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quotient
She divided him into parts
little sums with deductions
She believed were additions
resolved him into simple elements
picking him apart like a straw man
until She could slip him into Her handbag
where he now lives with the clutter
in a broken-zipped side pocket
a husband’s paraphernalia
of lost keys and small change
mouse bones and a white feather
a leaking pen a paperclip
The flow of
light
There’s little
time for us now
now that your
life is beginning
beginning to
take shape
to be shaped by
other hands
hands held shaken kissed
waved
waving goodbye a
train taken
a leave-taking tunnels
and bridges
arriving at
destinations
unforeseen
departures stations off my map
away from the
backwater of my life
the flow of
light beckons
the dissolution
of vapour trails
in frail blue
skies
the glint of the
sun on the tracks
carried away
like a wave
the now taken
out of sight
lost to a bend
in the river
no looking back
now
a shadow falls
the sun also rises
Decaocto or how long – a story of fate
Sunlight sliding through a window
a universe of dust motes
busy as atoms colliding
a door left open
a collared dove calling
on the kitchen table
a cup of coffee cooling -
the faint tracing of steam
unspooling in fragrant air -
a piece of string a knife
Alecto in the
revolving door (an extract)
1
How many
years down the drain?
She’s on a roll
now, a roller coaster
All her past
clawing its way up the slope
Ratchet by
fucking ratchet
The disappointment
the bitterness the loss of hope to
Launch itself
into the present
She’s giddy with
it nauseous
The push the rush
the gush
Does it work
like that?
To “do the right
thing”
But to do it so
badly
Held to account
for unhappiness
Yours and mine
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it is deep water it is shallow
language is a puddle
a clean white cloud
condensed
dirty water
reflecting sky
a swimming pool the
light all chopped up
the echoes public
fun chlorine and piss
the shared
privacy the shower taken
the sea too all that surface the light dancing
the fetch the
crests the troughs
and below
the continental shelf
rip tides and undercurrents
the imagined
sharks the all too real shipwrecks then
the melting
icecaps the far-off shores distance
the polar bear
tiring the muscle of life giving out sinking slowly drifting down
into the mind’s
dark telescope silently as if the sound were turned off
yet leaving some
residue of suffering in the empathetic ear not quite heard
not quite a scream not quite a prayer not quite the word
It’s letting in water
So he bails a glass at a
time
Not enough to slake his thirst
If only there were more time …
Lives flash before him
It’s so much of the same
And it takes so much time
He hoovers in the meantime, humming
Whistling whilst he mops the floor, rubs at the stains
Elbow grease and Radiohead
If only he were a stronger swimmer …
He’s killing time
Betrays his wife and child
Calls the office and his mother
If only they’d pick up …
He’s up to his neck in the water
On his knees He tries to
pray to sing
But he doesn’t know what boat he’s in
panto
taking centre
stage
you hold the
knife
to your own
throat
take yourself
hostage
demand a loss of
life
if we don’t pay
out
it’s just a
laugh
oh, no it’s
not
it’s a party
trick
oh, yes it is
saw the lady in
half
can’t see
anything
the tears in my
eyes
the audience upstaged
cries sings
she’s behind
you
I grip the blade
we all bleed
Dark Matter
I have tried to separate
your pieces
and to fix them
into a puzzle
that is the
puzzle of you
as if you are a puzzle
to be fixed
by finding discrete
pieces
discreetly
that form a
whole only to find
there are holes
where pieces do not
fit
or do so
inexactly more parts than sum
you or someone
dropped the mirror
and when you
peer in
it’s pure
Picasso the pain
There are spaces
not bridged gaps fissures
there are cracks
plates shifting
lack of seismic
control tectonic
irregularity
tremors and yet
you are
immovable and unstoppable
All this is
invisible
my antimatter
my Sagittarius
A*
sucking in all
the light
But this is just
science
and since it
does not cannot explain
nor can it paint
a picture of a weeping woman
I hold a shard
up against the light
to see its shape
wonder if this might be
a piece of myself
sharp
enough to make you bleed
warped by the
force of your gravity
tell them about love
I should say from the outset
that unfortunately the poet isn’t here today
he has some personal business elsewhere
and has left me to hold the fort
I’ve his scribbled notes hastily written
his handwriting leaves something to be desired
and as I recall he mentioned as he ran out the door
something about love about love he called
over his shoulder tell them about love
about how it runs out the door
about how it leaves you in the lurch
leaves you to hold the fort
with some scribbled declarations
apologies a code for accusations
an ellipsis the Morse for absence
ophidian and sibilant
and how finally
irrevocably
it runs
into silence …
An event horizon (an extract)
Sylvia puts the
kids to bed
tucking them in
with that last goodnight
kiss the
story told leaving a little light
to struggle in
the darkness
the hoot and
swoop of the owl
the licking of a
salty lip
the closing of
the hatch the click of the latch
each action
nondescript and final unnameable
as such then she
spends time stuffing towels
under the doors taping
round the frames
pushes her head far
into the mouth of the oven
wanting to be swallowed whole
...
