Of course – a blush
Of course - a rose,
Ecg plasters,
Hives,
And the blood
On the feet
Of eternal fouettes.

(Red hourglass woman
Turns everybody’s heads –

Because she's so far away from death
And because she's red, baby, red.)

A big shadow,
Overgenerous,
Sits quietly
As the lamplight sleeps
On its side.

The clock beats inside my thumb,
Ash kisses the floor,
Teeth wear fur.

Somewhere there is a TV,
And people clap.
Dare I eat more chewing gum
Just to find it in my hair?

I sat cross legged on the balcony as he rolled me a cigarette. He didn't smoke but he rolled perfectly. His perfectionism was killing me.
"The other night I filmed myself on my webcam." he said, rolling, rolling, thumbs turned inward. "I filmed myself going to sleep. I wanted to see if I talked or had nightmares or whatever..."
"Yeah..."
"So I watched the film back this morning. Turns out, I woke up in the middle of the night and chucked all of my things onto the floor. My books, my notepad, everything. It was like watching Big Brother or something. I mean, it was me, but it wasn’t me. I would never chuck my books onto the floor."
"Well…we all think that we would never chuck our books onto the floor, but we do don’t we? Hey you can really see the stars out here."
"I know. It's wonderful with a telescope. I have a very good telescope."
"Where is it?"
"Upstairs. We have a space gazing window. It’s my telescope but Frederick likes it too. But then he always smudges up the lens." He handed me the cigarette, thin as candy and gummed down with precision. "I could teach you about space."
"Oh, please, I'd never take it in."
"Yes you would."
I lit the cigarette and the paper glowed.
"I just like looking."
'You can't just look and not know. You won't even know what you're looking at."
I looked at him.
"Yeah, I know."

when we are home
and towels are hung to dry,
when the clouds are soot and black
and blue is shy

when the waterbed is hotter than the sun,
when the soppy christmas ******* has begun

I will think about this summer
and how warm
the sand was,
and how we owned the dawn

when I walked with you
along a gold foot track,
with suncream sweethearts tanned onto my back.

Black curls,
Broken commas
Unarranged.

Snowlit cheeks,
Cold flowers
Dimly veined.

Dog eyes,
Rich dark
Recycled glass.

Bottom lip,
Baby fat.
Upper? Sparce.

in the silver
bowl
you let her head all henna hexed
with indigo
sink.
you watched the ink
Twitch out to tell the tales
from one blue star to the other,
but no maps.

how black is her hair now, this mother,
and how deep am I standing in it?

I am black to the ankle
black and blue to the ankle,
and to the knee,

From the knee to the elbow that
crooks
to hold the baby?

I love it when you come to stay Bea -

with your night time t-shirt
that tells me
'tomorrow is a mystery'.

My internet history reads
Achica, free p and p,
and I have a box of barely touched
salted caramel tea.

This pain is an animal
That I have not tamed.

Its teeth will fall out
And sooner or later
I am bound to feel sorry for it.

I'm sorry
for my glamorous sizzling brain circuitry

I'm sorry
that I never warned you about the summer

sorry
I'm so sorry
for my own bones

sorry that I'm not quite the ticket

sorry if I'm not a good neighbour

sorry
I'm going up the wall

I'm sorry
if I wish this would go away
and give me the future that I'd always been promised

I'm sorry
I'm so sorry
but I can't cut out my own mind

and even if I could
I wouldn't

Cinderella’s mop,
A fish on ice.
A picture of a
Spinning top,
A neighbour’s lights.

A framed page,
A line of ancient words.
Somerset at five am,
A line of birds.

Foreheads locked
At midnight,
Spent and heavy.
All the lives that
Have been lived
Already.

Bones of sailors
Sleeping through
The ocean.
Thumbtacks sorting out
A month’s commotion.

The moon’s ghostly
Pockmarked
Other half –
Still, moving,
A rebellious photograph.

Hollow pink,
Beer embossed,

Eyes  -
Icing roses,

And the sound,
That sound…

Dionysian.

We shed our gap-toothed gentleman coats
and ran white skinned into a purple river,

George (a weak swimmer) grabbed handfuls of
reeds as the water undid a fantasy of clouds.

