I.
What killed me the first time didn't necessarily **** me,
they tell you what doesn't bleed you out
makes you stronger, but sometimes it just
half kills you.

II.
How could seven lines of speed and two
or maybe three big red pills that made me feel so alive
and showed me stars with long arms that clung
to each other in the night,
how could they lie?

III.
Maybe I am dying.

IV.
So are you. I've been dying my whole life.
Every breath is one breath less,
every step leads to a closer step. What is inevitable
if not death? And yet each laborious inhale exhale
is magic.

V.
I know of the end, just choose not to acknowledge it,
won't ever look it square in the eye.
Don't wear my seatbelt. Cool kids don't die.

VI.
I admire the girls that don't put up with cheating
and I admire my friend who won't put up with her dad
because he's ****. But I'll never
be able to stick up for myself or keep myself
from crying when I've been let go of once again.

VII.
I heard a bean sidhes scream and it was death's
breath down my neck but I am not yet dead and
not yet
even
half dead.

I don't know what it is I like about you.

I like your mannerisms, your politeness
and your willingness to chat to my mother
with a smile on your face that says you aren't scared
of the world, and welcoming arms that embrace
the unknown and death.

I like your warmth, how you complain
that I'm always cold but my house is too boiling hot
and that you strip down to your underpants
as soon as you walk in. But there is no half
dressed for you. It's nakedness or done up to the boots.

You'll even lie in bed with your boots on, smoking,
and I hate when you do because I know you're
texting. Waiting on a lift. And that's it for
a month or more. I like how you're so unpredictable,
how irritating you are. I like your stupidity

but I hate you and I don't know what I like about you.

Grey days melt sideways --
constantly overlapping, calculating and deriving,
integrating and balancing chemical equations,
tell the teachers I am chasing dreams with cold numbers,
lines on the page or Lego blocks.
If you added every one together ad infinitum
it would be zero. Doesn't that say so much? Or enough?
Midnight brings music and words, I bury my mind
in their useless and beautiful noises.

Seeing grown men cry strikes a chord in me,
a clang, dissonant, the cloudy eye and cracking throat
makes me uneasy. Though it is not just those that trouble me,
a persons freed emotions are trivial things,
yet I weep, sob, lament all the time. Do not misunderstand me.
Do not assume I have no anxious human worry.
I saw Dad cry once when he spoke about his mother.
Isn't it strange to think I would ever cry
for my parents, as though they wouldn't be around forever?
I've cried over friends I have no heed for now,
moods are temperamental. Feelings are irrelevant
and I am slave to their swinging. Cannot switch them off
must move with them and their constant tide.

Education is a difficult subject, it is all I have,
and I can never have enough. It is easier
to calculate facts and filter through numbers
than to tell you how I feel. It is easier to pretend
that in the stars I see swirling infernos of flammable
gases, and not your eyes, dreams and the nights
we slept together. Education is a master of disguise.

How do you oppress the people? Keep them clueless.
So I eat books like stale bread, dry texts
inhaled by the lungful. You sit in the bed
beside me, *******, and smoke. I tell you the same old
rigmarole. You'll die of cancer, a painful death
with no hair or dignity. You smile. Your lungs will bleed
and I will die of old age, alone, but thoroughly educated.

To irritate me, you twist the pegs
of my instrument while I'm not looking.
Strum, the clang pulls at my ears,
I cringe.

I drink.
You irritate me, pull at my ears,
then twist my arm behind my back
I cry 'stop' and lean in

sometimes I kiss you
sometimes I don't, I always want to
but I don't really have a say in it.
I cringe.

When I was younger they told me I was always
full of heat even when I swam in the sea and danced in the puddles,
I could be feral and free because I was always 37 degrees.
They marvelled at me.

How things change, swathed in blankets. I am always freezing.
I produce just enough body heat not to denature enzymes,
I am only warm with someone beside me, so dependant
that I need you not just for my dreams, my skin craves your heat.

Black wave rushes, gushes inky black
water. Icy cold, icy.
Dead man pallor on my hands,
I reach forward, but a cut throat pirate
hurt me too much to eat. Must have caught
it from that boy I often kiss,
he must have caught it
somewhere else. Black wave envelops me.
Off-colour, no red in my cheeks,
lost to the churning sea.
How is it you manipulate me
like this, so easily? How is it
you have drowned me
in myself,
in the ocean of my hometown?

