After the incense, whisky , music, lamplight,
after we’d waited for the world to turn a quarter revolution,
when you had kissed the places that you found,
stopped short of loving
what was the unknown message that we’d yet to learn?
After you’d offered me a future apple tree’d in brilliance
some exotic paradise where life is clear blue lagoon,
when I’d checked my heart to find if it was beating
the way I knew you needed it to .
Outside the opaque window Venus rose between us
visible for an instant then lost in clouded conflict,
there was absolutely nothing left to do.
After touching hidden corners where the creases curled
after wanting some solution to the sadness that we felt
after tearing clotted arteries where the old blood lay;
when I tried to hear the question there was only empty footsteps
the shadow of oblivion where I could not stay.

Bats fly low in Brixton sunset; we’ve talked about truth now
my mind recites it’s own quotations creates it’s own past:
you linger like green powdered mould in the recesses of my brain
saturating blood vessels scuttling into drab corners,
a dried corpse who chooses to crawl nightly beneath my sheets
leaving me indigo and remembering how, how it used to be.

I spend the day in recovery, shock edging my curled lips
waiting for the next adrenaline fix.

Doves strut Dulwich gardens, patrolling sun hats and Pimms gentility,
eyeing joggers red legged on prim park grass,
behind the blinds lies explode like party sparklers,
the menage a trois becomes six or seven and all is exhaustion
in the endless sputnik search for “the one “.
We are discarded condoms on a battlefield of adulation,
veterans in an air brushed drama where no one is in control.

We spend the day in recovery, shock spilling through the credit cards
lodging in Porsche seats, as the children turn their eyes away.

Parrots hurl insults into a taut tropical night,
and beneath the air- conditioning tourists ply tight skin with balm
as the rain forest tumbles under another colonial judder.
The streets of Phuket double as Marbella, clubbers club:
all is inordinately anaesthetised into a concrete corporate conglomerate.

There is no way to recovery, shock sidling from the side walks,
sweating between the young girls thighs, falling from the lines of ever open palms:

Somewhere in the universe the small particle which might be you,might remember,
take me from my nightly sojourns unseal this equation with a smile,

in passing.

You told the story,
in the dying light of a spring evening
how she was so so hot for you, you’d
left marks on the back seats of cars
locked each other for hours
in anonymous hotel rooms.

“Doing it” was what you did together
in bars, under escalators:
I wide eyed listening to the history
of your lack lustre couplings
saw her waiting behind net curtains,
Nintendo -ing her children
sending her husband on endless errands
to make way for your waves.

I suggested it was love,
“in love with my dick more like”,
I drew back from my coca cola,
watching your hand pat my knee
as you tried to light a spark in me,
begging for heavenly intervention.

You were dark, so dark
sometimes the light played tricks
you disappeared,I had to look closely to
find your eyes,and the gentleness
of your presence seemed to deny
your bestial behaviour.
You were a symptom of my week
this crazy city monsooning itself
in the first glow of April sunshine.

Obsession hid behind everyone’s smiles
I’d trawled conspiracy theory over latte,
listened to megalomania in cocktail bars
now your addiction wasn’t looking pretty
only a doubling of fake symptoms could
leave me breathing clean night air.

Trees pale reflected
in dark glow of meadow
flooded
colours of a lifetime
etched against your face
line by line I run my finger
down each crease
ask you to remember
how they came to be,
share with me the years we’ve
been apart.

Autumns forty three
or more you first took
breath upon
this earth when I
was still a beating star
in heaven’s itinerary,
maybe I watched you fall to form,
you grow at mother’s breast
those far flung years ago
how would I know
we’d come to this?

Day traces day
against this end of year
you walk by tinted lake
and I am here in city’s bustle;
but still each moment in mind’s eye
I touch the creases
kiss the contours
shed the tears, and yet again
I wait,
like autumn trees devoid of leaves
who break

if asked to bear too much.

High on a dynamite cloud
music unpeels leaving base lines
drum beat heart noise
trees are singing, weaving networks,
my mind dropping jewels of memory.

Buzzing in my brain
little green men blow
rings of smoke::outside
life takes its morning train
for me it’s all a matter of time

Mesmerised by life
I float beneath a thunder sky
Bluebells frame the woods
three deer graze the corn
fizzy green like children’s sweets.

Spring returns enchantment weaves
an errant breeze while wood nymphs clothe
the naked trees nature sings to me
in rising sap and blue jay lays her eggs
in vibrant shades of ecstasy.

Full moon in minutes rises
behind thatched roof, certifies
earth dangling from equator.

Many times I might have died
happy, but never like this,
transubstantiated by sky’s radiance.

Nuptial moon I leap to join you
across the shallow doors of everyday
I turn into heart beat: watch you climb

like Odin into the Valhalla of night.

I was born for this moment:
Buddha blowing water, flowing
into silent pool, frangipani , motionless.

This moon seizes breath: flaunted August
moon, full circle Jupiter. Cloud hides you
like a silk stocking, shrouding luminosity .

Full moon over beach café, flags falter
as surf crashes, so dark the diners stare
at empty plates. A light rain teases, palm silhouette.

Changes colour now turning grey ochre,
later pool aqua, your nose high and beaked
Lebanese, decked in palm wine and the stories fall

like rice paper.

Wrapped in woollens bird on twig, body sore from exercise,
you catch the 5.a.m. to Manchester; Virgin battle,
peeling dreams of sea creatures.

Each of us is whole, a rounded circuitry
of life, spliced together by beginnings
and endings.

We breathe the same air, carry the same scars with different
stitches.. Over dinner you listen as you’ve been taught to do, I
fire terse stories in mild flirtation, only to amuse.

Our kisses become less random, more attuned,
our bodies once aghast, now aroused by
midnight couplings

This is a grown up love born from the rattle
of laughter, a moment of tenderness where
you stroke my hand.

This is a place I want to be, not some stray boy
pawing me, but with someone who understands through
and through, that love is like water.

What binds us is not the skin thin wire of a briar rose,
nor the silk scarf of a Balinese afternoon., it’s more the
curling of tongue around my toe, the colour of the wine in candlelight.

the moment you forgot to think.

What binds us is nothing tangible or new,
it’s the idea in your head of miracles
it’s the loath ness in my eyes to deal with love

a passing by.

The summer’s turned its head upon itself, begun to cry
and I am fighting panic from a sense that life will never happen,
as you become a figment of a smoky evening

stuck in memory to clear away, like after supper debris.

Flying dreams, a morning kiss
through the wall we have it all,
surrender to deep sea moments.

We are too familiar to be strange,
too close to be apart, too near the centre
of our own universe.

I move toward, you move away
the sky stretches to hold us:
I wait for what must be.

Blossom’s dripping blood for you
the colour of your tears
Ceanothus nearly blue
trees are budding spooky green
like something from my
midnight dreams but where are you?

I saw a girl the other day
her blonde hair halo’d
just the way yours used to be
she could have been a replica
your daughter that was never born
if only you had stayed with me.

There’s talk of Jesus and his plight
but no one talks of you:
that dreadful night when terror hurled
you from the bridge to fall on broken ground.
Death appeared in pale moonlight,
he cut you down to size.

It must be twenty years or more
since we last spoke and yet
this spring is freaking out for you
Iris raise their violet heads a
delicate brand of excellence
to show me life goes on.

Louisa I can never tell
how much I loved you and
the day I heard you’d run from us
was filled with disbelief: others
mourn a man they never knew
dead a thousand years gone by.

This Easter makes me think of you
golden hair and boyish stance
our laughter never fades;
for me the blossom falls for you
in fragile swathes of make believe
it sings to me, our love song.