Happy birthday love, happy birthday God and goodness,
Safety and fear all mixed up
Happy birthday America and the end of the war,
Made up names and made up scratches on your little legs
Wrapped up in dramatic irony and meanness,
In poverty, in riches, in dreams and you are safe
Wrapped up in January
I would accept overhead lights and carpet,
The wrong colours
It makes you wince and grimace
You smile in the mirror and your cheeks glow
Roses on your skin
You are a rose on my skin
Happy birthday

Marry the one who makes your stomach hurt,
Drinking too hot hotness down your gullet
You have stood up too fast
Dizzied and dazzled
dazed, dazed, dazed

Awake, just, in the evening
Sleeping in her hair

Eliza in one
holding crayons and drawing

Belle in two,
nodding over coffee
Sincere, bored.

Kate in her daydream,
bare faced and noble, stepping inbetween words
Content with violence, content with worry.

Pillow on my side,
Left in my right,
Lipstick on my mirror

Do not wander.

Heart in iambic pentameter
Coffee in your clouds
I miss you after five years
I miss you after five minutes
At home with words and fruit, bumblebees and that sourness

It's all so careful
The kitchen is clean by midnight
The shadows are dark and deep
I look at the clock
I no longer sleep
I ache
I drift
I play

Out and in between
there must be a strong correlation between lust and waking up for a glass of water
Walks along the canal
between love and blisters
batteries that spill over the cassette
once held by your hands
when we were little ones

Sugar rushed
From your bedroom to the mountains
Where I was pushed
Left to fall
Cosseted by them all, their encouragements from the top
why was I going down?
Head first, limbs here and there
You were here, then there
Traced back on my back,
Black on black
So dark you could see the dust, and the dog hair
Stars from afar

Today and all days
Little pieces
Pearls and crumbs, memory and skin
I hold onto structure: houses, breakfasts
Or the earth and trees
Let me be stretched and fixed
Cracked, hit and smoothed by a heavy wind

In love, when I come home he will be there
Smothered by flour and butter and figs
Maybe the gentleness and force I want are more interwoven than I first thought
At a first glance
Maybe I walk towards violence, darkness
War

apologies written over my head
deep in the earth, over my head
under the ground, over my head

blacker than my teeth from the womb
left too long in darkness, unable to resurrect

speak to me with charity
a shot glass of thought
muddled up by me, in the mirror
a child
(a person)
a kid
(a soul)
no one
(everyone)

written into my muscle
like January
"I am so sorry"

Dragged into the water
Left to sit, stagnant
Prodded from below
Here you go, baby
Take it back, swallow it whole, a fledgling flickered,
Too small to fly
Caught in wire, it’s legs bound and bleeding
Where was he when you opened your eyes, and became aware of the body next to yours?
Hot and wet from the same things
Do you have a song on your heart?
Scolded by cherries, the woman in the window and the decay
There they will run
Here I will hide

China child
Delightfully loved, light on your wings,
who grew and gasped through sunsets and full moons

Will I grow gills? Learn to slip and slide? Feel the wet green on my skin?

Will the riverbed weigh heavy?

Fear and love
Written down but written down
Written over months
A novel.

Why honey?
Why my lovely?
Why my sun my galaxy
A big fat juicy star
Look at that!
Isn't it beautiful

Who knows where the time goes
Nina nina nina
Your fickle friends are leaving
Nearly home to go to work
Pick up my white trainers
Pain killers
Say good morning to mama

Channel
A vein from head to feet
Thumped against wafer skin

Awful, wretched creatures
Spilt tea, you're warm, you're cold
Traffic jammed
I wish I'd lived by you less
Loved by you less
by memories that never happened
Hot room, liked by laughs
purple streamers, and 'This is our song!"
Long drives, flushed by newness
streetlights, and 'This is my song!"
Cake, toast
Pressed into the floor; you are here. I promise.
In on the joke,
Let us be unaware
Eden children, the rest is up to you
I can't bear this burden I wasn't given,
A new creation, after all.

