Wake me with wordless curses at this hour,
A whirl of turmoil, a spirit shaking
With willful absence of feeling’s power -
Comes the shameful pain of a mind breaking

Down all the sorrows held under the bed;
Reluctant, the silent sounds just stutter,
Leave mirages of what needs to be said;
Thoughts thump and my heart a vicious flutter.

And yet the flavour of polished sadness
brings softly the glow of some golden past,
A time when life was clear of this madness,
Picturing peace, with relief I can gasp:

For while I might suffer with pain today,
Tomorrow may yield a hope that will stay.

I let myself go, when all I wanted was
             To be in control, no notion
Of living, only emotion
And what it means to be whole,
Means to be driven.

Button up
The remnants; tight thread
Of frost plaited in hate,
Thick
Along my skin, now
To think it is the
spin
Of pain that keeps
things silkily thin
beneath my lashes, beat
The love I’d burned
To ashes. Never again –
But then, with sickness
I cannot ever quite pretend.

For want of a sunrise
My mind wakes so sadly
At night, when the world
Lies bright in hard clarity;
Staring, staring – and seeing
Right through me. Enough
                  Of silence, the wind wails and
Screams with fury. At me. Blackening -

I wait,
gaze, while my glassy
hope gets polished,
catching a
flicker
Of some lacklustre blaze

Behind me;

With ravenous greed glows
The sky; a garish smile
Glares through dancing curtains,
dusted with sparkling
diamonds of time, as dawn

breaks her teeth, she glints
without sunlight,
a **** of grey upon
the wintery haze beneath.

I should still be asleep.

Instead, the rain fills me, spills
from sudden clouds
of bloodied red;
with nothing but burning
and stillness -
the world might be dead.

Erase, erase
the words on the page
and scratch out
the I
shadowing my mind

with one blot,
spilled ink,
smashed wand of a pen

I’m ruthless
in ripping,
starting swiftly again;

following the dots
with endless green eyes, trace
spirals,
failing to see, to surmise

the bleeding graffiti
of my face. Leave 
and this moment, believe,
I will never replace.

Such slippery symbols
spill over
and over
one other;
tumbling down each
page, like a word
mixed up
in a mind
deranged.

sleeping
      on a train
and waking
      feeling safe.

Thump thump* bellows
the pavement, cracked beneath
my toes, as my heels click hard
on concrete stone. Thump
echoes right through
the ground, my thoughts fast whirling
round and round; snatched
up and strung
with tarnished shine;
only the slabs knew what
was mine. Now I sleep in trees
sweet saplings safe,
curled up like a buttercup,
nursing
the marble heart
in my favourite place. Leaves rolling
skittish over my face, a sigh,
a brush; the earth I taste.