King Pin

Surely not the 7th already. A coronation in the morning

And at the garden, I’m scraping away at life coming up between paving stones.

Time passes. It rains. Myself and the other volunteers shelter and share pleasantries.

I feel like air. No imposition, no friendship, no drama, no mistake.

Nothing but an easy-flowing, self-sufficient, unattached ache.

A fox sleeping like a kitten. Oh, another. Fox that is.

To think they must be friends. Must be lovers.

Old lovers who reside in the grass. Whose touch is incidental.

On Friday I go north to meet the strange things I put in a box. To look at them fondly from a safe distance.

Now the sun has cast an eye on me, all vitamins and Spareroom adverts,

And window pen trivia with Chris and Abhi. The days, the daze, goes on.

Thinking of Julia telling me to chew upon the sorrel.

A stem so sour and sweet. Snapped and champed until there’s orange between my teeth.

We were somewhere in Burgess Hill. By a strange two-storey conservatory

And a monstrous monkey puzzle tree.

Crouched amongst the cowslip and spurge with iPads, as the tawny owls screeched.

This morning washing my hair of it. Clean hair, clean sheets, clean speech.

Reading about a tribe in the Amazon who live without futures.

While I’m drawing houses, smelling bread. Willing the sun to smooth my dimpled legs.

Or the moon. A crescent holding darkness like a nib of a pen

Bleeding ink and soaking everything.

Woke up to movement again. Across the bedroom, across the estate.

Woke up to distance again between New Cross and the garden gate.

A pearly lump of wine in my glass on a desk as they all close up.

Feels like the start of something, or the souring of buds,

As I, a pickler, a stickler, turn our sweet time into bitter capers.

And that’s all I have to say on the matter of coronations.