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.

Romance is over. Don't try and woo me, ***
before marriage is the done thing lately. I don't believe
in roses or walks on the sunlit beach, I don't believe
in Sunday clothes or boys on their best behaviour.
I believe in making me laugh and when I say
"There's so much to see" and you say "I'm as happy
as I'll ever be" because you have no dreams, and I say
"Would you come with me?"

I do believe
in common differences and long nights in the freezing
cold because I have felt love with my head slamming off
a headboard and I have felt love with my head
down a toilet, vomiting up whiskey with my hair
being held by weak hands in a loose knot above me,
the noose of my dignity.
I have felt love while standing
in the ocean at midnight, off my face, and my friends
shouting "Don't swim!" Love is not angels or
cherubic babies
with wings, or seraphim. Love is just a thing
to con us into reproducing. Creating variation
of the species. We could make love
endlessly.

My bipolar friend
pukes up her lungs at the bus stop,
my best friends are in love
and we are all sick.

Dogs in the city, sat on pavements
in buckets and floods.
Strangers chuck change at us.
We are all sick.

We are all sick,
sick like old flowers
wilted and crispy. Full of the joys
of a life, half lived in a vase.

Everyday we are dying
for other people.
Holding back hair and flagging down policemen.
We are all sick and tired,
all wasted and dying.
Sick
Sick
Sick
Sick

It is cherry blossom season
the white dust is settling into
petals decorated with boot prints.

Spring brings nothing new.
The same old worn out truths,
my doubt in all of you

lingers as clear as distilled water
pure and bitter as Russian *****
no matter how much I love someone

trusting them is not an option.
This is not a crisis of faith,
it is Springtime again, as it always will be.

Reliably.
The seasons never change.
They will never disappoint

so triumphantly.
I dug the grave, my friends
just threw the dirt to cover me.

There are good memories
and thank you for those, I suppose.
Thank you for caring from time
to time, I missed you for a few days
but now don't miss you, just
the idea of you and the notion
of having the same boy want me
for any time at all.

Build up the tumbled down wall
again
stick the last red brick back in,
fix it with chewing gum, glue
and leave. It's fine. It is.

Close up the dam
stop up the river.
Fields drain, crops wither
and die, my eyes dry,
how foolish was I
to dream it could be different.

You know how lonely you've left me?
Tired and empty—
I don't want *** with a stranger
I want you to hold me,
in the crook of your arm like a baby.
It's so hard to love me, so
hard to be happy. It's not even you,
just to know you don't want me.
It's so ******* lonely.
So cripplingly lonely.

You kissed me but it wasn't urgent,
it wasn't passionate and it wasn't
hurried like it was the last
even though it probably was.
I just wanted to hold you.
Press my nose to your jumper and smell you,
and pull you so close to me, I could sink into your skin
and you could carry me around in your chest.
You were tired though,
you didn't care I hadn't shaved my legs
or that I stank of brandy,
and when I said I missed you
you didn't say "me too"
just laughed as your warm body pressed me into the seat of your car.
But I could love you if you let me,
and you could love me if you tried.

HR told me I look
like **** and sent
me home. I was supposed
to give up the drink
but I couldn't think of anything
else to do.
I am good at my minimum wage
job but I'm
not good at life.
Maybe it's quitting time.

I think it's important that you know
that love was never my strong suit,
or a weak suit or a suit
I ever wore proudly. Indeed,
it stung me harshly, and I,
being clever, learned not to grasp
the thorny branch of the rose so tightly.
Like every Irish child,
learned not to slap the stinging nettles
for "biting" me.
I am fine, honestly,
but I won't pursue you. I might just
**** all the nectar out of you
until you're a skeleton,
a little shell,
a little mark on my arm of a lost you.

How could I question your word
you ask
but how could I not
every promise you made me
dissolved
sugar on the tongue —
It's cold, freezing
in the mornings, and yet
it's the red hot
image of you when I wake up
there 'til I sleep
and in my dreams. You
haunt me, and everyone
knows I'm in love,
so in love with you.

