I have a new, jaunty bob,
And there's a stranger in the mirror.
Last time you saw me I had a short crop and a kiss curl.
Do I seem softer now, with my sleeker bangs?
Would you like the new look?
Would the change help us to move from the past?
You could pretend I'm someone different,
That the sharp cropped siren is someone else, long gone.
It might draw you in again.
That's not what I'm aiming for, and yet...
I'd be lying if I said that I hope you wouldn't like it,
And what does it matter?
You're gone. You will never again see
Any part of me.

Stop staring.

I don't think you see.
It doesn't matter,
Look where you will.

It really doesn't matter
If it makes me feel ill.

Please don't touch.

Did you not hear me?
It doesn't matter,
Do what you must.

It really doesn't matter
If I crumble to dust.

I sat in your car,
Mentally preparing to return home, to try to save my marriage.
You made a fist with the hand that gripped the steering wheel
And lightly punched me on the upper thigh, twice.
"Good Luck" you said.
And I wanted to **** you.
I got out of the car, and walked away, without looking back.

Scalpel to the eye
Will slice away my blindness
At least - some of it.

Today,
A little happy peeked around the corner
And waved.
He was shaped like a question mark,
And kept changing colour
For he couldn't quite decide
If blue was appropriately ironic.

I haven't seen a happy for a while,
So I waved back,
And he turned red.
Either blushing, or angry,
A reluctant happy.
Nevertheless,
He made me smile.

Oktober
In September.
My world collapses
Amid the loamy stench of portaloos and stale spilled *****,
Indecency caught
Betrayal unearthed
Catastrophe birthed.
I enter Hell
A husk,
A shell.

Yearning for you
Makes me angry with myself.

So **** angry
That I literally weep with rage and horror,
Sometimes several times a day.

You are such a
Such a
Such a
Why do I want you, even now?

And I mean want want WANT you,
Desperately, angrily, resentfully,
Want you like the world wants saving,
The rain wants rivers,
Want you like a fallen angel
Wishes he could be with God, again.

I hear the call of the siren,
It drags me from my dreams.

Well, that's what you have to expect,
Living in South London, innit?

Others have tried to please me,
They failed, because, deep down
They were trying to please themselves.

You don't try.
You just do.

Before you, I fed on happiness scraps.
They tasted good
but I was starving,
I gobbled up and pleaded; give me more,
I tried to be deserving.

But you and I...We don't need to give, or take, or bargain,
Ever-friend, always-love,
We are happy just to hold each others hopes, and hearts, and secret dreams.
There are no conditions, no expectations
Our lives are both complex and impossible, simple and limitless.

I will pour myself into you, fill the aching places of need
You will never, ever let me beg, or cringe, or weep, or plead.

I am too much for myself
And everyone else
But I do not care about them, or me,
Only, always, you.

Am I too much for you?

I am in love with you.

See? I am always too much.
I have always been much
more than they can take.

Are you awake?

Where are those words?
Those just-right, perfect words?
These are all too much
And jumbled up.

Do you hear me?
Do you feel me?
Is this too much?

I am in love with you.

That's all that I have,
I cannot make it less,
It is all, it is much, it is more.

It is all.

Oh my love,
I am writing, wanting, writing...waiting,

I want to write something magical
To spirit you away, to carry you to me, and into my arms.

Something that is too much,
That is more, much more
than they could take,
Too much for me, too much for them,

And just enough for you.

My better self
Is giving my weak and silly self
A pep talk.

He isn't worth it, she says.
There's nothing to like, let alone love.
And you don't love him, anyway,
It's an infatuation.
He paid you some attention,
Made you feel amazing, and admired,
But he should have kept his **** mouth shut.
Why would you care about someone,
Who would do that to his two friends,
One he called his best friend?
What a scumbag.
Forget him.
Let.  Him.  Go.

My weak and silly self smiles a silly smile
And nods, weakly.
Yes, yes,
She says.
Yes.

If I fall, unbidden, into your idle daydreams,
Do you scourge me from your head with thought-blades,
Gouge me from the soft grey jelly with a blunt steel mind-spoon?
And how precise are these eviscerations?
Perhaps you may just miss a lingering memory;
That birthday kiss, your hands like angels whispers on the nape of my neck.
The glance across the room, or one of my fleeting messages,
Vanishing in seconds, but scribed indelibly into your psyche.
Or not so indelibly; perhaps you never think of me at all,
Or only as you think of other embarrassments, and guilty pleasures,
With a vague distaste, and a promise to yourself to do better.
If it's the former, and you find yourself gouging,
Dig deeper, my darling, I would wish to be gone forever
from your lightly troubled mind,
I can bear to be reviled, I can bear to be a torment,
I cannot bear to be a troublesome fly-thought, easily swatted,
An irritating echo, or a faint and tainted ***** dream.

I dream in
The colours of the palette you have gifted
my eyes see

New colours
Not-like-red and not-like-blue

Like the new love
not of the seven kinds
ever more than Eros and

Familial,
cerebral,
Celestial fantastical

Breathe, breathe, breathe
in gasps and
small
bewildered
shudders.

Coming

To see that
You have set me
Free.

The worst has happened,
And here comes the fallout.
It's nothing I don't deserve.
I don't deserve these tears, though
I have no right to wallow in self pity,
Having inflicted such damage
On those I should ever cherish.

I know why they call it heartbreak, now.
There is something broken, in there.
Broken, and disintegrating.
He has one to match,
But I broke them both.
Foolish, foolish girl
Did you think yourself invulnerable?
The most generous heart in the world,
And you managed to find the one betrayal
Even he could never forgive.

