I hunt for death,

teethe bared like a wild dog
catching the scent of blood meat

I am half animal, feral
and free. Yet half human,
closed up and shy

This uncomfortable juxtaposition is full of flaws to hide in

My rage is scarlet and pulsing, like a blood vessel about to burst

But is that the wild dog in me, outhunted, or the wallflower wilting

I hear his footsteps
Feel his breath on my neck
Hear him whisper in my ear
He is beauty and magic
and glitter.
But this is just fiction,
this is just hopeful longing,
this is me
not knowing what
I did wrong,
or how to fix it.

It’s the little things you do;
like holding a door

that irritates the Hell out of me.

I am not your rose fed goose, or a blonde haired nymph,

I never wanted that weekend in Paris, that forced upon me anxious insanity

yes, insane, that is what
they’ll call me.
The doctors and nurses, shrinks and quacks

but I am not
and never was

I just wanted to be a girl ,
a little more than I wanted
to be

a woman

Dreaming
With eyes wide
Open

Is the same
As running
Blind

A risk
Worth taking
Instead

Of the chocking
Confinements
Of this

God
****
Cage

Your mouth opening as it takes in
the bitter sweetness of an orange's
flesh

peel littering the worktops that
your grandmother spent hours
scrubbing down

scrubbing until the very eye of
the oak starred back at her

we don't have time for such
arduous chores, we don't look
at wood in the same way

we do not respect it, until
the sky spits out a spark

and the trees that held the
oranges, burn down

what are we now?

Love at first sight they called it -
love

as if it could be built in a second, hot blooded and wild

reckless of the heart, now clear of the cage of ribs

rippling back to it's ancestors,
who would tell it to slow down,
to wait

but there is not patience in sight. Hungry to see more skin,
soft as cashmere

if you call it love, beware.
semantics have stolen the hearts
of lesser men

you are the shadowed echo of a shapeshifter that once pulled at  the shackles of my sanity

the seasons change around us, autumn arrives, barely breathing. Those inclined to pray, pray pointlessly. We gather red leaves and pile them on top of a coffin of colour

I plan to travel. I get a wall map and some red pins, piercing every place I want to visit. This is the closest I have come to violence; the closest that most of us would

but I am not you, no, nor your passive peers. I take the throat of the Earth and shake it

oceans rise, sand swept, country boundaries knocking together like knees. I am asking for peace, don't get me wrong

but who can have that power and relinquish it, go back to stacking fruit and canned peas

I was the ground, air and water, but there was never any fire in me. I was terrified of the flames.

Fire burns and reduces things to ashes, ashes that I am forced to bathe in

the wind blows them into my eyes and I know I am no longer a friend of the overwhelming elements

just an oracle card floating on top of the sea

You, there!
with three dogs wrapping
around you ankles

tell me. Do you see me?
Do you hear by
song? Silently sending
melodies. That reach out
like tendrils to the
heart  

strings. pulling,
pulling, the desperate tug
of a girl with
a day left to
live

Sugar has grown on me,
what once sat untouched in delicate china, is now heaped
spoonful after spoonful,
into my tea

the sticky poison clamping
my tongue to the roof of
my mouth

why?

I guess I stopped feeling 'sweet enough', I felt like I'd lost my audience, who would clammer and chant my name until

nothing

silence piercing my ears with needles, where the **** were the cheers? The applause?

I am a broken bird, fallen from my perch to the dusty floor of my cage. I utter not the slightest moan,

sugar,

I crave.

A suspicion grew in my mind,
not about my lover, as he slept
beside me, statue like, with his fingers in my hair.

No, it is the world that plants
seeds of doubt, what once I
thought safe is suddenly
the open mouth of a fearsome
dragon

He turned the streets I was raised in, into a battleground. Soldiers firing shots, unpinned grenades.

Another theft, a function vital to my survival. To be in the prison of poisoned, toxic bubble of solitary confinement.

We are a world that lets these monsters lure innocent girls and women to their graves, to die without dying, to ****** without killing...

To clamber through fog, walk blindly through a forrest, all pleasure and peace erased by a single act.

I may breathe still, my heart undoubtedly beats, I am the not dead, ******, in a haze of soul aimed gunfire.

Blasted, I crawl like a dog, licking my wounds, dreaming of revenge.

