you drop it right there
your blue bicycle
in the almost-grass of april
and it sinks in
just a little bit
like a tired dinosaur
the blue kind
i don’t know all the kinds
you talk about them a lot
but i always forget

She first saw the tree when she climbed to the top of the Mount. She put down her satchel and caressed his skin; she pressed her cheek against his body and felt his strength. He sighed.

“Why were you born a tree while I was born a girl?” she asked him, gazing up to where his fingers touched the sky.

She visited the tree every day. In the summer months, the tree’s hair was green. She would strip off all her clothes and press her hot body against the tree’s cool flanks. In the autumn the tree’s hair turned reddy brown. She spent more and more time with the tree and spent less time in her home.

“You and I are just the same,” she’d say.

One evening, just as Autumn was becoming Winter, she ran away from home and went to see the tree.

“I wish I could stay here with you for ever,” she said.

She saw that much of the tree’s hair had fallen to the ground and lost its color. She felt so much tenderness that she wanted to scoop it up. She sat down, her back against him. The sun went down. When she thought about home, she knew that she would never go back. She would have to make her way up to the city. It would mean leaving the tree behind.

“Don’t you wonder what it would be like to be able to move around?” she asked him, wishing she could know what it was like to be so still.

That night, she told the tree all of the stories of her life. How she had never had anyone just be there for her before, or see her as she really was. She moved as close to his body as she could. She closed her eyes. She sensed the tree digging deep into the earth and growing into the air. She felt herself being drawn along with the Winter’s night inside the tree, melting out of her girl form and becoming part of him, held under his skin, an injection of love, mixing with his juices and flowing around his veins, pumped around all night by his mighty tree heart.

In the morning, the word ‘Goodbye’ fell from her lips as softly as the drops of dew that fell from her clothes.

Just a quick note to say
hi I hope you’re ok
because I am
I have a new girlfriend
she has tattoos
she is more adventurous
than you you know
I didn’t want to become
that couple who chat
on the phone at lunch
because they can’t at home
but we did remember the time
we couldn’t go on holiday
because you had to work
fuck that was romantic

sent from my iPhone

I never want to see you again.
– Angus (sent at 17:38)

Kitty Sashkovich sat there, crying
on the train
as suburbia passed her by.

She didn’t know
that he had sent the text
to the wrong number.

Oldskool. Words printed on cellulose papers and bundled up in a book. Now, that’s going a step further. Or, shan’t we say, back? Words printed on a cellulose paper then folded up and inserted in a bundle of papers with a bunch of words. That has its own charm. Try to stick this bookmark in an e-reader.

Five in the First line,
Seven in the Second line,
Five in the Third line.

The day I was dumped

I stopped plucking

my eyebrows.

I haven’t had a good

pluck now for

nearly three months.

I used to pluck

every day. Or,

rather,

I wanted to pluck

every day but my

tweezers,

they only wanted to

pluck me every

second, third or fourth

day.

I’m getting pretty hairy.

This table
is the high seas
Open water, bread crumbs
We reach across
opposite shores
and let our glasses travel

1

As the patter
of our passing feet fades,
I wonder
how hair on a head so young
could be so mortified to grey.

2

A pity,
that the mystery she weaves
can be dispelled
by a common name
scrawled on her coffee cup.

3

She careens across the street,
louche-limbed,
lush-lidded.
In her eyes,
a glint shines still.

I’m SO over that, says the girl student, imperious, to her sidekick boy. Y’know? SO past the age where, like, I have to get drunk and emotional. She sighs.

From the other side of the carriage, I smirk. The girl wears an outfit in a style pre-dating my student days. A twenty year cycle; now it’s the hip new thing.

An older woman opposite peers over her reading glasses at the paper. As the girl speaks again, the woman looks up at me. I realise I’m tutting out loud. As my eyes meet the woman’s in the hope of complicity, she drops them, and her mouth twitches into a smile.

I can immerse myself in stones

and pebbles here.
A gathering of tens of thousands
of boulders; rolling, rough but as
meaningful now as a human heart,
a similar size and as rich in history.

To my left a friend is
mapping out the coast;
rock-slides have left a minefield here,
deposits from another age –
but he’ll walk it.
I listen to nothing but the frish
and shush of wave-sets.
I look straight ahead and try
to see France.

