hold my hand/ above my head
kiss me sweet/ against the bed
call me pretty/ into my breast
cleanse my sins/ I am wet

moral tamponade: resisting the existing
pressure against my breath; the right in wanting,
the wrong in settling - the confliction in my conviction
for both *** and respect;

must the two be mutually
exclusive?

I don't do that catch and release type of
relationship **** - no predator/prey - just equally
matched competitive exhibition: rotate the roles
of top and bottom, pleasure and pleasing, we are in need
of fire breathing;

I want purity in purpose, practice
in form/I want limbs to be tangled and words
to be torn

I had  some problems  im going to be away for a while
Gonna miss you my friends
Just writing this to say goodbye

Slip a little something in my coffee.
Make me weak at the knees
and treat this disease,
because I am tired
of this hard-fought living,
this city of mortar,
my dungeon-held daughter.
I am tired of submitting to ***
like a calf to the slaughter,
or turning words over
like cigarette ends
by the homeless shelter,
by the beer garden,
where wine is thicker than water,
coursing through your veins,
as I lay your hair out
like a river delta.

For all I have written,
I have nothing left to say.
No promise of pay,
or an off-chance for loose change.
I have dug my hand
through every pocket,
through sofa cushions,
under coasters,
and a fork in the socket.
There are a million ways
to get yourself high,
to find those lights pirouetting
in the sky;
some pill-drawn lullaby
of amnesia haze
and ***-shot girls;
she concedes to the camera,
and even pulls a twirl.

Break your fingers at the piano.
Play me a tune
to enliven my moods,
some fast-paced chorus,
some prodigal son,
some forgotten chord
laid down by Horus.
The race isn't run,
though I faltered at the sound
of the starting gun,
I think I have found a rhythm,
I am hitting my stride,
I will cheer the **** up,
and not lay down to die.
Please, lend me a kindness,
as I pay off my debts,
either passionless crime,

or transactional ***.

I need to clothe this manic obsession
for acceptance and digital affection.
The mornings turn to midnight
before I have started my day,
and the wind is blowing reminders of Newcastle;
the lack of warmth becoming prominent
in the absence of loving flesh.

There must be a better life somewhere,
beyond uncertainty and marketed freedoms.
Beyond where only question marks
punctuate endless months
of Novembers and displacement;
the chasm between who I am in the doorway,
and who I really mean to be.

I hear you are carving a living
out of the ways you almost died in the past.
You are signing forms for others,
you are making tea for trembling hands,
all the while wondering how it came to be you
sat on the right side of the table,
and away from the wrong side of the bar.

You told me an operator will find me,
a receptive ear to put me through
to someone who will know how to help.
In the meantime, you said, I should love music,
for when the shop-fronts have closed
and friends grow fat and indifferent,
Tom will sing Hold On until I can find sleep,

or at least a viable dream.

What a bliss-
to wake up beside an old friend
and feel familiar hands
hold you in familiar sheets,
a habitual ache
you have known since childhood,
and can never quite feel yourself
without.

Dear J,
   I may be at a loss for words half the time, and the other half I might have too much to say, but I can almost always say this; I love you. I have felt fear and I have felt bravery and I have felt loss. I can look pictures of us and I can recall everything we did that day. I can listen to videos of you and I can tell what you felt. And I know that you didn't think I was paying attention, but I knew how you looked when you thought something was unfair. And I knew the look in your eyes when you saw the light just right in a sunset and you knew that nothing could ever be recreated quite like that. I felt the same way about you.
   Wherever you are, know that loving someone isn't a matter of feeling something or not feeling something. It's a matter of knowing what you're feeling and when you need to let go.
   I think that people know that letting go involves unfurling your fingers and watching something fall from a great height. It's the act of following that objects downward motion that gets to us. That once it meets the ground or whatever surface it is deemed to hit, it's gone. What was there is gone. And once you think about that you think of what could have been there. That one last touch, that one last feeling of bliss that comes with knowing that the moment you wake up the sun will be shining in rivulets through fingers that tangle in hair fresh off the pillow. It's sad to know that nothing like that will happen again.
   The sun won't shine the same way. Instead it may simply fall. It won't cascade, it won't flow over the edges of noses or smiling lips. It's the same way water may lose a stone from a riverbed and from there on after it doesn't run quite the same way. But another stone, another pebble will fall in place because replacement happens.
   I guess what I'm trying  to say, is that letting go is letting someone else take a spot. In order for something else to happen you have to let your joints move out of their grip and unfold from their hold on something that wasn't meant to be held by you anymore.
   Sometimes you have to let them land somewhere new.
I only hope that it's somewhere even more beautiful than before.
            Claire