Opals turned sideways
Was the shape of her eyes
Though one sagged, the other in a dream
A cluster of halo lids came a muse it seems.

Her hair unraveled
In wisps of barley, freckles of snow
“I inhabit cloud nine”
Said the strawberry mouth, glossy with plump plum glow.

She mumbles us a lullaby
Of what life means, of apple pies.
Made up words that make sense to her but they lose it.
They stop her in her tracks.

I want to speak up
Though it’s all too heavy.
It’s heavy for me while she’s light as plumes, drifting and drifting
There’s something about her that’s loopy.

The woman is from another time,
You can’t make friends with her.
This conversation skyrockets on
Until I’m in the corridor
And I can’t see her raincoat anymore.

Woven with yellow, the rivers blues, a lack of haleness suffused with daffodils
Sends the sailors head over heels
As she floods the room with hailing screams.

Watch out, watch out, watch out I say, I’m too anxious to talk today.
I’m numb all the time and so is she - I think she sees this and approaches me.

She is there for a second
And then she’s the sunset
Here to shine the day goodbye without articulating it
Like mist

A trick of settling upon the hebden moors
Only to manoeuvre her own country shores.
I step in
And the world is no more.

My eyeballs bolt
The moment it’s twelve,
I was a pumpkin before the ball.
Thirteen hours till blazing lights
Thirteen hours of fright.

Night owls hoot,
I’ve become one myself
Fawn and soft like puppy’s paws.
The man i dream, he is a fox
He knows to open Pandora’s box.

Aurora strikes,
I’m banished to the satellite
That orbits London in track record time.
Six hours in, I’m golden bound
Being chased by thunder hounds.

The goblin king glares at me
Eyes alert but aglow
They wonder where I’ll turn.
Left or right, in or out, either way is bad, either way you’ll go mad.

I wait for the fireworks
As they’ll inevitably come
The sirens to evacuate us off.
Three measly hours to search limbo
Three hours, I still won’t be home.

Staircases fall
And just when it ends,
No bellow is heard from Jareth.
Thirteen hours up, he grits his teeth
Thirteen hours luck, I just breathe.

“There are two sides to every story”, he says.
Though I know he is wrong.
He snatches the letters away from me,
my hand which quivers with the spirit of her husband
is now empty, searching for more history.
An apologist is not worthy of having them.
They are astringent, they are hysterical and they all happen to be women.

“If she was alive now, you wouldn’t like her”.
He gives no insight except she had depression,
as if that made up for the don’t meet your heroes routine.
Her husbands blood is yours, you should wear it with honour
As if your roots aren’t riddled with petroleum
He said he loved birds but killed two with one stone
How is that genius, how is that mine?

It was supposed to be beautiful,
Change my life forever.
I was to have a new outlook,
A fresh perspective on keeping myself alive.
But I’m still cocooned, still too afraid
I can’t even do what I love.
I love it more than anything in the world
So one day I will.
I will.
I will, I will, I will.

The train stops panting
I start to breathe
Poke my head around the bramble
See if it’s real

The artery of the station
An ever-winding sweet pea forest
A woodland cemetery
Black beauty’s still there

No splinters to my soles
Ankle cuts instead
Ball of fur that prowls and cries
But warms my lap at night

Yorkshire tea, toast with butter
Slumped in the rabbit hole
Then the fairy light switch on - not like Blackpool’s poor attempt

Twilight comes, I wait for bats
Scratch go the branches
On the bathroom window, I shudder though I’m not scared anymore

Weddings under the arch
Between me and my love sleep
We drink pink lemonade
Grow roses round the shed

I’ve magic in my finger tips
Spouting only when I’m here
Fields of an un-jaded me
For miles and miles and miles

A hotel on the south border of the most magical place on earth.
It was the night my life turned upside down,
The submarine lights’ Venus eyes burning me into the ground.

Hot and bothered,
We dipped our feet into the water,
A fire pit of we’re exhausted but at least it isn’t home.
The wild Wild West is oasis when you mark the territory as your own.

I was too young to see the potential
But as vesta burned France
And I combusted back in England
I wanted to go back
to the anti-torrential
as my world turned to black.

There was no fire escape
And that fact is marvellous.
Maybe I can be re-tamed with werewolf eyes and a red mane -
Just let it be beautiful
And I’ll return to the blazing sun.

