#scribblesonbrokenglass

I grew with the concrete towers.

I grew with the new mothers

and the kids around the corner,

getting older all the time.

I grew with the grey in the beard

of the driver of the #52 bus

and the trees and the Brutalism

that line these quiet roads.

I grew with the discount stores

and the empty shop-fronts

and all the for-sale signs,

now occupied with new faces.

I grew as a town only can —

on promise and pragmatism,

on opportunity and time taken

I wonder, these days, if the grass pollen

spat out as you tore it from the earth

lingers somewhere in my system.

Those soft hands would pry gently

seemingly untroubled, at each blade

and I would lose myself in each one.

Straining to be heard over the wildfowl

landing roughly in the streams behind

you said you were glad to catch the sun.

That was still intimacy: mute musing

of a young man finding himself

lost in a quiet thought jettisoned.

Milder now, that threshold’s crossed —

those tender metres between us.

when you cross that bridge

with its warped flagstones

and a wind that seems to drag you

to face back toward your provenance

there will be the pulling hand of doubt

no stronger than the hope driving you

when a rack of fearful dreams is drawn

the window slammed shut

and the spray from the road

ceased to fly into our eyes.

there was something graceful

about your confident grasp

clasped around my wrist —

the nails dug in, eyes fixed,

bayoneting through the crowd

to find something deeply personal

and the reflection of the programme

in your pocket made me think of sound

and all that colour in your hue:

the gentle inch of your thigh,

too, pale and unready,

/list: to feel the way on which

/all those futures in my head depend

/all those tandem visions, bipedal

/all those joint decisions, unanimous

-/running this from code looks simple

but the launching is much harder -/

and the way that it bends, frustrating

and the way that it breaks, endless

making stay from go is stop from start

when/: left is right, eaten is starved

/if forcing this is futile, aching

/if feelings are born sterile, weightless

/find: the essence of myself in _you_

FOUND: void, null value, seeking again

but the retreat from you, illogical

southern breezes seemed to carry

a bell tolling: nerve-bending fangs

and nails on chalkboard screech

it was that morning when Liberty awoke

and her eight legs seemed so unsteady

and the chitin body shook with angst

so ugly had she become that no one

could recognise her mirror image;

they saw in Liberty the chains of others.

that tough shell she had grown

after those myriad trials and beatings

ears still hazy, ringing —

eyeliner, popping blue azure,

arms railing-grazed,

ankles damp with sweat:

so lost for a minute,

a moment,

an hour —

an eternity

hungrily drunk

on sounds

and vibrations of sound,

moving in waves

crashing among minds;

limbs —

now aching sinews

it took some time

to cut so far in

and strike ore;

shocked to find it,

to mine a rich vein

of more than pyrite —

a glitter at last

emerges from heaps