Selected Poems (2018)

A list of publications, including downloadable PDF copies, is available here.

LIV

Carry me, beating heart,
to the comfort of another body
to drink and dance
to bed
to the black spaces in between scenes
and to the blank spaces in between lines
to the warmth of foreign tongues
or to the void of what we know.

Carry me, tired lungs,
to the relief of another’s breaths
to kiss and caress
to bed
to the interludes in between songs
and to the blank spaces in between veins
to the warmth of foreign beds
or to the depths of what we’ve forgotten.

XXXVII

Tell me why I stay…
I have found no love here,
                      but I have brought love back
and kept it wrapped in tissue between books, safe
to know that my love is around me, my home
built from the walls of our bodies…
       and yet its door is three hundred miles away
       and I have little love for that place, but you, now.
I am distanced from those cars, and towers, and crowds
but then, too, distanced from the embrace of your bones.
I have made my bed here,
where I feel you not between its sheets,
but in the biting winds,
       indefinitely longing for you
       but content in the quiet.
My soul will churn away through back-streets,
writing stories step by step
and distancing myself to a character in a narrative
of constant absence.
I have found no love here,
                      but I have brought love back,
                      and bring love with me every time I return.

XXV 

You trace your fingers over the edges of me 
drawing my lines 
to map a memory of my body 
that you can bring home, to bed. 
You’ve drawn me countless times before, 
but each image seems to shift 
and you seem to forget my boundaries 
for another month.

XLIII

1.
September 6th,
my mind is full of flowers
and moving pictures of clouds
that cannot find their form in a crowded sky.
Still, I have no images
to translate to verse for You;
I am staring at myself
naked in the mirror
that warps my chest and hair
(not that it will do me
any good at all).
2.
Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy,
Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy,
Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy,
Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy,
Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy,
Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy,
Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy,
Intimacy.
3.
Our intimacy
puts miles in the eight inches
between our bodies.
4.
September 7th, the clouds are fragmented and still, and your memory takes myriad forms: the coffee stain on my duvet, a blue t-shirt (that I cannot find), a Pulp record, and an unlit scented candle.
I hope that you collect me
around you
in the same way.
You surround me
in quiet ways,with a voice so loud.

XIII

In my orange shirt, I look like a worse-for-wear, miserable St. Valentine (orange has never really suited me), and I don’t particularly like yoghurt (I’m terribly sorry, Frank). I haven’t been to the Frick, though, if anybody fancies taking me…

XLVI

Oh, absent body:
Metronome of my heart,
and sweet harmony to my voice…

Find me in your veins, 
or in the pit of your heart, always wanting after you.