For Neil, on his bday
Barcelona is a sweeping mess, sweat
and sunshine any day other than this.
Instead Primavera Sound is a state,
a thickening, a grey and heavy noise,
The world gathers against the coming rain
under an airport hanger break section
by Gastro Kebabs & Fries, I find you
dressed in cream like a linen moon, like a
vagrant priest, like if Colonel Sanders lived
long enough to have seen smart casual.
You turn to me within a picture frame,
face like an opening palm, proclaiming:
I have absolutely shit myself.
There are so many things between us all
that I remember and more I do not,
memories fading, the darkening sea
between here and then like the slow retreat
of a Spanish portaloo, collapsing
through prisms of steady, filtering time.
But are they not in our heads? Upwardly
mobile bits, camping trips and Voi bikes,
laughing, kissing, the boiler room strobe light.
A thousand stories like Spain in a space
deeper than the mind, a thousand moments
that barely matter, single grains of sand
gathering across a future beachhead,
along those boyish features revealing
the spread of a slowly widening smile.
