Christmas

You find me in bed
into your arms
I feel the velvet ropes that tie me to my mast
and I hear
I hear the syren's song
let me encircle your thigh, your shin
tighter
don't let me go
skin on skin
hull to water
eels with mysterious mating rituals
are you even real or just scent and temperature
your manliness - sculptural
yet inviting, soft enough to mold into
biceps brachii, extensor, flexor, radius
I want to inventory the muscles in your arm

Why can't we be lovers?

You arrive late as if time were not irretrievable
in cool blue, momentarily scanning the room
but not believable
in your search.
As I cannot reach out for you, I pretend I have no arms. No eyes.
Yet all my cells are undercover spies
Mind zooms past conference props: chairs and people, pens and fingers, water pitchers,
chins propped on hands, sound glitches
In this madding crowd
I want to sway in your light
Undulating reed
To be seen but not seen watching, wanting
When the amplified pitch of the feedback loop triggers a whole room, you don't startle
The crowd laughs
But they could cut your profile in marble
We sit
Like two arrows at a crossroads
pointing in opposite directions
Dancing in and out of each other's invisible sections
boxers reading distance and closeness
we both get that sex is an 'It' ness
I poke your arm and you touch my face with the edge
of your palm, as you lean in for a whisper
I know my scent is trapped in that space
Yet I don't know my own scent
And I don't know what your skin smells like either
You are text written in invisible ink
I stalk the stage, I unmute myself:
Why can't we be lovers?
I am calling out to you in a roomful of people
Why can't we be lovers?

Little Venice

By Sil (7th of July 2017)

Little Venice 

Belongs to cyclists 

And city boys 

Who ping-pong their freedom away

Fake status satiety

Seek temporary safety 

In money and uniform.

In the glass theatre

A vertical, potted 

Gauche summer 

Directs a play without words;

It moves its actors in reverse 

Nature, reduced to a trimmed-back 

Farce mustache

Has no scent.

We're braving the edge 

Eyes, adrift 

On the frogskin face

Of the water 

(A prince

Left unguarded,

Unkissed even by death)

Carefully unpicking 

The stories 

We tell 

From the ones 

We don't.

Desire makes

Halfway station 

Between promise and 

Caution 

Conspicuous barge

Painted in lurid letters 

Its owners 

Are water haters. 

Silver Spoon

I linger in your spaces

Walk and walk,

Possessed by beauty

Admiring your painted ceilings

The sandstone arches;

When you build

You build beautiful walls.

Once I thought us, siblings

Born under the same moon

But Oxford reminds me that

You’re the one 

Born with a silver spoon

They’re playing the first chords of

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Within Plato's lackluster cave

My heart  -

A cat writhing 

Under truck tires -
Spits as

Young orchestra players sway with grace

Sheldonian angels

In the name of the Father, blessed.

Your tribe wear privilege ever-so-lightly

As if it were an expensive coat

You wouldn’t mind leaving behind

In the Bodleian Library

Shredder

(Silvia, London)
There is no you in you,

Just miss-target, lassoed desires

I envy your skill 

at fighting fires

This is your city

I take to the streets

In a pink scarf and red lipstick

Modern girl with a match-stick

Lingers on New Bond Street

At Sotheby’s the flower arcade

Never fades

That’s the best money can buy – perpetuity

This isn’t about finding you because,

Your sort shun opulence

I bet you smirked when Banksy did his shredder trick

Intellectual “Fuck-You, Your Majesty”

Hey, Mr Status-by-Stealth

I wish you died

They’d bury you wearing your usual grey

Next day – I’d keep those damned gates locked

At Friary Court

It’s late autumn, evening without afterglow

Did I tell you I have a child at war with himself
Together we paint a face on the moon

I’m 38 - my path loops back home

The lights are on

Homecoming

(Silvia, August, Exeter)

I watched you look for fragments

of your world

there’s a Romanian story

about a prince

who goes off chasing

eternal youth and

everlasting life

He returns home

to find

valleys and cities

where forests used to be

in the palace the lights are out.

At the Double Locks

Instagram poets

carry picnic blankets under one arm,

articulate girls

abandon their bikes

in the parking lot

We eat scotch eggs

in ritual remembrance

of student penury

and later, on the way home

I lock on Venus

to scale down the human distances

we’ve travelled

to something insignificant

like a chicken coop

Give me one fixed point

and I’ll be brave enough  

to let the sky bleed

again tonight

 every night

for the next

38 years