I have a decision to make.
I have already made it.
I made it in the millisecond between typing 'to' and 'make'.
So, I no longer have a decision to make,
And I no longer have a poem to write.

I shall take myself to bed.

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

This is a sad month.
The chance of another perfect Summers day
Falls away.

September channels melancholy.
Summer crazy turns to calm.
Excitement dies,
We start to pack away the years' memories,
Growth slows,
We ponder.

I have learned nothing.
Autumn's inevitability
Echoes my own, unchanging nature.

Perhaps I can learn from the season's changes,
There are things that I, too, should try to put to bed.
I will try to say goodbye
Not just to sun, and warmth,
But to my mistakes.

It's not a time for sadness
But for welcoming the chance to start again.

A butterfly lives for a single day.
If she thinks, perhaps she thinks
It would be easier to stay cocooned.

But I like to imagine that every atom in her
Yearns for that fleeting moment
Moves towards the light
With wings outstretched, blazes for a second
Awaiting admiration, fully alive
Soars into the sky, aware that time is fleeting
Simply quivering with joy.

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.

People are hurting themselves.
Again and again
I read of blades, and blood, and pain.
How very many of us starve, and purge, and try in vain
To find release
To find some peace.

Pain is seductive.
Enticing, romantic,
He can hold you like no other,
He's a charismatic lover,
And, in thrall to his call and easily persuaded,
You are urged on to ever more sordid acts.
But in the end, it still just hurts.
He'll leave you, like the rest, wanting more
And feeling like a *****.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My sadness
Is a late summer storm.

A few days of sun,
But I knew it was brewing.
Anticipation, trepidation,
Gathering resolve.

It thunders over me
When I least expect it.
There's a sudden build up
Then release.

Afterwards
I feel renewed
for a while.

Only for a while.

I can still hear the thunder, in the distance
And I know it will return,
Heavier, and darker than before.

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 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.

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.

Your birth was a storm of pain.
Red clouds
Roiling above a viscous sea.
Each surge
A bargain made with nature
For redemption, for release.

But I was never afraid.
I listened to you, your quiet calm,
Connecting, even then.
I breathed, perspired and rode
the rapids of my body,
Followed the pulse and rhythm of something unrestrained,
Released from deep within,
Urging me on.

There's a moment, when birthing
Like finding yourself alone, in a hot air balloon,
Rising higher and higher
Without the hope of return to solid ground.
You feel your insides gather, prepare for something new,
And it is new,
Indescribable, other, you feel like a creature from another world
And that's what you looked like too.
Little alien, yet so familiar
Eyes on each other
Daughter and mother.

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.

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.

Your silence
Moves me in ways your words never did
Your silence
Destroys my speech
Paralyses my thoughts
Provokes my tears
Undoes me.

As the days unfold
I forget how we sounded
Your silence
Dements me
Your silence
Makes me question
Makes me wallow in despair.

I make hasty decisions
Say things I shouldn’t
Your silence unwomans me
Makes me violent, makes me rage

You brought me here
Against all reason
Wore me down
Dangled me on a string
Until I broke
And now you abandon me
Silence engulfs me

Far away, where you are
Do you imagine me silent
Or are you clapping your hands over your ears
To block out my screams?

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.

Lying with you, in our meadow,
Surrounded by wild flowers,
You playfully trace a finger
Down a skin-splash of sun.
Reaching in, your lips stroke my collarbone,
Making me shiver, even in this heat.
Our laughter trails the breeze,
And we ride this July high,
Lost in each other,
Kissing away all care.
I am bedded here, in flowers,
Opening up for you, like a tender bud,
Dipping, dancing,
Aching to be sipped.

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-

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.