Take off your dress
You said
And I did
In one swift movement, discarded in a heap
With my inhibitions
And fear.

I threw it, I threw it
I threw it all away.

Take off your dress
Do you know how that felt?
Do you know how I’ve longed to be told just that?
To be told, to be told,
To be told, by you.

Take off your dress

And then you gazed upon me, saw me
Stripped me even more than naked
Stripped me of all my defences, of all of my doubts.

Take off your dress*

I did, I did, so where are you now?
How can you leave me
Undressed
And bereft?

She is naked and alone,
Everything hurts.
Tears slide down her gooseflesh *******,
They are cold and unkind.
Some catch at the corner of her mouth,
And the salt stings.
Baptised in pain and misery,
She raises her face to the unforgiving light
And closes her eyes, they ache and burn.
The tears run, then, to a different place
But they are still cold, they are still unkind,
Everything hurts.
She is naked and alone.

This beautiful island seems lonely, as if it yearns for a shipwrecked sailor.

It has a hidden current that repels ships and swimmers.

Navigate that sly, strong pull
And risk being dashed to pieces on invisible rocks.

But oh, the rewards, should you reach that sandy shore.

Have you received
All my invisible messages to you?
And are you
About to reply?
I took your phantom phone calls
And collected all the non-existent letters from the post office
Tied them with heartstrings
And stored them inside me
For a more convenient moment,
One where I can cry at length, and undisturbed
At what I know you will disclose.

Tonight, the dark feeds with splintered teeth,
The moon a bloated glutton, spitting light like shards of bone
Through corpse-grey, carrion clouds.
The night feeds and I shrink.
My dreams are dessicated,
All desire ****** dry, the marrow of me mourns
For the incarnation of before.
I was plump, proud, succulent, I lived
for the delights of the night, but now
the stars themselves spew from the sky
Like the ***** of a long neglected, hobo God.
Tonight, the dark feeds with splintered teeth,
All are devoured, we are an amuse-bouche
For who? For what? And *why?

When language is lost, we need never speak.
Listen, and you will know everything.
I begin so softly, this is my prelude,
Your patient silence a reply.
Building notes on notes, I tell you how I feel.
I need not fear; there can be no misinterpretation,
The song speaks for me, clearly, simply,
I am here, you are there, and we are together.
Keys are pressed, strings are plucked, the chorus reached,
Crescendo soaring, tears pour down my face,
But I am not sad.
All boundaries are conventions,
We will transcend them, together.
I imagine a door,
It will open, for us,
If not here, then in another world,
A dream, a page, a song,
A story we will build.
Listen, you will know me
In every way, I am giving you my whole heart,
It is here, in the magic of the music,
Each note a single drop in the ocean,
Yet, what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?

I bought my girls a donut each
To the disgust of the other mothers,
And I watched them **** the sugar from their fingers
And scoop it from their plates to rub it on their lips.
The other kids had half a donut each,
And when they'd finished, they just watched
my daughters lick and chomp and scoop and ****
A whole donut
Because life's too short
And it isn't as much fun
Without the hole.

And yet I tell myself, again and again

I am meant to read, not to write,
To lick, and not to bite.
The cherries are too far away, they fall
from the branch before I can rise up on my toes
And explore them with my tongue.
I'm so hungry.
I need this juice.

I cannot move.
Would you choose
A frozen muse?

I do not have the power...
To move you with my words
or my body, or my heart,
My body
My heart
It is not exquisite
is it?

I did a psychopath test
And failed miserably.
I am so glad.
Apparently, my capacity to be hurt
Is far, far greater
Than my capacity to hurt
Which is reassuring,
As at times, this year,
I have felt like a monster
Worthy of the orange jumpsuit,
The media sensation,
And the lurid reputation.
But the test tells me to be careful,
That many others don't share my "well developed conscience"
And will damage me, beyond repair,
These others, they don't care.
Beloved, aching poets,
Beware, Beware, Beware.

The difference between us,
Is that he wants soft pink skin
And I want heartfelt words.

