so what do we do
when the buses become blood clots,
stationary auction items up in the next lot,
nails placed firmly within the traffic’s trail,
beads on an already beaded bracelet
fit for a wrist as thick as yours;
delicate slips of skin wound around a bone
that glides along the air?

so what do I do
when we’re lost mid-city
consult and ask the commuter committee
that pumps around us in a lunchtime break
or walk on further just past mid-city lake
and look out for lost landmarks?

arrange me in an arrondissement,
unfurl me and curl out into a quarter,
lead me silently down another street,
kiss me in another alley and call me mine,
take a holiday with me, cross that line.

They got dressed that morning
to go out and protest,
though whilst running
a bullet entered their back,
split their spine into shards and out spilled
blood as wine flowing from their oak made cask.

Now they lay and lie and cry silently
in a room where a man counts the corpses
and wraps them in linen,
hiding faces from families making them hidden.

Close their mouths with tissue bows
tied at the forehead for purchase and extra tread,
cover stomachs of starvation up
and say words that shouldn't be misread.

Photos of the deceased to send around the globe
from camera to probe, back down to internet villages and news room towns.

Outside the demonstration continues with howls
and flags made from sweet cotton thread
and the march continues being walked by
those with barbed wire legs.

24 hours a day for the rest of our time together,
we'll walk with glutton in our shoes
walking with weight on our backs
covering distances only known in novels.

They'll get us you know,
those men selling cigarettes out of
office blocks, down that block there-
it's 62nd street and they never clock off.

What windows see aren't what we see.
Windows hear and feel and
we see and never heal;
we hold wounds like flowers bought
in hospital foyers, late to see a relative.

Buy ones and get some free:
it's a ploy so we spend that little bit more
than we need to.

For the girl with the bow in brown hair,

            the heat from the upstairs
restaurant cures the street where we walk,
            the freight’s in on the track,
you can tell by the horns,
            I from the diesel smell below the
afternoon clouds, faint above,
            sometimes when we speak a heart rate
somewhere peaks,
            another graph pinned to an office wall
shows this clear,
            sometimes when we talk tense chests
fear the answer you may say,
            the graph strays past paper and onto
those office walls, in red with a palmed
            smudge where you forgot where
the words ended.

            For the girl with the bow in brown hair,
your eyes are theatre-light reflections in twenty-four hour
window panes sat packed neatly off the corner of West 47th
and 7th, for you’re my central Times Square.

Decorations are up
hung from fishing wire,
fishing for good luck.

There’s Christmas on her neck
and as she stretches out in front of me
a wake of cinnamon decks the halls.

It remains and lingers,
falls away past nostrils and
turns to festive well-wishes.

The market is in full swing
wrapped up tight in large scarves,
like a low cut sling cradling the cold.

Winter has the streets in its hold,
the wind is sour, bitter to taste,
and punters, commuters, Asian lost-tourists walk in haste.

Shop floors are warmed by radiators
hung above their wide open doors:
let the heat out, let the customers in.

And when the mid-November light dims
and the council gets past the
everlasting electrical admin,

streetlamp sticks will light and spark,
sending effulgent embers down onto
the Cambridge cobbles.

Children will peer wide eyed into windows
remembering names for their lists,
hoping to unwrap them as gifts later on down the line.

Adults, some probable parents and others newly-wed together,
enjoy the festivities, the weather, the bespoke crafts
bought from Argos sold as Handmade Swedish Chairs

And do they care? No.
It’s Christmas in Cambridge and
winter is settling in.

Whatever is coming out from the chimneys
is catching the light in the distance,
it trails across the auburn tree tops that are
shedding autumn and getting ready for
the already-here winter,
then flails and falls down.

The train carries on
as does the couple next to me,
they're on about
what they've done and achieved in Leeds
throughout the day;
they paid for a first class carriage
but ended up in carriage C next to me.

Mannequin smiles with masks of plastic
stand and huddle, fight and juggle,
for their space in the crowd.
Elbows touching torsos,
torsos touching hips;
kisses under the darkness,
bonfire warming the lips.
A child sits on the shoulders of her rock,
hands resting in the lap of his head,
waiting for the fireworks to be ignited,
set off, lit and begin.
Eyes of raw astonishment,
watery with cold,
a deer eye mould,
looked up at the firework display.

