What are going to do with me?
I held your happy thoughts for over VI
I know you haven't forgotten me
I held the heat off sallow skins like a parasol
I always did such a good job
I gave myself a gold star when gold stars were in fashion

But for a while now, I've felt like this;
A little out of reach
A tongue away from fluency
Salt-dashed and crippled
Did you see my cinders?
They never did me justice

Ah this is such rubbish
Every limb. rubbished
I want to be worn away
I want to be your last supply of fossil fuel
I want to be your only hope of making it
I want to be but I won't



Here he goes again
Furrowing the youthful indifference from his brow
Levelling out temperatures to hold it warmer tonight than it has been for ages
A wisp of a rip to the right of his lip
That she calls a smile
That she still finds contagious
A throng of natives
A contingent of vagrants would never have held fear for him
Not like the fear that sparks blue in his heart now
Nearly there.
Closer.
Closer she moves.
Calmer.
The proximity aching through each thorough-bred leg muscle
And pedigree cluster of nerves

All his manners and perfected distance count for zero
They can't save him now.
Won't save him at this hour
Way too much of not enough and not enough of way too much
All bunched up like a swung cat

Find for them the will of one more anecdotal response
And then the clothes come off.
A duet of bodies alone.
Dwarved by the wanting. the needing
Sweeping in swift and low and swallowing whole in one rapacious draught
The sheets are seething back.
They bleat with loathing
Billowing above tremor after tremor
And scissor kicks of the uncalled for
There are years of back-chat and holding back in store



Post-coital, pre-coital
We press repeat
Point to a region
We'll be there all week

Nose to nose
A limb for a limb
Both out of focus

From tail-tip to lips
This toy tigress is ten feet at least
If she's an inch

And I've got her right where I want her
Hot under the collar
And she's got me right where she wants me
Only in my dreams



Trust me to be melting my soles in Kentish Town on the hottest day of the year

The midday Guinness now feels like an oil slick on a gull, when earlier it had been such a comfort and an excuse not to eat a decent meal

What are we doing outside in this heat?
My girlfriend, my best friend Dan and me

Leaving our trainer patterns behind us like dropped gum as we sweat-stream our path along the Camden Road

The pavement looks like the water slides I would make for my brother in our back garden when we were kids

Dan looks just as uncomfortable as I reckon I do, all we need is flies around our eyes to flick our ears at and we wouldn’t be out of place in a sty

But my girlfriend...that dress...that laugh...

She’s something from folk songs

I love it when her hair is curly like that

There is a small blonde lady just ahead of us

She has a week’s food shopping and a snail’s pace

When we reach her I offer to help her carry her bags

First off she looks at me like I’m going to run off with it so I say

‘This isn’t the weather for running off’

She smiles then and I untwist the bag handles from her numb, blue fingers and walk with her

She is chatty and intelligent and I’m pleased to have helped her out

She says she lives on the same road as Dan and asks if we are the ones who had all the loud parties

I said ‘yep’

She laughs and asks if her and her bloke could come to the next one

I said ‘yep’

We reach her flat and she thanks me and calls me a darling
Then she asks if she can give me a kiss

I said ‘yep’

So she kisses me (on the cheek), says thank you again then disappears inside

I turn to follow the others back to the flat

I don’t think much more about the lady with the shopping because as the day cools off, the Guinness is joined by very cold lagers and sugary cocktails I pretend not to enjoy

My girlfriend says she doesn’t fancy staying in London for another night so we head back home

She doesn’t say much on the train so I busy myself by complaining about the artwork that National Rail have plastered all over their ‘new’ fleet of super slugs

We take a cab home from the station and still no conversation

When we get through the door I ask her if there’s a problem

She just walks off to the bathroom and gets in the shower

I watch Nick Cave at Brixton Academy for five minutes and then decide it is time for bed

My girlfriend is still in the bathroom so I just lay on top of the covers, dozing, ‘Red Right Hand’ ricocheting around my head

When she comes in from the bathroom I open my eyes

‘No pajamas tonight?’

She pushes her face right up to mine until everything blurs, the curls the freckles, the eyelashes

‘I was so proud of you today when you helped that woman, your dad made you into such a little gentleman’

Her breath on my ear makes my eyes roll

Then she turns her cheek toward me, grins, and backs away a little so I have to reach for her

We don’t get any sleep until lunchtime the next day

I wake up at about four pm

I call my Dad and thank him for making me into such a little gentleman



where’s my seagull?
you must have seen it
never stops talking
never home before me
never far from water
impossible to drown
tripping over chainsaws
a-list complaints
or letters our better-halves will choose to ignore
too shy to ask but fuck it here goes
are those glass shards in your feathers
bound for bottomless holes?
coal in the blood
the end of an era
a battery is leaking
a dodgy connection, let’s make it our own
like owners
like professionals
swap ravens for wrens and still come out ahead
a winner and a loser to share the same bed
a card-ace and a loan shark in a ramshackle nest
wanna be my seagull?
just give it your best



Hold me closer than you ever have
Than you never did
As a lover
A stooge
An intermediate
My lips are idiots
Letting words slip past their sleeping guards
But I found those words today
Laid up against the wall in the corner of the bar
They said ‘we’ve broken your heart, don’t take it too hard,
We doubt what we sounded like, mattered to anyone but you...’



I can’t tell you what it is like to be dead

But I can tell you what it is like to be home

It feels like I am dead

My mouth slumps on mute and stays where you are not

I ache where you were

And the water in my bottle is licking itself clean

“Tickets please...........thank you”

Keep it

I can’t bring myself to listen to a song even once

So I listen to all of them twice

Each seeming to whimper the looped and mimicked syllables of your name
Noise and not melody

Salt where there was snow

Oil and mascara caked where there should be none

Just lips and eyes and arms like scythes

Angled and tight amongst each other’s ribs

And the cocktail grin of amphetamines and drink

Wait. Please...just wait.

I bristle. I drone. All the way home

Crushing north-west Kent into a paste that gags at the back of my mouth

Quarry dust and pig fat

I have been told it is Tuesday

I wish it was Saturday
Last

‘Tickets please......’

I told you to keep it