Not All Things Happen

The moon was not full on that fateless night.

Two would-be lovers missed their only cue,

and pristine sheets remained intact.

No glass was thrown in anger at a wall;

the red wine was not spilled upon the carpet;

and blows were not exchanged.

No feast was held in honour of an honoured guest;

no speech was made; no glasses charged and raised;

relief’s sighed exhalation broke no tension.

Unwritten poems roamed through restless heads,

but found no place to rest upon the page;

those undiscovered truths lay undiscovered.

Crash Landing

In the museum

of long since childhood,

two eternal six-year-old boys

walk on the Moon.

They tire of collecting moonrocks

and moonflowers

and even moonbooks,

turn their space helmets

back-to-front,

and see how many stairs

they can blindly jump

before injury

brings them back to Earth

with a bump.

Eyes

I wash my hands with brillo pads,

removing all those baked on stains

     and too much skin.

‘Lady MacBeth at two o’clock!’

the cry goes up. I shall not wear

     white gloves again.

A Catholic priest is much excited.

‘Stigmata wounds!’ she shouts, and phones

     the latest Pope.

‘The latex Pope?’ I clean my ears

out with an awl, while trying not

     to lose my grip.

While trying not to lose my grip,

I almost lose my hearing for

     a second time.

The nurse at A and E suggests

I make no mention of my eyes

     in any poem.

Dances with Strangers

You walk along an English High Street

and dance with the first stranger

who doesn’t look deranged.

Their face shows uneasy surprise,

as if you are telling the story of how your garden gate

was once treated for depression with creosote.

You stare at the only patch of blue

in an English sky,

willing it to spread, like a virus which eats grey clouds.

There is no sign of your erstwhile dancing partner.

Apologising to the pavement, you get down on one knee

and propose to a phrase of birdsong

whose reply you cannot decipher.

You dance with all the mad thoughts in your head

until their feet ache.

You dance and you dance and you dance

in case the music is still playing.