A pomegranate on the tree has split, crying tears of blood onto its twisted roots.

Persephone sits alone in hell. Are her hands stained with blood or pomegranate seeds?

My mother always said
not to pry green buds o p e n - let them be.

Girls are drowning in such darkness that freedom looks like an open window.
Bodies smeared like make-up on the pavement.

Ophelia wan and glassy-eyed, drowned like a spring flower.
She’ll see no more male rage.

Men lusting after ******,
no thought for the daisy-fresh girl her mother remembers.

Why do they hunger so for our blood?

We ache as the earth aches
where she’s been violated; skies
beaten black and blue shroud their stars in clouds.

In a daisy-strewn twilit meadow Persephone, violet-eyed, watches
her mother and lover fight to the death.

Hades saw her, loved her,
p l u c k e d her from the earth.
Gave her his dark kingdom.

She rolls power about on her tongue
and it is viscous like black honey,
but not the wild sweet kind she used to eat.

i
A pomegranate on the tree has split, weeping
tears of blood to
ancient gods and stolen girls.
I wonder what Persephone thought when she devoured those six seeds.
Maiden of flowers
snatched from her mother’s twilit meadow,
become courtesan of Death.
ii
They call me Queen here, Mother, I roll power about on my tongue - it is rich, luscious like black honey.
My garden grows jewel-like flowers, bruised blue roses - the colour of the sky when I saw Him.
I didn't want to hurt you, Mother,
so I return, bring spring in my wake, but your burning sunlight blinds me, I long for blue, for blood.
Even when I’m Above, with you,
in that dizzy, dozy daisy-strewn field, my roots run deep to Him.

There are two types of summer; white and dark.

White summers are those full of lawn and linen, the sea and soft sunshine, cherries and children’s smiles, in which you feel disconnected and light, almost floating, dreamy and distant in a haze of white dandelion fluff. You don’t ever want to land.

Dark summers are honeyed and sulky, full of pomegranates, thunderstorms, magnolias and un-kept promises. Cinematic and shadowy, you exist in a trance of melancholy, and feel passionately, though feign detachment. Pandora opens the box, and lightning fills the sky.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Clouds spit out water like
Pomegranate seeds,
Heavy droplets splashing
On the silvery jasmine;

The adolescent moon
Sighs alone, dreaming
Of the flush of heat she feels
At the sun’s arrival.

Pomegranates de-blossom,
Crying tears of blood
Down the grasping hands

I wait and ache,
Thinking of things past
Alive only in memories
And in my dreams;
I ache as I wake
To another day
Desolate and alone,
Clinging to a hope that
Slips like water through
My trembling fingertips
As I wait and ache.