memory

V.119

A laminated floor with chips
is cold when you place your hand there –
to pick up a dirty foam ball,
and quick throw it at some classmate.

The same floor is in the deep past
in the badminton hall where squeaks
happen and the thud and the thud
of an unknown body’s collapse

and blue face. I watch him dying
flanked by dark angels as I say
“It’s gonna be okay”. You lie
but do not know you are lying.

How can a floor, the floor you learn
collects grit, as your palm feels it,
with the rubber face of a doll
designed to resuscitate us

How can a floor, where I once danced
with my ginger haired instructor
whose smell made me blush, not knowing
why. How can a floor give resource

A blank floor. The sound of running
gets through the headphones. Electric
resources given by Four Tet –
in the gym I think of the past

V.117

A canvas: on uncertain blue
place a pink tear and a black plane
moving across the sky. Fragments
of torn cotton ringed with magma

beyond the train that collects thoughts
as it passes – dreams of metal
and paint, and nights of sweat on seats
of blue nylon. Dark reflections

in the glass as country lights slide –
each a knot in the night canvas
that rocks sleepiness into us.
Brakes squeal, and I am back again.

On the York train once someone put
a shopping trolley full of rocks
on the tracks. Metal squealed and tore
and I was mildly shocked. Around,

people glanced at the sidings, sat
still in their seats til the rattling
stopped, and the rain began. I sit
on this bus and look at the dusk

and use mindfulness to silence –
or some material memories
– dull you in my mind. I paint you
out but like sun you ramify

V.101

This author will still be read, when
the sun has enveloped the earth
in a stifling embrace, and rock
again attains its prevalence

It will go down in history
down into the land, under it
with the rust, into the magma
where the planet forgets itself

The nation’s glory shall ring out
through the debris field in deep space
as comets impact planets, dull
armadas in the dead empire

They will still talk about today
when mouths are a thing forgotten
and the only concept is cold
Cold that stills the slowing atoms

I will remember you until
I lie on the linoleum
watching the inlaid glitter blur
until a galaxy appears

I will remember you, my love
breaking the law of the poem
We will forever have been us
There is nothing that can change that.

V.99

The world is not a game of chess –
A game of chess is not a game
sometimes it’s something more and less
When a world turns on an evening

When rain churns upon the roof tiles
and rain sounds dance inside the ear
and rain worlds are raised from the red
depths of the mind, a damp childhood.

In an oxbow lake three kids act
in a pirate film, and leap out
in the rain, to feel the warm depths
and feel roots in the dark water

touch their legs, and shiver. A fish
a dead fish bobs among the reeds
Its unused eye staring at clouds
dark with the shadow of water.

In a film a neat cottage stands
by the sea, and an old man gives
advice that, being trite, this time
because of something deep, and past

returning, brings with it a roar
like the sun checkmates the dark sea
and castles on the sand, kids hands
had made, are washed away. I love you

V.80

Memory danger. It’s a pinch.
They’re in our heads, in our bodies –
they could strike at any time. Know:
Memories are dangerous things.

They wrench our heads through time, it’s worse
even than the ground opening
and letting you plummet away,
just to jangle from side to side

from rock face to rock face – insults
raining from their mouths. “Good lord, boy,
Call that falling!? A downy scrap
of feather would do it better.

Call that hitting your head? Go on…
Pull the other one! Try again –
Oof but that was okay, good byeeee!
AND THE DARKNESS SWALLOWS YOU UP.

So, melodramatic, but yeah.
It’s like the world is scattered all
with massive invisible traps.
Bear traps with a ghost chain attached.

And then you drag the ghost around
as it complains mightily – “Please,
I’m as tired as you, my liege. But
can’t you stop that racket I’m sick”

Two Sea Poems

You’re the Shark Eating my Heart (A Love Poem)

You’re the shark eating my heart
slowly and with little care
while seagulls watch most bemused
and the bored sea smashes on
against sharp rocks, boringly
meanwhile the wind has died down
and the pool surface is glass

so the only noise is chomping.
looking across the bay sound
I think I see whales spouting
but no – that red is blood red,
not sunset. Splashes from where
you’re the shark eating my heart
slowly and with little care and I like it?

Sea Memory

I do not remember
as if it has sunk deep
or diffused within me –
my first visit to sand
and sea – ever – as if
my genesis is now –

as if I were born out
of my sea memory –
as the long horizons
shone in the sea’s tearings
I materialised
crashed in, filling this space

We talk of this later
our feet are hot and sand
rubs off them in our socks.
I turn back and see it;
the dark grey portion sinks
leaving a blank white sky

V.1

Four woodpigeons pace the garden
of my adolescent dreamscape –
when tree houses hung suspended
above dark woods. And faceless things

were different back then they belong
among us, deep in my headspace
one pigeon is puffing itself
greater than the others, it thinks

one would suppose, and then settles
the argument. Flown to the woods
I hear the uniquely quiet
sound of paintbrush on old jam jar

where Beatrix Potter’s stand in
with warm and wiry red hair sits
on the fence and marks pigments out
of this world, and makes paintings

hang in my childhood, in halls with
abandon. a picture of me
and Van Gogh. I am young and
wiry. I paint now because these

are the deep horsehairs that gallop
out when I sit on the beach rock.
I will build my mind the gates of
time will not prevail against me