Suspension of Disbelief

Wear a mirror suit
and keep moving,
withhold information
about oneself.

Don't stop and
don't stop long
enough to 
repeat reflections.

Beam multitudes back
make a joke 
out of systems,
make no joke at all. 

Let information wash 
over you, halfway 
across the road 
you may stop. 

You are scrubbed to
pieces now the horse is
winning now how 
has it always won.

Watch yourself driving
in a darkened shop front
let the ensuing bricks throw
the people, propped, into relief

Others

 

In same spaces and in spaces apart,

understand this, what went on we

can barely form words out of

and our shared sense of what

it is to form a generation, we

formed together and that the 

ambivalence that seems

embedded in habit and taste

can't be analysed as the different

shades of every birth of the teen,

that behind our preferences

something colder and harder 

forms and we guess it

screams no and better for us 

whilst we shift placeholders, 

proxies as we regain each other's 

trust by pledging to persist in 

not forming words whilst we

listen to each other's version

of events and how we first

came to hear of them.

Strangers

 

Reams of code pinging around
the hitch, every institution feels
volunteer run, nothing is a service,
but yes take a dip in the tub
on the roof of Long Island City,
all worked up with nowhere to go,
a year sprinkled about the gossip
of a caption who was where with whom,
take an honest to god nasal swab,
I swear if I see one more group
shivering with nothing to do.

Poundland

Plenitude, the illusion of choice has

outmatched the illusion of choice
in plenitude in spending power in
bargaining power in space 
in objects in illusion of
choice how does one form any
kind of relationship with objects
and ideas everyone has an 
opinion but this is the world we 
live in we better best take the 
time to trace our fingers 
across the dust gathered
on a beloved item and 
wonder when our hands
will soften round its contours
and it will become one with 
us again, the tool the symbol
its user sinking into the sign of 
intelligent, benevolent
design, everything doing 
what it was put here for, 
pure as you like until 
it breaks and beyond.  

Down Wind

Face out the window, 
what was the sensation
of catching a glimpse of sheep grazing 
on a knotty bank,
and being gone before they had time to pause,
look up and register your passing
before you could register every tendon,
taut in a relationship with
undulation, the creases in the jawline,
getting grass down,
before they could measure
the angles of light
that skimmed across your face,
neckline,
and your wind-whipped collar?
What was that when
life seemed short yet slow. 

Bad Boyz

 

Winning is embarrassing
the off chance of winning
the magic of the spheres
for me, in me, mine,
sorry your sword is
rusted, it wasn't me 
how could I, 
I don't even 
know how to
fake humility it's
impossible to know what
that is when winning
is arbitrary
an iron blanket,
a hive mind,
all flopped across
rolling hills,
why are sports great,
I couldn't care less about
who plays sports how can
you learn anything about
solidarity when winning
makes no sense and 
losing is absolutely nothing,
nothing to
apologise for.

The Leak

 

Unfocused, get over the month of May,
exams are not a true test.
Switch off take it easy the panic
the time from where does it flow how to
keep it from coming how to clamp it at
the source-
I'm already holding the envelope
up to the light 
I can see results 
ink blotted through
B, C, C.
Time rising, triple pile up of the front and back
all those cars on fire in the fog
on the M4 I remember driving in a monsoon
in Texas I saw forks on the lip of time
and then I couldn't see.
Please, I can't be the first to stop
everything is passing me I don't
want to take it easy who
on the M4 had their destination
slide out of view?
Then we were all
stopped on the freeway, 
never been rattled this way by the rain before wondering who decided to stop first and who would be the first to peel away.

Known Quantity

 

About the town, scribbled in note pads, passed around,
a friend share, frequented until the blinds become dusty,
the plastic plants sag and the news cycle wraps round again 
a small glitch where the loop forms and what was 
once recorded takes on the patina of days and days before
and what is to follow, the perennial hope that there 
will be something more to be recorded before
this space becomes fabric and the locals glower,
close ranks make it theirs and theirs alone.

Behind the Gate

 

Sum total of what did daddy do,
but you feel for the shadow of absence,
wonder what fills what has been cut out.
An elbow pad on tweed here,
brogues sinking beneath the denim
crumple zone,
white collar criminals, fists fly at 
the rugby club,
I want to see all your fathers on
day leave, 
finger the bracelets
on their ankles,
ask them what's worth fighting for,
and what must be left behind 
to be ignored by the
sensor by the lock of the gate.

