Poetry, 2002
Poetry, 2002 Post Rock
for O.C.
A rising sea of newspaper print chokes off the door and I’m forced to contemplate throwing the lot into suitcases, starch-stiff and groaning at the hinges. The only choice is to open the wine, and by the time I’ve emptied the final dirty glass I’ve discovered the floor; dulled wood stained scarlet with pooling nail polish, greasy smears left by the butter’s balletic slide, clumped with an oddly heavy mush of tissue; gossamer snow still saturated in drink, off-white and fibrous. Bored with a life I’ve outgrown, the print swims before my eyes, and suddenly I’m burning with fury at his scorn for her words. <transcript interrupted> The one I loved throws a heavy arm around me as I scrunch clumsy fingers into the spikes of his hair, fistfuls of rings scraping a bare arm. Running melodramatic and awkward past fat lechers pouring from kebab shops, blubbery guts spilling over wide belts as flabby chips slip to the floor, I hear the plastic clatter of my perfume rolling into Cowley Road. I ignore it, because I know he’s watching me. <transcript resumed> I wanted her boyfriend but he warned me of the dangers of homage when I told him bad monologues mazed through these long alcoholic weeks like a bloodied river. Waking seven miles away, dazed and confused, hands splotched with odd red seas; a tramline of purpling bruises trailing one pale arm, the welt burning magenta-bright across my eye; the drunken red scrawl on my hand, pinking gently under a shower so hot it burnt. The coppery familiarity of canned Coke, glittering red under stopped traffic lights as I sucked the last of his spit from the can; as he disappeared back into the distance, lipstick marks feigned a kiss. <interruption> Waking, a film of glossy hair smears across my mouth; grim-lidded eyes shrouded in sleep-smudged black, defending you to someone I’ll never meet again. I clung, stubbornly, to remembrance. Ripping thick serpentine cords from the instrument with a look I’ve seen before; falling into bed, being kissed before I even reached your arms. <digression terminated> Dreary sickness stirs in the acidic pit of my stomach around six each day, ragged vision and hangover breath, exhaustively trawling these Burnley fightclubs where the only light glints off cheap sequins and smashed glasses and the swiftly removed wedding rings of the football team. Only the unexpected formality of his letter makes me smile, instinctively pinning the map to the wall: I know I’ve seen East Ham before but I can’t remember where, and the long minutes it takes to locate drag me back; tramping through an unforgiving London, summer stained with bloody sunsets and blinding rain. <incomplete>
16.i.02
Published in Tabourey, foreword by Seamus Heaney, May 2003
On Derbyshire
for M.
By day, art’s ersatz church. Words
tumble
from me,
Byrite mined: a
reddening gape, ulcerous pulp.
Sails toothpicking the sky.
By night, your smooth warm body
curled
around mine.
27.ix.02
On Yorkshire
for Sylvia
Years. These useless years of
dust, untouched;
weary spine, cracking as you move.
(Chisel-chipping women at your tomb.)
Clean sheets snatch
the cat’s hair from your shawls,
frazzled, coarse:
Exposure faciles his sternest face.
I unhook one eye from its
cream cotton lid.
My lashes scrape like spades.
17.x.02
Email for Envoy
Pro tem
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves
The way I feel today - 10 July 2004
Just seventeen - 17 March 2004
Roads to freedom - 25 February 2004
Confessions of a failed self-harmer - 25 February 2004
Manchester, united - 25 February 2004