Your memory is etched into my mind

as permanently as though it were stone,
and someone took out a chisel
and carved out your name

I cannot forget you,

after six glasses of gin, you blur
into something more beautiful, in character  

but it is still
your face
your hands
your heart

that have woven me
in the fabric of time and space

so that I am a planet

forever in debt to your sun

Your hands

reaching towards me in the morning

a sculpture Michelangelo

casted from beyond

the grave

discoveries unfold,
into the folds of
my mind

and I swirled her teeth
and treachery around my mouth
like wine and spat them out

there is nothing left of us but
a quarter bottle of whiskey and
half a pack of tax free cigarettes

we smoke, two at a time,
choking back the cheap chemicals
as if they are our tears

and, my darling, I have cried for you, on stained and ***** sheets that I wrap, like a glove, around my trembling bones

taking the eye of the storm into my mouth, like a ripe plum, yellow flesh that taunts my tongue and I let

all of my other senses dull as I taste a mouthful

of you

my heart is pounding out
the beat of the last time I saw you

your face feels like nothing more
than a delusion

so happy in my fantasy that I
even imagined myself a new

reality, that I believed would
be the case in a hundred years

you and I
standing side by side

it is nothing more than a crumbling
daydream in the endless cavity of
my mind

like a frightened bird
clinging to the bars
of its cage

desperate for flight
and freedom

but too scared
to leave

the safety of
its cell

is how I feel
when I'm with you

Years pass and I remain
buried, no air to breathe
and my skin cracking
as it feeds on it's
own hollowness

we’d sit smoking
on your grandmother’s porch

drinking cheap whiskey
and counting the stars in the sky

you’d play your guitar
until your fingers bled

trying to convince me
that love was real

but I never believed

not even when each star
had a name

and each string hummed
beneath your fingers

like magic

years later,
I thought of those nights

and how different
my life could have been

if I’d just took a chance
on love

He asked me how I've changed.

I guess it starts with the little things,
a braid instead of hippy locks,
an inch taken off the heel,
white wine instead of shots

I hold my keys between my fingers
and spread them out like claws,
I keep my back to the traffic
and turn my head to the floor

I practise screaming in my living room,
until my throat turns to sandpaper,
I drag my nails across my skin
until my skin soaks red

I check the doors and windows
once, twice, three times
and then repeat
repeat again

I take sleeping pills when it's daylight
and drink strong coffee when it's dark,
I tell my friends that I'm busy that night
and hope they stop asking me out

I never risk the last train
or stop for a driver with his window down,
I don't approach the homeless
or acknowledge my name

I try not to think about the big things,
the shard of ice that sits where my heart used to be,
a shame that threatens to **** you,
a rage you can barely contain

I tell him that I haven't changed at all.

we clung
to each other
like ivy
climbing a brick wall

our hearts were as strong
as those foundations

our outside changing with the seasons
but inside -

a fire had been lit
that no winter could
extinguish

Chaos and calm
are two sides of the same coin
constantly flipping
in my mind

uncertainty makes you thrive
(they say)
but I am treading water
with unbrushed hair
merely trying to survive

the soul goes on forever
but I am not sure mine is up up to the task

each day, a little part of it erodes away
like water eating into a sand cliff

and I am dropped down into the ocean
forced to swim or drown

and drowning has always seemed
so peaceful to me

my breath froze in my chest
as the tide pulled me down

my limbs stopped struggling

(I stopped struggling)

and I rested my head on the sea bed
in an eternal sleep

beautiful colourful creatures floating
around me for company

if my soul goes on forever, I hope it takes
into account these last moments

and not the years of pain and heartache
that came before

the times when I thought it was literally
being beaten and torn away from me

I hope my soul remembers my final peace
more than a lifetime of chaos

“Do all poets wear masks?”

a stranger, unwittingly flung
into the path of the flurry
of my pen, asked me

No, I said. Only the sad ones...

