its a tuesday and you are waiting for me
standing at the central dressed all in grey
inoffensive, unassuming: avid
i can see the whites of your eyes
all the way from point zero down
so now your voice comes plain
through a sea of fog, and i know
we are coming up death row
red steel, old stone: is this how it goes?

i throw myself all around you
flesh onto flesh, man onto man
two guts into a gordian knot
a futile attempt at lessening
your incomprehensible hugeness
your bones, the empty room
i cannot see any walls to
you are: my har megiddo
my mount, under thunder

and the sun is brighter than white
if only i could see it, and the rain
is clearer even than air--if only
i could feel it! but now we are grey
among grey, concealing seas of pink
storms of milk; there is no sky
where we are bound
no opening, no end

you press your hand into mine
and you are warm like dirt, maybe
like you are barely born from the earth
only just learning the load of being addled
with such clumsy comfort, this rough touch
the worthlessness of words and the distance of skin
but we are stretching our necks to rise above it
do you like what you see, now?

so you bring me to your little home
and you feed me little pills, one by one
and we take to your little bed, spilling over
too much, not enough, back and forth
the same air again, the same words
no lines of demarcation left to bear
just your blood and mine and
one little winding red road
from here to (THE END.)

youre in a too-small bed in pediatrics
all sticky plasters and twitching toes
stuffed full of wires, pink to the bone
hollow and soft, impossibly close

youre a skinned hare, still running
eyes drippy with moon milk so fresh
teeth carved from wax and every orifice
a wound; every love, from the flesh

so now the sun rises on a sea of all-pale
im holding your hand, waiting to flower
you let down your hair--i know its gone thin
but dear deer, ill still try your tower

we're wasting away in symmetrical styles
one from the heart; another from the head
ill leave it to you to figure which is literal
ill leave it to you to see my blood be bled
(its too much for me, now: all i can consider
are the slow and subtle pains of sharing your bed.)

problem: im waking up to the end of the world
observations: the sun is a spot of oil
in a sans-borders sea of perfect white;
youre explaining heat death to me and
your hands are so warm but all i can think
is that your blood has never stopped moving
not for a second, and all the air in this place
you have re-breathed a hundred times over;
all i want is something new

cause: beyond your view everythings off
youre redefining the weight of the world
twisting every beginning to an end
every unexplored to a nonexistent
and im far from a traveller
effect: theres not one single place to run
but im not sure theres ever been

question: when will you leave me be?
hypothesis: not ever; we are going down
to the end together, whether i like it or not
evidence: i am beneath you and burnt,
breathless--ash ****** between my teeth
refutation: i have your flesh in my fist
and im taking you to pieces; too many
and too small to even think of seeing
conclusion*: its nothing new,
its nothing new

the day after they found you
a wordless homage to ophelia
i walked down to the shore
and conversed with god
trapped in a seashell

you're writing me letters
from out at sea
and your handwriting
is not quite the same
but it's all sealed in salt

you've got me on the deck
at last, and i cover
your eyes with my hands
they're in the wrong place
but that's okay

i can't untangle
your legs from your skirts
and your skin doesn't fit
but i've given so much
it's okay, it's okay

1
i carry with me at all times a single fond memory of you ******* out venom from under my skin, right where you forgot you put it a very long time ago, —and beneath my eyes, as the vitreous shrinks and contracts, every sweep of your tongue becomes another dilution of the pigment of my iris, and every stem or stalk taken from the roof of your mouth, here is where hell begins—and i carry in me at all times your own discarded cells, and the stalactites of your bones beneath. here is where

2
you let me drown, which i will not blame you for, but i will blame you for the tears of my lovers all shed over not having a body to bury, or to dig back up, or to hold, simply because you couldn’t swim—but i couldn’t either and did i let that stop me? at least we know now which one of us is more so the coward, or i guess was

3
(…which was my worst fear if i am being honest, if i had ever told you: they say there are two deaths but i know there are three. the first is when you are buried; the second is when your name is said for the last time; and the third is when the worms give up because there is not enough left of you to bother their mouths with)

4
nothing i say makes any sense today
you took my tongue; give it back, give it back