At 2am, the knock came. Axe murderer loud,
my little brother answered the door.
You asked if I was in, and when he said
'Yes' you handed him a firecracker
and stomped down to my room.
I was asleep. "Gerrup t'****"

I should have, by all rights, shat myself,
but I knew you would come in the end.
You act like you don't care, but
you do a bit. Awkwardness doesn't work
for us anymore. We're far too comfortable
In each others madness.

We learned to have *** sober. It was funny,
it's been nearly a year of constant want
and yet only now can we summon
the courage to open ourselves to one another
in sound state of mind.
(The lights are still off.)

I think you're beautiful, but I can't
let you see me in my vulnerable state
on the brink of ecstasy. No,
that would make it too easy.
Then you roll over and fall asleep,
and I lie there thinking until morning.

The smell of you lingers, cigarettes and whiskey
stay with me 'til the close of evening.

Never really knew who I am, everyone
says something different. I am a thousand
things. Exceeding expectations,
constantly disappointing. My mother
is a hippy, a philosopher. London born;
Oxford made, and in love with
my father, Limerick man,
clawed his way up from the bottom, philosophy,
UCD. Are you beginning to see the pattern?
Spawned from thinkers and writers, I know that
every moment that passes is an opportunity
to ponder, to spill my guts to you strangers.
I live in the country by the beach, with a strange accent
neither London nor Irish. I am nothing
with no identity. I leave it with the farmboys
that continually excite me.

I picture my rage like a church bell, bang,
come now or hell! My fists bunching,
the storming forward. "Are you starting?"
Fear mingling with stagnant *****
into chyme. Screams engulf my mind;
you have been ******* around for way,
way, way too ******* long. Smack.
Fist collides with paper soft skin, kick.
You groaning on the floor, fight night.
Come first light the high subsides,
I will wash my bleeding knuckles and dig
your fractured skin from between
the semi-precious stones in my rings.

I want to scream at you until you apologise, then hug you and kiss your face.
Make sweet trembling love to you in the faded
moonlight. Make you see the hollow hatred in my eyes.
You always apologise, no matter if you've done
wrong or not. Because you so often do wrong
sometimes you don’t see the difference.

Who influenced you? You live in such a big house
yet still you steal kerosene and sell it
to romani gypsies with long socks and wives
the same age as you. You are so easy
to find infatutation in. My drunken words
were thrown at you and you accepted them, sober.

Inside I felt this shred of hope germinate, but
as quickly as it came up it died. Some girl
I barely know loves you more. She cried over you
while I never have. Despite having wanted you so long
I cannot find enough love in me. But oh,
how I long to make you apologise to me.

Semi-permeable.
You absorb what's good of me,
all I stand for
with osmosis. You are soulless,
letting nothing free.

Perhaps you thought
I had enough to go around -
but I can't go on
sharing pieces of myself
with heartless vampires
that give nothing back
for temporary love. I am
not far from having
forgotten
who I am; for I
am starting to bleed dry.

My words always come to that stuttering stop.
Hurts hidden past their dates
don't pop, don't explode, scream
or make a scene. The *** bubbles over
and the hot rivulets swim southbound.
There are never more than two.
Colourless, without sound; inside, the reaction
of heat energy, raising temperature
and changing state. My thoughts evaporate.
Escape.
I regain myself and carry on
the endless day and stagger home to bed
routines don't change, and in my head
I hear your voice and ask you
what are we doing, what is this madness,
why are you doing this to me when I...
I...

One day, we sat on a cliff's edge
scooping jelly shots out of cups--
fingers to greedy mouths.
We drank beer, Captain Morgan and Lucozade
and gradually got wasted
where no one could reach us.

I had been lost, and alone
and I found you buying chewing gum.
You said you were going to go climb,
like a child I begged to come with you.
We reached new heights,
approached the sky.

You told me things I'd never known,
I realised although although you looked strong
to me - you're a boy
with a heart full of love.
It shouldn't have suprised me
but I'd always thought you were unshakeable

and I love you Cy, I really do.
You make me feel OK, and
I'll never forget the day you became my brother
on the hill, with the whole world below us
gradually getting wasted
where no one could reach us.

