PONDS DON’T SLEEP

Pigeons wheeze

From a low rooftop

Throats full

A moorhen clucks back

Slipping over Lilypads

Scarlet beak picking

From the green dishes.

Something is moving

Sparrow-shaped

In the thicket behind

 

I am waiting

To be caught in the twinkling

Of low evening

 

The drip of the broken pipe

From the flat opposite us

Where a magpie perches

Snatching at the shining liquid

It throws its head back to swallow.

Beneath him, by the bins and bike parts

Our neighbour is scooping a pond

Out from the dirt

Between the roots

Of a stump

He has cut two young Ash

So the sunlight will fill it

Uninterrupted by thicket

He knocks at our door

Our windows

Asking for lighters, baccy.

 

The bench by the fishing pond

At the end of the crescent

Is overgrowing

Ivy and nettle,

Gout weed and Cleavers

Drool on their fingers

They will coat me in it

The pond’s darkness

Insects skittering

Over the shining gloom

I am breathing it

The green-black of Ammonia

The sweetness of crushed dock

I want to sit here until the night hooks in

I have seen bats

Scattered across the rooves of prefab council boxes

As though flung from the estate towers

They dive after the bugs

Sapped by water-tension.

 

I can hear an owl

Over the trees shaking

Their heads in the sleepless night

Its call could bust through the heaviness

Of pollen, cracked windows, twisted sheets

And sockless feet.

SLUGS

Cold refusing to meet warm

Under floorboards and carpet follicles

Damp breaths eyeless and many-fingered.

Our breath is on the windowpanes

Tissues full of sneezed out spores

Offerings of salt sopped through.

The bin is spilling over again.

Our neighbour rips out another of his rooms

Its contents marching through the shared lawn

Of blitzed undergrowth

A flagged territory of soil

His front door open to stereo

Bass and anti-theft chanting

A hole in the window over his kitchen sink

Walls and windows can’t close

Against the noise, the smell, the night and rain and growth

At the nucleus of this wetness

Passing from cell through septum, pore

Eating through warmth

The pans of scrambled egg,

Cast plates of glistening sausages

Garden offerings

To the toothless hunger of worms.

 

By the sheds

An ash snared

By half a rusted saw

Soon to be eaten through

 

WHEN GHOSTS SLEEP

I can’t help where I go in my sleep

Into the damp paving slabs of a different city

Up your moss clogged gutters

To suckle the smoky spit from the concrete

Of your sill

Wait by the window you will open to breathe

Wind my way inside your nostrils,

Down your windpipe

A snake in possession of your insides

Or sit beside you

Mouthing wordless songs

Settle into the warmth of your bedsheets

To await your return

I wonder if you do the same with me

An infinity

Of you within me within you within me

We don’t coach journey here

We travel by submarine

Arrange to meet just before unconsciousness

Where the Ocean takes us

Back to back staring out at monsters

Rippling behind glass

Daylight hanging before fangs

Whales the size of Regent Street

And sharks shining like wet Birmingham concrete

THE TRAIN RIDE AWAY

Dragged from the sunset

So cleanly I wish I had claws

To dig in to the horizon,

Or for the train windows

To lose their glass

So the wind can teethe a goodbye out of me.

 

The land writhes against gravity

To warm its skin

On the last embers of winter sun

Sprawled across the clouds

Like red hair tangled through bedsheets:

The weekend rolled up into a tight absence

Coiled inside my lips.

SUSPENSION BRIDGE

Miles above
Lights
Floating beneath the night-
The city;
A phosphorous shoreline.
The darks cold
Kisses
On our pink cheeks.
The drop.
We spat
Into the
Gorge.
To plant ourselves
Somewhere in the unseen
Below.
Belonging is dissolving,
Dispersing
Rations of yourself
Into the loved
You’re already missing.
Losing yourself
To the wind
(The space between
Two Cities)
The way flowers spit
Their seeds.
Take all these
Tiny pieces of me.
I hate my roots
But watch me leaf.
Watch me leave.