I hate cigarettes
Their smell makes me spit.
Their cancer-causing, artery-blocking
Trade in human slavery
Makes me ill just to think of it.

My ancient grandad, 55,
Whose chest Creaked like the dry floorboards
In Jarrett’s shop, sweet-jar lit
With tooth-rotting, diabetes-inducing
Culpable pleasure.

But I love you
And smoking releases you, for a moment,
From anxiety-causing, self-harming
Accidents of genetics
That’s all part of what makes you You.

So I’ll learn
The difference between
Flake and Ready-Rubbed, Nicaraguan or Dutch,
Blue-Flow or Cheapest 20
And help you buy them, like I once bought you sweets.


There is no word
for Listening to you say the same thing
over and over and over and over
circling the room, chopping out chunks of heart
and if not me, then who?

There is no word
for clearing out the empty nest bedroom,
finding the tube of Strawberry Durex Play
covered in fluff under your daughter’s bed,
like a Pritt stick with the top off.

There is no word
For not minding; after all, he made her happy
until it snapped her like a twig realizing
he wasn’t going to be the one,
before she glued herself back together.

There is no word,
Although the Greeks had about 20,
pondered by sculpted men with bead bag beards;
But they weren’t lashing out
at you because I’m sad about him.

There is no word
For The tutting stares in Farmfoods
When Her smile is like the Northern Lights,
As she gently lugs her Special Boy’s siren deadweight,
Her hair all snatched back in a second.

There is no word
For watching someone fade as their life
peels off like a wet label, as this
feeling drags its clueless club foot
up endless stairs, foaming at the mouth.


So I can forget knowing anything.
It makes as much sense as his wife’s cancer
or some controversy in the chip shop queue,
or you taking turns pushing each others’ wheelchair.

No word.
But if I take a deep breath, there it is,
like us waving sparklers at a frosty night sky,
crackling crazily for a few giddy seconds,
burning trails on the back of our eyes.