Sharp colour crayon lines
were drawn in the night-time sky.
Sound followed,
cheers and claps, applauds too.
They were lost in the hollow hole
of the houses around,
this’ll be the one she remembers.
Her first display of sound and light
and she’ll remember how she jumped up and down
to carnival music and carnival folk, rides and light,
menagerie sights.


News from the blog regarding my new poetry pamphlet, check the link out>> http://www.coffeeshoppoems.com/2012/11/homeland-borderland.html

Cambridge is screaming
and as a result its throat is sore.
Everyone is every park and porch
stopped, looked and saw
the shot and killed on a Willow Street floor.

For a girl whom walked as if wind
over little river stream, ******
was the last thing that made her scream.
A thundering absence laid seldom slain
with a bolt of blood spelling innocent pain,
on porch-wood-decking painted cream green
salad leaf fresh, cut from the root with melded flesh.

And we rang along those river banks
against the light cast as shadows,
fleeting past mournful dark windows-
timid in the evening's morning.

And you whispered into my eyes
the words you wanted me to see,
and showed them to idle ears
who waited for something else appear.

The fireside retreats
into the wall
as another TV Christmas special repeats,
with its sound echoing in the hall.

Tangerine,
Satsuma,
Clementine-Orange
peel litters the tabletop;
orange runway for the action figures,
plastic arms, moulded hairs.

Nina Simone plays loud,
'Nobody Knows When You're Down And Out',
Christmas is over,
and now there's nowt to do.

Manhattan by line,
by subway track purr,
by foot in a midwinter
fresh, gale force air.

The dying battery in
Times Square's wristwatch,
halts hands in mid air,
each hailing the second taxi
that comes to them
every next minute;
definitely in the next ten.

Buried benches in thigh high
snow look lost, with
only their branching tops
on display for the tourist's show,
tramping through
this January snow.

Double-back, back
past the Chipotle store,
where diners stand and eat,
stand and greet,
stand with napkins to appear neat,
stand near the radiator to warm their feet,
stand-in-the-corner-and-text-your-wife-saying-you'll-be-hom­e-late-because-this-meaty-wrap-is-pleasurable-to-eat.

He was with another woman, kissing her cheek.

Manhattan is a horizon of horizontal lines,
drawn by pencil lead, led up a page
to create this fascinating portrait
that a point-and-click-camera
cannot comprehend,
let alone negotiate.

We can go unnoticed there, like
most others in this gale force air,
but billboard boys-
the ones that braid ****** building hair,
window panes
and balcony balustrade-
are the famous ones
of Broadway, with nothing more
than their commercial stare.

Goliath:
You buy your love with bourbon creams,
cans of beans and full cupboard brims;
steal clothes to hide a torso of lies
twist that in with teaspoon brown eyes,
deeper than any holy bible’s spine:
found in hotel drawers,
away from the preachy, needy, cast iron shrine.

David:
Whilst the girl you’re with has nothing to give,
no family member nor money splendour,
you battle on with the train rides
cross country,
cross country train track guides.
Audiobook it; listen to it; learn it and write it,
write the letter she deserves, explaining
the ins and outs of your hidden nerves:
the nerves entitled ‘I don’t love you anymore’


My first poetry pamphlet, 'Homeland & Borderland' is still available to buy for only 3.00 GBP with free P+P to anywhere in the world. Both handmade and self published>> http://www.coffeeshoppoems.com/2012/11/it-is-here-homeland-borderland.html

Then there's the the nurses in blue
who always knew that we knew
that the news wasn't good.

Then there's the patient, whom jaundice
is rolling the dice for them,
sat still, long and thin
in a bed pinned to the ward
like a to do list on a cork board,
but the only job for it to do
is wait to fill out the paper work.

Then there's the family in black
who always sat back when
the funeral guidance guy visited with his hardback leather-bound funeral pack.

Then there's the sight of my father's eyes so red,
my sister's cheeks swelling up like that and
witnessing my mother bind a broken book back together again.

Take your ******* fedora off you are not a Jones.
Kid, leave the captain's hat on, gods know you're going it need now,
those waves are knee dip and those rip-tides drag:
lay flat across the hull in dreams of concrete and something a little more stable
until someone takes over,
guides you back home to the lit terraces,
glowing apartment advent calendar,
lighthouses of cushions
and the sofa just how you left it.

