Fix your smiles like sutures against my skin
pull back black hair, paint prides picture vain
he reignites present, sings such impeccable sin
as fresh pressed flesh weeps for him again.

I dissolve single stitches, you breathe them within
clasp palms and you sit, surrendering thy strain
raise wary hands to mine; all mine now to win?
you release, reach constrictions, rue me insane.

Keep rise rampant memory, fire fevered forged grin
best silent significance, now such rendered resting,
your words tripped dismissed long dead echoing din
riled love risked rages yes for true absence of him.

The only language I know is
the touch of your skin on mine. Your
voice my gospel, these days my doctrine.

The bringer of life is no god, there is
no meaning
of existence.

except for those infinite
meaningless miracles
like these times of rapture
of sunlight unrefined

 when those blinding eyes of yours
 turn to greet mine.

He moves over me
A darkened image; blurred
Edges not yet defined
For how to define
That which you do not understand?

Or perhaps comprehension
Is simply ignored
In favour of ignorance
And silence becomes the refrain
From the truth hidden on our tongues.

He rises above me
But I do not feel small
For I do not feel anything
And our kisses taste of guilt
And half spoken secrets
And I wonder, oh how I wonder
If he knows that they do.

And if he cares, like I wish to care
If he wonders
Of the troubles that we do not share
Separate lives, joined but temporarily
Yet not united, still apart
Drifting on a sea of sadness
Caught in the same tide
But not going the same way.

He is the sun scorching my irises
as I wonder what I ever did to deserve this,
strong saccharine sugar heightening my spine
as the paths of stars and planets finally align.

But sweet dove, what collar now is this?
I thought my eyes were blind to any but his?

That slight smile and how would it feel
to taste that skin, ah this spinning wheel
in my mind, please, stop. Now what trick it this?
He found true love but we overlooked my abyss.

I love him, I do, but that one talk with a stranger
has placed all that we knew in immaculate danger
was it actually my darkness that blinded his irises?
And what has he ever done to deserve this?

No, we are golden and in his arms I will lay
no more thoughts of a stranger, that parody play,
but now sighted eyes most unwillingly perceive
that is it happy, this heart, or is it I that is deceived?

Dash the darkness from the seat
this night is one to admit defeat,
I shall bring to you each echo new
and let us laugh to life's conceit.

I will be nothing for you

No smiles in the darkness
Are to be found on these lips
Lips which curve all too readily
When laughter lingers

Eyes will venture elsewhere
And my feet will follow
For to stay still
Is to degrade;
             to ferment

Even though fermenting
Could yield the sweetest things with you.

I remember the solid feel of your arms
and soft, papyrus skin pressed
against mine; encompassing all that
has and will happen.

Here in our circle, I turn
and slip and slide and slither
out, away and onto something new,
whilst your arms always remain open.

Forging young paths with new steps
splashing not lightly, causing tsunamis
with every decision made and regretted,
life lived and loved apart from you.

But there's a link inscripted in our DNA,
genes linking genes and laughter
across seas and silences and solitude
always, you stick with me.

Your eyes braced, lips ready to smile,
upright you keep your chin.
I think of you and pray one day
to be half the person you've been.

I wrote a poem for you when you were gone
It was everyone's darling; I found it feeble.

About how the leagues between diminished
when I stared up at the same stars that lit
the night where you walked. How the Earth
still revolves but we cannot feel it and we
look up, unknowing if anything looks back down.

You returned to me and I collected the pieces of your
heart, gained sight of salt leaking luscious from places
whose ignorance of existence naively I was blessed
heard words I would rather have remained unspoken.

Loathed speech fell like cumbersome bricks from
my tongue to yours, decisions took in absence
causing tectonic plates to clash and tremors be to
felt, further and wider than your eyes when I spoke.

I am sorry is a meaningless phrase. It changes
nothing and I try never to speak it, rather avoid
its crashes of consequence, freeze substance before
the impacted have little cause to celebrate
its colourless intonation.

