Poetry Blog by Tom

Picking you up to go driving
I’d get there early to watch you get ready
both seventeen and tangled
in that unspoken thing between us
Cruising the looping country lanes
in those dim headlight beams
That was our place, alone together at last
Two teenagers, eyeing each other sideways
and wondering who each of us would be
would you always stay right there
would you always be
in the car with...

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Returning to that rented house
once we’d split our stuff
casting an eye over
the now barron landscape of our love
I brush away the mess we left
touch up the paint in the hallway

One thing we forgot to pack
one thing you forgot to take
that flower box outside the bedroom window
I bought for you while working away
you planted seeds and raised them up
gave them names with handwritten lab...

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The smell of that stuff
they use to wash the water clean
it gets up your nose
when tired from swimming

Me and my friend
he teaches me all these things
Like how to keep a secret 
airtight

It’s a drink inside a flask
you don’t tell, even if they ask
and I never said no
but I never said yes

Why does everything here
smell clean
but me...

Busy bare ankles glimpsed
In the gap bel...

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Once all our honey has been spread
once the little moments are learned by heart
routine a debt that stalks our steps
and suggestions nag more than they ought
then the waiting boat will take me
to a wooden shack by the ocean
and there, I’ll start again, alone

Once your touch no longer prickles
once our conversations are to walls not through them
no sound but a ticking house that counts u...

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In these surprising years beyond expiry
forty and not failing
the journey remains largely painless
and brightly lit
wrapped up in love
in beds
hearts and books

Pull this feeling tight around me
another year of moving on
from all that didn’t seem to fit
closer to who I want to be
tangled up in love
in beds
hearts and books

All these lines, I can’t help but keep weaving
on the loo...

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Those stories we swap
in the heat of the night
Those secrets we share
on the cool mattress springs
Beyond the ears of the world
the prying eye of the sun
that’s where you’ll feel
our friendship in full flight

In real life
In real life

Those laughs that catch us
loose and disarmed
in a parked car at the riverside
Those conversations deep
that push through to the bone
binding our ...

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Come on, come on, close!
Won’t these lift doors ever close?
You breathe into my mouth
my fingers invade your finery
I was hypnotised across the table
by the explicit silk of your bare shoulders
Now hot air slathers at my forearms
as our legs entangle their thick reef-knot
Behind this crashing waterfall
no one can hear us moan
as you’re bitten for the thrill of it

And in this lift, we ...

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A hyper-sensitivity of feeling
your art connects across the senses
The roughness of ancient bark
beneath gentle fingertips
A kiss from rock-pool water
warm against bare ankles

A double exposure
a murmuration
it's poetry, the sensuality
the sheer never timid beauty
lensed so gracefully
with such assurance and dexterity

The texture, a waking daydream
a cloak of fog, shaft of sunligh...

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