When the guests arrived we would hasten to sit in separate rooms.

Quick to cover and observe deep voices through walls,
Men with domed hats and flowing kameez would arrive and wait
for steaming chaaval,
brought in a mound topped with cloves.

Dishes placed and eyes down, they would acknowledge with
half nods,
hairy knuckles to pour the saalan over geometric bowls.

My aunts would hush in the kitchen,
pinning their scarves in a zig-zag fashion.
The colours burning from the tiles,
watching them made me dizzy and inside
I longed
that my plait would one day thread gold like theirs.

Timed silence was a key,
and a pyramid that was never fell,
unlike the tasks that could be
stitched to your hands,
structured stiff – like a testing lap.

Boiled milk in china cups,
there would be nods, gap-tooth smiles, low chatter
with ears pricked to
the humming of satisfaction within.
Sounds through division that showed that yes,
in the right hands
the colours could burn brightly,
and that yes,
in a brush of joint henna,
we would stand separate from your

Vision of us.

my anger is a submersion
and like a deep current
that pushes its darker waves
angularly
I go under

my anger is a fear
that growls its last hurt
as the hunter chases
and strangles
veins that
turn blue

my anger is a question
of strange events
too painful
that now bare no connection
to me

my anger is a plea
that I am not
the hunter or the hunted
but I am free
to walk upon the fields

I do not think much my place upon this earth,
I am second, and you are first,
and when your voice is louder than mine
it is a familiar for me to sink and recline
into my chair, wilful to listen
to your unappealing, witted opinion
and programmed flair -
from which your talent glistens,
and has always been there.
Oh to be part of your vision.

I walk comfortable in high heeled shoes
that inscribe me a waggling soft tongue,
and when your pace is faster than mine
in brogues, and trousers that are looser,
I am simply undone,
at your ease to summon as the prime task-caster
of more tasks to come.
Your achievements are set with a slapped wet plaster.
Oh that you share a crumb.

And when you laugh, it is a big bellied echo
that chimes in my throat to strike and produce,
a small bit of fruit, just for you.
As I mimic your billow in an octave but lower,
that feels like part of the very same tune,
but my chuckle is actually a choke,
and what I could say would only provoke.
Oh you laugh much harder than me.

My almond eyes are softer than yours
and in the day you lock them only for an answer,
to some chore which requires a limited goal -
don’t get me wrong – I am no prancer,
my shoes are far too tight, and I’ve been taking the toll
of your papers, your personal sciv, your faxer.
A sniffing, weezling mole.
Oh I could dig deeper…

You **** much harder than me.
And when you ***, you look in the mirror
at yourself in white unbuttoned shirt, heavy brow, so chipper
that when your sun sets it does in a vulvonic decree,
but you do not know that when I go home, I secretly scissor
in a way that would make your morning clippers shake violently.
Oh I love much harder than you,
I am better than you,
but somehow you are better than me.

Eat.
A punishment to the waist.
Reflections manipulate,
to edit what is mine.
Stripped out another me,
I'm sure I ate,
the biggest grain I could find.

Pray.
That I will not expand.
If the grain touches water,
material triplicates,
Where will I land?
I'm sure I prayed,
myself I would not slaughter.

Sleep.
In tiny winks through night.
Sometimes I wake to rib-cage,
sharply inhale,
as deeply as I  might.
I'm sure I slept,
On my self directed stage.

Speak.
Through thin bitten lips.
A voice growing weak,
mouth internally,
small organs it rips.
I'm sure I spoke,
my box though mild and meek.

I have buckled under pressure
of synapses,
that confuse and measure
the then and now.

I have puffed into a smoke
of silences,
that refuse me to choke
or take a vow.

I have dreamt the dreams
of my violences,
and when I cry
I ask them how...

can you take me back to such spiralling?
When the pain that should have stopped,
was always allowed.

Don't be afraid to walk through fire
Let it burn your clothes
Let it lick your skin
Let it show you the pain within
Don't be afraid to walk through fire
There is an aching in your bones
A burning heart
A burning desire
To bring yourself to home

Don't get sad about the past,
for it is not sad about you.
It has passed - like the cars on the road
through a green traffic-light.
It has passed like the moment
where the check-out scanner goes 'beep'
and you walk away with your things.

And if Nietzsche said, that if you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss will gaze back into you,
just don't dare to look
and it will cease to exist.
It will know it's place -
to swallow, swallow itself -
up into space.
Just don't look into the past,
for it is just a stretched blackness.
That is waiting, waiting to take you back,
into the life you should have had.

