My phantom lover appeared to me

whispering words of love and affection

promises of forever
and “we’re in this together”

but the moon fades, his ghostly face

with it

and I’m left alone again

trying to pluck his memory from my dreams like a flower

it is always a pale comparison
a weak imposition

each night he comes,
and fades at daybreak

and my darling,
I know enough to know
that you’re not real

but this feeling

(this ******* feeling)

white hot
burning a hole
straight through my soul

is as real as the sand
is to the Pyramids

and I cannot break free
from this twisted apparition

it is my life, now
my heart belongs
to a dead man

I am nothing but embers
in the fire pit of
your heart

a Godless girl, kissing
with tongues, skin
burning at

the touch of a
weather beaten man

I fell for you, headfirst
into the abyss of desire

warmth rising from my
toes, through to my finger -
tips

inhaling the scent of you
by the lungful

my capacity is called
on, and I am a Phoenix

stunted, hatched too
soon, eternally shell -
less

You watched me force my way through the ashes
and rebuild myself from the debris

you said that you'd always believed in me
and I felt it

said that you'd always waited for this
and I could taste it

but when our hand clasp,
I panic, imagining them turning into dust

when we kiss deeply
I wonder if I am consumed by fire, inside
something so imbedded, so fundamental to my new state of being
that I can't control it

I imagine my tongue turning to flames
inside your mouth

I am scared of combusting at the slightest trust

I feel hazardous

Yes, a Phoenix may rise
ready to live their life over,

and it may be beautiful

but there fire inside them, still
and people will get burnt

There exists a photograph
of me, smudged now,
the image grainy

it acts like a cross
around my neck

it it not hope
or comfort

or even faith

but a reminder
to never make

the same mistakes
again

When the flowers die
our hearts die with them
shrivelled, brittle and cold
winter waiting in slumber
for the next Spring bloom

He lived his eighty years well,
they said

he often knotted his wrinkled hands around the smooth fleshed hands of his grandchildren

still, his heart gave out eventually,
swollen with love

I went to his funeral, a bystander,
an intruder of grief

I take flowers to his grave,
purple tulips with petals

that eat up rain clouds
and sunlight like a ****,

taking nourishment from
the red and white roses that
neighbour them

photosynthesis,

I recall the word,
from chemistry classes
an age ago

I never knew him, though
I got his name from a newspaper obituary I ideally flicked through at 4am

I had never known old age, you see
and it seemed beautiful to me

My camera clicks a little
less these days.
It doesn't forget that we are
no longer young.
The years we spent
kissing under trees, stretching
our limbs out to the sun,
skin crisping, blistering,
then peeling. Are gone.
We thought we were
solid and stern, that
we could easily hold off
the gusts of time. Now
we sleep most of the day.
Occasionaly, we take a walk
(in the shade) the trees have
aged too, but they still
stand proud. We are
more like a branch
it's cast off in the wind.
My finger pauses
over the shutter, I
want to mark this
moment, to see if
the picture is less
kind once it's
taken.

You pour boiling water over
my words and try to wash them away

but, my love, I can’t be erased

I’m in your blood, your bones, your skin

your hair will smell of me

I am a permanent marker
stamped on your heart

claiming you with an
acid burn

(my words were merely pilot fish)

I held forever
in the palm of my hand

as pretty and promising
as a pink carnation

and you took your thumb and forefinger
and ripped every petal off

until all I was left with was a green stem
of memories and might have been

Let's tell tales
tall enough
to make Pinocchio
blush

I am tired of being
a pit stop for your love

I am not here to fix your broken soul
or refuel your depleting lust

my heart has it’s own wound
don’t make me try to heal yours

(as well)

It was a plague passed
through kisses, I never
thought it would ****
me, but I woke up
one day, dead limbed
and deaf to everything
except the sound
of waves crashing against
the peaks of my heart,
and I couldn't move
without you

The play of my life
has no intermission
no break in the drama
no pause to catch my breath

On and on and on
the show loops
in my head
nightmares return
night after night

The scenery doesn’t change
the walls of the set, closing in on me
everything I touch is just a prop
fake cigarettes and alcohol free beer

