Tag: teenagers

Where Do You Come From?

Taking my first girlfriend
to the pub at seventeen
Crossing the cobbles
of a gunmetal grey
northern market town
Mitten in glove
warm in our teenage
prototype version of love
A chatterbox pint for me
a tipsy glass of white for her
and we’d find a quiet corner

Invariably, some red-faced
shaven-headed native
furtively eyes my companion
“Where do you come from?”
they’d splutter in their arrogance
“I’m from here” casually she’d lilt
“I mean, originally” they’d spit
“I was born and raised here” she’d softly smile
“But your skin, your eyes, you’re not English”
My heckles rise, her sadness spirals
another evening disfigured
by the spilled white paint of ignorance

She confesses, between kisses
of sobbing tears behind closed eyelids
diminished by sore encounters
shrunken by miniscule minds
How confusing to be from here
Yet made to feel you don’t belong
Then we’re edging off our stools
slipping out the door, thrust back into
the tarnished romance and rainy ruin
of a clumsily decorated market square
tattered tinsel droops with freezing sleet
on a crooked caged Christmas tree

And I’d be sighing to myself
‘This…
this is where I come from…’

Thanks for reading.

University Payphone

From the depths of a damp October
you called me daily
The auburn street outside
so unfamiliar
That new city
didn’t yet feel like home

“I just called to hear your voice
and ask when you’ll come to visit?”
Muted tears falling
on the university payphone
And the scratch of coins loading
asking if I missed you

And every day, I do
of course, I do
Every dusk into the winter
our daily phone calls
It was so hard to hear
those secret tears

Two months crept by
and now there are other voices
I could hear you smiling
and it’s so good to know you’re happy
new friends surrounding
fewer calls, less often

And every day, I do
of course, I think of you
Every iced spring morning
I miss your phone calls
it was good to hear you happy
but sad to know
you no longer needed me…

Thanks for reading.

Lipstick On The Pillow

The cavernous club thumps
A pulsing beat
shakes all things
and I’m coming loose
in the dark corner
by the cigarette machine
my hands pressed
tight against your jeans

The way you kiss me
with the fiery blood
lipstick lips
It’s the slickest red
that I have ever kissed
This shouldn’t be happening
We swore so many times
never again

But there’s a call
in the size of your eyes
and the fire they spit at me
And the meter of my smile
somehow
it summons you back in
Both of us unable to resist this
loosened, coming undone

Then in the bathroom stalls
we scratch our graffiti
over each other’s bodies
ankles dance beneath the doors
O, how will this night end
how will we meet the dawn
how will this secret
be split wide open

Your lipstick on my pillow
in the Sunday morning light
Your lipstick on my pillow
in the seasick morning light…

Thanks for reading.

A New Beginning

Leaves of brown and green watching
as the fire reveals a destiny for us
flames licking their lips at the change
of solid and tangible into smoke
On a beach of melancholy teenagers
destroying themselves for something
that they can’t explain or focus on
the big picture that is still being drawn…

Bottles of green and brown offering
their joyous and deceptive contents up
ready to infiltrate our consciousness
convince us that the weight has lifted
a sea of liquid to baptise our brains
then we dance and talk of this rebirth
forgetting all about thoughts of maths or progress
the new beginning we’ve been dreaming of…

Leaves of brown are falling in the sunrise
but day reveals that gravity has won again
our heavy heads are hard to lift now
and the breaking waves outside sing loud
A song of measured secrets that expose
themselves a beautiful harmony of movement
the moon under which we slept last night
brings them to us with it’s strong will

Bottles of green bloom in the sand
empty shells left behind from the war
we fought the best we could all night
and momentarily there was a surrender
a decoy that we fell for too easily
now, in the morning light, it’s obvious
the horizon arcs itself out before us
a new beginning comes every day
a new beginning is ours every day…

Thanks for reading.

Jetty Song

Click ‘play’ to hear me read this poem. Or right-click ‘save as’ to download an MP3.

Her fingers tracing mine
Lily danced me out of the garden
those green eyes brimming lively
with purest abandon
Then barefoot on the boardwalk
her summer dress riding high
she leapt onto the jetty
and gestured to the sky

We let our tanned legs hang below
as we bottomed up the bottle
the air was hot and heavy
the sea around us peaceful
There was lust upon our minds
as a veil upon a bride
the deepest searing truths
politely shot between our eyes

And no man could deny us
loose and open all the time
our hands and fingers; wanderers
tongues locked in a rhyme
By the spit between those kisses
our burning lips were sewn
her dress was barely there
my body carved from stone

With each nail driven into skin
I felt a clapping thunder
the temple tapestry was tearing
as she pierced my thin armour
A melody sung upon her voice
a lyric loudly grows
I’d have gladly turned my back
on all that I held close

