I bet you're #$@&%! other girls
who don't brush ***** out their curls
the type that rides santander bikes and
can't fall for people their mate likes, who
play piano when they say they will,  
and write about romantic things, like walking tightropes
blowing glass or #$@&%! in your room in spring

I bet you read to them in Latin, bet
they think you're chatting... utter #$@!
and that there's fairy lights above their beds
where you've cuddled all their friends,
it's almost poly, am i wrong? platonic head, you all get on
yes, and they sing
and look like disney when they're close
they're milkmaids, pornstars, near divine
no plasters needed, they shave fine
;
anyway,
I bet he'd love to #$@& them too,
because they're handy with their hands,
they have craft tables or play the bass in some punk band
and when they go to galleries they understand
why some artists are grouped with others when
to me it's all whatever, i'll see them all whatever

oh and bless! their kisses mean things
and mine are ill-thought-out and grime
they remind you of the time, with me it's always getting late...
i'm an r/truecrime date-  ​
i think that dahmer's in my teeth
not great for someone scared of meat...

and when you, when you, when when, when, um, i

i bet you're #$@&%*! them and more,
i bet he'd love to do it too,
his ice clear veins like Finnish waters
your endless thirst for Athens' daughters
but i don't really want to know,
don't need you randomers to call;
no cigar shops, sketchpad summer,
not the clash or prop-up vogues
what i really need is sunlight
and myself
i miss her most

shaving dry to set a spark
rub in soap and ride it out
the fingers are so clumsy but
talent brags foam up the mouth

is it the youthful face, or dress  
that clings like foil around the waist?
not self-awareness, but contempt
the true enlightened prophet makes

morality like marbles,
shining silly and misguided;  
never falling out of love, but  
finding better ways to hide it

then from the grimy floor
of the lavender fields' portaloo swells
an endless summer, and it creeps
up the blood orange walls;
each time i take a breath,
the plastic warbles like an underwater thing
we make little whooshes together  
it swells up and leaks out yellow

like i fear the girl's head will,
across the road,
all shaved and shiny like a soft boiled egg
fit to crack if the wrong car swerves
the wrong way...
anyway,
cancer?
at such a young age?

or the bees outside
springing up cushions,
decorative soaps, honey,
chocolate even out there from the earth
and i can't kick back and laugh
at how much they must be worth
because my god-

i'm scared of bees-

especially with the lavender
mingling with the sweat
in the soft part behind my knees
because what if they chose to stick there
and build empires from my flesh instead?

i'd be like that little girl;
as good as

anyway
sometimes my thighs conduct
like they're made of brass
and there's hail marys in the dust
tiny earthquakes caused by trucks
the tip of an ice cream cone
that isn't soggy

that's good enough

i stayed a little longer
than the trickle did

will you come up though?
will i ****
love the bones of you
bones is right

we were circumstance
and christ did we **** the fat
out of that
ripped through the tendons
pummelled the muscle  
gnawed through the marrow
even the cat wouldn't touch us
way we are now and she'll
eat about anything

well.. there's still my thigh
to pummel i mean
in biology until end of term
then summer  
you can watch me puke in bushes
yes summer
blind drunk i won't know you
that ways better
we kiss and act like strangers
so sweet then to each other

all this hatred at the end
they say that that's familiar
it's funny, that resentment
it's just love in a wig
pig, ex PM
that's us
that's us
we are far too similar
for our own good.

i endeavour to burst
my glum queasy organs
by binging on the sun;
like a fattened sow
that wobbles to slop
against the mist of *****

i'll **** the lemon hard
mouth spasming with beams  
till the rinds soak up my gums
where the nihilism clots
like plaque around a tooth  
fouling up my lunch

maybe i'll explode
across a hopscotch grid
they can twist my guts for rope  
and the sticky sun will mop me up
sour blood to goddess rust
now that's what hope feels like,
i'm sure.