Flood myself with
poison
my blood with
love, alcohol,
what ever drugs they give me.
Produce antibodies,
fall asleep. Awaken; groan.
Roll over, smell you.

Don't ever leave me.

Two hours later,
flood my bed with
sighs, smell your
smell, try
not to care
then cry.

like the rubble of an old house
that had burnt down and left me for dead,
and I'd survived.

Drunk, weeks ago,
you said

"Whatever happens we're best friends"

your hugs felt familiar,
like home but I was wary.

I went from loving you endlessly,
young girl with an innocent pain
to coldhearted, callous

"She must of loved him blind, that she needed
to replace him with all those boys."

That was the smartest thing the boy
with straight A's in my physics class
had ever said.

You talk about how you would write poetry
and learn an instrument
if only you had the time.
The time,
as though you don't have the same hours
as anyone else.

I'm telling you now, if you truly wished
for the time, you'd have it.
Creation is not a choice, it's a burden,
it's a crick in your neck that must be cracked
an addiction, a drug.
You don't find the time,

you make the time.
You sit awake in the morning just
writing
writing
and pray it's okay.
If it's useless you just...

Continue.

When it first started it was
sneaking around in

the dead of night,
stolen kisses and

excitement.
Now,

it's familiar. Same old story,
my mother makes you tea

in the mornings.

It was crazy, and loud, and fast
yet right in the middle was you
in all your normality.

Emigration is inevitable,
that's what they told us,
we knew, we knew, we knew

it was coming.
The land of milk and honey,
it was calling.

We stood under big ben,
sat close on the tube
and wondered if we should kiss

but didn't. We knew
I had to go home
and you couldn't. And wouldn't for the longest time.

“Does this mean we can be friends-with-benefits again?”

Well, we are friends, and we were *******, like before.
It seemed like a reasonable question to ask.

“I don’t know, I have to figure some things out.”

You had always been so sure of yourself,
‘til now - there was a sadness in your voice
I had never heard before.

All I could do was turn over, breathe your smell
and hope you were
okay because

I didn’t have the right to ask you what was wrong.

Woke up at six AM to the sun
streaming in
your window, to your mother
banging pans downstairs.
Turned over,
you were there, asleep,
reached out and you were so real
and alive and I was confused.
I had made myself believe
you were gone forever but
you won't teach this old ***** new tricks.

If I were to push you away now
what would you make of it?
Would you notice my absence?
Sleep easy? Speak freely?
Do I matter?

They think my ego is inflated,
when, actually, it's long gone.
I don't even know who I am.
I pretend, like an actor - forever
in character.

I don’t know if happiness is this ability I have
to just not be sad, or, if I was truly happy,
would I just… know.
There is no set algorithm, no checklist
in a strange man’s spiral bound notebook,
and the only emotion I can feel is anger
at nothing in particular – and everyone.
If you refuse to let people past your walls
I suppose you can’t lose faith when they let you down –
repeatedly -
though I always do.
I was never anything but kind to you
even though you always leave me.

I don’t want to be loved
nor forgotten either.

Most of my friends aren't from here,
I know this because of their parents' accents
and their aversion to pig ****
even though they still get tired in the big city.

Most of my friends take drugs,
others don't. Surprisingly the smokers
are the least ****** up.
Least manipulative, capable of loving.

Most of my friends tell me they love me
quite often actually. I don't believe them
but it makes me feel secure like
putting your hand flat on the ground when you have the spins.

Most of my friends have problems, like
crazy mothers or hopeless fathers,
drug problems, money problems, forgetting
who-the-****-they-are problems

and I'm sorry for them but I can't help them
I try and I try to tell them
it will be okay and we will be alright
but they're too busy helping me to see the light.

I don't like computers .
You must be specific to get them
to work with you.

I prefer people,
the vaguest smile, the subtlest compliment
can make them fall in love with you.

Manipulation is an art
when done very well, like I do,
disastrous when seen. A risky business.

Those boys don't love me,
this computer doesn't know me,
but they obey me.

I suppose I am a sort of God
I could control their fate
on a temporary basis,

some kind of Satan.
Lamia
or a Pope.