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 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.

Love is a word flung round
so easily. I've strung myself
out on boys I loved
but knew too well,
and aside from being unobtainable
before midnight on Saturdays
were unsustainable contrasts
to a person like me.

I don't love you.
I never loved you. I barely like you.
I love the smell of you, the feel of you,
waking up beside you and cracking
jokes with you. I weep for that smile,
the way you can't speak in public,
pick the label off your beer
and listen in on conversations
because you can't make your own.
My mother says you sound like
you're boring at parties.

I say no.
It makes me feel special that you
have things to say to me.
In fact, until I heard you speak
I never thought much of you.
I think it's why they say you don't think much of me these days,
only I heard those silly things that you told me.

My mother first wrote it
on my birth cert
by street name, by nature.

“You shouldn’t do that,
you’re no race horse.”
Then why am I running, running

perpetually
carrying little men who kick me.
Filling the hole won’t fill me.

If I eat sugar, orange candy
and lots of honey
I won’t hear the boys be mean to me.

We stumbled home
hand-in-hand as the sun rose
over your notoriously boring
working class hometown.

Not your real hometown
it adopted you.
The place you come from
has a name I can't pronounce.

Your accent is rough—
more common than your native friends.
I think you're afraid that your name
might shame you.

We stood there
outside your gaf in the morning grey.
You told me
that you can't stand your father

my hands ached, I want to
bare myself back to you
but I don't know how.
You just embraced me

kissed me all up the sides of my head.
I want to tell you
nothing has ever been this real for me,
but I can't.
You are everything I didn't know I was hoping for.

She's crying to me down the phone
and all I can think is
how ****** it all is. How sick,
twisted and manipulated it all is.
Love is a ******* gift,
but it's a trick.
A menacing, broken, soft-spoken,
seductive *****,
that strikes up against your ribs,
just a match that caught flame.

How dare you ask to see me again
when you knew how much I loved you.

How dare you try and spin me into your web again.
Don't you know that I've become
so much better than you?

Then why does it feel like I'm
glueing together
old bits of rope and string,
tying together bits of old things
that everyone else has left for dead?

Isn't it worth fighting for?
Isn't love worth fighting for?
Why do I have to explain this to everyone I meet?

Every half-finished painting, song or poem—
they don't make masterpieces
if you take them all home, stitch them together and leave them to grow.
Just leave them alone.

I'm cold to the bone. In the twilight
I'm empty,
my heart turns to stone.

I watch all these sunsets turn red to navy
and I numb it with ***** because I can't handle the happiness.
You were my baby but baby you left me.

You were my baby but baby you left me.

methyl (1R,2R,3S,5S)-3- (benzoyloxy)-8-methyl-8-azabicyclo[3.2.1] octane-2-carboxylate

Cahn Ingold Prelog

Whose rules are these? Press
on my lips boy, fill my face
and my hands with love.
Fill it up with confetti
little pink hearts that flutter
like Eskimo kisses or snowflakes.

Chop it doll. Link my elbow.

I'm so in love with a boy
that doesn't even drink -
I wonder if he loves me too.
He doesn't.
I wonder if he knows
that without him I'll get in with the ******* crew.

I know the chemistry of it. I can read the IUPAC.
I can breathe the molecules
I can taste the bad decisions I'm making.

I eat junk food and drink too much
€3.99 Revero
so I can stomach bad things.
Your saliva swims in with the bile.

How many times have I puked
behind cars
or old convents? Too many.

How many boys have I loved? Too many.

Anyway,
uni is finished soon.
I'm going home. Home again.

She sniffed
two lines
off her student card,
with her name and dates
then
two lines down
it said medicine, with a smiling face
and a big college emblem.

Two weeks later
she sits
in a bathroom in a new flat
staring at a pissy stick
two pink lines
stare back at her.

The day moves quick,
she rings me, she cries,
I console, she screams-
How? When she did everything
right
the morning after and
he hasn't even texted her.

