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.

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.

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.

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.

There was a girl to be seen sometimes,
her breath at the pulse of my throat
and fingers wrapped, such elegant porcelain
skin pressed against my forehead.

She fell into my eyes and I swallowed her
not whole, only those little bits she left.

She does not nourish me,
only curls up in my liver where guilt
prickles every time I let the toxins in.

The only words she spoke reverberate in my lungs
so each of our breaths whisper what I am not -
'when I was younger I knew I could be anything
it was only when I got older that I forgot.'

Was I pure igneous rock
and you sedimentary stone
both undeniably metamorphic,
look, everything's changed.

Hidden layers you obscured
deposited through thousands
of tiny imprints, consequences
of each a tiny blade still felt.

Geologists studied us but
no answers did they provide,
an unhappy cohesion of the
earth and none the better for it.

The pressure you put on my
atoms yielded surprising results,
intrusive company chipped
away at the outer layers.

But I longed for the fire and
you for other marble to which
my quartz could not compare,
friction reducing both to rubble.

You brought blood from a stone
and so I eroded you twice as fast
because it seems these two rocks
cannot make a love that can last.

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?

Green tea equations and cigarettes and
a distinct lack of food and
dark night lovely lonely walks and
maybe tomorrow
she will wake in a life
where she can love all parts of herself.

Can you feel that?
What a wondrous sensation.
She takes cold hands and
questions and buries them
in that empty stomach that
sings loudest when she fails
at sleeping. This girl with worn patches
and an overwhelming sense of
irony; there's too much to her
but still she is not enough.

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.

It is too dark and too late and too soon

It’s always the daytime someplace
And if we were there you would say
It’s too light and too early and too late

And so neutrality would be preferred,
To maintain ourselves on both sides of the fence?

Either side of the fence, you mean
For opposite we stand and shall remain
Until you let me climb over
Where the grass is green

It is no greener here
And all the more feet for trampling
Would ruin what is already bruised
And which would never grow back

I would not trample you.

We were talking about the grass
But now, yes, you will obliterate me
If you take but one step closer

Darling I will leave you
If you do not burn down that dratted fence

Oh my darling,
you were never mine for me to be left.

You whistle at me, here witnessed for the
first time in 589 days. I stop.

You stare. You smile. Your warm eyes still
sicken me. My old friend.

Tell me you miss me, see surprise at such sorrow,
but, still, do not touch my skin.

It's brief; I have to go. You linger and I walk away.

Welcome home, food on the table, a smile a little hesitant,
you're angry I am late.

A message reveals itself unwelcome. I respond, bleak
unrepentant work. I love him, not you.

This time, he does not write back.

Vindictive, I want to add
you were just a lesson
never to be repeated.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I can never let myself go
completely

because I am afraid
that I will drift apart

like motes of dust on a sunbeam
yet not quite as beautiful

and somewhat more meaningless.

You are beautiful.
There is no denying it,
that darkness of your eyes and I could cut myself
on the line of your jaw, black stubble defying
youthful skin. Everyone sees it,
the graceful strength secreted in those
muscles, taut and lean, life lived to
challenging extremes. It is odd, this
obsession with aesthetics, your face really
means nothing and I know this, yet I can
still fall into staring at your fearful
symmetry, grace and night entwined
as you walk on unaware.

Your hands whispered their truth as
you crossed the ocean. Lying between
those you wrote and those you did not
they remain, stagnant and curled up against my heart.

I miss you, I say, and you write
I wish you were her.

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?

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.

I kneel
kneecaps cracking, head bowed
under the heavy breath of your adoration
eyes ground into the dust each footstep rises

I am dirt-blind
but the crows can see, my ears bleed
how they cry and scream, weep and admire -
they enshrine him; I, unwilling, immortalise.

I keep
my eyesight clouded, looking down
the soil is my church, inadequacy
a mired crown.

7 billion conspecifics walk
on 7 billion pairs of feet
treading soft earth and waters,
concrete and sands,
causing vibrations through
individual kinetic plans.

