A clock
that has stopped

years of black dust
clogging up its mechanism

hands that are bound
by unseen hands

an echo of a memory
diluted over time

until it runs like clear water
containing invisible particles
of pain and grief

the clock starts to tick
and I run behind it

always too slow to be part
of its motion

Hell itself does not contain

fire enough for my heart

when my eyes see you

souls soaring into

a twisted wreath

to be laid at

Heaven’s door

I pick lemons from trees
meant for g&t’s
blessed fruit
chemical release
relief from longing
and memory
a slip of something else
and I am dancing with
the demons that would
otherwise destroy me

The wilderness is wild
and dangerous

but so is my heart

words are growing silent, now

whispers of a long forgotten
“I love you”
now echoing in the chambers
of winter

an icy kiss to say goodbye
and then...

silence

so loud and deafening it drowns
every other sound into the frozen
depths of the

ocean

your holy wine soaked lips

find mine at 2am as the stars

sigh above us

a prelude to the cold November sun

that will come

chilling our bones until they

fracture beyond

fusing back together

again

a flower doesn’t shed its petals
merely to be seen naked

it sheds them
to show the other flowers

that it is okay to be
vulnerable

these fingers can weave magic
these lips can utter spells

but only you have the potion which I drink
as if dying of thirst

that transforms my heart into a quivering bird

desperately seeking it’s voice
to sing it’s song of freedom

holy water, holy wine
your touch comes as a Holy Trinity

a beginning
a middle and
an end

let us not say goodbye, just yet
let us just wait for the potion
to settle in my stomach
one last time

They said my vulnerability
would be the death of me

my soft red heart, beating
away in a world of its own

my wild joy and
deep, deep sorrow

my ability to love in the face
of overwhelming odds

but I don’t think so

I feel like it’s the one thing
that makes me feel

alive

like the ebbing of the tides,
you have rolled away

(from me)

but I know you will creep
back up the beach of my bones,
again

and into my heart

(where you belong)

In a cage
sits a bird
whose wing
is broken

yet it’s heart
is whole
and it’s
song heavy

with sweet melodies
and soft tones
of longing

It is the song of freedom

that it sings despite
never knowing
and never hoping
to see

I am terrified of being

cut loose

I long to rip open the seams of my wound

and bleed, bitterly

***** stained breath
and the ruin of my family’s name

in the gaps of my bared

teeth

Sun shines bright
Like fire -
Light fights darkness

venom got into my bloodstream
the first time you smiled at me,
it runs through my veins,
shaking my spine,
breaking my bones down into dust,
my arteries are clogged with
longing for you

The first days of Spring are out,

I run through the woods
weaving in and out
of the trees

kicking up
green leaves
and the heads
of yellow flowers

I like to think that you're
still chasing me

one night you didn't
come home and I knew,
somehow, that you
were gone for good

we used to play
here, before
the winter came,

we'd sit for hours
reading each other

writing love letters
with sticks
and stones

my skirt catches
on a branch
and throws me
back, back
to that night
and I remember
that now it's
just me and
the trees
for company

I follow the arteries from your wrist

to the centre of your heart

and nestle my head into your neck

following the breadcrumbs of memories

and stolen minutes of bliss

I have found my way home

in the end
the only love that you’ll remember

is the kind that made your heart break
with each act of kindness, or cruelty

made your lungs burn, as you gasped for air
between each kiss

made you feel like you were going to die
each morning, when you said goodbye

that kind of love
is the only love that will leave
fingerprints on your mind

I take my coffee
black with two sugars
and drink it at 4am
when sleep eludes me
hiding my face
behind a cigarette
staring at the smoke
hoping an apparition
will appear to guide
me through the day
because if my heart is my compass
then I will be lead astray

call me anything you like

to justify your lies

words are your weapon

but darling,

the truth is mine

your edges
fold around me
soft -
I sigh into your flesh
I fit -
like a glove
each dimple -
a journey I want to map -
leaving my fingerprints
I, a thief -
your skin
my plunder -
a victimless crime
for your arms -
wrapped around me as I
robbed you -
blind

I have the power of a God

so what chance do you think
you stand?

when you cheat and lie...

