When all around you is falling down
When the grass and trees and cricket sounds
Are no more there alive than dead
When your world is crashing inside out
To sky be bound
Look up instead

When the rolling clouds are sounding out
And the river ink is pouring down
And the flood is in your basement found
Stand proudly upon on your here and now
Don't sink your brow
Look up instead

When the voices jeer you all about
And the rumors populate the town
When commotive chaos finds your head
Don't let the horizon slip you now
Though falsehood fed
Look up instead

And when the never becomes the now
And the time like nightfall pulls you down
When the sunshine strays its fading stead
May the storms internal you allay
In peace be found
Look up instead

i don’t think I found myself in the poetry, i think i am finding myself in your arms
under the gentle pressure of your fingertips and the velvet embrace of your words.
they think I found myself in the halls of the airport that it walked alone
but
i think i am finding myself in the kitchen of your flat, waiting for the kettle to come to a boil; in cups of tea nursed at the table and I hope that’s okay.
i sip in the same tentative manner that i reach for your hand in the dark; you may have the effervescent beauty of a tree in the autumn but right now i would like to lace my fingers with yours and be human together. i hope that’s okay.
you are like literature and myth; a deep and sprawling spectrum of contradictions and complexities. i feel like teiresias; blind and trapped within my own self-made cocoon of spiralling thoughts.
eyes closed i reach for your hand.
i almost miss my stop on the last train home spilling out sweet words about your everything.
her hair straight out of bed with soft eyes and parted lips, sculpted by aphrodite; carved from the finest marble i want her to pin me down,
to the bed, to reality-
her lips, to guide me
from her waist and back
to sanity. early in the morning
when she wakes up tangled in sheets
with her eyes peeking up over her phone,
soft smile on her lips.
the world stands still in the soft glow of flickering street lights like visible heartbeats, glowing and not glowing in tandem, and the windows are frosted along the edges; worrying a cracked lip between my front teeth i realise this may be the most I have ever thought about tea.
our fingers
tangle, grasp sheets or cheeks rosy
with first-kiss smiles. eyelids
crinkle.
you are butterflies in my stomach, fear and exhilaration, honesty and hope
you are
listening to the same song on repeat; your laugh is the song stuck in my head, every song i’ve ever loved,
the only song i want to listen to.

Her lips a curl of wildfire
Dodging darts of desire

She walks with wistful feet
To suppress the beast in her heat

Butterflies set off for paradise
In the moonlight of her eyes

A thousand stories ache to part
From the sorrows of her heart

Let us savor her patient dance
Beneath the dark sky of chance