Clarinets, harps, cellos
Delicate fingers on delicate strings
Snapping any moment
I want to be rough, want to be heard
My tongue is stolen, hands in my heart
Living there temporarily
While me, floating outside of my body,
Go from flat to flat
Man to man, woman to woman
Lesson to lesson
As I don’t know what to learn
And working is too disastrous for all concerned
I sing to ease the pain
I play to cure my brain.

Ghosts brush their fingers on ours
As if we wouldn’t notice
As if we wouldn’t be scared.
Sometimes I feel like I’m one of them
Or their enemy - robotic
Flashing, slurring, whizzing around
I have no heart to feel hurt with.

When he acted like I had killed him on purpose, I cried
I cried for what could’ve been, for the piano keys, for the honeybees.
He said he likes to torture me, I wonder if it’s real
A pretty man’s need to be seen….
With these fragmented eyes I cannot see.

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.

They're everywhere.
Girls on television with Hepburn bodies to fit into the margins of magazines, page 3.
Miasmic necks like giraffes to chase scenes as if they're paparazzi with their wine
and ritzy bones.

Suffocated in lip fillers,
It's a surprise no one has burst their silicone bodies,
zeppelins pop, emits poses for a new slattern orbit.

They're articulate;
put thought into every word,
sentences like lines of crystal virtue on lavish vinyls,
another dumb blonde for the
headlines - head space of naive youth.

Hand jobs to antagonise,
i agonise over crimson nails
liberating ***** with cuts of scarlet joy in rapture -
welcome to our modern culture.

They're infatuated with;
lucent screens set eyes aglow
to highlighted cheeks disguised as moons, an unearthly cult called, "mystic aliens of media control".

No. romance is dead,
it only exists in movies that star
******* Angelina Jolie.
Being adored is prone to vanity;
role models get to giggle,
play chaste to be bijou in the arms of Zeus,
while i act as chimera.

You're growing tired of the gismo I turned into.
I work like clockwork, right on the dot of you coming here someday.
Press my buttons by simply saying hello and for the day I'm yours
Through a screen and a scream every time you ask if I'm still there.
I'm always there
And I'd do anything like fly to drive you home from that party,
Watch soccer matches with you,
Save you from staying alone in a hotel on your best friends wedding night.
Will I grow tired of the gismo you're also turning into?
Absolutely not.
So maybe it's how it's supposed to be.

What it would be like to live in the sea -
Endless nothingness.

My spine tingled as i thought
of echoes from far away,
never close enough to harm me.

I’m the richest in rock bottom,
penny gold, the orange attraction.

I’m not afraid to be a silver dame,
alone with my scales flaking away.
Isn’t the ocean my sanctuary?

Like I said before, I'm scared.
I'm so so scared and I can't help
but miss the yellow skies and daffodils
that i used to see every day.
Now I think I just hallucinate it.
I'm so exhausted. I'm tired of this.
Maybe this is a cry for help
and maybe you won't hear me
until my chest gives out.
When my dreams of knowing what
everybody thinks of me appear
and i can't imagine you'll care that much.

happy girlfriend day
to beige coloured pages,
kept smooth and delicate;
like fingers turning light switches
so nobody else can see your elegance.

happy girlfriend day
to pale, bruising knees in the sun,
noticing how the symmetric lines
are the only ones who smile
when we are in silence and the romance is done.

happy girlfriend day
to the ones who can't hold a tune
but sweet talk their way through a poem on stage.
hugging our final goodbyes at the end of June,
dedicate your first book to me, think of us in every page.

happy girlfriend day
to twenty eight years of loving;
only tracing the skin that shines,
not the part of that is secretly longing,
I’ll never get to call you mine.

The essence of her
in the early moonlight
swayed like a blow flower
in my hindsight.
When she was there,
my artwork became real.
The air was gentle,
her name was Christine.

