Kolokithakia

Tambourine clatter as I salt my plate
writing tally charts in crystal tang
along the scars from bloody battles –

fought with chewy lightning
that shoots through eight ounce sirloins
or the chitin hull of lobster claws

or the single eyes of marrow
and bone yet to be scalpeled from lamb chops
with toothless dinner knives

– that end with prawn husks who stare
over the rim to the next table
where a trunk of fat is thrown to the dog

and a crumpled white napkin stained
with bean sauce is laid over greasy steel –
all the while I'm rubbing salt into the wound

They arrive with a song of olive oil
still hot on their skins
to be scraped along my battle china

like a rake through an autumn garden
leaving dabs of yellow and spice
to be mopped up later with crusty bread

22nd February 2013

ghosted

"I'm a nice person!"
she yells at no one
her voice a retching belch
of boiling water
down the plug hole

gathering her shrapnel
and wiping away
the driver's screamed spittle
as he floors it through
five o'clock rush

"I'm a nice person."
she gargles again
now just the fizz
of soap suds
and dish water

"Being nice is not enough."
I want to tell her –
if only I were a plumber
and this was not
my stop

no more

no more dozen glazed
to bleed jam for the flies
no more whisky to pour
its smoky cackle over ice
no more Pringles and tuna fish
or Trebor’s Spearmints
no more laughter
that weeps instead of cries
or the solved jigsaw of their body
finding yours in the dark

just questions like blind hands
pawing through fog
as your wind chime limbs
hang silent on the breeze
asking and asking into white noise
hiding the one question
that no one will utter:
what did he know that we don't?

"Cool wet grass,"

she said
before her walk,
yet she did not pause
to scrunch the tufts
of chilly green
in the fists of her toes,

as a skein of geese
fly their dark V
across the cobalt afternoon
and a dot-to-dot of ants
march a tickle around her ankles
and part the sagging curtains

of meadow
to where woodlice
turn the earth.
Just a tightrope tread
on glowing black,
soot feet
and smoky nose.

6th March 2013

CBT

"Imagine" she says
"you're on the street
walking along alone

it's a quiet high street
Sunday morning
or weekday afternoon

just the prams-
and-pensioners crowd
no mistaking you

when across the road
you spot a friend
pure bolt from the blue

and so you wave
but miss their gaze
just left to stand and stew"

she takes a breath
and then she asks "now
what if that happened to you?"

The whole room nods
they've all been
on that street

and so have I
but I guess I'm just the one
who can't wave back

teflon heart

mine is not
the teflon heart

things roll off me
like oil off a duck

leaving wings
like black fangs

that will never carry
south for the winter

mine is not
the teflon heart

but a siltstone cliff
written deep

of thrashing seas
fit now to crumble

and crunch
beneath your feet

mine is not
the teflon heart

and neither
is yours –

I don't care
what you say

Myopia

I've seen twenty-twenties
put mortgages on bar stools
just to take the edge off the world,

to redraw it in crayon
and dance with Degat's girls
while I go wine-eyed on the house,

afloat in a mush
of colour and smiling scowls and cats
that could be dogs by certain light––

but four legs is still
four legs at least, even when
you leave your glasses on the bar.