Friday, 23 January 2015

I went backwards through my poems on Hello Poetry in terms of their popularity and picked one line from each to compile this:


It’s coming, like it always does,
your heart beats more than 100,000 times every day
hid in one of those hiding places 
between me and my appointment tomorrow at half past ten.
A hiccup is heard from the back of a classroom.
and now I don't trust them on my tongue. 

Morning comes like hell with a garbage truck,
all knees and fists and teeth
disappearing
and the post began arriving on time,
letter-writing weather, bathtub weather, 
until pills pass from pocket to palm 
The inside window was not broken.

It was a stampede of hooves money was lost on,
every penny you ever tossed into a fountain, every star-
We are burning up the blueprints drawn up of our stars.
The universe came in and hungry
but it's not worth stealing anymore-

then and today, where have you been?-
the wind will be sleeping
(the black bedtime echo)-
and ghosts are only ghosts.

And those streets, do they matter to the shoes treading them?
Suddenly I don't need mirrors to tell me
I don't think we could have been happy.

That brain of yours. You’re just a sea made of tears
and happen to have a smile on your face and suddenly
I want to say something
but I don't think I'm brave enough,
because I wasn't even there.

There is the aching overwhelm of blood returning.
I know how tiring it was, loving me,
already I am holding my breath-

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.