The Comfort of Cold Porcelain

The sinks and basins, milky-lime,
And teachers talk by them at night.
The school, blackcovered and sleeping tight
Won’t whisper till the dawn hour chimes

We are sleeping.

In carrier bags thick fleeced with foam
Each bunk bed forms a cosy home.
Paired friends at top and bottom lie
And kiss the glowing day goodbye.
One, lonely now, will read his book,
And hug his pillow, and find a nook
There resting, feeling wrapped and warm
And no-one hears the tapping storm
That flutters snow on thinstrip glass
All warmth is here, now school has passed.

The teachers stand and talk at night
By milk-lime basins and hard strip light
One chews a sweet, another coughs
And all look bleary, worn and lost.

The wall a creeping spider bears
A blackhard pip under the glare
It finds the dark, and in its lair
Hides hopeful eggs beneath the stairs

Old school,
Wooden school,
Teak polished to a finish -
The sleeping children lose the day
And teachers stoop, diminished.

Rules of Engagement

Hello

he says as he opens the door, and I’m glad he makes the first move because I’ve never been one for leading. I keep in step and hit back with a

Hello

and he returns with a

How Are You?

and I tell him I am happy, positively happy, and now I’m in the hallway of his house with its cream carpet and phone and mirror and I give a smile to show him how lovely I think it is and then I say

How Are You?

and he tells me he is fine, absolutely fine, and we’re both mighty pleased at this because we’ve passed the first stage without a hitch. He leads me into the kitchen, and it has tiles and a table and nibbles, a touch of class, with a bowl of crisps and a choice of dips, and I keep smiling and then realise we’ve been standing there for a full minute in silence and I’ve forgotten whose turn it is but he saves the day by saying

What Have You Been Up To Recently?

and I tell him what a brilliant question that is, brilliant, and then I say not much. He smiles back at me but I can tell he’s a bit disappointed with that, so I add

And You?

and now he’s really smiling and he tells me what a brilliant question that is, brilliant, and then he says same old same old. I chuckle and he nods and I notice he’s waiting for me to speak, so I have a think and then ask him

Who Are You?

but it seems that’s the wrong thing to say, and he shakes his head and tells me I shouldn’t need to ask that sort of question because I’ve known him for six years, and he’s right about that, definitely right, no doubt about it, and I can see he’s panicking now because we’ve gone out of time, and he says with haste

What Are You Doing Now?

and although I think that’s rather obvious I answer anyway and say I am at your house because you have invited me over and I am holding a bottle of wine for you, and I am, it is in my right hand, and I raise it by the neck and give it to him. That puts us back in rhythm and he takes it with a grin and says of course, fantastic, and he pours out the wine and hands me a glass, and I swill and smell and sip and swallow and go mmm, and he goes mmm as well, and picks up the bottle and reads the label at a tilt. Chateauneuf-du-Pape he says, and it isn’t a question but I say yes, and he says 2001, and I say a good year, and he looks up and we both can’t believe we’ve actually just had a conversation about wine. Then I have a moment of inspiration and ask him

Do You Have Any Plans For The Future?

I can tell he’s impressed because he puts the bottle and glass down, he needs two hands for this, and he opens his palms and says well, and then a small plastic model of a dog wearing a top hat distracts me and I don’t listen to what he says, and when I turn back he’s still talking and about three hours have passed. So, he says, after that I imagine I will probably just die, and I reply everyone has to have plans, and I say it because it’s a universal truth and he nods at this, and then I down the rest of my wine and say I am going to leave now, it has been a lovely evening, and he says

Thank You For Coming

which is ever so polite and I thank him for that, and I take the bottle of wine because it actually tastes quite nice and I want it back. We walk to the door and I’m excited because I know we’re coming to the last stage, and I step outside and turn around, and he says

Goodbye!

leaving me with the prestige which is very generous of him, and I clear my throat because this has to be a good one, and I reply, with much gusto,

Goodbye.

The Face of my Manchester Girl

I cup her face in my hands
And what have I got?
The skin at her eyes is scrunched
And side-teeth show through red lipped kinks

She’s looking at me
And her eyes are happy to be by my fingers,
But where have these hands been?
Towelling doglegs, ripping caps from pens
And scraping away paint from tough bristled brushes;
They’ve even broken things.

I squash her cheeks with my hands;
My strong hard, thick and hard
Fingers like bolts strapped against wire,
The sun in Manchester has lifted my spirits
And my hands are warm, hard and dry.

‘You’re supple and soft – with these creams on your skin,’
The smile on her eyes falls and those irises sharpen
Her pupils, a set of two sharp pin-blacks
Watch me now, hunting
I lick her cheek and taste ground powders, old soap,
Those light, bitter chemicals.
The explanation, she assures me, is to do with the sun
‘If it rains so much here, I need cream –
I wear the cream like you wear a mac.’