I think I should tell you
I have been poisoning
Your dog
Because
It Watches me
Poo

Julie left the orthodontist clutching her mouth. She hated these visits. Her braces were tightened and the ache lasted for several days. She had always chosen colored bands to go over the train tracks but today she defiantly went with the natural color of the elastic. It was her protest. The truth was that she hadn’t been concerned about her teeth. She would have preferred a hip shaving operation in order to slim down the childbearing beasts housed within inherited chubby thighs. Julie stepped into the passenger seat of the car that her mother sat in, the engine quietly sniggering. The ache in Julie’s mouth continued the whole ride home and her resentment built. With each twinge of pain that eased the crooked pearly soldiers in line, Julie considered another part of her 13 year old complexion that could benefit from alteration.

Julie proceeded through life blaming her parents for highlighting the flaws of her body – for pointing out the imperfections that she had once been blind to. Their casual indifference to ‘correcting’ their daughter lingered, and Julie’s confidence slowly diminished. At first Julie tried extreme dieting – altering her body shape through juice cleanses and cabbage remedies in an attempt to reach what she believed could be perfection. Next it was her lips; they received multiple collagen injections and her face was hardened with repetitive botox. After some careful consideration and a lifetime of self loathing, Julie decided she would be more comfortable as a man. She lived as the opposite gender for over a year and booked a sex change operation with the local consultant. Julie’s mother pleaded with her to only have the breasts removed, but ever defiant, Julie had her vagina turned inside out and made into a makeshift penis. To Julie’s father’s surprise, he actually found his daughter more alluring as a man.

Julian had some real poise. And a perfect smile.

o
Sparrow

o
Otter

o
Pig

o
Debbie McGee

o
Leopard

o
Bison

o
Elephant

o
Whale

o
God

I watched it so,
As to not be seen.
Cracks of chapped lips,
Received Vaseline.

Now on her face,
Encased in slime,
Two slugs do rest
But not entwined.

Walking past the surgery
A queue of ailments
Wish I knew what you all had

Again in this extended box,
that isolates any chance of my
escape plan mutating alongside
the others here,

whom I know search a similar plea
with empty hands, that struggle
to have their previous contents replaced.

We hold out our callous free palms,
hoping our life lines will be once again rubbed with gold, just enough
to keep any wolves at bay.

But for now, our fingers hover like dragon flies, over the keyboards that are now clogged with dead skin and visible traces of boredom, and the voices then start to pour down the lines with a vaccine-less venom.

And to release each one at will would be a far to easy escape; instead I allow that headset to
melt with my skull, and allow the first hour to take its toll, and lead me once more in this merry dance.

  I still hear
          the split of your laugh

the sound of the half-way dead nee alive

      in the smallness
growing, dizzy on dark
          at the back of the old cinema
making homes for strays
and legends
      myths
      unravelling at the hems

our laces brambled tangles
and pockets
       bleeding an unpieced puzzle
on forgotten tarmac
discarded
       debris of our ghosts
turning walls in the day-lit hours
            until our echoes ring faint

and no-one remembers
us
      or the traces that we left.

We’d gone to see it on our way home,
That place he’d held noisome fun before St Vincent ended the party.
Standing on the path, we looked past
His house, the thing we’d come to visit, and elsewhere,
Out onto that palely glowing surface.

When it happened,
When the white sun melted into a sheen and the waves broke
Far away, you took my wrist
And asked me if I felt it,
The soft, cold approach of night
That made our day curl backwards
In on itself. I did.

But that evening had been our friend,
So I kept quiet, not wanting to spoil what was coming,
To leap ahead to darkness and miss the twirl
Of thin, translucent, bright grey silent light.

The Lady of the Night had the darkness wrapped in a colossal handkerchief. She settled the cloth over the town of her creation – because not only was she the Lady of the Night but the lady of life. This was, if truth be told, a rather large hankie, but equally this was a rather large lady. As the fabric fell the light crept in and the sky without moon lay on its back across the ceiling of the town hour upon hour. Shortly before the sun stretched out, creaking its bones, and awaking the belly of fire, there shone a beaming voice shattering the town:

“Ellie breakfast is ready. Hurry up!!!”

Rumbling earth followed briskly beneath their feet. Houses tumbled and bounced and many a person was knocked along the ground. Time passed between the voice and the beginning of daytime, but daytime, they knew, would eventually shine. They were made in her image but on a much smaller scale; she brought so much feeling and hope to the people – the Lady is love!