I could break you

slice you in two

the way you’ve sliced my heart

(in two)

but I still love you

so I shall give it all up

just to wake up to your
sleeping face

for one more morning

one more greeting of a fake

“I love you”

do you want me to pretend?

happiness, spread like a beach
of broken glass,

each tiny little rock aches
with its own weight,

the hands that break me
wrinkled and chalklike,

they do not care about me.

do you want me to pretend?

sadness, like a line a boats
each one begging to leave their harbour,

each one carrying an anchor that will both
keep them stable and refuse to let them move,

the known and the unknown.

I will pretend, for you.

I am not bathed in black water,
I am not soaped in sandpaper,

I am content.

my heart is not carved in the shape
of pain,

it does not cry in agony at the slightest
touch,

I am happy.

For you.

I am happy.

fierce fingers

trace a line from my spine
to my heart

where you sit
like a stranger

unknown to my kiss

and those fingers weave
a web of lies

to tempt you to forget me
without forgetting

or else cast a spell
to make you fall in love

without falling in love
(with me)

I am the ghost of poetry past

that cringe in your chest as you skim through words you once thought barred your soul
but now only shame it

that lump in your throat
as you try not to cry over a cliched metaphor
you used when you were sixteen and riddled with angst

you may think I am only here
to hurt and embarrass you

but actually,
I am the best teacher you’ll ever have

I will allow you to learn from what
now looks like shattered prose

I will allow you to grow from the imagery
you didn’t get quite right

and when poetry future calls,
she will bare gifts of words of wonder

that were only made possible
through listening to me

I watch you drown,
knowing that I could be
your anchor

I watch you sleep,
knowing that I could be
your nightmare

I watch you

I watch you

out of the corner of my eye,
I smile all the time

hoping you will never see,
the dark heart the lives

in me

Every Autumn,
my grandmother would
sweep away the leaves
from in front of
her house

she believed my grandfather
was always watching, still
sitting in his wicker chair
chipped white paint
peeling away from the
wood

in the kitchen,
the smell of bread
rose, licking the
ceiling with its
sweet tongue

she still bakes,
hoping the dough
will stretch as far
as his fingers

through swept leaves
and breadcrumbs,

down to the very core
of the Earth

the very core
of her

I wake up to your face each morning,

your hair creating red flames across a cotton white pillow,
your eyes, deep blue, luring me to stare into the depths
of the ocean, to be serenaded by mermaids,
your lips taste of coffee and cigarettes
as I plant a good morning kiss onto them,

this is a sight I want to see before I breathe
my very last breath,

I take it in, each detail
and fingerprint it on my memory,

you are more beautiful in this raw moment
than you could ever be

any other way

I thought the light in your eyes
was for good, so I never tried
to light it

Your daffodil kisses
blow off the snowy
remnants of winter
and a spring starts to blossom
in my heart

it was not difficult to love you,

like an antelope that had
outran a lion

I breathlessly fell into your arms,

safely wrapped up in the
folds of your skin,

complete in that moment
of contentment,

I loved you,

I left the evidence - my fingerprints
on your spine,

tracing my name in
chilli flake fire

rings

where we sat our coffee mugs down
as we watched the rain

fall,

each drop cementing another second
that I would spend by your side,

it was not difficult to love you
as I had never loved anyone,

as I had never loved
myself

When words are not enough, I cry

and in crying hope to unleash
some of the burden that nails me,
like Jesus to the cross

and set free my spirit,
divine and infinite

into the world where ghosts walk
and haunt my sleep,
but I hold hands with them, also

and we walk blindly into the moon
moon child, bright and brilliant
white light coursing through my veins

I cry, but tears are not weakness
and still I stand strong

memories linger like
fingerprints on my skin

a reflection in the mirror
echoes back to late nights

spent cradling a whiskey
bottle and twirling a brightly

lit cigarette

they whisper in my dreams
haunting the silence with

screams

every moment shadowed
by the ghost of you

the smell of your cigarettes
lingers on my clothes

I have tried to overpower it
with expensive perfume

(that I could not really afford)

but always, it is there in the fibres
of my jeans

stubbornly refusing to be
erased

we are a stitch

in the fabric

of the universe

held together

by dreams

a breath in the

vast lungs

of time

devoured

overwhelmed

consumed

poisoned

by the air

of our own

insignificance

Words, put together
on strings, made to look
like pearls

instead they're drops
of blood, bits of ourselves
that tell, like fingerprints
that show up under
certain light

