Nothing can hide you
not even that agreeable acrylic wrist rest
or the pine veneer on your MDF desk
not each morning’s filthy bus ride
this isn’t hades
it’s just HR
Let the puke poets play as kids will
in their empty sandboxes
perfect at least
to absorb their boundary-pushing
pant wetting
Doing their duty, pledging allegiance
to that knackered story
each in turn
holding the guilt of ‘freedom’
over your head
in single file
en route to writing their own
facsimile fan fiction
Nothing can hide you
not microwaved greens
or Sundays in Topps Tiles
and certainly not the ability to
install your own cistern
Let the puke poets play
And then flush them away
Nothing can hide you
The rain releases the plodders
who stall to a slope and get wetter
basking in the tragedy
of their sodden socks
the hiders, who’ll wait it out
guarding their doorway shelter
with tuts and shuffles
paralysed in their paved desert
the substitutes, who’ll trade
someone else’s time for a sweet coffee
an excuse, like everything else,
for self indulgence
and the northeners,
who feel it like an old friend’s presence
finding the freedom of empty pavements
and familiar faces.
The dust of morning
swirls in the toepath
the dark’s fleeting detritus
leads a gentle way
to the warm grey of the city
A quarrel of branches
go their separate ways
pitched against the girders
while witch white bark flakes away
on the breaking breeze
Landing on the face of the earth
in its sodden card tomb
in its sodden down coat
jeans and jumper
and children’s pyjamas
A trickle of muts meander beside
the beatless artery
through the tepid beauty
past the stillness of an ending
beginning again
The bleaching siren
enchroaches on the simper of Sunday
and the blue-faced bobbies
bludgeon the boxes
red.
Oop, hello ground
it’s been a while
you look well
gritty and hard
like I remember
good old ground
we’ve always got on right?
me and you
ground I promise
I never forgot about you
it’s why I thought
we wouldn’t meet again
alas here we are
toe-to-toe
hold on a sec
my heels want to say hello
oop, alright sky
how you been?
I just saw the floor
and I’m sure he’d send
his regards
I guess you two
see each other all
the time though
I wouldn’t know
been looking at
the horizon for ages
it changes you know
but it doesn’t get
any closer
I’ll stay here a minute actually
me and you have got some
catching up to do.
It was an
amicable split
despite all your
emotional blackmail
n’all
I told you
I couldn’t love you
anymore
then we shared
a packet of crisps
But the crisp and cold
the shudder of the morning
and the burn of burnt tea
But the smell of toothpaste
And skitter of cereal
And then you say I love you
But don’t stay to hear the answer
And then the day
the bleak forgiving blue
And the indolent obstruction
of everything in light
But then the dotted dark
where it’s harder to hide
where the crisp and cold
And the burn of burnt tea
Are But a preecher’s promise
We’ve stood here forever
two dandelions
two daffodils
two happy yellow wellingtons
ruling on the edge of this cliff
keeping the waves in order
counting them in
as we count them out
while they dutifully
shave away the rock face
hidden like the daytime venus
until we hear again
the mourning growl
of the train
to hold our backs to
our job like always
is to stand stiff
and be seen to whisper
the way to be
to one another
until the cloaking growl
whimpers away
hiding us again
deafening our
clues to everything
Ask me loaded questions
that turn my laminate foundations
to jelly, and custard, and ice cream
that taste delicious in their chaos
and push those comfortable mirrors
back under the bed with the real goblins
Ask me questions covered
in childhood nettles, bearing a fresh sting
which let me recoil to you
upturn the vacuum packed trunk
and let the sharp-cornered detritus of my life
fall painfully on your feet
And look at me, in jeans and t-shirt
find every flaw on the front of me
while I trick away the rest with words
I’ll tuck them up in conceit
and maintain it all.
He told her she was beautiful
not to make her happy
or for the sake of truth
he told her she was beautiful
not because he was weird
or to pilfer her affections
he told her she was beautiful
because she was beautiful.
Make it warm first
spread our bodies’ heat
through this exotic cotton
and listen to the juts of the radio
the pound of the news
while we haze away from the world
and roll up tightly in each other
Send that brave pilgrim
free already from the day’s
multi-colour entanglements
over the cold mountain of knee
down the coarse-haired calf
past the thick ankle
push your fat toe
beneath the skin-pocking
pressure of my elastic stress
and dive down from view until
we are free together
to be perfect together
Until the chill of morning springs again
with the promise of bedtime
