I Would Put Them Back In Poetry

These are my words, unless stated otherwise. I felt them, I formed them, if you wish to use them in some way, message me. Welcome. My name is Simon, and here you'll find a tranquil place in which to have a gander at my poetic works. Thank you for your time, I hope I can make it worth your while.

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I’m finally getting efficient and more realistic about how to get my poetry out there and hopefully published places. It has meant that any new writing I’ve thought of value I have kept to myself, as if I publish on my poetry blog, it could hinder my usage of it elsewhere. It’s felt surreal, but learning to edit, be critical and almost professional regards my work has really made me feel like I am a writer and I can get out there. It was tumblr that made me feel I had a creative voice worth listening to and encouraging and I just want to keep sharing it. As soon as it reaches new platforms you’ll be the first to know. I’m currently revising some stuff from earlier in the year, discussing anxiety, growing and the future and I’m excited for the work it’s producing. Give me time and energy and I’ll be sharing with you all again. So much love x

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Kingdom Come | 09.11.14

Even within bathroom sheen, in wellwashed pot, in ballpoint hot with promise, in the smiles growing more genuine, knitting these little moments together, I see glimpses of a cure, and yet fuck it all by Friday I'm in love or loved by the morning but not wanting that shade of dawn at all, set ablaze by evening in absence of reply. I now find I'm becoming my own crucible; orchestrating my cycles like industrial washing machines, sweating in the laundromat like a New Yorker still unaccustomed to the heat. Contemplating my chaos in shared kitchens feeling flat as work surfaces, as work surfaces from lines in books and books and I am now building mythologies of little epic consequence where you smile as I dance, where you don't have a Penelope, and the ravenous waves don't hold me thousand fathoms back. If we were heroic we'd have bloodlust, conquest, some concept of what's at risk and to be taken, to be won. Instead I offer tribute to disinterested idols, I feast alone, drink, sail the wine-blue waters home. Realising all too late this is my kingdom come.

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Some moments are melted butter, honey sunrise seeping from begrudged crumpet skin, thoughts loose and light as balloons at a fair, eyes glazed sweet, iced as buns and all about this body mine peace, sincerity. But unfortunately the palette doesn't end there. I have sour tendencies, blooming grey into stapled grimaces, bitter comments, bitten nails, chewed lips suggesting something regrettable left unsaid, something insidious under this tongue. Luckily, I have a sweet tooth.

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I woke to find July exhausted into August; into cooler nights and fireflies turning phantom sparks into intimate constellations in the blue dark. Blackberries, once on the cusp of sweetness but still too sour, like grudges held under the tongue and bursting bitter, now ripen for eager fingertips. Summer surfaces in more than calendar dates and roadtrips; it is here in endless weekend bliss.

01.08.2014<\b>

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deep gossip

I Teabags accumulate a little like a body count, some dishwater warfare, some conversation’s ammunition, sometimes I pace the tiled floors, hold armistice in an empty kitchen. Sometimes I forget how beautiful thought is when it colours a voice in sunset shades, when each idea is delivered like a poppyseed bread roll, split and buttered by the care and love intelligence uttered, presented in open palms, take communion this service is ours.

II Teacups accumulate a little like an empty train; carriages and passengers vacated exhausted in exhaled opinions and imaginings, whistles blown in sighs and shy and sly smiles, kisses blown in nods of heads and sleights of hands in private looks more tenderly passed salt down a dinner table than shaved ice gritted into a cocktail glass.

III We wave goodbye like war wives to the beliefs we married in secret and harboured like fugitives and bore like suffragettes and will lose like widows and find again like saints, we wave goodbye slowly, like age, to each other, like friends, like brothers, like strangers, lovers, neighbours, husbands, conspirators, undercover allies and comrades, confederates. We get over ourselves, our mountain ranges; we hire Sherpas learn the lingo, then unaided without oxygen, then alone in blizzards then thawed and embraced like summer until eventually hissing tension on a griddle.