She ******* her boat
and left it by the south pier.
I undid the rope -
sunlight filtered out here.
Her hand was my lifeguard,
though when I awoke,
within a distant star
came the morning smoke.

No one would say a credit to you...
All I do is cry
Wish I could be in love
Just to have something to show the furrowed brows and walk away's
Wish I wouldn't be sick
And love the wide eyes of death
I'm not your amber girl
I'm not your skinny *****
I don't have daddy's money or a car, wish I was neurotypical enough
Man, I came out with foggy vision
Catastrophic from the start
And when there's helicopters round your baby's heads,
There's bound to be high expectations,
I just can't be that for you.

“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?

Our country is insidious
I'll say it loud, I don't care
Our leaders have hollow guts
They blame it on inflation
The Great Depression part two
But it's fake, it's fake
It's all ******* fake
It starts with men and it'll end with men, old men
Telling us how we're gonna live our lives but who are you?
Do I know you, have we met?
No
So I don't believe you should be declaring a war on behalf of people you can't name
I am working class,
I am a woman by your definition
Your professionals can't even keep me in a dreamlike state
And so my disorder is my confessional
I am simple, I am too smart
Too loud, I don't have a voice
So I can't say anything but here in my room I say
You can't start something you can't find a solution for
If you want to praise hollow gutted men, go ahead
But none of them are gonna **** you, so...

I walk to feel alive -
As if South Yorkshire is utopia
And I'm an astronaut discovering it for the millionth time.
It's a raw feeling,
I've travelled back by closed eyes and a genie wish
To find those roots again that shoot through me, palliative like beryl rockets.
It's sad though
Because I imagine horses waiting for rain but only strangers came
And so I heard the metro
The ghosts of Bethnal Green lured me back to the land of opportunities
Home ground for love
I was an eagle eyed dove.
It was the only way to live a life worth talking about when I'm old
And before you ask, I'm not sure why I dwell on that fact.
As nice as it would be to be alone, I'm afraid I'll have to cut the seed from my hydrangea heart
Before the Venus fly sunset traps me in for good.

Our eyes capered on the skyline
Stretched arms out of the car
It was supernatural to us
with its circle of magic
Is that what it was like to fly?

I stood in a snow globe
of winter wonderland stars
It hugged the happy in me
like it was protecting a baby - then avalanche - goodbye

Labyrinth of shallies
all tangerine and peach
etched a path of crystal stones
gold if you were lucky
This was home of the fireflies

They led me to the beach cafe
And the club of cabaret
Where indigo lights taught me to really dance, a coryphee
The steps I still have memorised

Then I saw the sea's sage, regurgitation
Animals couldn't be collected in buckets like shells
And although childhood dreams stay with me

The kid in me has died.

A homesick hydrangea,
sapphire as a bluebird,
navy like a day
that turns into a sourly sea.
Who I used to be is in another timeline
way across the tides,
indigo and conscientious
of what I left behind.

In Sylvia Plath,
I find a similarity in our solitude
There's rainy weather opposing
misty blue violet glooms
and all of the landscapes
no longer bloom for me.
They contradict the hope
growing upon the seaside.

I even astound myself
with my clear disinterest.
With each iris eye,
I forget the ones I hold dearest.
Even in sleep, my perceptions are
a skewed crescent
of a story untold,
kept in myself so close
yet so distant.

When a boy slept in my bed
I felt like a hostage.
When a girl slept in my bed
I felt a *******.

He left marks on my neck,
A smell so repellent.
He was rotting in there
While girls give clean air.

His hair was long
But girls sing songs
Of butterflies and care;
Cannibalise my stare.

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.

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.

It’s crazy how fast people stop making an effort after making their transaction.
Playing around with hotel rooms, assassinating money, I keep going home to write a love song
Just to never hear from you again.

And as I stare on at the one space for rehab I wonder what was the point in exchanging numbers
If one out of a zillion gets lost each time you leave me to do it alone?
I'm a business, a link for you guys to meet without me.