Our feet found love with the edges of rocks and
our swimming trunks unloaded the stink of chlorine

into the cold bright dark light miracle of water,
our reflections broken into champagne pieces and

beautiful as only two laughing boys can be.
How clichéd to be lost in the heart of the morning,

as George sat with his orange juice like an
illustration drawn by the most lighthearted of artists,

a little prince against a backdrop of blooming baoabs
that shrugged behind him like green diamonds

with the tunes of birds still clinging to their leaves.
How deeply romantic I was at fourteen -

too young to have read Brideshead Revisited,
too old to have gazed at George’s hair and

seen a simple tumble of boring blond.
This was the summer that ached with everything,

like a muscle throbbing during tennis
reminding you you’re playing as best you can.

That summer was the shimmering pause
between two acts of a dismal play -

our childhood not yet left behind,
lingering like a tan line on the shoulders of joy.

One night we drank lemonade out of brandy
glasses and sat together in the biggest bath you’ve

ever seen, winding our wrists together to sip
from each others drinks, his hair was dark and

damp at the tips and there were bubbles everywhere.
Such things I remember, the gentleness of first love

and the way it shapes each love to come,
I’m still a sucker for blonds and a gallant lover of

summers spent as they should be spent:
in water baby England, with the countryside

humming inside your ears, and the sunlight
warming up the grass to greet your feet after

swimming in rivers, and to wind down at night
with a friend who is beautiful,

and to kiss them just once, near the ear and only here,
to wish them goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

The cat is being poisoned
My toenails are falling off
This house is haunted
And the fear is getting me down*

………..

Two children play with the hospital coffee machine, tearing open teabags and sprinkling the innards into pitchers of milk.
“This is how you tell fortunes.” The little girl says, watching the tea float.
“No it isn’t.” says the boy.
I want to go over and talk to them but my pyjamas have a bleach stain on the crotch that looks like I’ve had a *******. I am afternoon fog. My back is sweating.
I wheel myself over to the window with one of the hospital Bibles tucked between my knees. Inside the back cover someone has written:

THIS BOOK WAS MADE FOR SAVING
AND THAT’S JUST WHAT IT’LL DO
ONE OF THESE DAYS THIS BOOK
IS GONNA SAVE THE LIKES OF YOU

The kids behind me argue about fortunes. For a moment I let my head drop and my eyes close, but
**** **** terror ****
My cat is being poisoned,
And my toenails are falling off

And the way he stroked the roses was enchanting,

As the pint glass full of water was decanting,

And I felt as though I’d known that stroke forever,

As though he’d touched me long ago to soothe an error,

Like he’d fondled me before to watch me bloom –

But when I spoke, he just retreated to his room.

A boy in jeans,
A boy in trousers,
A boy in braces,
A boy in blouses,
A girl who smells like summer sweat,
A girl whose makeup hasn’t set,
A boy who swears,
A boy who doesn’t,
A girl’s shoulder,
A second cousin,
A girl who smells of **** and beer,
A tattooed boy with a silver sneer,
A skinny girl who’s got T.B,
A boy who daintily sips his tea,
A girl’s left leg – bare or stockinged,
A boy so cold his knees are knocking,
A nasty ****,
A suede-head killer,
Kate Moss,
Sienna Miller,
Vivienne Westwood’s crazy teeth,
Bow-legged loons on Hampstead Heath,
Blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, green,
Cold eyes, big eyes, sad eyes, mean,
Darling sweethearts in flirty skirts,
City-Boy ******* in well-pressed shirts,
Elbows, throat, wrists, knees,
A consumptive girl’s chainsmoking wheeze,
Blonde girls with their hair in plaits,
Skinny boys, short boys, muscular, fat –
Girls with pink lipstick like strawberry frosting,
I’m telling you man,
It’s ******* exhausting.

Grey morning,
The newspaper and
The cat.

His lilac eyelids can’t wake up,
Weighed down with
Saturday’s *****,
Pints and pints.

His dark legs,
My white legs,
Mixed up like coffee and cream -
He stirs and coughs and maybe dreams.

How I love Sundays,
Quiet and warm
With the newspaper,
The cat,
And him.

I’ve tickled it into his naked back,
When he’s ******* me it spools around my tongue,
I devote myself with every playful smack –
And harder still when certain smacks have stung.