All busy heading
ultimately to where all ends meet,
our steps are finite;
our souls are in our feet.

I've seen pictures of your old girlfriend
on the laptop you let me borrow, I was
snooping, looking for something to accuse
you of. You told me they had all been deleted
(I hadn't asked) you told me everything
was gone.

I've read messages, happy, hinted, flirtatious
coy poetry played between two parts which
haven't been officially scripted.

"It's weird between us now, isn't it?"
berated friendship, bartered love offered
in the gaps which remain unspoken
yet.

He does not speak of her
anymore. I have not asked.

Was it, unsolicited? Or does she tickle
your decadent fancy; you do the honourable
thing now and flirt with her
behind her fiances back.

Each trial has been blond and I fail
at not hating every single golden glinted thief
who stole something before it was even mine
to take.

You rise and I darken; I smile sticking needles
in your misadvised tongue. Still, these words burn
sweeter than those in my head.

Something whispers about that girl
who just walked past. Inside my crypt
things do not look good for me.

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.

It’s like I wanted you to love me because you were the least likely to, so it was safe to want you because it would never happen. And now you love me and I cannot take back the words I do not mean but which keep slipping off my tongue every time you say I love you.

I love you I love you I love you.

Each a different lie spoken by deceiving tongues. The more you say it the less it means. The more time I spend with you the more I cherish being alone.
I do not want your love nor your hands nor your smiles and happiness or eternal preoccupation with how much you perceive everyone either wants you or to be you.
You are sad and strange and closed off, but now so cracked open wide that I can feel nothing but contempt. Like the still homeless sat with defeat painted on their faces, it is far too easy to want to kick something which is already down than muddy your hand trying to pick it up.

I do not want you, I am afraid. I want the safety of impossibility; you have become far too willing.

I've done it again, I've cut you with my clumsiness.

A slip of the tongue and laughter loses all that which it once held, falling flawlessly like water through cupped hands.
I kneel before you, attempt to staunch the flow, sudden now, gushing and suspiciously darkened red.

Can't you see what it is that you do to me? Can you not hear the words you speak?  
My hands may be red but so are yours.

I mirror your actions and the consequences are dire; I hate to call you a hypocrite but this self sympathy is starting to get old.

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.

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.

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.

There's a body in the trunk
I tell the policeman
and he steps back, hands up
in the face of an invisible gun.

I'm allergic to you
I tell the boy,
because acting crazy is
the only way to make him leave.

I love another
I say to the man,
creeping fingers insistent
against soft skin.

I ******* hate you
I shout at strangers,
wicked words are unwelcome
and their desperation chokes.

I've got chlamydia
I tell another
and he vanishes,
it's my very best trick.

I did not want this
I said to drunken man,
do not look at me, those starving eyes,
you've already consumed me whole.

There's a body in the trunk
I whisper to the policeman
but he does not see it as I see it,
the empty cavern that yawns wide.

He tells me lying is a sin,
sternly pulls down whatever's left
"be a good girl" he sings so sweetly
but does not condemn what was theft.

The starched warm slinking smell that burns as
you breathe in clean acid and words like biggestrisk
and wellpotentially… Ireallywouldn'tadviseit and
I'dsayI'msorrybutit'sunproffessional and I stand
and nod and say 'I understand?' and then the door
behind is closed and the corridors are crowded and
I can't escape these facts they have poured in my ears
and they're sinking into my brain and I just want to
cry in my mothers arms but she's so weak to emotions
and I couldn't possibly worry her and have her sink
again, so I move, each step a
knife in my foot and a numbing in my head as
around me the flurries of life and death go on despite
the fact that I
seem to have stopped.

Sometimes silence is preferred
To those constant constricting string of compliments  
Written in your words and thrown off your tongue
With careless heed of the damage that they do
Irrevocable words of the lies of love and lust
Drip drip dripping down from your lips
To fall simultaneously in hearts and in the gutter
Where ******* collects and rains pour down
Eradicating all trace, but for the heart in which it kindled
No recognition from lips whose secret they once held
Now long forgotten and poorly remembered;
Lacklustre speech trailed and its meaning dismembered
Ill-gotten feelings poorly deceived when hopefully conceived  
From the deceptions which derided and descended
From lips once bloodied; now full of false testament.

