I hear voices -
that is to say a voice
that is not by own,
but a strangers

(no longer a stranger, now,
a friend, an enemy, a curse)

he licks my brain
with his wet tongue
whispering morbid
fantasies of death
and destruction

he is a wolf
to which I am
his meat - he plays
with me - toys with
me

drags me across
the floor, my blood
trailing behind,

I wake up to his
howls, peaking through
my window at the moon,

(I know moonlight well, these days)

I don't sleep that much,
his voice eating away
at my flesh, my bones
left brittles and shaking
in their shell,

I do as he commands,
eat the red fruit, don't step
on the cracks. Don't trust them!
THEY ARE SPIES!!!

he takes me whole into
his mouth, twisting me
around his tongue like
half forgotten words,

savouring his demands
for blood, that I have obliged
with the flick of a knife,

then, at last, devours me

I hear voices...
soft and delicate
guiding and guarding
that are mine, and mine
alone

I keep them close to my heart,
like lovers
caress them
whisper kindnesses
and promises to never betray them

and how could I?
these soft, sweet kisses from a world unknown
this loving embrace from a body
without
a
body

secrets shared in darkness
with only the flicker of a candle flame for warmth

I will keep you, sweet nothings,
mounting up to everything
that is mine, and mine alone

Voices come and go
with the wind
a light breeze
spinning leaves
amber, scarlet, evergreen
I know I need to hear
you voice, with it's
hooks and snares
that clip my heart
I know I need to feel
your skin, your silky
touch that sends icy
shivers down my spine
I know I need to see
your eyes, haunted
hunted, hungry for me
I know. I know.

I know

I learn from the love letters

I find hidden under the floorboards
of an ancient house

the paper yellowed, ink faded, but still…
fierce traces of passion and longing trapped
in their pages

they teach me fidelity,
when it is the last thing I want to know

they teach me kindness,
when cruelty is the mistress of my heart

they teach me that love can survive overwhelming odds

and so when I fold them up up and replace them
knowing I shall probably be the last to hold
these letters, that speak of beautiful courage
and compassion

I walk out of that ruined house,
whole and healed

ready to open my heart
to love

our love
is an illusion
of something
else

a love
of tenderness
and kindness

we kid ourselves
that we care
when really
we have grown
to hate

the sight of
each other

I loved you before
we kissed

before I saw the way that
moonlight sat on your
soft features

I wanted you before
you held me in your arms

before our legs entwined
making a sculpture that
would stand the test
of time

I think I loved you
before I ever learnt
to love myself

you were the first person
to show me kindness
and I took my fix of it
just like any drug

I think I loved you
before we were even born

Eighteen ways to say I love you
that shatter like ice in my throat:

the bread I used to bake with
my grandmother, her ancient hands
kneading violently as if years of pent
up frustration could be baked and sliced
in one loaf.

I did not know how to say “I love you”
and mean it. Only how to shape dough
in ways that implied it. My mother would
watch from the kitchen table, and I
would wonder if she’d ever said it.

We do not make our passions known,
our feelings other people’s concern.
So we bake, or plant flowers and trees.
We make our love visual and growing.
We make it alive.

I love you like the planet that is nameless,
yet to be discovered in an ocean of stars,
I could pace an empty beach, howling at the moon
to answer me and it would echo back my cries

I love you like the tree that is branchless,
arms that can never reach out and touch you,
leaves that can never fall at your feet like love
letters, carrying the song of my soul

I love you like the river that is cut off before
it reaches the sea, never finding it's home,
or it's place in the vastness of the Earth

I love you like a wild thing, an injured heart
desperate to be healed

It's getting harder to believe
that this crack in the wall
is not, in fact, a gateway
to another universe

you stand beside it
beckoning, sweetly
smiling, and you know
that I would walk hot coals
to follow you,

what is a crack in the damm?

