Car Alarm

It's a long way down
to the corner shop
when you're small
and the world is forever.

There was that summer,
the first one on your own
since leaving home.
When anything seemed possible
and probable.

The first rainy day
you realised it was over,
stood in pools of wet light
that punctured the night
like a million needle holes.
When the wind drove
tiny nails into your smile
pinning it into place.

Some things are best left
on the list,
'Remember to forget'.
Pushed into dark corners,
ready to remind you,
one day,
Superman's not real
and the golden angel
of your dreams
is made of clay.

It's funny
the things you remember
on the way down
to the corner shop,
then you forget.

****

It was quiet
down our road today.
There was the sound of kids
acting out the latest film
or video game
and from the direction
of the tower block,
the one by the shops,
the distant sound
of a car alarm.

There is Only You

There is only you,
to see through your eyes,
to know the world as you do
absorbed through experience
into memory,
recall,
there is only you.

There is only you,
to think your thoughts
to know yesterday as you do
brought to the point where you exist.
A sum of the past
on the brink of tomorrow.
Today,
there is only you.

Celebrity

The world is flat
and ‘love’ is just another brand
to stitch into our shirts and hats.
Felt vicariously
through wild idols,
who catch us in our drift of history,
writ large across our lives
with forced smiles and shiny eyes.

When they misread their lines,
from time to time,
they fake the pause
and blame the cause,
offhandedly, on memory.
Afraid to say that they
feel longing
for that which they have never had,

or is it just the fear
of being caught off guard?

One Night In Leningrad

Tick.
You balance on the even night,
fearless in the chilly blue air.
The drift of your hips
swells under the white satin dress.
Tock.
At midnight the shells start falling.
The ball is over,
it’s time to go home.

Darkness

It’s hard to breathe
when the horizon tightens
around your neck,
a tourniquet dream,
when you give up
trying to reach out
and reach in.

I would hand it all back
the music,
the poetry,
for one day
without the darkness,
and the phantoms
it brings.