The air smells like South America
I am cold and damp and the sky is lilac,
Lit up like the fields in Valensole.

(And I suddenly miss something that’s not there.)

The wind shakes the trees,
A neighbour’s drain gurgles distinctly
and I always loved the smell of the rain.

Oh, to be unlimited, to be free!
To flutter in the reality of possibilities
I’ve discovered for myself out here.

(I close my eyes and smell the air.)

And I’m running now,
With my feet on the damp grass
Alongside my discomforts and fears.

On the tepid sand of a beach somewhere,
With Northern Lights flashing above me
And christmas lights burning within me.

I do not care now.
Those distant judgements and colds,
cannot touch me, cannot hurt me!

I slip into memories
Of humid walls, *** and adventures.
Of bright white mornings without sleep, yet at peace.

(And I float back, into the stormy green.)

Five trees: I never knew there where five trees.
I wonder why I never count the things around me!
And the lonely nails on the wall

where the wisteria climbs in the spring,
All the way to the roof top where I lay.
And time shifts into darkness, but I feel no fear.

I am immense, and for a moment
the world is imperfect like me.
My finger tips tingle and my ankles sting.

I feel myself, wet and eternal
And for a moment, just a moment,
I am free.

It was scabby
Ugly and terrified
with skin like red velvet.
It crawled, hung, stuch to the floor
the paws red and abused.

The phantom walked past quietly
calm, distant, confused…
It was too heavy
And he held it
He grabbed it

By the paws, the scabby paws
By it’s weakness.
Not a sound did it utter,
Not a wimper:
A silent submission.

And I don’t know what won,
Which remote song of humanity sung
Of emptyness more ghastly than fear,
Hanging limply and calmly,
Like a shrivelled christmas turkey.

I washed three times but still:
I smell the vile breath, and still
I see the sunken bloodshot eyes
a pain too deep and miserable to scream
from its open grave, vestige of human lies.

Tomorrow your vacant eyes will not remember this face
yet the fetid smell will not ever leave my head.
Again and again it plays,
the blurry vision of a heat induced hallucination
sneaking up, once again, to threaten my sanity.

I thought it was a child,
an innocent, ill-fated child on a bike,
perhaps still burning, perhaps still alive.
Yet all I could find was the shell of a human life
bruised by a world which is infinitely unkind.

As you blinked at me and slurred your dissent
I disentangled your legs from the wheels
tugged you out of your certain crematorium
dead weight to weak arms and shaky knees,
dead weight to all our cushioned lives.

My abandoned car blinked furiously
ignored by the lives that unblinkingly drove by
No longer human, no longer of use,

illegal smelly immigrant

I wretched violently on the way home
the smell of your skin on my clothes and hands
the unsettling disgust in humanity
steeped into my disillusioned plans.
Only one man stopped:

‘anche io sono straniero ma…’

His conscience dirtied by judgement over judgement
your rotten breath etched deep into his identity
an anchor of blame which has nowhere tangible to go
defensive and defenceless to this worldwide generalisation.
Anche io sono straniero ma.

Did I really save your life, did I choose to be this way?
To follow the trail in the grass
where the cheap boxed wine pulls drunkards off course.
To acted upon automation, like the Belding’s ground squirrel,
putting itself in danger in the name of evolution.

You asked god to bless me but did I really do you a kindness?
Or should I have let the heat put you to sleep, cease your pain?
Head nuzzled in the prickly grass, feet tangled in your rusty bike
barbed wire inches from your eye
invisible to the road, invisible to the world.

And as xenophobia prevails, as hatred and fear win the UK
and all these cars speed away, I feel lonely and wired incorrectly.

My bones still feel humid
Above these clouds
As I soak in these days

A song with strangers in the rain
Una pachada
my voice softer than ever

Humid walls
Faded colours, vivid people
bright warm darkness and so many stars!

I can feel you slowly leaking out
Life soaking back in
With this music…

You, who filled me with emptyness,
And I bled with anguish.

Now I bleed light and love and life
I’ve been awake for days
I am everywhere.

And you’re alone,
Lusting after your own charms:
Your perfect inconsolable pain.

I loved you fear and restrain.
How can I look after you
Here on this rooftop, under the scalding sun?

