Elocution


I live with a silent man, wait on his words.
When they come each staccato stab
slices the silence, lingers in my hearing.

Later, he tells me.
Will there be time enough to squander
on later, I wonder?

Words pruned hard to bloody stumps
sentences culled from reedy echoes
dissolve in the void.

In the dark I feel his body tense.
We do not sleep. Unarticulated
conversations crackle behind the headboard.

He is the master of rack and thumbscrew
unmoved by the creak of parched bird-bones,
muted roars from the box room.





Astronauts



We stuck together
you and me
jammed into a compartment
sharing a seat, feeling the heat
of our first adventure.

Black clad brigands
wouldn’t budge, shrugged
as we protested
flapping our tickets
causing a mild commotion.

Somehow, we ended up apologising.

Stranded. Crash landed
in Salonika seeking direction.
Armed police circled the station
barking into two-way radios
snarling at anything in denim.

The hotel porter yawned
as we placed a zillion crumpled
Drachma on the counter
for one night, buckled
on a sweat-stained mattress.

In a waterfront bar, a fisherman choking
on the last of our cigarettes
said the man in the moon was a magic trick
dreamed up by the CIA
filmed on a back-lot in Hollywood.

Only God travels the universe.

We clung together
you and me
dozing, one eye on the rucksacks,
held together by a fragile connection
stretching back to Bayswater.

You bought me a string of wooden beads
to seal our engagement.