A mirror, no frame
A box, sealed with black tape
A picnic rug, rolled up tight, string tied tightly
A cd rack, filled with cd cases
A fire place front, cracked along the glass front
5 tins of chocolates, used for wrappers and nails
4 packs of red scented candles
3 flower pots, dried earth around
2 letter writing kit, missing no ink cartridges
1 single mattress
The dot - pinch, prick
bite, stab, the needle
through the eye
And the dash - the skid mark,
smear, stitches, the ka-smack!
of a follow through fist
the slide of a knife
around a wrist
Home was a chessboard
streets a jazz club
school a blotted note
the syllables and spit
black on white on blue
So passing the yellow line
of a grey platform, the long and short
stride of a light through smoke
takes him through that last grinding dash
all the way to a slowly blinking,
shrinking, distant dot.
Your childhood pet's name is
the Christian name of your porn name
Now celebrate your mother's maiden name
turn her lost trail from a word
on a registry, from password prompt
to a label for famous flesh, a show-reel
for the oldest profession, a new media pusher,
the page turner for lonely boys and lying men
Your mother's maiden name is
the surname of your porn name
My porn name is Bruno Franco -
a butch, mustached and leathered
Italian bisexual porn star name
What's your porn name?
What does it say about you?
of grey and brown and beige
cushion fur, musk scent, pinprick eyes.
They nibbled our lawn enough that moving
the hutch could have kept the mower useless.
By Boxing day the foxes got to the pigs -
cuts of hair clung to half chewed grass
while tiny blood paw prints branded the path.
We wore gloves to bury the gnawed
spinal cords and burst skulls
- those Marigolds staining to a warm orange.
by their fire, but the heat
from hand and glass is too much.
The pub is like the one I used to take her to,
with a leaking roof that drools onto the floor
and leaning, creaking tables
that I could wring to make up a round.
I lean against the soaked bar
look left, right at the pros
with their straights, doubles, rocks
and order a beer, knowing
that with my green tongue,
I have lots to learn again.
So I'd go off and play with the girls
with their sticks and rolled up socks.
Hockey was the thinking woman's game
and a boy's chance to play in a team
that played like a team.
So I was never quite sure why my dad built me half
a basket ball court out back - a board and loop, complete
with red paint square and string vest net.
I'd dribble and dodge, jam and jump,
try to dunk when lay ups would do.
One time a passer by asked for a shot,
over the wall of our garden.
I stood like a solitary street light,
fearing I'd pass the ball
and never see it again.
But I did, he got three points
and I got a chance to watch,
give a cheer and get a cheers.
Trust is like a ball thrown,
bowled, kicked or hit with a stick -
whatever it takes to give it to someone.
you can stare up
the centre to see
others above
- reach the peak
and you can spit
on who you were
or the pause to
think of what
to etch
You don't notice
my knife
and its beat
on the bark
the sound of symbols
or the sound
it makes when
it reaches sap
Later the frizz of cola
the can's spark
that opened later
to rotting apples
sugar and spirit
crushed barley then
finally to wine
sweet wine
I was a slow alchemist
a plodding, wannabe Jesus
I'm staring at the cow head, its pert ears
pointless satellites, its nose a dried oyster
glued back on at slightly an off angle,
and its eyes, in their wide blackness
reflecting each blade, fence, muddied machine,
and that final hollowing out by prod, then pistol.
All were awed by Him, except for Monkey,
who would try but never beat Him.
Monkey would jump and shout, throw and break
when he lost, God’s humble smiles infuriating more.
On the sixth day they played again, God cleaning up from break.
Monkey jumped and shouted, threw and broke the cue -
God's heart, solid with trust, saw nothing, heard nothing.
Monkey smiled and spat and patted to hide it,
binding it together again with a black hair from his arse,
then handed it back to God and grunted “Re-match.”
He lifted the cue high, the blue of the sky now chalk.
The crowd, bodies and dust, watched as Monkey stood and God
broke, the cue snapped, splintered, shattered again
and cut with laws unto itself eternal hands.
The blood hit the white of the cue ball in tiny red snakes
as the sky’s blue chalk stamped its circle
branding the Monkey’s black hair
that had curled into a dot from shame.
And with a tear, from cut or betrayal no one knew,
God soaked the white ball, its red snakes,
its blue stamp, its black dot, as it rolled
into a pocket, into a socket.
As Monkey laughed, pissing and drinking,
the animals and stars went back to their shadows,
for they all knew God would never play again.
He threw the other balls into the cosmos.
He planted the broken wood into the ground,
rooting with forgotten rules. And he left the table,
pink from wear, to its own devices, blinking.
Scratching the tire track across my chest
I looked around the rest of the cloud
the others waiting in line were bored stiff
the angels were humming and giggling
and God was yawning.
Apparently, I wasn’t going to hell - hadn’t been naughty enough.
I wasn’t going to limbo, it was full, and now in heaven
it seemed that no one wanted me here.
I realised at that excruciatingly slow moment of revelation
that my life and I had been really, really boring.
I sat there thinking about all my special and unique
and good things and how I didn't feel I was any of those things.
The heavens must have been watching lives like mine
for infinity, just average, just normal, nothing special -
I imagined having to sit through an endless run of American
Based on a True Story made-for-TV films.
I turned my back to it all, too preoccupied
with my own life’s monotony to watch the movie of it.
But I couldn’t not hear, couldn’t get away
from that dull soundtrack.
I listened to the last few seconds -
a busy street, cars and people, horns and then a screech,
people screaming, a woman crying, then silence.
I turned to watch the final scene - a baby crawling
back into her mother's arms, then a fade to black.