We call a conference,
best friends pull change
from bank accounts,
communion savings,
credit unions. We all
pile in. Get the girl to England.
Get her to a hospital.
Get her a degree,
we're all in it now.

You're a Tory conservative,
but you don't give two ***** about politics.
You don't know what you want.
Just not that. No, not that.

You're a petrol bomb,
you're a bottle full of explosives.
I run on you, usually,
I usually breathe you.

But *******. *******!
I read poetry and it's an anvil.
It's chest compressing, all consuming,
black, shapeless mass.

You're a racist. A homophobe.
I love you and I hate you,
you discriminate against love
you discriminate against me.

A straight white female,
and you hate me.
I think you might secretly love me,
Maybe you need me.
But I'll never know.

Sweet naivety balanced like dew drops
on the rims on pint glasses filled with the black stuff,
my hair is bleached blonde and I was going through
***** like water, you know those types of nights,
the ones where we tiptoe around each other
not knowing quite how to act, like lovers
or friends. Not knowing quite what we are,
everyone else seems to know so much better than we do.
Like when you were trying to explain to your neighbour
what I was to you but couldn't find the words
and we just nodded to each other repeatedly
saying our names and then laughing and getting
drunk and the night getting blurrier and blurrier
but I remember your hand in mine. It was good.

The saying does go
‘better the devil you know’
he said.

And sure to god
a fire was lit within me.
Sometimes you'd miss familiar monsters.

Sometimes you'd be suspicious
of the finer things,
of the promises often promised,

made now. But for why?
What changed, when I paid
nothing for it.

I'd almost miss
the curled up ball,
the loneliness in the dark night.

That's all I knew back then.
This feeling of content --
it feels fake, nerves I never used

Forever caged by our fears
the past mistakes that haunt
our moments in the half wake
condemned to relive
every old nightmare,
to fear ourselves and never love
again. And yet,
there is the look you give me
in the mornings
half closed eyes, observing
tired face with turned up corners
of your mouth. When you don't
stop staring unless I tell you to,
that tells me you could love me
if you tried.

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.

This past year has been so empty.
I’ve been trying to fill the space
you left

with glamorous friends, rich men
drugs and adventure.
It could have worked. It might have.

You turn up, nothing’s changed.
Same smile, same wicked laugh,
same freckled skin.

Rest your head on mine
and suddenly I’m whole again.
Frantic kissing like

trying to lick out the last drops
of medicine.
Who knows how long you’ll be gone for this time.

My room smells of smoke and cologne.
You seem nice,
your eyes are lovely. My inner thighs
are peppered in bruises,
my legs hurt, my cheeks are flushed still.

It’s sweet to look at the milk skin, the ink blots,
remember I’m real. Remember
the feeling of being wanted,
your weight on me, the sweet nothings,
the drunken kissing, the moaning.

I want to hold on to you, but I’m
sure I’d be fine without you.  My ex
had a baby, I wasn’t angry.
I wished him luck; it’s a girl.
A new main lady.

I drank something crazy, I lost my cigarettes,
brought you home and we went to bed.
I wonder could this ever be anything really;
could I ever look into your eyes
and say I love the bones of you?

The windows broken seals make whistling
bottle top noises in the ruckus, the seagulls
swarming like spiders in the back field,
the fat geldings hide by the hedges searching
for shelter. The fire roars and we sip hot whiskeys,
boys stroke their whiskers searching
for wisdom. Hum advertising jingles, hum
in agreement, wolf whistle at the young girls
in small skirts exploring something they call
"fun". Wonder if you remember what is was like.
The taste of brandy reminds me of something,
of a few things. Once I took a bottle to the head
of a boy that betrayed me, stinking of it,
and once my friend spit up like a baby,
milk of her alcoholic mother into my lap
in the back of a car. We're all so much older
and yet younger than we are.

Pie eyed, pout mouth
butterfly wings all crushed
a little girl's hand squeezed shut—
Who are you now? Mascaraed
to the death, to the death.
A young white girl slung on a pole,
a princess hung by the neck,
mannequin?
Who is your puppeteer,
does he beat you black and blue?
Does he do that to you?
Does he tell you he loves you like I do?

