Three kids sit in a beech tree, high above a stream.
The eldest at the top

The youngest two branches below

And the middle child one below him.
                              Stupid,
                                        brave
                                                  and sensible.
Each one of them grasping out... farther than they had first anticipated
To reach the next limb of the tree.
They watch the sun set over long grass
and are content not to talk.
Just to be there.
They have argued all day but they know with absolute certainty
they will forgive each other by tomorrow.
Because that is what it means to have siblings.

I was at a party the other day
I don't usually go to parties
I don't like crowds
I don't like gatherings
I don't like, new people.
But I'm here as a favour to a friend,
And so I stand in this hovel
That looks like the dodgy part of *****
Or the ganglands of Gomorrah,
Pathetically clutching my long empty beer bottle
And breathing in air that's more smoke than oxygen.
Desperately hoping
That if I pretend to be drunk enough
I wont have to meet anybody new.

But as luck would often have it
As luck and I do not get on
My friend beckons me from a darkened corner
Surrounded by people I don't know.
She's confident, enigmatic and wants me to come over.
And because I owe her a favour I cant say no
And so I trudge towards her with all the enthusiasm
Of an arthritic Labrador, dragging my hind legs
Across the sweat stained carpet
Bracing myself for someone new.

And as I place one foot in front of the other
I can practically see the outline of the gallows.
And I notice that the walls really are an especially ugly colour
And that boy surely isn't old enough to be drinking without permission from his mother.
And someone please tell those guys not to put the owners dog in the oven.
And I wonder if I should break up those limb tangled lovers
Because I hear that that one, who's dating that one, gave that one chlamydia
and suddenly the air is too thick
And too hot
But my feet will not stop.
Because I owe my friend a favour.
But this hideous carpet might as well be an ocean
Because believe me, I'm drowning, adrift.
This feels like I've left my stomach
Somewhere four feet behind me
And I've always been so used to listening to my gut.

This is not fear, this is anxiety
The two are so easily confused, but
Unfortunately by now I know the difference
More intimately than many people do.
Fear is a cold steel
Sharp knife, with smooth un-serrated edges
That drives into your chest or your head or your belly
And it takes what it wants from you, and then is wrenched back out
And its painful, but its usually there for a reason.
Fear can be conquered
Don't laugh I've seen it
Fear grapples with the human spirit in the eyes of every
Soldier still fighting
No matter what the battlefield.
Be it desert or office or kitchen or playground.

But anxiety is fears younger cousin
and it is a wire sponge against your chest
Like the ones they use on cleaning dishes.
And it grates at you until you're raw
And scrubs at every inch of skin
There's hardly a moment when you're not itchingly pink
Until it feels as though your ribs are utterly exposed
And every eye is fixed on what you hide within.
But that's not the worst thing about it.
That's not what drives you every second, mad.
I can handle the razor winged moths that make a home in my stomach
The worst, is the irrational nature of this relative of fear.

I should not be afraid to open my mouth
To be seen, and immediately judged
Even though I know in reality
The most important people won't reckon me
On the first impression, first look, first word.
But I still am
I am scared, and that is terrifying.
And I know that this might just pass
It could be teenage angst
My lack of self confidence holding me back.
But whatever it is.
Right now, it is Everest.
So don't you dare tell me just to get over it.

But as I sidle up beside my best friend, I know she doesn't understand
And I hope she never does.
One, Two, Three.
Three people who are new,
Three epinephrine shots of irrational anxiety pumping through my blood.
And she smiles so encouragingly,
All yellow and marmoset eager.
And I take one, two, three deep breaths of smoky air,
And let my mind play marionette to the corners of my mouth,
Tugging them into a smile that's somewhat believable.
And the first word that tumbles out of my mouth is a hideously unimaginative,
“Hey.”
But they don't seem to mind.

This small talk we're making, that for me is colossal
Gradually settles the pinpricks of venom beneath my skin
Into something entirely more manageable.
And by the end of the night
Two of those three people are no longer somebody new.
And I feel as though I've made the progress of a few meters
In climbing my Everest.
But there's still miles and miles to go.  
But the thing to remember...
What I must remember,
No matter what mountain anxiety builds for you,
Be it Atlas or Snowdon,
Be it at a school, or an office or at home,
Every step that we make, on our own or pushed forward by friends
Is another meter or mile, on this arduous road
That will eventually lead to a summit, ten times more beautiful
Than the valley we just left below.

I was raised in a house that seemed big on the inside
With a garden that was larger than the rest of the earth.

