Poem

Adrenaline threading through nerves like beaded
Poison slow-glistening the barbed spider's
Threads; and then the percussive surge -
That metallic plucking of those strings somewhere
Deep, hollow, resonant; fear and joy in crescendo.

It's the always-pump
Of torrential performance,
Between tears and love.

Cloud-Snuggled Girl: A Sonnet

Where speed-flitting thought fizzed behind her eyes
I strained to match and mirror, synapses
Failing in reflex-inadequacies.

The ageing breezes of Autumn return
With the reflux of spinal memory,
Cities rusting in blue toxicity.

Silver, smooth, immaculate: she lay – the
Cloud-snuggled girl in the tabernacle –
Pettled, bedded behind the pulsing veil.

The dream consigned to cobweb, it re-sparks
And infiltrates – bluey-red tinder light –
Like waking to the exeunt that night

Of shadowy movement, and the door slam,
And the protracted sense of invasion.

Sonnet

Spilt time: of course we spilled over somewhat:
It was always intended, in hindsight.
Hiatus of friction-stubble on cheek,
Our tentative finger-brushes painting –
Dilating irises linger and flux
Before the safe-clasp rediscovery.

The platform’s parting-drift: dragging boot soles
Trailing off - adhesive sight-line severed
In the gathering chomps of momentum.
The gluey-remnants of fragrance and touch
Left to the elemental shower gush
To pick and scrape away – like nesting birds.

The fear of committing to spilt time: that
Just before moment from defintion.

This Memory

Words are mere dust to This.
This.
Let music
And the gentle silence of our thoughts speak.
Speak of This.
For words are mere dust to This.
This always
This.

Spilt Time

Almost a year now. Of course we spilled over
somewhat: we always tended and intended to.
The lingering irises that day, in constant flux
of dilation; friction of young stubble on cheek;
brush of hands on Marylebone High Street, and then
the meeting and reassuring safe-clasp,
and rediscovery of lips.
Then phone calls, Manchester, the Cambridge Hotel…
but nothing seen through to conclusion, always
severed at that moment immediately before definition.
The metaphor of the parting-drift
at train Terminals: a few steps of dragging boot soles,
then the trailing off as gathered momentum breaks
the adhesive of sight line, and the gluey-remnants of touch
and fragrance are left to the elements and shower-gush
to pick away at, like nesting birds.
The fear of committing to
spilt time.

The Scar of the Shard

So many nights of ease carried
In this skull’s somewhere cavern,
But the scar of the shard I kept from her
Writhes smug,
Oiling guilt.
The blade that separated me like milk
When I needed to protect myself.

The Cloud-Snuggled Girl

Refluxes of spinal memory:
Of synaptic failure,
Inadequate mental reflex;
The strain to match and mirror
What worked behind her eyes
In speed-flitting thought.

Marvelling her
On the cloud-snuggled pedestal
Assembled and etched by me:
Engraved, embossed golden
Doors of the tabernacle, bedded, petalled,
Pulsing…

It does spark with injustice: the tinder
Lighting blue-red, burning my inner ear.
It’s an infiltration – like waking that night
To hear the exeunt of shadowy movement
And the door slam
And then nothing but a protracted sense of
Invasion, grating, tender-deep, falsifying.