I am my mother's daughter,
counting coins, making piles
of nickels and dimes
we think in green, adorned
paper. Made out of trees
whose roots are planted into
our hearts, as crucial
as the valves, veins
and arteries of our ancestors.
I do not remember ever
shedding a single leave,
yet autumn comes to us
all, diseased and old,
young and healthy,
we are two ends of a
spectrum that collapses
at the sheer mass of
miracles it births,
Oak, silver birch, willow
ash... we are two women,
making ends meet, feeding
our men before ourselves.
We do not feel the weight
of wealth, saving every cent,
but our hearts are full and
their strings can be pulled
as tightly as our purses

I find myself
at sixteen
twirling daisies
between my scarlet
painted fingers

with my lips
matching, fearful
of smudging, of
taking a glass
of water

that you desperately
need. Your dehydrated
mind playing tricks
with the lights

you do not see
your father, belt
wrapped around
his hand

his pants slowly
caving in to
gravity

and so do you
collapsing to
the bed, sheets
already ruffled

you are oblivious
to his weight and
yet you know, deep
down

that there is nothing sweet
about sixteen

we we taught as children how to dress, to walk, to smile

we were trained to be products, to be put out there for mass consumption

for men to pick, the pick of the bunch, they are after

a pretty smile, golden hair

in this fairytale, I am a rejected doll, tossed off a converbelt

I long to be made pretty,
dresses and curls

but men do not want a thing
to fix, they are not courting
challenges

I have searched, travelled oceans,
watched pink blossom fall from
a tree, sensing a way out

I pick my stitches out,
expose my seams, my cotton
heart

fall to the floor, in bits,
ready to be sown and made

new again

Without sunlight you cannot grow a seed

yet I stand here, feet planted firmly on the ground

grass underfoot, unweeded and beautiful because of it

I do not need to lean towards some far flung favour of yellow

paint, precisely drawn across the sky

when I can feel the roots of ancient trees beneath my feet

the rejected apples that turn wasps wild with drink

I can eat rotten fruit until my mouth turns sour

bitter, bitterness, so often mistaken as a flaw in character

yet it is the only leg I have to stand on

and I shall not sink to my knees, quivering, for anyone

again

Ashes remember the fires
they once were,

the way that you remember
the taste of her black hair,
the casually complicated way
she parted her lips.

Fires do not think of themselves
extinct

they believe they'll glow and burn forever

but you know they don't
and she knew, she knew this

about you

You have planted your feet
into the ground, as if the roots
of oak and willow trees
will bend and grow
around you

But the land is cruel
and unremorseful, it will
flood or famine or even
walk. The flowers full
of pollen, singing as
they sting

Yet you will tend them
tenderly, unaware of
the rage of a buried
thing. You will water
them and name them,
talk to them, sometimes

Your feet are in the ground,
now, and you cannot run
away, fight or flight, stuck
in time, in land, vegetables
surfacing, ivy climbing, as
you are forced to eat the
orange petals, that rebelled
against your claim of
ownership

I want to pour my soul into
your mouth, until you gag

it is my shame that stops me,
I am ashamed of my own longing

the still pink part of my heart
that beats for you

my water- logged lungs,
the legs that have trended water
for so long, kicked from under me

and I do not know the difference,
between riding out the waves,
or drowning

anymore

I have heard stories
of gas lights and
cobble streets

their glare glowing,
amber dreams,
holding tight,
screaming

as we slip into a
stupor, rattling
windows

the hunted and the
haunted, stumbling
across these *****
stones

shoes creek, old
and broken,
and no one.
No one.

No one

hopes for the rays
of an orange sun,
the smell of
Spring rain

or victory

Low tide -
oysters scattered across
the sand that cacoons
our feet

black hot -
we are nothing more
than a forty a day
bad habit

dying -
smoke filled lungs
desperate to swollow

air -
when all there is,
is dust

The girl that wept beside you
still cries out into the darkness

steel tears that cling to her cheeks

as if shedding them will somehow lessen the weight of her heart

beating now. against a barrier of bones

grieving, howling beneath
a full moon

for what she had with you

I burnt down the metal cage
that confined me

I have broken up with God
and I am blossoming

without his hand pushing
my head down

I eat blackberries straight from
the bush

tasting the dirt where they grew
the tightest bud bursting

into fruit that nurtures me
that sustains me

I am Godless and cageless
I am a woman of

flames, starting fires
wherever I go

burning, burning, turning
into ash

into the very dirt I courted
with my purple stained

lips

I have heard of people
tasting stars

and I wonder how their mouths
never filled with ash

I have cradled dying stars and
rocked them

as if they came from
my body

dipping my toe into the
waters of the universe

I am a child of flames
no cooler than the

sun

but I cannot taste myself
without surrending to

becoming that ash

Through all your niceties
I see the devil that you
hide

I have felt it
inside of
me

moving to a beat
beyond my range
of hearing

sweat soaked skin
that crawled on
top of me

tattooed with Japanese
as if you were
a native

of any land
but fear

I feel like we've been walking
these streets forever. My hand
in yours, my heart beating like a
****** clock, the smell of ***,
Marlboro and Mayfair
kissing my collar