He wants fresh flesh,
I want the oldest tale, the one that ends with
“They all lived…”
But there is no happy, ever.

He just wants to **** me

I adopted the mantra.
I made my friend recite it
Until it sank in.
But then it sank too far
And now lies buried, hopefully irretrievable,
Waiting for resurrection.

He just wants to **** me

And after, he would easily abandon
No second thoughts,
No shining words
No happy ever.
After, he would leave me
Utterly alone.

I miss you
At silent, lonely midnight and at angry 3am.
In the timid mumbling of morning,
And the quiet gathering time
As I prepare to leave the house,
Resigned and calm and ready,
I miss you.

I miss you
In the crowded cocoon of the bus commute to work
And the coffee coated sip of 8am.
In the manic chatter of my mid morning break,
And the solitary supping of sustenance, at noon.
When I shrug on my coat, and exit in a daze,
I miss you.

I miss you
Walking home, past smiling hordes.
My house tries to welcome me
Through gritted teeth, I turn the key.
I miss you as I eat again, prepare for bed,
Type this poem, gulp away the lump that's in my throat
And return to stanza one.
I miss you.

You are a pigeon
Pecking at a pool of sick.
Leave it alone
It's pathetic
And makes everyone else
Want to add to the pool.

I do not match
The colours you have chosen,
But I will let you paint a picture
Of a predatory me.
The teeth and claws
Were yours
And they dug deep
But I won't weep
for the masterpiece you've wrought,
All red, all red
But I am blue.
It's breathtaking, that work of art,
I think the two of you should buy it
And hang it in your happy home.
Your talent and imagination
Knows no bounds,
And neither does your capacity
for lies.

(Warning - quite a sad poem)
-------------------------------------------

This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

In a room full of strangers, the most important stranger
Squirts cold and smelly jelly on my slightly rounded belly.
I smile, everything's comical.
You read about these moments,
And we've waited in a fever of anticipation.
Excited by the chance to send out a photo,
We clutch the required three quid,
And crane our head around medical students,
Three nurses, and the all important doctor,
Ultrasound expert
- I've just remembered, his name was Jesus.

The screen is blurry, dark, morphing into
Alien shapes.
Shifting, sorting, I smile indulgently
At the grainy haze,
All to be expected,
Sometimes, the photo's don't even *look like a baby,
but -

There's a silence
And then something in the room shifts,
Nurse and scanner share a glance,
The students remain glazed, this is the seventh of the day
And they don't know enough, to know a thing,
But those who know, know,
And suddenly, I know.
There is no baby on that screen,
Because there is no baby.
Questions remain to be asked,
Am I sure of my dates?
The pregnancy looks younger...
But I know
Even before they fail to find a heartbeat,
And have already retreated
Into oblivion,
Where I will remain
Through the ensuing operation,
And for months beyond.
I cry, I cry,
I cry, endlessly,
Wondering why.

This happens to many.
I have shared their stories, since.
But you cannot know,
until you know.

That's the worst place, so far,
I have ever had to go.

All is still and quiet.
The moon dances a cold, icy arc
Across the winter skies,
And my heart fights off the frost, for now.
This is the time for deadening.
Unforgiving season of cold, sharp clarity,
Leads to painful realisations.
I look back,
Trying to make sense of the dying year,
Trying to find lessons though the pain,
Trying to find feeling,
But November wants me numb.

I'm under a spell
Could you be my magician?
Abracadabra.

Blank
Zero
Space
NULL

You cannot use null in a comparison.
Null has unpredictable results.

He is blank.
I am null.
He will overwrite me
And then, I can be used.

An acorn birthed me
The sky, my roots, wind, rain, sun
Elements of life.

Your voice grows lower,
Quieter,
Husky with desire
Whispering a breathless kiss

Oh, how I want you when you want me like this

You are already tasting me
Lost inside my longing
Penetrating those many-faceted
Illicit thoughts of us.

