No, you cannot join in.
Unless of course you also want the backlash that comes with kissing girls in public?
Take it-
please
share the homophobia.
I have had enough to last me 18 years of shame

no, this is not a game and you do not have the right to take photographs of me while I kiss her.
Unless of course you are a photographer  
here to celebrate our queer love in all of it’s natural beauty.  
For my love does not exist for your enjoyment
we are not the characters in your fantasy novel
my love is magical and you cannot publish it.
My love rains all over your non existent parade because your homophobia does not exist at pride

wide-eyed boys
encircle us as if to say that our mouths brush only so that they  
can paint the picture,
but you do not belong within my self portrait
you will not dip your ***** brush into my rainbow coloured paint set.
Clean your homophobia into the water
for our love is art
but you are not the artist
and my love is not yours to keep for later  
for wanking your anxieties into pleasure whilst you turn my pleasure, into anxiety.
This, is plagiarism.

Copyright my love.
For I should not have to be aware of who is watching
or pointing or shouting or stealing, my love.
So put your hand down your pants and think of your homophobia.  
No, you can’t come now
no, you cannot join in.

You have a heart shaped freckle on your body.
You have a mouth shaped bruise on your neck.
You wear a certain type of sweatshirt on your birthday
as a precaution in case they were to check
if someone had given you a love bite  
sunken lips deep into your skin,
but dear lover, a lesson you have yet to learn-
leaving the heart shaped freckle on display was your sin.

I wonder who silenced you.

Who placed your soul in one hand and your voice in the other
and asked you to applaud. I wonder who made you feel small.
As if not yet conceived, your expression made redundant before
it had the chance to reach your lips- those barbed wire worms,  
a sealed suicide note, a tired mother’s eyes in the morning.
“Children should be seen and not heard”. Was it your father?
Did his gaze lock you in the corner and make you screech like the
boiled kettle on the hob? Did the water spill from your spout and
burn, was this the moment you learnt how to un-love yourself?  
To force a grin that buried tears when he said, “C’mon, give me
a smile”. To wrap your arms around his neck and envision  
tightening them until he lays limp in yours. I wonder if later, you
prayed for forgiveness for wanting to do so.  

I wonder who silenced you. And I can feel the shame on my skin
when I imagine it to be him. One who died in his chair and sat slumped
in saturation for days before they found him. One whose name may not be  
soaked in blame, one whose face, I have forgotten.  

I don’t remember Grandad. I wonder if you look like him.

A trailed safety line hangs,
hazardous, homely.
The spider, desperately clinging to the edge  
of something beautiful lays in fearful pursuit,
for the hand that feeds us, does not hesitate to bite.  

Spinning thread,
a perpetual fight for protection.
Eight legs for eight webs,
“don’t bite off more than you can chew”  
but you,
you were born for this purpose.
A sac surrounded by sticky silk  
that serves to save,
at least until the hunger comes, in its waves.  

The desire to capture a soul,
with your words.
To entangle heart strings in webs that shine,  
rather than scare
and so the spider dares  
to take the plunge into the night.
Starving to succeed,
and blinded by the fall

into his (cob)web.  
His very own masterpiece
humbling his heart,
his art,  
has caught its prey.  

And so you lay,
ensnared by your terrific soul
and the strangers think you are terrifying.

They stand, the two of them, enveloped. Their bodies the segments of an orange before
ripped apart by delicate, hungry fingertips.
It is rush hour in Brixton and as she leans against this
unsteady machine, he holds her as if her limbs might fracture and fall
and land at their feet,
as if they might become neighbours to the newspapers and trodden gum that have
made their home there, *****, discarded, at ease.
Silhouette quietly nestled into his frame, sharing shadows
she, is elsewhere.
Gaze transfixed by a small being in front. A tiny entity that holds all of her undying
attention. Her lips bitten down to their core,
skin replaced by yearning and fear and a tenderness that you could touch.
The child’s tangerine lips waver hesitantly and then burst open, releasing a giggle
that sounds like fallen dust in sunlight, if it had a sound.
The space between them becomes a mirror, so much that the infant’s mother
looks like she has just learnt the definition of the word ‘envy’.
The tube falls into the station, and the passengers are squeezed out:
a frenzy of rushed beings in their most natural, narcissistic state.
From across the platform in rush hour, the train leaner is a mother.
And in her arms, oblivious, her lover.