He cracked open my sternum
feasted eyes on muscular beats
punctured both set of heaving lungs
ruined the cleanest of my sheets.

Claimed alcohol confused corneas
that tiredness muffled defiant ears
that blood didn't register, that pain disappeared
that I did not say that word, that he did not hear.

He stoppered each tear which congealed
such angry belligerence, hey, we made a deal.
This was one mistake and one ruined so willingly,
those scratches were passion, why don't you see?

you should have been clearer, yes really, I was the flaw
you should have fought harder, barricaded that door,
douse yourself in fire and go clean up this mess
it's time like these I begin to love you even less.

He cracked open this sternum
smuggled in gifts unadorned,
and these days I wish I had murdered him
instead of the aftermath, unborn.

It is tomorrow as I stray solitary
and walk myself awake, standing
on the grass that grows the greenest
on this here higher side
where the moon sleeps in the shadows
above your mud-cloaked body.

My bare feet ***** down the flora
that grows hopeful from your skin
and up I turn, looking for comfort
in a bare and barren sky

where even the brightest stars,
those thousand sharpened shards
of brittle glass glimmering,
fade too into blackness

as here, cloaked in this shining dark,
I am reminded
that the full fury of the sun rests so still now,
held blind beneath my weary feet.

I can go a month without thought of you, invading my
mind as I pretend that you do not exist, knowing that I am
better off without the trials and tribulations being your daughter
brings. You broke something special and now day by day

you grieve for it and simmer anger in your expression
as we rally around my mother, the only reason any of
us made it to today. I try so hard to love, to forgive the
drunken anger and sibilant self-pity that you brought

to us, making presents out of ****** philosophy and tears
out of sunshine, as each day you awoke hungover and
angry and we each reacted like hissing cats when you utter a
word, because nothing you have ever said has been worth the

effort it takes to listen. I loathe you. Today is your birthday.
This agony of fake smiles plays a parody across my face
and the hugs I gift are all for her; she who burns the very
brightest and you make suffer for it so. I should love you,

but daddy, hatred is something you cannot outgrow.

You miss me.

But still you throw your words
and I get caught up in a hailstorm of paper
shallow but deep cuts
as we fall or fly towards disillusion.

I see you
standing straight on high; heavy with
all the threat of the curve of the earth
and I

must not blink.

And in the darkness miss
your wondrous eruption inevitable
falling, flying

into something more than here,
something more than now,
something more than we.

And I wonder why we do these things
As we sit in silence, the decaying affection mouldering
between us like a canyon.

As you look at me and I look to you
with no way of unseeing
The deficit held within beloved brown eyes

It’s too late now and the sadness has settled
and you have already left
Taking with you the colours from the light
As the ash from your last cigarette smoulders  
and goes out.

Body shaking, stomach burning inside
to out, escape and leave me, for I mistreat
you terribly and I am not sorry. Each day is a

struggle, yes, but each morning a glimmer
of hope reflected in vanishing numbers tied to
sluggish skin. Your breath on my neck and

her arms around my shoulders, stretching the
concave of my chest and the hungry cut of my jaw,
twin collarbones thrusting out like the tip of a blade.

She trips and falls into my path, overeager
with bright smiles and a kindness she tries
to conceal.

The first time we met she fell into
my bed on the pretence of stealing
music and laughter.

Persistent she hovers on the edge of my
life, ready to invade, for a time, whenever
invited.

She has soft skin and hands that are
engulfed by mine; a quiet voice that
falters when shouting.

I wonder if she has other men, who
too extend the right to stay only
for a while.

I wonder if she likes it. And I wonder
of the hesitation that drops
from my skin to hers.

he looked to you
for once telling me the truth
I realise I knew.

You're lucky, you know, young sir.

Your face will not fall into lines and you will never wither and fail and have to watch yourself degrade, be given a seat on the bus, a taxi called for you as you leave a shop with empty bags filled with value promises, your body parts replaced until you're more than half-recycled titanium, knowing that you're doomeddoomeddoomed but going out with as little dignity as the modern world can manufacture.