You were carefree
And I was a door mouse
But when it came to superstition
We were sole in a row of Fridays.
First were the rollercoasters;
Rickety and sick inducing.
I needed to be spontaneous so I agreed to your dangerous request.

A whole rotation went by
We had escaped death and so displeasure beach became a sort of ****** symbol of our friendship.
A snapped ring, a bleeding eye
I didn’t get drunk but you were gone
It was the 14th when we left with sour dough faces.

I wonder how many miles per hour we’ll turn now we’re a combined mother tongue,
Our notions by the ocean, the nocturnal and the dreaming.
It was always the same with no communication and the funny thing is, is that we find comfort in that.

The priest must’ve lost count of tulips swanning into the joint
Red flowing hairs from the backs of their necks
Nervous of what god would do if he knew they didn’t believe in him
But were stamping over the bloodless beds
To get to a bona fide person.
Even if she is just bones.

She was easily found and I, an equally bizarre being
Cut through the graves like a scalpel, rejecting the problems that came with following directions.
My poem would be read, the lavender a blanket that smelt like home
That felt like her temperature rising again.
Though she would hate me hugging the dead out of her.

A bumblebee pricked the vapour into me
And buzzed humorously at my expense.
He turned my throat to zeppelins,
The thicket to the base for a hot air balloon
Where the ghost went on holiday.
She was so proud to haunt me that I gave her free access
Even though it murdered my breath.
I told her “anytime” and I still do
My pain an excuse
To do it again.

Snowflakes

The snowflakes are here again.
As dazzling as they are,
They stampede like wilderbeests
Pests for control
And I make no attempt to stop them.

To be tucked away somewhere
In the crevice of the living
Would be the suicide I wouldn’t want to carry on from.
Amongst my own kind, at last I can breathe.

Out on hikes with blood bags
As spindly as drips are
I am weighty but they carry me to little thanks, if any
Deal with my complaining, I said I didn’t want to live.

Somehow I will if I can show you how I struggled
Sympathy would be my asset though it’s been a long time coming
And I’m not sure I can cope anymore.

I will never forget when a strange case of ultraviolet
welcomed itself into our lives like it had always been there.

From the very start she paraded love; the kind that pulsed through her heart and into ours, just so we wouldn’t feel empty.

Even if there was a Hyde behind the scarlet skies and witching hours, it was prograde or nothing
And that is what makes an angel.

She spellbound those who had never pictured magic
Inferno and resilient in a land that doesn’t sleep.

I’m scared for them to know the truth
I am the air which kills the fruit.
I lose my senses through rotting roots
and pollinate friends like bumblebees do.

I come with my stingers, my lingering ears
no scene is too subtle to tell them I’m here.
Call one my darling, another my dear
except for the girl with the friendship fear.

I used to love my house and the welcome smell
it seems I fell head first into a cosy well.
The wine drunk hello’s to anecdotes
we’d tell
when I told you I fell, I fell onto the shells.

I’d forgotten I was living with strangers
a musician, a dancer, a model and a painter.
The one who kept plants, I really liked her
until her sun crisp face got fainter and fainter.

If we’d met somewhere else we would’ve been friends
It was too soon to share my rainy split ends.
The walls were venus traps, days began to blend
my pretending was too strong to ever make amends.

She cradled the stars before she died, she lured them in like she did with me. Pale landscapes, darkened hands, this is what she did, this is what she loved.

She investigated the way the love of her life moved like a tendril
that didn’t have the same devotion or patience that poured like finger ink.

She had no time, she didn’t understand her crescent moon mind and so paved away the thick red lines, as if the madness would vanish.

But the madness in her clotted like a hazardous playground,
all she wanted was to be loved in return by the one she called her saviour.

She was forever quizzical; ”why are you like this?” She would ask. Knowing she had seen her love freaking out on the bathroom floor just the day before.

She tried to control the flow but there was a barrier between abnormal and well. It didn’t stop her from craving a kiss but the kiss was stale, it was dead.

She deserved someone who wasn’t evasive. Not a curer but a good conscience that wouldn’t even help undo; just indulge in the sodden and non sodden parts.

And if she had’ve let me, I would’ve liked to be that person. I could’ve done anything to see the untroubled moments and the realisation that she is worthy of this.

And when I come to think about it, she really does suit death. One day I’ll be dead too, maybe I’ll see her linking arms with it, telling it a joke. Yeah. I like that.

I think I remember back to something
but I’m not sure.
The day that it happened I was young
but it’s hardly even a memory.
I know that there’s a part of this that’s wrong
but nothing rings true.