My bedroom was shared. But there was more than enough room.
So proportionally, I always felt small.

The curtains were vines in a furniture jungle
The bookcase a tower of riddles.

I used to spend my days inside the wardrobe
Because I heard there were whole worlds inside of them.

The sofa was a cloud, I liked to sink into it.
The bathtub an ocean, that I was constantly floating adrift in.

The TV screen might as well have been
A stage compared to me when I was younger.

Even the cupboard was a cavernous place, my sparrowbone limbs
Would fold up only slightly, but still there would always be too much space.

Space blank as a bullet hole
Like the gaps between stars.

An absence you're constantly falling through. When you're so tiny,
And surrounded by nothingness, its easy to forget that you're not nothing too.

I was compressed in the classroom behind a scrawl splattered desk
The lines of graffiti looked mammoth.

The teachers were giants
And I was just jack

They ground up my brains to make alphabet stew
And gave me only a handful of A, B's and C's back.

The playground was Olympus, I was acting atlas
I felt as though the whole world was on my shoulders.

See I was a really loud kid, always shouting out
Because I thought that was the only way to get anyone to hear me.

Lungs like an opera singer by the age of just nine
And in the habit of using embellishment.

I've been where you've been kid,
I've seen it all.

I know exactly how the sight of a bullies hand-down button-up
Can be enough to make you choke...

Sometimes it still is enough.

And I know I don't look so tiny now
I expanded as I grew more constricted.

Trying to compensate for the empty place,
I had made a habit of occupying.

See I understand, I know
But I promise you, one day you'll stop standing under things
Find your feet and grow.

The leaves of your family tree do not define
Who you'll be
You do not have to hold up those branches all alone.

And I know I look so small right now
But in here, in here
I'm mammoth.

And I promise the world is not so nothing filled
When everyone is giant.

What do you do at 3am when you're tired and bored and its raining?

Maybe this is punishment.
For eating those grapes before you paid for them in Sainsburys.
Or that time you forgot who Buzz Aldron was, or when you took pleasure at beating a five year old at Cluedo.
She started crying, and even then, you still
would not relinquish your title.
Maybe its for that time
You were accidentally racist  to the chinese guy taking your order.
Or when you forgot to buy your mum a birthday card, or when you made fun of your best friend for not being taller.
Or when you said, 'Maybe
selective breeding in humans,
Is not such a bad thing after all.'

Yes, Its definitely punishment for that.

But maybe its for all the litter you've dropped, inadvertently or on purpose.
Or for last week when you accidentally kicked the cat, or for stealing those library books,
For swearing at kids
and blaspheming at the dinner table,
Christ!
Maybe its for nicking your brothers chips, even when you're not really that hungry.
For halfhearted apologies handed out like office stationary, for scoffing at most modern art.
For not revising when you
Really, really should
...But telling your parents you are.

But even with all of this, isn't the punishment, just a little bit too harsh?

Well now you are sarcastic, and bitter and pessimistic at least 90% of the time.
And you do hide the fact that you quite like country music, and that you have a blanket with sleeves (and you genuinely use it) and that you're really rather patriotic at heart.
And you didn't say all that stuff when you should have.
And you said all that other stuff you didn't mean
And you spend far too much of your time
Invested in impressing the people you're never going to see again.

And you realize all of this... at three o'clock in the morning, alone but for the fading of the rain.

And you swear to yourself, with all the fervour of a tired insomniac. That tomorrow.
There. Will. Be. Change.
But in the cold, harsh light of nine o'clock the same day. Six hours after you fell asleep. You resign yourself to the fact that last nights punishments can all be absolved, by a nice warm cup of tea.
And despite what you say
at 3am when you're tired and bored,
listening to the sound of the rain.
You will always be a pessimistic idiot, with delusions of grandeur.
That watches too much American TV.

The four wheels that carry my family
Into the path of the moon.
We're away on a hairline breeze, he says
Dashboard shoulders jumping
With every bump on the road.
The earth is never far enough for him
Sea shoes well worn from perpetual wading
Sand in the sun lines of his eyes.
I hurtle Father.
Fists, teeth; I have forgotten the art of talking
Too wrapped up in the headlights growling,
Swearing apart confidently.
All my smiles like a train waiting.
Never fear Daughter.
Those are fireflies that wind their way
above the speedometer
And we'll make a space prophet of you yet.