Home is powdered white.
Snow and lines of *******
a little flurry
a blizzard of children, the needy,
the restless.
It's a kind of mania, a hiraeth,
a grá for a place once loved
but washed from the hands forever.

The South China Sea swallows me,
and I wonder if I can taste Atlantic.
The salt breeze, does it carry you in it?
Does it carry a thousand nights
in the frigid cold
hungry and drunken and trying
to get home?

It's not home,
it doesn't smell of home,
and on seeing gold the copper seems
tarnished red as blood
and yet the gold just doesn't settle right.

The sea here is turquoise
at home is green and at home home
is indigo. A hundred times indigo,
blue as the sky and the eyes of my mother.

When they say it with a foreign accent
it sounds so far away.
Killala my hometown,
the sinner's bay.

I raise my hand, she
mimics me. Her
hair is yellowing, fraying
rope ******* to a boat,
knotted to the dock
she thinks she's seen
the whole sea yet
never moved from that
one
spot. Pathetic.

She is useless and broken—
not fragile, not
romantically so.
She's not a girl
people would want
to try saving. She's
pudgy. Vile. Boys
on the street spit at her.

She takes it graciously. She
once would have been angry,
once held herself in high esteem,
once thought herself pretty,
a clever wee girleen.
That imposter now she
hides from me
I could almost
break this glass and touch her.

The bricks and mortar are not pretty.
Semi-modern, terraced, magnolia painted –
each street lined with nosy neighbours
among copy-and-paste suburbia.

SUVs and sensible
hatchbacks sleep in the driveways.
There's a bus stop nearby,
but the buses only run Monday

to Friday. The sea is so close
but hidden
by train tracks, and an ice cream van
calls every Thursday.

The wardrobes are empty, skirting
boards cleaned.
I sob into the sink,
clutching the porcelain rim to my ribs,

pressing my hands to my cheeks.
I have no home to go home to,
just a flat with no gas,
making promises of new beginnings.

Offering bags of pretty things
to fill up my life with.
On the last night, we climbed
up the obelisk

to watch the starry city lights
sparkle across the bay.
The smokestacks stretch
as if it were morning. I want to kiss

this year goodbye,
but keep holding on
‘til each finger loosens
and slip into a new way to live my days.

I'm pulling my hair, but it's easy.
Head against the bathroom stall wall,
staring at my feet and the tiles
and I'm smiling. It's easy.

There's no one to love, but that's fine.
Just plenty of friends, good articles,
wine and a big warm house
not far from the sea. It's so ******* easy.

Do you love me? Of course you do.
Look at me. There's so much to see.
I'm smiling, I'm so ******* happy.
Maybe I'm empty, but it's so easy.

I'm adjusting to life as a level-headed,
less narcissistic ***** who was a force
to be reckoned with. And this is it -
a kinder, better me. It's so easy.

Maybe I'm just no good at what I do.

My clouds all have silver lines
hung with fat steel
hooks
into the puddles
casting reflections
into the tunnel of mirrors, the fish swim by
sometimes they bite. Those nights we eat.

Maybe I'm just no good at wanting you,
maybe my dreams of you are wishes
that may come true but make you say
be careful
be careful of what you

wish
for.


We eat enough, we come too full to talk
and stuffed like plucked birds -
forever flightless.

Maybe I love you but don't think I do,
the only way I could have you all
is if I ate you whole

(I would cover you in honey first.)

I remember your first name,
your county,
I remember the way your words slurred,
tripping

over themselves, how you stared -
watching confetti melt
as it floated in fractals.

Passing instances.
I wonder do you remember
how I sat on your shoulders,
or how did we meet? In that field

I drank too much, the music
was loud and the air
packed with hazy heat.

You painted a picture for me.
A landscape of lives briefly
intertwined and a future
so clear I could see it.

