1st Year Undergraduate 

Problems of the problematic

The bus shelter dripped Sunday morning
This is the hour of the lost
Of cold remembrance and searing clarity
Losing control until all is vanity

A kind stranger lends a phrase.

The rain is thick as sin
The rain lends its tears to the dry, hot desert…ed boy
Unsure quite what to forget
Sure, only, that he forgets too much.

Every night is different, every day the same,
That was a red green blue kaleidoscope of an evening.
Genius that forces shame and begs regret;
Genius that rides luck and others’ lovers
Dark, damaged genius who degrades and destroys

I bet he’s not alone right now.

The pipes in my family home are broken
And only boiling water spews forth.

Distance


Once when she was at church, he snuck into her room and measured the distance from her bed to the wall,
then measured the distance from his to it
so he could know that at night she was 2.67 metres
4 years
16 shades of blonde
and 2 emptied school shoes
away.

She bombs the tablecloth at dinner
and it absorbs her sadness like a mother’s arms.

She dims like a distant ball of burning gas
hanging off the chair on the opposite side on the table
refracting the light through a whisky glass across her eyes like a child.

Their fingers collided once
with the passing of the salt shaker
and it was like watching the sistine chapel peel away in winter.

At night, they scream and fall
Landing in the morning at the table in sharp fragments.

She puts out one cracked glass and a crooked spoon
waiting opposite them until the sun takes her down with it.
He makes eggs and leaves
finding the one that he’d left her cold and greying on the table
when he comes home in the evening
smelling of the outside.

The Girl With the Chipped Smile

Brain darkened, fallen, reeking
Smoking chimneys on factories on pastures
Against a grey London skyline, naked, screaming, streaking
Muddy tents and music; your departure.

From light, curled up throbbing in vague loss
Needles, whitewashed walls and dark eyes
Extinguished flames of visions dragged across
Her eyelids. The doctor. The consumed youth. He tries.

Cowering fragile in bus stops, 'Never leave... Never leave..'
Putting brave faces to the dirty midnight breeze
Some tut. Some sympathise. They all leave.
Handling the syntax of hell and purgatory with ease.

Curtains too thin, weapons weakly deployed
Beaten lifeless, crying in borrowed arms
Too close the human spirit rests to the void
Locked away in these nut-house farms.

Kneeling hollow, smothered and tame
Corridors, wards, 'you only have a little while'
These doctors all look at her the same
But send her out again, the girl with the chipped smile.

Alexandra Palace

The grass cowered under our precious hands
Light rippled and melted in waves
An oasis in dry desert sands
A round horizon of office slaves.

The palace looked over our shoulder
The sky put its great ear to the ground
We blossomed and woke and grew bolder
Tumbling in rivers, gladly drowned.

Under the great trees of the hill
Children meet, play, laugh and love
We do the same; soaring but still
Caverns rumbling and crumbling above.

Head-to-to, like childhood, your laugh
Playgrounds and cheeks in your smile
The ground pulsed and the sky split in half
You found me, lost for a while.

Air buzzing and thick, lips like berries
Cross-legged, no blanket, in song
Our little words were round dimpled cherries
In our great plump bubble tethered strong.

Unfurling softly, glowing amber and settled
Backs arching on earthed hands of ivory
Swan neck glinting yellow and battled
I spoke of pool halls, you of Calgary.