Your magnificent masterpiece leaned to the left.
Framed and fixed, we never noticed until we stepped away.
You bulged blue, swore saffron and screamed at the help-
As if it were their faulted frame leaning lopsided!
I think I said something, maybe made mock;
My taunting tongue always for an attack on you...
So we both swore saffron, but only you bulged blue.

Before we met,
Warm summer days,
Were as eternal,
As the life,
Of a goddess,

It was common
For gaggles of girls,
To tighten ranks,
When he walked
Around the corner.

His jaunty stride,
And brooding glare,
Causing the mothers
Of teenage girls
To warn their daughters

My own mother's words
Fell on deaf ears,
As the growl
Of his bike
Filled my silence.

The words he spoke,
From poets mouths,
Long since dead,
Yet in his voice,
Even more profound.

I'd grown tired
Of my world,
Of endless summer,
And wished for
The taste of winter.

So when he came,
Astride his bike,
I took the helmet,
And sat behind.
Held on tight.




I choose to feel,
Those winter months,
Not kidnapped,
By unrequited,
Obsessive love,

She did not see
My mother dear,
The way I needed
The annual thrill
Of summer death.

So I came back.
To sun my skin,
And kiss her cheek,
Only for a while
Each year.

Before the growl,
And brooding stare
Broke the summer
To bring me home.

And free my soul.

You're begging for forgiveness
With scrapped up knees
And I'm standing on my steeple
With nothing to steady me

The hollow of your words
Drowns out the chapel bells
And I'm slipping from the slate
You wouldn't catch me if I fell

If the air is too thin
Then why does it seem
That here I can think
While with you i can't breathe?

Lines between lies blur into truth
Crows in the graveyard
They recognize your tune
Magic in the bard
And fresh meat at your feet

Sew forgiveness into my lips
And have me recite it
Edit out any slips or quips

You're sorry for lying
Apology for the cheating and hurt
But my acceptance is falsehood
As much as your words.

She'll speak to the dead with her head on one side,
Punctuate conversations with the roll of her eyes,
For jokes loose their bite once the dust takes my teeth
And laughter is dry without a tongue or lips and speech.

Watch the cracks for my mind and I have long fell out,
We were in for a while but overdue another bout
Any apologies would be useless in this little war
The maggots will mean the argument is lost for sure.

Once the stone grows too cold she will bore of my grin
But don't put my skull back where I lie straight and thin
Up here is a sun to bleach the old bones white
And a silver sheen smile beneath the evening starlight

My nerves frayed to cobwebs and caught the last draft
I won't feel the heat or ice like I did before in a past
With dark empty sockets I'm staring on blind
But it's better than rotting satin and myself for all time.

But while you perch on my name you may chatter on
Tell me of those who remained after my coffin was gone
If they became neighbours or settled elsewhere?
And have I mentioned, I only died just over there?

A diamond noose stole the breath from her chest,
Where ribs caved beneath creaking whalebone corsets
And her hands lay useless against the curve of her waist.
An hourglass standing with each grain assigned,
A time and a place, a husband, no thought for her mind.
To be instructed and moulded into icy precision
Because in her heart the royal blue ran in vain
And her prison was forged before birth by name.

Fairy tales make pretty the twists of her life
As she's wound into tapestries, the good, obedient wife.

Let those who weave take for granted stillness in her lips
And forget to check the eyes which dip from sight,
For those who's power falls too far for her to reach
Means she must hide hide her only freedoms in deceit.
She'll whisper beneath men's ears and lace their tongues
With words that from their own have not be strung,
For what do women in titles' prisons have?
But the babes from further shackles brought,
And hopes that scheming years shall dull the locks
To free the blood of those whose irons are yet to be wrought.

Some days I stare at my hands,
Trying to find my singularity-
Individuality!
Lost in the muddle of plurality!
When you exchanged my heart,
And swapped in your own.

"Tomorrow morning, that footstool goes!"
And I'm left to listen to my own voice's echo,
As it bounced back off half-painted walls
And round corners without the skirting-

Next weekend's promise still etched in pencil.
But faded past the point of a stranger's notice,
And even your mother has stopped commenting,
On the second landing's crooked light fixing.

I must have asked you a hundred times before,
To throw out that footstool in the hallway.
Bought at some junk shop, three streets away,
And just awkward enough, so that I stub my toe,
Every single time I walk through the dam door!

The same door you painted pink to annoy John,
Next door's tenant with a grey tweed suit,
And a hate for anything even mildly creative!
God he hated you! With a passion unmatched.

At least he did-

Last week he said how he'd admired you.
He said that you artwork was unparalleled!
You would have snorted in his face,
And asked him "what else you would expect?
You were a genius with a paintbrush after all!"
I just nodded and smiled.
You always said I was too polite to others.

That footstool you put in the hallway...
I try, but I can never throw it out.
Unlike the ashes, those I-

Your mother has them. Above her mantle piece.
She wanted a way to keep you close,
One that would match her interior design.
And I wanted that horrible urn out of the house.

You exist more in a footstool than an urn.
Though your mother wouldn't agree on my thought.
She never did appreciate your...
I think she referred to it as 'taste'-
Though some of those conversations are lost.

Like I said, she's stopped about the light fitting,
I'm hoping she'll leave the skirting alone soon.
Apparently I'm foolish to leave things in this state.
"No one wants a house half finished."
She seems to forget that I still live here,
And there are memories I refuse to erase.