But thankfully, we no longer eat at barbecues; we sup on discourse, repast and repose, what a thing to have Ginsberg creep back into my toes and throat, lord zero knows we succeed your deep gossip, raise you three shots and dare you come haunt me now, besotted with possibilities; summer’s on the washing line.

I’ll lend you a bedsheet, ghost If you’ll let me be your eager host. Inspire me, I am restless and hollow to the brim pretending some infinite weekend is still yet to begin.

13.07.2014

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point North

He giggles stardust, he grins tempered thunder, I have my doubts and now become them. Sorry enough to still be awake as evening leaves and morning takes its cue from me, searching for hieroglyphics in the gloom, else making this bedroom prison my tomb. I hear my phone buzzing bright noise through the walls I see butterflies in their sunshine, court. I make tea for three, milky white in the early grey, verdant green in the wilting May, a flask of bad coffee tasted only by the gurgling drain, muttering Scandinavian wisdom as if it were my tongue when all I really wish is to simply sit, smile and kiss, belong. I admire my graceless lords; we sabotage the abattoirs, build theatres of thought, faded signatures are our sponsors, sweet promises carved bark in trees, engraved initials bear witness to these, our vows; something wed with every secret shed, some bond broken and then reset, be a splint, some fire kindled and fizzled to cinder, be a flint, we torch our loathed and beloved suburbs and wait for fields to grow, recover. Until the knuckles of the hills are exposed by our densest blood still spilled in prose, Time sits still, our world corrodes; hooked to the drug of company or conspiracy or whatever lurks in this crooked three. Hold on to the rigging, to the mast, earn a living, living's past. Here comes the sea change, be merciful heat wave. I hear heart sorrow plunge like swallows to the shore, I hear your voice break and beat the airwaves like an oar; turn that anchor on its head, make it a brave arrow instead, trust the compass, not the torch, all maps, all hearts, all paths point North. 14.06.2014

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16.06.2014

Having tasted what it is to bite the ink, to dive in biro blue and sink, hear my worth rattle about the cabins of my head in ballpoint black bullets spilling from a mint tin, in sighs and slow typing and clicking and nose picking, restless middle age, teachers learning and unlearning sunset to death and no longer caring for its glow, their cats uncurious, their mouses furious sweep of some young thing's paper potential. Having tasted what it is to invent shades of beige on a Thursday and paint some gormless open mouth a brand new porch in magnolia, a reception for yawns and filing cabinets filled with good mornings and good days, to chase the sunshine's neon path in highlighter promises of fact and fact, to pace the floors of regret realising I left my keys eight pavements ago on a windowsill and heavy snow separates me from whatever shelter I have, some satellites rest wealthy quiet as my night is spent in clockwork silence; I have a pixel hourglass as company I'll evaluate, discuss, describe, analyse, justify no longer I'll forget my candidate number, I'll cram impulse into the echo of specification, I'll study only what makes this blood buzz thud foreign evenings shall be my case study, after exhausting every neurone's flicker having tasted tomorrow brave and bitter I will supper only on solace, nurse my calloused fingers by clumsily picking raspberries, in stained pyjamas, regain sincerity earn an education worth having, having tasted belated mediocrity and eaten my fill I've learned to fall and rose hungrier still.