I am sorry for saying I am sorry, but that which I am not
is for the needed swelling waves which set you far from my shore.

3 words that were the tornado,
obliterating all
into clean and tidy rubble.

Ordered, perfect, succinct
as your wicked fault-lines
imploded and I said

you were doing the right
thing, I just did not want
you to do it.

My eye of the storm, departed
crumpled
because I could not, though

I swear, calling bare, blood
burning, desperate, destitute nights
and each sharpened, salted day

as my witness, I tried.

But this body holds no words, this mind
carries no ease to destruction, incessant
heart beats out no explanation of why

why? why? why,

I cannot love you.

I spent a night with Mandy, our smiles
quaking lips and arms around strangers as
the darkness receded and the stars couldn't be
seen but they could be felt; sound itself visible
in the vibrations of glass and the heady movements
of living and your taste tripping upon my tongue.

Tonight Mandy has left me, smiles
borrowed now a debt to be paid as dusk
approaches. I miss you; my arms ache
to remember holding your body
years past as you came back down
from the music in the stars of the sky
and I was there to laugh and
dry tears and force the darkness to recede.

I think I must be dead and my body moulders, rests
imperfectly in a carved wooden tomb. Secreted

beneath the malted mud, a restless corpse twitches,
mind set on deceiving; images of alien fingertips
skimming supple skin.

Truly, I have never been more content, as my pieces
decay and dismember and chest rises with bloated gas

breathing such sure imitation against
bleached white weaving whale bones as

the machinations, these movements of worms
whisper, vibrating your words within each unseeing ear,
surely, yes, no heart beats now to hear them.

You love me, say my worthy companions, and oh
do I love you too, most magnificent apparition, sweet
spectacular spectre, conception of minds greatest trick.

I must slumber eternal.
I must lie beneath shaded trees where the birdsong and
shafted sunlight and sweet taste of dewed grass lends

life to decimated, deceased thought of what was once
concious, forcing disbelieving perception, fabricating
a phantom, forging the incredible wonder of you.

I think I must be dead, for I think I drew you up
inside my head.

He falls from my thoughts like
autumn leaves from the trees;
dancing away on a bitter wind.

I survive the winter, easy to ignore bare branches
whispering of ghosts buried shallow
in the cracked and frozen ground.

I continue; I forget to regret as
the dark nights draw in
whilst I thaw out.

No fear of green here, nor of light
bringing colour to what I now
admit I have lost.

But, even so, as the earth twists on its axis
thought of him still will flower;
loathe to grow back as the sun shines.

Encased in black granite
solid substance she can't find
as she holds the hand of her son
but he does not return this in kind.

Sweet Pieta, sent by her words
to dance with dank, docile depravity,
lies so still now -
and her eyes can't bare but shutter
against such sure lack of he.

It is so silent, this mourning,
not one vibration can be felt,
just that of solid substance lacking
encased in the cards that we dealt.

Your kindness has killed me.

It wasn't too sweet, not saccharine,
you came with a hint of lemon-sharp smiles
and mischievous eyes, cheek slipping off your tongue
to fall on my skin like a bluntly barbed-caress,
each laugh a knife that cuts me to remember.
I barely knew you but even so, I think it was enough
to slip into loving him who I perceived you to be.

Have I damaged
this plump, preening pride of yours?
I am not sorry.

It was all dark skies and twilight and
rare glimpses and wondrous sunlight
peeking behind lurking rain clouds and
I let you take my hand the night that

Jacob died and you led me to places I
would have avoided, glass sheared my feet
but you smiled so sweetly and it emptied
that void for a little while. And you said

such terrible things about falling so
I bricked up my mouth. But I wonder
after I departed, irrevocably wordless,
if you stole that void for your own.

There was a full stop
hedged on a semi-colon,
but you just flew straight through both.

A train wreck thunderstorm, lightning bolt
smiles that were just a touch too bright.