I think he gripped me, no he didn’t, did he?
slow or quick
or has my mind slipped, it’s always slipping.
was it abuse,
the point of being so abnormal that it was normal to live by the coral.

I always imagined i was a sea creature
we can’t reach her, they’d say.
she’s too far away fading it all out
and I always wondered why
no one even asked me what it was about
when all the time

they were trying to clear the ******* drought.

I think I won’t remember and perhaps it’s for the best,
can i please now rest?
I love and I can’t stand the ocean in my head,
sometimes i wish i was dead
and honestly, would that really be so bad
when these stills are always so sad?

They’re so raw and you’re all so painted,
it’s not me being opinionated.
I remember my life being so bright but now I’m in bed
and again, it’s crawling in my head.
I’m making it up, none of this feels real but...
It might be. And it scares me.

Melodramatic.

Melodramatic,

Just because I’m in pretty lights doesn’t mean I have a pretty mind,

just imagine if I was socially better, imagine if I died,

melodramatic.

Melodramatic,

I stand on the stage but I live beneath the storm.

I am counteractive when I give my all,

melodramatic.

Melodramatic,

If I didn’t moan I would be bright but I didn’t ask him to bite,

it’s the nice “girls’” tactic,

melodramatic.

Melodramatic,

I’m losing my hair to a monster in a pink disguise

I’ve been dipping it in drink and ****** thighs,

melodramatic.

Melodramatic,

Sorry I’m not intelligent; sorry I’m not a woman

sorry I’m not quiet; sorry I’m not a man.

Melodramatic.

She was a skeleton inside a snakeskin canvas;
the smoothest of hands to hold it’s madness.

She punctured the cliffs edge
but she wouldn’t meet the venom;
too dull, too grey,
pull at the tendons and never see heaven.

Did the momentum fade with the rain, was the rain golden?
Was it frigid, did everything stand still or was it fallen?

The more I reap the details in which mystery was apposed
the more I sew the waves with my narrative and dizzy words.

I picture a youth in my arms; squirmed in me and yanked out.
I’m too much of a charcoal cloud,
raw, cold yet loud.

Maybe it’s me above the harbour,
I’m curdling on the brink
like pale suns in vintage skies;
there’s nothing else to live for.

She bathes below the faucet of the sea and takes in discolouration.
When the windscreen wipers stop, breathing stops in full acceleration.

I’m sorry that I don’t come across
as being as lovable as you are.
My days consisted of hesitation,
building me a wall between
what I used to feel so heavily
and what I push away to the point
where it’s hurting me.
I see the breaths of silence dancing
on the screens that part us.
You might feel it blowing through,
I hope that it’s not hurting you
because it would make me wonder too.

I sent you my daydreams
we travelled the world.  
I took your cold hands
exchanged them for lights.
Talked into divinity,
I let myself be open again.
Reconciled with loving.
Then you left me.
It’s how it always goes.

My legs shouldn't stop shaking
going haywire on their own,
a person shouldn't be alone.
I lay on a single bed,
trying to be as quiet as a mouse.
It's been thousands of years
and still nobody hears me.

It's not that there's anything wrong,
when autumnal turns to white
there's something to be felt.
You lean back in your bath
to establish a bond between
familiar waves and your wet skin
uncurling itself in them.

When the snowstorm arrives,
listen to it's hymnal,
it's cry to see you as you are.
I had to learn the hard way,
see the shame in it's bleakest day,
faced it with bared teeth,
then gave it patience.

They think I’m not like cellophane,
as much as I try to point it out.
I want them to find me,
when I’m coiled up on the floor,
something having seeped
from the paleness
wishing it was the unwrapping,
absolved of the hurt
but it’s just spit from my mouth
gifted to the watchful air.
See, why are your eyes elsewhere?
I put myself on show for you
and you walk away
as if nothing happened.

You are not the martyr here
waited to get well,
what is your situation now?
I hope it’s not as bad as it seems.
Anything for happiness
don’t forget what you’re worth.
It is all dependant on
how you see yourself
and if it’s in the way I see you.

I’m pulling away
like a ripple in the sea
slowly disperses.
I’m missing so much,
there’s not much of a future here
except for with her.
The deadlines are heavy
but so is my heart
and I need to sail away.

