In his mind, at least, loneliness was a choice.

Those who required life support from doughnut-shaped women

held the defeated grey look of an incomplete jigsaw.

 

His agent called him once to pitch decayed ideas:

“It’s a comedy of errors about love,

a glitzy televised drama set in the arctic circle.”

 

A circus tent came loose from its moorings

and flew away in a storm.

The tent crashed outside his flat,

 

crippling several clowns

and killing a beautiful ballerina. A believer in fate,

he took a date with a medieval re-enactor .

 

It was customary in her culture

that on dates both parties wear armour

so as to evoke an irresistible sense of mystery.

 

As he watched the cage fighters, he was plagued

by the sensation

of having been forced into a crate.

 

Her hand on his knee was a robot’s hand.

Her voice was a robot’s voice.

Her words were spades clattering

 

down the trumpet of his ear,

devoid of even the meaning

possessed by a drunk.

 

The lukewarm paralysis of sex yet to come

worked its mandibles down his shoulders.

He said nothing but quietly wiped the blood from his visor.

 

 

Fate Beach

You were browsing eBay for a bargain toaster when you found it:

the houndstooth scarf, still looped in the shape of his wrists.

Over time the inner catacombs of the scarf had grown their own bronze cities.

Each tiny city held a populace of ghosts.

 

This sparked off memories of strolling through the coastal town

where you found the chicken carcass and discovered the meaning of empathy.

You began to wonder how far coincidence can stretch before it becomes fate,

when each day contains a million carefully crafted moments.

 

In the queue at Tesco you were engaged in ogling the checkout girl

so missed the ballerina pirouetting in the car park.

Beneath the static floodlights and wedding veil of snow

she could have just appeared from Christmas 1945.

 

Years later you found yourself on a beach,

stunned beyond words by the blue and gold of winter.

Your head was wreathed in a cloud of your own menthol breath.

Distracted by nature’s breasts, you missed the ice cream van sinking in the sand.

 

Tourists spotted the vendor leaning out of his window,

frantically waving two 50p ice cream cornets in the air, at which point

you sucked on a lemon and lime lolly and walked casually towards the pier.

Had you not moved at that precise moment

you would surely have been killed by the gypsy’s runaway horse.

Words

They’re making words in the factories. Slogans. Catch-phrases.

Sucked sweets, rainbow melts rolling off conveyor belts.

Language is a dumpster full of broken toy spaceships.

 

The photographer jogs down to the river beneath an inverted sky;

orange clouds, black pylons, the world a negative.

He develops his work in the water but the paper is splattered and glows

 

with a neon confetti of words,

obscuring his prize-winning snap of an ice lolly

melting on the steps of a museum.

 

Today people talk like caricatures of real people.

It is also popular to say “Get over yourself,”

as if your beliefs were hurdles, and you the clumsy athlete.

Matthew's poems have appeared in Poetry Wales, One Night Stanzas and Pomegranate, with work forthcoming from Fuselit. He lives in Cardiff and is addicted to the Final Fantasy series.

Cadaverine Magazine 2010