I couldn’t remember what had happened,
but then I heard a choir of cheers and what looked like eyes
being wiped but staying wet. The others were all applauding
the angels patted me on the back, and among all the handshakes
I said to myself ‘I don’t understand’.
God put his hand upon my shoulder
He smelt clean, new, like a big bearded baby
and He said ‘Let me show you around.’
His breath is a slow yawn
it draws in a shade
a cold and a rustling
everything sleeping, drying
An idiot-ox striding
His March drawing blood from flower
herb from mouth
The stampede lasts for months
He is the Harvester
hoof and horn
giggling and dribbling
with the sun on his back
and snow in his mouth
Over the years I had seen
in dreams and mirrors
how Time could personify itself
into a wealth of shapes and sizes
clichés and surprises
Like an apple, or an old man leaning on a crutch,
the hooded skeleton with a cold hand, or a bunch
of keys, an hour glass, draining away its sand
- some easy, some not so easy to understand
But this time Time came to me
as a calf puzzled by its weak legs
licking its own blood off
When he first came into the house
Blooded from the accident
Mother still wanted him
Father cursed the drink and the car
But tolerated
At first he was wet and loud
Mother drying and soothing
While Father’s frown could be seen
Hard through the paper he read
Letting slip the occasional sheet
Once or more
For no reason a hand would rush
Into Boy no reason
no reason Mother would say
Rubbing her baby’s head
Yelps and whining were heard
Echoes from nothing
First through the house
Then the basement
Then the box in the garden
The only thing Father made for Boy
Where he would lick his wounds
Watching Mother at the window
would it scurry otherwise
hide in cracks and crevices
eat our waste and squelch
“Thank you. Thank you, sir.”
when you step on its life?
it must be repenting
it must be in disgust of itself.
the spreader of sickness
a symbol of decay
or perhaps it’s waiting
praying for Armageddon
knowing it will laugh last
in the aftermath.
Delving through boxes and bags
I found all that was left, hidden away
I tried on his clothes
the socks fitting
but the rest too small
faded in colour and style
I opened his diary
breaking the lock with the wrong key
and read aloud forgotten fictions
and scenes more true than memories
Then I found his ponytail
wrapped in newspaper
cut at the base and still tied with a band
smelling clean and new
and not grey and old
not even dead at the roots
I have had enough
of its insults.
It mocked me
with its simplicity
taking pride in its nature
its symmetry
its serenity of black souls
in a white heart
within an emerald armour
Even bruised it shone
And it would cut
cut so completely
no blood, no pain
I have had enough
I swallow it whole and wait
We waited until the morning to be born
Our siblings buzzing around for a few hours
all dying wet, blunt, while we glided through the gauze
By midday we had caught the tide again
the river carrying us by our scales and tails
I remember how you bit the third gill on my right
anxious like the air
Mud around our ears, the afternoon saw us dry on the earth
our new hair an embarrassing economy
my feet hurt but I pretended I didn’t have any
In the evening you fought as I made you climb the tree
you tore at the branches, and threw a banana at my groin
we stroked and picked each other’s fur to make up
And that night, we lay inside one another
no fruit more a temptation
leaves not enough to keep our innocence
You spoke before you slept, I only understood the words
so I tapped your teeth and gazed into your mouth
I saw how the world had changed us
and how we had changed for each other.
Instead of dreams, my father’s life lived through
his garden. Years of afternoons he spent
turning and weeding, once he earned the rent;
and God he worked till countless flowers grew.
When made to help I’d scream and try to run.
He’d point to the seeds, soil - Now try to see
the soul and spirit; holding, teaching me,
without the faith, no flowers grow, my son.
At planting season, sweating, he would say
no more, just stand, then crouch and then not stand
until each seed was gifted to the land -
the dust was angel skin, the earth his clay.
He could have been an athlete, teacher or
a farmer, or a florist at least.
Perhaps some kind of poet, or a priest.
He should have been a sculptor, builder, more.
The day he died I couldn’t be with him.
But years later his garden had me stand,
then crouch, and then not stand, to hold a seed
and hold the soil, as I’d have held his hand.
I buy some everyday
and keep the most pretty
the dark ones I use
on letters to your dad
I’ve got one that tastes funny
a bit like sherbet and dust
it’s only half licked
do you want to try it?
I also make them
from card and hair gel
don’t lick them though
they made my cat ill
But this one tastes nice
a little like cherryade
You can have it
I cut it this shape for you
But it would only be the petals,
the bright, beheaded petals.
The stem I would keep to defend me,
All the pollen I would frame and hang.
Any thorns I would swallow,
to give this pain a reason,
while the leaves would be bandage
to the wounds that would heal
tomorrow.
And of the roots,
the roots and bits of dirt,
I would make a meal of
and I would not share it.
]]>seeing the bubbles of an oyster's first breath
the million movements of its shoal
its family there and lost in the currents
that near-miss of a shark's vanity
and of the sea itself
its yearning, parenting
its endless voice and ever-presence
the fish doesn’t think of what it sees now
through those drying eyes -
the men that starve the abyss
the fish's old home
She changes from page to page,
her hair, clothes, company, mood.
But she is always beautiful,
always sexy,
and always only ever has eyes
for me, that follow as I get closer.
But it is just as much about
what she has got, as what she holds –
a calendar of the days, the months,
of the years to come.
but as The Clouds it touched railed
and The Trees that were tenants fell
The Mountain knew a hell
how could it walk away?
So it caved in eyes
sent quakes through its limbs
and drew a breath the size of itself
then gasped again for Her kiss
Kneeling he suckled every drop and rock
and became a plain
asking for nothing
but to calm The Clouds
and to once again home The Trees
who only laughed and remained ungrateful
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