You will never be scared of the streets and the cut-throat carcasses that impersonate the young, never slip and break all because you've become as fragile as a Fabergé egg, whose fault lines too could conceal golden greatness within.

You will never be disillusioned, disavowed nor diagnosed as a faulty by-product of society, to crumble in corners as they count up the continued cost your existence creates and shake their heads.

No, Arthur, this was for the best, you did say that you would never make it past 28?

So many young mouths have echoed this, eyes wide and unlined and naive, brazen to time and unwilling to succumb to its effects regardless of the life lived in between.

It was for the best then, that speeding car and your drunken feet, inebriated on the futility of existence and the unforgiving slip of time. Never mind the driver, the hopeful fool going anywhere until she met you, never mind the infinite loss of possibility to your future self, nor the silence in the halls since you left, yes the trees still sing on as your mother cries.

The stars hang sleeping in a salted sky
as faulted feet tread paths worn smooth
all is stilled and all is awry
and the whispers of the wind
have nothing to prove.

The blackness is crushed velvet,
to be caressed with his touch
as distance travelled is at once
precise and all too much

for the stars are awake now
as I lie happy in this taxing grip;
he loves me imperfectly
and we are the sinking ship.

Yellow sunrises,
pieces of a past present
with such persistence.

Darken my doorstep again, you effigy which no longer exists
Bring rise to my mornings and depths to my dark
I seek you; he who does not exist
but in the recesses of remembrance

For time has corroded him and changed him
To be both more and less
And no more to be he as I, in turn, move from she
Who remains tied to the one I loved best.

Move me, like you did when you sighed from the skies
And told me, with one look, the sorrow I saw
You broke your own heart
Disappointment, I was not the one you thought

Come darken my doorstep again,
You effigy of he who ceased to be
Bring rise to my mornings and depth to my dark
I seek you, you *******, I will never be right.

Thousands of words make up this language
and an endless million more that I could misplace,
but no combination thereof could ever halfway gauge
that look right now, sitting plain upon your face.

Moments leave and
the memories that embrace us
are digested; engorged on good times
and the bad. Colouring places you’ve been
with their light and absence and we smile
or we cry, for these stills collected
leave indelible stains on each
moment lived thereafter. The
shadows of past colours sometimes
blaze brighter than each instance
here and now or lend their dimensions
to present moments, clouded and
sharp, that bring the light of each
colour to each moment of dark.

I had a dream last night that my mother died
And I woke
to a salty pillow and feelings of grief.

Then I remembered that it was you, not her
who had left me.

Andohgod the relief that I felt
has cemented every artery, vein and capillary.
This guilt will crush me to the earth.

I'm stationary, sat silent in a taxi
on another plagiarised street
where the rain is the only other rhythm
compounding that heavy threat of my heart.

There's one frozen memory
of words that crept unwarranted to
the surface and floated idly there,
an oily mirror amongst the ****.

I said
I can't do this any more.

And wordless, you left me when
actually, I didn't think you could.

This taxi is empty and the rain is
only on my face and that bray
of my heart holds steady,
in spite of everything
else having
stopped.

There is a chamber within my body
Beating, beating, forever beating
Until I am gone and then it is silent
For we are but one

Though at times it does not feel it
And, at times, I wish to rip it out
Drag it from broken skin
We are still together, forever

Until one of us falters
And then we both go under.

You sleep in the room next time mine
As I write this; eyes closed and body slumped
Heaven in the small things
Like the soft sigh of breath, eyelids flutter
Lost unto a world I cannot inhabit
Nearer now than you have been in weeks
But oceans still separate us
Turmoil of both hidden in such delicate shells
Harder on the inside, withstanding the constant artillery
Of our pain; united in the instance which will forever keep us apart.

Don't allow
the thoughts of your sisters
to invade you mind and
wrinkle sheets so carefully
folded over the places
you never grew in to.

