Incongruence

No cover

Clutching at 

Layers of transparency

Back-to-front cavity

Darkness to light

Refractive cornea

Locker

Designed faulty

To leak

Meaning

Teacher teach me

Stillness

How to build walls

And use my smiles

As a barrier

To design the perfect symmetry

Of benign indifference. 

Are you a dancer?

Dulcet, et decorum est

To choreograph your moves

Confined 

Inside the shoe-box

Of propriety

Claim ‘I don’t feel’

When you mean 

'I yearn'

'I hate'

'I'm fed up'

'I'm bored'

'I'm disgusted'
'I'm turned on'
'I'm in love'
Play your heart like

A transistor radio

When that
Underground train 
Screeches in
Off track

Too loud

Just tune it out

Disarm 

Disband 

Disappear 

When there's no listening ear 

Love and hate

Skulk on by

Like petty criminals

At the crowded end 

Of a busy 

Pier 

Slicer

I run out of run

In the slicer rain

Cowpat hero

I stare into 

The black mirror

Of a long road home

Light splinters into rainbows

I won’t chase them

Closer

Will never be

Close enough

I stretch out my arms

Emotions are marching creatures

In my own Animal Farm 

Just submit 

Today's love is a funeral

Summer smells like wet dogs

Its contours sharp

Drugged

Rain’s kisses have acid lips

The shell hurts

But pain is just

Skin, shin

Muscle
Flesh facet

Pressed hard against the bell jar

Labelled “This Is Your Life”

If I stand here

Will the body hive
Dissolve

Like a gigantic

Hatch-a-plastic-heart
Toy?

Migration

There's no inspecting

The bag 

Of a migrating mind 

Hastily packed at dawn

Multi-chambered heart 

Hacked

Beats incoherently 

Longs

To be trapped 

Inside the infinity mirror 

Of love 

The pure joy 

Of joint attention 

Two kids inspecting 

A snake crawling inside a fish

Eating it inside out 

Voices grow loud
Yet

No more questions 

Are asked 

The light is set 

Not even shadows can be read 

On the darkened face 

Of a perpetually

Eclipsed Moon

Unplugged

Wild berry
Nettle deep
Let sleeping beauty's
Dogs sit
Outwait
Love's outtake
Keep the heart/brake
On
Can't stop
The light
Rushing  away
Sold on
A promise
That there's more
Beyond the unreflective surface
Of the pond.
There isn't.
And so love grows old
Chewing-gum bland
Strings
Out of tune
Nonelastic stretch
Anger
Unplugged electric blanket
In a universe turned cold

Bridges

I drop the paper
We start in silence
I never look
At their faces
Angry men
Stumps
Rootless stems
I never look
but he understands
their despair
he's impatient
defiant
and he'all take me
back
To the start
bridge by bridge
we run
along the
Southbank
Reverse timeline
the crowd
will swallow me
I call out his name
the invisible
string
That connects us
Feels fragile
And it will snap
as I am pulled
into the
jaws of humanity
stripped back
anatomical model
just spine
I look out for Banksy's girl
with the heart-shaped balloon
And she's gone
Goon Park scene
hell is scrubbed clean
concrete is silent
flowers wilt
At the rain
Barrier
I break down.

4:54

Strange
Surgeon
Lays out
Outside-in pump, 37
Uncased
Wide variability -
Murmur to thunder
By the patient's pillow
Love is
Extraction
Operation-room humour
4:54
Just a dream
There's no tumour
But the morning static
Feels like
Failed Sheherezade's
First midnight
In the slaughterhouse
Of dismembered lives
That my emotion,
A frenzied
Rattling
Of the cage
Could rip apart.

Throwaway

Late spring

Thrust

I bite my lip

Cough up my mind

Anonymous,

Warden of sanity

Incorp. soul

Greets 

Strangers

In the open garden

Keeps the shutters

Closed

Talks Japanese maple

Dreams 

Of biting 

Into the bittersweet fruit

Of the ancient tree

That stands

Up on the fort

One climb

One fall

Risk

Such alluring

Throwaway freedom

When life is

Stop/start

Mechanical deer

Oblivious

That the city park

Is a wall. 

Following

I fall 

Into step 

Beside him

Rhythmic ease

Is his heart in sync with his beat?

I'd be content 

Following

Following train tracks,

Watching butterflies

But 

This is no country 

For trespassers,

Where he goes 

I can't follow

I don't know 

His species

So I'll call him 'friend'

Hey! 

Friend! 

What is it like 

To move 

With the languid grace 

Of a cat 

Who assumes

Time is just 

A sheep 

Grazing on a hill?

He's working out a route 

Conversant in the economics

Of a swimmer's 

Choice between 

Streamline

And breath

Late evening 

Traffic will sing him home

I head 

Into 

A different spring

And don't look back

To check 

Which master 

My dog-like heart 
Will be following

Anatomy

Spring reaches into me
With mnemonic tendrils
That seek 
Never bloom
Milky reflection
The self-absorbed face 
Of the pound
shrinks 
expands
Spring reaches 
into me
With cold, 
double-jointed fingers
She knows 
My anatomy.
Knows that beyond 
The ribcage
She might still grab 
My heart
As it hangs 
An upside-down robin
Obstinate child 
She'll hide 
In the emptying well
Until time 
Has lost 
It's withered crown
Of bluebells