Warmth drools like a baby
On the grime grey rooftops
Liberalism spawned dystopian blocks
The windows are never washed there
It's the rain that reveals their guts

On your bus stop murders and attacks
Rife on the Piccadilly line, the hum
Of melted Smirnoff bottle angels lays
A drunken lesbian kiss of delight
Party people live for the moment

When you step outside in the morning
To work for callus marks and gas, the trees
That line your route bob thick punk manes
In time to the beat of the rocking trains
They know what The Clash is about

And when you come back from a getaway
Seaside trip with sand in all your cracks
A little salt on your lips, an assault in the paper
You wallow in the polluted city allure
Like you're breathing in god's ****** incense

There it lies, the roll-up skyline
That would make any two-shoed god give in
To railway bridge peer pressure on his chest
At 4 am with deodorant blowtorches spinning
Leaving entrails of delight in the filthy half-blackness

It's a privilege to live in for sure.

unwashed shrimp; sick pink wishes
putrid puking and hot weather flashes
headaches and nausea for forgetting me
raw plates of karmic misery, i drank too much

I'll weather it with you through the phone
congealed seafood skies when i was alone
bred the bacteria that made you so ill
petri dish summer, i never wanted
to **** you, i drank too much

forty degrees like a tenerife beach
maybe from now you'll remain within reach
below the surface marine life bubbles
the fish of my thoughts will swim out of trouble
from now on
maybe I won't drink too much

spin the table knock the room
off its axis children gurgling ***
through juice box straws milk teeth
burst the confines of adult gums
knuckles fly like ****** dice
cards are chewed crackers shuffled

in the corner hear the ******* pray
furious at hosts of gay angels singing
his mother enchanted by female flesh
wobbling like jelly in the grape bowls
she'll be stalking some skirt tonight
he's yanking his hair to stop yanking chains

the political right rests a hand on her shoulder
the girl is happysad at the rain indoors
they slosh around and dance to silence she
is sadhappy and knows how her father thinks
siblings that weren't hers rule family frames
free market capitalism shines like a baby

it is a balmy november spring nobody
is ever hungover aroused or defeated
love takes three spins of a screwdriver to trap
there is something sweet in the council mail
they dangle by the ears from the base of the sofa
the ladies are eating cigars to keep warm

though they don't need to;
it's always sunny in england.

slipping drinks into cups
for scientific mirth only
a few OH groups and she totters
wobbling on cherry jelly knees

glass ****** dry like mango
back on your feet with lightning
shocking your hair into witchy frizz
clamping fairy dust in bottle necks

third fourth fifth keep on
consensual poisoning can't be
morally rotting perverted frissons
of thrill you feel as they sway
have something to do with the hour

incapacitation by grace
soft peach smile as you pour
generous purge juice on filthy ice-

if her blood orange brain clumps on concrete
will the fruit of control taste too nice?

it's been fun, still
there will always be the past
maybe i can crawl inside it
like those muddled in the freezing wood
slit open a horse carcass to survive
late at night maybe i'll lie there
tasting the drip of equine blood
listening to you laugh
it's as sweet a future as any
we might have shared, at least
there is no longer anything
you could do to stop
the way i love you matting my hair
and i'll reek of entrails forever

you ask me what I do
when the acid rain comes
to leave ulcers on my cheeks
roughens my skin like eczema,  
teases blood from pockmarked flesh

it's simple and pure, like snow
i feel my best stood at the window
tongue melting with ashen flakes
hailing the nuclear fallout

the orange sky is a cigarette from god
we drag on it like starving lions on antelope
there is spice, sunlight in the dust
it'll clot up the throat, but it's worth it for

the guilty pleasure of knowing
everything else is crumbling, more

are my lips too thin
so the words cannot flounce
or somersault with flair
they break their pretty necks  
land with a painful yell  
and flounder in your grimace  
helpless

are my teeth too crooked
like a metal fence deformed
the sentences tear and topple off
flattened children in the muck    
mangled by dogs
their sad filthy hands pinch your ears  
hopeless

if i dressed it all up
like a call-girl, ruby lipstick,
fishnet stockings on my thoughts
and i danced out the poetry
on your lap, in the dark,
would you be fine with me
being in love with you?

i don't know

A little girl splashing in the rain
Among cesspools and fantasy green
Kicking up the moss, ferns, dogshit
Soiling her unspoiled baby shoes
Mummy can't grab hold of her
Her arms are tiny ***** of light
She thrives on carrot mush and mischief

Fox **** can't throw her off
It's a fresh scent, her button nose
Doesn't yet crinkle; sour is captivating
She doesn't know there are homeless men
She's stamping on the mulch
The fairies nip at her ankles, they'll sew
Her a twiggy crown for her damp curls

