Sit With Me

Just sit, don't fade away,

re-skin ourselves in the front room

or on the same couch in a Hovis field,

watching the wheat busy in wind,

or eyes twitching as a pocket burns,

the flow of information has

become excellent,

or cheers-ing Cup-A-Soup

outside some car place,

or round the back of a takeaway,

but sit, won't you, sit?

 

Wood

The last car door slammed

and the chuckle of tire on

gravel let out a final ha

and then we were what 

now and if I had memorised

the list I would have known

a year like this would soon

come around, where we

should give each other wood

to commemorate the roots we've

put down or all the excess wood

that now houses a child in 

what was a guest room and

speaking of roots, the sewage

line is most likely full of them

I must get that sorted, wait,

what, now?

Bournemouth 5

Watching Grey Gardens and my mum joking,

that'll be me soon.

I sat with her once, in a darkened room

where at least the drips and patients in series were

some sign of hope in the face of it all.

Got to keep trying eh.

Ben shaved her hair off and sent me 

a picture and then there was the 

most fantastic wig I've ever seen.

No-one at work knew. 

And Ben said you might have to come back,

that white blood cell count.

I can't tell if he'll ever need me again,

it's as if no-one at home knew or

knows anymore. 

It really was another time, and if it

comes back, it will be a new time,

and all.

My mum lives not so she could do the following

but she did anyway,

she did jump out of a plane,

flip a sled in the arctic circle,

become a grandparent twice,

did a pitch invasion,

speak at a wedding (sitting down),

get her foot pinned (gender reveal accident)

did comfort my godfather,

learn to ride western style,

cry and say she needs the garden,

semi-retire,

abstain from the town centre,

knit things,

craft things.

She's quietly living so much and 

needs nothing, 

from anyone

for it.

Gain Ground

A little chip on my shoulder

for the devil to eat when 

it gets hungry from 

whispering in my ear 

you're the special one

who's as vulnerable as 

you and so I wilfully

play in a sandbox of

everyone else's guilt and

shame because why not

accept guilt and shame,

amass more chips for the

devil to eat, to hell with

hunger dollars, who's

as accepting of discomfort

as me, only of course I

once stopped Frank dead

in his tracks, as he charged,

head down towards me,

no, I bellowed, I don't

roughhouse as this age

or never, and so yes,

there are needles you can

aim to prick at 

my centre of gravity,

or lack thereof and 

an eternity spent in the 

form room, waiting for my

shoulders to broaden 

and my stance to harden.

The Things We Love

Things we love are like fruit, some are waxed, 

some are not,

wax only known from the touch,

not sure if boiling a lemon and scrubbing it

ever does the trick - 

there's no way to tell if the things we love are waxed,

no real way to tell when you have peak fruit,

no impetus to say I love this fruit,

this thing, it is perfect,

before it bursts, leaks and what doesn't evaporate

becomes a stubborn cake of residue

where it lies.

 

Bonded to Bounty

The toilet can't catch a break has it even worked for a single straight year, I'm on my knees

wondering if it sweats through the ceramic, whether it senses its own demise. It won't be

left on the pavement with a sign, unlike the neighbour who said free bidet about their free bidet, 

free from a household that decided to wrap it in thick clear plastic like a corpse behind the drywall.

Toilet, nothing to mark its passing, its shut off valve a rusted gun, see I once tried to make a 

water feature out of your stair case, your house is an emanation, surely, of that first date in

Koreatown, remember that restaurant with the grand piano jutting out of a waterfall, funny, you barely 

register it, you barely think that a restaurant should be a gaudy gem. You assumed all

first dates took place in spaces such as these, you assumed a first date would never lead you 

to this neighbourhood, with its hand me downs of most known objects, and a night like this one,

fretting in bed about one plumbing bill you refuse to pay and whether the other plumber you don't 

owe will answer.

Bournemouth 4

It is a car town, so you have to radiate further outwards,

where the cattle grids shake you from the misty revery

of all the Thomas Hardy you never read,

the empire emotions that seemed to spring forth

from nothing at all.