I had been lathering in the shower, worrying
about whether or not the shampoo
Mam had bought was going to sufficiently condition
my abused, bleached hair, and smelling
coconuts – being transported to last summer,
my first sip of lemonade and malibu in the sunshine.

Did it matter that I had ever smelled coconut before?
Did anything matter when I
and all that I was, were just stardust –
Balanced on a not-quite-infinite,
but exceedingly long time line, with billions of years
either side of me, and I, a white dot or speck
on the face of the space time quantum?

Why had I been worrying about how healthy
my hair looked now, compared to last summer,
when the only importance it would ever have
is when blonde girls – other white specks -in the future
fell upon my Facebook profile, and wonder
if I was ever anyone worthwhile, and find out that
no. I wasn’t.

All I had to my name
were a few emails where I had tried to help my friends,
but couldn’t. And some terrible poetry.

Sly smile, slick man in a matching three piece suit,
sleight of hand, small coins.

Small and round, pink and smooth,
washed down with a whiskey burn.

Pop, pop, crunch, split.
And the come up...

Heart beating out of the tin cage
I had been trapped in my whole life, and now this--

Perfect moment, beautiful people,
laser lights, infinite energy.

Puking blood in the back bathroom.
Sheer happiness.  Ecstasy.

For a moment I thought I had forgotten
how to write poetry,
it used to flow out of me
pouring forward and pulling backward,
a tidal blood jet.

I drown by my home in my perfect Atlantic
an anchor sinking, i find myself
crying again. The only outlet
while I haven't felt love or
anything in a long time now

I have lost my muse.

Three A1's.
My father says the world is my oyster.

I guess I could do anything,
continue to learn

anything I wanted
to know, I could know - anything.

Knowledge is power
and the world is my oyster.

I need to leave and not tell anyone where I'm going.
I've booked a plane ticket and plan to go
in two weeks time.

I need to get away from here and the gentleman
who's breaking my heart to pieces.
See if he notices.

I'm turning my phone off for a week or two.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
and coming back makes them realise

just how much they've always needed you.
I just need to see if they'll be waiting
at arrivals in three weeks or so.

And if they're not, I'll move. For good.

It offends half my village
when I say I'm an atheist
but I worship no one.

No one boy,
no one God. Not my parents,
not love

not anything.
And if you don't sin
then didn't Jesus die for nothing?

Or is that blasphemy?
To be perfectly
honest, if it's P.C.

or not
P.C.
It never mattered

to me.

I'd never ask anything of you
or expect you to love me at all.
Cheat as many times as you like,
I'd suffer in silence.

Want me until you become incontinent,
Incompetent in bed and as fat as your father.
Want me like some kid on MDMA
wants water and a bassline to cry to.

Never let me sleep alone
maybe love me a little but never tell me,
and if your feelings get too strong and potent
go **** your ex girlfriend.

Just don't ever stop wanting me.

I had been hung up on you
but I kissed another boy.
I think it's all better now.

That niggling feeling is gone,
I really don't miss you at all.
I don't wonder where you are

or what you might be doing.
I suppose when I swore not
to fall in love with you

I didn't believe I could keep the promise,
but I kissed another boy.
Not that you'd care but

it mattered to me.

I’m not afraid,
don’t ever assume that I am afraid.

Every time I’ve fallen off the horse
I’ve carried on by foot,

There are a million ways
to get there. I am not afraid.

Love is for the old and weak
and powerless and helpless,

I fight my own battles,
I know that I can hold my head high.

I am self righteous, entitled,
I am sacreligious and perfectly reasonable.

Not a romantic. A logical thinker,
but not afraid. No, never afraid.

You told me it was over,
I said: "Let's not be awkward."
Let's be friends.
I was hoping to salvage
some of what we had before.

I was walking to class,
you grabbed me by the shoulder
in an attempt at friendliness.
Knocked me off balance, again,
I gasped - "Don't fall!" you said.

The warning came too late.

Half a year of you in my bed,
meaningless *** and a lot of nothingness.

I know I meant as much to you
as spare change on your rich days.
Mostly forgotten but nice to have around
when you didn't get paid.

******* and your truth.
You say you can't do it anymore,
when did that occur to you?
Did you find something else to do,

someone else to use?
I was a good kid once. I'm sure you were, too.