One thing fell and then another, repeated,
endless cycles of your closed eyes, averted face,
until the pebbles that fell graduated to stones,
to boulders, and you turned and ran towards them.

Each step was a decision, each step another false idea,
another pathetic tragedy, trapped in viscous thought
as silence became a screaming, scorching pain after
you chose to become the enemy.

I was here, I was breathing, I was one step away
from you. But you did not reach for me, you did
not speak. You did not call. I left my phone on for you but
you did not call.

You stole secret to the edge and ripped yourself asunder.
You wrapped your fingers around our throats.
You decided to disappear your problems, to rest in pieces.
You resolved we should be the ones left to suffer,
standing perpetually in your shadow.

I still suffer. I am still here. I am still breathing, but it
is no thanks to you. Your mother cannot look at me anymore.
She says I remind her too much. She doesn't breathe,
she doesn't talk, she doesn't call.

She is the remnant you left behind, cast off like an old coat,
worn and weary and wasted.

Do you remember me? Do either of you remember me?
I cannot do it anymore.

Your legacy is made of salt and water
and all I want to do is forget.

Brother. Mother. Sister;
the family tree is dead.

The threat of tinsel hangs heavy around my house and
every surface I have tarnished with gaudy colours, one
handed angels and effigies of flightless birds.

I remember one year, as nights drew in and wrapped us
in its sightless embrace and my sisters and I still shared
one tiny room and you, dressed in a ridiculous red
dressing gown, crept loudly into our room.

Eyes closed but lips lit, we paraded our false slumber
as you offered a rumbling "** ** **", gifting allies
laughter that shivered in our beds.

I remember the next, as your trembling hands fluttered,
never touching, the presents we had each bought ourselves,
as it has become too bright for you to step outside.

You wept and I drew my face stoic
as those aged hands trembled and these bitter claws
ripped and tore and vainly tried to stick
fragile paper back together with meaningless scraps of tape.

Your face whispered, "shouldn't be wrapping your own presents"
as white salt mapped fresh rivers, traced on giving skin.

I avoided the rain clouds of your sound;
methodically trying to appease this sadness.

My voice lilted of forgiveness but my body, such young bones, so
rough-raged and rigid, spoke of a bitterness I would've died
to hide like the tears you used to try to.

Smoke and gaslight and pretty little parcels wrapped in gold,
maybe if we bury all under forgiving paper, living can
play as happy as the paltry promise of this season.

Insatiable bile rises at the precipice of ecstasy, undeniably
life lived is a rolling wave of emotion as I rise and I

fall with the sequences of the sun at my back and
these oceans under my feet. One day may I strike a

balance? To arise and not to plunge from these summits,
simply then to collide with the challenger deep. For now

torn moments do sustain me and drain me; I cannot
win against water whilst water cannot last against light.

I trip on the colours, blink like a child in
mornings lit by yellow drips of vacuous veins
winding sweet around your neck.

Your smile doesn't visit here anymore,
your darkness significant only in silence as
I touch your skin with fingers too insubstantial
for you to feel them.

I swoop low and cradle you in arms that
chafe like barbed wire caresses and
your eyes don't water from the smoke
I no longer hide.

We migrate, constricted and contained, sinking
like shattering shards of ice, separate atoms
only held together for so long.

I search for your reflection in the morning puddles,
the rain from yesterday still wet against my skin,
but the sky above seems empty; it does not talk back.

Your transparent presence today echoes my own
and time has come to embrace our salt,
for all left now is the places
where you are not.

It’s just that I had something extraordinary once
and I lost it.
And I can’t even blame anyone else
but myself
because I did not fight for it.
But how can you fight
for something you no longer believe in?


I lost it.
One could even say, I threw it away
it slipped from my fingers
but I did not run to pick it up
I did not scream nor rant nor rave
nor bleed and burn and break
I just
sat.
And watched my world crumble,
passively hastening desolation.

