The Rise

Mine was the right of two, a light apiece showing dimly on the
pillow and casting its almost beams on the Micky Mouse clock on my
side of the wall. An early picture of mine: ‘The Golden Hind’ – I had
proudly rolled in elastic – lived on the chest by the door; the needle
and pine scented drawers were embalmed in life-old Times’ Sport pages, browning
on the fray. A wavering Tottenham in seventeenth – nothing changed there.

You awoke to the bee keeper’s buzz of the kitchen TV,
and enthused clunks and bells of the ripening-brown microwave;
there was always ‘four-across’ crossword chatter, scraping butter,
the dragging of protesting red-cushioned stools, crunching toast from
the rack, and then that smell from the larder: every manner of
marmalade, biscuit, rioja, cake and sell-by-date.

Quest

To slosh these toes in this rock pool,
countering the heartbeat of waves – wishing
I could douse in watercolour some
gnarled sketch-leaf, and puddle it with the
fermentation of sea-softened thought,
one step further on the wanderer’s quest.

End of the line

Sudden waking –
like plunging from Narnian water;
the sandpapery bite of his larynx
tearing me from the blur.

My eyes scanned unfamiliar
peripherals, narrowing;
my bladder remonstrated for
lack of planning.

He walked me to the exit as I
focused the cap of my right converse
along the platform’s central ridge,
feigning sobriety.

He spoke like a man in his domain,
asked where I was meant to be…
his eyes unfocused – opaque – then
settled, arriving in thought.

Jump in, jump in, he said.
Ever ridden in the front
of a train? It’s a whole
different world up here.

Transfiguring my brain to sponge,
I balanced my head on the glass in a
state of absorption – edging forwards –
a glint of moonlight on the tracks.

Homeward

Numbness fighting the frazzle,
an o’er-brimming buzz of static,
and flexing-remembrances of breath.

Limp features draped in the underworld’s
mirrored canvas; hair: rustily greased,
like cooked wood – scaly, slick; a smack
of her rose-bright lipstick in the eye of the
double-glass. Hunger and survival sense.

The first dawn when theatre-dust fell tonight,
mixing with the dew of the lights, drizzling
baptisms, accepting our trading of vows.

The split-moment came, as he said it would,
when I stood there – between thoughts –
soaking it in, with the thrill of stillness in the
epicentre.

Down from the cliffs

Drifting fog:
the deft taunt of smoky wings floating the
aquamarine: its cloudy, bluey-green iris.

Here, down from the cliffs, where the water
encroaches:
treacherous-embracing glugs, hostaging rocks.

Dawn, dusk; inhale, exhale – breathing
light on this task immemorial: time’s
artistic etching of the details.

The accident of my back on this rock:
watching the rock pools dilate,
sensing the rise and fall of the diaphragm,

tabernacled in the vastness.