Now my mind sees more
And my eyes run wild
Fireworks in this cold comfort

These dunes by the ocean
Are a smaller desert
Then your desolate company.

What a thrill to chase
Little bubbles everywhere.
Acrid shiny silvers –
They are drops of mirrors.

Look there: it is me!
It is my reflection I see,
Blazing sunlight and glee:

My volatile moods,
Etched with smiles and deadly fumes,
On my ever-changing moons.

An eternal river,
I gurgle with promise
In the soil, the air, the water –
Breathtaking and flawless.

My shiny surface
Draws you in closer.
I’m your road to gold,
the gods’ messenger.

But my scalding skin
You cannot touch
You greedy treasure scavenger.

You’re too avid and bitter
With your truths and reason –
Your reality addiction!

In the gaping darkness
I will eat you whole
Like a death trap –
A black hole.

I’m liquid metal,
Quicksilver.
I will melt your brain,
Destroy your swollen liver.

Only the mad can dip their toes
In these pools of chaos and clatter.
I’ll be the gloss on your top hat

If you’ll be my mad hatter.

Faces, sweat, tiny little squares.
It all fades and flashes
And yo’re so warm,
so genuine…

A toothache and desperate desire.
My knees tremble
With hunger, fear and life;
With lust…of what?

And to think that just this morning,
my alarm clock was destruction!

And I wear my special glasses
On this fortress by the sea
A broken sax and both of you,
No one sees things like we see!

By the river in Boston
Where the little white boats
Are like stars in the blue,
No one feels like I do.

On the rooftop where we kissed
And made movies of our lives,
All the silly things I miss,
No one knows like you and I.

And I wear my special glasses
When I wonder by myself
Through the fields and through the trees,
As I hide behind these leaves.

On the cliff behind the island,
All alone, while the violence
In the world breaks into waves
And I swirl within its blues.

When my lids are heavy
With departures and arrivals
And I feel the frenzied blood,
As it pulses through the terminals.

And I wear my special glasses
When I think and sip my tea
When I smile at all of you,
Or swim naked in the sea.

And I slide through many faces,
Through the laughter and embraces
I feel colourful and free,
All these eyes, they dance with me.

And I tingle as my skin and mind
Are drenched in eau de glee
I am golden, I am wild,
Warm as honey to these bees.

There is only song and colour,
Silly details make me smile
This confusion is perfection
And it all makes life worthwhile.

And we do not need the music,
We can hum and we can write
I can hear things through my eyes
As I’m gripped in life’s big bite!


Cheers to my friends Meg, Elle and the broken sax.

a blanket
on a clothes line the stains
all washed out
I hang out in boredom,

to dry.

I am sick
of the clips
that wearily hold me up

of this washed out sanity

I am sick.

This is not the best me I can be.

Stop this, run again.

madness
drunkenness
silliness

dance away control:

colours bodies laughter

c a r e l e s s n e s s

the frenzy the rush
the high.

I miss life and I have lied.

burn books thoughts dreams.

They aren’t enough,
I’m going to die.

burn lists
projects.

I don’t need to be clever and ok.
people movement fear anger lust.


- to touch
and

be touched.


to feel alive.

Orange and gold
Through the stain glass window
Brighten the churchly silence
and the unyielding heart.

Foxgloves and orchids
float in the air –
I could hatch my eggs right here;

Behind her undeserving shrine,
Casting darkness on your lonely burial.
Lord Ashton, you fool.

I’m high in the dungeon,
The statue is headless.
Are we talking about the walls
Or drenching ourselves in useless sadness?

On the tree stump I forgot
If you mattered to me yet.
You were shrieks, nettles and streams,

Red leaves and silly dreams;
The laughs and the pints,
The sly glares and all my fears:

All my hazy window seats.
I’ve forgotten why I care
But I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

And I forgot to walk the promenadfe,
I forgot to warm the bench
And I didn’t drown my thoughts
In the marshy quick sand.

I forgot to match the pretty face, ask –
did the chemo go okay?
Yet they loved me anyway,
I who could never afford their pain.

I forgot how to be grateful
With my flesh my flesh my fkesh.
I forgot the date, the present and the letter
And I can’t recall why it ought to matter.

This is the bubble, the cell block,
The lithium drenched infirmary.
Here we don’t feel like going to bed
Or to die a slow death in the library.

