vows

I didn't like the idea of god being involved in this whole thing

I thought it should just be
between the two of us

really, that's what this day's about
right?

the two of us

but a friend got me thinking
that it's not the name you put to it

but more the idea of two
minds, two components and particles
becoming forever entangled

and recognising that
in terms of something greater

the final message received by the ship mayflower one as it left home

and turning through the wider air
my children fall from view
and carry all our grander hopes
of finding something new

may stars shine on their spreading wings
and guide them through the black
they travel on before me, now
with glory at their back

carpet

there's a game I used to play with a friend of mine
late at night when we were down
to the cheap wine

we used to imagine who we'd be
in ten years
twenty, thirty
what stories we'd tell each other
in this same place
another lifetime from now
(and writing this, I know we'll never meet again
- something we never wanted to predict)

and who we'd know
who we'd have loved

so now I'm thinking of the stories I'd tell her
if, in six years, we met again
on that battered carpet on the stairs
clasping budget french in our hands

and what chains of effect
might yet begin
to lead me there,
what stories and what people
and what loves
I would fill my hands with
what my life will be when next
I carry it to her.

blood-flow

and again, you find
the urge wells within you
and you welcome it

because it's the only thing you really know

and everything else is just falling forwards
trying to get back to it
looking for that mark your feet made in the floor

where you stood for half an hour
because you'd forgotten about moving
or rather you'd forgotten about motion

you've never stopped moving

not since that first moment
in that tiny chair in what they called a library
filled with learn-to-reads and bright pictures

since then it's been running
and you wouldn't stop it if you could

because there's a sort of calm
you can only find at that speed

and they tell you you're fascinating
too quiet
hard to read
bizarre, frustrating, damaged

and you smile a little bit
thinking that's just
because they can't quite move at the same speed

marked

so I was looking in the mirror today
tracing out all the places
it's still sore

all the little bruises and bite marks
where you nibbled me into shape

the little bits that got chipped away
those I hid

it's a funny thing
not to know your own body
to look back across months
years, actions and sentences

and not to recognise yourself

all the nights
and the walks home
the drinks and the conversations and the phone calls

not to see where you fit into them

because you know you were there
you know those were your words
your movements in the dark

you have the marks to prove it
the evidence
the hidden map of how you changed

hollywood

kisses always disappoint me
and that's not to say I don't enjoy them
far from it
I still remember the stain of your lips on mine
in that cramped attic bedroom
all those stolen moments

but when I was younger
before you reached across space and time
and closed them both between our breaths

I imagined it would be
explosive
the joining of minds we always longed for

that as we parted
I would point at the stars
and see you smile
as I always hoped you would smile
without voice, without thought, without need

with only the wordless joy
I could never give you

surplus

there is too much in this night
too much to fit these little words

which will not stretch
to catch the cosmos
or shrink to see an atom tremble

which will not bend
to the curve of your spine
or fold into the pressing of your lips

which will not rain
to douse my wakeful mind
or blow the sleep away

which will not find
the places we were happy
or bring lost moments back to me

recollections of a conversation in which the author, for his sins, attempted to explain his muddled views

imagine the odds against the creation of the earth

against the climate and the air and the water
against shifting plates and tides and weather

now try the odds for life
for that spark
and that perfect soup of chemicals

and again, that man should come from such beginnings
evolve these eyes, these thoughts
these frail hands

and then each birth, each person,
as a chance so tiny it can only be fate
which chose this sperm, these genes,
the glance which brought them together

now two such creatures meeting,
such flukes of chance,
and you ask me why I smile,
even now
as all the wonders of creation
are between us

fireferns; or the things my father told me

Take yourself
On the last unwashed night of the year
To the forest which grows at the crossroads

Do not forget your salt
Or the courage which your father taught you;
The demons have many voices.

You must wait
Until you see the first flower
As it prepares to open

Then cast your circle round it
(Never widdershins, my child, never that way round)
But do not listen to the many voices in the dark.

Now as the flower
Blooms at midnight, do not glance away
Though its light may burn you

For only those
Who have seen the fire-fern flowering
May take its bloom

So take
With charred, unseeing eyes, the flower
That you came for

The spirit
That you capture with my science
Which I taught you

Reach in and be renewed;
The light which burned like Hell’s
Now softly glows

Reach in
And learn to speak the tongue of beasts
Acquire time and life as your prize;

These are the gifts
For the brave men who can win them;
The things you earn with your fear.