I wait for my death scene
my heart racing with anticipation
for my exit, stage left
but I weep in the knowledge
that my final breath will be just an act

and there is no escaping this plot

The edges of one body blending into the bones of another

spreading like fire on a terrace of thatched roof houses

we are learning how to count in twos, in pairs

we are moulding into the shape
of a house where children run, barefoot

we are learning how to build ourselves out of ashes and fractions

out of crumbling teeth and rotten mouth kisses,

halitosis

At playtime,
we skipped hand in hand
making whispered pacts of
forever

when the bell rang,
we ran towards the sound
or maybe it was away
from it

it doesn't matter

our breath would smoke
as we hit the cold air,
our shoes would catch and
click along the pavement

as we went

the weight of our secrets
would press through our skin,
through the soles of our feet

as we placed them, one foot
in front of the other foot, onto
the tarmac

leaving footprints with our pain
but we didn't care, as long as we could skip,
hand in hand

tomorrow

I take you
into my mouth

pierce the purple
skin and expose

the tender flesh,
your yellow reminds

me of bruises,
thawing like snow

blind hands over
a coal fire

you are whole
and full

my tongue rippling
with expectation

the soft brush of
an uncharted

inch of you
against my stark

white skin. I am
broken and

bitter, but your
sweetness spreads

into my pores
like lava

and I explode
with everything

I've pressed into
my breast

every thorn, every
wound, healed

by the taste of
your plum

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

You are a liar
not a poet, he said,
and your feelings
are as meaningful
as an invitation
made in September,
that new year bliss
that covers you in
new notebooks,
fresh pencils and
friends. If you could
only love a person
as much

if you could only
love me

You are a liar
not a poet, he said,
and your feelings
are as meaningful
as an invitation
made in September,
that new year bliss
that covers you in
new notebooks,
fresh pencils and
friends. If you could
only love a person
as much

if you could only
love me

People think that poetry
has to be a certain way

look a certain way

sound a certain way

but at night,
when it’s just me
and the words
and a white, dazzling page

a raw outpouring
of rage, or grief
a siren song of sadness

I know better
than to believe in that

and to think with my heart

and not traditions
or conformities  

and to trust in myself
and the words,
and that white, dazzling page

poets long to be held
in the embrace of words

caressed by consonants  
held in the void with vowels

to have letters wrap around their fingers
like fingers

their sadness lies in knowing
that each poem has an ending

and that most are no more
than a drop in the ocean

of history

as poets,
we carved our hearts
out of pencil and
ink,

every drop of feeling
was a metaphor,

every echo of "I love you"
had been written
before,

how on Earth could we
ever learn how to exist
in reality?

for our passions
to become more
than a dance
on a page,

to feel and not knee-
**** into action
over our laptops
at 4am...

but I loved you,
and not for my page
or pen or protagonist,

but for your pencil -
sketched heart

that I dreamt of
filling in red

I remember the ivy
that grew in the side
of our first house

year by year, we
watched it shake off
its dead leaves and
tremble, naked through
the winter

in the Spring,
we'd take tea underneath
it, sharing the sugar spoon
like we shared sheets
and secrets

we watched it beat
again, like a heart
restarting, rising after
the fall

the wrought iron
chairs are rusted brown
now, and no-one sits
upon them

we're dead
but breathing,
blood pulsing on

and on

hearts beating backwards

and sugar spoons left
out for the
ants

I remember the ivy
that grew in the side
of our first house

year by year, we
watched it shake off
its dead leaves and
tremble, naked through
the winter

in the Spring,
we'd take tea underneath
it, sharing the sugar spoon
like we shared sheets
and secrets

we watched it beat
again, like a heart
restarting, rising after
the fall

the wrought iron
chairs are rusted brown
now, and no-one sits
upon them

we're dead
but breathing,
blood pulsing on

and on

hearts beating backwards

and sugar spoons left
out for the
ants

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

You are standing in the middle of a poppy field,

sweet red petals gathering around your bare feet,

their black roots planting themselves in your heart.

You will remember this, when he kisses your neck,

goodnight. You will hear him say he loved you

that day. Your yellow dress gathering about your knees,

skimming the blue bruises that have built up over time

to colour your skin in the way the sea is coloured on a globe of the Earth.