Our phones were dead. You said
“I should find my friends.”
and then you were gone forever.

I dreamt I killed a man.
Somebody really burnt
the old mill to the ground
down in a crackling
bonfire
as half the town just watched,
eyes wide and gaping mouths
like mackerel.
My skin is whiter
than the snowdrops
in my garden. I imagine
you, kissing my belly.
I wish someone would just
relight me.

Little peach, you are
too sweet to be real.
Too good to be true,
too unbelievable. Your juices
taste like melted Calippo,
you must have been factory made.
Built by men in white coats
in a white lab from orange E numbers.
The softest skin, so ripe for picking,
there must be a stone
in you somewhere.

Little peach. I will not
eat any more of you. I think
you might make me ill.
I think you were genetically modified
to make me fall in love with you.
Who taught you to taste
like caramel? How many girls
have ate you down to the core
only to *****
when you were all gone?

There's only so much flesh to go around,
if I don't do my time
you might rot in the bowl.
And what if you're wholesome?
Garden grown beside pea plants.
Sunshine citrus, full
of thirst quenching nectar.
A sweet little peach for me to eat,
I'd never go hungry again.

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.

We get drunk, there's coke,
there's yokes,
there's drugs in abundance,
emotions pour out through
the broken dam, exploded
temporarily by big eyes,
slurred words, and a general,
overwhelming sense of well-being.

Euphoria brings euphoria,
I lie in your arms "just be with me."
You agree, it's easy,
almost beautiful.
We talk about how we've hurt eachother,
your brother, your ex, your roommate
we blame these people for our losses,
for our inability to just love eachother.

But then
sobriety
crippling and loud, the day is crisp,
lights are bright and suddenly
I am on an operating table.
You are brandishing an instrument —
a scalpel? Or a needle.
Are you stitching or cutting?
Your hand poised above my heart
we stare at eachother in silence.

You turn, your white coat swirls,
you leave.
But wait? Where are you going?
Is this love? Is it love? Is it?

I dig my nails in and it feels good.
I wish you would hit me harder sometimes
when we’re joking around, naked,
I deserve it.

You bruise me but you don’t mean it.
It’s not your fault you’re taller than me.
The boys before you, they meant it.
They tried their best.

Has anyone broken your heart?
A boy once got a girl pregnant, she wasn’t me.
And another one.
Still not me.

I don’t want babies.
I don’t want to draw dole, smoke draw,
earn three hundred a week and blow it all
in the bookies.

I haven’t seen my Mam in a month now.
My brother might be taller again. I miss
the sea and my golden retriever.
I wish you would pretend to choke me for longer.

Sometimes I don’t want to breathe.
I think you’re just proof that home does not own me.
You don’t know me.
I can be arrogant as a priest.

Bless you, child.
The lines of your palm
a yellow legal pad
I want to write down my life on

to sign myself over to you
in the one moment. The next—
L'appel du vide.
I am not a girl supposed to be tied down.

Yet you coax me with your frankness.
It frightens me, your realness
I would like to blow you like a puff of smoke
and watch you drift into fog

with your commitment.
With your leases and your plans
and your baby names and your mortgage
and your job

and the way you admit you may
not love me in a year or ten.
Well I may not love you in a day
or two

I say, praying I seem nonchalant.
Your adoration wraps me up,
seems we were made to be
yet you’ve heard how the proverbs go

I do not like the thought of growing old.
My perpetual sadness will always
tighten its grip on the rope, you know
the brightest flame is always fastest cold.

Half of my love songs
were written for your brother.
Now you're the subject.

“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.

The female temple.
Hollow shell in the minds of men.
An autoclave
for a belly, a copy-and-paste mind
of blasphemies. A page
in man's contradictive bible. Just blondes and brunettes.
Just virgins and non-virgins.
Nothing more than breathing incubators.
I am a person, I have a brain, I say.
They smile at me with a condescending
wink. A nod. Good girl, well done.
They tousle my hair. Well fine, boys.
Watch me climb the ladder with one hand,
backwards, in heels. When I reach the top
I'll ram these six inch Louboutins
straight through your hearts.