Within simple pleasures sleep intricate tasks,
curled up dogs at the foot of fires:
someone please tell them their Dalmatian died whilst they were on holiday,
he was
below
the radiator in the spare playground.
Am I a weak man? it asked the black marble glare of the corner skirting board joint.
Am I meant to feel like that gasp after a slow kiss? that come back for more
               Godfather Part Two again,
               Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,
               rumble string of motorcycle parade through tarmac and your core
               sat crossed legged on any first school floor.
AM morning calls to vets,
stumble for words and
over the abbreviations,
the IAADP have got your back in case Gandalf ever witnesses your blinding,
forever led forth by a lead and little more faith in something worth confessing over.

Love is a tango
it's too hot to handle,
someone sang in a spontaneous smoking area
spawned from a spare terracotta *** and someone asking for help once,
so nervous their knees quaked,
slow down reigns not effective once their BPM was past 200 whatever
Jeremy Clarkson was screaming that week,
but their eyes,
they were knocking down walls with toffee hammers,
scattering chunks under werthy wooden horses,
rubbing sweet stud wall shards into coarse prison gravel with waiting soles,
whistling so not to give the game away.
Escape now back to a Lowell of an old park bench,
dig through **** and pipelines of earth for
canons of authors stacked high in front of you,
you awfully well bled individual,
the wounds from those words about to heal
all the slips you fell into
dragged yourself out of,
clawed back your fedora through more doorways than you can
remember: it always gets you into trouble.
Kid, one thing at once.

Loaded dice love affairs
with snake eyed girl, downstairs
on chance, is multiplying on chance:
roll, bet, blackout, squeeze and a dance
with the winner.
He’s tall, with a
casino shirt and a seven card suit.
Linked up to the left arm of him is
8 ball eyed girl. She potted her way ‘round the table,
blonde haired wisps of hair
occasionally covering her view.

And now snake eyes is no longer new.
She left with haste, a wind a scent following her tail,
back to her hotel room, complimentary towels, free shampoo.





**Check out the blog for poems and pamphlets>> http://www.coffeeshoppoems.com/

Beach, hotel,
One Direction and Bach.

Train ride, taxi connection,
Beer and other-language, confused information.

3 week realities and forgotten home-life mysteries,
Cat to feed, fridge to fill, neighbours to be neighbourly with.

Before I hide myself away
for another night awake,
I'll look up between letterbox gaps in the broken blind
to see the moon shift six degrees southeasterly and think that
in the next seven hours soft eleven light will leak through as
an alarm-clock-call no one asked for.

Before I walk out the door
for another day of yesterday,
I'll look for the wind coming down the road
to ask it if it's bringing me something new on its coattails.
Ikebana dalliance?
A chance blur with her?
Or something old and the same as before?

carrying Kalashnikovs on their backs,
the rebel mules have panic in their eyes
and resting at the back?
fear filled pupils that dilate
with every corpse seen vacating itself
of tissue and blood,
smell the perfume of gun barrels
and those lonely enough to be culled,
picked off by a trained eye
and a government lie and
a man laid down in an apartment block out of sight up high.

civilian fathers laying spread on the back of a flatbed,
cinderblock walls that offer no protection but that of protecting the dead,
sharpen another knife for another internet viral video of another guy without a head
and finally, cat walk model rebels wearing beaded shrapnel necklaces, gorgeous and chrome red.

and they’ll try give them away around,
a daily sound of the everyday
so they can have a price that they can pay
for the ordinary,
for the sane,
for America’s definition of the lame.

It was with the sun
that they drove eighteen miles to every quarter of an hour
to the port
where they put down the car and started like petals from every dead flower they saw together.

Up the steps
he tried to steal her waist for his own,
willing his arms to stretch around widths they weren't made for,
only to cement the idea that they weren't alone.

In the cabin they fell asleep to familiar films
and woke up to see the sea out of a round window
and the guarantee they won't hit land nor port
until the captain's say so on the inbuilt radio.

They came back from a grand meal
that was of Titanic proportions, tidy suits and surreal women in waistcoats,
they made love in a bed that wasn't theirs,
and he witnessed it and saw
her new print dress that caught and tore and was reduced to shreds upon the floor.