He will think your body an Atlas, drawing rings around the countries

he has visited. There will always be uncharted territory,

another city to discover. He will tell you that you looked

beautiful that day, with your hair dyed silver blonde and

curled. He will trap you in that moment like a photograph,

and sixty years from now he will whisper a word in your ear,

and you will be the girl, standing in a poppy field

again

I think of you in that poppy field
your red lips bleeding secrets,
emerald stalks, blending scarlet scars into flesh. My cold shoulder
when I turned my face away

it seems like a trick of the light, now. When I reach my fingers across our bed, tangle a lock of your hair around my bitten fingernails

we pretend to forget the little things, like if we take sugar in our coffee or who's turn it is to take out the trash

we promise to hold onto the best parts, as if we are dolls that can be dismantled and remade by the hands of a child

but it's the laughs that disappear first, like the poppies whose petals we blew away so carelessly,

thinking there was a whole field when really there was just

us

this heart of porcelain

vitrified by your gentle hands

I am delicate, you said

like an unplucked flower

I am just waiting to be

smashed, picked, broken

and you would stand in the smithereens

and cry

over a ruined masterpiece

but shed no tears

over the girl who sacrificed her heart

for your art

When two words meet
there is a crack
running like spilt red
wine from one end of
my room to the
other

there are voices
living in it
young girls that
scream and laugh
as they fly through
the air on swings

old men that creek
when they move
and breath heavily
as if the weight
of their decades
is a physical onus

before my train leaves
I stand in the middle
of the room and spread
my arms as if they
are wings

my fingers don't touch
the plaster, which is strange,
after spending so many nights
convinced that the
parameters are closing
in on my dreams

I was brought up
to believe in last
looks and I have
grown up to believe in
railway stations and
airports

looking back it seems
cruel to be told that
your address isn't fixed
that there is no point
in learning to live with
the cracks

I leave a pink post it
over the crack
'Theres no place
like home' and as
I leave to front door
unlocked, I wonder how
full the carriage will be

and if the stranger
next to me will carry
a portmanteau

When two words meet
there is a crack
running like spilt red
wine from one end of
my room to the
other

there are voices
living in it
young girls that
scream and laugh
as they fly through
the air on swings

old men that creek
when they move
and breath heavily
as if the weight
of their decades
is a physical onus

before my train leaves
I stand in the middle
of the room and spread
my arms as if they
are wings

my fingers don't touch
the plaster, which is strange,
after spending so many nights
convinced that the
parameters are closing
in on my dreams

I was brought up
to believe in last
looks and I have
grown up to believe in
railway stations and
airports

looking back it seems
cruel to be told that
your address isn't fixed
that there is no point
in learning to live with
the cracks

I leave a pink post it
over the crack
'There's no place
like home' and as
I leave to front door
unlocked, I wonder how
full the carriage will be

and if the stranger
next to me will carry
a portmanteau

It’s time that I wasn’t
your possession

a coin in your wallet

a doll for you to dress up
and manipulate

into any position you like

I am restless in your collection
of figurines

I crave independence

and a voice
of my own

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”

another black coffee
to chase away the
nightmares
of lingering hands and
***** soaked breath

it was another life
in daylight
but as the sun goes down
it fills every inch of me

not just a memory, a moment
silence is power when you have none
and sleep is a Hell when you
had none

Amidst the chaos of
what was and
what can never be

there is now

I’ll sit and hold
your hand, here,
in this baffling moment

and whisper
“It’s okay”

How beautiful the bloom
that blossoms again

wild roses that the winter cannot take

sunflowers refusing to sink into the soil

we look at them, and long

to be

another tulip tempted by the light

but we are weeds

creeping between concrete cracks

waiting to be destroyed
so that beauty

can prevail again

The trees sang our names
as if we were an ancient song,
shrouded in mystery and an infinite hope

the woods rattled with longing,
as our hearts danced beneath
a star splattered carpet

we were not unique, or new to these elements,
but it didn’t matter,

they held our love close
as if it were a newborn baby,
seeing a life unfurl as it gazed
into our bright blue eyes

as our souls cried out, primal,
for one more dance

when you wrap your arms
around me

they feel like prison bars

I am confined, tight, to your
body

and there is no way to
break out

there is a heaviness in my chest
as you pull me closer

I am screaming, running around
the bottom of my cage like a

frantic, frightened bird

(must I learn to sing?)

