I slept in the forest and the willow watched over me.
Her roots ran deep, heavy in their drink
So that not her strength nor watchful eye should falter
And her stem hair should fall nonetheless.

I slept in the forest 'neath the willow.
Her fair arms outstretched so all would see
Poplar, Yew and Oak would see she protected me
And I slept well, yes I did.

The cold night air bit not when it saw whom I kept as company.
The damp earth kept its spittle away
For 'neath my tree I slept peacefully
Until the good morn' blessed us both.

What's a palm
Sweating in panic
Or a stomach
Whining as the whistle of alert
To someone like you?

What's a voice
Too clenched,
Or a word
Misplaced
To you?

What's a sentence
Repeated
Or a song
Sung drunker than a foul man,
To yourself, long-lashes?

Flutter-hair.
Architected smile.
Ancient-Greek eyebrow,
Curved
In a musing love.

You found a little else,
Didn't you, a
Little chick to
Perch with you?

Let's jump and find our wings
Let's take feathers for what they're worth
And leave those flightless birds
To the foxes,
With a taste
For emus.

It's no one's fault really
Just slavery
And I'm free when I know you
Popping like sparks onto my knockout vision.

At night the stars seem far away,
But through the dark is light and day.

Let me have this
And I can face tomorrow
Forget I'm here
And I'll cuddle your honesty.

Tell me no one cares
And there's no point in wanting
Tell me holes picked in all things
Grow.

For now
I'll curl up alone
Because at least I'm not
Without in the face of nothing.

Deliciously intricate,
The ways of the world, no?
No?!

Think of the droplet in the surf
Flung far from its mountain basin,
But a roaring speck of an army of being
United in washing me clean.

Think of the dust blown high in the breeze
Wanderer of the spectral footplains
Going forth in a tumbling dance to
Brush my cheek.

Think of the people in their two step music
Soloing their own sorrows, but finding
That when they find another
Their solos become harmonies.

Deliciously intricate,
The ways of the world, no?
Yes.

Loving is strong but hate is all knowing,
Ripping a heart is much quicker than sewing,
It's harder to see what is painful is growing
When you know what you find home has skeletons showing.

Keep enemies strong and all your friends weaker,
He who sees gunshots sees candles the meeker.
It's not those who drink blood from marvels and beakers
It's what we may find when we call ourselves seekers.

Tell me your secrets but keep hidden your dreams
For what I may say may speak not what it seems.
I live you, I love you but we are the gleams
In the truth of all things when you find what each means.

Don't wait 'till the end for the lock and the key
For dying is nicer than living as me,
Break out the ice and watch it freeze free
Too quickly you'll see that there never was we.

Me, on my way to clock out,
He, croaking wooden breaths, a
Splintering throat, crooked as an oar's overbite
Glinting with some
Unbelievably bared promise.

I looked past him, echoed the anxious knots
Of its hollowed brow, scooped and spotted
From overuse, I frowned past him, though he followed.

I spent as long as I could not talking to him,
But forced to deny myself silence
I heard his two part speech
And paid some token focus
To what he had to say

What little I heard, in his hope filled groans
Had nothing of his contented purpose, for
Varnished words are slippery

When we went to the pub he
Leant on the wooden counter and
His roots set, he
Sprouted drunken fruit and
I don't think he's moved since

You're an almond joy
A smooth stone in soft flesh
A blank stone sparrow
In crooked wire mesh

You looked over your shoulder
And ignored their descriptive hairs
Dancing with compliance
Giving never selling wares

What unbroken ****** skin
Around your eyes, thy
Eyebrows never meeting, stretching
Happy faces to the sky

I hoped richer feelings
Might comply to your dream, yet
It was laid on shallow and
Cracked and poorly set

Still despite your fret dancing
Your shakes and swoons so full
Graceful, hopeful, ruby bright
Fell dirtied, scratched by gravity's pull

Despite your new company,
Jackal grins that never start
Hope, not one can rival
The sweetness of a young heart.