Here the sky is white and clinical
And the crystals didn’t catch my breath
And I didn’t smell the fresh wet leafs,
All I saw was corpses and death.

Now I’m sober, I’m cold, I’m clever.
I disgust myself more than ever
And I leave you with a humid heart,
My lower second class grave, Lancaster.

And the people in those houses
Oh, they laugh and dance dance dance
And they grab my hand and twirl me round
I entertain, and I am bland.

Dear old friends:
I am flushed
And dressed in white.

Gently anchored down
By roots
And laughing eyes.

You crown me
In laurel – in affection,
You dress me.

But it is summer here.
This warmth
No longer suits me.

Me leaves to the floor –
One by one
Silently fall.

I should be red and raw,
My magnificence
Inspire awe;

As breathless,
My branches touch the heavens.
But my golden fruits I cannot gift

To you my friends,
As I await the winter drift.
Infinitely still.

As Daphne, I am ill.

Is it no longer me
Living in this purple shallow sea?
Where cracked shells sleep,
scratching the soles of my feet.

You are the reason,
The clench of teeth.
Under skin, squatting unwanted,
Sticky and mean in my brain.

Ghastly creature
Your well-eyes burnt my soul.
I rose clever from you ashes,
But somehow no longer whole.

I’m switching off slowly this time,
Not all of a sudden.
I get heavier and heavier each day.
The life tickles and taunts as it leaves

And the power of your throne
Sharper than love and humanity,
Squirts its ink of insanity
As it poisons my bones.

The brute, astute revelation
Of a painfully insignificant fade out:
You never were, the specialness I craved for.

You never were.

Forcefulness embraced me then,
And now your face I cannot colour with my pain.
I craved the ethereal self, I imagined through your eyes.

I was your portal –

To feel love, for yourself, to feel worth.
A portal for big words, and comforting elation.
I was a beast of beauty to subject,
Like the beast within us all we cannot tame.

I am tall now –

Taller than you now, navigating higher comfort.
We seek the same fulfilment
And project ourselves in winning battles.

I was your projection –

A mirror of the self you wished to be.
Through lust and ego you created many me’s.
We are all just shadows of each others dreams.
My existence depends upon you all,

And I need you.

I could only ever gage myself through you.
Only when you were inside me
Could I smell and taste the colours of me,
Never where they mine to be felt.

I touched myself when you were inside me,
And the walls for a moment crumbled
And we floated, for a moment, in the same chaos.

That me, you made me.

Forever yours it will be and you, will forever be mine.

I can smell the lethargy in the air as the rain comes down.
Who told you you could write all over my skin?

Territorial disputes.

Casually manhandling death and the rain
don’t stop, the rain           don’t stop.
Biting ******* under neon colours.
Stuffing your face and drowning in the barrel-
Drowning in the rain of your pain.

Contempt for conformity. Body builders of human agony.
The vivid dreams stopped months ago.
Flashes of blood running down my neck.

This winding road is ****** and this skin is too tight.
Grinning mouths with men hanging at the corners.
Unsteady flooring and gums aching.

I’m heady from the drinks, the want and the sweat.
This tube smells of metal, blood and ****.
There’s a nightmare pulsing in between my legs.
Laughing hyenas pull at my clothes.           I give in.

Vaccinate me for control.

Chapped lips in the cold. Stomach acid scratches at my soul.
Flashing streetlights, cars, dancing on my window.
Magnetic network of obligations and purpose.

Buzzing in the world and screeching in my ears.
Monotone high pitched frequencies and I’m going mad, I’m going       mad.

The itch, the itch the pulse           in the eye,

the everlasting night, the bite,

the blood.

I’m a mess of filaments,

my nerves are barbwire.

Your fingers feel like bombs.

Psychosis, migraines, want.           A hollowed out gut.

Out of body,

overlooking this city.

You stand next to me, naked and shivering.
My cigarette shakes at the lips.

It falls and I          let          myself                               fall.

