Veil

I must have knitted myself

In those strange plains of sleep

Bourne with the needles

Vaccinating, the terrible teeth

Tipped with paste.

The net

Coughed from, caught on my lips

Screens my face. Adulthood

Stirs underneath

-          Then accessorised

The metal brace, grief

To educate the smile.

With fins

They wait to tickle the silver

In my eyes.

For it is hollowed, the meat

Torn away from the shell

Of the crab-curve, the cheek

Of a child’s sense of self.

The school uniform clung

Like a dressing that day

That week. Those long years

I was served to the world

As a boat

Hollow

Caught on the tide of parental desire

With a row, row, row

Yelled from the sidelines.

Short staccato strokes.

I became their vessel

Dragging the shore, against my skin

Which become the waterproofed body

Boarded by hurt, by sin.

Now 

They are giving me way to ideals

The aisles, where we start

To pick external objects

Which will constitute ‘living’

Or failing that – art.

The veil assumed a landscape

Across my legs

Crawled to stand on my spine

But I was younger then

 Now

It has dried.

Starts as a spool on the cheek

Serves to top every rib

Which they put pressure upon

The seats in the ship

And I am caught in their hands

The fingers

Still fail.  For they

Have determined a net of it

The long, stinking veil

Which glints in my stomach

Pierced with holes

As they sit either side of my chest

And throw, throw, throw.

Something to Hold

'The situation is like this’

You declared, with a flutter of lips

And a wrist in the air. The teaspoon hung like an instrument

The tea almost hissed

Your legs lend the chair new proportions, always did.

A  calendar impressed

The opposite wall

Yet the tea, month, mouth -  was lavender. Bitter as gall

With the brewing.

I watched the milk fall, my fingers chewing

Over the silence, the wasting of sense.

The fat on the surface

And we both raised the cup to our lips

As I do now

Under absence.

Under this. 

Fishing For Newts

Not fish in the water

But newts, as granddad leaned

To pluck them like jewels.

There on my knees, I practiced the art

Of catching a palmate

In the palm of my hand.

Then

Between finger and thumb

The warm liquid flux

Of thrashing life, the thump

Of pulse against skin – before I could write

Before I had summarised love

In a few sharp strokes.

No, this was tenderness

Taught, by the rippling throat

Of the newt smelling death

In the folds of my coat,

The damp anorak clung

 With the tension

I had learned by love

To let him live.

For this was the ten-year old affair

Waiting for dinner

Seeking consolation from fortunate hunger

The grinding tin in the kitchen.

Instead turning the newt

Like a key, over

In that old lock of waiting

And the sound of gravel shifting

On the roads of the estate.

It was not the cheap affection of television

Not the nautical stench of a catch

No wax crayon on the mouth of a clown

But the sudden consolation, the flash

Of amphibious underbelly.

The spinning of cold stone

Lodged in my memory

A punch of colour, flecked brown

The oozing yolk of summer, intensity

Summarised there

 In the newts stomach, burning

With orange. The fear

Was mutual, sharp, sweet

Of two lives unaccustomed

Half apologetic, craving more time.

Never since have I seen so full

A colour

Now even the advertisements, imitations

Seem like leaf litter

That granddad was sweeping

As I held

Meaning, feeling

Right,

Right there.

Yet the fish was plated

The kettle screamed

And eating after I wondered, what would express better

The singe of emotion

Of that orange skin.

The love and the longing

And poured childhood in

To that fiery lozenge.

For it was a time of realisation

Monday at 5pm

Haunting with feeling

Between cold blood and blue

The repeated segregation of

‘Wash your hands after’

But love was dangerous then, wild, wistful

Now dirty all the way through.