From root to blossom we each grow
Reaching up to see the stars aligned
And although our branches go different ways
Our roots remain forever entwined.

You compose my inadequacy,
this front which I present is not true
for I do not want to love you
and you do not want me to.

Love is false;
I trick myself into it every time.

I refuse to be half of one whole
For I am enough always
To stay silent surrounded by seas
And as Ellan my will shall remain
Constant, contained and content
For it turns out that I need you not
And that I want you even less.

When the grains of your sand
Moved
One by one
Slowly, at first,
Shifting under me
Like it was normal;
It meant nothing.

Until the avalanche came
And a million tiny grains
Grew in velocity
And violence
And suddenly, my very ground,
Had slipped; shifted,
To under the feet of another.

So here now I stand
On this bare; barren ground
Worn smooth by your leaving
Silent in your wake.

I pick up a rock
Hold it in bloodied hands,
And I use it
To forget;
To carve new ground to stand on
But this time I shall not need it,
It shall need me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I wasn't sure of
those words, that holy
trinity pressed to give back,

until your heart stuttered systolic.

Contracted, you underplayed every line as
I fought, undervalued, omitted and flat-lined

that singular skip your two-******, beated rhythm
warning beacon, red-flashing, blaring signal flared sign

granted every second second of each stolen time, when those
planets and these stars became so fiercely yet finitely aligned,

yes, I understand now, as we lay entwined, cyclic, chest
deep, life-defying leap, gasp of breath, wake from

sleep, it is this that I seek, sunlight unconfined
crushing breath divine, beat of two, separate

singular, unexpected yet still

defined in-kind, of your
continuation bringing
life back to mine.

Under your skin, I will rest, elevated
on ribbed, rigid cages of ribs containing
that one muscle confounding all;
here I will perch and observe

such a beautiful rhythm, concept of
constant contractions as my fingers will to
wrap around the chaos of capillaries, each
vacuous vein and every attesting artery

screaming as I squeeze, nails painted
ebony as rivulets exercise against my sins.
Your body is my rapture, yes every manoeuvre
fascinates these prying eyes, I will prise apart

the seams of your internal markers and search
secrets stashed in genetic poetry, discover
paltry physical proofs, truths of what went so
badly wrong that your mind drowned so readily

that you chose to diminish, turned off all navigation
headed steadfast, sure and glorious towards rocks
everybody warned you about; I must vivisect

this paradox, venture deep within the places you
refuse to look; inside your claustrophobic body
covert are the ***** secrets of sea sickness, of why
you chose to sink in love with me.

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.

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.

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.

There's a sister who floats with hungry collarbones and a razor-edged smile. She smokes sadness when she isn't ready to exhale.

She is beauty in fine art and wrath the colour of thunderstorms; the rain comes when she smiles.

Holier than thou and quick to judge, with antiseptic perception known to bring out the things you were not aware existed.

Addictive, those imprints from her feet will stamp all over you; nimble fingers puppeteering those who fall out of her thoughts.

She is selfish and always leaves, leaves, leaves. She ran away at the first tremor; she did not stay to watch the concrete crumble.

But she picked me up when the concrete friction broke my knees, lashed tyrants with her tongue and prowled behind the boyfriends that came and always went.

This sister whom I project; the image of her I mirror. She is love and laughter and moods that taper and flare.

She is a cluster of persons, a bomb liable to a detonate on a short fuse. She is trouble ailing in the best possible way; her flames light up the shade.

the tv is too loud and my peeled skin
echoes bleeding beaching, I can't get out
and  next door are screaming

a riot of colour and life and celebration
hurts so much I am taut of breath,
please I need help but the words
won't trip off my tongue

I can't bear the uproar
water flashing, roaring , oh
god the suffocation with the sound
of inebriation

I am trying but I

can't
stand it
anymore.

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.