wood and stone bolted down to protect us all from rain.
and then with singing hearts, some of us start building shrines that rival the sky.

tonight I am walking towards where all the candles are burning.
If you sit beneath her closely, the cathedral stands taller than the sky -
and if you touch the stone, you know, my Mum always said
think of all those other hands!
Look how the cobbles are worn from pilgrim-feet, here years ago.
Dead now. That's what these buildings used to be,
yards full of the pious dead, palms up to the earth.
and when I went to Canterbury, the entry-way limestone
was worn smooth like marble, and I touched it too,
because I knew there must be something good in all this,
such a big building, so many hands and feet.


a great warm shivering heart
that sits like a bird perched in the middle of my city.
Two big eyes that face out, casting light
back to when everything was young, and she was

Moore-ish. Heaving in this white flesh that breaks on sight and gathers itself at horizons. I have bits of it here - a motley collection of broken things and cold-cuts: that grip, those fingers, a stomach, strands of hair, not enough, and deprivation is becoming aggravating. Like an infection that creeps increasingly deep under your skin until it is wriggling around your insides and chanting 'More! More! More!' and 'Feed us more of that flesh!' And I have nothing to give them, these hungry worms! Well-fed, we dripped from branch to branch and slithered around tombs of drunk gods, laughing, giggling, we pooled cool sand in our hands and crevices and swallowed soil like we were performing, Dionysian play-acting among the feathers and the leaves. What indulgence. The sun that cracked open your window and cast itself in a thick tread across your badly-plastered ceiling seemed weak and dull. The sea that lapped and tugged at the sand around our feet seemed tired. We ****** the energy from the earth! We took it and hid it. I know that now to be our undoing.

We jump from isle to sacred isle, finding more, and losing more. Islands of time, multiplying at the horizon.

in living we leave behind nothing
but empty paths
there is no sweeter longing than recounting what you have lost.
I don't feel regret.
I feel only now the heaviness of time
like the tide slipping at the shore,
fleeing only to return.

i fear long a certain caged-up growl
fingers left of the heartbeat of another
struggle to confirm their own circulation...
self-preservation, yes, much to my upset I must
face the ripping theft and rough lips of God
uncontrolled but perfectly placed, face God
and the skin that scrubs me clean
with long seconds. days and hours,
never forgotten, once seen.
When I face others, I find it a waste
to not see the prettiest parts of them.
Whites of their eyes, cheeks bruised up with rising blood
fingertips turned purple, then white
interior parts. expanding pupils that splinter outwards and fray to black
tears in the mouth - or is that?
opalescent sweat glands, red around the mouth
wet-washed skin, spit-stained lips, broken colours,
once seen, forever reflected in shadows of others.
Back to hands I know well
and a body that demands
tear me again from this heavy earth
and bite the air from my mouth. Force a betrayal
teach me how to come
break my skin and eat my mind
remind me I'm alive.

you must not yank and pull by the stem
you must instead grapple with the growth, finger-deep
and rid the soil of the root.
Headaches numbed with ice
betray a deeper bleeding on the brain
tear the pain out with your fingers
to keep bile from your veins.
Don't prevent mania.
you must instead bite the wound,
open your palms
and let blood to that fragile and fictive arcadia.

the peach-grey behind the clouds. those opalescent seconds
don't you remember that day
when we held hands and it felt okay
and I cried because it stormed and
Neoprene vastness of vision. I watched you sleep and you didn't feel human
I'm not free this evenin g and I'm sorry
Those hours in the morning where early birds speak and tell me
go to sleep
Hands hot and bristling
And forced to
- 'and she painted throughout her life-'
And we have to talk?
Because I feel like I've lied
but when you're not here I feel
Cold. The Cold that spreads and burns
and tell me h-
"I don’t see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived."
She sat across from me, on the other side
of the room
A gentle flood of blood that felt to me like drowning
and agreed that I'd reached Inner Peace.
on the way home it stormed, and I cried.

Rising heat
and the
various plastics, and metal. And cold
The cold that spreads and burns.
I can't see
but I know your form
and prise it from your hands,
Sweating.
The drip of the loosening end
and the fray
and the cut -
the cut that I make,
She mote it be that
indulgences rot in your palms if held for too long.
I think of berries all through winter
but fruits left in the mouth taste bitter
and the sugars burn.
Night passes, and heals me.
and the wheel turns.