Trigger finger 13 is hung
from his shoulders,
though not by hooks found in the butchers book,
but with pride and a sweating brow,
one that can survey the terrain with a quizzical eye,
analysing rustling in bushes only 3 clicks away.

Bible tattoos tattooed below the tribal
ones,
and a 13 on the finger used most
when they charge and come.

Open internet bookmarked pages,
creased and cut newspaper pages
and what do you find laying there?
Lies! Written and typed white lies
that can change the minds of men
and the diet restrictions of nervous, plump women.

I know what is real, I think:
          1. Gradient blue skies that are swiped across the Cambridge ceiling at night. They are real.
          2. The feelings you feel for those you have felt feelings for. They’re real
          3. Falling hail and wet shoes, socks moist with Spring’s choice of weather. That was real.
          4. Falling shrapnel of the Boston Bombs that embedded themselves into the tired thighs of  marathon runners running upon high. That was real.
          5.  This poem may well be real, but I haven’t the guts to say in concrete-words that it matters in the grand scheme of things. This might not be real, I regularly think.

for Denim McLein

The car had jumped the curb at speed,
it was gray and dull and 2 foot high.

On Thursday, 12 men with guns on their thighs
took notes and talked and looked around and choked.

Tears fell from 24 eyes on Friday at the station,
for a 3 year old was mowed down in a moment
of miscalculation.

The 18:45 four-door sedan has blood
on its hands.

I'm going home,
leaving the pack unknown and unsafe
and my eyes strafe, swoon and sigh at the holy display
of the pure 9-to-5,
walking away from her place of pay,  
to go home like me tonight.

A swift above carries on home,
food for its young carried between teeth and tongue.
A family walk from the local school,
with song being sung from the cooler two of the sons.
A car reverses nearly knocking and smudging the woman in blue;
a jacket atop a blouse, pristine shop-bought-new.

I remember her sunglasses.
I remember her eyes from behind her sunglasses.
I remember her staring me down through the lenses
melancholy and blue,
knowing that this was a passing
break-through affair.

We all want someone to hold whilst the music plays
but this is a delayed reaction to teenage hormones,

you're clutching to not-a-lot-of-nothings,
smart jeans and smart cologne, a stolen ring

from your step-father's collection tidied away,
deep, in a box under bed sheets in that drawer.

Your mum says the right one will come 'round
soon enough, but so far the results

of dressing differently have resulted in
women speaking like spray from under a van:

rainwater white noise and not a lot else;
though you're still searching, if not for you,

for your mother instead, elderly and re-married:
some else's burden, another husband to carry.

Carry out of the bottom of drunken wine glasses
and into clear meadows on weekly walks
where discussions take place, peace treaty
talks about holidays in the Mediterranean,

upon balcony ledges they'll embrace, learn
about fading stars, the history behind buildings

visit local bars to drink sober cocktails
conjured up in off-the-web smoothie makers

bought with the ambition to make a living
and help the community out.

If not now then when, your **** shouts
hiding beneath moneyed material

cut in sweat shops, washed in sweat heaps,
delivered by the sweaty mail man of the Bronx,

will women love me you'll say,
will women want a house with me, stay the night

under reclaimed, bought from thrift shop,
lights and kiss until mornings turn into weeks,

those weeks into new jobs
and before you know it, retirement plots

in allotments off Broadway?

No thoughts were thrown around,
let alone conscious decisions bound
in clear evidence and concrete fence-post facts.

She was awake before the frost settled,
and my how her eyes showed the time:
Lengthy red lines pretending to be hands that chimed.

The parkland grasses awaited the
speckled dappled, sunlight shade,
to warm its back in the morning masquerade.

-

Only her body was thrown around,
alone across a car bonnet
in a clear honest, beautiful smudge of fashion and blood.

She would never awake the same again,
and how the nurses soothed her pain
with modern miracle, clear liquid rain, medicine.

The parkland grasses still await the
speckled dappled, sunlight shade,
to warm its back in the morning death march masquerade.

It’s a 5 day world out there,
followed by a 2 day scare
of baths and walks
and holiday forecast talks.

Planning goodbyes before you’ve left and gone
whilst sitting still on Subway platform one,
with stationary thoughts
like the stationary train,
wiped down and dried
by the city state rain.

It’s a 5 day world out there,
followed by a 2 day scare,
together another
7 day affair.

it's a misgiving feeling the thought of you leaving*

An airport terminal stretch of time
between the metaphor in my head
and the rhyme of your feet
stepping quietly on up ahead.