You pass the wild ponies in a slow motion gauze,

wonder how "Chariots of Fire", a film you've never seen,

filtered men, running on a beach, the same, towards Paris,

1924, and then you think about sports washing and

how the Olympics, the World Cup, 

wherever they have been and will be are all the same - 

a complete erasure,

like how Hardy erased Bournemouth into Sandbourne,

though he was speaking truth, albeit to Victorians,

who I see bleeding through the long straw and wheat reeds

of cottage roofs along the way,

bleeding through the packed stone of houses,

they spring forth and from whom I 

want nothing at all.

Handing Up

I've gone pole to pole with this;

there's a hole in daddy's brain where

all the duty goes,

there's a hole in baby's brain where

simple instructions go.

Don't mind me, I'm quietly in the service

of what I assume is something - 

a neat little furrow already ploughed,

I can trundle up and down again

until it's a holloway

Hell Lane, flanked by dirt 

held up by tree roots,

bedrock worn until I can only

see as far as the next kink

on the way.

This is a path I am on,

I haven't remade my world to walk it.

One mile up in Fort Collins,

I may as well be an astronaut,

or a salmon beaten senseless 

on the deck of an Alaska boat.

Cult of the individual, cult of the collective

Refreshing like a stumble in the snow, the cold shock already melting

by the time I've righted myself, most likely explanation is

I've found a new way to be upset by an old way.

I've manifested a text from someone I last saw 13 years ago; 

coked out on a dance floor in Monticello, 

my head is vibrating as an awesome rash of guilty pleasure spreads across me,

and he tells me how you split his head open with a wine bottle and called 700 times 

when he could no longer bear it and left his phone off for a day.

I got off lightly and I'm still so angry for him too.

Coffee's in the works. We have settled, built our homes, he's off to Nyack soon. 

The potted history of men (?):

20s - she's crazy

30s - she certainly had her reasons, it's fine I suppose

mid 30s - crazy is not my word, fuck the patriarchy

40s - fuck the patriarchy, in fact fuck everything else and yes I'm still angry

mid 40s - nothing is my responsibility I'm still angry everything is my responsibility

50s - 

On The Fence

New parent friend what friend should I be,

flinty and rusty as the playground gate,

inwardly cursing the coughs

and vocal chords that betray the strain

of bones breaking, muscles popping,

cartilage clicking, new life forming 

from new life, generative life,

until it's not, which is where I'm 

down by the tree by the chainlink,

skin flayed by the winter vortex

of Long Island City,

wind skimming off glass and steel,

drying out my attitude,

finding my peace and my quiet,

nose deep in the accessories

that conscientious parents 

sort into Ziplocks to pass on

and down.

The Tyranny of Truth

Four years in,

and liberated into uncertainty yet,

my father broke ground in a paucity of thought.

Thinking can get you in trouble,

it's a hot compress on your scalp,

bringing your brain to a head.

I've assigned my role as thinking for him,

but what I think is his truth

is just my truth, for him, and simply

just my truth.

I read how you just can't take diversion away,

you sit at dinner and you can see

someone's history looming

and you see someone else 

barely bat an eyelid,

grab the wheel and simply

steer round a subject.

You can't slap those hands away,

if you want to stop an accident.

The truth is steered round,

it is elided,

and so it lives in countless dining rooms,

and if it feels so good to talk,

so it must to say nothing at all.

Our elders are deeper than most things I've known,

they have lived with everything they've seen.

And if I have to call what I am,

I'm just a shadow, generations removed:

My own father can't tell me

he sold cigarettes made out of

other cigarettes because he didn't

and his father could barely speak the same

because he did.

MoCA licks boots - so who's in bed with

who at the Malaysian Chinese Museum?

These, seriously, are my thoughts as I wonder

what pilgrimage is. 

Maybe it's best a stone unturned. 

Maybe that stone is not for me.

My grandfather was not so sure where he

came from, so he didn't go back near the end.

But somewhere in time, somewhere in China,

he is scouring the ground for tobacco

that found no breath to be smoked

the first time round.

As Quiet As It Gets

Tonight, this is as quiet as it's ever going to be:

I will nod off to these keys clacking,

and/or my friend behind these pocket doors,

sliding on his chair, eating dinner at 2.20am.

Peace like resignation, an uneasy truce with sleep,

I barely need it, but if it's your gamble, your chip,

sleep is what I'll take.

