Now
You are a free oxygen radical,
you set the chain reaction
and there are more of you than I can
detoxify.

Then
I breathed you in-
-voluntarily;
you were always there,
at the end of the electron transport chain,
you broke apart
to accommodate my capricious protons
and you changed state;
for me.

Now
I am in oxidative
s
            t
 r
            e
  s
             s
as you are colliding
your way through my melanocytes -

and my skin is draining white
and my eyes are burning red.

I'm thinking about June Acott
She died on the 18th of August, 2009
She had aged seventy-four years before her demise
That's what the bench says, anyway.
If June Acott were a wine she would be a glowing, sweet red
June Acott would be a summer wine
She would be a pricey vintage
And as she had aged the sediment would have built up
And it would have smoothed her rough edges
But maybe that wasn't enough
And maybe if she'd been decanted she would have aged seventy-five years
Or maybe seventy-six
But seventy-four is a vintage that anyone would be proud to have in their cabinet
And I hope that whoever built this memorial bench serves her all the time.

There is a word that expresses all
the ways in which you have disappointed me
and driven me to tears of frustration;
I could not enumerate them without displacing
my mind in the process,
I can only seethe in the chagrin
that you have left behind you,
a thick gelatinous mess you spread
with each movement of your sluggish body
and with each breath you take
you augment my resentment for you
until it boils over into one expression,
one word that encompasses this
empirically justifiable vexation,
uttered with the sarcastic malice
that could drive it into your dense English skull;

cheers.

The incandescent Sun
is eating itself alive

They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter

The helium will compact
to a carbon red giant's core

They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter

The Earth's heat is depleted
by geothermal extraction

They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter

The geysers are drying up
and the pressure sinks in subsidence

They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter

The permafrost decomposes
and prehistoric methane effervesces

They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter

The Yellowstone caldera hisses
plumes of taunting toxic gases

They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter

The sea-floor volcanoes
purge their way to the surface

They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter

The aurora lights the sky
as solar wind ravages the magnetosphere

They said it's too small to matter
too small to matter

I started reading late and never learnt to put down the book
I guess I burnt out with the strength learning took
I couldn't stop spewing the facts that I learnt in school
But now when I open my mouth I cant help playing the fool
I guess I stopped using words that others could question
I guess I got tired of being the only one awake in lessons
I guess it's not worth it to embrace a humming mind
When being alone is the only solace that I find
Because honestly, we are "in clanging space a moment heard"
And Yeats is the only friend that doesn't think I'm absurd
And my friends take the **** because I read poetry while simultaneously they're reading books that I breathe
"If its not on the curriculum then it doesn't count"
Well I read it all years ago, want to know what its about?
Maybe its dense to think that English Lit numbs your mind but I didn't take the subject and it didn't stunt the meanings that I find
I guess it's my fault for reading Leroux instead of Meyer
But the only fantasy I need has a mask hiding layers
And I guess Lloyd Webber gave it a rebirth but The Phantom of the Opera was my favourite book first
I wish that reading books could make me superior
But I'm in a corner, lips tight, perpetually inferior
I wish I'd learnt the things that they'd learnt in school
Like throwing parties and talking back and breaking the rules
I'm caught between one extreme and the next
One second I'm curled thinking alone the next I'm having ***
Because when I voice my thoughts they're warped and inaccurate
Sometimes I wonder if I'd express them better if I'd stayed celibate
Surely talking shouldn't be so hard
But it's difficult to hold back the words that I want to discard
Discard because my head hurts from the pressure
Of the thoughts that no right mind could measure
I suffer from the pain of never feeling understood but honestly, I would push you away if you could

I savour the bitter-sweet tang
of teeth encasing bottom lips,
the harsh sharpened edges scraping
against jittery nerve endings
under cling-film coral.
And those teeth encasing bottom lips
encase us.

Forearm up
to block -
the firearm’s out
to blow
and the spectators
peck away
at the show;
saphrotrophs
fester fright;
such delight
in such a plight
and a thorn thick
enough
with blood
to drain the room.