I've put on my face, that vacant smile
that fools each stranger dusting the streets
as I walk to your house and throw cherries
through your open window, all but one to miss
and fall back, rolling down to my feet.

Laughing, you let me in and we fall into your
room, my smile still ever so carefully cultivated.
One look from you and the corners of ready lips
turn down; you ask, 'are you ok?' and the salted

rivers I have held so long in check, those tides that
rage and roll and throw themselves at each ******
breaker, the swells that flow weaker and stronger
but always always always there, burst forth -

tracing white estuaries on soft skin
as I cannot help but breathe you in.

I have decided this day not to give a
crap about the machinations of others
whose notions concern me just as much
as I care
about falling down stairs or
running into walls
or hurting myself
on purpose, which itself deviates
dramatically
day by day.

It's the final chip
in a week of crumbling foundations, dark
days whip-lashed with uncertainty and
faltering ears hearing words most unwelcome,
set to heed all that I do and yet has still been done.

Forgive me, eyes, for leaking salt
onto wounds so raw with blackening
guilt, faulted dreams and hopeless
expectations.

Forgive me, skin, for softnesses
weakness in such times of trial and
for the temptation to wreak destruction
on the only true thing I hold left.

And forgive me, heart, for taking
steps that were destined
to lead no where but this.

I do not care if
you do not love me,
for I have stored all the colours and
traced the secrets of your steps.

Your arm around my shoulder
is the first moment of the first sunrise
radiance caressing frozen webs of spider silk,
silver glory emanating golden dew.

I know no other way but
nor do I want for more, only to will
you stay; hang suspended on
backdrops of my blackest night.

So I do not care if
you do not love me;
I treasure that weakness enough
for the both of us.

We either fall

or we fly and there's no

no plateau on which to lay

to rest our heavy heads, hurtling

between each inevitable

windburntbloodscreamingcoursing

drop

and every

goddamnbreathbaringasphyxiating

                                                                  elevation.

Suspended behind the panes lit up by golden glows
I lay and watch the world turning and darkness descend
with you, wrapped against my stomach, heart humming
eyes closing; flicker open with each page turned.

Peace is eternal; I could stay here held in times palm
for the rest of days, solitude is serenity when I think to
the others, who irritate, castigate, berate as a necessity.
I am happy alone with my fragile bird.

But my bird cannot walk, it's wings are tied to the ground
and I give you no choice but to stay with me; my prisoner
hidden under the pretence of saviour and eyes turned to the light
that I watch darken each day. Recover my dove, then fly away.

Awake;
the morning cacophony of cars sing and
the tread of the many outside our doors
washes through stone walls and into here.

Here;
where we lay and lie and love and the hours
creep by, tiny movements of a hand hastening
the path to our inevitable destruction.

Now;
now as the dawns chorus rises to an inescapable roar
and your arms tighten around my chest; your face
defiantly still buried in the depths of dark hair.

We;
that ****** word, that cage that I cannot outrun,
we move only by staying still; your arms my
sweetest stricture; my breath your way home.

We oscillate
Each turning in our glass circles,
With fluid walls
letting in and keeping out at will.

Circles then projected, transparent barriers
Impeding revolutions of others
Previously content just to spin.

We pause in our rotation
Watching from afar.

Societies shattered silence
Screams, we will all cut ourselves on the shards.

I feel like burning myself, stepping in front of the never ceasing stream of cars which fly past my house and off into the dark. Except they all have places and people to be and how could I ruin life for another?

I just don’t understand any of this. I thought that I didn’t love him, but now he’s left I am bereft and can see no other reason than this loss. I put too much into one person and now there’s no one to turn to. In five days I see friends, that’s such a very long time right now.

All I can hope is that tomorrow brings the numbness which I used to loathe. All I can hope is that every feeling freezing through my veins will solidify and harden to such an extent that I cannot feel them any more. Perhaps then they will fill in the cracks which have emerged from my core.