When the darkness came they only ever assumed peace, quiet…darkness until the slow rising of the light much, much later. Water rushed and dragged homes with it – person after person lost in the swell. She with her mighty hands scooped the crushing, tumbling jar of light from its path of destruction, quashed the mighty waves and soaked up the town. She, the omnipotent – the gentle saviour.

Morning never came gradually, the time to adjust never factored in; it happened in a sudden sweep and those that have been around to testify say that you can see the darkness seep and drag across the blue sky like a magician’s table cloth tugging, pulling in it’s wake the sun from the ocean but leaving the sky un-harmed, leaving the stars and moon in place, hidden and outshone by the brighter. As we now know we have no organic order to control our cycle, there is only her, the Lady.

James Bond, Freddie Krueger, “Dirty” Harry Callahan, Amelie Poullain, Bobba Fett, Sugar Kane Kowalcyk, Dirk Diggler, Patrick Bateman, Jessica Rabbit, Roy Batty, Withnail, Nurse Ratched & R.P. McMurphy, “Cool Hand” Luke, George Bailey, Scarlett O’Hara, Keyser Soze, Atticus Finch, Will Hunting, Martin Riggs, Hannibal Lector & Clarice Starling, Brody & Quint, Harry Potter, Rocky Balboa, Maximus Decimus Meridius, Donnie Darko, Mary Poppins, Ellis “Red” Redding, Marv, Mr Blonde, Cobb, Simba, Oskar Schindler, Jack Carter, The Driver, Phil Connors & The Groundhog, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, Hal-9000, Woody & Buzz, William Wallace, Tony Stark, Blade, Anton Chigurh, Rick Blaine, Tommy Devito, Ace Ventura, Hans Solo & Darth Vader, Ivan Drago, Annie Hall, Johnny Hooker, Michael Corleone, Forrest Gump, Travis Bickle, John McClane & Hans Gruber, Lt Ellen Ripley, Randal Graves, Lisbeth Sander, Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia Organa, Vincenzo Coccotti, Wolverine, Norman Bates, Axel Foley, Marge Gunderson, Ed & Shaun, Jack Torrence, Snake Plissken, Clark Kent, Fast Eddie Felson, Jigsaw, Daniel Plainview, Peter Parker, Don Logan, White Goodman, Leon & Mathilda, The Bride, Frank Booth, Napolean Dynamite, E.T., Dracula, Dr Rumack, Charles Foster Kane, The Elephant Man, J.J.Mclure & Captain Chaos, Batman, Bullet Tooth Tony, Ted, Jason Bourne, Tequila, Edward Scissorhands, Alex Delarge, Peter Venkman, Juno MacGuff, Yoda, Tony Montana, Indiana Jones, Harry Burns & Sally Albright, Martin Q Blank, The Wicked Witch of the West, Neo & Agent Smith, Lt. Frank Drebin, Marty & Doctor Emmett Brown, Jack Carter, Arnie Grape, Tony Manero, The Joker, Susie Diamond, The Dude & Walter Sobchak, Gandalf & Gollum, Marsellus Wallace, Truman Burbank, Wayne & Garth, Holly Golightly, Jacques Mesrine, Harry Lime, Annie Wilkes, Mrs Robinson & Benjamin Braddock, Captain Jack Sparrow, Tyler Durden, Mark “Chopper” Read, Ferris Bueller, Wall-E, The Man With No Name, Ron Burgundy, The Terminator.

she taught me again today, the sea

(i returned like a reformed drunk

still ill with booze but ready for rebirth)

filled with the pomp of learning at

her altar yesterday, i stepped off the

shale ledge to commune with her, embalm.

The judder hyperventilation scramble footing

scraped furrows in clod thick feet

and soles communed with rapid death

to get out. YOU ARE NOT READY

the sun crackled salt skin like a piglet

on the spit, laid out on the trillion gems

that clickered millennia like rollers

casting factory carcasses off to cure. mim

A Haiku Cycle

i (spring)

damp leatherette seat
slowly dries under air-con.
special offer drinks
ii (summer)

a Beer and Burger
served on a sticky table-
J D Wetherspoons
iii (autumn)

aromatic spice
a taste of the orient
it’s raining in Hull
iv (winter)

at opening time
the loyal flock through the doors.
they are there at close