BLACK SITE

The Dolby won't hiss, if you can find a tape
recorder to play them. The local archives
have got one where you can sit
with a pair of headphones, each muff
bigger than your fist, that make it echo
in your head as large as a warehouse.
Do you dare go in? How far can you listen
to boots being scraped through muck
and rusted bolts? What can you see now,
eyes closed, blotting out the librarian's
busy curiosity? What can you see now?
Is it the tape over his mouth? His flinches
from the crack of a belt? His eyes crushed
shut with bruises? Will you go on
or press stop? Or pause, and reflect,
get your breath and let those muscles
deflate, before pressing play? It comes
back louder and more intense. Shouting.
An earful of poison that sends speakers
whistling with screaming crackles of electricity. 
You imagine the body of a man, seventeen, 
suspended between two frames. His torso
overwritten with cuts. WHORE. You hear sobs,
Muffled begs for it to stop. Will you listen?
Or will you go on to the climax,
now you daren't believe it? Do you think
it could be true? If only you could see,
you'd know the sudden silence after barks
and whelps was death. It will not tell.
The recorder clicks. Are you disappointed?
Could you guess? Are you ready to live
with it? The uncertainty? The quiet?

THE FOUNTAIN

It is only water and it only holds
you long enough to toss a coin
between its jets and wish if magic's
what you believe in, and you believe
the cosmos at that moment
will turn its megatons of matter
in your direction like a radio
telescope in the Mexican dustpan
bleeps messages to little green men
who answer in pig–latin code, 
they are important friends and wish
you peace. You tell me so.
It is only water and it only holds
you long enough to toss a coin.

WATTER

Sheffield Floods — June 2007

It were pouring ahrtat sky an up frompt gutter
an ahrtat river. It were evryweer. All that watter
submergint Wicker, runnin undert arches 
an all owert roads. It were all owert news. 
Thi were folk on Calendar waist deep, wadin
after cars that fluated like dinghies up Brightside
t Medderall. It were all dahnstairs in the'er.
Mannequins lookt like dead bodies aftert Titanic
went down, bobbin ont surface like corpses.
All at cluathes were ruined wi sewage. Shittud
come up ahrtat drains and intat watter. It were toxic.
Two were killed, swept away bit current,
an owd bluake crossint road an a young lad 
who got t close ast river erupted. I dint know em,
burra do nahr, an as quick as it come it were gone.

SOMETHING AND NOTHING

Life is stepping down a step or sitting on a chair — and it isn't there.
— Ogden Nash

This morning I thought you were dead
until I saw your chest heave
underneath a heavy breath
that lifted the sheet then dropped it.

It's something and nothing. Either
could have passed, berthed side by side
like boats. Either, perhaps both,
of us could have gone in a gasp.

Is this getting old? When you woke
I decided not to spook
you with an open casket
that, after all, was never there.

But it nagged me, lingered. Worn ghosts
that walked out of the woodwork.
Fear, from knowing everything
is dissipating like a breath.

ON POPPERS

Inhaling molecules of ecstacising death

begins the necrotization of the flesh.

An oxygen thief that paints tell tale signs;

the lips thinned to two navy blue lines,

and the crescents of ash at the base of each nail

where once was white and healthy. All

for a rush of blood from the heart to the head,

thumping in the neck. A cock, soft, lolled

and bouncing in time to each thrust. An arse

that opened easy as a tub of meat paste.

Orgasms that bump up against one another

like fantasies mixing with acts in the ether

of dreams that smoke from these brown bottles.

The final tautening muscle. The screams. The wobbles

that tumble us from sheets onto floors

where we gaze into a gasping air pierced with stars.

DEAR MAM

It's Pond's Angel Face, shade Golden Rose,
If you can't get Golden Rose, Tawny will do.
I asked for permission for my hair to be bleached,
but permission has been refused. Dear mam,
when you see me at the trial I will have awful streaks
and my hair will be lifeless. Dear mam, 
can you please bring me a bottle of make-up?
Ian would like the photos we picked out at Chester,
can you get them developed for us please?
He thinks you will be quicker than his mum.
Keep all of the photos for us for reasons,
ones of the dogs, scenery etc. Mr. Curtis wrote here
to ask. I can't even have it trimmed or thinned.
Dear mam, 29th of December 1965, we had
half a chicken each, turkey sandwiches,
half a bottle of Sandeman's Port Wine.
Believe me when I say 99% of Smith's evidence
against Ian and I, particularly Ian, is lies. Dear mam,
it's a constant source of irritation. The dark roots
are very much in evidence. Whether or not
Ian and I killed those children there's no need
to go into the matter. Dear mam, it's 7 a.m. Friday,
and probably the jury will return its verdict today.
6th of June 1966. Dear mam, I knew I'd have to go
to prison for some time for 'harbouring'
but I didn't think it would be this long. Ian
is in Durham. Ian has a little mouse in his cell.
He feeds it crumbs. If you would drop me in a box
of maltesers and a short note. Dear mam,
Mr. Fitzpartick has a list of photos to send
to Ian and myself. Dear mam, will you phone
Mr. Fitzpatrick and tell him, as soon as the appeal
is over, to send Ian and I the photos we picked out
at Chester. 6th of August 1968. Dear mam,
when you collect them from the chemist send them,
Ian is anxious to have them. Dear mam,
I'm sorry to have nagged about them for so long.
3rd of February 1970. I keep putting him off
with vague excuses. You keep saying you'll bring them
but never do. Dear mam, thank you for bringing
the slides. Ian is happy. The other night
he left it half a chip, thinking it wouldn't touch it,
but when he woke up in the morning it had gone.
5th of May 1966. Just believe your own heart.
My fondest love to you all, my gran,
whom I will never probably see again. Dear mam,
destroy after reading. I don't want anyone to see me.

