Category Archives: poetry

When you take my cold hand the tingles

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Shake my spine awake as bristles fall
Gaze slides over the streetlights the lamp
I fell onto dreaming of you and wishing
You would take me again through blood
The smile when you saw my scarred nose
The fear in your eyes the warnings before
I miss sitting on your chest I miss you
Pulling my legs close while I wriggle on
Your fallen angel keep you close to me
Our fallen angel keep me tight to you
The way the heart hurts for what it wants
The way my mouth gets wet to see you
Prayers I say to the night the moon
Its dead gods whisper in my ears that
Thing of ours like my child kicking is still
Breath in my lungs catching your stare
As you fill me and plant me and make me
Trees have it easier they don’t have to go

I never want you to leave so

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If I don’t let you in you can’t
Right I mean that’s how that
Works and so what if I’m never
Happy at least I’ll never breathe
A breath knowing you left me and
Find my own air tastes different
Rots the lungs drips out the pores
At least
Though five minutes is worth
The seeping whistle of a puncture
For eternity if with you

The kettle clicks and you won’t

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Get up because that next line on
Telly is in your mouth the cushion
Edge of your seat is dripping over
You’re almost in a yoga chair and
Somewhere vapour cools so you
Light a cigarette and smoke dances
Sweats the little coughs that sound
Like asking you reveal your brand
You move your eyes you call help
To get the kettle and change channel
And change and demand the same
Rewind remixed grainier than before
Your VHS screaming tapes a light
Blue-grey a colour just above hospitals
And if I touch anything it does not belong
To you so I hold my fingers close
As I listen to the world in your mouth or
The telly that glows on your face
Pales in the pale radiation another ad plays
To my silence lost in the glare of this smoke
Breathes my pores and I taste the line
Like almonds or snacks which sit salted
Beyond our reach

When I talk you hear petals in the wind

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When I talk you hear petals in the wind
A wheeze of pretty vapours from my red
Lips some siren singing out of tune cries
Before your dull pupils as you speak
This is her this is the mad one Cassandra
Licks your ears wet and thick dumb
I drip nectar on your floor I sip your heart
The spirit wind fills these aether veins cut
By arrows crushed under foot under wheel
This death is a love poem and life sears
Open tips shut the flow to bottle up wisdom
On the draw of a fool card some back alley
Game you like to wonder by watching
Pictures move beyond your hands your eyes
Money drops you see it slide from this purse
This grip you had not considered loosening so
While I spread my legs you strut away and
Dogs take their turn knotting you say
That’s what she wanted and I say I’ll take it

Very clear sky tonight only two clouds

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Very clear sky tonight only two clouds
In the ink we’re floating above the water
Not winded like they usually are motioned
We’re sitting on the concrete spur watching
The sea pass us by pass in front pass
The pebbles to our feet licking toes
Dragging us off into the current the lift
Air passes by our coats forelorn our t-shirts
The clouds are joining now that they see
We bathe in the moonlight glitter the eyes
Seed ears on the rocks cold hard on the soles
Never lack for warmth after dark when the
Moon speaks your name / in my mouth
And when the sun burns the same words too
Fit this skin but there the clear sky

Bull

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then we’re back at the bar, this little shanty place in the brown below and shade of a steel bridge, open, food stalls, picnic benches, but quiet or even private
this big guy I know walks in ahead and is throwing his weight around again, he pulls this pistol out from the usual place and starts waving it
before long he’s shooting me a few times like he does, a few bullets in the arms, especially the shoulders, some go through and some stay, I stand and take it for a while but it’s not just me, and I’m angry but it’s not just me, this other man who came in with us, he makes it bigger than just me and big bull, I walk up to the bull and take his gun, point it into his forehead and whatever snarls he had becomes this calm visage, he smiles, there’s an acceptance, a desire for death, a kind of only mildly suppressed self knowledge here, almost stripped bare, the fact of a gun barrel in the folds on your forehead, at least, that’s how it all seems
I misfire
He takes the gun back and points it at me, I guess sad, I guess angry, I guess usual
Suddenly I have to decide whether to make my peace, and I suppose I have to, if death is coming I think I can’t panic and piss myself and shit and scream out, no, I think I have to be calm and look down the barrel and look down the eyes so we both know the score, and everything that dies can die peacefully
He misfires
The gun is empty.

Between the lines an artery gets fat

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Pale those fingertips on the cut glass
Swirling textures that rub the snake
Crack dividing truth like flesh
I thought you trusted now cold lips
Sticking as they part over white sheets
We lie straight in the blue half light
I drop an unwelcome plank a leg
On your blue I pull it back the way
Whatsapp messages are deleted
You talk you smile you kissed are
Accusations from between my cheeks
Where the tongue moved your fingers
Should have touched like the glass
Canyon that cuts them as I type
Away the last drops before the stop

Old poems like worn shoes small and torn

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Flap rubber and canvas on the concrete spent
You stride as ballet holding the bear warm
Close below your ribs and bunny ears on
Tattered sleeves pass cold pillars hold the sky
Echos whistling through your headphones
Skip in your step the bright lights in the dark
Shadows in the day slap the fuzz awake some
Shinflesh in the gravel I wish I could lay these
Lips on your lids and breathe the feeling thru
Your teeth as it fizzes my veins as it touches
These fingers but it lands off hides beneath a
Tongue burrows in the wax and whine we
Wear our old badges that remember death worse

The Man I Want

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Another you
You looked into my eyes and sold me shoes
You looked into my eyes
You got inside me and made me want
When you finished even you didn’t want me
You smiled and laughed and I bought the shoes beneath
Your raised eyebrows
But at that time you had a she who you loved

Then some time later I came to you again
An initiate
And I was lost in my mind as you played
Music
I drank until I could never be full again
And you played on
And you began to see how I cared

I wanted to help you selling drinking listening
Every part of you I wanted gave way
To something deeper
Every part of you I tried to build up with me
You smiled and laughed and I brought the shoes
Beneath your raised eyebrows

We lived for centuries moments corrupt with love
To last lifetimes we lived I lived for you
You’ve seen this
And all in quiet brown wood and cotton and wool
All in these ancient fabrics and the root of all colours
Your words are the sweetest rose thorns

We’re sitting at the bar and you take the one with most
Bubbles and I have the remainder that tastes
Tinted with your touch I
Imagine things
We enjoy the places between oblivions
Bookended like that they’re the only life

I caught you in my trap

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That springs to rub along sides
Grasp and hold in warm places
You thought some libertine’s
Evening that these bodies
Would stop your capturing
So wanton a hare as this
Loose on your lot and holding
My hips some sachets of condiment
Served for this blissful moment
Ghosts possess the mind’s eye
Totemic emblems are tossed

The fact of a mythological meeting
Is always lost whether
In faerie caverns or converted
Bedrooms the feel of my flesh
Between your fingers recedes
Dreamt away with the flaccid joy
Of distinctly female caresses
Needing to be touched
The alarm clock and the bottle unfinished
The questions dissolved in ultraviolet daylight

You walk away with a limp or

Otherwise encumbered