Drying blood on old teeth.
Poor old things.
A life of events, and nothing to say?
I love you -
I can say that
It's not fair -
I can say that
It happens everyday -
you could say that.
But not to me.
This is gritty.
This is salt in my eyes.
This is the devil,
popping my spline with a pin.
But
The Teeth
The Mind
The Hair
you are beautiful.
Red on yellow teeth,
that is my beauty.
A dull harsh moment
slow realization,
my last words
that I breathe, for you,
could only be,
that I'm sorry.

you have brushed me
as daylight rose,
and each sigh
contented the air
soaked with sun-beams
through the blinds.
I am the sum of your parts,
and they are like
an aching set of tiny bones
that are crumbling
in your hands.
Don’t go away,
your gentle breath will be missed
by me and my day -
as you are the air that keeps
my lungs
heaving with reason.
With each eye-locked spiral
I fall deeper into your
chestnut coloured soul,
that swims with
endless passageways.

Existence is fallow
Upon the sheaths of grey
Transparent in the slides
Omnipresent crawling
In with no other
Inflated into, frozen in
Panes of glass
Brazen ice tell me your name
Internal tread on jags
He in his own bloating
Of crashing white sun on
The surface plain.

A flame
soft, unmanned
free to flicker
in a capsule

Intrigued
how it melts
but I'm
**** caught
in my middle

Breach the boundary
light blue colour is
patent source of
our futality

Pulped to desire
a deposit of
labour tides
that flow on the outsides

Stimulated by
awful timing
I am gentle,
courted fuelled
toxicity

Burnt wrist
blatantly lying
hostile for hearts
in respiratory

Returned to
the bone of light
illuminate my
skeletal plight
among the dark

Through partings of dismay
I lead myself to stable
A feeding of my prey
Big-eyed and unable

I trudge a swallow track
To a barren fixture
My mind itself attacks
Its own beleaguered mixture

Night I spend in transit
On familiar paths of woe
And memory demands it
That I shall never grow

Repeatedly I’m tarnished
To a blank and endless room
And my skin is taught and varnished
By the silent aching moon

There is a stillness of the night,
and it yearns to me in places,
dots aligned from street to heart -
and that is where it starts.

A hushing breeze – finally –
the lapse of gathered calm.
Through dawn to dark, a beauty black
falls softly in my palm.

Shall you try to eat me?
you spit me out and smooth the frays,
that in the day but tingle limbs
and leave an itch, confused, afraid.
But the city sleeps and I brave a whim.

Not aflame, I am just one.
Survivor of a mundane talk,
that sends a spin which causes some
to laden me a dampened gawp,
Why don’t I just walk? Just walk away!
it is known for me to often stay.

Alas a chance to scuttle to
a central storm of silent peace,
transform motion of small to grand
that surrenders me on bruising knees,
to that time that some have always seen -
a glimmered chance to understand
the source of my serene.

Melted pass, in the dark I ******,
a dripping of a solely love,
retrieve my jaded fears that push
and sink to me like a toothy flesh
and rip a smile from ear to ear -
What can I do? When this blooded mesh
is the source that leaks my fine ideas!

Intruder thoughts, retreat to dome
closing slowly, leading home,
a sprightly sprig to dance in-front -
seducing me of what’s to come.
When I arrive, a-new, unknown,
until the door is closed and candle lit,
my-self I sought to laugh, un-wit,
a place lay set with vines and grove!

An open truth, of raw and felt,
a bleach-ed canvas who only sought
a place to ***** their mind to words
not crudely spoke or illy-thought.
Scarcely would it seem to spelt
in skies of which a heart could flutter,
and even through my solemn stutter,
it chimed that time was bought.

And so I have this much more -
through spot-light streets and shadowed doors,
the lastly glow through peeking blinds
that glow and leave me late to lay,
on patterned bed, to rest my mind,
I will weep and inspect my spore -
a speck of drying cosmic spray,
that seeks to soothe my bowing back
from the thought of choking, fleeting stay -
so when my hand moves to adore
the curvature of timeless waves,
it moves, it drives my endless core
and in the night I am but saved.

Once I lost my pen.
I chewed it and chewed it during a problem
Until it was wet and made my jaw ache
And when I paused to gaze up into the air
For one last try
My hand went limp and it fell and
Rolled away

I searched for my pen
Under my desk it should have been
Spit had gathered around the sides of my mouth
And ink had stained my tongue bluey-green
It made me feel so dumb.

On my knees, where is the drenched thing?
I'm embarrassed for I was marked with its puzzlement
I still didn't know the answer to the problem,
And now I have another one.

I am always so much trouble,
but maybe I should blame the government.

In the car
you felt awkward with
bobbed veiled eyes,
squished in,
a neighbour insisted lift.
Their Language was
Course
Throaty
chiming with gold.

You had rationed bread then,
it was women’s only
and when one was
touched askew,
they took her away
from there.

That time of servitude,
5am Dettol, peeling skin,
when your man would
be home waiting to
kiss them Better.
You were glowing and
not alone.

You lent me a book,
frayed edges with
bi-carb knowledge &
I was surprised
that it worked,
as I didn’t know much.

A cache of
pyramid pictures,
Wet mirrored smiles
as they looked down upon us,
with the man reflected
gone
but
kindly enough.