Pressed apple child
Disgusted, enchanted
The city clogged us in, gurgled and choked up
in the middle of the room
Infant, in-fact
in the way
Get out of the way
Stuck with your hands
Blue nails, veins, a scar on your thumb

Holding onto the damp earth
Let it be
Kneel for the King and let him weep by you
Sit up, sip, breathe

Why are you going to the USA?
To you, not me
Blue moons, baby on the table 
Hold my hands in the cafe 
I'll wait for ever
I don't know what's right, I don't know what the translations are 
They'll knock on my door and fill up my heart
Blue moons, baby on the table
Chocolate pudding at the sink 
Yellow dancing, sun light in the windows 
Honey I'm home and I'll smile 
But I'll smile anyway

Wrap me up
You always do
Soap and smoke and I'm always happy and sorry 
I’ll sleep in, and wake early and he's there 
Dog with no sick in his fur
He listens and listens 
It's all raindrops and July when it's warm 
Shocked by your biology and your fear and your jealousy 
Americana boy
Wrap me up forever

Equally
Make believe

He, on a dirt road that kept getting longer

She, under the covers of a violent room
Holding the pith and pits to her ear

Put her on repeat
Puppy tailed circles
Wrapped around wedding bands
They wake up to a golden hour
Every window washed with a river, a snake

Exhaustion is not the right word. Instead it is
training your tears, sugar and bread
Rising and dipping
The syncing of an algorithm, you have cheated it. This is someone else!
Beautiful and empty: a political, sensual housewife
Curled like a shrimp: is this too much?
You have a metal chest, lock and key on your wrist.
You wake without an alarm, and hips click and throb from long walks and the weight of LOVE
Its discovery of sickly clues that point toward the deathbed
Girls with little red hearts, there are hundreds of them. You mimic their vanity, it is insincere.

The plumping, powdering and stitching of a patchwork doll. You are homemade.
Fear leaks into the dream state, you cannot speak
Brainwashed girls are always looking for peace or violence. And you are not brainwashed.
You stand with a camera lens, pigtails and hope. You chew discomfort and loneliness.
You analyse when you are home. When you are home you can sleep.

here again
I prayed we'd be there
Four feet in serenity
My voice
Your voice

That I had skimmed my stone too far into the night

Chaos
Death
Dirt
the bottom of the ocean.
Challenged, difficult, naive.

Gentleness. Genesis. Listerine. Back to bed. Cry on the way home. Boys who swear. Swear they would literally do anything. I love you and it always has been that way. I feel the same. I know I was vulnerable. I found it. I got it. Such a beautiful thing.

Hope in sea shells.

To be more
To swell and breathe it all out
A nectarine
Full of health and youth
Who are you without your raspberry jam, sourdough, hair gel, the way you travel, your Sunday walks
Without those you laugh with, without yourself: who you cry alone with
Will you still be here if you were left with your apple core, two feet away from the edge, breeze and the sea salt

I remember hearing about fish hooks
The bodies of animals between my hands
Their gills and bones and the thump of a mouse's heart
Petrified by the cat who cornered it into a stair

I recall the grease underneath my fingernails when I iced their Christmas cakes
Packed ground almonds into pan cases and filled them up with oranges and raisins

Without a kiss unsaid
A breast untethered from pink or white satin
My questions are heavy and hot
Eyes that stare while you sleep
Suddenly, they are lilies
Obscene, tired, temporary
Suddenly they cannot see at all

You had bad tattoos like these
You hadn't thought them through

Is that her, lit up by the colour I wore?