The radio clicks the worn out song
of days gone by and governments gone wrong.
Its static, the rolling of clouds before a thunderstorm.
The newsreaders rustling papers,
High pressure systems on the move.
The hush of the people as they gather to listen
Breath bated, held back by obedient tongues
The bulletins are nicotine bullets,
they're so incredibly easy to get hooked on.
News comes down the wire like commuters on the tube
Jostled and shunted along.
Through underground networks it spreads
With absolute efficiency
And yet the platform on which it departs is more than often wrong.
Outside the park swings are empty,
There is nothing unusual about that
But the kids sit by speakers with their hands over their ears
The high frequency waves dance around them.
This day is marked down as one they wish they could forget.
The headlines blazed into their minds,
More dead.
Oppressed.
Injustice.
Religion.
Elections.
Disasters.
Tornadoes.
Politicians flustered.
Corruption.
Famine.
And Hollywood Blockbusters.
And now we move on to the traffic
Two hundred more just come in from Pakistan
They say there's a pile up in Europe
There's an awful lot of wreckage on the road
and now they are left with no place to call home.
The M1 is running slow again, no surprise in that
Row after row of red brake lights
Join them together to make constellations
And you have your very own metropolitan galaxy.
Because who needs the stars when we have brake lights!
And who needs the moon when we have Big Ben.
Down the telephone lines comes a battalion of lies
“Honey... I'm going to have to work late.'
If you listen very closely to the nine o'clock news
You can hear the reporters wristwatch
And every five seconds that tick on top of his pulse
Marks another slice of news coming in.
The little hand chases the big hand
You cannot tell the time with just one.
The details escape somewhere between
The real world and what's put down in papers.
The trouble with black and white
Is that you miss all the shades of grey
And if you've never seen stars
Then brake lights, are just brake lights
And disaster is just another day.

Living here is like being raised by wolves;
You **** the ones you love to build cities.
Swallow enough tar and your insides forget what its like
To not be ready for a funeral.
And every blink's an inch more time
You haven't got the hands for
And you yearn for the years that aren't this one.

"I drew you a picture."
She said.
Palms open.
It was an outline of her hands in rosepetal pink.
Valiantly spread out on the page.

"Do you like it?"
She said.
Eyes open.
The outline of my face in the seafoam blue shades of them.
Hopefully spread out on her face.

                                                          ­                                               "How could I not."

To be alone is so different from lonely
Lonely is a strange shade of fear
Fear that you will be lonely forever
Fear of an absence of care.
From all those that surround you,
Envelop you, clothe you
To be so obviously apathetic to plight.

If the sun was alone there in the sky
To be lonely is to stand in the night.

I saw a man dancing the other day
His dance was a walk 
But it sang as it passed.
His footsteps were balanced
On a tightrope of serenity
It was more graceful than any waltz 
Or ballet that I have ever seen.
He looked at me as if to say
Why don't we all dance this way?
As the limbs of life
Come to gather us in
Why don't we feel happy to see them?
He stared through a window of pity
At us
Mere mortals
Still walking in a lolloping fashion.
Yet to discover freedoms tune.
And I looked back
Through a doorway of sadness
Unable to step over the threshold
Constrained by the branches
Of what I have built
In my own efforts to make myself
Happier.

sometimes i can't trust myself not
to buckle under the weight of
your near enough's and almost
words you can't quite force out from
between my teeth. like the accusatory
cutlery your eyes never fail to
reflect this would look better with
the lights off and between sheets but
then again i always have had trouble
with the twin tormentors dark
and sleeping. sometimes i feel as
though red is the only colour i know
and you insist on inhabiting it you have
ruined sunsets and arsenal and jelly
for me. like i was not made to walk
through fire just as well as ocean i have
merely forgotten the way spoon fed
on ashes and bad pennies glinting
off the electrics i refuse to give you
my spectrum. sometimes my
ribcage admirably lives up to its
name and i find myself choking
on thoughts i'd sworn not to
inhale. like non newtonian fluid
i have inherited your sudden cusps
and contradictions lit up momentarily
only to be put out when i am around you  
i find myself craving cigarettes.