Sometimes I feel like Esma.
How she hugs the air,
It’s caftan arms somehow
hugging her back.
There’s a safe sentiment to it.
You rely on the sun
the way that she relies on Novalie,
she isn’t there yet Esma
isn’t as alone as they all think.
And sometimes she leaks
into my window with the streaks
of light that remind me
I’m still alive.

How am I how I am
when she is so angry?
I wake up, hear the tension.
Can you feel the tension?
I am speaking it,
she can’t help but to
weave it through my own
mouth, it’s invasive.

I am not her.
I am the cry when she shouts
though little by little
I stand up taller and walk out.
If you are like me,
if your mum is like mine,
you are not her.
I am not her and you are not her.

I need something to believe
that aren’t my own odes
and ideas that are like snails
not reaching the end.
The alignment of your thoughts
make me feel wiser,
pick me your clementines
and primrose, pink stargazers.
You call it lunacy,
there’s a luminosity to you;
I want you to give it to me
and I think you do
when I’m talking with you.

To lower myself to their watch
with their black eyes,
knowing eyes,
would be bad on their part.
There's no love poems,
just eyes and lifeless bodies,
non feeling, not levitating
like you would think.
I moulded myself out of nothing,
they might use me
but I am their muse.
Their Medusa.

She took a dive
on a particularly lonely night.
It’s when women play.
Pristine girls who pick brains
dream of ******* in the rain,
wives in the same predicament,
sixty years with a man
go ferociously with the familiar.
The man was now like cadaver,
traces of him in her footsteps
though she had a woman’s tongue
on hers now and liked it.
Perhaps nights would never be
so lonely again.

I myself am vacant.
He is in it for the violence,
she is lazulite sea,
I still see his bullet wounds.
You know it’s sultry,
me finding my red refuge,
skin in blood satin
like live people will notice.
I plead to join them,
for the ripples of my dress
to be like the winds
killing jewels and men.
For I myself am vacant.

I see so many addictions,
special labels.
These clean surfaces
are getting old,
I want to be white dust
but I fall away
and you can clean me up
but I’ll still clutter
in my own little way.
The day is like a dream
except I don’t sleep.

Somebody give me a spine.
I need support for my head
and all of its rocks
that are no longer stars.
It doesn’t know what friends are
and so became unlit
like pebbles from another time.
I can’t think straight,
surely I’m a useless case.
I’m dissociative.
Where can my spine be?

When you think it is over
there’s a gushing light
and then it’s blue.
I can make out my clothes,
my covers in the shadow
but it’s dark and I
I just want it to be over.

I lurk on the surface;
a two headed monster.
Though I hold one eye open
it’s hard to depict
who is true, who is of use.
Whether they are using me
or are useful to see
how it will go down when
I find a similar fish.

There was a hand
it used to be golden
but then it met hers
everything became tainted
like the ground she laid in

Anything, she said
I will draw the smoke
you will draw the big round eyes
she was in awe
the other just had to say the word

Let us be a little less dark
I’ll treat you kindly
I think you’re a depiction
of something i could love
when we get some warmer light

There is a hand
it used to be golden
but it paddled in blood
everything became tainted
like the ground she lays in.

To lower myself to their watch
with their black eyes,
knowing eyes.
There’s no love poems,
just eyes and lifeless bodies,
non feeling, not levitating
like you would think.

Once I killed a butterfly.
It was white like lace I could
see through every line
of the hand I trapped it in.
And to here, I sit and wonder
if that is the movement
that made my life so unsolvable.
So little, so monstrous
and not like lace myself at all.

I feel the blow to the chest
the psychosomatic burn
of the candles they’ll light
sending me off, their last goodbyes.
The resuscitation,
getting me through limbo,
back into life and out once more.
It’s all starry now
and I’m glad I stayed out.

My phantom mother
isn’t scary at all.
She lessens the fight,
bewitches light.
There’s so many things
I wish I could say
as we lay in our hurt
and every time she leaves
this earth
I hold myself
pretending that it’s her.

We get lost in what we can’t undo.
She came in day after day
but you can’t mend a broken body.
Sure, there was joy
you see the ones that you love
and you can’t turn away.
But you can’t mend a broken body.
I am only telling, I didn’t see.
She was nine years old,
now she is a woman
and so I see her resilience,
a most beautiful strength that
I once thought of having
but we can’t all be as strong.
She didn’t take her first job,
it was too little.
There was a bigger voice
to be heard, to be loved, to be sang
and she embodies that.
Her face is not to be touched,
her skin is not to be labelled.
Don’t get that get lost in this,
let it be heard.