Flying under the sky, over the sea

To the next adventure, you and me.

I don't know if what I am doing classes as living, classes as

enough; for I am all too aware of time passing; standing

attested, arrested by people purely expanding as all I do,

when held against dream's nostalgic playing field and

childhood's uncertain scope of vision; silver concrete

wonder at the world being round, that this life

now tastes uninspired, anaemic;

excessive only in its own

insignificance,

truly.

Erase the skin on which you wept
Some secrets were not meant to be kept
Flee quick now, before the burn
Let us break it here, before it comes undone.

Yes, it was glory and the life of the light
Yet all things end, like the coming of night
And sometime soon memories will fade
Let us bring dark to the light, **** the shade.

Do you know the name
The named things named
When sadness took frame
And solitude turned
To silence hard-fought,
Do you know the name
I hold in my heart?

May we be forgiven,
For pretending for so long
And pretending so poorly.

For never forgetting
(And always comparing)
To that which we had before.

Pray, may we be forgiven?
For I do not know how
To forgive and forget
The crimes of those who once scarred us
And the crimes that we ourselves commit

All in the aim of some previously lost game
Which broke us apart before we met,
And now never to be the same
Haunted by words better thought, not said.

I tried to burn you out
smoke congealing in my eyes as you
stepped in unscathed; lily-white sight seeking
something unsustainable; you landed on me.

Cut-glass dressed vinegar smiles falling on grazed skin
leeching blood and plasma and solid-silver silence
as you tuck my hair behind my right ear and I
dissolve, take the shard and slide along
humming anticipation beneath this taut canvas.

I keep watching other people living
and wondering how I can keep up with
each showcase, another step behind
and my legs are too short and eyes too
tired and I can't make my hair shine like
you do or be happy like he is or have
a dozen friends in undiscovered places
like she always has, nor have I ever done
anything that is actually anything on his scale and
to be content merely moving is apparently
never enough, I need to push forward, become
someone and do something that dulls
everyone else's shine
because apparently that is living and that is life
and it's only real when everyone else can see it.

We do not go up but only along do we tread
and sometimes unfettered hopes go on ahead
advancing to places we strive but cannot touch
no matter what I achieve, it is never enough.

I break it
wholly, this time, the shame a red reef of guilt
traipsing across burning skin.

I keep getting
angry with you, unreasonable, unfounded,
unlovable moments that you always see.

Why were they
all blonde, whilst my long hair coils dark
a sin choking at my neck.

One a lawyer,
two a doctor and three a nothing that sits
at home and eats at your words.

I keep trying
to make myself believe that you do not
love me, when you say you do.

You do, love
me. Speak blasphemous prayer (I am enough)
though, I never have been before.

There's nothing like holding someone in your palm and looking down at them

when they used to be so raised up and universes out of reach

that only when you finally turned your back and pointed your eyes at the ground

did they descent to walk amongst mere mortals and fall into your path

steps tripping feet as they open arms once gold-gilded, now bitter, scuffed and burnished

and no longer quite  blinding enough for you not to see, unfeeling,

that they are not who you wanted them to be.

A trickle of freshwater
transparent, streaming down
building until the rampant river rages
frothing ***** underneath this pale skin

I question the worthiness of my water
crashing next to his, his estuaries wander
of new continents and mine falls,
losing weight, losing track, losing direction

to pool, fat and turgid, darkening in the lower light
stagnant waters reeking of incompetence and mud
whilst the estuaries delight in new discoveries and I
lose myself in my reflection.

Oh to be dust
Tossed around by the whim
Of the sky and wind
To be free
To never care nor worry nor bleed
Simply to fly on through the mist
And come out on the other side
No different as before,
Just dust.

Do not let them in,
sometimes insanity is
all I have of you.

Illustrious shrapnel leaves gold-gilded grazes
And we dance danger with distinctive detonation,
Blood screaming in our ears; all sound now internal
till the final dank decimation.