Inches of panic, life
and death.
Unclaimed disturbances.
We walk
down the same road
but you stopped
to tie your shoelace.
You didn’t see it coming.
And now:
our universes spin and spin
in webs of incomprehensions
as we try
to understand
what cannot be touched
by the other.
I’ve slithered around death –
maybe you haven’t been as lucky.
or maybe I’m the unlucky one
the haunted one.
I can feel them following me around:
GUILT FEAR POSSIBILITY.
An omen of what could happen,
a shadow of what never did.
A parallel outcome,
Pain beyond all I could imagine:
LOSS DISTRACTION BLAME
I killed  the old lady.
I can feel the crinkly skin
of her neck in my palms.
Impotence disguised as power
HATRED.
I killed you, I killed you
and you die every night
I was laughing
and I wasn’t quick enough.
I was happy
and I wasn’t quick enough.
And now cars are demons
Sirens deafen me
and lights blind me.
And people are evil
They kick dogs and live off arrogance
And I
live off bloodlust and compassion
I live off my own confusion.

Prickly fir tree
The smell of salt taunts me,
The air is still
And I am stuck.

My wet hair sticks,
Resin pearls on my back.
Prickly fir tree
I wish I could peel

Off the pain
And the heat
That stick to my gut
On this stiff summer night.

Ghastly faces regard me,
Distorted and sweaty;
Levonorgestrel
Bombards my ovaries.

The air is still.

I am heavy
as a hippo, and real.
I was orange and purple
and now I am stale.

Fleshy red eels
Squish me to mush.
My insides are mouldy –
I suffocate, I rust.

The air is still
And I am stuck.

I cannot ****, I cannot ****
This empty shrine
Of flesh, of flesh.
I’m no Ophelia

And death isn’t pretty.
The smell of decay haunts me,
The smell of salt taunts me.
Intoxicating thoughts

Of binaries and wars:
To ****, to create –
My enemy, my love;
Controlled clarity or deadly insanity?

I cannot ****, I cannot ****:

An extension of me
Or a monster in herself.
Fascinating and deadly,
I am golden and immortal.

Sudden, sudden loss of control.
Your invisible blood sticks to my fingers,
The air that left you,
To my chest like alien tentacles.
Grey metal to join the blue and black,
Already nuzzled in the fields.
Who was here before me?

My pill-induced nightmare is shattered by your silent scream.

Sudden, sudden loss of control.
My biggest fear just rolled all over me:
From a distance I observed,
The war of paranoia and sedation –
The human-made virus
Spreading through the world.
Whose side am I on?

Grey streaked kind woman, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.

Sudden, sudden loss of control.
I cling desperately to the only scrapes you left me:
It works, but only just.
And only just always fills you
With horrors and questions and blame.
Only just pulls me out of Switzerland,
and right back into the rubble.

I’m at war.

Back to bite, back to bite, don’t breath, thump thump.
Lights, gone. Food, gone. Drugs, gone, Hope.

Desperate *** and wobbly legs.
Get me drunk, look after me, stop the thinking, stop the world.

Back to bite, back to bite, bite me harder, **** me harder
Than this silence, than this screaming, are they screaming, is it me?

The terror is like popping candy abusing my skull,
Like angry clots of blood trying to burst out of fingernails

Pulsing, screeching, moaning, and then silence.
The constant ringing and now your face has gone all blurry.

The thought of all the itches we will never get to scratch.
It’s all rotting, it’s all gone and you just keep being so ******* kind.

The bile in my stomach, my hands in your pants, is there even a point?
Splashing about in mud, looking for familiar faces, for a trace of something human.

Slaves demanding justice, then wanting the crown.
Grey days, skipped days, were you slowly drift away.

I don’t want to be pretty, I don’t want to write pretty
To hide behind niceties and disgusting adoration.

In the darkness I’ve stopped tripping, I walk steady now.
I’m not longer funny but I’m lonely, as you roll me the millionth cigarette,

As I gulp the millionth gulp of bitterness, my bitterness.
We lost a long while ago and we’ve wasted all our time.

Toxic waste and suspicion, is that mask because of me?
They’ve turned us against each other and there’s no going back.

There’s no life during wartime, only slow self-destruction.
Before the bombs, before the lights went out,

Before the mould and the stench and the disease and the hunger,
The mind numbing stupidness had already knocked us out.

The outside air is sharp and crazed:
The breeze, the fever, my head in a haze;
How did you resist the deep dare of the dark?
From your window, the sky suggests safety and light,
My guts din and dance in a chaos of sparks
And I run as a child, with no aim, in delight!