I never thought I’d fall for such a man,
Who smuggles love like drugs inside a coat,
I love loudly just because I can,
The words collect like songbirds in my throat -

Or three boats arranged into a fleet,
To sit behind a hesitating sky,
Sulking with the shyess of retreat,
Billowing with every loaded sigh.

So I wanted to **** him!
Of course I did.
Didn't you?

I only wanted a new twirl of genes on my belly,
New legs, all ambition.
I've got a city of curls,
I need hands on them,
A new voice on my name.

You stand there green and wild at the hood,
****,
hurling ashtrays and lamps.
Let's have a fight!
A fist fight,
That years ago I could have won.

Is it done then?
What a tragedy if it is!
Because I'd pay for you to **** me now,
Right now,
While you hate me.

There is a strange quality
That infects beautiful people.
Marilyn Monroe is a perfect example-
It is the quality of other-worldliness,
Convincing us
That this idol transcends the mundane
And become something holy,
Untouchable
Wholly untouchable,
Their beauty circling us,
Dreamily,
Slowly.

Tom,
Despite being the most beautiful
Creature most people have ever clapped eyes on,
Does not possess this quality.
In fact,
It is the absence of it
That makes his beauty
All the more unreal.
He is so lodged into the fabric of
Existence that even the colour of his eyes
(Which have been compared to the sky so many times
It has ceased to be a cliché)
Do not look like the sky,
They are the sky,
His pupil a black sun
Stuck in the way.
His furious storm of hair is the
Golden brown of fine malt whiskey,
You can get drunk on every strand,
And you can chart the seas
From the white half-moons
On the fingernails of his hands.

(He flutters behind the bar like a drunken hummingbird,
The gold paint on his face
Turning him into an off-duty statue from Covent Garden.

He turns to address the crowd of customers.)

“Right – roll up, roll up –
Come see the Brick Lane-ologists favourite mixologist,
I’m a cocktail maker and occasional drug taker,
I can do things with gin that’ll make your head spin…”

He begins to juggle with three glass bottles,

“I’m your loyal bartender and I take any legal tender…”

he sets the bottles on the bar top with a grin,

*“And I’m at your pleasure…for just two quid a measure.”

Mutual ******* in Madrid,
Athens in the winter tans me red,
Paris lamps, romantic power grid,
Venice swishes, watching me give head.

Caribbean wave locks me to the sand,
Fresh water fish Frenchly kiss my hair,
Land’s End extends a silver hand,
And all the angels know that I am there.

Me and Dee,
2007.
An afternoon
Scrabble session.

Friendly game
Turning sour,
Silence,
Filling up the hours.

I slyly grin and
Slowly lean.
******* Dee!
“Byzantine”.

He narrows his eyes,
Calm and small,
Then throws the Scrabble board
At the wall.

(There’s something that I keep in my pocket, a piece of dental floss, flavourless now, chewed to a white nothing by my own mouth to wring out every strand of his DNA, but now it just tastes of me and nothing else.)

My sister was wearing a black dress made of crepe. I remember it so well, the way it scrunched up in my fingers like paper, my knuckles juxtaposed against the colour, white with tension, against a bottomless backdrop of black. I held onto that dress like a terrified child. For that moment, it was the only thing that existed for me.

gotta sit here, gotta stay, gotta sit here.

(Memories of bumblebees with their innards hanging out,
“make it start mama, make it start!” it’s a common reaction amongst children so I’m told.)

I did not feel his soul sliding past me. I didn’t feel a thing, not a single thing.
Is it the same as turning off a TV? Energy dispersing into the ether? A kettle boiling, bubbles stilling? How can he have just…stopped?

He stopped.

I have felt many things in my life. The whole spectrum, from dizzing highs to drug doped ecstasies, suicidal jaunts to white-edged nothingnesses. But I had never felt abandoned before. Not truly, sincerely, abandoned. Marooned. Bitter. Desperately bitter. Terribly, terribly frightened and deeply alone.

There’s nothing like the smell of flowers to jolt the senses.