If this is all there is
If everything I've seen so far in life  
Is all there is to live,
And you are never ever coming back
Then let me be happy with it.
Because I so desperately want to be happy.
Let me see every new new day like
A mother sees her child, eyes open wide
Staring at something I had a hand in making
That could just as easily go wrong as it could right.
Let me hear every seven AM wake up call as
The bells of St Peters to the ear of a choir boy
Calling me to worship with unquestionable faith.
Let me eat every burnt slice of toast like
A convicted criminal ensconced in solitary
Devours his last meal on death row.
Let me feel laughter as something other,
Than just the vibration of vocal chords.
Let me always speak with the conviction
Of a dreamer, a believer, an activist
Shouting every syllable
From the pinnacle of an overturned soapbox
And treating every street corner like a stage.
Let me stop trying to predict rain
And accept that if there are going to be downpours
There are certain seeds I need to sow.
Let me stop watching the television screen
As though all of life's mysteries
Can be answered by documentaries.
And that I can finally tune in, by connecting with fictional shows.
Let me see wonder
Because for a long time now I've been dreaming in colour
Its real life that seems trapped in monochrome.
If this is all there is
If everything I've lived in life has taken all I have to give
And you are never ever coming back.
Then lets get it over with.
Because I so desperately want this to be over.
Let me breathe in smoke for the rest of my days
Until tar spills from my lungs, to my heart
And burns my capillaries with that nicotine flame
Let me make heartbreak an art.

Because it reminds me of you
And I don't deserve any better.
Let me walk like I'm walking on eggshells
How I always used to do for you.

You wear your eyes
Like a woman wears diamonds
And the pearls of your teeth like a veil.
Every two months careful hands
Strapped onto scissors
Trim moonlight to crown you anew.
I drape myself across your mouth
Held up by the bower of your lips.
Laughter lines like
Trails of a knife.
Take this, and this, and this…

You use your hands
Like the whole world is made of paper
And your arms are the trees it was stripped from.
Every week a little more snow
Falls onto the hills of your shoulders
And slips to the ground as ashes.
I tumble into your embrace
Held in the ring of your limbs.
Veins like ink
Etched into your skin.
Remember this, and this, and this…

You hold your heart
Like it’s the tide coming in
And you’d like nothing better than for it to sink.
Every day is a monsoon
And love plummets in drops
Matching the beat of your pulse.
I plunge into the depths
Drawn like the moon by the ocean.
Bodies both rivers
Destined to clash.
Have this, and this, and this…

Goodbye
I guess
What more is there to say
Farewell
See you later
Live long and prosper.
I think I'll miss this actually
I'll miss some of you quite terribly
And I will miss each and every one of you at least a little bit.
Because thats what you do
When people you've known
For five whole years of your life,
Suddenly just
Aren't there anymore
You miss them
And you know what... that is alright.
Because I know we're too old or too cool to really like school
And I don't know about you
But I'm sorry for me it has just lost the magic.
Maybe it has something to do with the amount of
Homework we're set.
Or maybe its just because unlike primary school
You don't have a sand pit.
But, I am only sixteen
So what do I know.
But we should still say goodbye
Because what this place has taught us,
Goes far beyond just finding X
In mathematical equations
And yes I might still not know how to calculate titration
But far more friendships have been made here
Than chemistry sets broken
And we've formed bonds,
Not just covalently
We don't share atoms
But we all share similarities
And I've learnt right from wrong
As well as metaphor from simile
I know definition of friendship
But I will still forget how to spell necessity
I've learnt the truth about equality
Not just from R-E or P-C-E
But from how I treat Y-O-U and how you treat me
Out there on the playground
There have been fought more battles
Than every single one we're taught about in history
But I've learnt how to read the signs
Admittedly not always effectively
About when its time to shut up
Because its often mapped out
On peoples faces like geography
And I've learnt that the suns gravitational pull
Is not the only thing that causes us to revolve
Because we spin around each other
Not always touching,
Not always interacting
But for five long years
We've spun together
And that means something.

The thing that hurts most about growing up
Is losing table settings.
First we were six,
Then five,
Now four.
I dread the next place-mat leaving.

Fat lumps of butter drip from my mothers fingers
As she realizes she's once more forgotten to account for our losses.

Sugar sweet, my sister, cracks eggs for the mixture
Her smile splits her face like the line down a peach.

My brother fetches glasses and de-clutters the table,
Like a general wiping clean his strategic map.

The thing that hurts most about growing up
Is losing table settings.
First we were six,
Then five,
Now four.
And I'll be the next place-mat leaving.

A sparrow passing through this home,
Flitting with the wind round one eave then another
Could tell me no more about you
For you are my heaven.
And my love is leagues deeper
And devotion far greater
Than what these flint walls of life can fathom.
So do not yet submit to fear
We will crest above the waves of parting.
Mottled wings will lift us far from here.
And this end will birth beginnings.
Though you and I for now exist in separate lands
I know time is more twisted than even the fingers of our joined hands
And it is for this reason I say with utter conviction
We will meet, and shall have met, and are soon to meet again.