I found the pip between my teeth

an hour after the bitter bite

of garden currents

had faded from my tongue.



In the middle of a meeting,

too close between collegues

to spit or pick

the pith from my mouth.



Instead I chased it

from cheek to cheek

along the ring of my lower lip

to the hollow beside my molars.



The presenter lost his place,

tapped again at his laptop,

muttered a word ,

asked someone to call IT.



I swallowed by accident.

Choked,

drew a worried glance,

waved it away with a glass of water.



Outside the cleaner checked bins,

roll of bags at her hip,

quick, quiet between the desks,

she whisked any evidence away.

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.

Clouded by cobwebs

these days

you tell the same stories

and ask for news

forgotten by the next clock stroke.



You are no longer the apple peeler

whose hands never faltered

in wielding blade or teacup,

whichever was needed

to cater for me.



Though I bare your name

the syllables slip

and you must grasp

at faces I resemble

in the hope you’ll catch a memory

before it fades for good.



You were seventy-seven at my birth

and yet you stood

in photos with me,

constant in attention and love.



I do not know,

a world without.

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.

No one explained that best before

was subjective at best.

Instead they suggested

that you were lucky to find a man

willing to settle for spoiled produce

so close to the sell by date.



Did it occur to you

the rot might be them?

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.

"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.

It’s almost as if someone forgot to turn the radio off.

Not in this room

but the one across the hall or down the corridor,

a somewhere that can’t be found

no matter how many corners I check.

The distance turns voices to static,

punctured with partial comments

slipping between floorboard

like strings of mist on summer mornings.

Even if I press my ear to the wallpaper

I still can’t link the lines into one another.

The harder I try

the deeper the crackle in the speakers.

If I busy myself,

turn the dishwasher on,

boil the kettle,

fill the house with the rattle and clatter of things needing to be done,

I might just stand a chance.

A hiccup in the warble leaves a sentence

pressed against my ear,

burrowing its way through

to find the next line

in the dark of the grey matter inside.

All the while the radio continues playing

in a room I cannot find.

I do not love you like the ocean,

I’m much too scared of drowning.

Instead I love you like a battered paperback,

small enough to pocket

on walks from dorm rooms to lecture halls.

I love like the blanket my housemate bought me,

too pink to be polite

but a soft cucoon against my skin

warm on cold winter nights.

I love you like anything that can be forgotten

tucked away or to one side,

but hangs around in the quiet moments

still very much alive.

I do not love you like life itself,

but I love you a little like breath.

In the same way that I do not think about it,

in the same way that to not would be nonsense

in the same way that I don’t know how to stop

without the pressure in my chest building

to a point where I think I might shatter me pieces.

I suppose I love you a little like breathing.

I do not love you like the ocean though.

With you I have never been afraid of drowning.

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.

Watch for the cracks in the pavement,

Watch for the monsters waiting below.

At midnight they’ll rise from the darkness

and slip through the gaps in the stone.

So watch for the cracks in the pavement

And keep your sword close at hand.

Just because you’re no Prince Charming

Doesn’t mean an escape from this fairy-tale land.

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.

The buzzards have fledged

swapping nests for summer winds

screaming on new wings.

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?