I heard that telephone ringing at the one remaining box down on the street on Division Street
If one of us answers the call they ain’t coming back whichever one of us goes to answer that phone they ain’t coming back
I woke up restless in the night opened a window for some air the whole city poured straight in over siren wail and drunk’s lament I could hear that ringing sound
Moonlight is at our glass again the summer heat is rattling the pane I can’t sleep for the life of me through the sound of that phone’s coarse plea
If either of us answers the call they ain’t coming back whoever it is to answer that phone they ain’t coming back
Well now, I haven’t slept since my birthday week that ringing has been robbing me of sleep I think I’ll have to go down and I may be some time…
The complication of those earrings the texture of the paint around your eyes the sun’s highlights in your hair
The redness of those parting lips such belief in everything we said the pristine shape of your nose
Lying on the roof your head close to my heart summer blushing the sky weren’t we beautiful weren’t we beautiful then
Nothing to fret about just prolong the passing day swaying through the city weren’t we beautiful there
The precision of our jaw-lines the optimism in our hearts skidding through that midnight snowfall spelling out each other’s names as I caught you in my arms
We were so alive so in love so beautiful at that moment in our lives…
These paths we walk grounded by responsibility well-worn routine practiced intimacy I could only smile when you whispered in my ear ‘Take me away from this take me anywhere but here’
Living in the moment it’s all we know to do as you pepper my shoulder with kisses my fingers explore every inch of you You said ‘the world is a minibar cold and empty but now we’re blessed by this heat tonight, we’ve broken free’
You’re biting my shoulders as I worship at your chest real life left at the door shed like the straps of your dress Then you’re climbing over me and I taste it on my knees every drop is so addictive just like you said it would be
The way you bite your lip and your softly closing eyes when I gently twist my hip as I bring myself inside My thumb is in your mouth measuring the pleasure It’s a holy hell in this airport hotel
Those moans are low until they’re as high and loud as the planes above it’s a rush, it’s a ride to any escape that pleases us…
If you can find your way back here let’s meet under the old whale bones this place that we each love Where we look out to sea or back towards the sleeping town
One day, we’ll stand together and unbeknownst to us it will be for the last time in our lives
Whichever of us, must go first let’s make a promise to meet again under the old whale bones Hearts filled with feeling and the beauty of the harbour lights reflected on the water
The hem of night is chasing us with its rude goodbye as it claims its prize and lays us down as we close our sleeping eyes
One day, we’ll smile at one another and unbeknownst to us it will be for the last time in our lives
Mum, dad, when you slip into that endless blue or if I am gone before you Let’s find some way back and meet under the old whale bones
We’ll pose for someone’s photos ghosts that chatter or ghosts that silently contemplate the sea under the old whale bones
We’ll stand together and look out across the sand stretching as wide as our smiles…
I was young, I was clay I was given to looking out and there upon the train seat a gift from the universe A barely filled notebook no name, no number no way to find the owner it piqued my curiosity…
With pencil then, I tried to fill it with all my words, my wonderings my secret truths but it went nowhere just collected dust upon my shelf
A few months gone by still young, my paint still wet still at my most malleable Lying on the pavement there another present from the universe a gleaming fountain pen lid on, no engraving, no passer by no way to return it instinctively, I picked it up put it to the waiting paper
The flick of that scalpel nib the infinite potential, the promise… For the first time in my life I could speak without interruption get my thoughts straight, talk it over A friendship formed there that has never faded
Since that strange coincidence or you may call it providence I’ve always had a keen eye on the world for its quiet subtle gifts and moments Look up, look down, look out It’s all around, every day I am humbled by the wonder of nature and the ever generous beauty of existence…
Hit play to listen or right-click and ‘save as’ to download.
There’s a girl in tears upon the cathedral steps as I walk to work the rain a mist that swallows us leaves blowing by I want to wrap my scarf around her and say
There will be better days there will be lighter times there will be happiness again
And there will be birds in the morning singing for you and me singing for you
There’s a boy in a phone box framed behind glass, he sighs as I’m passing by his call has ended the last call of that friendship I want to get him a beer and say
Don’t forget the love you have don’t forget those faces it will be bright again in time
And there will be birds in the morning singing for you and me singing for you
And the rain comes down and leaves blow by all the busses look so busy I laugh quietly to myself wondering Do birds even sing on winter mornings?
[2019]
Thanks for reading.
Oct 2022: Reposting again (sorry) – audio remastered with clearer vocals.
Through the bitterness of winter life crawls, so lingering and lonely and hauling your battered heart into the shelter of some place holy Your mind swims with the terrible things those hands have groped toward The grit of guilt and shame conspire to serve as your reward
Such troubled thoughts reverberate as they echo up into the arches Gathering their mass and falling back they’ve now swollen to a chorus It’s to the ivory king atop his wooden cross your hope will momentarily cling but in the deafening silence he lets ring you’ll sigh your stuttered hymn…
“O, hold me hold me like someone who knows me for there must be one…”
Caught between the ribbons and the frills of a hired friend in a rented room Her garments kiss the mottled carpet as she beckons you from the dimming gloom You’ve lassoed all your longing gathered up your greed but all is tarnished by the arrogance of succumbing to this need
To feel her fingers, small and slender as they rouse your self belief A patron of the pornographic sweatshops with nothing beyond this fleeting relief Your hands suddenly feel so cold There’s much your body is aching to confess and your tears of lumpen coal merely exist as you whimper at her breast…
“O, hold me hold me like someone who knows me for there must be one…”
The dance of waves like hungry knives metallic in the floodlight moon This freezing clifftop is haunted by the remnants of a family ruin And strobing images of numbered girls divorced from name and age You torched everything that mattered for a compulsion you could not assuage
The trouble swells, you’ve lost control it’s from yourself you now must flee Still your wings, they have no feather it’s a long way down but then you’re free Soon you’ll slip between the stars a fragment of that timeless beauty as the sea rises up to carve your body you exhale that broken plea…
I watched you wrangling those sensations turning your heart upside out, inside down And dipped in ink kissed the page I heard your words fall articulate fictions collected spelling out the world filtered through your eyes…
I sat, awe-struck at those flippant phrasings pouring from your pen Truest lies, the lying truths splattered accurate clinging to the pages I believed the textures you carved in open air the spoken honey of your prose a world seen through dark eyes…
All gone and gone time laughing at us It’s all forgotten time mocking us all for nothing like rain at sea Those sparkling lines those beauties bound all forgotten like rain at sea like rain at sea…
[2013]
Thanks for reading. I have no memory of writing this one but I quite like a couple of the lines so thought I’d share.
