I never cry at midnight.
It's still too close to the drama of the day,
To doing, to being, facts, routine and acts.
Dreams are waiting, whispering,
Timidly sending out tendrils,
Tears remain untempted; this is not their time.

Near dawn, and only sometimes,
Sobs shake my unsleeping soul.
The things, the thoughts, that feed on salt, descend,
I walk a tightrope between night and day, begin and end,
I come so close to falling, and one day
I will just let go.

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.

Things are getting harder
And I cannot carry on
Burdened with these butterflies
That just won't die.
I am a specimen in a jar
Observed by a curious self.
I flutter to the top, to an airhole,
One delicious gasp,
And then I fall back, waiting
For the strength to rise again.
Forgive me,
I am new to myself and only want release
Perhaps I need to be restrained,
To ever find some peace.

I wish you were here
And could hold me.
I expect that you have big, strong arms,
And would make me feel
Safe, warm, blissfully buried.
I bet being held by you
Would feel like hibernation,
Like shutting out the cold, cruel world.
I wish you were here
And could hold me,
I'll wish it for a little while longer,
Until I fall asleep.

Pain is a test, you've failed.

Stop writing about ***.
Get out of bed, and tidy the house
It looks like a pit, and so do you.

Stop sabotaging your happiness.
Reign in your emotions.
Think before you speak, and leap,
And loop a leash around your heart.

Secretly, people think you are...
(Insert a multitude of insecurities here)

I hurt.

I am pondering
The perfect shape of your mouth,
And wondering
If that symmetry
Would be spoilt,
Or enhanced
If I could make you bite your lip, in longing.

I am recalling
My favourite sound, your laugh,
And imagining
That beautiful music,
Were I to find a ticklish spot
Caress you there,
And call it forth.

I am obsessing
About your hands
Caressing
Every inch of me
Delicately.
Your mouth, your laugh, your hands,
Are keeping me company, this evening,
I've had a lovely time.

Stop
Stop now
Stop right now
I will not read and
I will not respond, I have
nothing to say to you, nothing
you would ever wish to hear, you
should just stay away, you should always
just have stayed away, there will never be a
chance for you to have me back, as anything, as
anything that you would ever wish to have, so please,
Stop
Stop now
Stop right now
Stop thinking about
reading you will not read
you will not respond, he has
nothing to say to you, nothing
you would ever wish to hear, you
should just stay away, you should always
just have stayed away, there will never be a
chance for you to have him back, as anything, as
anything that you would ever wish to have, so please,
Stop.

I think it may be time to visit my dark place,
The demons there have missed me.
They have been calling incessantly,
Now, more insistently,
Sending me pictures
And planting what ifs.

Last time I visited
I barely made it back,
So if anyone has a better idea,
A destination to recommend,
I'd love to hear.
This compulsion to return
Is simply better the devil you know
But I'd rather not know this Devil, anymore
And I've had enough of heat.

Last night I dreamed of you again.
We were together in a crowd,
And I turned and walked away
into a silent, sunny forest.

Trees knotted into strange shapes,
Like lifesize bonsai.
I struggled over swollen roots
Exuding damp moss,
And slipped down an incline,
Into your arms.

You had followed me there,
Caught me, saved me,
But you dropped my hand as I slipped it into yours
And walked on, talking, expecting me to follow.

I’m done following, though,
And turned immediately,
Struggling on over the resistant landscape,
Over a ridge and across another of those bulging, snakelike trees.
I didn’t think you’d follow,
But again, there you were.

I asked you why you’d dropped my hand.
I know what I want, you replied
But I don't think you do,
And I'm trying to do the right thing.

I find myself wanting to ask, why? Why now?
Why, when I am over the confusion and the pain,
When I am past the most dangerous phase of withdrawal.

But, oh, that’s right – it didn’t really happen.
And I wasn’t really there.

You breathe very heavily
And you're short
And bald.
You tell obscure jokes that no-one laughs at.
You get really, really drunk
And shout along to songs - all the wrong words
deliberately.
You're very annoying.
Right wing
A wind-up merchant
You watch nothing but the news, Top Gear, and old re-runs of Poirot.

It's no good.
I love to listen to you breathe, and sigh
You're just the right height for kissing
And your baldness suits you, suits your perfect smile
I laugh inside, if no-one else does
And am usually drunker, and louder, and urging you to dance.
I love your teasing
And the TV doesn't matter
Because we only have eyes for each other
when together
It's no good.

I wish to unplug
The primal urge.
Life would be much simpler in its absence.
I wish to turn off
All turn ons.
Disconnect
Unwanted connections.
The bill is too high,
And there's always the risk of
an explosion.

A lost, dark star
Resisting the relentless pull of a black hole,
Taking, draining, breaking,
Its light could not escape.

Approaching the Event Horizon
A high-energy collision;
Caught in the gravitational pull
Of another, kindred star.

