Murder mile
I saw girls in ball gowns drinking wine on murder mile,
traffic passing,
the great round circus where we drank beer in your flat before
still there off the high street.
I crossed it holding hands with girls I can’t remember and
talked about my friend from Argentina.
The Caribbean men yelling by the chicken shop.
You never think of now til now,
one room begets another just the same,
one life itself, again
but something moves, things evolve
and we forget, thank god.
These streets all tapered into non-specific
City when I got here first, consulting maps. Houses and shops and sky beyond.
Stories tapered too / the known-tale-courtyard
and the end: flat shops shut up, painted onto wooden boards
The scenery of ending, hiding in the future from the now.
God that desperate lust to write won’t go until
you give up hope and then at last /can/ write, dispossessed
and outsidered, lost,
your legs take you, and what you hunted
is with you everywhere.
/
the city’s silvered-over to the skyline
We drive to Primrose Hill and walk over the hill
beneath the rain. You’re cold. Before a friend
was talking on and on about his money and
his records til I made him stop the car and I got out.
It rained then too, the wet boughs shining and
the grass soft underfoot, relieved. Soft pressure and percussion
overhead, I trespassed through the emptiness that
humans hate, the grey skies sighing sympathetic
and the telecom tower misted in a veil like memories of the
80s. You and I are imposters here I think
beside her, far away as
deserts and the sea, hand in cold hand,
the rain comes down around us like before
and the city’s silvered-over to the skyline.
/
Out of food and you
Out of food and you fading
we lay down dying
thin, white and weightless
as a breath.
The tumblers made tall
shapes in the mortuary
the cap-man peering down in
mock concern before
collapsing dash and
cry
twists claps and
colour,
they all lithe and well-fed.
Our windows then were
televisions to the
sorry east end pale
light and lost souls’ hustle
blue sirens bansheed by
and lorries stole
heavy cargo off like
rockets fresh from
Palestine, the passing pressure
tightening ribs in crushing waves.
I wanted you in your skirt and
satin knickers with your classic unwell
face straight from the 19th century
pneumonia days of sweats and worrying in waistcoats
but it felt too wrong
too happening elsewhere in
places we weren’t
and people we weren’t
and I didn’t want to
wake you.
Where we were
the ashy sheet stretched
over the chipboard frame
—like Heat tales of
anorexics’ faces tight stretched over bone —
stopped it wrinkling into
valleys as we slept.
My boots in the
kitchen, faced the oven
where had I
bacon, or money for the gas
I would stand.
I saw myself there
In them — weighted and
bright — missed him — felt
dead and old, alone and
jagged while you tossed
your head like black salad
humming occasional
songs of drunk girls
glee and laughing Muslim
kids walking to mosque with
wizened grandfather kind and
slow-moving, the beggars and
hookers, pimps at the bus
stop picking out hotspots;
and here are we, lost as stories.
/
Empty City
When the use-everything drove there, the signs
it strangers breathing again. Moving, room-source: smashing garden,
woods gone to dead long town burn
chosen the endless thought
the sad strange forwards
beginning through, outside (read: room)
imagine garden-thousands going home,
they wouldn’ how, or Why
/
[For Carolina]
From your room the windows bracket the city.
The light rises at dawn and falls like a sigh into night.
The wind blows and we shiver at the thought of outside,
rain is lost on the glass, the lightning flashes
and the thunder roars and rolls over us, fading into silence beyond.
In here time ceases, we cease it, it tries but can’t reach us.
You type and I smoke, you talk and I kiss you, we hide in the dark
And outside the city lights mark out their loneliness, great spaces between.
From your room the windows bracket the city.
The light rises at dawn and falls like a sigh into night.
/
Porcelain girl
Porcelain girl
……………….. my tiny pupil
slip
not
……….your foot into your
………………..gauze-purse all stuck through
with ashy silver
………foils pointed
through needle-tips drip run
……………………………in your ink into our lost infinities
………this dispersion space
and soft recovery sofa
………hospital bed
……………………………………. in that old room
………out where the shouting
and you safe and I safe and you
…………………take not the glittering edge
but of wit
…………………………………………………..to write with
………..nor do you
scrawl releasing air for safety’s sake
………..or stir my tea with that dark spoon taken
………………………………………for our cups of tea in prospectus
animate
…………………..conversation and mothers dress or curtain picking
and grandfathers shouting at the dog
……………………………………….in fond secure passion outburst
for tis a sad thing
………..my lost one
your deathbed power tools strewn across
some-open shirted sweating desk by candlelight on lakes we drowned in
……………………………………….. dreams
defeat all our childishness
and with their written purpose rule our loneliness
—Martin Dean
NC
Martin Dean is a writer and Poetry Editor at Minor Literature[s] (@minorlits). Follow him on Twitter @martin_c_dean