The dim glow illuminates my face
as I search for the perfect playsuit, perfect dress

or something. Something beautiful.
And everything is. Colours and elastane,

polyester, nylon, lycra.
Peplum, bodycon, strapless.

But the models are all size six,
and you must be pretty to wear a pretty dress.

I'm going to spend a week's wages
on this ******* wedding outfit,

and if you're not impressed
I'm going to ram a slice of cake down your throat

and smile, and catch the **** bouquet.
Will you look at me? Look at me!

I'm a sad, pathetic wreck.
I want to mark my territory. Your neck

will speak for itself.
Will say that I've been there before.

This perfect dress I'm searching for
to be left crumpled on your bedroom floor.

I swim in jealousy.
Up to the brim of my teeth,
floats litres of envy and greed.
I don't need you but, oh, I want you,
so I can discard you at your opening sentence
as an idiot or a hypocrite.
I want to want to love you,
for you to "love you too"

I want to reach out in the morning
and touch your soft speckled back
browned by the sun
to roll into your armpit
and smell your tobacco smoke.
Murmur my love for you,
kiss my hair
tell me you'll want me forever.

Why can't I just want a boy
who wants me back.
Or better yet, want a boy I actually want
instead of these fictional imaginings,
these stories I play out in my head
these lackadaisical dreams.
As if I would ever allow myself
to be happy!

It feels different every time.

Whenever I see you it's different,
I'm always some varying level of
completely bastarding
legless drunk. Usually you are too
but that's life though isn't it?
Like our heartless business arrangement,
that's life too.

It gives me life, and drains me of it.
I still maintain I saved you,
everyone hated your girlfriend.
You have terrible taste in girls,
I'd hate me if I knew me
any better. But right now
I don't know who I am.

Nobody knows me anymore.
I've changed that much,
it's tragic really. To lose myself
to an uproar of useless emotions.
I gave up on love a year or so ago
and now I know what I know
I wouldn't go back on it.

I wonder if you told me you loved me
would I feel anything.
Would I be angry, or cynical
or stay here or leave you
because I'm too much of a mess to ever reciprocate it.
Or maybe love triumphs over expectation.
Over death and trouble and devastation.

We'll never know.

Suddenly, it's not at all
awkward, between us anymore
and although I enjoy your company
as much and as often as possible
I wish it was like before
when my face would burn red to see you
around anyone else
because you knew things about me they didn't.

But I knew this would happen,
I think you're sweet. I'm sure she'll find
that spot behind your ear
I used to rub in a circular motion
when we'd lie in a comfortable silence.
I'm sure she'll be better for you
and skinnier, prettier, kinder,
much less petty and jealous.

Much less, much less than me.

I climbed to the top of a hill
today and the wind was ridiculous.
I wanted to scream how much I hated your guts
and let the gale carry it back to you
four or five towns away.

But how could I? I wish nothing on you.
You're a little bit beautiful but far too young
and happy in the arms of another girl
I should have been happy too.
That part wasn't your fault.

I drink tea now. Hot and sweet,
and I could never kiss a non-smoker
because I'm far too set in my ways.
Far too callous with my dwindling days,
I don't particularly want to change either.

Recently, I could go a whole car journey
without putting on my seatbelt.
Because, really, we're all dying anyways
and that time you had told me to wear one,
like you cared if I lived or not.

There were seven of us
crammed in a tangled mess.
Four in the back, three in the front, I sat
on your best friends lap.

We were leaving my best friends back
to their house. You drove
like a ******* maniac.
And we were all fantastically twisted drunk.

Fiat Punto sardine can,
my two in the back held hands.
Whispered 'I love you' in their own ears
whenever you took a sharp turn too fast.

But me and the boy supporting my weight
were screaming for faster
and I could feel life moving through me
in the wind rushing past us.

We stopped then, suddenly.
And you put your arm around me
and said "put on your seatbelt."
So I did, because you said so

and on the drive home I felt safe.

Beautiful, beautiful
the waves of my Atlantic lick the sand.
Big green pool I've invested true love in.

I have bled into that water.
Run naked along the beach, hugged a boy
I thought might love me

but really didn't and never would.
That silly boy hurt me and tore me apart
like the wings of a butterfly.

