i’m so sorry to bother you again
it’s me –
your majesty.

i live inside you
like a seed in avocado
like a belief against killing animals in a sensitive vegeterian’s mind
like a last sip of lager in a loser’s glass
in a gloomy Belfast bar
at totally unimportant night

this is me
i am your majesty
i am your sense of procrastination.

your long
dark
eyelashes.

Freckles like water on your skin.

Thoughts written on irises.

Melancholy smiles.

Will you let me in

again?

In the gutter
white blossom
explodes.

In dark skies
clouds burst
with menace.

In a dream
faces merge
with yours.

In a church
voices echo,
they echo.

She was an engineer and physicist with an interest in cosmology, an historical discipline forever looking into the past, which is itself forever. Over time and in secret she invented this thing: a device, a button. The kind that you pressed. The button was housed within a box that contained two half-lived and particular isotopes separated by a brittle crystal oriented to the vertical.

The mechanics of operation were simple: depression bore the column down upon the upper isotope, crushing the crystal and bringing it into contact with its lower counterpart. Some might have described the process as brutal but this was refuted by the fragility of the crystal: a slivered boundary; the difference between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.

The physics of the mechanism were more complex. Certain calculations based on the properties of the isotopes – as well as those of the crystal – had been made and processed via particularly imaginative formulae, resulting in a number of different hypotheses, all of which arrived at the same conclusion, albeit one that remained untested (1).

The box comprised a lead-lined inner cube and an outer aluminium shell, with four plastic nubbins on the base. The button was made of danger-red rubber and it was protected from accidental activation by a transparent lid that could be locked with a key. It was no bigger than a child’s picture cube and only a touch more weighty (2).

If the existence of the button became known it would be referred to as something grand and destructive, or omniscient and all-powerful (3), but she believed it to be both more and also less than that. The button – like all good solutions – was simple and elegant and it wasn’t so much a question of would she or wouldn’t she, but when, because once such a button has been created how can it not be pushed?

(1) Obviously

(2) Early plans incorporated a factory reset option, but given the button’s function…

(3) ‘The Doomsday Button’; ‘The ‘Atropos Box’, etc.

Språngbrädor – ‘stepping stones’ (Swedish)

Some people slither around the corners of our lives
They emerge from the silence of shadows
to slip across the patterns of our roads
and then quickly sidestep the narratives
That pass as pavements and verbs
They are simply stepping stones, as we are to them.
Crossing lanes on motorways, jostling down highstreets,
bumping shopping trolleys
Like Tesco Trojans Asda Amazonians
These close encounters count for Lidl else…
We are gallous ghosts
We shake rattle and roll our change
as vampirical iridescent loaves of light
I love scruffiness and the secret smells of dusty books
Their words coiled in tea stains and vintage promises
I love the dishevelled ambiguity of discarded t shirts
and stepping around the toes of worn shoes
Criss-crossing the crumbs of croissants, I love the absence of Sky
Replaced by skies
And when bastilled by bees
I count amongst my number
the alchemy of landscapes corralled within discordant colours
ensconced in charity shops.

That film was on last night. That film I only ever see in hotels. That film I watched for the hundredth time because the reception was poor on every other channel. I thought about reading. I thought about that paperback, that slim paperback I keep in my suitcase just in case I forget to bring anything else. I thought about reading, or just going down to the bar, or just having a wank and going to sleep. I thought about those things but I watched the film instead. I watched it for the hundredth time. I watched the film, for the hundredth time, and wished again that they’d given that actress a bigger part. Wishing again that the one part I associate with that actress was more than just a walk on part with a few empty lines. I watched the film again with the same actress wishing they had given her a bigger part and thinking again how much she looks like her. No, thinking again how much she reminds me of her except she’s taller, she’s blonde, and never plays any parts which remind me of her. Thinking again how much this actress reminds me of her because I saw her interviewed once on a talk show, and something in her mannerisms and sense of humour, something in the way she looked at the interviewer, reminded me of her. So I watch the film for the hundredth time, wishing they had given that actress a bigger part, and reminding myself that the next time I talk to her I’ll tell her about the actress who reminds me of her. but I know I’ll never tell her about that actress who reminds me of her. So I watch the film for the hundredth time, turn off the television when the credits roll, have a wank thinking about her or the actress who reminds me of her, and go to sleep, and wait until the next time I’m staying in a hotel to see the same film, and have the same thoughts again.

“Are you a Muslim?”

Implosion on impact.

Breathe.

The man’s shallow gaze pierces my open eyes
In this chasm my silence echoes
Through the chambers of my soul

There she lies, beyond that gate
Her state and fate of late, it brings me to my knees
It brings me to her shores
Just beyond my fingertips

“Sir, could you please answer the question?” he asks.

She lies in wait
Does her heart still beat?
Her lips still whisper
For the truth

Will I outlive her everlasting love?
For I shall die if I do not hold her breath
One last time
Yet she would never cheat death
How could I cheat mine?

“Sir, your refusal…”

The words fall to my feet
Before they reach my ears
Is this my time?
To proclaim my undying love
Standing on the plinth of truth?

For what is left in these mortal coils
Without faith in more than myself?
She gave me that.
Let me save her
Save for her, here

My lips part
Between them, one word
My one heart, no longer in retirement
Therein my verdict lies
I shall see her again
I shall live forever
I choose immortality

5 September
she was on a bus to June
mourning her summer self that had not quite sparked like it used to
was not scrubbed clean by sea and sand

She tried. Remembered summers
sleeping outside with friends
dawn breaking something ephemeral
settled during the night and left
before they woke up. Magic
maybe that’s what she used to believe.