The weather changes endlessly and it always rubs her skin.

I hold her face in my hands,
These hands have broken things

Subject

You have built me,
And forever I will be no self.


Taking the hands from your clock
I watched
The face of Time relieve the room
And sitting there together,
We burned logs.
We fed a fire I never started
Through a roof you’ve never seen

Buckle up my shoes I want
To walk the ruined garden
Or talk to passing strangers;
Spin the life out from my loom

Clothos and Lachesis stare,
Atropos lifts her weary head;
For one moment pushing nearer,
Fateful scissors to my threads

But as you needed walking,
Around the room and talking,
With fever at a wedding ghost
Of someone whom you loved the most;
The room begets my life.

Hold me fascinated
Hold me -


Walking for a moment
A shard of mirror bites the fire
All light reflects into me
And all I see
Is you

June '92

He came in through the bathroom window,

cracked it with the peak of a knuckle

or the beak of a rock, a small

incision, enough to reach in

and open up a door

to crawl through.

He made a mess on the tiles, soap and

shampoo knocked from the sill,

toothbrush cup spilled and left

leaking a gunk of spittle.

He had a choice of treasure chests

on the landing, but I suppose

he chose the closest, and in our room

exposed the innards of draws and wardrobes,

pulling out tights like intestines

and throwing shirts and pants

aside, scattering sex debris across the floor.

He took the passports naturally, a handful

of jewellery and the present for Peter,

you can see where he sat

on the bed and unwrapped it,

shards of blue paper

dropped on the duvet,

I wonder if he smiled and said thanks

to the silence, just what I wanted, best Christmas ever.

He moved through our rooms to

quench his quick lust, filled his sack up

with gifts for the season: a laptop,

an Xbox, a TV, a watch,

for every item taken

a shock of space, an outline of dust.

He drank a beer in the kitchen, shifted

the seats for legs-up comfort and

ate a mince pie on the side, a gored

slice grinning on the table.

He wrote a note in the lounge, it says

sorry I did this. dan, and he placed it by

an open photo album, snaps from

ten years ago, and there's a

gap on the page, and the caption under the

blankness reads June ‘92, and I cannot

remember what the picture was of.

Lost Property

Item one, a mobile phone

used by Rebecca Collins

(had a hole in her pocket):

item slipped out

left on a bus seat

picked up by a boy named Mark

it impressed his friends

so his brother stole it

sold it on the street

Mark thought he'd lost it

(irony lost on him),

item then owned

by Darren Walsh, he dealt with drugs

liked to shout at the phone

and feel like a real business man

but eventually outgrew it

gave it to his nan

showed her how to use it

she tried to work it

thought she broke it

sits in her kitchen cupboard now.

Item two, a teddy

formerly of Joe Bowler,

this time the true story:

item on a table one morning

mother knocked it while cleaning

dog grabbed it

gutted it

fluff-flesh and ripped face on the floor

the mother devastated took it

but couldn’t fix it

tried to replace it

but no shops made it

so turning defeat into deceit

she said the boy had left it

lying out, carelessly

and the dog had taken it

far away

(and would you believe it!)

the boy believed her

learnt a lesson that day

he remembered forever

(mother learnt

that to lie is easier.)

Item three, a cat

owned by a Gertrude Willoughby

living lonely:

item a stray

bare skin and stinky

Gertrude nutured it

loved it

underfed it one day

stayed in bed

felt ill, she said

so item (so-called Migsy)

took to the streets in search of grub

was wooed and picked up

by a little girl named Rosy

she moved it to her room

her first pet! - called it Percy

fed it biscuit crumbs and milk

and hid it from her ma

and kept it overnight

and locked it in a box with holes when she went off to school

and on return she found the cat had made a mess

so took a cupboard draw

and made a toilet for the creature

let it have the room to wander

left a window open

Percy ran away

Rosy wailed

and asked her ma if she could have a pet

and after many tears she got one and police

found Gertrude's body

eight days after she had passed away

and lying on her belly

was her cat, starved to death.

Item four, a note

worth five pounds sterling,

from the wallet of Will Francis:

item put on kitchen sideboard

after Will had bought some breakfast

hour later

back he came

and note had gone.

All six housemates suspects

all plead no way! not guilty!