Joy, frost, ducklings and breeze
In our hair, with seduction and laughter
I tease you away from this bleak pallid world,
Towards cosmic, magic, rhapsodic symmetry;
Souls and bodies embraced in deranged symphony
All those secrets and certainties fiercely unfurled!

Forever unsleeping we’ll live, you and I,
We’ve no need for the slumber and the idleness, you and I;
Don’t they see, don’t they feel, the bustling euphoria?
Oh, my fingers could dance this dance forever, my mind
So many worlds and ways and wills could wander.
Thick brows, dark eyes, framed in curls of amber

Unruly as my soul, ostensibly beam at me
And this beauty I now grasp, won’t relinquish or enrich me.
I shiver in the cold, at the promise of spring…
Up the tree all the stars, share our frantic delight
Of the books and the feels that still keep me up at night;
And I’m sheltered from the morals and manners they sing:

‘Now stop it Mercury, you’re insanity is gushing
From the core of your reckless wickedness, and burning;
We’ve no heart for this blame, we’ve no time for your pain.
You’re talking too fast, you’re delirious, you’re rabid
You consider yourself clever but you’re merely big mouthed!’

And the squeamishness and guilt and the fear creep back in
I am meat, dust, and disgust, yet again.

She, comes rarely:
A heavy shadow – bills on bills on bills. The eye
Clicks an evil polaroid,
Of the lies I was comfortably told.

She, sits in my comfort zone,
The money-munching
philosopher, with her odd young folk – petty chameleons.
She breathes ghosts and the room thickens.

This is my house.
Now splotched thoughts – clumsy grey and blue paperclips
stick to the furniture; squelching boots
and books everywhere.

She, shrieks and bangs
In my quietude, she never makes the bed.
She whom I care for,
Yet she meddles with my head.

This quarell I’m having,
This grief – she brought with her bags on the way.
She’s in my mausoleum, my pouf;
The dust settles in every day.

The maid comes and cleans it away.
But her baggage won’t budge, the badgering
Starts: and comes the gaping hole in my heart.
Go away, go away, go away.

Can’t she be more like me – as i need?
Can’t she stop piercing holes,
I can’t afford pills and spills
Like the fear that leaks out, and the bills.

Here’s some *** to our grief.
I cannot help you glue your head
back into one piece:
can I give you some money instead?

Up the gods rock,
To the top of the island
I climb – a lucky guest.
I’m crowned in laurel

And bigger than the sea.
Round and round
The sparkly heavens shove me;
The pitch black

Catches me.
I’m a microbe, a quasar;
A pillow, a kife!
I’m ready, I’m hazy

Your nightmare, your prize.
Have I yet the courage
For the dive –
The big dip.

I’m still green and weary
I shall dry up or slip,
Into death
and oblivion and dread.

Newton is dead.
Why are we still clinging to a flat Earth?
Observe the atoms,
Ride the waves.

It is me I see
In every crook and corner.
It is me who sees,
It is me I see.

I am your Frankenstein
You mighty organiser
You puzzle maker
You forgot to flip the light switch in my eyes.

You stuck me, colourful
to a monochromatic Earth.
Unrelentingly chasing
Hidden meanings,

Fireflies.

Sea gulls screech and peck at my face,
peck away at this ivory.
I am disgraceful and I don’t think I’m real.

Why am I sat here: the cold hard North burns.
I’m full as a festive gut,
I am sharp as a sting – a big deal.

What was the gain,
Myself a giant and yourself full of care?
This humanness leaves me ugly and bare.

In a pool of silver, metallic I float.
The sun keeps me dry, I am sickly orange as the sky.
I’d rather be anywhere, anywhere but here.

I tear and wear, these niceties scare
Me bright blue to green – I’m violated, wide open and boring.
Will I be this lame, will I make you smile?

I’d rather be pecked to a pile.
Like a movie, I’ll live till the morning – tomorrow
You can all come and see if I’m gaping and hollow.

I am meat after all – meat, flesh and unrest.
You should pay for my smiles,
You should pay for my angst.

You’re an eye, you’re a serpent.
You blink and I scream:
I scream, I dream and you beam.

I’m big, real big and blue, dark blue.
I’m a brat on a bus going to London
And I'm afraid I don't hate you.