Later, a pebble, chiselled, bitter,
Thrown vindictively from a high-rise window
Will try to knock it down
She'll learn about money and hate
And scream at the rain
Like she's trying to lacerate it
Maybe she'll watch it bleed

Someone will break her heart and nobody
Will be there to make it right
Apart from maybe a smelly poet
Eating a takeaway dinner
A few decades away in a stinking room
Probably boozed up

A little girl splashing in the dogshit
Unaware of gypsies, robbers, death
And me just stood there trembling
Thinking lucky,
Lucky her.

i enjoy england

with its little houses
hips brushing, faces smushed
together to revel in quaint rumour
among gentrified lilies and pink
lady apples that blush in the summer

its walkways and alleys
dribbles of soft lamplight guiding
the drunkard, moth-brained and ill
with silk threads to a blind spot
of amber where muck can be spilled

the people on transport
with their airy talk, their mindless
silence, heads lolling idly on
windows, eyes crumpling like napkins
against the leaking crumbs of warm scone sun

pretty little England
where exploitation is vintage
and runs like rosé
down the dusty store windows

here we are free to stumble
down streets with sweat
in our hair and manic karaoke
reverberating off the walls
glee drinking is government protected

I'm quite in love with england,
this field of dew and white roses
fed by gore and sweet tradition
where fresh-faced, sunny children play.

sunlight licks the kitchen floor,
but sunlight is delirious;
soft-brained, a half-wit,
deaf to the creak and slam of doors
blind to crumpled t-shirts
lacking tact, a clinging idiot
leaning on whitewashed walls
to read what's in the cat scratch

it doesn't understand
it wants to play, it dribbles
it pokes my thighs, it dimples
rolls around in the soil
shimmies in the grasses
brings back the scent of warmth
on its grimy cheeks

it's just a child,
it doesn't know I've lost you
can't smell the stomach acid
or register my shame
it tilts its head, i slap it
it was there, should remember
your soft skin, your name

i melt into my pillow
pull the shutters on my eyes
don't think about the water
or the *****
or the mauve congealing blood
forget about the battered sun
just wait for moon to rise.

limbs that sweat in plastic
doctor's bin-bag clothes
hospitals like landfills
landslide horror wards
clap like it's been scripted
casualty- stream live
sunlight voids the distance
summer pressure- vibe
queen is on TV
joke is on the screen
everyone's outside
looking for a sign
bathing in the light
bouncing off the streets
who cares about the queen?

the scent of a day dissolved
sweat rolled off, sun slipped
from the crown of the head to the shoulders
where it rests, like a cape, when you touch me

and us sunk and laughing
in the glowing amber light
bronzed vanilla from the bottle
talking about scrapes and the colour jade

you and I and broadway hip-hop
and your mother calls about her meds
that you didn't steal, though you steal time
as the peach dribbles soft into dusk

the softness of a day distant
behind the amber glass where i keep
all my pretty mortal thoughts
where you belong, incendiary,

cracking fizzy out of reach
behind amber on an evening
that puts other springs to shame.

all of this
the world like a piece of meat
humor hatred saturday jogs
leaking balanced unbalancing

all of this
fleshy tender company
herbs conflict flooded staircases
dribbling sun on bus journeys  

kisses on benches
playful slaps pushes shoves
hugs

and us just sat here
tapping out words
listening to muffled guitars
the hum of the pipes
the flicking of pages

and us just sat here
opening curtains
remembering red hair
snippets of conversation

and us just sat here
the world on a plate
steaming bleeding sizzling
a slab of death of love of something

and us just sat here
nauseated and longing
the flies will come soon
they aren’t vegetarian.

the sky is so blue,
the ******
topsy-turvy vase dribbling sun-spit
crashing around
with its mucus rays
stumbling, heaving on doorsteps
punching drunkenly through windows
giddy and chaotic as it *****
air greedily upwards
windmilling glory
away from us as we exhale-
"what a perfect day
the perfect day to stay
inside
the perfect day to **** away"
the swaying, nauseous people say,
and the sky, the tipsy ******,
giggles as it throws itself
blue, unsubtle, with ripped tights,
glistening thighs, come-hither eyes,
unsteady, with love,
at the trees.

The dinner guests have all agreed:
"Why yes, we love the poor;
The softened little sunken eyes-
What's there not to adore?
The way they dress in raw distress
It's flaunted like Dior-
For heaven's sake, there's lots of steak
Who's for a little more?"