FRUITS

When I talk about fruits, I'm not talking about fruits, I mean fruits

in the literal sense as opposed to the metaphoric, fruits such as apples

and oranges and pears. Straight up fruits, not those, innuendo zested,

non-literal fruits. When I peel a banana, I peel a banana, 
taking the skin in my fingers and pulling it back to reveal a moist tip

and shaft. I mean to peel a banana and eat it. The long, white flesh taken

in portions and swallowed in lumps down my throat. Although, some fruits resist

being eaten with tough, hairy exteriors, though kiwis give in

if you open them up with a spoon first and eat out their soft parts.

In my experience, lychees need to be stoned and similarly cherries, 

if they're to be taken with ease and red wine at parties. Do you see 

what I mean? Sometimes this business of fruits is confused 

by those melons who can't find their honeydews among their cantaloupes. 

I mean fruits, are not that difficult to spot on the whole, only tomatoes

upset the vegetable cart with their impostering as french-dressed salad and not fruit.

THE OLD PLACE

for RM

I walked by the old place today
but couldn't see much from the front
past the overgrown privet that swamped
the bowed gate. Round the back
that Flymo we left in the outhouse
was buggered, the blade crusted with rust,
and those Qualcast hedge-trimmers
were entombed in cobwebs. That tree,
that threatened to pull down the wall
of the office that squared the back yard,
had withstood the knocks of the council
environmental department and flourished.
The lawn was a wild meadow of dandelions,
thrusting out cracked pots. The greenhouse
had collapsed to a pile of bent metal
and shattered glass. That wooden chair
was still sat where it sat before
and the fleece that got caught out
in the rain and was ruined still hung
across its shoulders. Not everything remained.
The neighbours had changed more than once,
judging by the addressees of debt notices
dumped in recycling bins. Placing back
pizza leaflets a child spooked me
staring through the letterbox. Two brown eyes
that watched me scarper down the jinnel.
A fat, haired hand in an upstairs window
let a curtain fall back shut.

HICCUPS

When he told me I had his digits
and should call him, I got nervous,
thinking fingers in a jar
in vinegar. It was not the first
time this had happened, nor the first
time I'd reacted with hiccups.
Once a guy had called me nuts,
and I'm allergic. I thought my skin
would burst and, sure enough, hiccups
burped exclamation marks on the air.
A hiccup or hiccough is a myoclonus
of the diaphragm that repeats
several times per minute. 
Common knowledge has it frights
while drinking water backwards
standing on your head will cure them.

When he stroked my hand and said

he loved my smile. My jealous eyes

and toes couldn't be happy for my mouth.
A third date ended in spasms
medically known as singultus,
from the Latin singult, meaning the act
of catching one's breath while sobbing.

OCTOPUS: A FISHY TALE

We never meant to become entangled
in its limbs that tickled, wrapped and strangled
round our arms and necks. I saw the bosun
go in first with his glittering harpoon,
aloft at the end of a sinuous
arm and saw it snapped in eight by strong legs
licking round the blade like eight generous
tongues. It thralled us all, twenty dolly pegs,
each clipped in place along a suckered snake
that slimed and writhed across an ocean floor.

What gave us breath? Who knows? Two hours or more
it raced over reef and bank. In its wake
a haze of bubbles shimmered, powder kegs
of sand exploded where its enormous
tentacles dragged the sand and lifted dregs
of wrecks like ours. Others too, courageous
in their effort, must have drowned. Only one
escaped. My muscle slipped the net, slick-spun
flesh that tightened vices where it angled
strangely hooks and knots and finally dangled.

STRAW

Everybody feels the wind blow — Paul Simon

You knocked the stuffing from my shirt that blew,
a sail, tautened by the wind whistling through,
and my last straw hanging threadbare and loose
from my broompole frame. You gave no excuse,
just staked me alone in a field for crows
to peck holes in my pumpkin, and who knows
when I'll next see a farmer turn this soil
or sow. 'Til then I'll feel the cords uncoil
from out my waist and wrists and I'll throw straw
to wind like drifts of dandelion spore
that, blown, will leave me thin and thinning more,
my heart, my straw, gone lost, blown free yet far.

HYPOMANIA

Why have these balloons 

not popped, that grow so large

and simmer by the ceiling,

pre-empting bust,

like bubbles flirting 

at the surface, threatening

pop? I am in love.

It crackles under duvets like

electric blankets,

spilling sparks into my groin.

I swell like blisters

that grow hard and burst

like fountains that erupt

like beer cans,

shaken to the point of bang,

and tin, exploded, shines

like water falling

into water. Water welling

in the mouth

and water, pooled, tastes salted.

THE COW POEM

All my life it seems there has been a cow
somewhere in the picture. This one, brown,
sitting by a lecture hall, expecting rain.
I didn't notice cows until I was fifteen
and I heard them mooing in the barns
at midnight. Strange for cows to be awake
so late, but they are. A Friesian once 
was sipping milk in the bar and told me
it was human. The only cow that ever spoke
was into politics. Most of them stand dumb,
flicking flies from their arse, their eyes,
the size of wet planets, stare from lashes
long and curled. They do not threaten me,
these loving giants, who turn up at the margin
of my funerals and weddings. They chose me,
so that even now there is one sighing
by the skylight, bedding down. One day,
or so the Friesian told me, a bull will come
at sunset, stand silhouetted at the end
of a long, empty road in Idaho or Istanbul,
a donkey prick hung beneath his belly.
He will scratch a foot, snort, and run
straight through me. That, she said, will be
the sign the cows are done. Tomorrow,
I fly to Delhi, where I hear cows are holy
and roads in the centre are short and crowded.