Tick tock silver watch
A glinting, precious jewel,
Circumnavigates the wrist so tightly,
Coldly compressing veins
Until the knuckles shine bright whitely,
Looks nice enough to put on in the AM
And to take off again each nightly.
The convex mirage of an oasis
Hovers in sweat drops
That cling to the coarse grain of his skin,
Beneath a white collar, sky blue shirt lies
A prehistoric land,
Borehole pores punctured by hairs,
The first weeds of the season
Breaking through the sand,
Thatching the primal roofs of swollen, brutish hands.
Branches that grasp so tightly at the rucksack in his lap,
As though it were new born
As though it might hatch,
Spread its mighty wings and flap.
No sir, those fingers are clamped shut,
Twisted tighter than an oyster’s kiss
Around a goretex pearl.
Eyes stare up and down,
Left and right,
Boy and girl,
Swung by vibrations, spinning like pennies,
Slowing down gently and then stopping dead
Staring straight ahead,
Midnight blue, cold and dry,
Skewering my head.
And the eyes might’ve stopped but his jowls do not,
Dragged down as they are like Salvador’s clocks.
Two dangling peninsulas pockmarked by eddies of shade,
Hanging like keys in a pocket or bats in a cave.
Tag: author
8th June Commuter
The fingers in the bath ask the fair weathered face:
‘How long have you been submerged?’
‘Were you too impatient for your true features to emerge?’
‘Why do the creases of a five pound note decorate your skin?’
‘How long have you traveled from pocket to pocket, trying to fit in?’
‘Does the ready salted stubble wick the liquor from your lips?’
‘Why do we only care about the cracks between the bricks?’
‘Do your wrinkles show how far you’ve slipped?’
‘Are you jealous that ours only give us greater grip?’
6th June Commuter
Arms rusty, folded, resting
Cross-legged on the soft swell of a middle aged paunch,
A long term construction project,
Facilitated by fried breakfast, brunch and lunch,
I bet you could put your ear to his belly button
And hear the sea whooshing,
I tell the lady next to me, who lowers her paper
And starts shushing.
Fair and pale hair dusts his head,
Just like Salt flakes on a winter road
Or baking soda in a mixing bowl,
A swimming cap snapped onto Mount Fuji
Stained slightly pink from the rosy scalp beneath,
A garland of snowy feathers worn like a winners wreath.
Stop being so hifalutin,
You can’t write like that about someone probably called Keith.
Good grief.
Ahem. He wears a workers tan with ease,
It’s neither a milky tea brown nor a sterling brick red
But more of a vicious maroon from
The lower shins peeping above his socks to the top of his head,
And strangely, it’s the same colour as his tshirt,
Which must be size XL,
Or stretchy and made from 100% cotton thread.
Tight on the arms, kiss puckered lips,
Never enough ketchup to cover the chips
Avocado skin creases cover tattoos
Of snakes and daggers,
Of topless girls and curvy ship anchors
Of construction tools and business loans turned down by bankers.
They’re all faded coffee stains now,
blurry and indistinct,
Something interesting at the bottom of a muddy stream,
Close your eyes and imagine what they could have been.
3rd June Commuter
Are those the sort of glasses that
Change from light to dark,
Depending on the light and the dark?
And if they are, I need to ask,
How can you read the Metro through glass
The colour of weak coffee? Of thin gravy?
Sepia eyes screwed tight,
Up all night with baby, maybe?
Grab squared paper and a compass to
Sketch a trigonometric face,
All angles, sharp points and
Unremarkable features. What does it prove
When a nose rises like Mount Olympus
Above cheeks so smooth?
A boyish tuft of hair,
Cotton wool clogged with glue,
Stoically styled to stifle the fear
That one day Blue Peter might appear,
Construct a face of corrugated cardboard,
Papier-mâché and little sponge bits for a beard,
Then size him up and single him out with
A derisive aside, just as he feared:
‘Look, there goes one that we made earlier.’
June 2nd Commuter
Beneath Jonathan Creek curls,
An Autumn cabbage, tumbleweed in full bloom,
Sit sunken cheeks, hollow grey,
Heavy set lenses and too thick frames,
Lengthening the shadows
Deepening the gloom, shrivelled like prunes,
More out of date than Fruit of the Loom.
A pale nail flickers upon her face, an itch
Perhaps, or a rip to fix?
Rubbing the sticks of sparse grey hairs
where it ought to be bare,
Strike your match on the furry top lip friction,
Watch it flare then burn to nothing,
A ponderous contradiction.
And yet her peach scarf screams
Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!
So full of life, so full of beans!
Yes I’ve been! Yes I still am! And yes I will be!
Forever beholden to the marionette strings
hanging beside my nose,
Sniffing at the cigarette smoke curls,
Deftly placed fingers raise a smile
Or so the stories go.
Sweeping down, overcast days swamp her slight frame,
Engulfing her body like a squid from the deep,
Hiding her figure like wool on sheep,
Resigned that it’s no longer her time,
Chunks of soured milk long past its prime
Yet an aura of authenticity is stitched into
Every crease and each cavity,
She weaves a web with a pen,
The spider scrawl of a diary
Unfurling before me.