There are stones between us, grasping black
jagged deceitful arches of rock which have
stolen my blood and my feelings and my
smiles once too many times. I can look and
see the waves crashing, engulfing what
little humanity you managed to bury and
lose in favour of salty self-pity, stories told
in the drunken tear tracks that mask your
face and your lies and your guilt, because
please do explain to me how you cannot feel
guilty, I get it yeah, alcohol dims your memory
of all the awful things you've said and
done and left open upon your face, slamming glasses
against walls, music screaming at 4am as you stomp
and kick and shout at the TV, at the world,
at my sister and I. And then she grew to
shouting back and never being home and
I? I yearned to bring that bottle down on
your ******* head and glory in the blood
and bone and brains that would cover me and hide
me from every single little ******* thing that you
have ever deigned to commit. Sister, I could reach out
to him now and try to bring him back from the seething
waters, but I would much rather watch him slip and fall
and drown in the glory of his own creation.

It was the greatest night and I didn't even
look up to the stars because they were
all around, lighting up our feet as
we smiled and stepped across solar systems,
universes and galaxies in our quest to
make those memories that will carry me carefree
towards the end of all things.

I trip into your path, machinations
of bright smiles and a kindness drawn
only with pleasing you.

The first time we met I dreamt myself
into your bed, sly moves of a body
you did not want to resist.

Eagerly I hover on the edge of your
life, content to steal company whenever
it is permitted.

He is rapture defined, solid substance
with self-abrasive smiles; a keenness
that cuts when I stand too near.

I wonder if he has other girls to
whom he also extends invites,
to accompany him but for awhile.

I wonder if he likes it. And I wonder
of the dwindling kindled hope that
enrages my skin - and his?

He dispossessed me one summer as we sat beneath skies
blazed blue with such wonder that it burnt my eyes
and I sat and I faltered as those days wore on, this beauty
that mocked me because my glory had gone.

I saw blankness instead of the stars of the night
for he left me, bereft me, took the colours from the light
I was angry, inconsolable, annihilated aspirations of
affinity, consciously avoiding living in contempt of infinity.

Those days were sandpaper shards beneath my clothes
and I worked hard to make sure that nobody knows
those depths that I sank to, the sleepless smoked nights,
where I sat and I wondered how to turn off that light.

Life is brittle glass, dazed and ***** stained clothing;
there's no meaning or secret or way to be knowing
where steps we have not taken will force us to move
and sometimes this darkness is our only truth.

But colours crept back despite eyes not meeting mine
and unwillingly I resolved to tear down this shrine
and I won't lie to you and tell you that each day is joy,
simply subtle expansions of life cherished without that boy.

Torrential rains still lash and terrible things still happen
and his name I still hear which causes infernal distraction
but steadily I am limping my feet away from his lack
finding fire in small things to kindle lapsed hope back.

For the wind and the rain bring green grass and seeds
and salted solitude brought serenity; refusals to concede
and there are new secrets to hold which force me to warm,
for hope, heart and happiness return after each storm.

Look up to the treetops and look around to your friends,
you stand tall, worthy amongst many great men
truth is but perception and so the truth I perceive
is there is hope for you, because there was hope for me.

I am afraid of all the things which came after you:
The smoking, starving, sadness,
the silence and locking my secrets away
and the sight of your brown eyes seeking to look to another.

But with times passage these now have degraded;
I am sometimes happy
Though there are the days when thoughts are
want to wander, unprovoked

For have you ruined me?
Because now
I am afraid all of the people who come after you,
well, my love, they never seem to live up
to the standards that we set.

The water falling washes over skin
as supple as your silence,
as I sit and I write and you
simmer still in your thoughts,
thoughts always of her.

The mourning by the sun for Venus has particular relevance
On a day when optical illusions earmark the transition
Of your face, from lover to something I am not sure to like

Thickened atmospheric eyes, now cold to the touch of mine
As they move to less pronounced planets, in the endless game of galaxies within galaxies
Tricks within tricks held within the circumference of your palm
which holds still the very sun in reverence
… And fear, of your fingers closing and snap!
Snuffing out the brilliance of the light.