Now that the meal is over
The subject's come and passed
The dinner guests compare their crests
Sat smugly on their ***
Now that the sun is setting
The poor rise from the streets
It's time to stumble round again
And scrounge some food to eat.

If we ate the rich
We could build playhouses from their bones
Paint fairytales onto marrow
Watch our children dig pixie dust from the grooves
Charleston to their windchime laughter

If we ate the rich
We could pave roads with their teeth
Crushed into twinkling mosaics
Speed in glee down the polished calcium roads
Walk on blooms of gold and lilac at sunset

If we ate the rich
Their skin could line our altars
Or catch the heat slipping through our walls
To warm our hearts or frozen feet
Whichever love was needed most

If we ate the rich
And cleaned our teeth for ligaments
And spat out the fatty gristle
And when all that remained of the last billionaire
Were just an eyesocket and some coins

We could sit back,
Minds and bellies full to the brim,
Fragmented bourgeoisie burps ringing, melodious,
And laugh at those who claimed, in the old days,

"You can't eat money".

I hate pottering around inside my mind
With no reason or rhyme, like I'm retired-
Poking through cobwebbed corners,
Pulling at age-old tablecloths, considering
A garden party for me and my little lost smile
There in the half-wild,
With the sun like messy oil I'll have to wash
Out of my hair and clothing when I'm done.

I hate playing docile card games alone,
Laying out plans like pictures I'll never colour in-
My doughy brain pokes stimulus off the shelf  
And traps itself in kindergarten daydreams;
I fingerpaint endlessly,
Defining the world through crayon senses,
Crushing, mushing cookies and shaking
Clumsy maraca beats.

If only I could lie down in soft rustic flesh
Snatching handfuls of it to conceal my skin
Finally, finally filling myself in
Buried alive for good
And be expelled, again, into blazing harshness
Choking on the earth that forms my body
Crying, crying for hope and fresh presence
Coming to life for good.

Scratching itches with bottle caps, grooves
In my brain cut from diamonds and blood
Flinging my shadow like darts at a wall
Frustration, when dizzied, transforms into love

Scabs and guitar riffs I'd shred with my teeth
Gnawing her lips to bake blackberry flesh
Stamping on baubles, an aureate hail
In a winter that reeks of sweet summer death

This circus of wildfire charcoals my hair
I'm yearning to stay but it blazes me out
Cold air and bored stares, a knock on the jaw
I thought I had finished bedazzling myself

I've underwhelmed the brightness I chase
Adrenaline fawns over prettier girls
Cold and alone in a fitful night's sleep
When you're fevered and worn, the splinters stick deep.

Little miracles are fireflies;
When I catch one, I snap it
To sizzling gloop on my palm

So your god could patch my blisters
With golden thread, instead of the raw
Scraped rubber I spin on

Or tug his dandelion angels from the grave
To levitate me, regal, never to walk another step
Still, I'd deny him.

Little miracles are broken glass;
When the sun drizzles, they could be
Tiny flesh-encrusted jewels

But your god could heal my eyesight
Enhance my Eden to iridescence,
Blooming softly, gleaming,

Or clasp my skull like china forever
Precious, careful as the ****** mother with my brain
I swear I'd deny him.

In a fit of passion, push
Blazing rafts down from heaven
Euphoric streams through my window

Replace my dropped smiles
Like old, shameful sweet wrappers
With hosts of lovers, heather, art,

And me, still scrawling
'Return to sender'

Little miracles are burbling infants
Superseded by the howl of war
They do not revive fossils or friends

Or pelt Australian treetops with fluorocarbon
They are glitter in the carpet
A barbeque for nirvana

A burden
You must deny, deny, deny
(You have my word that so will I).