“Aren’t they all sad?”

he said

(Check mate)

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 struck me,
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
rotten mouth consumes
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

and a reflection of a woman,
no longer whole, yet still
alive

I draw hearts in the sand

like a child

and my heart beats for you

as wildly and recklessly

as only a child

would

They came again
last night.

Eyes bulging
as the air was forced up
through their throats,
out through their
silent, screaming mouths.

The more I pressed,
the harder they kicked.
Muddy grass flying up into my face.

My veins are a chemical mess,
lust, lunacy and loathing
coursing from my heart
into my blood.
Filling my body up
in the absence
of love.

I can taste it,
as the bodies seep through the walls and windows

I can remember
the moment that
life left them.

In the smoke of your cigarette

I saw everything that could ever be

and everything that never would

and it took my breath away

we were bodies on the ground
decomposing into the earth
into the soil where roots are planted
that grow and bloom and blossom
back into life

I sit drinking black coffee
(two sugars)
in an all night cafe
across from the park

my face is pressed
against the glass,
condensation forming
as the temperature hovers
around freezing

I stare at the trees,
watching the leaves intently
as they blow slightly in the wind

the birds are chirping loudly,
anticipating the dawn

as the dusty pinks
turn into pale blue

people appear like ants,
scuttling in formation,
focused, eyes fixed on their goal

the pavement takes their weight,
the train terminal opens
like the mouth of the sea,
allowing them all to enter

the city is waking up for me

shadows -

concealing secrets

time digging in like a claw

there are messages
ebbing and flowing in the tide

moons collapsing

footsteps -

like locks

the stars dissolved
in your eyes
a hand lay over mine
and I was unafraid
of the darkness
that surrounded me
the wind whispering
silently through the trees
the ocean rolling away
the years that lay between
us and death

and yet, we slept
in that dark, windy night
like babies, in each others arms
knowing that the storm would come
and wash away every impurity on our skin
every blemish, every wrinkle
would fade

and we would rise from our beds, in the morning
clean again

Rose petals litter the bed

and where you see beauty
I see only the dead flower

ripped from its roots, dirt clinging to its stem

a pink blossom, a ruddyred thorn

piercing my chest as my heart beats, irregularly

a feeble twitch, a caffeine shake

skin pulled tight, scarred, the wrappings of muscle and blood

kohl and red ochre,
like Cleopatra

(undone)

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

Sometimes through the
silence, I hear your voice
whispering my name
a timid cat-call reaching
like a hand, nails clipped
like claws. I want to
respond to your
touch, to crumble
like soft rock beneath
your breath. Yet I
can't forget those
hours you weren't
there. Or the days
of empty whiskey
bottles and *****
coffee spoons. I
used to pray to
God for you to
come back to me.
But I no longer
believe in miracles.
No. Just the awful
edges of a word,
a hand, a memory.

I am full of sins
that threaten
to fall from
my collar -
bone

they grip onto
this beam
of my body

these stranded secrets
of the skin,
that have nowhere
to go, nothing to do

except to hold, hold
onto the bar of my collar -
bone

I count on my fingers
the times you’ve made my heart
STOP

a kiss on rain drenched streets,
soaked to the skin and shivering
into each other’s lips

a fickle finger stroke down my spine,
bones shaking with longing

this wild eyed love that they said
would never last

and yet,
we are here

at the start of something more
than lust and lunacy

more than cliched movie snap shots
more than the weight of two hearts,
separately

we are becoming
a combined mass, forever

My hearts skips beats

aching for the days that were

carefree and frivolous

when my smile was genuine and my eyes

sparkled with life

I know there is no going back

that the journey of life does not come with

a rewind button, or even a pause

to take in the evening air

and breathe the sunset into my lungs

so that I may expel beautiful colours

come morning

a candle reflected
in the mirror

echoes of spells
and rituals

conjuring love

overpowering each one
of my senses

the brightest light
glimmering in
my eyes

the softest touch
waking up
my skin

the rustle of tarot
cards being shuffled

a whispered promise

I can almost taste you

He talked of shedding
skin and roaming
constellations

the bones of the
Earth breaking
beneath us

the past blending
seemleslly jnto
the future

spinning time

and weaving
ourselves out of
the present

They say that death isn't a disease,
that you can't spread it
like a virus
from mouth to mouth
or in a blown kiss

but each time I touch your skin
I hear my heart in my head
blood pulsing, lightly at first
But fiercer the longer my fingers
lick the shell of you
like flames