Slow dance with me through the apocalypse of space,
in which our words are mercurial.
toxicity is fed to my lungs
by your homemade oxygen,
as if my face of candere
is truly reaching out it’s hands
to find serenity in
swirls of mahogany tables.
and you are just looking for
a lost fluidity of soul.
transform yourself into calico;
so i can create a lucid dream
just. once. more.

let’s fuse up like aurora Borealis,
expand our cryptic galaxies
so all eyes can be on us.
radiate with acidic moon rays
when the incense rises;
already set for retrograde.
"Let’s explore satori".
you said. "but what if
your oxygen is cataclysmic?"
i whispered in a hushed tone.
being the antagonist
was bizarre to me at first.
but then i replied,
"i guess somewhere
is better than nowhere.
because i found you
when i couldn’t find myself".

He was a battle cry in the dark
To latch on to the last remaining
Sparks of a past life
Ignorance in the first degree while witch hunts ****** the dangerous
In theory he's inquisitive
He should handle emotion with care
But he was a dagger in my wounds
Which he jokes about
In turn with those who can't walk, cant talk, cant eye stalk
And in trust we signed our traumas to him just to mark them as average
To reward a mans unspoken need to discourage a woman
Who gave every word to him.

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.

There's so many simmering pastures,
please stop the bristled fingers
that infiltrate my body like pretty
splinters making bruises and
tearing my hopes apart
as if they're just some book.
I've been naive in the past 
but now I know not to trust you.
Tomorrow always fades away
with greying moon dust.

I’m swirling the thoughts around,
wishing it was some nutrient
but all I get is no conclusions.
I listen to the playlists I made for
other people who wouldn’t give me
the time of day that I need.
That I quietly beg for but only
to myself because it would be weird
to do it in front of strangers.

I'm doing it again
Flying my flag of inspiration seeker.
It gives me headaches of wild proportion but I keep going
Like those who starve me; like the sunset that swallows me whole
So I can have tea with the moon.
It's definitely worth going to sleep with a new work at hand
Rebranded, branded a fool when capitalist men exist
I'll weave poetry in the five senses till I collapse
Dying by the feet of bland brains; monotonous colours of consumed or not consumed enough days.

New ideas, writing lists,
inspired by the night.
The stillness of it all in
beautifully dimmed lights.
Sparked loving affections,
fists grabbing my pillow
in silent excite at the kisses.
Soft breathing, romantic words.
Thoughts of reckless outings,
too afraid to do real bad stuff.
More uncontrollable laughter
at silly stories, muffled cries.
Sneaking downstairs for drinks,
hands connected to the wall.
Sitting on the cold floor,
numb but content.

Savage me you could
Brunette bird in a world of wolves
Countryside to city
Drenched in rain either way
But still unstoppable
You look over your shoulder
That porcelain shoulder
The bones, the tips of your fingers
Gently nudge me
Right where I needed to be nudged
To follow you into the night.

Looking back on everything
Sobriety, ecstasy
Loud mouthed moth
Drowned in questions but staggered out
Unladylike, feminine as ever
In candy wrapper kicking boots
You sing me to sleep
Without plaiting my hair, no lullaby
Just a beat of notoriety
Right when I needed to feel notoriety
To follow myself into the night.

I want to sleep in my dress tonight
Because I don't want to forget you.
You gave me love while I was blacked out and like a true voyager, ripped the leopard print.
Stuff it in the car
Bring it from the Zermatt mountains
Take it back to the dressing room to re-sew the hem and kiss me where it should be

I want to wake up heavy headed
From a night of running into your arms, running from reality.
Running out into the world, running to find a purpose
And I'm pretty sure my purpose was to fall in love
fall out
and fall back in it once I saw aurora fall from the house lights into violet onto you

I want it to be October forever
Because I don't want to forget you.
You gave me spring while it was doomsday and like a true endeavour, it got me terribly lost.
Drive me home
When being sober gets too much
Crash into the violet reflected in my eyes to mend the goodbye before it's said.

