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

Back To The Start

(By Gub, the 21st of January, 2016)

I have a Coldplay track turning
in my head, along a pitted sunlicked road
with smatterings of shadow cast by trees and
leaves swept sleepily by breeze, and sun and cows
and coarse dark cigarette smoke
circling inside the cab of the car
and you stretched out in the passenger
seat;
asleep

and this track of contentment
playing through the heat of that
Romanian
summer

and a yearning
before it could
be yearned for

that this was how it would
it always be

how I would want this moment
to last forever

and never have to say
nor end up wishing:
‘take me back to the start’