If paradise had a name
A prism of the tongue
I would speak it to you, and hear
The tinkling laughter that bless'd the air

And clouds would hear my poem
And spread it through the rain
And eager faces turned to the spring
Would feel my words also

Chuckles showered 'cross the green

Sunny minds would face each other
And grinning, speak the words of meaning
What charmed thoughts would dot the village squares,
And sighing fields of this land

You'd bring that be
A conduit of mercy
A funnel of good will
What wonderful eyes you have that
Look into the skies with me

What is different about your trunk?
Said the Cedar to the Ash.
It's rotten, ere forgotten,
And its branches have long gone.

What is different about your leaves?
Asked the Oak to the Holly.
They're pointed and disjointed
And their colour has gone dark.

What is different about your boughs?
Asked the Poplar to the Yew.
They're leveled and disheveled.
Do you like them? Oh I do.

The sunlight is fanned by your boughs, dear Yew,
Rain makes night seem longer on your leaves, my Holly
Your trunk may be rotten, dear Ash, but it is terribly untrue
To say that it does worse than any other.

The forest lights with sunly sprights
And I will walk among the trees
And hear the sounds and see the sights
Of a nature much more at ease.

Does she still remember
How a coy smile I summoned
Felt on her lips
When I slipped
From the doorway?

Does she still remember
My stinking shirt and red face
While we sat together and
Drank a cooling coffee, which
She needed more than me?

Does she still remember
Brushing past, like bluebirds could dream of,
Making the peace sign as
A plea to her mind and
A recognition of me?

Does she know,
I was scared, and
A little unworthy
To feel all I had thought ready;
All made perfect for me?

Will she take the offer,
Barely written by my lips, and
Come here one day
To remind herself and me
Of what never happened...

And still might?

A bit of phantom dreaming
A haunting phantom free
A dreary phantom morning
A toil of phantomy

A rock of phantom learning
A leaf of phantom tree
I find my phantom yearning
A phantom just for me

It's the strangest thing,
We can all blush over really
What we're all made to do
By the pink hand of biology

The coated sexuality
We claim and occupy readily
What strange things we tend to see
Under the pink hand of biology

Roaring flames burn angrily
When met with female gasoline
Or the match of male anatomy
According to the pink hand of biology

If I told those
Who knew so little
Of another world
Who knew our tales one thing, it would be

That Thor is real, but he has become something to sell to us
That Jesus is real, but he has become something of a conflict
That wars are real, though to you I'm sure they seem insane.

I don't know you, and you don't know me, humans of the Otherworld
And by the rules of our game that should mean we hate one another.
We live by some standards, but sometimes standards build empires.

I want to tell you,
That some of us don't wield hammers,
But pens.
There are those of us who
Hear about a fight and
Run to break it asunder,
Some of us,
Really are heroes.
I've never met many, but I know they're out there,
Distant humans on a distant planet,
I guess we're both
A little detached from humanity.

A poet's not the one who shouts the loudest, no
Not the one with flowers in their hair, she who declares
Her wishes to those who cross their heart
And write about dying, listening to her
A poet's not one with a crystal ball, Tory Taurus,
Nor one who speaks to glass caverns, taking themselves in
Reflected light, a poet
Is not one who paints themselves green to be seen

Listen, and you're the poet,
Stunt light's tracing fluid in your growth room
And you're the poet
Grow to hate crowds and you're
Write in the silence of apathy and you're
Put your collapses into verses
And you're the poet
You gorgeous night petal, you
Misplaced word
Thank you.

You're a trophy,
Bragging rights,
A shot of servility, yet to be drunk
A ship on some waves which I may command
Poseidon inside them,
Yet to be sunk.

I remember you, don't I?
We waltzed a little, stepped on each others' toes
But we don't sound so good now,
I'm confused to hear you speak,
At least, at least I know you
And at least I can chirp to you,
Little tree, Rock solid face, without emojis or discipline
Tell me more about yourself.