I imagine my body changing
Swelling, spreading, the edges
Of me never ending, flesh
Meeting flesh, lips locking,
Eyes tilting, red wine swirling
At the bottom of a glass

I imagine my skin melting,
Peeling back to the back
To the bone, rivers of
Veins running around the
Heart of me

I imagine holding you to me,
Blending our bones into
One

Imagine

I miss your heart

the way it played
tricks

on mine

the way it would beat
faster if you saw me

smiling

I miss your heart

with all it’s arteries
and veins

red and blue
washing a purple night sky

over my soul

I miss your heart

it’s elements of love
that built me into a

a woman

who didn’t need to be loved
all the time

only in the windows
of your eyes

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 sit on a beach
on a freezing December night,
the sun has gone down
pinks and purples and golds,
the waves are vicious
I pray that they consume me
to wrap their foam around my waist
and pull me under -
I run my fingers through golden sand
as silky as your hair, and I am transported
back to that last night together,
the hatred in your eyes when
you told me to leave, burns in my memory
every time I close my eyes,
and I didn’t question or argue
I didn’t plead or beg,
because I have known from an age
where I should simply have been
playing with dolls,
that I am difficult
that I am different
that I ultimately
impossible to love

the electricity of your touch

reverberates
through my spine

shocking my heart into
beating again

a frozen pulse, thawed

you breathed live into
me

when it seemed
an impossible feat

If this is all there is
if this is all that can be saved
then I want you to know that I’m sorry

I’m sorry for holding your heart in my hand,
and promising to protect it,
when I knew I would fail you

I’m sorry for staring into your eyes,
as if they held the entire ocean,
mysterious and deep in thought
that I could not understand

I’m sorry for being, existing, pulsing
in your life, like a poison in your veins

I’m sorry is the bottom line,
and I will beg you to believe that
until my dying breath

Old age hit me
like a fist

I was planting roses
carelessly, never anxiously
avoiding their thorns

my teeth were my own,
I could bite into a hard, green
apple easily

there was no consequence,
no fear of an explosion of
false enamel

vegetables grow into
something beautiful over time
if you treat them right.

unlike the shell of a woman
bleached, oversaturated,
badly composed, framed

by misery.

A seventeen year old girl
bending into the hands of
a childlike man

unaware of the flames
she was igniting,
her body slamming
into the kitchen floor

you will cry in the morning,
weep for the innocence
you lost, the shock of
surviving your own
******

unwantedly.

I was thirty before
I tried to disappear
back into the oblivion
of filthy London streets

thirty pills, one for
each year, a litre
of ***** and a
badly written
death note

I survived. Just long
enough to paint a
picture of adulthood

a husband, a wife
a son, a daughter
I was everything
and nothing all
at once

old age hit me
like a fist

a rattle of dust
in an urn
and a hundred of
the flowers I have
always hated

they cry, thinking I am lost,
I smile, knowing that I
was never found

I dodged a bullet,
but the near miss rings in my ears,
broken glass scattered around my feet,
and y.o.u...
lingering when I close my eyes,
on my clothes,
and in every beer bottle
I will ever drink from, now
my mouth dry but resisting rehydration,
until I shrivel up, skin brittle and cracked,
organs s.h.u.t.t.i.n.g.d.o.w.n...
I dodged a bullet, fired by your gun,
but I shall still die by your indirect hand...

My heart

hurts

from

the iodine

the lick of a metal

tongue

eyes sting

wounds

need healing

but I'm in love

with

the

Iodophor

I slip away into dreams
of when we were together

into memories of
your touch upon my skin

scorching as starlight
and just as beautiful

doubting myself,
I walk through the roads of regret

until I reach
your outstretched hand

and know that I have found
my home

in your arms I am infinite

I am infinite as the universe,

I am marked by fire, stars
burning on my body, their
light bouncing off me as the
foam rises off the surface of
the waves that sweep across
the ocean

I have broken up with God,
skyless and without faith
tying me, rooted to the
spot with shame

I have shattered the bars
of pain, the cage that surrounded
my heart, bust open

I am blooming as the tulips
bloom in April, blossoming
from green stems into a
carpet or purple and red

cageless, Godless, shackles loose

I am infinite

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

I think
that rain
if Mother Nature
weeping
looking down
at her creation
with regret
watching your
reckless fingers
break another
ingénue
heart