I inhale the perfume,
the chemical reactions of
our flesh touching, feel the
electricity shoot through my
body

Exhale slowly, letting the breath
linger on my lips for a second
the air between our mouths
glows red with hunger

But we're not giving it up

Your words
like corsets
tighten around
my chest

Please stay.
you say

But the pulse
of the street
outside beats
through my veins and

I can't

It's just a shadow of the past
he says

So how come every morning
light seeps like blood through
the curtains, forcing my body
to turn and face the house
guest that's supposed to have
run its lease

It's a part of me now,
like some small spot
you notice in the mirror
one day and keep
picking, picking, picking
at until it's red and
bloated and fit to
burst

You have a pimple
the doctor says
you've been picking at it
for the last five years but
your nails were never allowed
to grow long enough to get
a good grip on it

And the scent of the ward
wonders off my clothes
through my nose
as I sit there and listen

I've tried soap and
bleach and caustic soda
but madness has its own perfume
its own way of clinging to
your skin long after your name's
been rubbed off the whiteboard

I'm drifting in and out of
dreams now that I've left his
office, waiting for the train
to take me back to my
husband and kids who will
smell where I've been
the moment the front door
shuts behind me

But they will never say

I find myself staring into
the mouth of memory,

wet cotton, fine needles
and wine

my mouth turns wet at
the thought of it

to hold such history
in my mouth

and twist the knives that
my teeth make

into it

Our sins, our secrets
those creatures that
fester beneath the
covers of our
bed

are visible from space.

If having sin made me
more desirable to you,
I would leap into
every wooden
box

and tell my deepest, darkest
secrets. To be laid out in
front God. Naked and
vulnerable, withering like
a rat trapped in a cat's
mouth

But I know that it
wouldn't be enough
to make you plant
your roots at my
feet

I am full of sin,
I am bloated with secrets,
my rib cage snapping,
sharp shards of bone
penetrating my heart

I bleed open, I bleed out,
and as I'm dying I wonder why
I was no match for the sins
that grew in you

I cried for you
a flash of silver
between my teeth
lips, scarlet and drip-
ing

at seventeen I knew
the weight of you,
each hair on your arms
as you pressed my back
into the stained carpet

the Japanese tattoo
that, tracing the thick
black lines with my eyes

a quick glimpse of my
grandfather, mixing bread
with milk and whiskey

flowers that grew, evergreen
in the garden where
he'd chase me

laughter ringing through the air
cheesecloth blue dresses
and black, buckled shoes

you eat me, heart first
then each sense in turn.
I welcome the loss of
them all.

The touch of your
nails in my thighs. The
taste of blood as your
rotted mouth envelopes
my own. The sound
of flesh beating flesh.
The sight of sweat beads
resting on your brow. The
smell of ***** seeping
through skin.

In a moment
I am no longer
a girl

but a woman eating
the words off my clothes, smarting, sinister ****

a ***** kitchen floor
is waiting. The cool relief
of the tiles on my
burning skin

a woman,
no longer whole
yet still
alive

It is winter
and I have had
no time to
prepare for it

tinsel tangled
around fake
trees

broken fairy lights
the flicker like the
wings of a trapped
butterfly

the smell of
cinnamon that
reminds me
of childhood

was I happy
back then?

was my heart
torn and troubled
with a quiet
discontent

do I remember
happiness?

I am sure it is
locked tight
somewhere
inside of me

a cage that
holds the ruins
of the past

it is cold and
wet, I am drenched
down to the bone

December shouts and screams
demanding my attention
like a crying, hungry baby

I am lost in its folds
a timeless tapestry
of snow and freezing toes

it repeats,
every year
like clockwork

and the cogs
are rusty and
creek as they turn

how many more years
can I stand it?

how many more
dreams of death
can I awaken from?

I fell for their promises,
the arrogant belief
that life begins again
as the clock strikes twelve

******* hell, it hurts
salt rubbed in an open
wound that people try
to fill with joy

I am breathless
and heavy with
the weight of
the future

when it feels
impossible to
imagine one

I conjure you,
out of yellowed newspapers
and matches.

