Gazing 

You can see 4000 stars with the naked eye
but my eye only wants to see you naked.

We are as astronomically improbable as satellites 
colliding but it seems possible from Dingle. 

Forget the fireworks at the Puck fair, 
we’ll lap up the Milky Way on an empty beach, 
the lack of light illuminating what’s obscured in cities.

We pair of shooting stars, winging our way 
across Galaxies, flashing brilliantly for a wink, 
we caught it, we thrill at the celebrity of the sky.  

Patience will be paid by twinkles, eyes crease,  
trails sail our ships to safe shores.


9. Gazing

Ancestral Sheets

Under these ancestral sheets we construct a fort
castle together turrets from the cushions of hearts
that pricked outside the city walls for too long.

We play house, beneath these childhood sheets
that my parents slept on, that they packed for us
like brides on our first night, for our journey,  

to discovering, what laughing really feels like, 
the way daddy's bedtime stories said it should be, 
we knew they were make believe but believed anyway. 

That tooth fairy love, that nestles under pillows
wakes you in the morning with milky kisses. 

We once thought love shifted in magic mirrors, 
hid in hedgerows, mazes, ashtrays and bottles. 

We found the map, dug it out after all the exs 
that marked us but never found the spot, 
the buried treasure, that we thought we had lost, 
that we didn't even know we were looking for 
until we found it, gem-like, sparkling security.

It’s as if I’ve been drinking instant my whole life 
and you’ve handed me a fairytale cappuccino.

It’s Goldilocks love, never too much or too little, slipping in, 
when I’m not looking, please eat all my porridge.

I want to rest my weary legs, climb in, tuck 
these sheets into a den of duvets and birdsong.


8. Ancestral Sheets

Ogham Poem

I thought love was weatherbeaten out of me 
Standing so long unread on a boggy hillside. 
Stokes notched on my core indescifrable. 
Scripts and scores of love sanded by time.

But you found me, all salmon skies 
and lighthouses, signposting a sea 
once obscured by crossed lines.
Giving direction on a holy mountain, 
your grooves depicting a dynasty.

I curl into you, an unending Celtic knot 
surviving crosses, long boats, Red Coats 
and balaclavas. We carve our seam, 
study a secret sign language that
communicates through centuries. 

In the etches of your smile 
pointed fingers are hand signals, 
Red faces flower into roses, 
fists crumble into shakes. 
The dials of our eyes trace each other 
like we lead somewhere, together. 

10. Ogham Poem

'Just like a Pearl'
I long to conserve you in the undisturbed channels
of the Owenkillew, where vibrant pearls cling in the flux 
of secluded upper reaches. You are a rare freshwater mussel, 
not the old veneer that erodes like a river bed. 
I want to wear you always, treasure you, not as a life ring 
but an heirloom, at home on the confluence of you collarbone. 

12. Just Like A Pearl

What’s this? 

It's stopping 
biting my nails after a lifetime 
of self consumption,
cuticles meandering back. 

Your nipples, 
radio dials tuned to my tongue,
conceiving poems on your belly 
and birthing them instantly.

I’m studying,
the landscape of your cheeks, 
the descent of your nose 
the contours of your eyebrows.

I’m a cartographer
mapping your features, folding 
into creases, charting a future 
of our bed bolted to the floor.


13. What's This?

Because you made me a mix tape

You make me want to start a new book
to be fresh for you, so my grubby soles
won’t stain our bed sheets with cliches
of past connections that didn’t stick like this. 

Even though my old book still had some leaves left 
there is no order, just higgledy-piggidy half thoughts.
I start anew to begin this properly, the right way up, 
a continuous stream of sense not the skipping of pages 
like a CD that’s been played out.

You make me want to go back to cassette tapes 
and VHS, bulky formats that last, bring childhood 
nostalgia in the hoops of their ribbons. I’m seeking
sellotape to seal the severs in our choruses,

so we can slip into that hifi, that VCR, 
that we once bowed before like an altar 
all scabby kneed and doll eyed, acquiescing 
to the beat, motion, the dream that one day 
we would be the ribbon enthralling other children 
to believe beyond their boundaries, to record 
and encase their lives in plastic to be listened
to living rooms in distant lands. 

Let me slip my pencil into your wheels, 
unwind the broken things, stick myself 
over the cracks till the scar is just a reminder 
to yourself invisible to all the world but me. 

Let me loop you back in on yourself, 
coil your memories into an orbit, 
so we can play again. 

11. Because You Made Me A Mixtape

Sandwoman

Can I be your Skype sand sprinkler?  
Salt your dreams with chance meetings, 
sweet arrivals, sandcastles with en-suites, 
fresh sheets, trays so we can eat crumb free, 
in bed, perfect cups of tea, in-jokes, those looks. 
Then wifi wakes you with sirens screaming in my city.

I apologize that your subconscious cast me in a dark light 
last night. Had me stand you up when I would lay you down 
on a duvet of security only wake you because you asked me 
to stir you from the Sandman dreams of previously ripped things.

I'll feather kiss your eyelids, on all our shared mornings, compensation for
the inconveniently curved Earth and wide ocean, that's a scale to fathom - our love.


14. Sandwoman

Have I treated you like my garden?

Accidental tomatoes self-seeding 
in the wormery my sister made for me, 
the unplanned pumpkins germinating 
in Paris of their own accord, reaching for 
the crevices of a garden left barren from 
over-jealous cutting back, fertile ground
I didn’t think I’d have in Spring and here we are
in Autumn and the fruit is fat, growing regardless
of lazy watering, shallow soil and long absences. 

It came by chance from across seas, so easy 
in the Summer finding time for tender shoots.
Now we hang on for harvest, hoping to eat 
before the first frost. Wondering if it’s ripe, 
pruning the excess so energy flows to fruit.

I stake myself beside you, supporting growth.
The brick letting you lean, focus on blooming. 
I’m no flower sender, I’m a vegetable tender. 
This bed wasn’t sewn by mistake. I will rake, 
chase squirrels that nibble on soft innocence, 
water with gentleness, kiss roots, shine smilies,
photosynthesise love into a life to garden together.

15. Have I Treated You Like My Garden?

Performed in May 2015 at the Monday Night Cure in Derry, check it out every last Monday of the month Sandino's https://www.facebook.com/MondayNightCure

Derry - Monday Cure - Wee Irish Tour

Performed at If Walls Could Talk - Monthly poetry night hosted by the delightful Melizarani T. Selva at the fab Gaslight Cafe in KL - check it out! https://www.facebook.com/ifwallscouldtalkkl

catbrogan