I wonder what truths, flies and lies the book hides
And as if in silent response, she looks up.
We meet eyes.
June 1st Commuter
Black gauze stains skin as the
Silken sheen of tights trickles over limbs, and
Pools in a pair fake leather boots.
The sort that gnomes would make,
The sort that shops would fake
So suck it up, suck it in, squeezing the limb
Pudgy upper arm, veins near the skin
Wrap the bacon rind around the bingo wing,
Such a tight thing for such short sleeve,
The toothpaste’s lid’s open and the crust
Makes a smooth fit an impossibility.
Softmint eyes ebb and flow over pages,
Reading for days, assuaging the ways
That the lines on the page beat those
Cut on Friday nights with a razor blade.
Rapid page flips, shuffling whip cracks,
She sniffs up the plot, must be engaging,
Cos she’s reading the lot; losing the plot and
Her lips might be moving, but no sounds, not one jot.
Tracing the words, silently reciting as if she forgot,
That the carriage is bare –
But it’s seventeen forty three, so of course it’s not.
May 31st Commuter
The pastel silhouette of a face pushes itself through a sheet,
Sketching the faintest of features
In the folds of the fabric,
Telling itself it’s poking holes in the rubric,
Tracing paper eyebrows that lack all viscosity.
A placeholder ellipsis scribbled in to mimic pomposity
Makes scoffing so easy it sticks in her throat
A mix of smokers catarrh and afternoon coffee.
The lickle-spit envelope flap of silver scarecrow thatch droops
Limply over squashed features. Carved from pumpkins and
Badly transposed from cellulose.
Beneath the adipose lies a life so varicose,
First blanching, then flushing purple and red through
The thick, plump flesh gorging on her
Swollen, twisted ankle of a face.
Doughy as a suet ball, plump dumpling
Bobbing in a stew; can’t trace the bevel
But then what else is new?
May 25th Commuter
Hispanic scouser Ian Beale
Dressed in camouflage gear sun bleached teal
Cowers in an ill fitting padded jacket
Giving ample cover to
Hanging eyes, drawn on hands and
Quarter gram baccy packets.
Army cap is pulled on tight, a plant pot
Blooming underground sounds booming
Ears melt like waxy candles under a pyroclastic flow
Of dry air and dead winds,
Whipping past a snotty, blocked up nose.
Call the midlife crisis,
It’s a flag of surrender when the tissue blows.
Short black thistles
Dabbed on stucco by
Paint brush bristles
Stitched of whistling reeds,
And the Midas rumours murmur,
Clog and crystallise in
Silken rivulets of silty lies.
A man made of wet sand,
Carved from wood with tatty, leather hands.
Full moon bags reflect beneath tired, watery eyes,
Pallid irises flicker just like flies
Under hedgerow brows,
A pair of graying gorse bush clouds.
He rises grabbing an orange Sainsbury’s bag tightly,
Rheumy eyes flighty, a burden not carried lightly
But a pilgrimage he must make nightly,
Wake up that puggish stare and
Approach the chiller buzzing brightly,
The cool glow beckons him over impolitely
Shelves are bare, stock is low
Therein lies the rub, so choose wisely,
Snatch that meal deal:
Deep fill sarnie, grapes and iced tea
Grab the carpenter’s cup oh so nicely.
23rd May Commuter
That’s a mighty big schweppe lad;
With your upright sitting posture,
And your hands clasped in lap,
The product smothered beetles
Wriggle in your tree sap,
You’re twiggy resin,
Wearing a birds nest for a cap.
Sore red spots, ink dot gumdrops,
Hand holds for daredevils and rock climbers
Potted plants for office two timers
Greasy with lacquer, teak soaked in oil
Varnish the skin before it bubbles and boils.
Tie it together with a skipping rope beard
Arching from ear to ear, a keratin grin,
Patchy muffler, a scruffy neck warmer,
Nobody puts hindsight into the corner,
No they team it with pristine white jeans,
Bright and blazing; eyesight blinded, fading.
A white hot sunset in snowy cotton threads,
An un-ironed heat haze over khaki coloured treads.
Suddenly he jumps up, gives his seat up
To a young woman with a smile and wink,
Zips up his top to hide the
Mustard splashed t-shirt, pastel pink
The sort of stain you should soak in the sink.
18th May Commuter
His greasy green coat glistens like the skin of a wet reptile,
A slippy, gangrenous bath tile,
Tangy as a venus flytrap’s saliva
Sharp as limes, stuck in the mud
Smoking sativa, eyes rosy with bud,
Slumped on the back shelf,
Puffy tunnels lined with filo gargoyles
And melting crenelations. Floating here and there
Lost en route from station to station,
Shifty as twilight, a golden hour caught
In a cat’s eyes at night –
Use your walnuts to polish them bright.
Skipping down, I’ll go out on a limb
And call that skinny moustache a scuff mark on his chinny chin chin,
Flickering like train tracks,
Skittering ripped bin bags in the winny wind wind.
As above, sew below, the ripped
Knee holes blink open and find that they’re blind
Thanks to each awkward shuffle of a restless behind.
Stories On The Sofa 