I come to recognise the scent of you, through which you untie
the core of me

I swallow you down
as the hoards devour religions.

People banging on the doors of churches.

Swallowed up in scripture.

I wanted to see God
in the silver blades between your teeth.

To cut out your Adam's apple and place it between my lips.

Consuming your masculinity with a single, careless kiss.

Anatomy's foundations rocking like an antique chair.
Stripped wood that still sings of trees, chopped down in their prime.

This destruction of youth that should sicken me, thrills me to the bone.

Each blade of gentle green grass grows in the sunlight and I pick each daisy
as carefully as I pick my men.

Young men that touch silk sheets, glistening with sweat. I lick the knife, metal caressing metal, blood on
steal.

I am ready to receive him.

I have always had an uneasy longing to be
Godless in a world ful of Devils,

as I walk blindly down an unfamiliar road, I force my keys between my fingers,

I hear the sound of glasses breaking,
the aftershock of a fist making
contact with a jaw

someone is following me and,
despite myself, I pray

later, when I wake from the haze
of a Rohypnal dream

catch sight of my siren red bra
on a hostile floor

inhabiting a body that aches,
beating to the rhythm of a clam -
like heart

head spinning, a brain that has been
suddenly stunted,

I wonder how I could have turned
to God?

To have turned my back
on the Devils, to be caught
unawares

is this my punishment for a fickle faith?

the boy who cried wolf,
eventually burning beneath the sun

why do my legs shake with rage
at the thought of ever

praying?

We are born without teeth
yet, instinctively bite
peach lips forming circles
around fingers,

I remember the first bite,
he was pale and wore dusty
jeans. He came into my
bedroom, offering wine
he had laced with crushed
pills, unknowing that
to me his skin was laced
with ecstasy

the numbers mount up
in the same way they
fade, days disappearing
when a calendar turns,

memories are meant to
etch themselves into
our bones, but I  realised
that it was blood, blood
that preserved our former
selves, each drop a day,
each mouthful a moment,

they think I bite out of
spite, out of fury and
rage

but I am merely a collector
of moments that do not
belong to me, a predator
of the passage of time

I am gluttonous, I admit
but feeding on men that
prey on women does not
seem like greed,

I remember....
the night I was bitten.
He was tall and tattooed,
I liked his shoes,

***** flowing like water,
clear, crystal water
purifying (I thought)
until it hit my brain
paralysing all thought
and then...

Hell moved inside me,
a self-gratifying demon,
inked with a dragon,
as gunless as I
was Godless

I bite these men now,
these haters of women,
who **** and drink and dare
to slip a finger in,

I am reflection -
less and yet I know
what a mirror would show
about me,

the exit left of the battered
woman, who dared to change
her set, her scenery, her script

no, I am not ashamed of the
blood I take, but I am not
an animal who kills
for sport, for fun, for food

I am vengeful, I am every woman
sick of settling for less,
I am that woman you pitied
then despised,

I am that ******* a cold
bedroom floor, reborn

with fangs

Suicide, I thought,
would be my stage exit

(left)

until the pills got stuck in my throat, the doctors got stuck into my heart

pounding, their television screens bleeping

bringing me back
to Hell

when I was just a
step away

from Heaven

Estranged, I am
shackled by steel

a secret bursting like fruit
behind my lips

they do not let me taste
the strawberries

I must gorge, fistful after fistful
until my chin turns red

the madness of hunger matching
the madness of me

tied, belly filled with lactose
capsule coatings

reality unravelling like a badly
sewed dress

the whisper of the world
reaching out to you

a spike in the black heart of
nothingness

The tulips grew
under a patch of shade,
half warmed by the sun
yet still, protected

flowers used to mean
stuffed noses and watery
eyes. I never looked at
one through a clear lens

we would sit out in
the garden, the gentle
buzzing of heat, electricity
in the air. The oncoming
storm

now, roses are red
beasts that bite like
a vampire, drawing
blood into the stifled,
stagnant earth

I wait for frosts
that freeze,
turning green grass
to the white blades
of winter

the unforgiving morning
chill, robins perched on
iron railings that snap
like a steel rod,
submerged in
liquid nitrogen

