Back to the old house

I am transported there
My heart and head
Is where my home is
Nothing has changed, everything has changed.
The shops shrunken and shabby and stuck
I have moved on but they remained forever
The kids on the street meaner, nastier, stupider
Or am I just getting older?
And those words
That spelt the name of the street
That I lived in for eighteen years
Once as important as my own name
Now unfamiliar.
I walk walk walked
Past the dead end alley
And the berries crushed
into the ground like brains
As a child
I tried to avoid them
But now
The street is a photograph
And I am a giant
So I step and step and step.
Finally I reach you
My heart, my mother, my father,
My brothers and lost best friends.
Home.
It could have been then
The cat skitters by
Crying, left behind.
It feels like you were my lover.
Behind my doors and windows
A new family lived
The plaque, ‘Roseland’, prised from the wall
I see me within you
Ghosts
My dad throwing my mum out of the door
My brother punching a hole in the wall
I lost my first tooth
My glasses, my braces
My virginity
And my mother between these walls.
Inside
We were still inside
The five of us inside
The golden lion knocker on the door
I remember a time
When I wasn’t allowed to cross this road
Was I ever that small?



_______________

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.

________________