An expanding universe
Unleashing the power of creation.
Darkness recedes, banished,
Twin suns shimmer, renewed, rebirthed

This is us; you are the star that saved me,
The universe blazes with innumerable others,
Your light outshines them all.

There is nothing ****, romantic, beautiful or admirable
In starving, bingeing or throwing up.
It doesn’t make you different
And it doesn’t mean you’re in control.
Fish-Bone body,
Spine like shards of glass,
Risking a rupture each time you indulge your
sordid, secret habit.
Why are you trying to find beautiful words
To pretty your ugly, violent acts?
There are none.
There is no beauty
In ***** and bile,
There is nothing to admire
In the punching of your stomach
The water loading,
The blisters on your knuckles
And your grey, grainy skin.

I watched someone die from this.
I refuse to do it again.

It is not my heart that is breaking.

We are lost and ever abandoned.
You let the waves engulf me,
I'll let you think I drowned.

It is not my heart that is breaking.

All that shattered shall be mended,
You made the decision to let me fall,
I'll let you scatter the pieces.

It is not my heart that is breaking.

Just thinking about seeing you, tonight,
Makes my eyes water
And my head spin
With various aspects of crazy.

I am considering (and trying to find an excuse)
To abandon a cosy dinner in a candlelit restaurant
For two hours in the rain, watching a Disney movie,
just so I can see your face.

Of course, I’m hoping there’ll be a resurrection
Of longing glances, whispered messages
And later, electronic conniving
Of the kind we have both been avoiding.

It won’t happen,
But I will derive a certain sick comfort
In seeing you there, in the rain,
Watching it trickle over your beautiful face
And wanting to kiss it away.  

I will be happier, and more comfortable
Squirming there in rain-soaked clothes
Than sipping top price Burgundy in you-know-where
With you-know-who.

But I know what I need to do,
The sensible thing, the only thing I can.
I'll leave you there, dewy and delicious
Kissed by rain, and wishing it was me.

I see, I see
That you have brought a box, for me.
It is so very small.

My heart, my heart, will fall apart
In such a joyless space.
In such a cold, dark place.

I am frightened of your box.
I will not
Sit inside and rot.

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.

Recently I’ve been censoring myself
Because the things I imagine you doing to me
Are somewhat brutal
And the fact that I enjoy the thoughts
Disturbs me.

The thought of your hands slapping
Things that have only ever been caressed
Excites me.
You make me hurt
All over, and inside.

Turn away from me. Abandon everything you think you know.  I will never, and have never, and can never, offer you anything of any value or importance. I am lost, to myself and to you.

Turn away and leave me here, festering in a wilderness that I conceived and believed and embraced, willingly. Turn away and find a muse, someone who glows, and knows, and doesn't need.

Turn away. Leave. Don't grieve.
Don't try to find me. I am never coming back.

There is an unwriteable in my life,
An unspeakable in my mouth,
An undreamable in my sleep.
Such a hurt,
That I cannot even skirt
Around it, hint at what
The unpermitted is.
A blank space in my head
Once remembered,
Now consumed.
As a doe absorbs her kittens,
I unlearn myself,
Unwritten from existence,
And unspoken evermore.

Your music was a lovers kiss,
Welcome, unexpected,
Libido-launched.
It swam inside, traversing psyche depths; a sleek fish
With purple scales, overflowing,
Like your heart.
There was never time enough
To share the surplus of your wealth,
But you tried. I want to walk
The filled-to-the-brim vaults,
With my eyes open and my ears attuned
To nothing and everything,
Catching from the chaos a crystal riff, a purple pulse,
Musical graffiti,
Splashed on mind walls,
Astounding, and alive.
Leave there in a Paisley daze,
Saturated, never sated,
Ever now emancipated.

You are not worth
The spit in my mouth or the **** on my shoe.
You are not worth
What I gave you of me,
And you're certainly not worth
What you never got to have.
You are not worthy of her, or me, or him,
Or any of these angry, bewildered poems,
So why am I writing them?
Why am I feeling this?
Why am I investing you
With more power and importance than you have?

They do not know that we remember them here,
Their names and faces locked in our hearts
Each one a smiling, could-be-me,
An everybody.

They cannot see that we seek peace in their name,
Their death has birthed a unique grief,
The painful realisation that death waits patiently nearby,
Demanding to know why?

They will not feel the love and hope that holds us in this place,
The nods from passing strangers, of every faith and race,
The friendships forged from tragedy, connections made through pain,
Arms linked in shared communion, and hands held though pouring rain.

Virtual kisses scattered across cyber-skin
Can feel more real than an actual press of lips,
Each a little pull, an ache, within.
Sensual stories do provoke a rush,
Evocative, delicious, stirring, lush,
But, there is no substitute for strong arms, encircling
a slender waist, there is no online-version of the warm sweet taste
of lips and tongue. Such precious words
Should be whispered, to a trembling, eager heart
Not typed onto a screen, too many miles apart.