You said you'd be back within weeks,
business takes days, it's a climb
to the highest peak, you said
whilst walking through the gates.

It's a misgiving feeling
the sight of you leaving
you bag in tow down terminal's row
passport control, doors out,
disappearing

In an arcade
a couple choose an engagement ring,
through a window they peer and grin
for this is the beginning of something new.

He, the larger of the two-
tshirt clad and cool-
stares with nose against the pane.

She, the rounder of the pair-
dressed for work but doesn’t care-
looks to her lover and smiles.

In an arcade
a couple chose their engagement ring,
through the door they came out
for that was the first domino to fall.

I carry on with this coffee
and think to the day when
I’ll be in an arcade choosing a ring.

Left bank beards
in Beat hotel rooms,
a boulangerie breakfast
down the street and to the left,
and for lunch fresh baked bread and brie.
Letters sent home to fathers and mothers
singing sweet serenades of Paris
dressed up in autumn shades,
cheques for the royalties that'll
get them to Belize to write and swoon,
chat up ladies in the early afternoon;
where hotel fees that are treble those in the 5th,
bookshop stalls that'll never be found
another closing-down-establishment myth.

They were climbing with oxygen
long before we came along,
base camp poems written under
floor lamplight right before
the eyes of others.
Jett powered prose and wine in the light
sleight-of-hand punctuation and uptight
editors looking for finer narration.

Stay at camp and remember
what won’t be forgotten,
unless the picture you got printed
disappears and returns to embers.
3 months away is 3 months too long,
especially when every day, every day, every day
is reminisced, sicked up in the conversation ashtray.
Stub out the cig and smoke what is real,
as then the hits you score will reveal the hidden,
the truth and the tiny minute, microscopic detail.

Celluloid cells of candid smile fun
printed in race track, river-run stems,
the 120 down to the 35mm
fold it over to form the hem.

You can be my New York
that never sleeps
or that Venice Beach
with bright, chiselled high cheeks
or
the more probable
lesbian lover I’ll never get to meet;

meet properly for a drink.

The evergreen edges of the newly cut
box hedge border look greener now
with its cleaner lines and stronger bark-spines;
the train's in an hour so pack up and go,
leave Christmas where it is,
leave Christmas at home.

Un-sent Christmas lists sit in the flue still,
they never got delivered and never got through,
houses stand with their lights on up the hill,
they blink and sparkle and blaze and gaze at the night
with competition, cheap goodwill.

Jumps back on the ketamine and the *******
and stands in alleyways and lanes
and forgets why the stars sit and the moon stands;
who fights demons with hairdryers and backward hats.

And it’s okay to look like your Dad you never knew,
in glances through the wood would only a few see the resemblance,
but similar hair won’t make up for lost Christmases
and days away at rain safari parks.

You’ll have to leave the fox hole through the brambles
at some point in the future,
so get scratched now and bleed a little sigh
of relief,
one that you’ve broken the tie and loosened the knot
and show us all that you’re out of your cot.

Pin up nurses in blue and
black,
automatic manual doors grow
and contract,
windows that mist and condensate,
bells that annoy for no apparent reason
other than to be late.

Hospital beds.
Child's dead.
The mother's dread.
Just fake a smile. Just fake a smile. Just fa-

-send forth the balloons, cards and grapes
in an attempt to sew the stitches of
one broken womb:
a womb where the roof was torn
by precision tools and an expert eye,
though the doctors said the kid would live,
I believe they lied-

She denied the note
with a wave of her hand,
a harsh slice of the independent woman,
right there next to the bookshop stand.

I could tell, you could tell,
the whole ******* shop could tell
that this couple was very much in love.
It was the constant kisses on cheeks and
that rubbing of the palms with thumbs,
that gave their game away.

Tucked beneath wet raincoat pit,
a brochure protruded and hit
every close contact enemy.
It was a bible of new houses;
psalms of yet-to-be-wet-feet-on-new-lino-floors,
prayers of neutral-coloured-baby-room walls,
proverbs of shall-we-frame-this-poster-or-just-BluTac-it-up-and-hope-for-the-­best?.

They left the shop back into the rain
to the sound of several sighs,
thank goodness for the gray
dangerous clouds of the sky.