What awaits me tonight
What lurk in your mind?
Foully feminine, dusky on broke wings
And sprightly on toes of splintered wood.
Cave in, fall down, and maybe I'll find you again,
But up until now,
I've only heard you selfishly

              and wikl never ztop doin so

Pretty poppies
And burnt earth for horizons
Crackling savage against the cool blue
That burns you without and tightens within
Endless green and poppies

I wish I spoke like you,
In red earth, pebbles spilling from my grin
Able to lie as much as gabble
And taste the impatient air
The scent of expectant poppies

Hurriedly, I'd rush back there
And feel the emptiness apart from me again,
That kind of emptiness that lends itself to
An adventure in you
And blushes
Like poppies blush
In turbulent valleys of burnt dirt

She hides among the poppy seed
Sweet brown eyes growing yellow-red
Roots emerging sickly-soft
And ears remembering my rasp -
Rasp she wanted?

She spreads her petals for me
And I see all I wanted
Red coat shed on sunsets of
Pretty skin
So pretty.

She washes with the wind
Eating sunflakes
I don't look at
The black spot on the poppy

Because she's a bloom
Who had stains I never thought of asking for.
Who asks a stencilled crushberry sky
What it will want when it leaves?

When the moon comes up
I feel the old blissful cold
She won't warm me, but
Poppy's make poor blankets anyway

Freckles speckle nothing anymore
And red has fallen silent
I regard the stars she left me
And paint my canvas new.

So it's night
So it's dark
So it's quiet
So am I.

Bathed in electric shadow
I push blues and whites
In cream curdled from clouds
And shades of grey and green.

In politics and paint you're born
'Welcome to the world.
You're going to make someone very happy.'
Me.

So how many days
Can you spend in nights?
Let me know, faithless print
For eyes watch us, praying fondly.

I get confused, often
Spraxically distopic in a utopian person
We'll succeed together
We'll fly on splinted wings.

I can write love poems too, you know,
But I'm only here for the future
So let's wait, together
And work for something we still breath for.

I'm here for you being here for me
And I grow branches in the night's silence.
An ode to breathlessness
And the chill of flush for the quiet.

How to start a conversation?
That's the question, isn't it?
Don't you dare try to tell me I forgot
What niceties bear the *****  of tightness
I'm here, aren't I?

So how are you? insipid
So where were you? cutthroat
So what can I call you murderer
Since you left?

I heard once
You broke formation, and told the wave of indifference you'd call me...
Where was that, that
Stuttering star sign
Supposed to make you divine for me?

The truth is I'm lonely,
But not worn, like
So many rocks in the ocean,
I think I prefer the company of schools of fish
And dark things from the sea
Than... Well
You know

But how to end a conversation?
You're the best at ending things.
Lonely? What's to be alone?
Better, you said it yourself,
Better than being apart.

I knew a woman
Trinket to little pieces
Puzzles making frowns and faces
She lay, lay down blankets and tablespoons
For a man who looked at her
With a quivering, ivory eye

She grew to him,
Shockingly a bud meeting rain
Thirsty for him
Leaving what she thought she was
Behind for a man like him
And she told me
She had no idea what he was
Behind closed garage doors

He bled a little every day, she said
Till there was nothing left
He burned away his wick
And hung, string-like from a beam
Swaying in a wind she never knew she blew
She left herself in his arms

Now she doesn't smile the same
I know, though I met her
Long after
Now she doesn't sleep, but sedates
Now she walks on blades of glass
But so kind
So good
She never fell like he did

I never think I knew her
Like she was
As what she was just cries
But what she built
Talks to me
Lets me know there are people who keep going
Through her smile
She lets me know

At the end of
Long
Hard
Stays,
I feel little
But the apathy
That sails me past honeyed seas
Through treacherous rocks.

But is there worth
In saying little,
In giggling
As if I never grew up,
As if I had never seen these things?