And I stop and try to hold the cosmos steady in your wake
Before these eddies of instability wail and break all down
Hurricanes gathering, electrical storms cascade against black as meteors
follow paths of collision long since drawn in the dust of stars

Down we are to spiral as you become the supernova
Gorging on the **** that we left behind, dark matter seething
disrupting the peace of heavens vacuum as you ***** starlight and magnitude unconfined
The sheer brevity of the universe, whose expansive inertia is forced
to abandon apathy as its constellations are devoured and disgorged

Silent, my darling rips the stars from the sky, breaking fundamental laws of physics with energetic destruction
Radiant rays of glory emanating, mutating all ever known
As she spirals Saturn,
Seeking solstice in the free fall of dusty decimations as
  the sun
          falters.

Its brilliance diminished, total eclipse.
Bringing confusion to corneas
faced now with the explosive onslaught of love and dust
As the astronomical causation and implications of desertion
Rocks universal.

Apathetic atrophy to be favoured now over expansion
as the pieces begin to fall way. Such a day of great reverence,
it's relevance uncontested as time and what didn't come before
is forced from its final, infinite march to cease.

You face, from friend to foe, your name a once so simple,
celebrated noun transformed from the precedence of dawns chorus
to something I cannot force myself
to say aloud.

Black drops, bitter like a shroud
as the sun mourns for Venus, for Venus orbits another star now.

We were drunk and
I wanted it so you obliged.

I put your fingers in my mouth -
you told me this was dangerous

that made it feel so delicious  
as you gave and I took, but

I feel something stirring
and now I am afraid.

Azure sapphires glint and dance
Below the fields still flower in France
As debris blow and snow does fall
White silence in the space of souls
It is meaningless; it is not fair
Here lie solid absences and despair
We were many; now we are but few
They fell, fell right on through.

Odysseus once hid under a sheep,
escaping the sightless hands of a Cyclops
to sail away unscathed.  

You look into my eyes and
together we laugh at your joke,
joined on the face of things.

But there's doubt creeping through my veins
secrets hitching my voice
and I yearn to fly too close to the sun.

But it seems you are just blind to the fact
that underneath my slight smile,
I'm wondering how to elude us.

Maybe you don't look for those things,
the trouble around the bend. See?
Everything's dark; all I discern is darkness.

You walk away, pin-***** white against the night,
it seems I did not have to hide
for you to free me.

I leave you
Stood silhouetted in the doorway
With light spilling onto the steps
Like liquid brilliance, amplifying my dark

I smile, wave and turn on cold heels
My rictus face falling into lines
As my back faces you and then retreats

This betrayal is so evident to all involved
That we make a mockery not to speak of it
As I leave you and you?

Learn closer and put your arm around hers
And whisper words once previously practiced in my ear.

Do you still think of me?

Do you remember the blaze of my breath
pausing taut once more before yours?

No.

The day you told me, plucked up by a poor mans spine
shucked beneath your skin, I whimpered to behold
treacherous lips, last imprisoned by another.

A dry river of salt flowed static down my skin and you laughed.

Parked a pistol at my temple,
with rough fingers and parched breath frozen, indecision fraught.

But letting go was enough.

Sometimes, you endure resolute in my thoughts
like fingers wrapping again around this throat,
singing sorrow when, stupidly, I look too closely.

I cannot foresee time when thought of you
stops shattering these shards that remain.

And I hope you still think of me,
but what use is that.

The maelstrom circles, patient, waiting,
lurking ever beneath my still water smiles,
ripples never to reach the shore.

As I slip a little closer; cold, I can feel -
oh yes, that blessed razor-sweet breath
burning hot against my tongue, tripping and -

and I can see you're back, burning eyelids
with our tender-stemmed secrets, always
all too ready to explode forth, exhale,

but today you sit there, still here, always -
maybe, perhaps, incessantly, please

I do not want forever, yet I pray,
stay, stay sweet, just for now
we could be nice.

