aren't real.

Love is only an ideal
a belief we live
and never achieve.

But love stories we need.

Only its conjured spirit
makes some sense

of our existence!

Remember
my body is not your temple
do not worship there
I am not a deity
I am not a holy place
I have many sins, many scars, many demons

My heart is not your home
You have no claim
Learning the secrets I have locked away in darkest corners of my person is a privilege
Do not take my willingness to let you explore me for granted

My love is a gift
it is wrapped in the battered letters that I wrote to my last lover before he left the shattered remains of my heart behind in a wooden box
Be gentle when you unwrap what is left of me
I have only just begun putting myself back together

What comes after?

I caught brilliant light in my hand
Are seconds it shone more precious
than what comes after?

           'Will I be rich?
               Will I be poor?
                 You can't fall further
                   Than flat on the floor'

I held her hand,
I held her.
I gave everything I had
I held her.
I loved like nothing before.
I held her.
I would have given the world but
I held her
back.

               'In Yorkshire they ask
              Where there's muck there's brass
           But what's brass coated in such
        A volume of muck.'

What comes after?

I'm lucky I found some sunshine.
Some brilliant light.

              Heaven knows
                Where it goes.
                  
The ghost of a flame
Exists
For a second

I hope it explodes
Into something
Bigger.

Time Volume: 1
I’m eating up the hours
one by one.
Blink.
Click.
Blink.
another screen,
more non-words
Blink.
Click.
Just letters.
Click
9000 more words
blink
and more time.
Click.
To be forgotten.


Learning to forget
The melting *** cast a boy and I ran outside,
A slime soaked goblin, a monster from the pit
Lobbing clods of mud at a harmonic sky
Whirring with dragonflies and lolloping bees.

Sun and rain prepared a day on a different earth
Where there was life in the monkey puzzles,
And scuttling battle grounds that
hid hundred-handers beneath concrete slabs.  
Gravel churned up tiny black dragons,
rotten logs, fortresses of tiny fiends.

I had a sword in my hand, I was noble.
Defender of the realm, scourge until tea,
The hero of worlds
everyone else couldn’t see.


Time volume 2**
Excalibur was stuck fast
When the new branches fell
Click.
the tips of my fingers are beginning to rot.
Blink.
Click.
If only I could
blink
stop the second
click
See the world behind glass.
blink
and dance out of time.
Click.
This snow globe,
Is not the Antarctic.


Artificiality in Imagination
Turning my back on time and space with
Bottled brains, ***** mist, powdered thought
I chiselled into old pathways.
I carved a silk road through synapse and nerve
to return to my monsters.

I saw a sickness of colouration
A lynx effect for the sky
tearing punkish streaks into the atmosphere
that were quickly blinked away.
Sunspots, cloudbursts, tussocks, grass,
Paper squares, green, red, purple, pink, blue,
pungent smoke, bugs, ripples, shivers,
polka dots and blank spots.
A storm-cloudy stomach.

The perspective of a head plastered to the soil again
saw thing for what they were,
a tiny amazon thought lost to rationality.
My heart thumped for a fear and joy
in a way forgotten by time.


Time Volume 3
Why is it called wasted when it is time well spent?
Click.
my god, my eyes hurt.
Click.
Just 9000 more words.
Click.
What would I give for a pretty girl sat under a tree.  
Click.
search * (pretty girl sat under tree)
Click.
She’s hot.
Click.
So is she.
Click.
… could always.
Click.
don’t be stupid.
Click.
Just 9000 more words.


Fantasy for a Counterpoint
I questioned what’s real when she blinked at me
and stopped existing  when she closed her eyes.
No one taught us to write in blood,
Tattoo our names into each other’s skin,
Leaving claw marks for the world not to see.

Whatever you drew was Van Gough
Whatever you said was Keats,
Whatever bruise you left was Tyson’s.

The outer layers of or skin are dead,
It’s funny whatever you touch on a person,
Is already dead.

Just before our love got lost
I noticed a thread break away from the braid
Around your head,
a small incongruity,
That made your hair a mess.

Love became what it was when you said you were
‘as constant as the northern star’,
And I replied, ‘yes - always in the dark’.


Time Volume 4
This is progress for my sake,
Just in time.
Blink.
Time is money.
Click
Time flies.
Blink
A stich in time
Click
This is a paradigm of nothing time.
Click
I’ve got so much time.
Click
And so little time to waste.
Blink
I’m a long time dead.


Hope for a handful of dust
Eventually I will while away these lonely hours.

What black rocks stir while we sleep?
What prayers rumble still, among old stones?
Do they speak the eternal city and glow civilised blue -
Or burn timeless black?

Does the probing ivy find us out
And the blunt head of a worm investigate
our most intimate parts?

Or does a spectre rise from the soil
To live under children’s beds?

When is the point that death
Becomes something breath-taking -
And the brook, my brown blood,
The dead leaves my skin,

Is it fantasy
to put something
where nothing should be?

The soft earth will **** me in
And give my brittle bones
To worms and crows
What stirs beneath the stones,
may always be worms and crows

We share a dim squint at eat each other
interrupted, rudely by your phone
I slither my hand down your chest,
rub you til the snooze alarm.

Our legs, once locked together
ungratefully untangle as I roll left
you roll right.
I make tea as you shower.

As you pick the dust from my eyes
and I complain,
the morning's hysteria hits us
and everything's funny.
And you're so beautiful.

Lying back I watch you dress
smoothing down your top,
wriggling into jeans.
When you're done,
I'll pull you back down,
undo all the hard work.
And ******* before you leave.

Father left a sword and a lamb, like only he can,
They hang on a wall like nothing at all.
Like they were nothing at all, just things on a wall.

The boy with a pen, in a hollowed out crypt, he sits.
He doesn't know when he plucked his first gray.
He sits there all day. With nothing to say.

The lines on her crown penciled by her frown
'The world moved much faster today,'
I say, 'did the world move much faster today.'

Stones leave beautiful news, we leave you some dust,
And even great columns all crack, like the small of a back.
we leave you some dust.

The Sunflowers drop seeds like their heavy and sick.
They're picked over by crows, then sprout over bones,
That found out forevers a trick.

Your noon blue eyes catch the open horizon.
Moss green and hedgerow, we lie as the
sun bursts, exploding from behind your body.
Thin cotton whispers off your thigh,
our voices are woven into the sound of the reeds.
The thin air quivers a shoal of oak leaves
breathless, the grass is spun to gold.

I saw someone, two grades older than me in the halls with a purple shirt.
He was tall and had a huge grin and a loud laugh.
I heard the boy in the purple shirt had an B in Spanish
And a D in chemistry
And an A in foreplay.
I thought maybe he's had more than one girlfriend in the past few weeks.
At school he tells me he likes my shirt. Then turns around and tells another girl he likes her ***.
I realized then I wanted to be him. Because the girl was probably going to **** him, and not me.
What does he have that I don't.
Chin fuzz, a reverberating voice, broad shoulders, a ****.
That night I did one hundred push ups. That night I cried for one hundred minutes.
And slept for what seemed like one hundred hours.
When my morning comes my chest aches. When my morning comes my chest is still chesty.
When his morning comes his chest is occupied by a girl's head.
When his morning comes he let's go of a morning *** on his purple shirt.
On his purple sheets.
On the girl's purple cheeks.
He remembers someone, she is two grades younger than him.
She is small and has sad lips and a quiet sigh.
She has an F in math, and an F in history, and an F in foreplay.
He told her he liked her shirt, because he really did, because it wasn't purple, because it wasn't his, because it made her look strong. It made her look like a man. He then realized that he liked the color blue better, and liked the way it looked on her.