I look into your eyes, sometimes
despite myself
and see the burst blood vessels
spread out like a drop of paint
in a puddle

I know that our hearts
are about to give up on us
and that it will be
no lightning bolt
of passion
of bursting love
of feeling too much

they will just die
like a story dies
when there is no-one left
to listen to it

I can't help but think
of the life we
could have had
if we'd waited

instead of clinging madly
onto each other
desperate to shake off
the fever of the last ones
we'd touched

our lives are in constant
contrast

we live for the moonlight
but melt under the sun

long for the ocean
but drown under the waves

our love is no different

a heart in one hand
taken by another

a lover dreaming
stolen by the morning

we live and love
in a contradiction

confused and erratic
but always

always

searching for moments
of ecstasy in the chaos

The look in your eyes
hooks me,

taking me back to the days
of my grandfathers, dark
whiskey in hip-flasks kept close
to their chests, eating tinned fruit
and singing to warm themselves up
on cold nights

I remember the sound of their voices,
thick and throaty, as if forty
cigarettes a day had eaten
into their chords

I wear their blazers sometimes,
Over a red dress, imagining myself
before they thought of me

wondering if they felt the rain fall
on their face as blood washed the
souls of their shoes

I know that your green eyes
are searching my face for signs and
similarities, the past threatening to
seep through the open pores
of my skin

I am corrupted

There is tape on the floor at grocery stores
everybody is staying indoors,
doctors are dying as they tend the sick,
mask less, watching them die,
the death toll rises like a giant wave
escaping the ocean,
fear is everywhere in the air,
like a virus,

and  the virus

The Virus

cracks appear

when I look in the mirror

and see your face

reflected back at me

those ocean blue eyes

and whisper thin smile

it’s as if you’re mocking me

with your beauty

the beauty that left

my heart in

cracks

Maybe I’ve been craving you my whole life

like a cigarette
I had forbidden myself from smoking

or like love
that I had convinced myself wouldn’t happen

because you have not been craving me
your whole life

like chocolate
a sugar rush you wouldn’t share

with me

like a starved dog
I will devour you
in an instant

without thought
or feeling

and in that instant
I will consume you
as the air consumes
everything around it

I will dissolve into
that air and become
edge -
less

so that where I end
and you begin
is merely a concept
long buried in
the murky swamp

where creation began

The arms, legs, heads
were covered in clay
but their bodies
hadn't decayed.
They were trapped
in ice, transparent,
clean. That is the role
of bodies. To be seen.
That is the role of
children. To sit
quietly counting
coins. To brush
the long blonde
hair of their
sister (mother.)
To not be heard.
The dead leaves
of trees are
too loud.
Crunching under-
foot. Who am I
to investigate?
To take samples
of hair and
skin. To match
DNA and finger-
prints. No, the
ice should not
melt. As it
struggles to
survive in the
sunlight. The bodies
thaw. Heart first.
And I am trapped.
plunging the
secrets of rope
around throat.
Of stab wounds
and bullet sites.
And the blood
is so cold. So
very cold and
unforgiving,
unmissable,
uncharted,
until my hands
slice,
sift,
silence.

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

crows called me from sleep,

before a dream had ended,
before another had yet begun,

I opened the window to my room,
and flung my arms out into the dawn,

such promise,
bright, brilliant dreams to build,

I took a step out of the door but silver shackles closed about my ankles,

and I was dragged back to bed,
back to darkness, back to nightmares,

where crows do not beckon a new day,
but eat me from the inside out,

a carcass left on a roadside,
no dreams, no hopes, no feelings at all,

the crows will always come, I guess
it’s how they come to you

I am just
trying to
find my
way home

when all the
breadcrumbs
have been
eaten

by crows

My knees weaken when I see you

half smiling lips and wine soaked breath

I am still faithful

a shadow, shadow that walks

without body

without a solid shape

I turned to God once, ideally,
my mouth forming prayers I'd saved

for you

muttering malice into the nothingness

etching memories the way they etch gravestones

a black crayon and blank paper,
pressing hard and hoping

that the colours will somehow
bloom into meaning

Godless, knees shaking

a single handshake and I am
crucified

There’s no crueller word
than goodbye

Until it’s accompanied
by the whys

our love lies
battered on the ground
like the centre of a rose
left naked without
its petals