Would others say
'I have seen it too?'
Would others tell
The faces they find in the night
To chase some other ****** and turner?

Would others say
'We don't care,
But for the things we know in each other,
For the silences we share, while knowing
Little greed?'

I wouldn't know,
I'm too scared to ask
It doesn't feel natural.
Nothing does
Anymore.

What dispirited purpose cups to my ear
Or orifice sufficed at being a sense of the world
What hands can claim to be my lips
Speaking to the world they claim to feel

What broken envy feels
Those scattered ivy fields
Of hopeful grey sent on its way
Of years and months poured into the day?

What gotten fear keeps me
Chained cherish to the time I should
Be walking on to other things
That make me feel the good?

I found a barrow cut by the wheel
And ghoul-hands rotten roots a-reach
From smoothed walls cut to seem rough
And grief for spirits frothing at the ducts.

I found some feeling of myself
Sippy-cup filled with mediate dreams
I made up words to keep myself from gotten
I sank into quicksand on my back

A peg of person
Hanging on my word
Show'd itself to me
Wooden, carved roughly
Surfaced on linen, varnish
Shallowed man.

He felt nothing to me, at me
He told me riddle body *****
I ignored, bored hated words of worry
But felt them myself, little
Anti-anti-anticipations
And trembling lumps of merryweather met us

But we came to a pond, and drank the green green wealth
We spun a little, splashed like ripples do
Onto a blank canvas of a conversation
Muddy murky words came out
'*** *** ***' little bee, buzz for pollen, buzz for me
I couldn't. I'm not.

I'm not another, you're different, distinto
I'm feeling nothing, angsty man,
Through rides and fairgrounds together
I found a lost child, and he set me
I told you who I am and I found me.

Roughly cut, varnished wooden man
Burned in envy, dusted away
I felt nothing, watched his anguish
And figured, hammered, rutted out
A sense of self-belonging,
I guess we don't belong, I guess we make our own self-pity,
But at least we know.

I said goodbye, he did not, I left the day before yesterday
I wrote a confusing poem to figure it out
And people read it
Quietly I confined myself to words and Bibles written for me
For a bitter version of myself
I burned away, burned away,
Burned my, burned my burned away.

When what is new
Stays through night's wading charm
And lasts not for fame's harm
But ignorance left here with thee
There you invite something special, something free.

Where you use what is new
And usurp the old order
You taste what lore old beggars do
And beautify lost tomes once more

When you find what was forgotten
And wrap wedded slogans on yourself
Raise slightest youth from its ignorant ways
There, thine work is well founded,
And your spirit well freed

Playgrounds became lifestyles when I was with her
Outgrown boots shod, dainty feet sat down together
Sat down for a kiss, I didn't think could be sincere,

Because I have problems,
I have woes the epics tell
But she told me different stories, different
Beliefs in me, hopes for my sunlight
Times spent rushing to find a place to smokey intermingle
To gasp each other's air.

I tried to find her as circumstance ripped her away,
But I'm forgetting her as I write this
Unceremoniously awkward, I hate that word, but that was how we left it.
Was it real? Who knows?
My eyes don't like to invent.
When I let the hoods slide over them,
Down, dark, a shelter from the mist
I see a sunny vale again
Where she might be waiting.

If you know me by now
Nothing will feed me, but that
You understand what I live for
And try not to perish with

Lay me down a place to recover
A lyric in gold and green, you'll see
What a gentleman looks for
What a good lady frets of.

The way I need everything
Is in your hands, take
Care of me, I'm haggard
And lost without more adjectives,
So without my defence
Stay with me

My dreams are painted clean
Tucked and trimmed by a sewing machine
My mother's face is wrinkle free
And smiling for eternity.

My father's voice is soft and kind
My brother's eyes are sparkling blind
My sister's arm is thick and strong
My family line is clean and long.

My pencil fertile, conscious itself
Collecting brilliance without my help
My headache gone, my nostrils clear
Breathing sea air gushing near.