Oh, how I want you

I stretch and writhe and reach
As you tease me, please me,
Needing you to touch

Oh, how I want you when you want me this much

Oh, how I want
You, now
Oh, oh
Oh

Your face in my mind
Obliterating all else
Why must I still yearn?

His heart is dying
Paper thin fragility
Reluctantly beats.

Cigarette burns
A nearly-broken arm
Spit *****, sandpaper,
A face rubbed in the mud.

So used to all those other names
I quite forgot my own.

It was all dealt with differently back then,
Not really condemned.
I was made to feel that it was my fault
For not conforming
To social norms.
I brought it on myself.

I hid under the stairs
Tensing, sensing
Their approach
Anticipating spit, and pain,
Determined not to cry again.

They found me, of course
They always found me
I had nowhere to go.
The hiding places were easily unearthed
By jolly torturers.

Eventually, It was easier to join in
And self torment.

It took me years to ditch those angry habits
And some of them
Have never gone away.

I do not like olives.
They are the only food
I have been unable to educate myself into.
Just one food,
Most people have more,
But I will eat anything
Rather than an olive,
I'd rather gobble down a rotten egg.

I want to like them.
When the waiter brings a little bowl,
Balsamic, bread and oil,
I sigh and let the wistfulness kick in.
They are so civilised,
So summery,
I feel I'm missing out -
- But I just can't -
They taste like mackintosh,
Or shower gel,
Or toothpaste gone wrong.

I feel sorry for the olives,
Offering a holiday vibe,
A Mediterranean ambience,
And meeting revulsion, rejection,
(Juddery shuddering).
Perhaps I am making too much of this,
No-one can like everything,
They will never know.
Perhaps I am someone's olive aversion.
Perhaps they are
(Juddery shuddering)
At the thought of me, right now.

We danced in the rain.

The purple rain.

I can never listen to that song again.

We found joy in repetition,

Now, I continue to repeat,

But all the joy is gone.

I miss your kiss,

But wish you heaven,

Wherever you are.

Once we danced,

It wasn't enough.

Maybe we can dance again

When doves cry,

My beautiful one.

Here is one more love poem
For the one I love.
Just one more; except that’s not quite true,
There will be many more.
I write them in my heart
I write them in my head
I write them across his lips with my own
As I dream him up, as I take him down
As he follows me, into my dreams.
I sing them to him, softly
And I hope that he hears,
I cry them to him, sadly,
And I know he feels those tears.
I laugh them to him; we gaze into each others
smiling eyes, and understand,
That this is how we are
This is what we do
This is how we love.

Everybody loves you
At the start. At the start
The world's your friend,
They all leave you
In the end.
Nobody is yours
Nobody will stay
Everyone will walk away.

One week ago
At this exact time,
We were saying hello.

If only we had known
that five hours later,
I'd be sobbing, abandoned by the side of a road,
And you'd be desperately hunting for her,
Oblivious to my despair.

If only we could have had a sudden vision, upon greeting,
Of the disaster that lay ahead,
Perhaps we could have kept control
And averted Armageddon.

If only, as you said hello
I could have looked into your eyes
And seen myself, a roadside wreck,
And you panicking, in pain,
I would have ordered a pint of water,
instead of a pitcher of beer,
Or I'd have made an excuse to go home.

We just couldn't resist
each other's pull.
What was it, that madness?
And now look, we've lost each other,
And you've lost him,
And I've lost her.
Good God, what was that reckless disregard of danger,
That arrogant belief
That we were invincible?

Your friendship
Is now lost to me forever,
If only we had known,
If only we had seen.

I should resist the temptation
To read into this photograph.
There is bound to be a very good reason
For the way she is gripping that glass of wine between you
So tightly that the glass might shatter,
The fact that you both have your arms around others,
Not each other,
The way your teeth are pressed together
In a tense, false smile.
I'm sure you're having a great holiday,
And the camera just captured an uneasy moment.
It's my inside knowledge
Promoting this interpretation,
I'm hardly objective.
I should close the page,
Close my mind,
Close the door,
And leave it be.