I let go of my sister’s dress and walked – not ran -  but walked out into the daylight.
I remember that I had my head held high - I could have just been going for a smoke, going to make a phone call, going to check that the sky was still up in the air and not down on the floor like a carpet of bluebells , but when I reached the door of the church I started to run.
I ran right in front of cars – **** it! – across the road to a half deserted carpark, winding through the cars like a ******, and slunk down to the floor in front of a parked white van. I thumped my head against the cool metal of the bumper and started to shake. I remember my body feeling somehow too big and too small all at once, I remember laughing at one point because it seemed like the right thing to do. My shaved head hit my knees with a thwack.
I’m not here, I’m not real, I’m a black and white thing, I’m just a black and white thing...
But I was real, and there was no escaping it. All of it was real. The carpark was real. The flowers were real. The only thing that was not real was the thing that mattered the most.
“You ****.”
I got up. I started to kick the van, kick the wall behind me, and kick the air.
You read about it in stories and you see it in films, people losing their marbles and hitting out, heroically bleeding from the knuckles, stinging, saying ‘ah, ah.’ None of that happened for me. I hit so hard I thought I’d broken my hand, but my bones are ******* stubborn. The world is ******* stubborn. My mouth felt like it was bleeding, but it was just laced in a cobweb of spit.
“You ****! You ****! You ****!”
I took off my suit jacket and draped it over my head, pulling it tight; a black ghost in a carpark in the countryside.
I felt an arm wind its way around my waist, and the rustle of crepe.
I sobbed up my grief like catarrh, the lining of my jacket wet with spit and the inevitable chawing tempest of tears that caved in my stomach like a perfect punch.
“I’m losing my mind.”
My sister grabbed onto my hand and squeezed, hard.
“No you’re not, Arthur.” She said to me, with certainty.
“No you’re not.”

I am tipsy at lunchtime with an airful of rain,
Killing time before a party.

And I wonder how it’s going to be
When I turn up slightly tired
And see her face.

I’m drinking in the daytime
So that I am drunk tonight.

Snatching at the hours,
I point my feet
Like a clock at twelve
And imagine hands.

I’d like to call you,
I’d like to tell you
That I’m thinking about
Walking to the countryside.
I’d like to tell you
That this highness
Doesn’t feel royal,
And that I can’t stop
Thinking
Of beheaded ancestors
And bolt-headed cattle,
Loveable tortures,
Millions of wandering dogs.

I want to call you and
Reel off a list of
Everything that’s ever happened,
All the people in the world
Who have made love at
Deeply
Satisfying
Angles,
I want to call you,
Pump you with blood,
My fingers rabbiting
Through a snug warren -
Bright Eyes,
Bulldozer,

Wanna call you
And say
'How could he do it to me?'
And in the same breath,
'Imagine me on my knees,
Oh, uh,
**** my mouth from
A distance -
But,
But,
How could he do it?'

Wanna call you
Because I’m not happy at all,
The universe is sitting
On my head,

Need to call you,
All ******* in a tangle
Baby,
I know the histories of
All the trees
And I want to pour over maps
Today.

I want to call you,
I've got so many questions.

I’d like to call you
And ask you
Why I’m not dead.
No melodrama,
No pressure,

But I’m gonna really need an answer.

the thorns that cross my mind at night
with gold eggs stuck in my throat
(cod liver oil, big and bloated and gold)

he heaves me into a cold front,
but I can hear planes circling us
on their fronts and cold,
the dark is a rumble
tottering ***** plates on edge

the planets are spectators come too close
like wasps, too close, can't finish this thought -
I love you but I need to be alone,
this is when ghosts come, too shy for you,
they need to sit and shyly shiver,
go now, go out,
and find out -
where is that plane going? Cold, someplace cold?

Like vultures,
Bald and pink -
Even ugly feet
Look handsome in the air.

