Oldies replenished and restored.

Illuminated From Within

With the final chime of the grandfather clock

choice words, warm as mittens,

witter from between white teeth –

flighty moths escaping into the dark

carrying your life’s dust on their wings.

Straight as they go towards the sticky glow

of a bulb that nestles in my ribcage

swelling and shrinking comfortably –

a sponge for light particles.

Glittering stalagmite from the base of my belly

means we’ll never go hungry again.

Like all the wasps’ whispers in the pollen

your life rubs against mine.

Blind Spot

When the whiplash of your ideas

escaped like loose kite tails

I saw that familiar image

of someone fidgeting in a library

sitting tight on prickling feet

thinking hard, tongue against teeth,

learning ways to capture

those dancing kite strings,

those lost lanterns.

Your futures went like quick little fish in a rock pool.

I tried calm,

sought out all the possibilities of our alphabet

easily missed.

Then I remembered your outline.

The in between belonged to you

and I was calm as I never was,

knowing the coordinates of the blind spot

black dot where the backs of us cracked open

into the searing white –

where all the mouths and eyes

in unison

exploded and were lost.

Soldier

Looking up at The Plough that hovers above the house I grew up in

I realise that someday not far from now

you might kill a man

to get out of a situation you’ll be stuck in.

As plainly as the kitchen clock speaks,

I wonder if you’ll ever have to choose between

running backwards and admitting defeat.

You’ve been taking photographs on a low shutter speed

of a city I don't know any better than I know you;

I can’t assume much about how you are,

whether anything means the same to you as it does to me,

but just take care,

walk steady holding hands with the other seven, please.

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I’m rolling wholly up

in the stuff that makes you real,

feeling blindly for twins for these limbs

cold pinned with Braille

where they should be new egg smooth.

Never bored with

kaleidoscopic shapes of thoughts

caught, undulating

beneath the highest sky

from a place where

miles ago we collide.

7am. I am.

Letting the sober morning street carry me

carrying you, clambering back

to when we had an hour alone –

through seven o’clock’s slow attempt at snow,

in throbbing neon

today reads Welcome Home.