With mine
I earned only wrinkled hands and an old guitar
Broken strings and dull eyes

But old bards
Still can sing, and in their songs teach
Younger men who are not yet burned

lotus

there's a dream I have in which one man
shows a lotus flower to a crowd
and another man smiles

and it says a lot if you've had it before
it's that smile I long for every second

when I look at you sitting there
and imagine the galaxies of atoms which make you up
and imagine further dark expanses within all of us
and further still

to the smallest imagined space
where a tiny blossom sits
silent and still in our hearts
smiling.

glass song

we stood on a beach
and you asked me if I preferred your hair straight
and I wanted to tell you I liked the way
it got caught in the wind
and my fingers

but then we saw the place that lightning struck the sand
and the glass there
and all I could think was

last night I dreamt of twelve men
who did not know why they flew
until the moment that their teeth hummed
and the pilot threw them into a turn so tight
it tore light and time

I awoke to find him dead
which fitted

although the shards we trod on
no longer would

and then I thought of how these moments
turn away so quickly
that their shadows hang forever
and I wondered if
in trading places with
any of those twelve

I would see something
as memorable

as your hair
caught in that breeze

addendum

the poem I just read is incomplete

when I sleep, and it buzzes through my head
(as these things will, when you learn them hard enough)
it has other things to say

new lines, new notes
that I cant find the words for now

and more than that
you'll never know it

not the light in the room where I wrote it
or the faces I thought of

not the tongue that I use to speak it
or the reasons I don't use it more often

not the streets that it walked
not the streets that it walked

or maybe this is just me
pretending there's more to me
than you think

to make you look harder
so that I can feel your eyes on mine

fac. 2509

so last night I sat up
to watch this documentary
on factory records
til 3am

even though the pills had
made me drowsy
and even though
it was a story I'd always known

one that had walked the same streets as me

I watched it
mainly because it made me think,
which is still a novelty

it made me think about
all these people who do the stupid things
they love to do without thought

until one day they end up on the BBC to tell their story

and about the ones that never will

and about that time we smiled at each other
when their records played in our local
and I thought that would be a story we might tell one day

and about how we never will
and about catalogue numbers
and how each one is someone who danced like this
to this song and how each one is a story I thought I'd tell
and about what they're all doing now
and if they still dance in the same way

and about how they turned the whole thing into
apartments when it all went tits-up
and how they put the plaque with its number 51
in the lobby where people could see it

and about the people our parents knew
who were there, but maybe they didn't know it at the time
and how it must have seemed back then

and how the people we know now
might one day be names we drop
to impress our kids
when they are old enough to stay awake
to watch someone else's story on the BBC
where we'll never tell ours

recursed

I write poems because they seem to be
an easy way to impress people
and I like to be impressive

I think it's because they seem
mysterious - as though they were
anything other than words in an order

I guess I'm not that sure myself
how it is they come to get that way
and why people like me so much when they do

I don't like mysteries.

So I put this poem in alphabetical order
to help me figure out just what the hell
it was about it that got you all so riled up

About all alphabetical an an and and anything as be be because

Maybe it was the way that the frequency of the letter 'Y'
was exactly 1.618:1 of the frequency of the letter 'E' - which is the golden ratio.
Apparently that's an aphrodisiac.

Because come do don't easy figure get got guess hell help

Or maybe it's the fact that, in placing the dissected piece at the end of itself, I had the poem twice,
which mean I had to add in all the
new words again to the alphabetised list.

How I I I I I I I'm impress impressive in in is it it it it's just like like like me

Which I then had to repeat.

Me much myself mysteries mysterious not order

Which I then had to add in again

Order other out people people poem poems put riled seem seem so so so sure

So now I have this poem which is
copulating with itself
recursing like a golden rectangle

Than that that that the they they they they they think this though

So now it's gotten so big
that the original version, which I'm reading now
(and god I'll have to put these new words in too)
it like the square remainder
and the work which may once have impressed you is just
spiralling out of my hands
into a list of words which never ends as each one I add spins off an infinite tail
like a child's face caught in a hall of mirrors,
and I've written 'and' so many times that I'm drowining in the damn things
christ I thought this was supposed to be the easy way!

To to to to to up was way way were what when why words write you

Damnit. Now I'll have to start again.