Give the knots that line my spine
The milky film that clots my eyes
The pride that grips my jaw
To be suspended

Hair blown out in rat-tail haloes
By soft ochre dispersions
To bob, a boat returned
Plunged into the myth of algae
Nymphs that bring dimension to the depths

To be an oil spill clearing canvas
A gliding watercolor rag or
Submerged irradiant water hag
Concealed by a cocoon

The overhang where beads of light
Exaggerate the urban dream
Freed from the stingy binds of gravity
The filthy nihilistic scene above

Just on display way down there
Beneath the ziplocked airless sky
For passers-by to glimpse the paradox
This wilful tragedy of mine

Through a waterlogged trachea
Umbilical cord to godliness stretched
Returned to me mangled and sore
Drowned in the canal of Little Venice.

saturated with ***** don't watch the news
be it
throw your head back so the oil of the sun can
slip a ***** leer down your open trachea
brave and the knives can't inspire the fear
glad you're here?

great

empty just pools only watering holes
don't move
not an ant in your plasma gold cold and clear
out of ideas even mucus stains disappear
are you still here?

no

so

saturated with *****, don't watch the news
feel it
and the sun is extinguished
and your throat peeling, yelling and stripped
and you're not really present
for any of it.

love will not because it cannot

heal it has no cough drops
chug it like syrup and you will retch

dance it neglects its limbs
tangled bruised an epoch of breakage

smile its teeth are blackened sugar
liquorice diabetes thick as sharpie night

be because it isn't
anything more than a mask
for lustful, ill-born fright.

Dehydration will
Crimp and squeeze you
Wrinkle your bones like paper fans
Lacerate your doily throats
Won't you package water for it?

Starvation yearns to
Yank and stretch you
Flesh out the pitfalls in your face
Coax out your cabernet ribs
Won't you import produce for it?

Exhaustion could
Squander your crystalline minds
Flay you right down to the core
Burn you out like your kings of Denmark
Don't think, build homes for it.

Apathy will tenderly itch at your lips
Plaster your eyes, emblazon your ribs
Pepper regrets in your Vogue cigarettes

But let you live, collect your pay
Be a friendly face, at the end of the day.

Poetry sits like a cat on my chest
It purrs at me,
Licking the tips of my fingers
Pressing its soft beating belly to mine
I used to have to cajole it up here

But I'm so mean to it tonight  

I do not tap its ears or rub its back
Too tired now to plait its fur
And call its affection pretty
But I lie quite still and I try to forget
I'd rather shove it off and have a cigarette.

I cup a paper likeness in my hand
A flower, you say, but it's dusted
In prussian blue that stings my eyes
The colour of the end of movies, twilight
Mirrored in the smoky Thames

How can it be a flower? It doesn't breathe
I call it an onion

It spreads its biting petals out in agreement
A reminder of what it is to cry
Halfway through a song even though
I've only just finished laughing
Alcohol will do that

You name it "flower"
After your mother's smile, perhaps,
Or the gentle drift of lightning
In a summer storm, but to me
It is only a vegetable, round, familiar,
Painful with nostalgia, not saccharine
With some aesthetic pinterest sentiment

I grab a stranger's cigarette ****
Litter the paper creation with ashes, watch
The silky tissue wither
Like blind marble turning grey with age

This is what I think of your flower

How can you be happy, hang it on your wall
It's so thin, so bitter and dead
Where is the romance? Confusion rises with the fire
How can you be happy when this is fake

The warmth ****** my fingertips
I stamp it out just in time on the street
Look, the paper
It's crumpled
This is what I think of your flower
This is what I think of your happiness.

But you asked for sunlight
So sunlight you must have, nothing
Apart from spinning gold
In places you will never reach, nothing
Beyond an incendiary bore
A couple thrilled little waves
An abundance of rays, observe how sometimes
They make the flakes of dead skin dance
Turn a few times in the air,
You asked for sunlight
So sit there and watch it before it dissolves
Everything is temporary,
Give it a little smile so it knows
You're still appeased when tasting its glow.

Darling, your fingertips
Are such a warm shade of life
They leave stains on the water you brush,
Though my blood slips away quite at ease

After you've pulled away
The blueprint for your genesis stays
Penny-shaped, an indent on the surface
Spread outwards in a wingspan and blooming

Encouraged by the breeze, you take root
In the flesh of the fountain through the day
And at night, a new you steps out to greet me
With the new moon
Perhaps I'm dreaming

Ethereal, you appear to me
Dressed in dilute headlight gleam,
The water gives rise to your colours
So I can peer through my curtains, trembling

And watch you, once again,
Washing your blameless hands of me
In the pool of the night sky which blazes
Deep yellow with the blueprint for another you
The cycle continues before my blurry eyes

Maybe this time you'll bring Armageddon down
To see me soon, soon
I'll watch the sky erupt with love in silence

At least when you push me away a third time
I won't have to miss you ever again,
Consumed by ravenous starlight.