Home and Away

Feeling my way round or for the grease of a plate,

like making a wine glass sing,

or it's caked with soap,

residue blasted to dust and fingers

bump like the runway wheels,

knowing either way will be a return 

to shelf or rack.

I don't want my trips,

want unyoking, 

but I'm not wed to the act

as endurance,

rather the suspense of not knowing

if the washer is filling or emptying

does feel like a hinge that is

lacking once I'm away.

Smooth Air Above

I'll drain every last drop
I swear I want that smooth air above.
I thank hurricane chasers for their work
and I don't understand their work.
I'll drain every last drop of comment
as others search to explain
the ring binders and radar charts
flying round the cabin.
It's fine to follow the weather
where it wants to take you,
someone's always up there,
waiting to come back to say
yes the earth is changing.
I just can't see the sky right now
as we are all the sky.
Hurricane chaser, what's it like
on the edge, the o,
can you remind us
there's a premium on the act
of god?

I'm Being Good

I'm being good,

I'm planning my obsolescence,

I'm trying to strip all the magic

out of all I do.

I'm not feeling romantic,

I'm not enjoying drinking,

I'm not sticking to a web I've spun,

I'm walking with my head down,

the neighbours best avoid me,

I'm pure, too pure,

hoovering all the space

of the lane I'm in,

I'm being helpful,

but then doing whatever the

devil I want,

I'm having bad thoughts,

I'm wishing sabotage,

I'm having good thoughts, too;

I'm working through that,

I'm a pebble being rinsed,

the water has not moved me,

I'm taking so much time,

to rearrange my thoughts,

this is me when I am good,

I am being good.

Clear Thought

I've never moved with such anxious precision,

like I'm holding a moth cupped in my hands

and trying unlatch the door with my knee,

careful for myself, the moth.

There will still be days like this:

when I'm scrolling through vacuum cleaners,

kicking laundry round.

Seems likely now there will be many more,

when I'm moving tiles around 

the bedroom ceiling 

as tasks appear and are

locked with like,

so that if a row of them forms,

they disappear.

Bournemouth 3

Streeteasied or Rightmove.co.uk-ed,

a kernel of thought starts up,

well Mary Shelley is buried here,

if it was good enough for her -

and then would she have died,

if she knew there would be a

"...well-preserved polychrome Gothic shopping arcade”

in Westbourne and that electricity would be

even more monolithic than she imagined

and there would be

lights strung up there still

and that me or someone else like me,

who did alright, who has no reason

to come home,

but could,

would, blinking through the drizzle,

at the golden glow it has smeared

recognise an exhale,

becoming a murmur,

becoming lips forming shapes

becoming mantra -

Ah, nice gift shop,

I mean yes, we could, why not

and why?

The Mark of Time

My clothes have gone around, my leather jacket has come back,

it still fits I'm so vain, dozens of shop windows can attest

my body remains in fright.

If I stay out of the light, my face also seems familiar,

I'm essentially the same, then, and whenever a  distant

friend of friend similarly goes round, they visit me through

slimy screens and no filter can smudge them as 

anything but carrying warnings to my past.

The Smell of Water

Abigail rising, my mum, her party, almost 

one acre to put the dog out to pasture, 

cows so close in the mornings,

my dropped ts slowly returning with every tsk

Trees that rarely fell, so thick with tree

we would level with the rooftop with

no real sense that we were even

up there.

Cows in the mornings, cows receding

up the hill, cows giving birth on 

the horizon, cows watching cows in

labour all day.

Where does the water taste, where?

Did its metals fortify me when I moved

to town? I knew remoteness once

and the night demon that shifts

my hips in clubs is just that,

wants me to know what it is

to need water, to taste water.

Packed spaces remind me how jarring 

they are as is the sulphurous solitude

pouring forth from the country tap.

Night Hawks

The sky turned pink

       the sky turned pink

the sky turned pink

just before the office 

block began to shine

its gap teeth or its

Tetris hell

three friends are swallowed in;

a fast fashion 

pleather wad in the tunnel before

the sky gives out,

dressed the same in tribute,

in intention

as pure as in wherever the

landing page takes you

in devotion to each other

and on to the next

thing and the things

after that.

Don't ever change,

now change.