THE BABY-STEAL MOTHER
 
Snuggling-up on a pieces-fell night,
this teeny worldling
who is my bind.
She's unlooked for sunshine.
I have far-seeingness,
a brain full of marbles
and won't hold breath
for too much.
 


TWO EX-LOVERS ON THE ANNIVERSARY
OF THEIR PARTING
 
1
So began my morning walk, a
rhythm, railway timetables.
Soles arched, quickened
the threshold of Mancy park,
ours, pollen
days.  Inclines to angles,
the crush of swing, dry air.
Black birds delivered notes,
spindly grass rippled, shone
once, only once, a backward
look.
 
2
Late breakfast.  Wet warmth,
sunshine, skydiving
spring.  A perforation of
nomic skin, soft touch,
tail-ending the first hours.
Squelching dog-mouthed shoes,
parallels of throttled grass, we
skipped.  Black shadows fall,
Silver Dust trace tentative
steps.
 

 
TEN AFTER SEVEN
 
In high hopes I'm Tallulah Bankhead, an id
whose musk if Peruvian snow, light-headed
bubbles to splash down pills
and a contour that describes a twist of paper,
a fill-up squeeze by the bent hands
of a synthetic chemist with bachelor habits.
 
Has your nonchalance gasped, 'I love you'
and not meant it?  My ear reverberates
with Thelonious Monk
as I trust a crescent moon to trip, hot
in the flickering of amphetamines.
And no regrets?
 
The day invents its puzzle;
I'm only tipsy now.
My ghost word could be 'more'
but there's the pooch to keep fit, stanzas
to paste,
 
the swoosh of a giro
through the unlocked door.
 

 
T-REX AND THE NIGHTINGALE
 
She had brick-built, Big Daddy arms,
mousefleece bumfluff with tides of sweat,
military two-stepped like Charlton Heston
and trawled her ballroom nets
an A-line flare with sequins.
 
I was four Russian dolls smaller
in every dimension, a girlish boy,
a dandelion clock in christmas-black velvet,
a pixie on airborne toes.
 
We sashayed each dusk a garish hour
and Hollywooded ourselves, the ideal pair,
grabbed medals, bowed or curtsied
but never once saw eye to eye.
 

 
TYNEMOUTH BAY
 
Lifelong days
smoothing pebbles and shells.
I wished I belonged to oars.
 
These are fetters that you touched
pigeon-wary.  Ruined colours now.
Archaeology of holiday ramparts,
tender mumps.
 
East sun disgorges light,
daystars west.
Memory - seasplash
pervasive sea.
 
Born
I am wedded to salt.
A spoil, rancour stings
in the churn, constant revisitings.
 

 
THE HOLIDAY I NEVER HAD
 
The hour's happening.
A box turtle is an opera.
Mosquitoes being.
A floating-point is the Hibiscus.
 
And in sunset's moon
a wish-you-were-here deodorant can
reflects.


 
© Christopher Barnes, UK