Hold me in your eyes,
glassy and predictable
The way that you feel
it’s lamentable.

It escapes you
in the rainfall of your mouth
that says many things
but nothing really comes out.

You know what you want
but there’s pain
and you’re not the kind
to take someone’s life away.

Except your own.

If I had to live without you
there would only be blue light
crowding my space
where you should be like
downcast stars
and manifesting scars.
only a way out for us would be
my salvation.

With red raw eyes,
i’m not crying
in some pretty orange
hue that i look
baby in.
I’m figuring out
how to hide my wrists
and how i can resist
joining you
again.

I’m just a droplet
in a whole pool of deteriorating
coldness and boldness
that I never asked to be put in.
So please pay no mind,
i swear i never feel this way
when i’m with you.
I step into solace ground,
you, incredible girl,
help me push it away.
I’m learning,
I will be for a while.
But we’re never too old
to start loving
like we always could.
And listen,

we will.

Your world is so confusing.
I'm ambushed with colour
going insane with some longing
that I'll never be able to explain.
As long as you keep standing there
composing a cadence in my heart
I'll keep journeying through it,
milking your clairvoyant eyes.

Chocolate ponds melted into her face,
puppy dog eyes that I'm sure she's used
but I trust myself stepping into them.
It's a new path to follow,
I see the softness of her skin underneath
her pomegranate checked shirts
and a fragility she likes to hide.
Skin that feels safe,
skin that blends into me as the evening
winds become dark apricot fire
and as we ride the angry roads,
our smiles become country lanes.
Everything is raspberry swigs
and running as the days drain out
into relief, forever.

I wanted the sun to cleanse me
and when the rain came
i drifted to another place with you.
See, it calms me and doesn’t ignite me,
it doesn’t blacken me more
in the process of healing and hope
like it does when i’m completely
discoloured without you.

Faraway echos and the hum of flies
are like distant lullabies
of a childhood I had almost forgotten.
A childhood written by Charlotte
on an icy blue morning like this one.
How very special is it
to start holding the earth in her eyes
in mine like sapphire raindrops
that dream and cry as humans do.
My breath dances in the fog
as if it was weaving a wordy web
and I smile in my silent ease, it's a
moonlight I remember from years ago.
A charm I still can't fathom
but I want it to stay for the rest of my life.

A sad fever takes a hold of me.
I know I can't be sad forever
but i'm a survivor and if it means
wrecking myself then so be it.
I don't want to be tough
but my fists are deep azure
and star bound as they punch down
every wall I created.
It's been a hostile few years and
what you don't understand
is that I can't be my vibrant self anymore.
Not for you or anyone.
I just want to be left alone.
I don't want to be alone.

My mind is a clementine.
It's freshly squeezed
and it's guts are everywhere.
I tread over the peels
but keep slipping on the intestines.
The stringy bits hang me up
by my ears and I jump around
like a patient under shock treatment.
It's sunset all the time, never day,
never night, just stuck between madness
and catatonic tendencies.
I'm always here and can't get out
of the orange waltz.

It's a series of technical difficulties,
my mind is tuning itself.
But I never turned the radio on,
I don't want to hear the talking anymore.
The only clever idea it comes up with
is to blow myself up so I can
BECOME part of the sunset.
Whatever I do, it'll be messy, it is in there.
Maybe it'll learn not to
call me a mars struck alien and
make me butcher myself up like I'm
mouldy and unworthy of saving.
I've gone off and my mind is thriving off it.

I can't stop feeling sad.
It feels like junk overloading
on a machine and I'm the poor sucker.
Then it scatters like mad rabbits,
rabid blue and tatty... frantic.
Just one more lost star for the collection.
They're all the same
but you always singled me out.
I was worse than the others
and you wonder why I become what I become.
I always thought there was one last
dash of dopamine, something to live for.
But it was a waste of breathing.
it's time to give some air to someone else.

The clarity of the sky is all for you;
bluebell contrails open up their arms.
You should've found that true happiness
and you still capture mine.
But it wasn't a breeze.
It was intangible cyclones like hazel thorns
ripping the edges of your world
and all I can say is that I'm sorry.
That wasn't meant to happen.
All the things worth treasuring don't
come close to you,
all I wish is that you're smiling now.
For secret gardens only you can see
and you to breathe easy while you sleep.