The flock of diamanté dragonflies buzz on her shirt,
A silent fly-by beneath grey-haired sky,
Rhinestone insects, wings spread like summer flowers,
The trim of her trainers, pristine, white as self raising flour,
Ready to bake the most of each day,
Leaving tire tread footprints in the soft clay
Of gum on a pavement or mud in the park.
Fiddles with shades that pull back her hair,
A silent remark to show that she cares,
Despite how her skin hangs with a sunshine sag,
Despite the fact its the texture of an old serpentine bag.
I’ve an inclination to ask where exactly
The purse ends and the suntan begins?
Maybe beneath the luscious green stains
Supplied by gold plated, copper rings,
Bringing digits to life like
The rains on the plains of good old sunny Spain.
She’ll bequeath them one day, as either
A tacky postcard or an heirloom for kin,
Call it a passion for fashion?
More like original sin,
Just a set of toggles to tighten up ill fitting skin.
Tag: writer
17th June Commuter
Nibble the nail, waggle the tail,
Watch the olive bubble and burst
Bobbing in blue eyes that fidget and flirt
Beneath a grey budget cut, stoic and square,
A clipped LEGO do that perfectly frames
Frameless glasses, all lenses and glare,
So perfectly, that momentarily it’s hard to perceive,
Where the human begins and the plastic recedes.
Feed the earlobes some slack so they
Billow and sag; lower than vines in a swamp,
Bend the branch with a stomp,
Ripening fruit turns to wine if it wants
A belly pregnant with flies,
To drag down the skin
’til it hangs past his eyes.
Drips of cold custard flung at a wall,
Can’t cut the mustard, he’s expecting a fall
Cos something’s got him squirming,
Worming it’s way inside of his head,
Cut off the crusts to reveal the bread.
And still his chin bobs, this way and that,
Badge on his collar, hands in his lap
Fingers twitch anxiously, twisting, turning,
Gripping, gurning when he catches a nail,
Fiddling fingers curtail each cuticle,
Pushing them back until the nails are minuscule.
Now they grasp and entwine, latticed like vines,
Tightening the knot that’s tied up his heart,
At least it’s a start, not the whole, but a part.
15th June Commuter
Shark fin heels cut swathes through the aisle,
Flexing her thighs wide as a smile,
Stretching her tights cos that’s just the style,
To dress up your floating logs as crocodiles.
Slumping in seats, languidly lazing,
The taut, dark brown fabric gradually fading
Through phases, thinning from day after day
Without changing. Her knee caps are
Straining beneath a drab cream
That’s just itching to burst.
Oblivious, mother hen is hatching her purse,
Casually cradled, craftily able to
Explore all her things,
iPhone, lipstick and gold plated hoop earrings.
She coughs into a cardigan, politely hiding her germs,
But a hand is preferred when manners are learned,
A vicious hacking bark has dislodged her perm,
And it feels like a corner might just have been turned.
She re-fluffs her tresses to make sure they fall right,
Palms down the creases on the dress she wore last night
Tries to put on her makeup under the right light,
Steady hand, steady wrist,
Checks her phone, what’s she missed?
She looks disappointed,
Forlorn and let down:
The 3G signal is feeble,
Because we’re a mile underground.
14th June Commuter
Twin eyes bulge at the bottom of craters
Carved into a newly hewn moon,
A pair of potted cue balls ricocheting
Among the bulbous, firefly-white cheeks
That dominate this wide chasm of a face,
Exposing a parrot’s beak mouth as they
Pull apart like tectonic plates,
Fat strokes of butter hastily spread on bread;
A canvas primed with early morning acrylics
Smeared on with the flat of a blade,
Features splayed in oh so many ways,
All the kaleidoscopic angles of a fleshy Picasso.
Check the footnotes and take note of the feet,
Niagara skinny jeans spill over the seat,
Gushing deep, dark, denim waters
That trickle into tattered Chucks,
Tie the laces once, string the beggars up
Then never again with any luck.
Criss-crossing, over and under,
Put the rabbit in his hole,
And pull tight to secure the body to the sole.
Use a finger to trace the dark seams that
Ripple across his blushing currant hoodie,
As if the skin were stripped from the body,
Revealing the flesh and organs beneath
Casting him as a natural history exhibit,
Detailing the muscles and their functions,
The arteries and their junctions,
The feet and their bunions.
Drifting back to the face of this young’un,
Spot the faint grouse speckle
Freckling the hairline around his ears,
Early onset stubble,
Not long enough to shave,
Too short to cause trouble.
13th June Commuter
A pair of clothes peg cheekbones
Pinch the skin tight and
Hang both sheets out to dry,
A soiled and stained bedspread set,
That I bet’s never been Vanish white.
Seems the kids have taken their toll
Rubbing teabags into the page,
Like crayons on bark until he shows his age.
But that was yesteryear; now they
Rub the whorls of their thumb on placid glass
Until a wild sepia toned Instagram filter appears.
Blonde skin, sallow and yellow beneath a fox fur beard,
Paragraphs scribbled upon used grease proof paper
Broken by scratchy punctuation and a shaving rash,
Bobbles of red, like wool on a jumper,
Delicate as each individual eyelash,
Gossamer spiderwebs spun atop tired bags,
That sit like bruises beneath each eye,
Plump seedless grapes,
Fit to burst,
Let the juice cascade from beneath the precipice of
Tightly knitted brows, a thin line of crochet,
Two dinosaur femurs buried where they lay,
Framing two hollow yet insightful eyes,
Serious but delicate, like rocks dropped through ice.
These geological conquistadors,
What have they seen so worthy to ignore,
All the things to pass by and not keep score,
Surely they can’t have already absorbed
Everything deemed gorgeous,
Prescribed to wariness and movements cautious,
Squirrel themselves away
Just so there’s no need to meet our gaze,
Acknowledge and adore us?
10th June Commuter
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.
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?’
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 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.
Stories On The Sofa 