bitter whispers of
"I loved you more
that you loved
me"

I will call you
cruel, your
callous heart
wounding me
with goodbyes

I will call
you cruel

cruel

cruel

I want to make you cry, he said;

not by breaking your heart,

but by showing you the beauty
that you hold behind your eyes,

that I see every time
I look at you,

that I know you cannot see
for yourself

I drink wine from the cup
that’s meant for God
and I do not feel ashamed
at the taking of something
sacred, for animalistic
need

Like a bird of prey he circles me,

cigarette stained fingers grasping at light, loose cotton

his breath, stained with whiskey
and red wine

dripping with blood as he devours me, soul first, a ripe heart for afters

the whistle of the wind through a cracked chimney ***

where they used to send children, where children died

(I envy them)

I collapse into his words and I know I must succumb to my (un) death

to the weight of twenty stones of fat logged arteries

to a man two joints of red meat away from a heart attack

who is forcing feeding me a glass of water laced with sedatives

I pray to a God who is dead to me
that I want to resurrect

I pray for Cyanine and Arsenic,
kept in a jar

under the bed where he
buries me

My father hated him
at sight

Stolen glances from behind
his crystal whiskey glass

He prefered the last
one

Tall and dark and
strong

A real man

The kind of guy that looks
like he carries photos of
his kids in his wallet

With spare twenties and
condoms

My mother keeps
quiet

I know she liked him
too

But she noticed the bruises
and fat lips

She knows the smell
of pressed powder
over black eyes

I really was her daughter
back then

A broken bone bond
between  her child

She hates that I got
out

That I refused to carry
on their name

She looks at the new guy
whose arms hang over my shoulders

My father smokes cigars
and sighs

Trying to work out if his hands
could make fists

If his knuckles could
smash against my skull

He can't stand to see me
with a man who lets me answer back

A man who gives me his coat
when it's cold

He likes to see a mirror
reflecting back his
brutality

Telling him that his daughter
is safe (in a way) from
the wolves that walk the pages
of fairy tales

My father hated him
at sight

Stolen glances from behind
his crystal whiskey glass

He prefered the last
one

Tall and dark and
strong

A real man

The kind of guy that looks
like he carries photos of
his kids in his wallet

With spare twenties and
condoms

My mother keeps
quiet

I know she liked him
too

But she noticed the bruises
and fat lips

She knows the smell
of pressed powder
over black eyes

I really was her daughter
back then

A broken bone bond
between  her child

She hates that I got
out

That I refused to carry
on their name

She looks at the new guy
whose arms hang over my shoulders

My father smokes cigars
and sighs

Trying to work out if his hands
could make fists

If his knuckles could
smash against my skull

He can't stand to see me
with a man who lets me answer back

A man who gives me his coat
when it's cold

He likes to see a mirror
reflecting back his
brutality

Telling him that his daughter
is safe (in a way) from
the wolves that walk the pages
of fairy tales

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

Damaged girl, they say,
so damaged girl, I act,

don’t touch me,
for my fingers are fire,
and I will not hesitate to burn you to the ground,

don’t love me,
for my heart is a serpent that will
land a poisonous bite in your neck,
and I will not flinch, but look on,

damaged girl,
damaged goods,
unworthy of touch,
unworthy of love,

but do not mistake my tone for self pity,

for I am happy
burning my way through men,
as they have burnt their way through me

revenge is a flame on the flesh of one
who reminds you of your enemy

and a snake bite, in the neck of your abuser