He sits next to me in the waiting room, his breath labored. He’s good looking, in his late twenties, wearing a red vest.
“Hi.” he says.
“Hello.”
His face is suntanned, but one electric white spark splits the colour of his forehead like a bolt of lightening. It confuses me for a moment, until I realise it’s a frown line that hasn’t tanned.
“Listen, mate...listen, mate. What’s your name?”
“Arthur…”
“Listen Arthur, can I call you Arthur?”
“Of course - Art if you like.”
“Listen Arthur – what are you in for?”
I put down my copy of ‘Perfect Home’ as the water dispenser blows a great gasping bubble.
“Bipolar.”
“Yeah? You being sectioned?”
“No, no. I’ve just come out of hospital. I’m having a review.”
“Right.” He chews his lip. “Do you reckon I’m gonna get sectioned then, or what?”
“Well - I don’t know. What are you here for?”
He sighs darting his eyes sideways, and his frown deepens.
“When I was sixteen I was at this party, right…”
“…Right…”
“And I was drinking. You know how it is. Few beers, bit of fun. You know how it is, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, so I’m at this party. And I feel sick, ok? So I go to the toilet. Nice toilet, friend’s house, pink bath, air freshener, nice. And I’m sick all over the place. What do they call it? Project summat...”
“Projectile vomiting…?”
“Yeah yeah, projectile vomiting. And then I gotta take a ****.” He lowers his voice, leaning into me. “So I’m all beery and I feel kinda terrible y’know? And I unzip my jeans and go to pull the old fella out…”
“Uh huh…”
“But there’s nothing there.”
“What do you mean there’s nothing there?”
“Exactly what I ******* say. My **** is just…gone. And I realise, right, that someone at that party has chopped it off. One of my friends. One of my friends has chopped my old fella off.”
I lock eyes with him.
“Jesus.”
“I know. One of my ******* friends.”
“And this was…?”
“When I was sixteen. Anyway. To cut a long story short – I went to Thailand a few years ago and I took this drug over there, some party drug. And my **** grew back. Everything’s been fine since then. But on Monday, well, you can imagine can’t you? I wake up and my **** has been chopped off again. Again. God knows who did it, but I've got a good idea...”
“And that’s why you’re here.”
“I’m here because I want them to find out the name of that party drug, the drug I got in Thailand, the one that worked. It worked. It actually worked, mate.”
“Was it ******?”
“**** knows, but it worked.” He rubs his face with both hands, sighing. “So, what’dya reckon? Do you reckon they’re gonna section me?”
Of course they’re going to ******* section you.
“I don’t know, mate. But I thought that my neighbours were poisoning my cat, and they weren’t too pleased about that. Do you get what I’m saying?”
My psychiatrist interrupts to call my name, standing at the mouth of the waiting room with a smile. I shake the man's hand and wish him all the best.
I look over my shoulder as I go down the corridor, and he picks up my copy of ‘Perfect Home’.
He puts his hand down his jeans, adjusting something.

So what will I do
With my heart?

What will I do with it
Today
Or tomorrow,
How much does it owe,
(How much did it borrow?)

Is it daggered into my
Chest with ruby darts?
Is it butcher wrapped
In class-passed
Love notes,
Or shrink wrapped carnations?
Is it waiting around
For the perfect donation?

And what will I do with my head?

Is it getting bigger?
Will it slot into a shelf?
Is it killing me?
Will it fix itself?

What will I do with it
Next week,
Or next year?
Will it be William Blake
Or Edmund Lear?
(MRI:
blooms - blushes – stains,
This boy’s got roses
on the brain!)

And what will I do with my hands?

What will I do with them
For the rest of my days?
Will they stick to my lap?
Will they flutter away?

Will they get even worse
At unscrewing lids?
Will they shake sticks
at the neighbours kids?

What will I do with my body?
Will it see me through?

What will it do with me?
What will it do?

The winter was unkind
Yet you loved it
So much,
It was your gauche friend,
Reclusive in its blankness,
Complicit with its demands for
Many layers,
As snow is complicit in ****** -
Snuggling coldly into
Footprints.

And I remember the simpering
Light
That night,
As it squeaked into the
Room like
Lab rats bred for death.
I remember the slip
Of your body on the sheets
And your
Speech bubble breath
Spearmint ellipses,
Your teeth white
Your eyeballs white
Your watch-face white
The witch behind you
White,
Whispering the content
Of her
Turkish delight
And sculpting you
For her museum.

(Nothing ever really warmed you up.
How I hated that winter.)

I put the heating on and
Showed you the
Wedding dress –
An antique affair
That had been passed down.
My sister did not want it,
As she is not at all romantic.

When I got back from
The bathroom
You were out of bed,
Holding the dress against yourself,
Stuck in the mirror,
Head turned,
Absolutely lost -
A tiny bride
White as a
Snow tongued branch
And just as still,
Waiting for the wind
Or the clouds
Or some kind of joy
To move you.

Close your eyes.

         Imagine a white room.

There are objects in the white room.