Oh, help me, someone please,
This hurts, this hurts,
I deserve it,
But I can't take it,
I don't know what to do.

The noon sun blisters the earth,
Beats upon the brain, semi-boiling blood.
I am swimming through the sun, its rays are waves
breaking over me, soaking me with sweat
that pools under my bared *******.
Slick with lotion, I shift upon the searing sand, aroused,
Dreaming of a shaded room, your fingers on my sun-kissed skin,
And there you are; with a frosted glass
of something cold, crusted with icy diamonds.
Smiling, you hold it against my flesh
Relieving that small part of me from heat,
Raising gleeful goosebumps,
Cooling me outside
And stoking a fire within.

I don't want to write about the cold, the wind,
The rain or these January doldrums.
England at this time of year is desperate and depressing,
And I'm longing for warm breezes, nighttime teases
A pregnant, chuckling moon at midnight. August dances,
Wild advances, stolen, secret, hungry glances.
Magic, confusion, summer scents
BBQ, Samsara, Bacardi and Cava,
And the kind of flowers that try to impregnate you with their scent;
Smell me! they plead,  then kiss as I burst, spilling my pollen,
Blessing the union of your hungry, eager mouths.
January is barren but August is ripe, heady, ready,
Moist and pulsing, life is in the air,
Flee the doldrums, take me there.

You have no idea
How you have changed me.
You think it just a minor lapse
Easily overcome.
A dalliance, sidelined,
Quickly forgotten.
What if you knew
How I have altered?
That there is someone else
Underneath my skin?
Our kiss unearthed a changeling
And everything I touch
Feels alien and other-worldly
Abstract, and assumed.
My life has been stolen
It belongs to that other person
She’s hidden far below
Whimpering for release
Too quietly to hear.
My blood is screaming
Thundering with new, unwelcome cells
It drowns the old me out
Help me overcome the usurper
Keep away, away
She feeds on you and grows strong
Starve her.
Stay away.

I poured and drank a final glass of wine with you
Undertaking that sacrament
With a pure heart, for the very last time.
But where was the rapture
Of union with my God?
Unconsecrated, I yearned
for flames, and burned
Burned with something else
Unspoken, like a prayer.

I love you
Every night
       (Sometimes twice)
And although I adore
Being drenched in sweat
And shuddering uncontrollably,
The thing I look forward to the most
Is afterwards, falling asleep with you behind my eyes,
Imagining you in my arms,
Taking you with me, into my dreams.

I cannot sleep until you're home. The second that you slip under the sheets beside me I will allow sleep to take me, almost brutally. Having you beside me is enough, there need be no communication.

No-one is closer to me than you and yet, I lead a secret inner life that I just can't explain to you. I have no idea how you would respond if I were to communicate these truths. Some of these thoughts make little sense, even to me. It is enough just to have you by my side. No-one can, or should, know everything about another. You know, without knowing.

But you will be home soon. I lie here, so far from sleep, yet exhausted, and trace the contours of your face in my mind, over and over again. Your face is like granite, you are bearlike, fierce; safety, protection and sleep. You will be home, and I will lose myself in dreams that I cannot fall into while you are absent. In those dreams, there are things I cannot face alone in this bed.

You will be home, to free me from exhaustion, you will come home.

Hurry home.

You have tied me too tightly
And the ropes are chafing,
Let me go
Before I panic
And the blackness overwhelms.
You have bound me
Mercilessly,
Now you pound me,
You won't stop -
Don't stop,
Until you've ground me
Down.

Do you want me to feel small?  Shall I make myself small for you, now?
Tiny, tiny, tinier than the tiniest of things?
(they've found some very tiny things)
Am I too LARGE for you?
Do I embarrass you?
Do you think that I embarrass myself, with my H U G E N E S S?
My big voice, my *******, my BIG brazen ways?
I am not embarrassed.
I am not tiny.
I am not sorry.
It's deliberate.
You are the small one.
So small
So very small
That you
Might
just
Disape-

Speak to me again.
As your lips make words and sounds
I imagine them instead, moving over my skin,
I want them there, brushing past my hair,
Sliding down my neck, pausing for a heartbeat at my mouth
A trembling, teasing, barely-there brush, warmth and wanting,
A flick of your tongue against my lips,
Then down, to find the soft, yielding curve of my breast.
I think of you loving me,
Setting free your hunger to encourage my own,
Passions rising in a tidal wave,
The rapture of released restraint.
Willing flesh tugged by eager teeth,
You need to taste, I long to be consumed,
Gasping, once, twice, the damp heat of you
Spurs me to a frenzy, I am all aglow, a lava storm
Streaming forth in torrents, gushing, rushing
To you, always to you,
I want you in everything.
Speak to me again, my love,
As passions rage, our fates collide,
Speak of a love that will not be denied.

I want to **** humanely, but
The pulsing gushes taste sublime
When they’re aware that it’s their time.

I need to feed.
I long to read
The terror in those heartshed tendrils

His lifesblood is delicious.

Scarlet drips
Awake my lust
He needs to bleed.

I should not…But I must…

Why are some years
So world-shaking?
Is there something in that star sign business, after all?

Leo,
You will have an encounter that will recode your existence.
You will spend months
Writhing and tortured with desire.
Your comfortable career will free fall
You'll have the option to return
To where it all began
But might not take it...?
You will kiss your best friend
And feel nothing
You will kiss his best friend
And feel everything.

You will find yourself, in chaos,
You will start to write again.