ghost spaces

ghost spaces unsettled
in me, filled
tightwith curledtight
streamers

shifting uncomfortable
with eachnew
(new, now, not you)
turn i make

I began having

Sex, before

I knew

Anything about it.

I posed. Grotesque

My tongue

Doing something to

My lips

I thought it should

My body stiff

Something needing

To be dissembled

Rather than melted

Into.

(Caught in a picture

My stiffness

Is hardened over years.)

I can claim my grotesque

Now.

Fear of not the unknown

But the will

Of my own soles

And joy even in that

(but know, for you

I tried. And you could

Have been kinder

With my attempts) 

old fingers

you deleted

cleared
everything onhis
computer

you told me chattily.

my goodness, you said
he must have found that back-up
button and
never stopped using it

you said.


and your words create
a
strange hole in my chest.

a picture of my grandfather
old, hunched,
gnarled-tree like his
fingers growing into the computerkeys
as he hits Control S over and over.


I ask, knowing the answer,

if you had saved, any, maybe
one
or something,
of his backups.

Oh no, you said,
i didn't see anyneed.


and i swallow
hard and quietly
blowing silent
kisses to his old
(gone)
fingers on the keyboard.

one year in

you turn me into
chewing gum


flavourless
and wrapped round your
teeth your spit
making even
my staying power

not strong enough

this

this. this is about
something that mattters.
something that is urgentinthe
momentnow. that wont wait will
come out,
through these hundreds.

hundreds with their
own urgency
to feed on yours
with their fingers,
licking your inspiration
off them.
because this.
is something that matters.

and your face
in that moment. onstage (mikemagnified)
but bigger than stage
and alloftime(hope)
in one moment and all the work comes down to
THIS. because, this. Is some
thing that matters.

sometimes

i am stretched
thin
and elastic sometimes.
(but only sometimes)

and your smile can
bounce off me
and boomerang
back round the moon, grow bigger
and...

(only sometimes)

photomemory

you are brought
back to me
through a curve
in a photo

and a heartflutter
(still,
as ever, nothing
to hold on
to)