Im Down

While my lady sits
I’m lying in muck. 
Playing the role of husband,
we’re scheming of ways we can afford to take swings.
She tells of the old way to do things 
How to make gold from a stone…

“Climb me a ladder,
bargain for your tea.
Paint me a mural of my lifetime 
In the musings of the branches 
of the magnolia tree.”

You’ll always find ways to argue the truth of anything.

Serpentine walker, 
home grown augur
lighting up the crux of the question. 
I’ll learn how to behave, In seventeen new ways.
I could teach lessons on how to listen.

Hermit in a ball gown, Spector on the moon, 
laughing at things you don’t find funny anymore.
Make believe a word, I’ll make believe one too.
If we speak them
I’m sure we won’t unravel

Alchemical mystic
slipping in a new disc 
moving with a wave 
and stumbling on a new sound.
Cerebral upheaval, 
echoed by a laugh track.

Terrible feelings, 
shutter-stocked and archived - Playing pretend in bedrooms made up like barnyards. 

The backbone of delivering :
‘HAVE YOU GOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE 
TO PASS THE RELEVANT CHECKS?’

“Call me any time you need some indifference.”

Bags of shit and semi-automatics,
I’m getting down to the gold in my curse.

— Transient throng in the dustbin dancehall

‘Tell me all the ways you’ll change my life’

Jumpstart the cold rush

All symptoms go! 

Felling trees in half remembered dreams acting as though I never even heard you call.

Overgrown. 

Underpromised and Overdelivered.

Zugzwang.

The streets are paved with coal, 
With dumb luck I’ll never run out of road. 

Celebration stalker, you’re a ‘dine and dash’ author.
The elegance of lightning, 
maybe I’ll just do my thing…
I’m off work at eleven if you wanna swing by?

Dubiously off white, 
an incremental shoreline 
caught between an 
‘alright’
and an 
‘I’ll let it go’.

You, wearing a bikini
ready for a sea swim
clothes pegs on my eyelids 
and my nose.

Troubling pencils trace around my outline catching my true likeness - I’m a stone.

I aught to get a new phone…

It wouldn’t change the fact 
that your calls won’t find me at home,
I’ll be lit up by the gold
that dances off the stool she calls her ‘throne’.

Innocent like a shoe string,
dressed up in laces and curls,

“Before or after the fact
I only mean I want you.
Does it scare you that I need you?
Could you cope if I asked you to go on?”

Masthead Typeface
comments made with red lines,
paragraphs of words find you fine.
Clacked away by daylight,
ticker tape and delight,
a smile across your face
under lights.

In semaphore you order a new drink, face so tender
flicking me a secret with your eyes.
In cities where I find you, 
your face looks more alive 
than all the smaller faces 
in the towns. 

Whistle and I’ll answer 
play and Im a dancer, 
sing and I’ll be a singer too.
Cauterised and cleaned up
patching over the scrapes on our knees.

“Next time let’s think smaller”

Murmurs into darkness we’ll ignore.
Tiniest of dancers, holiest of fathers,
maybe heaven really is on earth.

Lenticular formations
broken in by sunbeams.
I’ll be here with the drunks and the dreamers 
when the last of the trumpets play.