Vast bands of sky and sea and sand
layered like rock strata,
the sand’s seaweed veined skin
pulled tight by wind, the sea
welded flat to the shoreline;
white crested waves crumble
chalk into flint grey water,
granite clouds press down hard
enough to sharpen a blade on.
This landscape runs through me
as I run through it, crack it
open and you’ll find me there,
a seam of something different
caught between it’s layers.
Your breath like snowflakes
coming from your mouth,
as though it were the only thing
you could dream about after
so many days of white horizons.
In the morning I wake before you, chilled,
to see it still uncurl from your lungs,
my talisman, my lucky charm,
my prayer beads I count one by one,
as they rise into the morning air.
The train moves like a diving bell
through a sea of night.
Cities luminous shoals of distant fish,
until all fades in the depths,
the world closes in,
the window shows only my reflected face
orange under neon light.
The train sways suddenly
moves the centre of myself,
away from myself,
unchained to rails or seat
I’m thrown back into remembering
that last hour of the journey home,
when eyelids eggshell brittle with tiredness
closed against harsh amber light.
The carriage a decompression chamber
coming slowly up from the depths of us,
but never slowly enough,
so that when I arrived I still had the bends.
The pressure of your absence
bubbling in my ears and veins.
Now every train ride sounds
the Morse code of our embryonic
love within the rail’s clack.
Bees swarm the hive drowning
the skin’s honeycomb in sticky sweetness,
a pulse flutters its wings at my wrist,
dances figures of eight around my heart.
A new honey hums upon my tongue,
tastes of strange moors are on my lips.
I remember the time
he came out of the woods
with the hares in his hand,
casually, as though they were
a pair of gloves, blood stained.
The summer silence
bloomed on everything,
a verdigris that rusted shut
the clamor of my thoughts,
I no longer recognized myself,
the way the lines on my face
softened around him.
My life before obscured
like the coin that grew green
in my pocket, unspent, useless,
the face on it blurring
beyond recognition.
There was no future, no past,
just this; the time he came out
of the woods, handed me this gift.
something we both understood.
Love; a currency
I had never spoken before, or since heard.
I recognise your kind
snake dry cold blooded
but warm to the touch
knew your nature was change
a long muscle smooth as breath
rippling time along its back
the mist from my mouth rises
to join yours: two tails
curling in the frozen air.
We are carbon based life forms
in different allotropes.
Insight is to breathe in air
and breath out diamonds,
cold and sharp in the chest,
the future scratching raw
against the insides of the present.
I have a talent for it,
seeing what people will become,
how the weight of pressure and time
will form the diamond in some
leaving others to sleep on unchanged
The chalk man is only a marker
for the dark man that lives beneath.
Who sleeps all day under his skin of grass
the slow heat beat of the earth unheard.
At night bones of flint and fossil
raise him up into the sky,
his vortex of silver hair fragments into stars.
The holding dark, when all is quiet.
An obsidian web, flecked with frost
whose silken threads hold
me with all the strength of steel.
Enfolded in a galaxy of spinning stillness
that goes back to before I began.
That does not ask anything of me, other than to be
until time and space dissolve
into liquid thought, a river of silvery fish
swimming me down sleep’s waterfall.
And in my sleep I dream his centre
the slow heart beat of the stars,
A galaxy curling in a spiral like an ammonite,
unfragmenting the fragmented light.
Cathedral vaulted ceiling for the amplification of God.
I could not hear him in my life now without
this breadth of stone sky to hold me up.
The ceiling unfolds with the grace of wings
feathers enclosing us safe in darkness.
The stone ribs hold shadows of lungs,
that breath angel dust,
a sandstone breath drifting down
catching gold in the light.
This cathedral is vast almost beyond comprehension,
but we’re both made from the same dust of creation.
As large as the sky it came, like us, from the earth.
Let us be the architecture of God.
Big enough to grant shelter, to bring peace.
To let all come in. Strong enough to love.
For though like these walls we can feel worn thin
by the passing of time, the weight of our lives.
If we take our sandstone soft
human love and metamorphosis
make it harder, denser, stronger
We become quartzite.
Crystal, unchanging, inert.
The unbreakable heart of God.
To say I love her is not untrue.
But iits more that when I feel in her that vein blue pulse,
some counterpart pulses in me.
Like the animal that doesn’t know it has a voice
until it meets another, calls out to it, and so
finds itself in the same breath as it finds its mate.
Like the sound of her heart beat,
makes me suddenly aware of my own.
But more than that.
The sound of her heart sends an electric pulse
that runs from her body to mine,
so that the quiet starts beating
and I find within the emptiness
a throb separate from hers, that is my own.
She calls, and part of me I never knew existed answers,
and that answer hangs in the air,
like a ringing in the ears,
even when she is gone.
And I’m in love with the sound of my voice,
as it echoes through the room.
People have so many selves
they shuffle them round like cards in a deck.
She’ll say ‘pick a card, any card’
and you’ll take a chance, make a bet,
try to get her Queen of Hearts.
But its hidden too well,
you end up with the joker instead,
and by then its too late.
The black souled jack waits grinning.
He’s already dug your grave with his spade.
Summer has gone
the stunted days darken into
round silver moons
the soup spoon kisses
our mouths when we’re apart.
Stomachs full
my softness circles yours
dipping into you as we lie in bed
round as spoons
I
She’s lost her centre again.
A broken mirror, she fragments out,
a galaxy throwing out its arms
unravelling stars from lips and hair
Feathering the air with light,
The whole world inside its dark broken heart.
II
The smashed mirror sent out a galaxy of glass,
reflecting your face from its broken mess.
My fingers are drawn towards the fractured
shards of your eyes, your lip’s sharpened edge.
No less beautiful fragmented.
The light switch clicks loudly in the silence,
power’s off again - the fuse,
or you forgot to feed the meter. Either way,
and expect an answer. Though I do it anyway.
that climb the stairs as cars go by,
I follow them up to your room,
framed in your window the harvest moon,
huge and yellow on the horizon,
stand in for an absent sun.
You lie on the bed
pale and slim as a candle,
waxen tongue hard and still
in your mouth’s shadow.
A love like anger rises,
sharp as the strike of a match,
that wants to push the flame of my tongue
against the roof of your mouth
roll back this wordlessness.
I go fix the only thing I can,
back down the stairs into the basement.
I reach in my pocket for a pound,
hung between two fingers.
We’re both hanging, holding our breath
Waiting for the light to come back on.
Waiting for the light to come back.
In spring it could have happened another way.
But now the edges of shortening days
draw together their sunlit corners,
sheets to be folded away for winter.
Night and day look at each other as equals.
The path splits like a serpents tongue
and we take the darker one, less travelled,
that ends with the apple falling in our hand
We all know what they lost in the darkness.
But not how Eve felt when knowledge emerged
like stars from under the ignorant light.
Or why God made temptation ripen
on the cusp of the seasons as though
he wanted us to choose the night.