Bright and vaguely translucent.
Surprising loud
and perfectly quiet

I was a bumblebee's hum.
My mouth made a perfect round O!
A little girlish sound I vowed

to never make again.
The hurt, I vowed to never
ever

feel that hurt again.
So I found a beautiful, beautiful
boy

and took everything from him.

I will never love again.

Today I woke up at 7am
remembered the boy who climbed
out my bedroom window last
night after we watched Pulp Fiction.
I smiled like the Cheshire Cat
for the boy who promised he'd
never love me.

Never love me, and I promise to never love you back.

Maybe there's a parallel universe
that runs a track close and alongside ours,
where we are not commitment phobic.
Then again, maybe in that
parallel universe
you marry the girlfriend that you cheated on
with me.

I am not pretty.
But I have your virginity!
A big ugly chunk of you that I would happily throw back
if I had half a chance.
Yet, I still cling to you like a lost girl

we sit in silence and I try to show you Pulp Fiction.

But you won't stop talking
and then there's a moment of highly charged ****** tension
and Uma Thurman says
to paraphrase
"Don't you just hate those comfortable silences"
Why do we always yak about *******.
I realised I don't know you at all
and I kissed you quietly because your eyes were closed

Because that's what you do, right?

You had been pure, little boy, but I dropped you in the mud.
You kneeled, dropped your head, and shone my shoes.

You can no longer be buried
in a pure white coffin, like a child. If you died

I would not buy you lilies. I would not clean your face
anymore. You're tainted, tarnished, poisonous infected.

I cannot lay by you, now I know what I took from you.
It should have been more innocent

More special. But you have been cheapened.
I took everything from you

And still I want more. I, the biblical *****
that stripped you, bit you, broke you.

Bells chime, ding ****.
Cue the long run.

Rumbling empty belly
of a concrete anthill.

The same faces, same routines
same air, same space to fill.

Run, children, run!
Two hundred green pullovers

move in unison.
And the beautiful ones detach themselves

with heavy lungs
they inhale the fresh air

stamp out rollie butts.
Nobody cares.

Eat, sleep, bleat.
Two hundred green and grey sheep.

Day in, day out.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I remember every scar.
Every mark left on my fickle heart
the silver lines I hide under my bracelets.

I remember all the lessons
When I said I’d never love again, how much I meant it
I remember who kept their promises.

I am becoming numb
The build up of emotion, the hatred and abuse
when my friends stop talking to me

when I get called a cold *****,
a ****, a *****, attention seeking bleach blonde *****
the build up, build up…

the anticlimax.
The unanswered expectation.
I do not cry anymore.

I do not laugh or love or live.
Every morning starts with a longing for a blunt,
or a bottle of something strong, for a pill.

I can’t even look at the boy with the lovebites
that I left with my teeth
I remember every scar, every mark

When I found satisfaction
I remember the relief
of finding the light in the dark.

My body aches, shakes with cold
I await the return of my parents.
Head pounds like a kick drum
stomach acid burns, burns, burns.
I love you Mam,
I love you Dad.
But I'm bad. Evil and mad.

Depression comes in two forms;
Extremes. I loved but could not have
and now. Nothingness.
An Arctic sea envelops me.
I love you Mam,
I love you Dad.
But I am bad. Evil and mad.

Alcohol could never save me.
They all love me, then they leave me
take my body and abuse me.
Use me, use me, use me.
Help me Mam.
Help me Dad.
I'm sick. I'm mad, mad, mad.

Listen.
The drunk girls are so loud
when they cheer for us.
You know?
They're more excited
than we could ever be.
We are terrified to the bone.

Well, I know I am.
Though you fascinate me.
You don't need love, you found and lost your home.
Neither do I,
My old scars still sting.
I've ****** up.
We ****** up everything.

It's not all the girls,
just the ones that can't handle their cocktails.
Not the cool kids, who smoke,
drink pitchers of beer and
full bottles of *****
but can still count backwards from thirty.
Just the ones that love me,

know what would make me happy.
I'm not incapable of love,
we just don't like it.
My ego wouldn't let me anyway,
my important sense of self
forever blocks the way.
Do you understand how perfect I would have this be?

It horrifies me.