five minute poem

every-where’s coming together

we stand in stations, thread ourselves

through tram lines, linking fingers until

wherever home might be i know it’s here

everyone’s coming together when they

touch my arms and tell me how long it’s been

(and I talk about you over whiskey and a grin)

thinking how grown up we’re allowed to be

my bank balance is zero, stripped down to

master bedrooms and living room furniture

we talk about soon, with both our names on bills

knowing that everything’s coming together.

make me miserable

i am in love and therefore cannot write any more.

last year seems so long ago

Situation Summer

chewed up in the choice of the move,
the season spits us out the other side like pips.
in search of a new life, we’re waving at neighbours
and stealing smiles from strangers; trying to make contact.
we relax in the anticipation that something will happen soon.

new rooms prickle with the heat and people speak with alien
accents in the street. what we do not say is stilted and when
she leaves every day it’s to stake a claim in something else,
performing to a crowd until she’s bought.
(muted by the mornings i stay indoors, until august is a
flush of hushed visits, unspoken agreements that i am not in.)
we’ve comfort in common until she doesn’t come back.

in the house of the man who fed me lines and called me delicate
i took a photo of two green chairs in the garden, faded and buckled
like couples breaking into each other, all the while thinking;
‘will i ever?’

unless it's fictions

i have a bit of a thing about kitchens at the moment. i think it's because i spend so much time cleaning mine.

The kitchen is a six-foot squared box of utilities James does not know how to use. He contemplates the science of it all; of ovens, kettles and tumble dryers. The unseen processes which occur within them to make them work, like a body. The image of his mother at the stove superimposes itself over the scene, stirring a saucepan which boils steamily at the closest hob. He marvels at her magic.

i am having fun in my life.