Threesome

You should listen to your cat

when you get home tonight

as it follows you

to the kitchen

as it followed us

up the stairs.

It will watch you squeeze out

food from a pouch

Impassive.

Like it watched us

fuck on your bed

Impassive.

Your cat keeps my secret.

Afterwards

I used your perfume

your brush and

your shower.

I stroked your cat and he purred.

I want that cat to

tell you

what it knows.

I will make it talk.

Verdana

Nights we spent spewing words

Trying to impress

You were my Verdana

before we even met.


 

Studio

My new life

without you

makes me wonder

what the old life was for?

why I hung around

in the face of such wrongness

when it was so easy to leave

it took a month

in the end

and I was gone.

I don’t think of you now

but if I stay up all night

sometimes it hurts

not because I miss you

but because 
yet another 
bit of my life

is done.

Barking

I didn’t realise how many words

There were for crazy

Until you went there.

Loco, nuts, bonkers, mad

They all sound like a joke –

but what you did was

Horror

not comedy.

I thought of asking your sister

to take you the new

Bright Eyes CD

But god knows if you still like them

or who you are right now.

Is your real self; your real mind

hiding somewhere?

Can we unearth you?

It feels like you’re dead.

Instead

you’re just out to lunch.

Excerpt/ Reflection

You were part of my history

a sticker on a timeline

forever seventeen

drenched in mythology

Ten years later

developed and dated

thawed out and dreamless

Your ageing ages me.

You reside

inside my head

in a box

with all the others.

I’ll take you out and

glorify you periodically

but only if you stay

confined and asleep.

And don’t forget:

the story is all mine

What you remember different;

didn’t happen.

You weren’t meant

to turn out like this,

and I’m ashamed

because neither was I.

___________________________________

Prize

The inflatable flower

that you won for me

the night we met

still sits on the floor in the bedroom

filled with air from your lungs

How can that thin red plastic

hold you – even now

eight years on

and six months since

your breath ran out

forever.

Today I cracked

and finally pried

the stopper open

I sucked you up

and breathed for the both of us

Afterwards, the flower lay

crippled on the floor

and I wished I'd waited

another day, another month

another year.

________________

Extol

I was wrong

before

about falling in

love being about

me

It’s not.

And fitting together

Is one thing

But I’ve never ‘not’

fitted

with a lover.

All people fit

If you hammer hard

enough.

So love isn’t that,

either.

Our love is about

light up deities,

pop gods

and seasides.

And how you came

from space to save

me,

did you know that?

  

The story is

upside-down

from the way you

tell it.

___________________________________

Horror film

On my knees

at your feet

with the light

from the camera

in my face

I felt wild.

Watching it back

felt like watching

childbirth

or a car crash.

_____________________

Gulls

Two years

we kept

two stones

as we stitched

and laced our dream.

Two stones from

Brighton beach.

We pictured

drives along the coast,

healthy living

and a little life

waiting for us

when we got back home.

We got salt,

that much we got.

We filled up buckets

but not with our hands.

Now we ride back to London

Not defeated.

I can still see us

sitting in deckchairs

I can still see the sea from here.

_____________________

Better off

After you beat her

(not straight after,

but soon after)

My mum left

me with you.

She repeated

like a prayer

how you would never

hurt me

Never lay a finger on me.

I was safe with you.

And I was.

Each month

I would call her

hysterical

over some

act of non-violence.

A door torn off

A smashed TV

My brothers

fighting,

but not play fighting:

one throwing the other

down the stairs

one (the same one)

hitting the other with a

baseball bat.

And my dad,

Well, he did his best

Gave me money for the chip shop

and told me mum

loved her new family

better

that she had new children now.

______________________

You are my nicotine patch dream

You came via electro mail

And gave

the crushing drudge

of twenty four

after twenty four

after twenty four

some punctuation.

Before you

I was

chasing a hearto

mainlining sweets

of both kinds

Now,

I’m still part

slow motion suicide          

But laughing

Let’s cuckold old age

Who wants to live in bungalows

via panic buttons

anyway.