we let it seep
through the curtains,
as we wait for each
other to wake

our nails
clawing, digging, sinking
into each others flesh

lightly
tracing the red
stutters that
appear

we forget about
the taste of
iron, the smell
of it rising through
our bodies as

they spread

She warned me against falling freely
into the arms of strangers,
but I would always run, head first, into them

going from catastrophe to catastrophe,
heartbreak to heartbreak,
I learnt quickly how unkind and cruel
strangers could be,

but there were a few,
a glimmering, shining few,
amongst them,

who healed my wounds with whispers of
“you’re safe now”

and held me tightly,
not so that I couldn’t breathe,

but so that I knew my breath
would always be met by
another’s

you’re in my blood, like black ink

rewriting the next pages of my book

before I’ve closed the last chapter,

you’re in my bones, like calcium

laying the foundations for a lifetime

when I’ve only just begun

I took your hair
and brushed it into a long plait

thick, strawberry blonde curls
tamed, for a moment

until gravity made them fall
back into my hand, again

I asked you to paint thick black lines
under your eyes

framing a brilliant, deep ocean
of youth

I was painfully aware that my own
were natural

framing a tired, green lake
of misery

I did this

hoping that you wouldn’t realise
I was trying to turn back the clock

by turning you into a shadow of a girl
I met when I was seventeen

and thought I loved,
thought I loved,

until my heart got crushed...

Oh, unnecessary beauty
that twists like the waves
of a deep blue ocean,
rushing to shore
to cover a stretch of sand
with it's white foam,
only for the coast to bend
like the elbow of a lover
encasing the sleeping head
of his sweetheart,
indecent, unnecessary beauty.
It is in the fall of rain
on a hot summer's day
arrogantly waiting for the rainbow

light slips through a crack
and for a moment I believe
that there is hope

until it is eclipsed by night
and I revert back to believing
in nothing

we are forever
falling back
into the ghosts
of who we
were

wrapping our wounds
in our history, as if
the past can heal
as much as it
can hurt

we are never
moving forwards
merely slipping softly
into the patterns
of yesterday

I am -
a woman of
science and skill

I am -
a collector
of facts and
absolutes

He is -
the anomaly

a cruel contamination

he says I
count and in
my mind I
imagine

not with my
head but my
heart

the rules of
fantasy are still
mine to learn

how far does it go?

does it
have edges?

I feel the edges
of his body blending
into the shape
of me

the taste of tobacco
of tea on his lips
that are now
my lips

I am -
a woman of
passion and
warmth

I am a woman
curled into the
crook of a man

my girlhood unravels like wool,
coarse, that unwanted touch  
stinging my skin,

a wasps nest, kicked alive
swarming all over me,

but these stings will not scar me,

I will grow new skin,
a shroud of flesh that has not
known the prickle of unwanted fingers tips

I will rise from the ashes of your depravity
like a Phoenix, born again

Do not compare me to a summer’s day

for I am a storm

incoming

ready to consume everything in my path

your heart included

I am not subtle, sweet or warm

I am fierce, loud, overwhelming

I will devour your

soul

and leave it singing only

for me

we leave a trail of sugar

with our fingers

on everything we touch

contaminating the surface

of the Earth

with sweetness

as our own teeth

rot

Star shaped bullets

fired from the night sky’s rifle

murdering the sins of daylight

what must never be seen under the sun

destroyed in a passionate blaze

star shaped bullets

footprints on the moon

our kisses and confessions

will all be over soon

let us watch the infinite night sky

and pick which constellation
we are going to set our love against

the stars sing our names

and the moon reminds us
that every phase is part of
a whole picture

growing, healing, moving

with the ocean

and in the beating of waves
we find clarity

forever washed over our skin

like water

waves against the shore

boats against the current

we struggled, like sailors

to control the ocean

to bend it to our will

but in the end

the deep sea took us

and we drowned in beautiful

blue

reluctant arms
are still arms
to run into

empty words
are still words
to fall
for

hollow love
is still love

heartless -

I am caving
in

when I was eight,
I would pick blackberries
and eat them straight from the bush,

their purple juice would
stained my lips with
childhood joy and
wonder,

now I'm the wrong side
of thirty, and melt those
blackberries into
jam,

as if I am seventy

there is no joy left
in me, these days

only a weary
tiredness that aches
with longing for

what was,

those blackberry bushes
and purple fingers,

now fraught with
frailty

as I boil jam,
playing it like
a snake charmer

so as not to
spoil my mixture

(as I have spoilt
my life)

of blackberries
and regret