Orion’s Belt

You had three dark spots
in a line
down your back,
more or less in line
with your gently curving spine.

Your very own Orion’s belt
you used to call it.
Each one of us,
you would say,
has our own constellation,
we have but to find it.

I didn’t care for it much,
I have to say,
but I liked the way
the corners of your mouth
turned up when you frowned,
so I stayed quiet.

But now,
when I look up to the night sky,
I find myself tracing you out,
amongst the stars.

Bretagne in the raw.

We lie
hand in hand,
your head in my lap,
under the shade of a low tree
beside a Normandy coastline,
in a field full of
white stone crosses.

And as the wind blows
huge, silent, grey-white clouds
across an otherwise clear sky,
and the hair across your still face,
I think about how many lives were lost
how much blood and tears were spilled,
so that we two could lie here,
so that I could watch you sleep in my arms
and dream of the future
and your silent charms.

Forget Sentiment

Sometimes
you pour your heart out
in to a few empty tea cups
to see how it settles and warms.

Sometimes you chew
on the remnants of days
to taste their dull bitterness again.

Clouds pass
and rain falls in the garden.
The wind whispers her name
and you fall asleep
knowing that it isn’t for pity
but for a brighter sense of the world
that you strive everyday.

Spreading out a map of the world,
you colour in all the places
you’ve been in your dreams.
Paris is deep blue
and all the southern states
are gently shaded in pastels.
The coasts have been highlighted
so that they’re slightly heavier.

This poem that you have been writing
is filled with too much of her.
It imprints the ominous outline of her smile
and pulls the strands out of you one by one.

Forget history.
Forget sentiment.
Perhaps some things were meant
for you alone. To hold and harden
like the brightest diamond.

Untitled

‘Cos dreams are full of
long lost friends
and good days come to
weary ends.
And while I may have danced
and thrown my head back in delight,
it wasn’t me you loved
that night.

I swear it.

Stop it. You’re
fucking with me
from beyond the
grave.

Aggression swelling my
veins, my chest.
Every muscle stretched
taut.

In my eyes
smolders the fire
of my remembering
you.

Motorbikes.

I think I know now
why I have always loved
a Portuguese night.

I had thought it may have been
the sweet lemon scent
that accompanies the darkness
after the heat of day.

Or that it was the returning
from some happy meal,
with wines and family
and warm smiles.

Perhaps, I mused, it is
that I remember sunny days
of sand and sea
and ice cream
as a child,
and I carry them with me.

But I think I know now.
It is as my eyes are on the brink
of closing to more pleasant dreams
and from some further distant street
twin engines roar
and then retreat.

Here at home
not enough people own
motorbikes.
Or at least,
they do not ride them
off into the night.

A Day

I like the way you move.
And I like the way you shat in a bucket
and had to wipe with your own hair,
which was falling out in large clumps,
wrapped around your hand
because there was nothing else.

I like that you’re telling me this,
on a cold November morning,
over coffee on Westland Row.

And you frown
at the memory,
or maybe because you’re about to tell me
you don’t love me anymore.

Way up in the night.

There was a perfect crescent moon.
And it lay beside a single star
Way up in the night.
They discussed the wind.
The comings and goings of it and how
it rustled your hair
as you twirled in your new dress.

All the lamps were golden and strung out
to my half closed eyes,
each eye lash diffracting your beauty.
Everything was fluid and full and tangible
each seperate taste on my tongue.

And when you’d finished dancing
we went inside to not turn on the lights.

This is the day.

The smooth expanse of supple black leather that is my desk,
like a stretched and scraped skin left to dry and shine,
the biggest man you ever saw.
And the to-and-fros of bobbing heads from my window.
Tree branches like fingers
groping for that yellowing golden noose
of lamplight.

These are all I have left,
these and my old worn cassette player.
We had good times.

Perhaps I should eat a slice of butterless toast
and go dance new-born in the rain.
This is the day I forget about you.

There was no quenching in the rain.

You never said it but you knew
we were wrecking like trains.
Flying along those tracks at
breakneck speeds. Too eager.

And for a little while at least
it looked like we were getting pretty close.
Little did we expect this rending of metal,
this tearing and splintering
of flesh and heart and hard white bone laid bare
like the most delicate tinderbox.

The fire was the slowest burning I’ve ever seen,
this train wreck of us.