the snow

to everyone’s surprise, the snow just stayed…

in spite of any milder air or sporadic spells of rain.

e-scooters were abandoned in cul-de-sacs:

their lack of traction a new blemish on their cachet

with the veins of suburbia perpetually clogged.

sunday league games were still cancelled day-of,

that single tether between each teammate straining

over pints of pissy lager in a run-down village pub—

the winger’s hangover story getting yet another run out.

roads to all the schools were heart-breakingly clear,

while roads back from work swallowed up commuters

whose hopeful tyres chewed on the carpet beneath.

but couples floated home above the hostile terrain,

lighter in the soundless postscript to interior conversation,

with bright faces pressing on against the inevitable cold.

the hotel bar

an untethered few—

all strangers to

each other— with final stops too far,

all rest their feet

in the mismatched seats

gathered there at the hotel bar.

one spends her night

with a dead tealight

that once flickered like an evening star.

but see a half-smile crack

in the carlsberg tap

at the end of the hotel bar.

old tungsten bulbs

light a couple’s souls,

their bags left sitting in the car,

weary chatter sings

til the barkeep rings

last call at the hotel bar.

all the world is there

in a three pint stare

and the shimmer off a room key card

but the morning sun

sinks the gentle hum

we left in the hotel bar.

statue

i’ve been thinking—

you know those statues

outside football stadiums,

the ones of our fragile gods.

a silent distillation of their

improbable, unfailing hope.

the ones who would find

the divine in our honest

rituals; now casting the

shape of a sacrament

in the skies of the places

that they’d ply their trade.

well I was thinking—

i should commission

one of you, everywhere

that we’d go together

and on my heart’s

broadest side,

where everyone agrees

you did your finest work.

forgotten

i won’t forget you, i shouldn’t think.

although your birthday’s slipped my mind,

since culling facebook this past spring.

and i’m sorry that i locked you in

that anecdote— cut adrift from your name

and circumstance, for the saving of a second

or two in new company.

and i still find a trace of you

in a once-buried, thoughtless turn of phrase—

a story dropped someplace in the divide

that i’d sooner ignore than cross.

and i’m still drafting that apology, indefinitely,

in part for things i recall that i said,

but more for the things i don’t.

because i fear the ugly shadow that

the worst of me could cast.

but most of all i hate the end, where i’m

a ripple lost to the tempered sea,

because hidden in the promise that i won’t forget

is the hope that you still remember

magpie #2

each day he’d round that same corner

and face the solitary magpie there—

twitching, picking at its modest hoard.

and each day he’d greet the lonely soul

softly, as though to make the case for friends,

before bearing the evening sorrow that

each one-sided meeting brought.

but one morning, when the night had

spilt into the milky sky, he couldn’t find

the patience for a promise of joy,

and walked silent where once they spoke.

now each day he rounds the corner,

absented by that persistent omen,

with doubled sorrow and loss of hope.

slowly

how unromantic, they all said

to fall in love so slowly:

a deprivation, to not be crushed

by the sudden weight of

inevitability.

the sheer inefficiency to be

without the slick anecdote for

a stranger, against the countertop.

but how can we care for

efficiency

when our repetitions are prayers

that, when missed, leave an

emptiness in the air–

like a car engine, idling

then cut in the driveway.

and how can i describe

the perpetual thrill of

pulling at each gossamer

thread, each fine layer

we hide behind, to find

your capacity for shared

affection, unbounded still.

to fall so slowly, you never

stop.

carpet

they’d stripped everything else out;

pulling the debris of half a lifetime

from the living room walls and

doling out the foraged pint glasses.

all that was left was the carpet.

he went to work with a stanley

knife, cutting through the grip

of fibres.

he kept the whole second step–

the one she’d skip over on each

descent.

she went to the kitchen door,

tearing out the patch stained

by a kir royale, clumsily made

then baked in by the warmth

of tender conversation, now lost.

they retraced a dynasty of winters

walked through, to place a shoe

sole echoed by the back door.

they dried tears on the corners,

unexplored and unworn.

he tried to ring out the unkind words

soaked into the bedroom floor.

she took care around the tinted shape

amongst the light-bleached stretch;

a silhouette, as she was then,

when she cast her shadow, waiting,

in the dim hallway light.

they split, finally, the sunken spot

where their feet had intertwined

and worn away the threads

beneath them.

ghosts

the deepening of autumn dropped

a new darkness of the early evening

and turned these streets to a ghost town.

what an awful thing, we thought then,

to be a ghost when we were so full

of life.

but now I envy the unchanging spirits,

who chatter between the scrapes

of suburban tarmac under feet.

they are fixed in the youthful frame,

and misremembered to the point

of near-perfection in the minds of the

haunted, who conjure the feint forms

and are cursed to wonder where

the thought of them still haunts.

Modern problem, #1

A guy drifted to the front of the crowd

Of people wondering what to do

While looking at Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”

And made a huge gash in its poplar panel.

In the days following everyone was distraught;

Recent viewers spoke to news anchors

About a knowing melancholy noticed in her eyes.

The Louvre had thousands of visitors

Dressed up as fair Lisa herself, with tears

Rolling over their half-cocked smiles.

Scholars forwent analysis, gesturing only

To the unexplainable enchantment

Felt in the presence of a masterpiece.

Then a man in a suit walked into a grey room,

Beaming at cameras, and told us not to worry.

For our victim was a faultless facsimile,

3D printed decades ago in a lab–

The original locked away for preservation.

They wheeled it out to a frenzied applause–

Until a hollowness descended on the room.

good mourning

the whatsapp servers took a sudden spike

and the technical integrity of iplayer was challenged.

huw edwards rooted, frantically, through his desk’s bottom draw.

the bbc graphics went grayscale, too.

channel 4 disassembled their logo before desaturating.

people in pubs were glued to the coverage,

played on tvs surrounded by guinness memorabilia.

landlords across the land began repainting their signs

diligently copying her majesty’s profile over red lions and harts.

artists drew for their ipads, scratching at their screens

to evoke the consoling spirit of paddington bear.

graphic designers googled which fonts have royal warrants

and the owner of the rolf harris royal portrait felt his luck turning.

referees slash footballs in their thousands.

the met cancels the weather.

poets check for rhymes with crown.

those watching planes in aberdeen wear black cagoules.

members of parliament test each other’s knowledge

of the reigns of kings and queens of england

and check which era shall follow the second elizabethan.

and somewhere beneath the sound of rifles loading

went the final rise and fall.