Alex (best friend) was the liar

saw five pounds just by his keys

he thought he must have left it

seized it

spent it on two Pot Noodles, bread and cheese

never told them it was him who (accidentally) nicked it

and after he'd dispensed it

money journeyed down the chain,

cashier gave the note in change

to a cute kid buying sweets

he passed it onto mother

not allowed to spend it all, you see

she gave it to the church that Sunday

reverend counted up

cashed in

the bank absorbed it

spat it into the hand of Barry Wellock

bet his best mate Tony

Hull would get promoted

lost and Tony laughed and lapped it up

then snorted some coke with the note

(stuck up Tony's, Nick's and Mickey's nostrils)

note unrolled

and bundled in the hand of a blond

put it down her thong

for the joy of the throng

she wanted them to die

but danced

then gave it to her boss

he bought some cigarettes

down the local cornershop

it got robbed (again)

assailant dropped the note

and on that street a minute later

Will Francis found five pounds

must be a sign, he said

lost it on a roulette table that night.

Item five, a child

named Max Sanderson,

mother Maggie (single):

item aged three

soundly sleeping

Maggie downstairs

cleaning

washing

ironing her tops for work that week

she checked on Max

the bed was empty

nervous, looked around

and found the front door slightly open

(didn't close it properly, distracted with those groceries)

she rushed outside and screamed his name

the wide world had negated him

neighbours - no clue

shocked

now scared

informed police

they started searching

(a notice in the local paper,

a mention in the evening news)

Maggie sat alone and waited

the case filed through authorities

but with witnesses lacking

there were no leads

(Max had been picked up two blocks down

by a woman named Vona Fin

she'd coaxed him over to her car

took him

faked his papers

gave him (for a fee)

to an adoption agency

in Ohio

made a living from this business

'mothers make easy money' was her mantra)

a length of time slipped past

and Maggie found it hard to sleep

her dreams were always finding Max

so she hid the pictures of the boy

and took long walks through busy streets

she liked the way the crowd consumed her

(Vona meanwhile got knocked up

but couldn't kill the baby, strangely

stopped her business dead it did)

and two years passed

(Max named Scott

now five years old,

healthy and happy with new family)

the case was shelved

Maggie moved away

met a man

widowed, quite old

owned a charity shop

his wish

a hand to hold

and nothing more

she concurred

(a lie, she needed a child)

they worked together in the shop

and cared for things

thrown into the wind

one time a book was handed in

by a woman

was a gift from a friend

bought from a school stall

donated by a man

who'd read the stories to his son

named Scott, before that called Max,

so when Maggie opened the book

and read a short tale

she could have been reading to her lost child

but wasn't

the book was old

hadn't sold

she closed it

binned it

left it to rot

or be found by the cycle

and carried away.

What Oscar Amor Left Behind

Off went the television and in the filthy screen was the face of Oscar Amor, dead. Three days dead, yet still he clutched tight the remote-control, oil-black but for the yellow masking-tape preventing two double A’s from falling out. The other hand was free and resting on his right leg. He had ruddy knuckles, thick and coarse with wiry hair on its verges born of an out-of-doors occupation, and anyone who ever cared to consider those hands might have supposed he ate his lunches out of plastic bags and sipped watery tea from a flask battered by the knocking of tools. But they would only be half right. His tough skin and clipper-proof nails were undermined by softer palms, the likes of which told of an early retirement. Those hands had dealt with soap, choice soap, premium soap, soap of waxy-paper and bought by someone who had a preference for soap of a certain lavender scent, saw to it that Oscar got plenty of it, used plenty of it and did appreciate it. That someone was Aggie Amor, his wife. She’d found him dirty, left him clean.  

So they’d done well for themselves, through her keeping stock: of soap, of money, of food, of good-sense. She’d brought out his better nature. But he died an old, stocky, bent man – leaning always from the pains in his chest and struggling with some secret weight. In years to come they might discover what it was by digging him up and finding there a few bars of soap lathering his damp remains. That said, Oscar didn’t die alone; at his feet was the old grey heap of his dog, Fibbs. Fibbs had remained ignorant of his owner’s death until now, preoccupied as he was with sleep and with watching television, walking about occasionally with nothing in it, like old dogs do, in that bored-with-domestic-life attitude, stolen perhaps from the bored-with-domestic-life attitude of dog owners. Fibbs was frightened by the sort of change death promised them both, he stayed out of the way and sat watching it happen to Oscar and thought to himself that perhaps he had a chance of outliving his man by some margin. They had lived together since before Aggie. The pet was something she’d tried her best to cast off but had failed and Fibbs had outlasted her too.

