Stories of the places I was when I truly fell in love with music.
A guitar
Electrified— like any glancing
contact would bring down trees—
we shook together. It was too 3-D.
It wouldn’t sit on the sofa
(full of protrusions),
so I laid my sweaty palm
across the frets until
we could breathe more easily.
I had often tried to cease
breathing— to extinguish
without drama.
Now an ache hummed,
pushing back through
the thin skin on my fingertips.
Regulator.
The Music Box
Faith no more – Everything’s Ruined
We are already drizzle-soaked when they come
to unlock the doors. Indifferent to our uniforms,
they let us through, and the room expands
to a laser-sliced haze. I try to walk slowly
to the bar— my legs make staggered bounds.
We demand beers, but the woman pulling them
insists we say please. As we settle on a bench
so dark I have to feel my way to its edge,
people start to file in for our perusal.
Hours pass like that, all darting eyes
and picking at Diamond White labels until
six, seven, have settled, gurgling.
It’s still dancing when it’s skipping
on the spot, and I try to make sure I hit
the ground on the off-beat, recounting
“I’m alone” to myself, with each strike.
The night is over
Faith no more – A small victory
Crack the filter so menthol seeps.
One last draw before it bounces in the gutter.
Huddle in the open air like you’re straining to hear.
Drizzle is sweat off the ceiling.
Cold back shivered off.
Wade in each swig.
Leap with your arms out and lift him off the ground.
Splayed limbs reel in front of a taxi.
Pulling away.
Back at home
Alice in Chains – Would?
House party
Nirvana – Paper Cut
The morning after
Dinosaur Jr – Drawerings
It’s exhausting to hold still, so
I wind up
to movement
like a second hand
held eye-close,
pulling slightly
before it judders
to the next tooth.
The air sits on my ears
until they ring
from the long decaying static
of Drawerings,
and my breathing
is shallow,
with a tiny
wheeze on each tail.
There is no analogy for
shame, shame, shame—
just a word chanted
to steady me,
so solid as he cycles
Do you know
that it’s alright?
through his nose.
They never turn the white lights on
The Breeder – Cannonball
I nearly lost you
Screaming Trees – Nearly Lost You
I arrive in the new city,
affliction ready.
You sit on a worn bench
in the windowless pub.
I keep away from streetlights,
carving out the danger.
You ramble the playing fields, an eye out
for kids who might want your walkman.
I expose the studied
aimlessness of screaming guitars.
You perch on the kerb, with cars
whooshing by, and think about vacancy.
Between lobsided lips
PJ Harvey – Man-size
So close to a break
from dampening.
Growling the air
between lopsided lips—
man-size.
She marches to the mic
with one shoulder down,
swallowing, deafening.
Grotesquely alive,
I try to refute it for
months, re-running the
episode on the VCR.
Each time, in that clatter
back to a flat line,
I’m trampled on the down beat
of a snapping snare.
The ferris sun
REM – Nightswiming
Where we sat there was nothing
except cut down crops
and the soil. I worried
that I’d ruin my shirt,
but I stretched out
my curved spine
and whispered in your ear.
Shallow breath while
an oboe drifts into the strings.
The profiled line of your features
gathered to a smile,
as the orchestra re-assembled
under a ferris sun,
and I had mastered
affection for a moment.
Eject
Smashing Pumpkins – Quiet
A little shudder
when it begins,
blocked. Even.
The pious flash
of your shining
teeth. Closed
eyes. A square
wave effaces
3 minutes 42.
eject
We laugh at the force
of striking strings. Diverted
by shouts on the playground,
you don’t see me frown
that you won’t
spend decades hunting
for a resonant tone.
The Ferris Sun (II)
REM – Sweetness follows
She wasn’t so unusual.
I wasn’t so good at curling a shape
around her fringe.
“All those poems are about
you”. Artful boy— cello croaks,
peeking from under the airy synth.
A moving sentiment, elevated by
that half-listened-to lesson on Shelley.
So, yes,
her freckles sparkled
and her hazel eyes gleamed
and she beamed until I welled up
and I can still see a vision of it, fervent.
You’re not going to get me through this, are you
Dinosaur Jr – Get Me
My spine curves
impossibly
into the apex
of my seat. Knees above head,
so the chairback in front cradles.
Only one line (about some
failing relationship)
is audible
on these shitty headphones.
I swell and sputter,
the intricacies of
watching love trickle
year over year, out of sight.
Agony soars through the lazy solo,
until the bus pulls in,
and I move down the aisle
with my eyes to the floor.
You’re living all over me, on vinyl
Dinosaur jr – Little fury things
But which of us is which?
A— Me, a swaddling blanket
over your shielded torso
and those eyes.
Barely able to straighten
under the cloy,
you gasp and wriggle.
B— You, the shadow over my longing,
forcing my eyes down
into my gut.
A sublime nearness,
and bask in that warming
sun, full of easy life.
You gave me the record like a gift.
I had no way to play it,
but I would stare at the love it showed —
ferocious pencil strokes as our bodies
arced and rounded each other.
There’s only one way of life
The Levellers – One way
Tripping backwards in circles
on a dusty stage,
sitting on a steady fiddle rise,
bring her letter back to me.
When it left my fist
there was no thud as
that ball of bulky paper
lodged in a tall privet.
Rot there, in the rain,
still burning with
quiet platitudes.
I never opened it,
and you could have told me
your search was over, etcetera,
limp red hair sodden around your cheeks.
I’ll hurt him now so he’ll know
Sebadoh – Jealous Evil
The skin on my forearm is like a singed branch,
dotted with bic pen craters and scratched lines.
It’s mine to emboss, along with my textbooks.
In the common room at break
I’m not wrapped up in myself,
but the acoustic’s low E rattles hard
against the fretboard, dark
as anything I’ve ever heard.
Quite mutterings and eyes down.
Staring out of the wire-threaded glass
towards the window cleaners, I’m sure
they are as content as I am miserable.
I say this is beautiful. I think you are strange.
Belly – Low Red Moon
This is the last blazon of
your artless face.
Stammering a lovely feeling
over and over:
The electric sight of you.
The flat earth around you.
Stately.
Annihilating.
Freckled?
I don’t remember
those kinds of details—
could be you were pink cheeked,
or perhaps dour.
No doubt of the wailing song
of the Leslie though,
ringing under the grind
of my eyes.
Decades ago
Sebadoh – Skull
Rescued from love for
an evening, three old friends meet
in your back garden, and our pulses
settle under scars.
Stretched out together on the lawn,
air warps through the barbecue’s heat.
Our Mancunian summer
will last until the darkness.
I watch clouds
and listen to Lou Barlow sing
that love will gently
take my skull for a ride.
We have the solidarity of loneliness
to stamp adulthood. That phrase lasts
until I wake up, decades later, sweating,
having dreamt of the end of my marriage.
This collection launched from me trying to reflect on…
That Night with Golding 