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conversations between poets

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revels ended

I Even maps fold in on themselves, even the noble lose themselves; balloons pop under shoes like shots fired at the back of the throat from shelves to the lips from hands to the hips from hands to the hips to the hair to the grips of the neck to the chair to the wall to the bar, but this is too dystopian, and not the night I knew with them. When all their saved and spent affections tread gingerly towards midnight like some beast or princess dragging a great trap of a secret of a past transforming with pumpkin wrath clawing back fistfuls of distance for fistfuls of fivers, then I have found a nightmare where there should have been an island. II What we had was paradise; Time was not the circle of a watch, direction refused to associate with the compass, to witness our young minds lost in hurricane bliss was enough, to know we'd done this alone. All a blur with horizons beneath our eyelids, each other's smiles on our minds. Yes, we were oblivious to quicksand sadness, yes, our minds began to trespass, communicate in stifled sighs but teacups or boulders as paperweights could not withhold the sea-change that all begins with a last goodbye. III The boys in their father's suits or their father's image or their mother's and the girls all sunkissed til smothered fill the garden of acoustic Gatsby, giggling and queuing for the ladies' lavatory, spilling like fumes into winding staircases, spilling like hands into bad embraces, killing their chance at immortality for 'another round of Jaegerbombs please.' This is the Trojan wall defeated, this is where brave Medusa retreated; here in the knotty confines of the gloom is where we measure life in millilitres. Now I sit with my eyes to the orchard with a glass of last night's bedside water breathing in the morning like it's new to me, our revels ended and we drowned asleep. 19.05.2014.

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too soon

I know what it is to be caught in the Holbrook monsoon; with shade playing tennis on the living room window, thunder playing chess on the garage roof. To be lost in the grips of tireless ambition; my mother wants to give back to the mountains which already claimed her best friend, my brother wants to give in to inevitabilities, rather than withstand, my father knows the rough in me, watches my clumsy plans, and I; well, my feet feel far too distant from my hands, my head steals hope from the sea and land, my fingers type with the urgency of birds, underground trains and the damned.

I want to know what it is to toss my cufflinks into the pond and laugh, awake in sheets of rich damask, brunch in town with dreams still caught in my hair and upon each eyelash. To chat to boys you met at some Halloween party, some lost station platform, and girls you find in bookshop upstairs’ and exchange gentle gossip in evening air. Too soon, I’ll have June before me, with its breath of summer, its taste of honey, and we deserve to claim it. Too soon, I shall write farewells to all my loves, my many loves, and litter the bluebell woods with my ballads. Too soon we all grew up to find our heads hit the ceiling of the shifting sky.

15.05.2014

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sometimes

Sometimes, I favour the silent affinities of train passengers over the hubbub of playground politics. I’ll stand on that station platform, one day, from the staircase vaunting loud to the suitcase disarray, crying to the crowd, ‘dig out your gorgeous octopus broaches, your tabloid tattle, last night’s samosas. Book table seats, so there’s space for your thoughts and yourself. Consider spontaneously placing treacherous Leicester over your destination. Carolina Jordan waits there, smiling American air at strangers.’

Do so and you’ll miss children wanting nothing more than noise, just noise, shiftless girls and freckled boys who look out windows at factories and quarries and cry out ‘oh my god, it’s a palace.’ And they’re right, in both, power is made. Don’t ignore the Stamford houses stood like grandparents by the trackside; they are chateaus in all but everything. France would have them back again, claim them yours with a second glance.

Canals still sit like ghost-laced veins with still blood in; the still remains of noble Albion, between lonely trackside horses and Cambridgeshire savanna; where can a mind wander when the land is so flat you can see your ideas run to the horizon and back.

What an idea; have your grandchildren wave at passing trains, you’re guaranteed to raise a smile. The quays and the locks of England suggest we have a secret to keep only our waters may know. Our voyage is salted by the train conductor’s curses, and if you and your mother hadn’t rowed, you would have never made my verses.

Returning home is always spare buttons and mediocre green tea evenings; cradle the haze, gather loose change for cafes, where complimentary ginger muffins sometimes await. It’s worth it for the chance. It’s worth it for the chance.

08.05.2014

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I Three nights of Tennessee liquor and their bitter black skies, brittle bright with little light taught me to fuck this melancholy. Building moments of gloom and glory, my monuments, to mark a story long since gone to print in ash, applauded by the puddle-splash, criticised by the raindrop, turned firework on the bus' glass. I stood in the noble urinals, I took in the CCTV horizons, I read so far between the lines, I forgot his full stop could just mean silence. II From a porch, under April's evening umbrella, we saw airplanes composing brief constellations, we saw cars skidding like conversations, I asked the underpass to do my bidding and settled for the river as consolation. Denying deep long breaths of reckless youth, I favour secondhand sunsets. Lead a life, ironically policing impulse, with restless spent pens, smudged desks. III I'll chase the whiskey with a green tea, knowing either way I'll cleanse, he'll flow in poetry and prose, making straight and intricate bends and if I ever dredge him up, I better keep it between friends, because who knows who you can trust when the plot twists once again. 28.04.14

