I’m writing I love you in slow motion
that should make it last longer
it’s a little superstition of mine
pen cannot justify feelings
as intense as this
but I shall try
wrote my first love poem at six
and 9 degrees in the playground
by the bikes tin shack shells
we had ink wells reserved for numeric tells
but I didn’t use them
and in carved desks, scribed the graffitied dregs of lovers before

I ignored their writing style-

alice 4 dave
shaz luvs stu
dez was here 78
andrew draper sniffs glue

scribed with the thigh dig of compass
the yard bullies stab you
for feeling
the tattooed dears and darlings
I ignore them, pain is ugly, love fits much more
snugly with my Basildon bond
I steal Biro and blue tack
and pop love hearts on the kick me backs
I’m gentle like that.
they say its
soft to say I love you
hard to cry when they shove you
gotta be strong so you can tell her
gotta rescue her
so you can flood her ear and swell her
with all the fantastic words
better than the letter, I don’t think so
words are gone, cant be caught or traced, gone
written could be wrong
in foreign hands
pass it round the class room
my love letter
laugh out loud, shape out the conjecture
of stupidity
soppy me they say
yet the classroom mockers
were the first to sway when a broken heart
had a way with them.