A quarter of a crown
Lies in secret; without a sound
As drums keep up their beat
And steps go on, in spite of feet.

Deep beneath us it lies
Temptation, blessing sighs
As you turn and look at I
And I smile, as only inside
Our secrets they still play,
Breakable to the light of day,
Please turn and leave; just go
Did it happen if no one knows?

I tried to drown myself in a bath once
It was a half-hearted attempt; bubbles bursting
as treacherous lungs forced my mouth to open.
Diving for the surface, cascading water breaking
over my face, upturned.

I sat out under the stars that night
wet hair sticking to my neck in the wind,
hoping hypothermia would get me.
But I was rejected and left, defeated, as the sun rose.

You were there the whole time
Whispering, telling me not to be so stupid
'Get inside, get dry, breathebreathebreathe
Look at you, wasting what I no longer have
I thought you were supposed to be the smart one?'

But you have no body now, no hands to move me,
And the only times I can hear you are times like these
So I will keep on these pathetic attempts,
destroying myself bit by bit,
Because this is all of you that I have left.

you were that second sunrise of this new beginning
you were the time I believed again that I could be winning

we would wake together and we did not sleep apart
and I contemplated whether I was giving you my heart
when you told me words professed never before spoken
and soft sentiment I tried to bury was once more awoken

but you also kept secrets and you recycled your words
and whispered them sweetly in the ears of other birds,
you played the puppeteer, how you loved those sticks
but I've met other magicians and I've seen all their tricks

you loved me (and the others) that you failed to contest
yes but oh, it was me that you loved best?

I am not sorry to have told you that that was uninspired
I've had our moment, true I enjoyed being desired
but this effigy of love you staunchly kept constructing
had flawed foundations your pleasure was deducting.

So this is the truest goodbye that I never did say
what do we live for but love? Yours went astray.

You go out
not for long, be back by 5.

6 hits like a slap to the face,
smarting, pain turns to anger.

"Will you be back soon?"
Pride bites cheeks, sore from asking.

Half an hour is the parody of reply,
but I wait anyway.

45 minutes and no sound of return,
I burn on the sofa.

Anger grows, a deafening shout of
hatred unleashed, aimed at you

it still lands on me. I leave,
footsteps tracing concrete promises.

Late, I return, you stand with greeting on
fermented lips, I ignore your eyes

and tell you everything is fine. You get
angry now too.

We both burn, you hold weary righteousness
and I, a fire fed by something

I don't even understand.

When you laugh at yourself because
your words cause solitary hilarity to ensue and
then shake your head smiling because you are
so **** clever. It's true you think a lot of yourself
but I wonder if sometimes you need to, because no one
else thinks that much. It's strange that I can write these
words about someone who I've shared secrets and a bed
on countless nights, we've walked under the stars and
picked out our favourite constellations and once I used your
house as my own for months on end and used your
company too. I've said words I don't mean because you
said them first and there's no way back from not replying
and I've thought both wonderful things and terrible ones too.
I didn't want to lose you, but now I am not so sure.

The message I received escalated sorrow from joy
it's worrying, this power, that I give to this boy.

I could write that you
are each shade of the seven colours of
light and smiles that thunder, the envy of sunrises
the absence that defines the dark.

I could let my thoughts
play out upon my face, open to all sight,
every word gifted an ignition sparking
shamefully how willing I am to fall into
step with the rolling rumble of your feet.

I could say that
I love your hand in mine when I am sleeping
it's the only time you tremble that touch,
inconsistent I am the cold to your warm
and you are the eye of my every storm.

But in reality, breathing the same air alight
azure eyes drifting lazily down towards mine,
I will say only, that the sun hates you.

Abstained from dropping thoughts to vulnerable speech
of how it was merely jealous,
for no star could never shine so bright.