I want you to draw blood to the rio grande to say you won't forget me,
Dance me to death
Revive the parts of me I don't want dead anymore
I'm a bomb in retrograde, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy anywhere
Wherever you are
I'll fall into violet, onto you.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I say as I proceed to rinse my hands clean of love.

The contrast between words and actions is strong, causes pangs in both parties’ hearts.

That’s not to say either of us have a heart… that leaves a lot to be desired.

We’ve been living in shyness
Staring each other down like the other will run.

But despite the want to cut the invisible string before it stings… I can’t.

You never caught my eye and we never kissed that night but even so, I felt an overstretching glow

That came in August, the bloodlust, the unexpected hook up

And you never know, it might not be love. Hopefully not love.
Hopefully the invisible string is enough.

Cause I don’t wanna hurt you
No, I don’t wanna hurt you.

When I squeeze out the contents like I'm a citrus reamer
Are the heavy notions of death meant to be?
According to the book I cut my apples into eights
Will someone tell me how long my death will take?

I wait to be transparently flat like the morning sun.
Is it meant to be when I'm still as fat as an out of date plum?
My life was meant to be pulled away a long time ago
But the hoover broke and so never cleansed me of kilos.

Is it meant to be that I will forever breathe the air of my house?
The sickening fumes often feel like family when starvation has clout.
It's common knowledge that a girl leads you, tells you how.
The only thing I have is a pen and a useless body now.

As the planes went over my house
We talked about everything.
Pink and orange Flores I wish were white because I picked those
And the tea I should be drinking with you but I slept through the flight. We're always sleeping.

When we're not, we're waiting for whoever it is to let us go.
Like the ones who caused us to mishandle these situations
And the ones we'll love next if we fall out of infatuation but god I hope this connection wasn't made for nothing. It can't be nothing.

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.

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 want to kiss the malt you stained your lips with,
As masculine and camouflaged as they are by a lions mane.
I never saw you as beautiful until they day you spangled me in it
Longing with questions and me with a taste for the road,
It could work if I forced myself to turn my back on what had made me whole.
For the drunkenness in your coal mined eyes and the need knots in my stomach tell me to join you on the stage
Whether it's behind, in front or by the side, I want you.
I want you in the way I don't want to be alone.
I want you in the way I would starve myself to the bone.
I want you in the way I'd call that home.

I took my foot off the gas
Of a car I never owned
Got a job as a ceiling starer.
I stared into anatomy
Face shapes and circumstance
All I found was a lost school dance.

I'd smash your fingers in my piano
If i had the chance to walk into your life like a lie dressed in silk.
I can make out your figure through the reflection of the glass bottle
Wonder why it got you in full throttle

When I was alive
When your baby cried
Already with suspicions.
When all she did was abide
By the rules of how to survive
In such a ****** up situation.

I see Sylvia like she’s here to console me
“Ariel, it’s gonna be alright”.
‘Death Note’ and undiscovered phantoms
Under a black cross, gothic chains.
The plants look dead but I have to water them, when they wither, I’ll get the blame.
Julia is silent - the headless woman…
I wonder if Caesar has hung her clothes on her.
This balcony is a world stage
Where I fight the urge to smoke,
Drain the dregs of these century old bottles
And I listen to the crowd of flat mates,
Neighbours, strangers… it doesn’t seem too loud anymore.

To be away with the fairies in Koukounaries
I reach for it with the clammy hands
That built lady bird houses and dug black holes, perching in them like a cherry magpie until the dérma tis fotiás

The fear of filling myself up too much drove the planes away
Now they’ll be swooping over my head, plummeting me into the comfort of sting rays, starfish, wasp free shells

My cosy skeleton will love the scalding
The schooling of how to smoke cigarettes on the inferno proving to be a
Vignette vision of a blood ocean, one only my Aphrodite eyes can see glowing

She furthers the syndrome
Of the family portrait
Her husband a knight;
Her children slight.
They haven't been born but she'll have them when she's bored.