Each object represents something in your life that worries or stresses you. Each object binds you to the external world. Each object stands for something that keeps your mind active, keeps you worrying, keeps you awake.

Imagine a white room.

I really am trying. My eyes are tight, eyelashes stuck to my cheek.

(I can feel the blood trickling through the veins in my sclera, ******* itself from end to end like cherryade through a drinking straw.)

I have my toes resting on my knees like a good little lotus, my fingers resting on top of them making the ‘ok’ sign.

This is a hard trick. It takes concentration. It takes effort to clear your thoughts from a metaphorical room (Jean’s room, tidy but never clean.)

What if I fall asleep upright? Will my neck break?

You ever see spiders playing dead? They roll onto their backs and cradle their bodies inside a disjointed prison that they’ve made with their own limbs. Their legs bend back at jaunty angles, crooked at the knees.

A spider ran at me once whilst I was sat on the toilet. I was reading an encyclopedia at the time, just flicking through, and in my panic I hit the spider with the spine of it. He curled up into a crumpled ball in the middle of the pink bathroom mat. I thought he was dead, but by the morning he had moved on, not leaving a trace.

In the grand cosmic metaphor of it all, we’re all just bristly little gymnasts looking to be left alone.

The white room is flying over the sea.

Objects that represent your daily life are sitting in the white room.

There is a door in the white room.

There are windows.

Using your imagination, remove each object from your room one by one. Throw them out of the door. Pour them out of the window.

Clear your mind.

Throw it all into the sea.*

My laptop is drowning. My journals are dissolving like sugar paper. White birds come from nowhere and lift up the corners of my bookcase, shaking it out into the ocean as one would air out a bed sheet. My memories are eating sand. The people I have loved are unsmiling shop-window cutouts, rolling along the waves of a mythical sea.

How far do I have to go? It seems like this means more than just Sleep. Every night do I need to be new, need to empty myself out like a clogged up sea-shell? How far do I have to go before it’s just me that’s left?

I can never make my sea deep enough because I don’t wish to drown. I’m not Ophelia.

I’m really not.

I don’t hold flowers neither.

I just can’t sleep.

(White isn’t a colour, it’s an absence.

Put a tick against my name. Use a bright red pen.

I’m right here. For always.)

will we ever share clothes again

will we ever gallop up the stairs
with big elbows and a drink

will we complain about the gum studded streets
and swap tales of our mothers

will we wrestle to music this summer
and compare our white arses,

will we wake up still drunk?

will we get our hands on each other's faces,
will we steal cigarettes,
will we ****,
will we text,
will we worry about each other's coughs?

will we ever swap clothes again?

She had a dressing table,
Aveeno cream,
And a big blusher brush.

There was nothing sad about the scissors
But they sat there open on the dressing table,
And they looked sad.

Two canaries flew freely about the room,

So we joined awkwardly in the darkness
Under the sad eyes of scissors
And the colour yellow.

Table,

My father and I sat
In our timeless silence
That brewed away beneath the lights
Like a sweat that never breaks.

Sister and the Stranger
Sat flanked by pillars,
With two full glasses of
Blood-lit wine
Simmering warmly like
Lamb's hearts
Dropped into bowls.

Never do I love my sister more
That when she wears that little fishhook
Of a smile,
A grim refusal of her lips to flicker down,
Making mincemeat of photographers,
Men in bad jumpers,
And garrulous psychopaths.
It was crueler than any frown.
Far more efficient.

The Stranger buttered her bread-roll all at once,
(A damning thing to do this afternoon)
And dinner turned to coffee
Without a hitch.
I noticed that the whole evening was
Done in a deliberately cut-glass way -
Two siblings painting themselves
Into the people they never wanted to be,
To make a ******-minded point.

She’s not one of us.
She’s nothing like us.
She’s nothing like mother -
Absolutely nothing like mother!

And as we stood waiting for the car
My sister turned to me and said –
“I thought my expectations of daddy were low.”
She swiped at her flapper-girl haircut,
“Turns out my expectations
Have a basement.”

We only notice class
When we need to shut someone
Out.
We only notice class

When it's all we've got.

Zoe hangs back,

My home-time mayhem
with half a head of hair,
pink neon flashing up her cherry studded arms.

My cufflinks snag and shake,
trying to make her see,
trying to make her see something.