These days he’d taken to watching whatever Oscar was watching, he had no choice in the matter anyway. He enjoyed game-shows, and he knew that Oscar knew he enjoyed game-shows, and so he was outraged when suddenly the thing was off and Oscar’s corpse was reflected in the glass of the television set. The house was muted. The answer to that afternoon’s Countdown Conundrum ‘nosmtoowb’ was lost forever -  though he’d thought, ‘boomtowns’ and was fairly convinced he was right as he’d got it within three seconds. That’s how it worked for him - if it came to him it was fast like that or it wouldn’t come at all. Now he’d never know. Before this incident he’d been rather glad at Oscar’s silence lasting the past few days’ worth of game-shows, as the quiet was usually spoilt with ‘Don’t tell me, Fibbs! I’ll get it myself.’ This he knew not to be true.  

This state of things incensed Fibbs; that the man had gone and died without at least topping up the electricity, and that he would die too never knowing the answer to the Countdown Conundrum. Because expecting something and not getting it - for a dog at least - is an abuse, and he hated that even more than the bitch next door or the torture of getting bathed. Though the latter crime had all but ceased to be a threat since Oscar had stopped going upstairs, in order to save his legs. Now he found himself thinking that a bath wouldn’t be such a bad idea, he certainly wouldn’t protest much at having one, if it was offered. When Oscar pulled back from stroking him with, ‘That’s you. I know it is. You’ve a bad smell on you, Fibbs. Now get gone.’ He found he quite consented, but felt a strange lack of conviction in the old man’s tone, and it was at these moments of hollow anger that he found himself missing her and missed seeing her in him.

Told that he smelled badly Fibbs took walks in the dark of the house. It struck him that most of the house remained in darkness most of the time. Whereas Oscar found solace in shutting himself off from certain rooms, Fibbs felt no such desire to avoid or hide. The closed doors frustrated the dog because for him these rooms held no special worth in themselves, even if they did still seem like her space and he’d become conscious of that if he wondered  by chance into thicker carpet that was particularly good and soft to walk on. When he thought Oscar had forgotten about him he would return to the space in front of the television where Oscar would then shake off his felt slippers and hold his toes out - wriggling them lose of each other like rusty chain links, and if only they were made of metal, a quick burst of WD40 might have sorted them out for good. But they were human toes: pale, stiff and hard. With these dull tools he’d rub Fibbs’ belly like it was a hot-water-bottle and then Fibbs had a time of it, he’d always been a ticklish dog. Oscar laughed too, bereft of any actual laugh; rather it was an involuntary gasping action. Fibbs felt close to Oscar at these times. He felt they were not too dissimilar after all.  

To his surprise the house did not remain silent for long in the absence of sound from the television. Fibbs soon began to perceive the irregular operations of the fridge, which seemed to be struggling now in desperate tones as it tried to carry on without any power and manage its empire on the food economy of crumb-regions and slick yellow rivers formed by accidents with the milk. Oscar never had any food in the house. He was quite content in his own way and to the acute annoyance of everyone else who happened to be around at dinner time - to eat a sliced tomato on a saucer with salt, ‘for taste’. Or fill up on a cup of boiled water with a broken Oxo cube inside and plenty of pepper, ‘for taste’. Into this soup he’d say, ‘I’ll make a meal of anything me, Fibbs,’ and then he’d give his loyal pet a wink - which made the old dog nervous for the meat on his own bones.

Fibbs went into the kitchen, his paws made little taps on the stonework until he reached two shallow porcelain bowls on a tray by the back door. These were patterned in fine blue paint depicting nursery rhymes in several stations. Fibbs much preferred them to be obscured with the soft biscuits and jellies of a meal and the water to be filled to the brim. He remembered how he used to splash the liquid about the stone as he lapped it up from these bowls, but he soon perfected a method of taking it carefully, and now he hardly ever spilt a drop. He wasn’t a greedy dog and like Oscar he ate very little anyway so that his food had lasted. But now there was no water left and the food had gone except for a sticky glisten, as though a passing snail had taken the last of it. He went back through the kitchen, ducking underneath the table when there at his feet he found ice-cold water and noticed then that the fridge had been leaking. It formed a great puddle stretching out from behind the fridge, under a wall-unit and now reached the table. This he drank, not caring whether or not he splashed it about.

In the living room he lay down. He looked hard at the deep set blue eyes of Oscar Amor, which he thought sad now and in retreat. He couldn’t remember if they’d always been like that or whether death had made him stranger. He saw the all but useless legs below the tartan blanket and a single fine line of black, petrified liquid working down to the floor. It struck Fibbs that perhaps it wouldn’t be too long before someone found them there. Oscar had family enough, from before Aggie, who paid visits to their father once in a while to check on his health and make certain measurements in certain rooms leaving carpet samples here and there by accident. Fibbs saw that the old man had lived life so completely that he’d really left nothing behind. And after all Fibbs was with him right until the end. And that’s how the dog saw it - if it came to him it was fast like that or it wouldn’t come at all.