I tipped
a bottle
of midnight
black ink
onto a fresh
white page

inhaled, exhaled

and carved patterns
out of the chaos

etchings that
would be the
start of my
first chapter

without you

Through a fog of sleep
I feel you

turn your head
towards me in your
sleep

arms reaching through
the blankets

I am living,
bones brittle,
waterfalls of hair
soaking the pillows

dying for those quiet
moments in the dark
when I know you're
watching me

the moments when
I exist, like a shadow
eating sunlight, in your
eyes

Ask anyone, they’ll tell you
she likes to pretend,
red heels and red lipstick,
chest waving between
parked cars,

behind the supermaket
she stripped,
stealing glances
at another’s skin,

to kiss on the concrete,
so close to preachers
pressing papers
into hands,

was like walking
through a thick forest,
lips parted and
desperate for
air

your weak breath tickles my ear,
with fading heat, like a September afternoon,

and I hate myself just as much as you hate me,

for my greed and loyalty to the cards,
instead of the stars that were your eyes,

but your heart was impenetrable, always,
like Everest or the Atlantic Ocean,

I could not get close enough to touch it
and make it mine,

close enough to make you mine,

so hate me, and I’ll hate myself,
but I’ll know my faults wondering
if you’ll ever accept yours

in return

The things you’ve taken from me
cannot be counted,
cannot be listed,
cannot be measured

like the passage of time since that day
where I have stagnated,
the taste of my own blood

still rich upon my tongue
and other tastes that are not mine,
now belonging to me

a memory torn to pieces
yet burning with white hot precision

I have buried myself in blankets,
drink, drugs and denial

but I cannot change the truth
the bloodied, fleah torn fact
that you were once

inside me

Words hatched like baby bird
from yellow eggs

and in the confusion
of new birth

he could whisper through
the chaos

knowing that his mouth
would never be found

to be the catalyst
of earthquakes

that shattered the Earth
to it's core

I stand
with you
for you
even when
you go to war
against yourself

(especially when)

I see your heart breaking
love running through
your fingers like sand

I believe in you

stardust soul
you will drink
water from the
craters of the
moon

doing the impossible
dreaming the undreamable
living, daring, being

owning the space of the universe
that is designed only for you

The grass was tall
enough to hide me
from anyone

and I wrapped myself
up in it's long blades,
braiding them into
my hair, softly
tickling my skin

pulling daisies down to
the roots, my fingernails
shining with silver polish,
teasing magpies as
I dig

down into the earth,
turning up memories
and moments in the
chaos of soil

the past and present
mingling on my skin
as I dig, deeper,
greedily

listening to the scattered
songs of birds and
imagining how
I look to them

small and frantic

but strangely, I am not

I am calm, calmer

and the smell of buttercups
reminds me of childhood
games, of holding flowers
under chins, teasing
and tripping

moments, memories

pockets in time that the
voices haven't reached
and I relish them

counting them on
my fingers

as they play

and then, there are noises,
shouts, doors banging
and windows shaking

fingers clawing at
my throat and
yelling

spit

bloodstains on the cuffs
of my dress

and sirens

When it comes down to it
I am the light that falls
That fails, as the tide rolls in
Where I am trapped in the body of
The favourite child, gone to seed
Turned black and blue with the weight
Of sadness and the knot in my
Stomach as I grow inch by
Inch into a shadow
Where I will stand in the mouth of
An angel singing and the voice will
Cut down to your
Bones

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.

our names are written

in the stars, too bright for eyes to see

a pattern of hands clasped,
fingers entwined

the constellation of love

blinding to those below

whose first thought is to hate

Please remember me
in this moment

as we gaze into
each other's eyes

whole solar systems
collapsing

in milli -
seconds

of doubt

a sweetness that
lingers on the lips

like sugar, that turns
to paste upon

the tongue when it
meets the moistness

of your mouth

I am not your
lullaby

nor your temptation
taken out of

time

I am just a girl
you loved once

not for a lifetime
nor an infinity

but just

in this moment

I’m not coming over tonight
to beg you to stay,

in my heart
I know it’s over,

nothing ever lasts forever,
not even promises of

we’re in this together

If all we have is tonight

I will pick each star from the sky

and name it

take the white moon into my mouth

and taste it’s craters

with my cavities

I will paint my soul midnight blue

with the brush of my spine

and scatter our hearts into a

constellation

to be gazed in awe at

long after we’ve turned into

stardust

Into the heart of you
is my journey

my map - a maze or arteries and veins

love is my compass

I bite my lips to taste blood,
so that I may know what I am
travelling through

my destination only to see you smile
one last time

one last sneering grin
that used to irritate the Hell out of me

only it doesn’t, now

forever is lie,
built on the idea that we will live

forever

now is a promise,
built on the knowledge that we

will not

Kiss me on the inside;

can you feel my heart
shake? Do your fingertips
read me like a Carpenter’s
reads wood?

could you re-build my life
in your shed? Re-paint
the years that have
chipped away at my
skin

do you have tools
that can mend souls?
souls that have escaped,
eloped with promises
telling you to hold
tight and wait

Wait.

