o' turtle in your tank
why do you cry?
belly-ache or heartache;
which is it this time, turtle?

o' slow creature
idle too long
it's time to move on
moss collects upon your back

inimitable armour
to mundane pebble
you transform
in your tank

tell me what ails you
young reptile
do you long for the taste
of sweet algae in a pond?

or has it been too long?
have you forgotten
what it’s like
to be a turtle?

o' solitary being
have you given up?
the glass has bound you
these twenty-odd years

have you grown frightened
of what awaits outside?
you retreat at the sight
of the earliest light

o' forlorn prisoner
hold your breath a while longer
for freedom is bestowed
upon the patient

I hop into a bed most nights,


                         most nights I take my ******* off and if I’m lucky then there’s something soft like a blanket knit by my grandmother’s hand or sometimes the boorish **** of a man, it’s all the same;

something soft to soothe my soul at night.

sometimes I paint my lips the scarlet of a harlot so that my smirk will weaken someone at the knees,
                         I only hope; and to get into my bed at night they need only say please, brush my dissipated face
with their disappointed fingers
and then whisper you could be so beautiful… and the loneliness consumes me,
then it begins to confuse me
and I could hide in here for days simply staring at a picture,
or I could drink it all away with a girl and then I’d kiss her

    but it’s all the same escape; I’m just trying to soothe my soul with something soft tonight.

I walked down a silver path
silver was the moon, he told me
‘silver is money, I’ve got that’
‘silver is your eyes,’ I told him

I smelled a daffodil
I thought,
but the bright yellow mess was just a ****
nicely dressed

there were shrubs, planted firmly
I thought
until the harsh spring rain
uprooted them in a quick fit

I walked through the night,
dancing
watching the stars, I thought
they danced with me

he watched me,
watching the sky
‘kiss the stars for me,’ he told me
and I did

colours, lights, feeling
and sight
indistinguishable
in the silver moonlight

I was led, then
to an inevitable dawn
and cast into
the golden sun

as an infant born of a silver womb
I thank him for keeping me
warm at night
and I thank him for letting me go

there’s evil in the way I sway my hips
                           ( like sailing ships through a hurricane hell )
where heat under eyelids
meets the cold of the outside

and storms are ****** up
from the atmosphere
and through my throat;
they claw and scratch
and make their way down
into my stomach
to sit and swell

( in a hurricane hell... )

there’s something devilish about
how all I want to do is kiss you even though
I know I’ll only **** you in the end

they tell me rainbows, they are somewhere
and sometimes I can feel them,
but you can’t see the hues through the gray and sleet
or be thankful for shoes if you haven’t got feet,
and fireworks can feign the colours so well
but nothing’s real in here,  ( in this hurricane hell )

and if my eyes were cold
and not so ******* old maybe I could see the way you do;
a ship in a bottle.

some greedy little bitter man has put together a picture-perfect person and out of pure laziness and malignant attempts at control he pays off a psychopath to make it happen but we’re just a little body, flesh and bones come between them and their paychecks so why not make it easier? they made a factory out of our garden and nothing grows in factories it’s manufactured, easy as one two three four five six, we’re all sitting on an assembly line waiting for some alcoholic man to shout at some pimply-faced twenty-something “FASTER! FASTER!” so it begins! press of a button, we’re created, step one: your parents were given the baby books, kids! infants, they’re all the same anyways. they’re not individuals yet, they haven’t been encoded so relax, parents. want them turn out like you? sure, do what your parents did, worked out well, eh? been occupying this factory your whole life, then? well anyways, step two: they spend less time with you because you’ve been in this world for three years so it’s time you get out on your own…. step three: they gotta YELL and scream and children aren’t supposed to touch things or say things or scrape their knees because that’s more work for the adults, and they work all day, just like they were programmed for, good little machines 'cause they forgot what it’s like to be a baby or an animal or a plant or a God but also the resentment, a child wants to live but how ridiculous? there’s no life in industry… all about the money baby step four: you buy your education because it builds your character because money says power but when did meaningless power equal respect? I don't know but they force you into reading the same old instruction pamphlets left in the break room at the plant for the past century or so and five: your turn to work for fourty years in this polluted place because it’s hard to break free from twenty-three years of moulding into a cookie cutter you never did fit, that’s why it hurts so much when they try to push you through, your muffin-top is sliced right off and you’re contorted to fit the view of perfect sugary sweetness but just to make sure you're ready they coat you with vanilla icing to cover up your imperfections, perfect, now step six, and this one is the doozy, and because you’re **** broke: go back to mom and dad’s and grab those baby books and again and again and again the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats….

shield yourself from winds of shattered glass
sparkling and dancing ‘cross the desert
in a twist of fate
veiled
she emerges
tall with tools in hand
strikes earth with God-like blasts
and swiftly sets the dust by her command

cracked orange and beige line horizons ahead
three-hundred sixty degrees of dry, dry land
sweat drips
from forehead
to feet beneath
but the hot ground drinks
your juice before it can be seen
like the jerky flesh of a jack-rabbit
turned from corpse to some dry, dry bones

follow along the waving, molten paths
seductive tones will take you by the hand
and lead if you beware of the mirage
ubiquitous; devious, ambiguous
so shut your eyes, open your mind
"there will be no man left behind."

in her tracks she halts, and smiles
she rests in place still as cacti
a singular explosion
starts to shatter the terrain
she dives into the chasm
and  begins to dig
and dig and dig;
she builds a home
always enclosed
to dwell, to dig
warm within
the valley of
wisdom.

I will confide in you as the earth does the sun
trusting every ray incessently
absorbing your warmth into me;
I will need you to grow, my sun
just as you need me to balance you
and my orbit to feed the stars to you and help you grow,
my sun.
I will look up t’wards the heavens and think
not about the raindrops striking my brow nor
celestial bodies that keep our universe whole
but at you, my sun.