Freeze Out

 

Years out in the cold 
and cold in
non-contribution 
what's it worth to me
I'm for 
a mission 
where do I see
it end am I too sour for it
I should
only hope
to be the frozen footstep
of a spirit,
echoing in the 
cathedral of thought. 

Never The Twain Shall Meet

The mouth agape, or the held tongue                      sliding back behind the door,
how many chances for a stranger,                              how many for a relative, or a friend,
hope and disappointment should be a               continuum but the treachery,
like being backed into, all dug out,                                 a hopeless foxhole of rage,                        disappointment feels like despair and                    despair hasn't found a place in me                                yet I live it like disappointment                                  which seems more familiar in how                               its penny drops and how quickly                                       its ripples rouse my anger. 

Another Year

The year is done the year is not yet done,

gingham, the shell which I resent 

having to dress; which fabric flows for 

which event I'd prefer if it hangs stiff

in the breeze, I can't countenance holidays

no-one throws themselves all in 

anyway, is it a miracle I'm open to if not

looking for joy and could I also hold joy

waiting in the freezing spit as an equal to

the heat sink I become by June, same face,

same aversion to guilt an islet for myself.

Invitation to Collaborate

Ask me to do anything I have patience and no ambition
half my birth name is still standing and patience is the rod
in my back, holding me in place far beyond the stop
ambition took, it's not resting, it just stops, coiled not
nesting in the v of the verge there's no reason to it, 
I've chosen to remain standing long
after the lowing of the cows come home. 

Rumours 2

 

Information withheld so much 
more than the banality behind it,
a tight ship should be just that,
it glides across the horizon,
over the course of a day,
you don't see the waters
churning beneath,
or feel the salt take years off your life,
or grip the rail as you feel your
way back to your bunk.
Which side will a wave slap next,
and the view from the cafeteria,
moderate or good,
occasionally poor? 

Weasel Words

 

The ecology of weasel words
I can't even begin to explain how 
a hidden world extends its power
and seduction with a some might
say or and I heard or people would
agree, no.

Weasel words and their weight,
you never want to feed a fantasy
hope someone kills their bit and
moves on, it is myth like disease,
fur on the arteries,
the hope that kills.

React or Die

Sitting with an idea it's a choice, I'm not that excited
to be shocked out of my routine. Was I meant to be
shocked if not what was the point, pushed and pulled,
I said to Allison I'm clearly not a dominating force
I don't want to be punted out the room and grabbed
back in again it's not my speed none of it is, my life
in media, files shuffling about banged in the knee
by drawers, my age and I, either, ask not for 
respect but I avoid the things that misunderstand
me, time is precious, if I could get out the front
door fifteen minutes before the fourteen after I 
said I would I'd manifest as if time is precious,
I'd be backed away from, dripping in nothing 
missing in my life unless I said it was.

The Cause or Relevance

 

Selling here a lip serviced stab at persona
it's so easy to be loved that you're hated
but a soft heel at that.

Real ale, Melton Mowbray puritan
should be face down drowning in the
gravy with your bangers.

May the pens push you out 
from beneath the bus shelter
and you shiver.

May your blood turn grey,
dry out like the wax desiccated
on the sleeve of the Barbour. 

On Waking

Woke up with the nail bit until it bled
ran it on a hand puppet
so it was bleeding too
this within a phase of nap
and the safety pin
came undone dug into my thigh
the safety seal of crinkling plastic
bound to ride and wend its way
into my waist and the house 
seems empty and I have
all these parts to weigh
the finger rises up to the mouth
the puppet will never be the same
the cloth that keeps me dry undone
its fastening is pure design 

so this is someone's mind at work

the skin not yet breathing
it will shed once I drop
the constellation. 

Gifting

 

Pick something out for yourself
this is from your brother,
he doesn't know you yet,
you will know him shortly,
but he can't possibly know you,
won't know how you know the
shape of his mouth when he cries,
how you think he loves too much,
has no inner life,
seems to need what you needed
but more frenzied with it
can't but seem more idiotic in 
permanent lack
can't but seem to make you idiotic
in want,
a want
before you felt sure you knew
that your path was to 
petrify like a forest
in games.

First Afternoon

Cessna sighs dips its wing tips along the seams,
where the cross hatch tightens towards Plymouth.

Seeing shadows finally filled morphing into 
the cloud overhead and hinting at a return.

I felt dejected, a fixed point against the dipping tone
as propellors beat against the haze.

The shame in paying for this afternoon again,
mother watched me watching on the lawn.

Still, wanting it to never change as I too first felt
changed by not wanting it to change.