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.
