manchester airport

someone I knew
drew in her nest breath

by fiber repose

beyond the full December hotel
like a covered annexe
through the empty airport

inter lube steel

gull

viaduct travellators,
under its engineered roof
slung bottle-bin

night-lit, nearly empty,  clear my head

of its hall of trolleys



I took a snowy breath; I paused

and glanced out to the terminals;

taxi-ing craft, becalmed so late;

upward, as if to a belfry:

the southern night sky
and its distance; a pucker of the folds:
vegetation, fire, or birds?

something happened to dismay us




you looked via cool
                mile-long ringway return
boy
body disembarked onto
castle shelves

came ads for greenspace
               back-lit caffeine hit

New Scientist rail and a rhythm of taxi phones
               Swissair: continuous, background resonance
see you again
   of something.
Mile of ring-pull warmth

gull of the hood jogging breeze
a shoe-in scarf

cabin-crew heels, claret lipstick
      if you switched to E-lites

panes flashed as I passed:
             the constant chuckle in the vents

you touching me drunk

          faster by the glass, postcard
serving Broughton Cliff, Kersal Moor

pick up my beat and flail with the spirit of seventy fire
           flare
           like one in sunshot tins beside a deck
Tulane Wilaayat has shooting boots
it's yesterday once more
you're thirsty and hungry
you're shrivelled
oh! cheerleader
and pip sliding
on a box of wings

as if to the tune of
"Bats in the Belfry"
lowered to execute
the tiers in old hall


I lay and smoked... around me, the night thickened.

in the lake mist, in a clearing

the spiral of a buzzard

spread fan, wisp of a dawn fire,

as if the momentum of the ringway

drew up into the dark

a pilgrim's spiral

I rested in the hugeness of triliphons

celestial board-meetings

flecked wingbeats


Is it summer, mamma?