You are four hundred and forty-six miles away
from me.
Four hundred and forty-six miles over
rivers, mountains, a country border,
over great London fist and Glasgow knot,
all passed by in the second it took
for your words to reach me
and the power of words
hits me like a big red double decker bus
and I wonder if it hits you
at least as hard as a can of Irn-Bru
and as Big Ben shakes the city
I think about how time is a greater barrier
than distance could ever be
because you are four hundred and forty-six miles from me
but yesterday you were only fifty centimeters away,
the distance of my eyes from the laptop screen.

a well-starved leech on my
mind. An ore beating
through the tumultuous sea of
my stomach. I struggle to reach
reach out
and
lift
lift myself
to
freedom, upon that boat -
oh, almost so… tangible;
oh, almost a light at the end…
The boat pushes faster,
h
harder,
the waves licking desperately at
it’s splintered hull for just
just one
one taste
one salt-splaying,
spliced
taste
…at the end of this disembowelled
sewage pipe called love.

Your black liquorice fingers taste like nostalgia hitting my gag reflex
as I am nauseated forwards
spitting out bile because it burns more than words;
your teeth are lemon lollipops
and your tongue and mine
lick greedily for a sugar hit
and a wince
before your fingers twist the tap
letting the water drown out your appetite;
I pull open the oven door and the smell rocks us backwards
butter makes a voyage
diffusing through the air to find the moisture of our tongues
and lubricating the crumbs of the cake
so that they fall through fingers
and we stand in a world of eyes into eyes
and hands into hands
and tongues into mouths.
And it tastes better.

Tomorrow is an anniversary:
39 years, 39 years;
how sweet to have made it
this far without forgetting
(twin abandoned, twin left bare)
how to drown a graveyard
with your tears.

When privilege has you scattered
others don't see the drain
of a life mapped in tatters,
each scrap on a different plane;
life has left me perpetually lost
but how else could I be found,
how else would I learn the cost
of directions not homeward bound?
I look over the undead corpses
of the homes I used to know -
one that crawled in roses
spelt my childhood the most
they bloomed in all the colours
that a child's heart could dream
and stained the century-old windows
so it seemed the little house did gleam
and when we left it ripped my heart out,
though not the first nor last home lost,
but that's what true love is about -
being left hollowed out with frost.
And now my memories are in footsteps,
trodden away from my new home,
because with age comes curiosity
and a desire to be alone
and when I walk these old Cheam streets,
a village slipping through London's fingers,
my heart beats through my ambling feet
and the ache of pure love lingers
because the walls crumble at my touch
and the streetlights flicker red and die
because the city is at an Oyster touch
but trees are gathered at my side
because the huge huddled houses loom
but birds and foxes can still roam
because bulbous roses will always bloom
in a place that I call home.

But this time I am leaving,
for a different city now,
though this town on London's border
is the best one I have known;
my footsteps travel further
but to a place, for once, that's mine
but I'll take all of these memories
and a rose to keep the time.

My eyes flicker past,
as the frog that leaps from pad to pad,
and linger, dissatisfied,
where the most shadows lie,
as the salamander that makes a sacrifice
of metamorphosis for a simpler life,
and there I hunch in darkness bound
cocooned
hoping that the light will be softer,
the wind a cooler kiss,
when I emerge, adapted,

different.

But metamorphosis is for butterflies.

Am I another girl
hips gently swaying
and mind lacking?

Am I another girl
arched body yearning
and spirit cracking?

Am I another face
laced in lace
of illusory airs?

Am I another leaf
passed underfoot
rotting in despair?

Am I another girl?

The escape of a label,
"untitled",
labels itself:
insecure?
Uncertain?
Unimaginative?
Or maybe an idealist
who lives in a world
where labels are shallow
and the soul overshadows the face;
but there is no escape
from the scrutinising eyes
of those who find meaning
within












absolutely nothing.