This summer her heart was broken
but her iphone was fine
so in keeping with expectations
life continued. Renaud sings
vivre libre c’est souvent vivre seule
do the French never suffer realistically

5 September
all of her heroes are lines in a poem
Her voice: on the quiet edge of panic
Her striped sailor top: ‘a versatile style that can be dressed up or down’
She doesn’t forget the simple things

That weird spike by London Bridge
was built to protect the city
from intensely unlucky paratroopers.
We don’t want their kind here.

my love for you is like crumbs
it appears in small parts
unexpected places
you forgot to look
corners and cupboards
it will not go away

The willow danced, her moves did not care about the crowd, they drew circles in the air, like caterpillars falling down from apples, they crossed over unseen faces, caressing their every pore, she twirled embracing human bodies only she could see, and the room was dark, and still, and the light was red, in the Theater-Podium bar, and only the little black cat in the corner watched and whispered through her purrs to the trees in the forest in which she thought she was, she said, look, although there is no river, and no human to cry next to her, here’s a willow with a female face, with long dark-red hair that falls onto stones like branches, a woman who forgot to dream but became a dream herself, forsaken by male touch and baby hugs, look, the cat said, there’s a woman almost taking off and leaving ground, rooting her hands deep into the clouds, but the cat was just a cat, and the forest did not listen, because there was no forest, and there was no ground, and the music stopped, and the willow was now asleep, with a little black blind kitten curled up at her feet, and the next performance, and the audience, they were nowhere to be found, and the willow’s voice was dreaming of a time when she used to sing each night, it was either opera or jazz, and the willow was young and voluptuous back then, she was nothing like a willow at all, and the willow’s voice fell asleep too, deep in her stomach, away from human sounds, behind the curtains, and never again was it to be found.

my mother says that god is not female nor male.
i am not female nor male.
so, in some ways, that makes me god.
i realized that i do not need to look to the sky for god, but only to my genitals.
and i pray.
let us pray.

I want to be shot by Kern
his style – the less pornographic
girls with their tits, in panties
at home or outdoors
on roller skates, brushing their teeth
letting white foam spit, dribble, drip
from tongues lips to sink, floor
He could photograph my feet for
fetish magazines,
they are dainty I would offer ideas
for series – girls with towels over
their heads drying their hair
girls eating cake. Icing, cream,
jam, sprinkles elbows deep in
the mess of it all

Sailing on the thrum and steel,
westward the silver, sure line eases.
Each boxcar at a smooth delay,
as voices in a choral round.

In sliding frames fit for St.Ives
a landscape airs its carousel:
brushstrokes of woodland, gold-leaf sea,
the sudden, muffled shock of tunnels
with explosive horizon each end.

Flying true, as pen to rule,
surely we ride the veins of England;
surely all other is reduced now to blots;
surely all other is but busy-ness bleeding,
bruising such moments as this.

I cannot sleep.
Restless.

I’m thinking of sleeping with the Classics.

Where should I start?
With the vulnerable Pound?
The clumsy Thomas?
The mystical Rainer?
Blake? I certainly loved his technique.
Maybe Bukowski could be somewhere in the middle…
I bet he’d last an entire five minutes.

Perhaps I could finish with
Sade Marquis.
It could be my punishment-
for all of the sinful fornication,
the moral blasphemous
of such casual carnage–
each lash of the whip a bit
of forgiveness.

Yes, yes, yes!
I will go out not with a bang

but a whimper.

‘This is it, you know.’
‘Is that so?’
Flo holds up a dull tin, the label warped and peeling. Smoothing the paper, she reads:
‘Sausages and-’
Flic joins her. ‘Beans. Best til last.’ She sniffs the metal with exaggerated relish.
‘Well then.’
‘Shall I?’
A pause.
‘Yes, you do the honours Flic.’
‘Are you sure? Come with me.’
‘Wait… Let’s cook this first.’
Flo walks to where a low sun casts through the glass. It reflects off a loch, red with algae. With arthritic hands, she turns the gears of the can-opener. Slow.
‘I’ll get the knife.’
‘Warm the pan too. We can spare the gas, after all.’
‘Get it piping.’
Flo chuckles. It is always hot now.
While the flame burns, blue on black, Flic goes over to the other window. On the deep stone sill sits a stunted lemon tree. She spits on a cuff and polishes its crisp leaves. A broken residue comes away on her sleeve.
‘To think Flo. We grew it.’
‘From just a pip.’
Flo prises the can’s lid with a knife, scrapes congealed innards onto the heat. She joins Flic, looking out over the raw dark hills.
‘What’re the odds?’
‘Not good. But it lived, alright.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
Breath held, Flic pulls the lone lemon from its branch. In the palm of her hand, she eases through the soft pith with blunted blade. Zest. Flo leans forward, inhales for them both.
‘I’ll get the bottles.’
Fast on stiff hips, Flo makes for the cupboard. The tonic lets off the barest hiss and the gin cap is almost rusted stiff.
‘Glasses, Flic.’
One. Two. Yellowed liquor slipped in both. Flo throws the remaining dram to the flagstones.
‘For the dead,’ she laughs. Flic smiles with her, eyes rheumy in the acid air.
‘Here.’
Flic cuts over the glass, but the dry fruit does not drip. Three slices and a hard navel each.
‘Pull that pan.’
‘Plates?’
‘No need.’ Flo holds up their spoons, passes the least bent one over. She stirs, prising charred meat from the pan bottom. Takes a bite.
‘Well then, Flic.’
‘Flo.’
The two friends lock eyes, cheers.
‘To health.’
‘To health.’