You didn’t fix
the clock, did you?
The hands still
move too fast

instead of the beginning,
middle and end
you told my story
in a flick book

My childhood is
a paragraph, I was
young for a page

your hands are
hard but your heart
is harder

unflinching,
throwing out
the parts of me
you can’t fit

In

To

You

I forgive you,
of course, when
you show me the
sculpture you made
out of our tomorrow's

the wood has
beeb sanded down,
the edges, smoothed
as you place your arms
around my waist
and lift my face, slightly
to the sky

and there,
where the stars meet,
there is where
our hearts beat

burning out the parts of me
that don’t fit

In

To

You

As the oily substance hits my bloodstream

my insides shudder

concrete setting into the stem of
my brain

Peter Pan taps my window, inviting me to

fly

but I can barely walk

atleast

I am free of unlaced shoes

of licking blood from the corner of my mouth

bitten lips and chewed fingernails

seventy five milligrams
of sanity

My mouth is made of glass
that breaks each time a word
hits it, my hands break out in
Boils each time a finger touches
their flesh, my eyes are made of waters,
that break like waves against the sand,
my ears are made of rocks from which
mermaids sing out, invitations to anyone,
my heart beats like a caged bird,
timid and alone, so utterly
alone

As your mouth moved
against mine I saw
new suns burning,
new plants rising,
sea mist dancing,
my whole world
folding into the
reflection of
your eyes

I still feel you

in the water that covers my toes
after another night staring out at the waves

in my shallow breath,
in my lungs that ache for a red wine kiss

in my blood that runs cold,
begging for the warmth of your touch

I still feel you
I still feel you
are you really...

gone

Yours is the voice I hear
just before I fall asleep

seductive whispers
that wrap around my ear
like silk

yours is the hand I reach for
in the dead of night

when the stars abandon me
and the moon grows pales

yours are the lessons I’ve learnt
about life and love

and I try to love you

I try

but those whispers
don’t reach my soul

that hand
doesn’t reach my heart

and those lessons shake
with the echoes of pain

I try
but I am burnt

and no balm exists
to cool my wounds

(it’s just ***)

to consume someone completely

(it’s just ***)

to strip someone of their power

(it’s just ***)

to rob them of their identity

(it’s just ***)

to take away their future

(it’s just ***)

to imprison them in their own bones

(it’s just ***)

to tear them apart

(it’s just ***)

knifes slashing designer shirts
their ribbons scattered across the lawn
so that everyone can see your callous
heart. Your reckless romance with a girl
who you don’t own a house with.

I smash mirrors. They say you will always see a man in the mirror, flickering between the candles. I thought that man was you.

I play her messages on the answerphone as loud as they will go. I want people to hear and know how cruel you have been.

I used to be better than this.

but love makes you weak and petty, when it is taken away.

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 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

I type as I live,
from word to word,
bouncing from the walls
of my brain,
as I try to find another image
of beauty or love,

I type as I live,
in a desperate frenzy
with nicotine and coffee stains,

I type as I live,
because I have no choice, no say, no control
in this

It's teeth, it's
teeth wear down,
eroded with the
acid of time and
memory

she told be this
but

the memories, the
memories bite still
sometimes and the
distance

the distance between
who I am and who I
used to be
is growing

growing like an
unweeded garden
and the weeds

the weeds, too
bite and the
bites are

as hard, as
consuming as
fire and
ice

It's teeth, it's
teeth wear down,
eroded with the
acid of time and
memory

she told be this
but

the memories, the
memories bite still
sometimes and the
distance

the distance between
who I am and who I
used to be
is growing

growing like an
unweeded garden
and the weeds

the weeds, too
bite and the
bites are

as hard, as
consuming as
fire and
ice