The rich herbal infusion of your blood
It blots on paper, makes funny shapes,
You giggle-
Teabag skin stripped by a paperclip,
Torn so easily, it smells like rain
Like the first time your bare feet touched soil

You long to lick it,  
It's the liquified form of tension,
Some inner tangle propelled outwards,
Tempting, tempting,
Like stuffing a yarn doll with its own string;
The re-consumption is only natural,
But allow it still to flow-

It is water let loose from a dam or a hose
That's been blocked with moulding leaves
And now sprays fitfully just because it can,
A thousand explosives set loose
From their trembling captors.

By no means is it neat,
But the sieves of your veins have kept it
Fresh and scarlet with health,
So it isn't unpleasant to look at.

Drain it, let it pour like honey across the table
Where your family sits, silent and traumatised,
Watching the deluge do what it does best.

Pour them a cup of it to have with their slices
Of cake and biscuit crumbs on their plates;
Haemoglobin is good for the brain,
Gentle terror for the soul.

Blackout blinds and ditzy drunk, I lost
My breath it tangled with your fairy lights
Words like ripped petals collapsed, sad,
On your sheets and we are such teenage cliches
I cried about him one more time when I got home

It felt like the moon, fuzzy and good, you said
I was telling the truth but the vermouth
Hinted I was lying just a little and I was
Undressed to my bra watching fake plastic stars
Swimming in positive vibrations from your speaker
Thanking you for caring

We weren't ****** but we acted like crackheads and still
I cried about him one more time when I got home
The solar system came full circle, it wasn't
Solipsisim anymore, I'm not alone
It's not a simulation I really am hungover
And very glad to be a part of your universe.

Oh, Gabriel.

Yank the headlines,
They're just vintage tape disguised;
Force the months to run to you,
Unspool like tired ribbons in your cupped palms.

Be generous with the scissors,
Rip apart the snippets that candy the truth,
Commit glamour-shot genocide to avoid
That little green glint of jealousy in your eye-

It's a useless emotion, and time will fly
Quicker without it nipping your ankles-

But pull them, beat their crawl into a sprint
And if they won't come,
Commission extra strength from the wind

Until you're gurgling ink and it's everywhere,
Political names that mean less to you now
Heaving their last breaths on your fingertips
Like tired wasps drowned in honey.

Pull until Doomsday is splattered across your window
And the fruit is rotting in its bowl
And the frenzied radio is yelling
Like a banshee the slogan
That puts a layer of ice into your liver-

History repeats itself
And the blood runs like a river.

You said I have you
So let me roll your cigarettes clumsily
Over the yellow vase I got from a stranger
Who was heading to the ODEON drunk
And we'll see if I still have you
If I still have you
I'll stroke your veins for an hour in a field
'Cause I love touching arms
If I still have you
We'll fall asleep on trains and wake
At one a.m. in the suburbs
I don't care about finishing poems
I'll buy the best edibles
That my loose change allows me
We'll listen to metal for the rest of our lives.

Physics acts on every one
Of the baffled little parts of me;
Gravity refuses to leave,
Drags my eyelids down to active sleep
(I chase after life in each scene)

And in the morning, right outside,
I fail to hide from the hands of the sun
Its filthy fingers pressed to my skin
Letting the heatrays in so easily
You'd think I was a plant.

(I need it as much as if I were green,
It turns my fears golden
And lights my eyes clean.)

Eager to grab control
From my little follower who rules it all
I pull muscles and harvest bruises-

Newton's third law, impact and force,
Of course:
Heads against shoulders,
Leather and walls,
Thighs against doors,
Lips on lips and disappointed synapses
That serotonin can't quite reach.

If I am blood,
Fresh experience is bleach.
(A dark little figure of speech)

But I light candles sometimes
Just to blow out the feathery flame
To feel temporary, precious
Like rosy musk enhanced by rain
And fill up the tightest corners in my mind.

Life, in the end, is stupidly kind.

And in the evening light, she and I remain,
The world entangled in my limbs,
Breathing in, and out

And in.

The silhouettes are all the same
When formed by falling nuclear rain;
And that's the real catastrophe:
No difference between you and me.

Look at me
I'm not wax. I'm still because I'm sad
And I want you to hold me.