5
it all comes back to an oral fixation, i know that, just wish i could tell you why

6
—no, i remember why now, it’s because
you kissed the soil of my grave when you thought i wasn’t looking but the joke is finally on you because decomposition had begun early—sickness is the only bedfellow we’ll ever have—and after that comes

7
return to start?

so i go searching charity shops because
i forgot to bring a book today and
i want to get something to eat in a momen
because i am hungry
because i have not eaten anything yet today
because i forgot i am a flesh-and-blood thing
but i want to sit down somewhere to eat
which is something i do not like to do without either
1: the company of a book or
2: another living being of some sort
(one who will not make small talk
or touch my hands or think i matter)
since these are both fairly good excuses
not to make eye contact—even unintentional—
with anyone who happens to be around you
which is something i do not like doing
as every time without fail it makes me feel
a little nauseous, just a little
There are two major measures of eye irritation.
One is blink frequency which can be observed by human behavior.
The other measures are break up time, tear flow, hyperemia
(redness, swelling), tear fluid cytology,
and epithelial damage (vital stains) etc.,
which are human beings’ physiological reactions.
Blink frequency is defined as the number
of blinks per minute and it is associated
with eye irritation. Blink frequencies are individual
with mean frequencies of < 2-3 to 20-30 blinks/minute,
and they depend on environmental factors
including the use of contact lenses

i settle on a three-book set of stephen king
and i read the first thirty pages of "the girl who loved tom gordon"
sitting in a cafe between very slight interspersions of rain-watching
and i manage to avoid looking quite directly at anyone,
even the waitress,
which i am proud of myself for
in a small sad sort of way
but then i get up and i go to the restroom
and i spend several seconds deliberating
over whether to use the womens or the mens
because i am a liar either way
but i settle for womens just like i settled for king
and when i walk in there is a lady there
washing her hands at the sink
and we meet eyes for a moment
before i flee into a stall and, sitting on the toilet,
knees drawn up and tense,
holding my head in my hands,
burst promptly
into tears

i leave and i stop at the counter to pay the bill
which i almost forgot
and i find i have change, yes,
i have exact change, precise.
i worry about the chance of this
for five minutes after i leave;
i stand in the street and i find the rain has gone off,
but it hasn’t,
so i stand there holding in my hand
an unused £10 note that is verging on soggy
and i worry about whether that is okay
and then i go to sainsburys
and i buy tea and chocolate
just to get rid of that ******* ten pound note
that my gran gave me yesterday
that has a pen mark on it
that my granddad was almost certainly responsible for
(which does not make me cry but
does make me clench my fist very strangely
for a moment feeling embittered
towards this self-service checkout
that i am going to hand this tenner over to
knowing it will be eating up something
that reminds me of the way my granddad smelt
and the way he sort of hurt to be held by
because he was so odd and bony and my face
could never rest quite right on his shoulders for it,
and i do not know whether this is
a bad thing or a good thing i am doing, here)
and i almost buy bread too
but there are too many people in that aisle
so i do not

i go home and i read on the internet
about piercing one’s ears at home
and then i almost buy a suturing kit
from a medical supplies website
for a dog that i really like
and i get changed out of that jumper
into a shirt, finally
but now it is too cool rather than too warm
so then i just end up
taking all of my clothes off entirely
and crying naked
under the bedsheets
like a coffin-baby
because the world just won’t stop for me
and i really
really
should have bought some bread

a story: today i went out shopping and i
bought two pairs of the same earrings
in vaguely different colours
and so i stood there in Peacocks
holding one in each hand
looking up at the lights and thinking
i ought to have worn a shirt
instead of a jumper today
but i just didn’t expect it to be so warm
im wondering if i can pierce my ears
at home by myself because ive just recalled
my lobes closed up three years ago now
a needle, i am thinking, a needle and thread
and i’ll stitch my ears shut cartilage to cartilage
til not a word will scratch its way in
because every shaven-haired loose-lipped
teenage boy in every crowd
is God and we live by a sea where every gull
speaks the devil’s tongue
and i dont want to hear a bit of it anymore—
three pounds, i am thinking,
do i have change?