For now she's entertaining the spots
Named each one
Congratulates her executioner
With a kiss; breathes another hiss.
She uprooted evil in one more girl
Before jumping off every cliff in the world.

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.

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.

You leeched me away from myself
When I’d just walked away from a blade.
The evidence was disappearing…
Now it’s back with a vengeance.

Half sight is half understanding.
I sat on your floor and ate your promises.
Recognised the soul tie
From my thousandth year of research.

I was out for blood…
Yours was running from a tap.
Lapping it up, it fuelled me with melody
Till I couldn’t breathe

Couldn’t see
Couldn’t speak
Choked out but’s
Having believed your presence was love.

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.

I daydreamed on the subway
Through the screeching sounds
Of the metal on the metal.
I think about how fast it goes
How slow my days are when I don’t get on it.
I’m not very productive either way
But I like the sun on my back
And the rush of chameleon people.
Everything is industrial
Everything is lilacs on canals
It’s definitely something to keep on dreaming about, keep on dreaming about
Living in the clouds

I'd give you a locket
An imaginary locket
That you'd keep around your neck
For good measure.
A picture of us in fairy dust and charcoal nights
I'd wake up every time for you
Cuddle you till you weren't sad
And in the end we'd be glad
you'd opened up
till the time you reach my age
Me your grandmother's age.
At both sides of life it's okay;
If I tattooed your name on my wrist it would mean something
More than an ownership.
You'd never have to pay for your existence,
Never shed a tear over words thrown around like birthday presents I could pride myself on being acts of love.
Sometimes I fear I'm too small to bear a child
Too compressed by bad genes but in that there'd be so much determination to do it right.
From your locket I would shine the softest light.

Lonely like Lazuli,
i haven't been
how i used to be.
Not been inspired
like i should be.
Not been loving
like you want me to be.

Lonely like Lazuli,
i lay in a pool of sapphires,
and i know i could
be much better.
I am something more
than sad eyes
and poetic suicide.

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.

You love bombed me up to high heaven.
I never asked for it, I wanted the opposite
Yet you came anyway, a pristine oblivion.
A nice person at the right moment until the moment didn't suit you.
Your eyes would burn, effort cumbersome
Wild for someone who said they understood
That I'd been strung along before and this was new
Only for you to fall in love not with me but with you.

Is she back in fashion
Is she getting something
More than a dead goodbye?
Not even a kiss is ever in motion
Channeling robots
Love her love forgot

Nothing was ever made so monstrous
But her, but her, but her
Her fault, her problem from scratch
A joke is a monologue
A monologue a break up
Now she’ll never go to Marden Square

Since she can’t even find it
Since she doesn’t want to find it
Since she doesn’t wanna get ill
Inveigled into silence
Sentence of a hopeless romantic
May as well hang it up for good.

I started may drunk
Hope I don't carry it through
To where I meet my friends
Inevitably feel like ****
And relapse on the monsoon

Because I know the rain is acid
But my high is the destruction
And though summer may be sweet
It still won't sober me up
September I'll see you soon

I wish I had medications
So my pain didn’t come out in excuses.
Everybody’s shy but me?
I wanna die.

No one understands complexities until they reach for a thousand years
Deeper, deeper and deeper still
And even then I don’t get a sympathetic ear.

Benzos: I learnt the name from a book
Not from the mouth of a doctor I saw a few times until the receptionist said
“You’re here AGAIN?”

My mum didn’t see the traits
Of every illness that clogged my body like arsenic… good job I couldn’t get hold of a lighter like everybody else could.

I’ve spun around my world so many times
At my big age I should know how to balance
But I still feel so weak
As if my legs will give way

Any. Second. Now.

I wish I could pop a pill
Line them up in little boxes
Save myself from drunkenness to mask the stuttering and shame

You KNOW the only way to prove I want to die…