Don't put a lighter by my legs
I'm not a candle that can melt
But I am stuck in place
'Cause I want you to hold me.

Look at me, those purple welts
Are there because I carved them
Into me, my flesh, not wax or dough.
My lips are lilac with infection.

All I want is for you to hold me.

Why do you think I'm wax?
Plastic doesn't melt as fast as me
Because I'm made of weakness
(Weakness and bad decisions)
And it's true I'm unresponsive

But your voice gives me goosebumps,
And goosebumps are real.

Surely? Surely you'd reply
If I told you I'd nearly died, wax can't die

Wax can't die or *****.

I'm waiting for a response because
Its 3:19 and I want you to hold me.

You complained when the drinks ran out;
Alcohol's synonymous with fun, you said.
I rolled my eyes, presented the concept
Of conversation- you wouldn't give in
And, in exasperation,
I split the bottle on the bone in my leg, shard to shin,
Muttered snidly as I bled,
"Hope you like red".

(Better to be, than keep feeling dead)

We sit there in the morning,
Me in your shirt, you slipping on mine,
Cold coffee in a cup I know you'll leave
But I give to you any way (it's tradition).
We spent last night inches apart
So close that our hair might have switched
Or your eyesight sharpen and mine diminish
To swap our pupils round.
We chew the names of old friends out like popcorn
Barely a breath given to any individual-
Me asking about yours, you teasing about mine
The two of us (mostly) never not in agreement.
It's been this way, one might say,
For 14 years and a little over that, too,
Not that I remember clutching your hand as we lay
Belly to belly on a baby rug with our parents watching.
Your smell becomes mine, so I associate it with home-
Sweet and fresh like candy tulips and soap.

We may as well be one; this is how little our paths diverge.

The middle of a pool of salt-
A Eucharist is said to float.
God's dignity created flesh,
A sacrifice the Pope could bless
If he could only find the shoes
To wade inside the choking blue
To pluck the body from the waves;
A child the doves were slow to raise.

She is turning in now,
To the syrup grey of the city scape:
Splintering limbs to fit into cracks
And stripping her flesh to line
The potholes; the local council smiles
At the diminished road repair fees.

She is turning in now,
Before the stairs to the sky break:
Spraying her blood on the old brick tiles
And plucking her vocal chords out
To busk with; the local players grin
At the spectacle which reins the coins in.

She is turning in now,
While the skyline is scrubbed senseless:
Shooting her gouged eyes up like marbles
So they are first to taste the morning light;
And this time only the birds laugh
For they recognise her need to escape-
And the circular motion of constant daybreak.

Flesh hooked on lampposts (ribbon-like)
Railings, bus stops, fences too
Unlooping miles and miles of eager skin
Colouring the pavement with vivid

Bone strung like windchimes (hoisted high)
In all the brightest places
Mainly on rooftops, we have an affinity
The sun splatters them pastel each day

Muscle- candyfloss on benches
Warm, thick (seeps into their mouths)
Chunks of wriggling bliss in the tighest corners
Embossed with sweet disaster sprinkles

Me me me; the essence of Me
My pulse spread out across the city
My veins in the underground
My heart cut up onto various plates
The pieces will take years to be found
And they're not all mine anymore.

But under the ivory moon
When I'm sighing, "I'm lost" to each night
My city rocks me straight to sleep
And walks me through the dying light
So while I'm here, my soul's all right.

The wine stains won't wash out
I hope you do soon, though.

Oh, but my darling
It's really the same-
Making you love me
And burning the rain.

I phase in and out of existence
Like today, for instance
Sunlight shines, my body's fine
Then back to evening distance.

On the surface of her eyes,
An algal pool in full bloom.
He wades in with his lashes, caught,
Stumbles around in the fishing nets
Soaked to the knee.

The place in which the oxygen should be
Is choked up now, perplexed, verdant,
A floating city of jealous skirts
Buffeted by a harsh March wind...

And further down, he has her pinned
Tracing paths in shallow waters
Close yet distant to seashell ears
Roughening the lilypad surface
With a single feather.

Through algal bloom, she wonders whether
He'll bother wading down to meet
The covert Atlantis beneath his feet.

You teach life to mimic art,

Even as you're dying.

Dark-

Yet listen to my heart:

"Now that's a craft worth trying."