Inspiration well stocked, character for sale
My clothes well spun like a handmaid's tale
Garden promise behind shut doors
This is what my dreams are for.

Another robin hopped behind my window pane in light
He cocked his head and put his dread in my heart which pulled so tight
My poem of the past made robins seem quite grave and dim
His vengeance burned out from his breast and shrill it came from him

His size surprised his anger as it swept beyond his beak
He hopped up to the glass and watched me like a circus freak
His deep black eyes gave quick surmise to my suspicion of his hate
I closed the curtain and sat back, contented' till a later date.

Why do we mix again and again
A poison bitter strong
The killer tools of government
Consciously created to be wrong

Robotic minds make music
And we will dance along
Not thinking of the people
Who lived the beat the gong

And now we are alighting
To the torch of fabrication
For walls began their freedom fall
Language soon our only nation

I burdened you, did I not?
Told you things I thought you'd hear,
In the wind, in whispers from the woods
Nobody told you, but I did.
Vaguely I burdened you.

And you were lonely, I tell you so much,
In ways I don't fathom, shallow diving me.
Weird fishes nibble bones, weird stories take your love for me,
Rumours, rumours, grow like weeds,
Weeds, weeds grow as bushes between us.

So we sit on lawns of cut relationships,
Each blade a sharp reminder,
Of friends we never made,
We grew, didn't we? Like stalks of flowers that never dreamt of being trees,
But sometimes,
I see the yellow of your kiss across the garden hedge.
We never bore such fruit apart.

So sitting, so kneeling,
So waiting till time makes us desperate enough to try again,
I move pragmatic pieces, and play games that think of you
I spell your name, in footsteps I take in the wrong direction,
But it's only wrong to you,
We're only wrong for each other,
Why should that mean we can't love?
Why does that mean we don't talk?

Not through rumours.

The pretty feeling
Of lip shaped saliva on your hot-plate cheek
The heavy scent
Of her hanging off your arm
The floating flight
When she swings, swings
From your thoughts.

Nobody
Knew her
Nobody
Spoke her name
Because
She only lived así
In my head.

Outside
She shifted
And blew with the wind
All I had to charge me
Were the memories
Listed above
And the bare resemblance
Of her beautiful face.

It didn't have to end
But for the cliffs between us
She looked down from the rocky top
And waved
Never again
Staying in my head as she was

I think I stopped
Grovelling and wallowing in what I didn't have
I think I started
Working hard and not writing about it
Look at me, silly me
I forgot what it was to be
To be that little boy, sat on the toilet writing poems
Because nowhere else was safe to write.

I think my fears have changed,
And thus my need to write
I know who I am now, seen sorrows abate
And taken on those robes I dared not accept
Those names I dared not carry
Who was I then? I was the one who did not know myself.
But at least in that I knew me
Now, I love myself more, but
Is love writing poems for me? No.
Mud's the only ink my pen will take
Mud from my feet sinking slowly.

I think I'm a parody of myself, and
Perhaps I'll take me in new directions,
Or perhaps I'll leave me behind and take on new dreams
The truth is, I had to force myself to write this,
Forced to feel my way down to this level
But, I think, perhaps a cocky thought
Or perhaps acknowledging the new way of things
My old self, my old rusted plate, barely standing,
And my new shining body, pink and dry in the sun's honesty
We make a nice team, perhaps I just need to listen a bit more
To what I tried to block out.

I walked a summer day, warm and fair
Thirst my only burden, and lightly so
For all was light before the sun
I found a rabbit upon the ground

He lay on the soil, shivering
Despite the bright he grew cold
Beside him a hemlock plant was cut
I stayed with him till the end.

I sat in the buttercups and poison leaves
And spoke to him.
'I am sorry, wise friend, for you who knew all
Could not make a gambit of this ****.'