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seventeen will leave me like a good book closing; with ellipses promising a sequel soon and dusk beginning to seize my room. Eclipsing a year of triumph and trial with scents of cardamom and Father Time, this birthday will be a candle crackle, stale cupcake, ghost caramel, but beautiful beneath its tawny shell; if I unwrap enough, give eighteen my love, sleep in its yolk only to wake up and walk the tough honey sunrise tomorrow remembering the meeting is the sweetest sorrow.

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and so March spent itself, like loose change on bonbons and liquorice and evening rain, and in its hopefulness, let April shelter under it’s umbrella, looked up toward impending thunder and whispered ‘good luck, darling,’ and meant it. April took the handle, flickering smiles like a candle, kissed its neighbour gentle goodbye and sang sweet spring into the softening sky.

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Unremarkable

My thoughts grow less remarkable; they’re fraught with shards and dark troubles. They dull like blunted blades on flint, with fading wonder spent and skint.

I talk with cadence falling short, I wretch to find my meanings caught and trampled, dragged like brutal giant’s grasp down fell and valley side. I suffer the utter unchecked wrath of adolescent careless laughs; I’ll choke the joke at the source.

Jaded fools hold no remorse.

25.03.2014

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Scatter, Darling

Regret, you have a crevasse-clasp, I am uncramponed, unprepared. Neglect, you seize a weekend fast, then leave me to my streetlight prayers, creeping like a glacier to the coast, teasing the beach’s shallows.

I sought my future in turtleshell hills to realise they were hollow. I am retreating up the valley slope to holidays of long ago; treading water in Salcombe’s bay and now I’ve found a cause to stay. I will relive February bliss each time the sky forgets its grey.

I will build a Devonshire heaven. I can topple worlds. I will seek the supreme Southbank sunsets I crave in the orange indigo of the estuary waves. The open plains of my coursing veins will stage the great migration south; if bluebells chimed I would hear them sing ‘all this earth is lonely now. Scatter starlings, scatter darling’ and I’ll run until my feet give out, for why would I not take the opportunity I chased down to the southwest sea? If I’m leaving home, then let me go to the ends of this land and arrive alone.

17.03.2014 

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Last Tango In Reykjavik

Reykjavik bared its teeth to me; its bay an open mouth asleep, its blocks were concrete studs in tarmac gums and from it sprang a midnight hum.

I, awake with Iceland's frost in my blood, heard the beat of the Valkyrie drum, slunk through corridor soft and dumb to seventh floor balcony-come-clifftop, where the dozing busses and snoring cars played soundtrack to my soaring heart. This city's foreign slumber, dreaming deep oblivious under Aurora. I glimpsed Valhalla's gleaming floors. I stood, pyjamaed tourist, unworthy of this private promise the sky was making, that I could belong to an island waiting to rejoin the myths from which it came.

I stayed awake half the night, so I could write on the back of a postcard, 'I'm sure I saw the sky alight. Send all my clothes on the morning flight.' I would gladly spend my quicksilver youth standing on the black sands of the Atlantic, hands pressed to the glass flesh of iceberg nests in endless headspace.

Instead, I crept down from the fire escape, imbedded myself in hotel duvet, woke at five to dejected disarray, packed a cracked mug in a suitcase, took a packed bus to an airplane, boarded and sat, crushed by altitude, realising all I was about to lose as my precious hollow filled with tomorrow's mundane mundane. I sighed off the plane and into home, and missed and missed the ice and stone, and wished I'd sipped more meltwater from the glacier, so it could feed my bones, my knuckles and knees and teach my tempest mind to freeze.

03.03.2014