Not everything I write is about you
14
Or 15 when I saw you first
Blue coated in winter
Or autumn
And I thought
He's really something
(I wrote it down 4 times, each with a different syllable)
And then January came and I was born
Almost everything I write is about you

Chewing her way through:
I do not know
I am not
I am jumbled up and shaken, left here
Mouth full, when will the final point be?
When do the buds bloom?
When do I hear it?
Sword in their hands, redeemed
Fire and ash, cracked earth
Rivers hot and blue
Spilled over and frothed

I made some coffee,
I sat down to my duties
I took a deep breath, ate what was clean
Stretched like the cat,
The fist was mine
Somewhere else,
Coated and closed in
Closed out

Messiah in the gaps
I love you that much, this much
Too much, not enough
Too weak, you're hurting my arm
Colour me out
Leave in the space between
Leave with conviction, cabbage butterflies and coins
Look at it, give it away
Hold us in the silence, make me throw it all up
Lead us to the simplicity you that promised
Armour, a horse, a hill, a call, a new body
The joy of newness
The peace of sleep

The joy of newness
The peace of sleep

The joy of newness
The peace of sleep

Puppydog heaven
Hold me in the sun
She is in madness, she is in REM
Blind bunny
I love you and I love you

Winter spring, the worst months
Where will you go when the heat comes?
How will you be?
Is it your calling? Is it everyone's?
A necessity, written for the better
Carnivore incarnate, it was meant to be
Purple outlines, flat American landscapes
And mountains, gold, silver, old dogs and fruit trees
Are you waiting for me?
Joanne, Elizabeth, Kate
Congratulations baby!
Milk and ***
Indecisive, manipulative, naive

She never would be a writer so she had her baby
Born breeched, two feet in the world
A gift, white laced, everything she does is perfect

Pen to paper
I want it in my heart again
You’re smaller, I’m bigger
You’re bigger, I’m smaller
I miss it in my legs
When they didn’t feel so old
When spiders would thread
White
Lavender
Bake me a cake with a vow in it
asleep in my own arms
We came home and let the drought in
Red light green
Blue light red

But by love, the oak trees writhe

Do you believe what you see?
Do you believe that you see?

He simplifies me,
Paper under his paper weight
Listening to those teeth which chatter

Those lemon trees that grew and withered, and grew all over again
They watched you tread water,
Swim out too far
Kick step and float

You wish for darker, warmer
The mind and the stars, the sand and it's numbers
You want to be backed into a corner
Left and loved until you are sick
Loved until you are no longer sick

I see my light come shining any day now any day now
To throw up orange pulp bits bile and shiver for once
With big arms to pick me up and put me to sleep
Bathe and wake me with nothing
tabula rasa
All fixed in a big house on the moor
Full cupboards and smoothness
Time to make it up and then dancing
I shall be released

My mother called to say

"In Germany they have a word for it: too heartbroken to carry on.
I lost the house, the horses, the rolling hills.
I lost the red kites flying overhead.
I lost Patti Smith, Buffy and my prodigal daughters."

Who curled up, curled into themselves, curled their hair
Thought about running away, red boots in the mouth of open space, sleet and rain.
But instead soaked it up like a bed of wet moss.

The wind makes the trees breathe
I was a floppy fish
while you were smiling

Love letter in November
Happy to be part of the Juliets and the Kennedys and the women who never lose it
I would do it all in a heartbeat, and I would do it again
I'm in my glory days
My glory weeks and months and years
And I cling to it, not it's notion but it's being
All I can do is smile
Smile and warmth
That is what it is and you love.
You love and love and love

Fireworks night
Writing reading is loving
Big costs soft hats baby doll
You have it all
You got it all

Tennis ball heart
At the tip of your nose
The end of your throat
Swallowed by things which aren’t meant to mean anything
Ineffectual
Dismissive
In-between all of it
The edge of hot-water bottle giggles
Film credits
The smell of breakfast
Swallowed by you
Jonah in his own mouth
Warm, alone
A little suffocated
aware of the sound of running water
Does the divine exist in this redness?
I will feel so glad to go
Will I feel so glad to go?