Dragging your feet,
talk time for hours, when
your upward chin
would float above your
throbbing knees,
no grievances at all.

Decibels rose
like the formidable
stone wall
that was still protecting you,
and the laughter you brought
to me was…
thank you.

My practice called and so
I beckoned,
but you whispered
to me somewhere -
with a single
guidance,
to come back.

A sunny day,
a set of white teeth,
was all you could see,
morphine soaked back
against green
struck trees.

Naïve glass
between you and I,
a rose card
with plush material
on the front,
it was
the most expensive one.

Blame that left me
misaligned against a rail,
peeking through
the parts that felt,
coldly
wrong.

Licked and waiting,
useless,
I didn’t know how
to release your
generous sentient
from mine.

Graceful and soft without
life's judgement,
it has locked within me
and remains,
like a warm
forgiving light.

The morning sun leaves me white
as it’s too thin and
i'm coming down

Nothing soft can save me
not even a throw
woven by him

The curtains should be thicker
but they don’t obey
anything

I am unhappy
it’s obvious
that even strangers know
i'm a woman of sin

i think of you
and come undone
to a private world
where your kiss is the sun

palms spread
glittering sweat
a thousand powers pass
over flesh.
close on air that bares
memories
quashed by life lines.
cross gestures of hedonistic roots,
that bear no resemblance
to us.
egos flare and quell
reveal a moment
that weeps for itself
between
bare walls and
fantasies splashed.
imagine a cure
to the sickness we face
and tick on in it's place to
solve the wetness
the wetness of my grooves

when I was young
I would stick my finger
in a hole in the wall
and believe that the tip had been,
transported to space.
I miss those days
when my mind could thrive
in the most average of place.

fog, saliva
suffocation,
a shrill scream

legs in mud,
no good,
stained air

a stop sign
burn it down
don't care

running
clouds rise,
this mess

is red
is paved -
with love stress

I care
I care
just too much

if you
were here
as my crutch

I'd run
right back
to stop sign

to paint
above, that
‘you’re mine’

the world is made from screens
our boredom is our only defeat
as waves infect us microwave Waves make us sicker.
fat and bloated
those were the days in which I would remain fixated on the box
and my socks would stay on my feet because there’s just no time when there’s screens.
hours become the moments of our lives
when we are mesmerized by the horror with our own eyes
but this disguise is the screens terror to topple us,
into a slow and pitiful demise.
terrors of fuzz-glow and makes us believe that we are infinite.
yet lights only tell us what we think we believe
corporation stains our hearts
till we accept the rush of anger or deceit.
but please, my feet have remained so warm
and the fuzzy knowledge makes my mind swarm
with images of faraway
Inside the box, I will wait
until the day these images crack and decay

The drawing board was home to the dining table
which curved and shined a warm brown.
Many hours I would spend there,
the scent of mahogany
permeating my day-dreams
through the calmness of space.
Others – if hundreds – had dined
with the golden set of cutlery released only at
special occasions,
but seldom did I take my food there as
it is known I am a dreamer without sustenance.
The room was close through the silence of the day,
clanks of past plates did not cease to echo,
they electrified my present mood, generating me to
walk round and round and fantasize endlessly
about the whisperings that had been,
what looks were exchanged,
any laughs that turned to cries,
which children sat upon whose knee,
the best served dish,
who had filled their first heart of contentment since June.
Internal laps, the room
contained the motion through
the synchrony of ticking clocks and folded napkins
slid upon the surface.
Each time I do not expect to spin, but I do and I fall, over and over,
until I decide to draw an old chair and sit,
head in my hands.

I am sadder than you could imagine,
and I have done worse things than I would care to admit.
I am gripped by the shame,
and like a vengeful ghost,
I turn my sweet hand
against me -
to leave me wounded on a road.

I am sadder than you could know,
but my eyes dart first to the gutter
and with a small hushed whimper I let out -
the oozing guilt of secrets, the unknown.

I am sad, I am sad,
as I move slowly than the others,
and I can only look down when there is talk.
Like a transparent, bleeding being I am lost.

I have a deep sadness that is like no other,
which goes further than the soul,
and like a feather that fell there,
long before I arose -
it tickles at my heart palace of stone.

Menace on my garden step
Into ocean eyes
Bathe in sullied salt
Your skin will sap a single drip
To naturalize assault

Peep through shower drapes
Onto pickened flesh
Steam in closed air
Your lips will slap a greedy thought
A sanctity left bare

Knock into soft limb
Produce a curtsied silence
Echoes of anger loom
Your hands will feed a seeded fear
That croons a tasty violence

a beatless heart
that only moves with
strings attached.

In small actions there is magic
I've seen it in the eyes
Of weary men with nothing
As they look up surprised
At handed change

My teacher once told me
That one single smile
Can cross the world over
From mile after mile
And to this day I still believe her