Stood on the car roof
with a Stanley knife from the milking parlour
cutting down posters
and their vicious screaming.

*******, *******,
the corrugated plastic cuts my hands
and it's raining icy and
hailing mercilessly. I hope
that's the wrath of God on us.
The cable ties take a few
goes of the scissors.

"Vote No" to love —
I've been denied of it
too many times myself.

Have you ever had someone
tell you you weren't good enough?
Or worse,
lie and say it's all down to them?

Let a man kiss his man,
that's his business.
Don't tell your dad that I'm doing this.
Partaking in sociopolitical
vigilantism, with a dairy farmer's
knife and my best friends
and a farm vehicle.

I don't
read the bible. Holy water
means nothing to me.
I won't marry you in a church,
probably. Or at all, because you
don't ******* love me.

Let a woman kiss her woman,
what difference is that to me?
I'm just a leaf in the ******* breeze.
I'm just an acorn fallen from a tree.

My hands bleed.
There's rain and there's tears
and I can't ******* see.
The wind is howling around me
as these posters come down I'm finally free.
All of ye can have love,
**** hatred and all that it gets me.

Repeated routine paints
the flurry of butterflies greyer
by the day they settle
further and so much quieter, you might
mistake them for trapped air.

My hand on your chest,
eyes on your big brown eyes,
and your eyes on the squeaking bed.
Look at me, I’m afraid of the waxing,
waning of this supposedly unconditional love.

Is this just the practice run, slow
build up until real life takes hold?
Maybe it's just the dull winter
pouring dishwater on our embers,
or your parents in the next bedroom.

Will you get tired
of collecting me at the airport, and forget
to overlook my untethered views.
It’s not exciting is it, really? The M1 Belfast
to Dublin bus every Friday at 2 o’clock.

I was half dead anyway, so there was
really no need for the *******.
Lemon sherbet, cherry lollipops,
sweet as pie and whatever you want.
I like diamonds, cold and shiny,
I like boys that never liked me,
I'm too scared to be cared for,
too stupid to be careful,
too many times scorned by past lovers
unprotected by my brothers
unloved by my sister and hated by myself.
I can't afford to be rich, or a drunk.
I'm torn. A ***** with no lovers.
I'm bored.

I live for these days,
cold, wet and rainy,
overcast and hazy,
smoke-filled, getting wasted
in cars with the boys
ripped jeans soaked to the waist
in motor oil, cow **** and meal.

Flat tyres, rollies,
tar stained fingers, and buying
his girlfriend's morning after pill,
my best friend beside me
and it's not
impressive, it's not my degree,
it's not the big city
but it lives in me.
In the deepest part of me.

We sowed the seeds and faced them north -
sat on the ground and pushed fresh shoots
down with pokey fingers and old *******,
poured salt on the soil so nothing could grow.

But the summer was hotter than we'd imagined.
The caterpillar we kept caged spawned wings
undetered by our criticism and clenched hands.
We could not stop nature, though we tried.

Awoke to our patch full of fruit and vines
and tried to destroy it with poison and lies.
Watched every tillering flower bloom back twice
as though time were the only cure for loneliness.

The sun isn't even cooking me
it's just not raining,
the brown Liffey is dipping and lapping
the bus windows are all open.

"What think ye of Christ"
asks the poster by the driver.
"Not much," but if he's real
I'll thank him for the blue of the sky.

Is this what happiness feels like?
Because it's pretty ******* good.
The silver lines on my arms
tease me about years ago.

I remember
tightening a belt around my neck
and wondering how it felt to die.
But I was silly back then.

Look at the blue of the sky.
Look at the wispy clouds.
Look at my friends saying
"Go outside and look at the moon."

Life is strung up by a rope.
I miss the boy who I love
but not too much.
One day I'll find a prince for myself

in Rome or America
in a land far away on the sea.
I'll sail away in a couple of days
life's going good for me.

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.