I am callous and
cruel. I do not look
at the world in
wonder. I am
distant and dull

but I can't help but think
of the tulips, how they
are half hidden in
darkness, yet still

grow

It is the fiery breathe of the sun
that blows bees off course in
their search for honey
nectar; what I wouldn't give
for a mouthful. Sickly
sweet, wrapping it's way
around my fingers,
licking off the golden
sugar as if I am a child
licking a cake bowl
I am fearless of their sting
the bitter sweetness that
demands their death
I am that bee, that sting,
deciding where to place
my pain, weighing up if it
is worth my life

I remember the first time we met;
you were a lightning bolt that
stricked a fire in my heart

they were dark days,
I was resting on the shoulders of
hopelessness, dancing with a two
left footed devil

it took me less than a heartbeat
to trust you, to test the water,
the wild white waves of my madness

nuzzled into my neck, as if
God himself had designed for
our spines to lock

man of the stars, wandering
the skies to find me, a held out
hand pushing though the galaxies
that tie us to reality, to longing

roaming far from my chest. An
empty cage where fishbones
rattle,

I pray for rain, for thunder,
for the slightest sign of you.
I am not soft and warm,

I am calamity, child of the
night, woman of the Earth
holding an entire universe
between my teeth

and waiting, wild eyed and hungry
for your electric

kiss

Robbed of dreams
I sleep -
in silence

a quiet that starts to
hiss, snake like, at
my feet

fangs flinch at the
smallest twitch,
ready to bite off
more than I can

chew. I am a
woman, again, built
up and battling with
my soul

fierce fires of blood
shoot from the tips
of my fingers

stuck in a web. Oh God -
I pray, word by word
reaching the tip of my
forked, forsaken

tongue

God, plunge me into a sooth -
ing lethargy, from which
I do not want to

wake.

At dark

a murmur in the hungry wind
asking for the moon to shield
us from the unforgiving night

a blank canvas dotted with fire,
flames the will engulf
and eat us whole

we are made from the dust of
the universe, constellations,
transfixed

I knock on the ribs that hide
your heart,

can you hear me?

The black spot on
my heart that has
spread through my
body like a plague

The great river of
ice, confessing to
the coldness of
my soul

I swim, battling
the tide of my
innermost thoughts

A wanderer who
hates the loneliness
of the road

The palm of my hand,
empty

A kiss in the dark
lips meeting beneath stars

we are the burning embers
of the night sky

the moon shuddering
under the weight of hearts

we are fearless,
Godless in the dark

who are we to meddle
in the ruins of

our fire

You have rolled away
from me - in your
sleep, a nightmare
that lives inside
the person next
to you

and not in your
head -no, you
dream, still

a beach, an empty
bar - people
reading over
cold coffee,

a quiet room.

Our room is so
loud - thunderous
roars of regret

hurricanes trapping
our hearts

not touching,
ever

as if your skin
is flames

as if those flames
have wings

that could fly
into my soul

and burn, burn
burn

leaving me a pile
of ashes

and hate

(thick, black
hate)

At what point
did it start?
they ask.

An endless rhetoric,
slyly demanding
unremembered
histories

I don't know.
a simple answer

feelings  do not
come into your
heart with
warning

they bang on
your rib cage,
a dull echo
shuddering through
your body

I am not
a moment
captured  in
a photograph

stained sepia,
a sliced negative

It did not
start with
the click
of a clock

stopping the
hour hand
at twelve

it consumed me,
slowly. The sea
does not devour
the sand with a
single wave

it is the
onslaught of
sadness creeping
into your blood

a parasite,
a lowering of
cells

it is
criminal,
and I am it's
victim

as you try
to execute
my misery
with pills

(electric shocks)

crisp white sheets,
pulled so tight
they feel like bandages.

Wrapping around my limbs
until I am paralysed
with emptiness

one bed, one desk,
one chair

a tick sheet of
sorrow that I am
now pinned
to

like a butterfly,
living for only
one day

but pressed and
preserved

indefinitely

I rejected myself
at seventeen,

twisting my fingers
around a half-smoked
cigarette

my eyes turned red
from fear, blown
pupils,

I wanted to inhabit
it all, to press my
hands into my

soft thighs, like he did,
taking my hands and
holding

them tight,
I did not struggle

or shout. I was
trapped in the
amber of

my mind, between
the legs of a thorough
bred, respected and

encouraged.

No, I could not tell,
let that snake crawl
from my mouth.

Instead it grips
around my chords,
humming gently like a bird,

the caged creature that
I have become. I

did not want to
own myself,
to shout or write
my name

consumed by the
stench of silence,
quiet deeds that
are nameless,

emerging from the
caverns of lust