Dark intoxication:
Your bitterness is stimulus;
The steam rises;
Your breath from darkly depths.
Bold commands:
You burn the morning fur;
Thimble potion;
Unbind the mind.
Damn, my book was in there!
I’ve burst open the packet:
Fear has leaked all over everything.
Should’ve known better than to pack it.
It’s impossible to get it out:
It clings and I can’t shake it off
It’s cold enough to sting the hands,
Such stupid sticky, trickly stuff.
I grab a towel and fiercely scrub away at it:
The smell — the [...]
My childhood seems to have been made of patches,
If my memory is anything to go by. Mere snatches
Of scents and tastes and ideas I had collated
That bordered whatever everyday life orchestrated.
I wish I could document it, from go to now,
But it seems impossible. Somehow,
I have concatenated a hodge-podge memory
Of family and incidents and miscellany.
I remember [...]
Although the knife was blunt;
(What else could it be after years of dinners?)
It had what the News called lethal force.
In distraction, the dinner burnt:
(Lucky nobody was hungry now.)
The law’s people came and began the needful course.
The knife was slipped into a bag,
(“Blunt as butter, boss.”)
And hurried away by a cautious, legal hand.
The chaos of [...]
When times are hard and nights are long,
And clichés stalk the land,
I remind myself things could be worse,
And take my mind in hand.
I remind myself that things aren’t so bad,
That the fear that grips my soul,
Is merely the side-effect of some greasy meal,
Or over-spicy bowl.
And if I look into the eyes of friends,
And see an [...]
In the Dining Room hung a clock;
A strident, clapping ticker whose sound marked time too strongly.
While we could hear it, we had to march orderly to the grave.
So it hung in the Dining Room,
We only ate there at Christmas, when we were too noisy to hear it.
When I was thirteen:
I woke up in the night.
I [...]
Full, flamboyant, forward flower;
Peels from velvet and unrolls –
Spills the sheath’s sides
And lazily casts the petals wide.
Naked branches, trimmed and bare;
Fake-coy fingertips pinch the air.
Flush;
From bridal ivory to scarlet satin,
Silky soft sheets knotted at the pinkest core;
Where the action is.
Cold still for roses, upright tulips,
Silent midnight scent hints of warming nights.
Without you there would [...]
The party had passed the tipping point:
We had ticked the boxes of
laughter
fight
tears
throw up off the balcony
crash in the garden;
And now waited for sleep or sobriety
To take us to comfort.
We sat on the floor,
where there were crushed chips and spilled fizzy drink;
a sticky pink bloodstain shed early in the evening.
We talked quietly
because even though he had [...]
Spiced zing and twisted tart,
Flushed of cheek and tongue,
Warmed and quickened at the heart,
An addiction started young.
To heat the platter and the bowl,
And Fiercely fire away the ill,
A charge electric to a tasting’s soul,
A gesture fine of nature’s thrill.
And then to fizz and glow,
And finally soothe the tang,
Tipped over ice or melted slow,
More glimmer and [...]
I would love to shed my skin:
Unzip my mottled scales and emerge, pink and damp,
Allowing the worn-out, used, unwanted sheath
To crumble, drily, to the floor.
I step out, I am newly-hatched
Yet fully-formed.
My old skin turns to dust and is whisked away
Memories of it eclipsed by novelty.
Instead: to change my spots
Is a sticky, hard and resistant shift.
Work, [...]