He said;

“It’s not like you have
a serious mental illness.”

and after I told him to “*******!”

I wondered if he was right

after all,

I’ve only tried to **** myself

(twice)

maybe three time’s the charm

I’ve only been bed bound
by a crippling darkness

that eats light with a ravenous hunger

I have only felt my heart
explode in my chest

with the utter certainty
that I was dying

I have only conversed
with spirits and demons

(the fun ones are the ones
that love you back!)

maybe he’s right

maybe I’m sane

or maybe...

I cannot promise you

forever

only this red wine soaked moment of

bliss

under a carpet of stars, sighing as our hearts

collide

infinite and unfathomable

a mystery for the universe to

unpick as we sit

waiting...

for the moon fold around us

safe and complete

a second of ecstasy

amidst the chaos the turning Earth

but I promise you

this

The scars on my hips
that leave blood on your lips

the taste of innocence and ignorance

unknowing
of love’s sting

the bitter kiss of loss

wrapped in the promise of forever

A hospital roof
top – the world swelling
like a broken limb
beneath him

breathing

the air tastes
of car fumes,
***** – people
with their feet
covered in
the dust of
life

for a moment
my heart imagines
he is going to
jump

jump
away from the plan

I trust myself
enough not to
trust him

A hospital roof
top – the world swelling
like a broken limb
beneath him

breathing

the air tastes
of car fumes
***** – people
with their feet
covered in
the dust of
life

for a moment
my heart imagines
he is going to
jump

jump
away from the plan

I trust myself
not to trust
him

The cavities of my heart

fill

at the touch of your mercury fingers

years of decay are repaired

by the amalgamation
of sweet whispers and fierce flesh

strokes

writing your name on my back

claiming me as your

protected

I was not born to feel the
endless night

that comes, starless,
bringing to my room a broken moon

I was put on this Earth
to crush leaves beneath my feet
and revel in the changing seasons

to take each one into my mouth
like a ripe fruit

I am here to touch
the brilliant, bright sun

I was born to make Icarus proud

Prozac killed the poet
with it's blister packs
of two times ten
every twenty eight days
taken twice a day
with water

candle wax
and dried tears
velvet ropes
and silver chains
thick, black smoke
that engulfs the heart
twists it into impossible shapes
they speak to me
the bodiless ones, in my head
when the world has gone to bed
conspiring and calculating
condemning and
confining me to their
silver sphere of insanity
where home is nowhere
and nowhere is home

Another sleepless night
Memories piercing
Fear and shame

The paralyzing thought
That I’m the one to blame
Guilt, what did I do or
Say to deserve it

What did he steal
That day?
More than my dignity
And worth

Every piece of my
Heart, body and soul
I am just a shell

Flesh and bone
Shaking through
Nightmares that
Twist the pit of
My stomach

That reach the
Black root of
my heart

How I do I simply
Put it behind
Me and move
On? As I am
Told to do

When I am timelocked
In that moment of
Terror

The world is turning
Spinning forwards
At breathtaking
Speed

Yet I am planted
Like a root
In history

The knives of grief stab me in the heart
over and over again and again

they penetrate the beating
pulse that is keeping me alive

when that which I loved
is now merely ashes

I try to find beauty
in the chaos of
hopeless longing

for that which I can never
have again

my heart keeps
beating
beating
beating

but I am dead inside

You murdered me
yet I survived,
in a sleep where death
is my only dream,

my heart was stolen,
yet I hold it in my hand,
broken and scarred,
why does it still
beat?

I feel your fingers on every
inch of my flesh,
flies that get under my skin
and infect my insides
with fear, guilt and shame,

I hold every breath in
the purgatory of my
throat ,

to be sent to the
Heaven of forgetting
or the Hell of regretting

My face is the front gate
of a rotting town

people sweeping
through streets
like a Plague
that kills with
disproportionates

my eyes the ticket-men
who check scraps of
yellowed paper for
numbers, ripping
of corners for their
pocket

my ears hum
with the sound of
Thalidomide bees,
collecting nectar
from dying flowers

I can smell scattered
chemicals and poverty,
children without shoes
and old ladies who
knit with rheumatic
fingers

I keep my mouth shut
to stop the spread of this
war

I let my head fall forward
sometimes, or shake

but

I will not open my lips
for anyone