Monday
Sisyphus is
looking forward to the weekend
a moment where
the rock jolts and jumps
bounces gets the rooks in flight bends
the air running
to a stop looks back
and then he
smiles and takes his
time as he walks
back down
the indifferent sunlight
dying slanting
golden
on the trees
clouds
flame burnishing
the air pungent
smoke of the
neighbour’s
barbecue
drifting
towards
Monday
bedtime story
the softness of
summer light
late afternoon early
evening
the way it
adheres to solid surfaces
the way it
emanates from leaf and tree
the way it
washes across the grass
the way it
gathers in the air
the way it
breathes like music
and if you
listen
the way it tells
your story
using only the
present tense
gilding the
moment …
then the way
twilight turns to dusk
turns to
darkness incomplete
turns to
starlight distance crossed
and so to sleep
Patience
Sundays
seem to come more often now:
The week a shuffled
deck -
Cut the pack and what do you get?
Another lonely day, after a week
Of lonely days, yet somehow
Longer, as if more silence had been
Wedged into
the gaps to stop the leak
Of violence.
Sundays - the
turning of the cards
And between
-
And the
slow wait in sufferance
For
Monday’s glib indifference.
Prognosis
The doctor shook his head,
The horizon’s coming after
her,
He said. He said,
It’s going to tip her off
this world -
Which, after all, is flat,
linear
When unfurled -
And take a part of your
world too.
Did you imagine that the
Coriolis
Effect was a fictitious
force?
Or that Achilles would never
catch up
With the tortoise?
That life was travelled
along a Möbius strip?
The TV’s on all day, playing
repeats,
A mockery of time passing.
She sits,
A bundle of sticks thrown at
her feet,
Too many to count, too few
not to number.
How much courage do you have
to muster,
Waiting, knowing, looking
over your shoulder?
Gift
Medea takes the lift
each floor a new betrayal
love’s knife sharp truth
across the throat
until there’s no one left
no one getting in no one getting out
no more hearts for sale
and now the doors won’t open
a lid on a box that is forbidden
and then the light goes out
so there are no walls no ceiling
only a floor she cannot trust
she might be rising she might be falling
she just might have disappeared
she puts a hand to her face
touches skin with skin
understands the weight of faith giving in
She’s Psyche perched upon the spire
waiting for the marriage beast
in the darkness for her husband’s breath
for Persephone’s beauty played upon a lyre
and she’s lost all hope of Pandora’s gift
she’s alone dissolving and becoming myth
she leaps upon the pyre
the fallen
on the smooth surface
of the Icarian
Sea
a fisherman hauls
in his net
and shudders to
find yet again
waxy feathers and
fragile bones
swimming with the
muscular
flesh of still
living fish
writhing and
squirming the frantic
mouths the
would-be screaming
the water greasy
with fear …
above, a sky clear
and blue
holding a sun
the light a whorl
all radiant with
innocence
blinding the
world askew
and deep down in
the turbid depths
of a black sea
floor the bottom feeders
are picking
clean the gleaming
remains of a fallen
star that at least once flew
that, at least
once, flew
Love story
It’s deep in the water,
So I’ll need equipment:
Oxygen tanks, a mask,
A suit to keep out the cold,
A torch to light the way,
A lifeline either way,
A sharp knife, and
An excuse for failing,
For returning to the surface
Breathless and empty-handed,
A reason for standing in the shallows,
Bloodless and still flailing.
the fall
Nike hesitates to cross the street
her hand held out in mid-air
just above ground zero
as if to stop traffic
tanks rumble past
the ground trembles
her wings coated in ash
she resembles a statue to an old hero
she cannot compare
her ears fill with static
a laurel wreath in tatters at her feet
Ares with no regrets
is smoking a cigarette
and leaning against a lamppost
on the other side of defeat
Bound
As the sun
slowly heals the night burns bright
Prometheus can
see far across the valley
can read the
smoke drifting dispersing
almost smell the singed fat and bone
watch the
figures in the landscape
ploughing building
toiling
note the shadows
of birds
skimming the
fields
a dove an eagle
umbrae of an
approaching
vulture
…
Click here for Prometheus link
The bends
Love is surely the same for some of us
the seemingly original addiction to touch
and being touched the anticipation
the seemingly endless gratification
how everything is too little and too much
the spiralling descent into paradise
only to find the oxygen thin the lack of sky
So begins the slow tortuous attenuation of desire
then the raging ascent rising for a breath of air
and towards the end surfacing into endless ocean
with nothing or no one to grasp or cling to and
the blood fizzing in the brain and the bends.