I lay him to rest and walked on, the thirst taking hold
And met a fawn, poison creeping through her too
Her legs shook, I held them tight
And spoke to her.

'Alas, many of you, wise friends have fallen to this evil,
On this wonderful day I feel nothing but remorse
A fear of what has befallen you,
Why did you not run?'

The fawn, sharp of eye and tongue, yet deep of heart
Said nothing, though her eyes were full of words
I lay with her and read her pity
'Til the very end.

Lastly, taking my throat in dry anguish
I walked on, the heat now unbearable,
The path lay ahead
With broken souls of wise thinkers

I heard, in my anguish
A hoot, and looked up
An owl on a branch who did not cry
But could not fly for torment

'Why have all these great beings fallen?'
I asked him, sour of tongue
He could not speak, but pointed
At the old forest, which was no more

In its place, fields of hemlock stood
Before it I could not, and wept.

'You see, dear human, our forest is gone
And with it our world and our souls
Your kind has committed what we would call wrong,
But you would call reaching your goals.

With nothing to eat, they fed on the stalks,
With nothing to drink, they drank of the sap
Great thinkers and knowers these walkers of walks
Are fallen at the claws of your trap.'

And with his words in my mind he flew from his tree
And fled the fields for the sky
Above me the mountains, below me the sea
My thirst was such that my eye

Sought out some water, but such was there none
Just hemlock, and that I did take
I drank of the sap and like them I was done
Like my own kind my life was forsake'.

I respect
Something...
It's not simplicity
It's not silence,
But it's something,
I'm sure.

I expect
Something...
It is simplicity
It is silence
And it's a little,
I'm sure.

I reject
Nothing...
It is hatred
It is pressure
It is the growing fist in your stomach
Save me
Because I'm nothing,
I'm sure.

Some people hope.
And you?
Some people dream.
And you?
Some people laugh.
And you?
Some people try.
What about you?

Me, I cry.
And you?
Me, I trip and graze my bone.
And you?
Me, I walk and hurt my feet.
And you?
Me, I live on a spectrum.
What about you?

You, you chuckle.
You, you accept.
You, you wait.
You, you absorb.

You are not a person.
You are a sponge.
And when you do not squeeze yourself,
All you will do is take in,
Until you saturate
and split your sides.

You, you do not live.
Me, at least I try.

Those scapes
Rock brows with frills of yews, pines
Cloud ruffled about it like a boudoir dancer's hem
I see worlds beneath them
Under the foot time long stamped down, buried
Barrows and dungeons, first glimpses of ebony and gold
Riches piled in mountains, infant
To the soil above
And surrendered to otherworldly hand so,
Minds like mine may see them
And let daydreams grow
Like the yews and the pines
And feed the clouds
With the breath of our sighs
Each time

It must be lonely
To be the pearl of the ocean
To be the gaping mouth of the sea
For
Only drowning men may meet you.

She likes to laugh in summer
She likes to dance in Spring
In Winter warm's the butter
In Autumn dancers sing

In June flowers don her hair
In April grow she will
Adance the chance to see the sun
December - member, green is still.

And yellow shouts the solar flowers
While melody passes the birds on pink wing
Across the bright of rainbowed showers
An Autumn-Winter-Summer-Spring

Cosy posie purple heart
Pine cones grow and roots wriggle down
Soldiers, lovers, sippers sing
The aurora more a festive crown

And 'lo, my sib'; take light in eye
Though grey and opaque cleanse the lens
What may share may never die
What may grow stays here forever.

You should hear me late at night
When I sing the stars dance
We play together, notes and song
Alight until I tire

You should see me when I’m alone
Tall and bold, Napoleon’s envy
Awash with waves of delight
At my own commanding reflection

Something about you ***** that away
A great vacuum in your laugh
When I stand before you, the largest of crowds
I quiver

If I took you home, would you see me the same?
If I sang to you, would you dance too?
If I stood tall, would you stand with me?
But when I hear you calling, I return to what I am.
You destroy dreams.