Click above to hear me read the poem aloud. Right-click and choose ‘Save As’ to download.
Slipping between the scattered diamonds as turquoise waters part and gently lisp against my throat The heat beats down and the sunlit ocean claims me as its own
Swimming in the shallows fish and rocks, bend and merge the lapping lens obscures them all weightless in the womb of possibility The purest pleasure of the planet against my pores
The dipping sun, a molten iron ingot a neon snooker ball plunged into the horizon torches every surface All is pink and crimson a beauty I’ve never known
Dining later every mouthful was kisses smacking The spice on my tongue so uniquely exciting Cricket’s clicks swell to a crescendo smothering every sound
The evening air warmly fills my heart and skin Blood laced with love The whole day seared into memory I tried to catch my breath but it couldn’t stop escaping
Every sense alight with simple joy at my most alive living in and living through the happiest day of my life I tried to hold the moment but it wouldn’t stop escaping…
So many warm afternoons spent in my Grandad’s endless garden Home to my first and only treehouse when air-raid siren tests still filled those Northern streets
And most magical of all the rough lumber shed he’d built A place of wooden-handed tools you had to carefully maintain with oil tools that would have been his grandad’s
A place where big furry bees chose to die with dignity behind his motorcycle helmet or a row of ancient cricket balls by jam jars full of sorted screws
Eighty eight lead weights from the keys of some deceased piano kept for… I’ve no idea Drawers of bakelite switches and fuses A big old crate of things for me to play with
Such fascinating bits of dismantled gadgets all teaching me to wonder to pay attention, and to imagine how everything might work
I’m still fascinated now, still want to know how all of this might work So, I show my working out right here on the paper writing with his old fountain pen…
Those chemical seas wash you closer and closer to me on the chemical seas you ride closer and then closer again to here
O, how I’ve held a small part of my breath kept a little air inside for your return part of me; patiently poised as your waves wash through my closing fingers
O, how I’ve quietly tended a small flame for you landing lights aglow along this heart’s runway expectantly, with a constant hunger for that desired descent back to me
Those chemical seas sweep you past my port pulling you away from me Your fickle thoughts, your fickle heart strip you of decency rip you far away from here
The restless movement of the moon caught in my saucer eyes The polished mirror of the moon a wet silver across all your photographs
I’m still helplessly recoiling at the wave of hurt that levelled me but just as I see you, so the tide turns and as I reach out for you so your mind blurs
Nineteen nighty five Nominally fourteen; I was sitting in the sports hall pen in hand the desks apart a teacher I didn’t know patrolled the aisles The English paper said ‘write a story include a river and an allegory’
The clock at the front clicks thin hands jerk and tick I spin my pen study the air vents above me there’s a dusty shuttlecock caught up in the pipework there’s a brown deflated football sitting on the skylight I need to start writing…
I wasn’t a reader, then I knew nothing much of stories I’d watched a lot of films I’d heard a lot of pop songs but I wasn’t a writer
Unimpressed by the aesthetic the muted light inside the sports hall I pushed my mind out onto the playing fields down the long road past the waterworks to the river on the edge of town
And I could see it there a bend in the channel where a tree had lost its leaves a tree was clinging to the dry mud of the riverbank being undercut by the flowing water being ever exposed by the erosion being deposed
And I started to write of the tree being cut and torn being pulled and weakened by the hunger of the river Hanging on with every root and the river’s endless running
The more I wrote the sadder I felt for the tree the more I wrote the more the tree’s plight mirrored something I’d seen the more I wrote the more I saw my mother’s best friend’s fight with cancer revealed before me The more I wrote the more I saw her face looking back at me and the more the story moved me
And the tree succumbed to the river’s flow as all things will, eventually
That essay was the first time I wrote something with any meaning handed my paper back a tear-stain just above my name That was the first time I wrote something and I haven’t stopped since…
You and I, vampires habitual creatures you and I, hungry again This hollow needs a fill O, to dip our quill…
You’re chasing love chasing fantasy the thrill of infatuation dutifully presenting its pale skin beneath those long teeth
Ravenous I stalk experience joyful or otherwise Thumping heartbreak or whatever I can muster any morsel of emotion to carve apart and analyse Drawn into the well to spill again I’ll get my fill again
You and I; vampires you and I; blowing through some town I’d see the same look in your eye that I would see if I could face myself in the mirror
We both know there’s nothing out there that’s going to seal that crack, these wounds
The chase is endless habitual creatures Sensation fleeting always; we’ll part and roam on…
The Lighthouse 