tied them round feet

and neck.

On one side,

droplets of your blood

in a descending trail to basements,

impulses of light pierce releasing head-colours,

eyelids stammer and eyelashes flick each others,

unfocussed with fake contentment

and confusion stood

inside.

On the other,

in neon you found food

in my bins, and a bed on my bench.

Tonight you saw how I could lead you astray;

Huddled , you slept, so I hustled a doorway

of my own to sleep and change,

from one daily feud

to another.