when i outstretch my arms to you
from this finger, right out                                      




                   ­                                             here







                   to this finger
                      right out







here






and i say
“this is how much i love you”
i mean to say
“look at all this space i’m taking up —
this is the only space i’ll ever be able to take up, in fact.
just look at it. this 1.7 meter radius which
perceives — envelops — all this life
inside of it.
big warm house
me with my arms stretched out, saying:
from here — to here —
big warm house with all this fire in it.
big warm house with all this light in it,
big door open wide to let more in.
everything i ever touch
everything i make
everything i read, love, devour
each peach plum and pear
each kiss
forehead ones
big strawberry picnic ones
little dog snout ones
ones i do without lips at all:
looking at you
in your cool
orange shade magic
making me fizzy, for example.
little red cheek from crying, from kissing, from blushing
little duck swimming in
soda water.
all of that
all of this
fits within this 1.7 meter hug
and with it
from this finger
to this finger
i mean to say

“hello, please come in,
welcome home”

love you like cold wet macadamia hair
i love you like a boot itch
love you like the cucumber antidote
like licking you off my fingers and then sticking them down my throat
i love you like a caged and malting tiger
like i’m using this muzzle
to eat or kiss or both at once
love you like you love the blues
and how I just learned to sing

if she leaves you the day before your birthday
or on New Years Eve

start each tomorrow like this:
someone who was left, yes,
but someone
who starts the new year anyway

there are two ways to grow older:
to let time take you
and to
take
time

an offering of green

cream avocado meat

from lemon rind hands

which sour and wrinkle my fingers when i try to hold them.

“welcome home. 

I love you.
have we met?”

the lick of the puppy tongue

on my skin like this:

I’m only warm when I’m treated warmly --
the fizzy boil of hot adrenaline

up and down my spine
like 
it’s desperately never felt the heat before,

is not a kind of warmth.

hungry fingers here on my vertebrae
finding out where the loose links are
- is not an adventure.
it smells of cold food, or stale fire,
the way something smells when it isn’t quite right

isn’t quite for consumption --
-- 
but almost

a gold-leaf paper bowl – no –

a lime flavoured bubblegum.
here: ******* a bubble, wince,

and I’ll pop it for you.

your eyes ache and squeeze when you eat sour sweets

because they’re almost something delicious,

but depriving, just

inside this cake there is sour cherry jam:

you hold out your sandpaper fist
and I don’t know whether it means
“this is the shape of a heart”

or if dinner just went cold

i definitely told you at the right time

cold new lips i kissed you at the right time

two years on and i kissed the same place so many times

i lost count of how happy it made me.

i swallowed your tears in so many different lights

a waltzer of a moment, i heard **** jagger

i heard the melody of mens voices, i heard every key and every shift

dazzled and dizzy in light and dark and in mud and rain and

smudgy warmth

i heard a buzz so loud it turned into vision

and everything was a spinning top

i heard everything i’d ever heard and seen everything i’d ever seen

and i held your hand like i was about to get pulled away any second

in the avalanche

i saw your beautiful important face so many times

shouting at the sea, in the palm of my hand, in grass

in pillow, on the back of everybody i ever meet

in love i licked all the salt away every time

i couldn’t tell whether it was the rain or the sea spray or tears

and i thought about this every time we kissed

and i thought about how it didn’t matter to me at all

we lived in an electric moment that fizzled ultraviolet for half a second

and i painted that second

so i could prove to everybody i met

that it happened

that this is kind of how it looked

to be on the tip of a hurricane looking down at the chaos

and being happy just for the excuse

to hold hands

damien rice makes me think about you
damien rice sang my depression to sleep

today he told me
"you don’t love him at all anymore"
and i agreed

shiny boy
it’s never my turn
to be with you.
sometimes it is
and when it is
the seconds are so full i get sick
you’re my own homemade chocolate cake
and i purge you by sticking my fingers down my throat and throwing you up
all over the soft
get it out properly this time
come on you can do it, without whispering
get you out of me. take your hands
and put them down my throat
and then get out of me
get the hell out of me
i’ll 
be clean
lose a stone
lay naked
you’re 
either poisonous to me
or you make me sick to my core
whichever one it is
i can’t stand to be around you, anymore

i haven’t seen my doctor in a long time
i don’t know if i need to but in just in case
for old times sake
i still take my medicine
i still take my medicine