For Neil, later

Almost a year has passed
and still my fingers in your mouth
in them early hours
lingers in my mind

Your kisses dancing across
a late night drive
the tense pull and dive between us
now as then

"What are you going to do to me?"
the question passing
before and after and inbetween
the pages of us stuck together
like a book in the bath
impermanent drowning

I want the hurry of you
ticking back time to make me present

I want the secrets of you
all spilled out like an upturned drawer

I want the moment we share to stretch forever
beyond us, inside us -horizon and vertical
lasting as long as we need

the men we are

If you came to me again
after all this time
through the sun or rain or snow
in any weather
you would find me
paused all sticky fingers waiting
recognising the smell of you impatient

What do memories become?

Between your legs
a map of hair to trace
a promise of secretions unimagined.
I can imagine you
opening up into futures unwritten
you have no idea yet
of what you've begun

What do memories become?

I don’t know
About the easy come easy go
ways of who we’ve been
I don’t know
how to piece together
the glimpses of the
men we are when no-one’s watching

What do memories become?

For Ezra

Thank you for appearing
transforming
accepting
and all that thus attends

Thank you for quiet moments,
multiples, proliferations,
conversations without end or sense

Thank you from the part of me
that does not need you
beyond the simple fact of
when you're here you're here -
the part which knows itself
but shuts its mouth

Thank you for showing me
how simple life is
simple happiness

Waiting with you
Always waiting
Sharing news
Not caring at all
And then you're gone

But so am I

At the station
together
in that moment
existing only
for those afternoons in restaurants
paying our own way
after years of being brought
finding a friend in unlikely places

Oh lost weekends
Oh hungry texting
And what we do but have no words for
Thank you

This Week

Yesterday I tried to use
my Oyster card to open
this flat instead of keys

This is how the grief erupts
again when I thought it passed

This is how I laughed
stood there ha ha frozen
implements all wrong

This is how the week just gone
has been misshapen
and taken wrong

How it knocked me sideways
when someone barely known
but known dissapeared forever
leaving no note no notice
not even knowing himself he was going

And then gone
with us left
implements all wrong

Between Us

That night we lay
gin-soaked under white sheets
undiscovered.
All the signs were there
but we made a tender side-step
preferring instead the narrow
violence of normalcies not ours.

What I didn't say
plus what you did
equals a new balance
between us.

We were each other’s
impossible hopes
in unexpected shapes.
In that stretched moment,
a landing-place. A light.

And how I wish I could have made that leap
yes I wish I could have found the words
but there were too many rules between us
and I wouldn't have known where to begin.

Dear R, I'll never forget,
your invitation and attendant betrayals.
Doing nothing, we betrayed everything.

In the morning, a table scrubbed,
a cliche, and frost in the garden.
You shone.

Memory poem

Hello handsome
I'm here again ready
for the hairs of you all
spaced and bodily

This secret place I've found you in

The long thin marks and tracks
stick with me here
intention to cause a change in behaviour
you've taken me over again

And stand I do and let you
all agape and small again
knowing that you will hold me
till the open closes pushing
at the long abandoned bounds of me

And here in this image and
a few barely conjured words
something hits like hope again
and again

We are all scars and long lines
burning for each other
the wish crack of a memory from
before my time

I am always reliving that moment not mine.
I am over and waiting
hanging for the thing
you'll bring
the promise that we asked for outwith our fear
The gift I'll give to pay you back for being there
year after year.