She stopped blunt, as though words are gunshots
dripping from my tongue; I want her
to know, but not for good reason.
We humans are bitter animals.

She never started again and was found floored
as though gravity had claimed her for itself,
her eyes staring and lips pale eggshell blue;
forever parted, but lost unto speech.

One drop
and then another

rolling down dusty cracks in a windowpane;
as transparent as the clouds.

Here they fall, whispering widows
traces as substantial

as the autumn leaves
when the wind whimpers,

as substantial as your smile
when I'm not looking.

The drops simmer on,
down the desert of expression

fall down down down
and I will

make sure to look the other way.

I would love
to be the cigarette burn on your arm
the nicotine stain in your lungs, rip
fibres of hair from follicles screaming as
I drench petrol and fiery words on your
body as you trip and stumble and fall
in every which way back down to the ground.

your smiles make me sick.

I want to ***** acid on your supple skin,
singing hydrochloric corrosive promises
which consume us both because now
just right now
all it does is burn me and
you don't even notice.

It is dark outside and

the winter is creeping in again and

you are not here again and

I am here again and

it never ends and

it's dark outside.

The moment I let myself love you
happened incidentally, it was never
my intention and, yes, I was fiercely opposed,
but sometimes letting go of this fight to
keep yourself distant is
fundamental to being awake.

I say a moment, it was more like a collection,
a combination, a calamitous effect
of all the instants we spent, your eyes
widening and dark lashes closing shut only
to open again, drowning upon my face.

Yes,
this is going nowhere except
for the fact it has all already helped
me cross oceans and I will always have
the memory of your laughter and that
one moment
when your face said my smile alone
made the sun shine.

I see a picture of you and it
punches me in the chest, eyes
of night black darkness bleeding
at the corners but your

smile now means nothing; it is directed
to me no longer. Arms so soft and brown
caress a skin other
than mine and you turn

to thinking of her, always. I sit and stare
embroiled in memories
as the print of your hand runs
around and around my head,

the words you once meant that I can
never bring myself to
throw away. The lament of lapsed lovers
sings low and persistent.

I've added up those infringements
stumped them safe, sleeping on dewed grass,
notches burnt on pain of others past to
flare to light in the light of future true.

Goodnight sweet princes, please let
me abandon you soft in this dark
I want to move without your strictures
to seek valleys again crossed with blue.

Numbers lament from my touch but this
I know to be true, it is not my turn to
dance in the ditches, but I would set fire to
dawn to seek sweet signal of your hue.

This recrimination brings no reprieve
but nor does it change the violence conceived
and ill-prepared were we for this siege
as families swell with undeserved grief

the questions he asked were slow and
mistaken, like the actions he took before
like was forsaken, as now we stand but
one stretch away, the condemners  
facing those who we make to pay

the crimes they committed were
wrong, that's fact, but all else
is blurred and they cannot retract,
but repent is not favoured to the
guns which will sing; flesh will be
punished as we pull the strings

we did not know where it was he
was directed, but the ****** chains
were ones we had elected, adding
safety to the very last limps of life,
yes we all fired the bullets, 
but at what sacrifice?

you washed the salt out of my eyes
you stomped your feet, refused goodbyes
you burned my books when I tried to write
and set up traps to catch me in the night

I followed your steps up to the cliff
and tried to recall how it felt to live
before this cage of you that I elated
when this infinity could not be sated

So many steps seen from where I stood
so much bad diminished so much good
and those lies were always easier to tell
before that mention of where he fell

A push that was but kinetic emotion
who cried the tears, formed the ocean?
Your own were dried long before this last
and your steps have penned me in the past.

I am sold on this hope of you
the sky has become shady and
rivers torrent, raindrops become
addicts to the scent of your skin.

In your touch, streams of
molten estuaries feed this great
gaping belly of the beast, salty
eddies tempering all wont to be.

