In the loom of a broken cassette tape

If rain were ink and clouds paper

And if seconds were pens and minutes, letters

I would write you a novel a decade long

And pour you a couplet a sunrise strong,

Till the dull grey morning

was poet (and painter)

And your inspiration longed

Among waterlogged ballpoint ballads,

Would be the 10:02 back to childhood

A last desire in fading Fire-brigade

Till our windscreen wipers

couldn't fathom

February's vernacular verse

And the battery of who we were was dead

Jumper-lead all me to memory, the tongue to taste of then,

As days are drivers and we all passengers

In middle-lane rainfoetry, brailled to sing along,

On the Costa of del propia to the rhythm of risk and reward

Unplug the electric windows, let us be open to the elements

If only the sound of the ocean could be

What you hear when you lift a shell to your ear

It's true contents not the sea of course

Not what else did you think but the roar of blood confined in a spiral casing

The cadence of silence in a wind-filled fist

The surf of voice seeking an ear

(it's hard to hear your own self speak

when seas are storms are streets are gulls)

And somewhere inside it all a moon ready to break

No wonder then when put to your ear

You hear only waves of yourself

But though there is turmoil between tides

The ocean is not its waves

So the heart is not its currents

And the soul is not its shadow.

Between the bookends of a blood-red sunset

I would write you a bible between blinks

If sunset were paper and dusk the ink

And the language of light

My scripture to think,

With every thought a heartbeat

And every heartbeat a breath

And every breath a prayer for daylights death

In the dialect of dusk and the dialogue of dawn...

What I mean to say is:

There's a trembling in the

telephone wires this morning

and it sounds like a song on the tip of a songbird

Cold enough to climb

up a throat with forget-me-nots

Till it sits on the tongue like a kiss on the cheek

Of a cheek that was turned when the kiss was not wanted

But beautiful still

in its own braille of bitten back butterflies

Beautiful but broken

like the hymn you hum

When the choir is gone and the congregation carpets

With the congregation carpets of half-muttered half-hopes

That half-formed and half-lost this morning

in the half-light before

Sparked like a sparrow spurned against a windowpane

Of a windowpane world that's half-seen and half-seen through

You know the song I mean:

It's the one that you sing

When the song that you want to sing

Would be sung only in the singing

And the silence that follows is a silence that knows

Your secrets by heart, and sings them back to you

Jukebox of shadows & vinyl reptilian.

Play me again like a broken machine.

I'm still here, between the grooves, between the first letter

of your name and the last breath

I took before I could say it.

Replay.

Rewind.

Repeat.

Till we are static (again)

Till we are dust

In the space between a sigh

And what the sigh intended to say.