Lit by light at night
In a white t shirt, you stepped too far into open space
Golden, in the shadow of something bigger
The centre
Waiting at the train station
I thought you were too much for me
Hands on my heart and my head
I think you are too much for me
Aware of the child running after him
The tap tap tap on the pavement
The arms round his neck
A warrior of both, of
How Much More You Could Be
You could be so much more
I could be so much more

Here the magnolias came and went
I still had your bite marks in when you died: red over white, blue dents rising.
I’ll pay your rent
I’ll drink you in
I’ll light up our screens of memory
I’ll be that smaller girl
The one in your bed
a body in these systems of work and play

I am no one. I am no where. I have no one coming.

Turn this water into song

Cold country
Tropical island
And you're by yourself

Marriage before thirty
(Babies before 32, but wasn't that the date?)
So you'll fill yourself up
And you'll worry worry worry

And wonder if you really trust the boy
with his arm round your neck
and his hand on your thigh

And you wonder if you ever really trusted him
at all
And you're by yourself

A hole was dug for me when I was 21
I happily died in it
I helped dig it.

Is this bliss?
I think heartbreak exists within my chest
Sometimes it emerges as bile
It tastes like sugar and sea water
Sometimes it is warm and thick on my tongue

You bit off a budded magnolia for me at the branch
You exposed the inner bark so it could drink up iced water

What have you done here?
To these bright eyed birds
Singing in your living room
Circling, twirling
Little lions, where the children went,
inside out, so that we sat on the surface.
Floating and waiting on glory
Muttering to the ears that listened

Prepare for thy God

Under sheets of blue cotton you breathed back into me

Something repetitive or grey
Something fed with anxiety, the shakiness of a half drunk animal

Your white skater shoes are left to think under the kitchen table all night
Collecting the smell of the laundry, the fridge, the tea
They step and trip all day, they are laced and undone
They step over mine, and stain

I know the weight of the afternoon, I said.
It keeps you awake but I can sleep, it know it well.

Is it the girl you see in me, her small thighs?
Or the half woman, her madness?

This project might keep me dead
If I held your baby one day would you ask me who I was? Which part of her or him might show up wrong?
Wouldn’t you want to know?

Our lust is a beaten animal,
How much work we put into it.
It is balanced and contained by so many chemicals.

All day I sink deeper into it,
It becomes cold and dark, I am a stone.

Cut your nails before you occupy me
Don't expect ecstasy when I am ignored in daylight
Ecstacy is to be seen
That is a different project

having but denying
having nothing to do
(with such people)
always learning
(but never the truth)

of everything you wanted
of everything you had
of everything you placed, so gently, into the sink

watched it curl up
curl out
twirl
link

a rainfall, an echo, a star
some days you live in them, up there, too bright
three in a row

I use more water now
I scrub off the grease of this city before I leave
A head trauma: soft and unsheltered
You could spoon me out like cake, if you wanted to
You could put your fist through my skull
If you felt like it

in silver,
sin, sun, Son
look at it, put it back on the shelf

I dreamt you were a missionary
Everything you weren't before and more
Loud and summarised

I saw you at my kitchen table,
I laughed at your jokes
Stuck in 16, stuck in this love
in a silver chain, keeled over

Took a wound
Took a thought
Took a man
Took two homes, two cats and an angel above your bed
A star that was mine: a canopy of trees
Snow White, Dorothy
'Order for me', that's what it took
A basket of waste paper and
places that were hidden

Smoked away
Driftwood

We talk about music and people, mostly
There’s a bumblebee in the curtains
Stuck in the window and the shades
There’s a bumblebee outside

I let him take my hair down
I let him on my skin
Passive
Aggressive
Gentle
Active

We walk in silence
I wear green, for once
I cut my hair
The wounds heal

From the East
Things will be stolen
You will need to grow up too fast
You will see the white cliffs of Dover
You will anticipate the end of the world

I've even prayed about it
You're my star

You will get into small places
Your feet will crumble beneath you

Birth control
Lace
Lip balm
Neck kisses
I am here; soft, lost, a little dead
You are the foundation of my house