We could have traveled every sea
taking turns to lead the way
if only
if only she’d have asked me
if only I’d thought to stay…

Dusk light falling on the harbour
the day became a dream
with toes curled round the boards
she danced me to my feet
in one movement I was shirtless
in another she was naked
a smiling glance was shared
as we leapt with fingers knitted

Our kisses painted salty
lungs burning between breaths
the solution we had longed for
as our bodies coalesced
We swam until our limbs ached
then floated side by side
in the moonlit wideness of her eyes;
another world, I spied

I was so thirsty for the moment
and drank it all too quickly
my mind got blurred and cloudy
my greatest drunken folly
Too naive to know the value
of the treasure in my grip
like sand through careless fingers
I stood and watched it slip

There was water on three sides
and only one path back to land
but somewhere on that journey
I somehow lost her hand
Now, I wonder if she thinks of us
a moment spared for all we shared
does she ever sit upon that jetty
singing of a parallel despair

We could have traveled every sea
wild adventure every day
if only
if only she’d have asked me
if only I’d thought to stay

If only
I’d had the wisdom
to stay…

Thanks for reading.

Song for Laura Lee

Laura Lee, she was my first love
tangled in her parents’ bedsheets
and shadows from the attic window
With my army-surplus shirt
slipping from her shoulders

Laura Lee, she was my first love
my first taste of intimacy
her loving hands upon me
guiding that desire, so deftly
through our discovery and naivety

Laura Lee, she was my first love
our fumbled teenage kisses
quickly blossomed and were washed
in ever deeper waves of lust
and learning a new language

Laura Lee, she was my first love
she taught to me the chorus
of that lover’s song
she handed me the blueprints
I would forever build upon

Laura Lee, she was my first love
I’d ascend for hours into
the bottomless darkness of her eyes
and the lines of those lips
her quiet radiant beauty

Laura Lee, she was my first love
as I learned how two hearts will knot
a little death, a birth
as she sang the lover’s song
deep into me

It’s a melody I’ll chase
perpetually
Thank you, thank you for the tune
I’ve carried always
with me…

Thanks for reading.

Highbury Fields

That sixteen-year-old words 
scratched there in my diary
could bring the two of us here
seems almost supernatural

A spring-evening walk, so like us
the us we were as teens
when you were my first
and still my only kiss
as we walked the peaceful parks of home

Now, so many years stretch across
a wide valley of unshared experience
they squeal and dance between us
slowly and methodically we close the gap
spinning our silken bridge of words

I pull the feathers from your lungs
they’re knotted and tarred
dripping with the bitterness of isolation
they’re catching in your throat

Your silences
and the space between those words
they say much more
they say it all…

Your sorrow is a blanket of leaves
your sorrow is blossom that falls
and covers this park…

Highbury Fields disappears
beneath the tears I know you cry
in your silent room
from your hiding place

Recently, I read again of all you gave me
when the two of us were lost together
so I ask myself ‘what I can do
to help lift you from this place’

What can I do for you
what can I give to you
only my time, only my time to you
the healing warmth of resuscitated friendship
as we walk the adult evening
through this pretty park

And you can say it all
you can speak it all out loud…

Thanks for reading.

Chlorine

The smell of that stuff
they use to wash the water clean
it gets up your nose
when tired from swimming

Me and my friend
he teaches me all these things
Like how to keep a secret
airtight

It’s a drink inside a flask
you don’t tell, even if they ask
and I never said no
but I never said yes

Why does everything here
smell clean
but me…

Busy bare ankles glimpsed
In the gap below the cubicle door
I never thought I wasn’t ready
I’d never thought about it before

Only how many lengths I could swim
another one, another one, before back to him
It’s a silence I struggle to keep
but who would want to listen

Why does everything here
smell clean
but me…

Three decades on
so much distance in my heart
and all those failed moments gone by
all those loves that fall apart

I’m still free when I swim
I rarely think of it now
he was no friend to me
Finally, I learned what it was
I learned it had a name

Chlorine…

Thanks for reading.

Kimberly

We move slow
in time with our slipping youth
We don’t rush, no
we were slow
to go home

Passing the coffee shops and bars
I would later make my home
I couldn’t have ever known
they passed by, a blur, unseen

Her hand
held loose
in the heat
There’s no need to push things
we’ve time…

Then one night
on a sofa in the kitchen
at my mother’s house
She turned slow, smiling
and said “we should”

I could have laughed
I must have beamed
and all at the same time
I was cautious

We moved slow
tip-toeing down to the car
I didn’t know
if I could take another one
another person’s innocence
away

So, I paused…
and time slipped away…

In a daydream I had
more recently
in a bar, when I was feeling particularly old
I thought back
and couldn’t remember
why I didn’t have her
If I could do it now
I would do it now

Then it hit me
I was honest then
I was decent
O, I was a real man
back then…

Thanks for reading.