To drive head-first within unknown
waters, broken driftwood promises
must be cut free; am I to sink in
the ocean or to swim in your sea?

I sit next to Sally and watch the sun set,
here in this life, where I'll always regret,
leaving my home; moving away,
for here is where my heart will stay.

Contamination seeps and weeps from pores and migrates from your skin to mine
I cannot see it but I feel it, sliding over me and sinking through layers
Through my skin and my nerves and my tissue down right to my bone
Where you pause; take a breath, look around;
Try on my internal machinery for size and speed and duration
Drag and rip and tear my insides for a sign and the very spark of life
Then, once located you break through, right down and into my marrow
And consume all it is there that makes me immune
Become a part of me in the parts that I was not even aware existed
A lovely parasite who feeds on my secrets and bathes in my blood
A darkness within which perfectly mirrors that already present
Both of me and alien, twisting the two so intertwined that no lines can be drawn
Until we are but intermingled and so all is lost in bones that have become yours
All that skin and those nerves and those tissues, lost unto me and gained by you
To be devoured through duplicities of dancing and deception  
A most beautiful way to die, to simply cease to exist to be
Devoured by a love so consuming and false that not a trace will remain
When you do not falter but dance on; playing out your parody of happiness
With all of those who once thought that they too knew the steps

But now what remains at last knows better
And as it burns it both regrets and adores you
It both loves and it hates you
Wanting but denying the need for a being so superfluously mendacious in their meaning
So extensionally versatile with their morals and reduced in magnitude by their ploys
Now the ash can rise above, constrained by no sentiments to bind nor naivety to hope
To fade into comforting insignificance as you compose a ******* of life with bitter strings
Tying irreversible knots in all others connected to your skin; secured by but the very finest of threads
On the edge and ready to leap; always with a larger hand in sight and the treachery to take it.

You are burnt skin under boiling water;
the acid singing at the back of my throat.

You are the scent of river water rushing;
the precipice of temptation, to fall or to fly.

You are folded paper smiles, salty swallows;
the risky hand knowingly played and lost.

You are the thought I cannot make myself
voice aloud.

I remember the day
with the cold water-kissed summer grass sticking to my thighs
and you, eyes solemn, downcast, peeking up through thick lashes.

I was afraid
because the words which tumbled from hesitant, confessing lips
left earth to quake and silence in wake.

Except for my hiccups
undignified explosions; face raw red from crying
salt tracing sorrow
white rivers flowed on soft skin.

I remember that day,
where I stood and walked away
not with much clarity.

As though sight and sound surrendered
said, this is it, the end.

So what has become of
the seashells I used to collect on the shore?
do they build up, unfathomable, now my hand
is too busy carving a life unlooked for.

and what become of the arrogance of youth,
they who knew know bounds;
determined to grow as changing as the tides;
that their dance would be the one
to draw the moon ever closer.

now all to hear is gulls screaming incessant songs
as I learn of rhythms that are caught,
a trapped constant between tide and wane,
an age where there is
no magic in this magnificence.

We never dreamt that such small wonder
(of invisible breath that moves the clouds
subtle shifting of the seasons
sunrises and sunsets)
could be so finite.

Nor did we plan
for a life as fractious,
incidental;
shifting grains beneath
unsteady feet.

There is so much screaming, a
mess of self-deceit flashing colours
around blinking eyes; we try always
not to let the light in.

Please, the night has fallen and
I cannot stop myself, these thoughts
of mine rise and plunder internal,
ripping pieces of machinery into
new formations, weapons

you smile at me and I take it as
an affront, you stay away and I
scream (please) I do not need you,
(please) I am only myself.

They sharpen inside and force their
way out, blood lying on my tongue
so I disgorge foul words and this
much maligned vanity.

Is it time to run you through the mangle
with me? We can flounder without falling,
but no purchase can be found for
our wandering feet.

No, I push you away and pull
myself asunder, but you do not
leave until I put the knife
to your neck.