You can sit with your shame and you can sit and sit and sit
And you can let yourself climb down into the coldest depths where you think you belong
And you can bargain and promise
And plead that you’ll do better
That you know what you did
That you’re not like the others
Or you can let it go on the breeze on your knowing
Bet it all on the little brown nut of your love for yourself
And realise that it wasn’t you all along
That you’re good
Oh you’re good you’re good you’re good
And sleep,
with the comfort of your own choices.

And I loved a girl once
From the same place as this band I like
I hear her sweet missives in the angsty twang of their songs
And when someone talks of New York
I picture her running about the streets
Before she knew me
Breathtaken in the easy newness of it all
And when I think of southern England
I think of the trip we took to the coast
Her bright eyes leading me from London
Hands steady on the wheel and my thigh
And I can’t visit the town of my youth
Crochet myself through the crowds on Cowley road
Without looking for her by the house she used to live in
I see her body pushing mine into the red brick of the Middle Eastern takeway
On that warm night in April when she first showed me her longing.
And often when I'm in Clapham
Driving past the couples walking slowly in the grey snowed-grass
I’m haunted by the common, dusty with bottle tops
and the smell of smoking
Light august rain as she cried at my swollen tears

Can’t stop
feeling the shape of people
Trying to see if they will fit
Into the space I cultivated
Just for you

Low tide
I wait and I wait
You enter me
In dreams
I can’t scrub the smell of you
My head

She breathes into me
inhales deep
and relaxes back
and I think she might just be the greatest thing
That I've ever had.
fears others all
do not exist
Only her.

I have made friends with the birds nesting above me
In my nights alone
When I am full of you
They murmur along
Nodding at the right parts
As I retell myself the story of us.

Our love was secret
I delighted at the hidden bits of you
that you were entrusting me with
We swallowed sunsets and mornings
Days of messages and small smiles
orbits speeding as we circled one another

I lay on her sofa
Eyes closed
Not sleeping
Gently waiting for her to be finished with her post-evening necessities
Water
Food
Checking her emails.
I smiled to myself,
With each wet chew of her bagel
Each soft sound of her tongue moving in that beautiful mouth
I imagined I was the bread
and she was eating me alive.

Why do I want to eat things that make me feel sick
Like a confused dog.
Why do I still want you when it hurts me like this

I went bed shopping with my mother
Watched her touch the fabrics and shake them out
Imagining how they’d keep her warm in her settled life.
And all I could think about was you
And how I was in your bed
And the furniture in your room
And the smell of your neck
And how I wished I could have made a room
Beautiful enough that you’d want to stay in it.

What am I supposed to do with myself
now that I don't even have the promise of you?
I need to be fed.

I don't know what to do with all my thoughts
Now that I can't let them be about you.

I’ll be ok

The vapours of her will leave my body soon

Because that’s all they ever where

Vapours.

In the optimistic light of the morning,
or when I’m travelling somewhere, fast,
perhaps on a plane or a train,
everything seems ok.
Caring so much seems silly, and I feel released.
Healing and carrying on with life seems not only possible but natural, inevitable.

I know that you love

But do you only love accidentally?

She reaches into my chest
every day
And pulls out my heart,
looks at it for a while, turns it over in her hands,
feels its heady pumping weight
And lets it fall to the floor,
as if she never even felt its warmth.

Going to sleep was a lot more fun when it was in your bed
A thousand possibilities and the only one I really wanted swam in your eyes when you looked at me.

You reach back round for my arm
Which had fallen away from you in sleep,
As I, too hot, had reluctantly rolled away,
trying to maintain some semblance of chill when faced with the heat of you
But you
You move with me, following me into my roll,
Your body not happy with being left without mine
And love, that was everything to me.

You reach back round for my arm
Which had fallen away from you in sleep,
As I, too hot, had reluctantly rolled away,
trying to maintain some semblance of chill when faced with you
But you
You move your body with mine, following me into my roll,
Your body not happy with being left without mine
And that was everything to me.

You’re not allowed
To listen to songs that make you think of me
yet not message me.

bodiesbodiesbodiesbodiesbodies
Earlier your body was pressed into mine
As closely as two skins can be through layers of clothes
The movement of your head and breath on my shoulder as we tried to swim in the last dregs of us
now I run at you, hard
My shoulder hits into your stomach
my arms crash you to the ground
My weight landing on you, hard
Bodiesbodiesbodiesbodiesbodies

We spin round one another
in places, friends, conversations, songs
Circling
Orbiting
We both know we’re there and we’re aware
But we pretend to be oblivious
The distance too breathtakingly close
The gap too heartbreakingly wide

How do people do this?
I am so full of love I can barely eat
She bubbles inside me like wine
I’m spinning in the swirling glass of her
I can’t keep her from breaking out across my face in a smile
It’s her it’s her it’s her it’s all her
I am less me now and more her

I keep going to the river to pray
say my words into a rock and sink it in the pool
tie my doubts together like daisy chains
And let the stream pull them out from me
I slip my clothes off
crack my shoes from my feet like shucking oysters
Dip in heel-first
Let my body flow after
I sit like tea in the shallows
Sins dissipating from my skin in swirls
push off from the mud
mouth open
Gulping at the river bed
My flesh cooling to meet the temperature of the water

My cousin looks more like my mother than I do.
The acid of this hits the back of my throat
makes me think of
family rooms with eyes that pierce and wonder
Years of explaining the Northern control of my accent
Why was I taken from the sun
that caused the freckles on my kins cheeks
like kisses
Raised alone like tall corn amongst the barley.

Glutton
Swollen child
Raised to expect love
Like water from a tap.
Reliable
Plentiful
Clean.

She leaned in
and I held my breath
thirsty for what she might say.
She told me something she has told a thousand people before me.

All the blood ran out of my body and out of the nightclub and into the sea.

What if I said
All of those things that have been stuck in my throat for months
Would it change you?
Would it change us?
Would you unravel into my arms
Like petals coming loose?
Would you see me for what I blankly am
and would be be how I always dreamed?
Probably not.
For I am too nervous and bound tight by convention.
And anyway, I don't know what goes on behind those deep brown eyes.
In that life of yours that I don't know about.

But tonight
You kissed my hands and for a second I thought
You saw me.
But then again
Maybe not.

How can you be so close to the centre of my axis
and I so far out from yours.
Surely out orbits would have collided by now?
I guess not.

Water falls
droplets dappling flesh
Pools gather where your skin soaks in.
My eyes dive in
I cling to your shores -
let go, and swim
inhaling in the waters of you.
I gulp,
but it is salty,
and stings my eyes
when I see.
My fingers run through each stream
searching for something to cleanse me
But all I find is weeds

the days seem long
and the nights longer
yet weeks fly by in blinks
of eyes too bleary to really see
paralysed by a fear of doing
dissatisfaction leaving me helpless
immobile
lost

Silence passes east between us
long flights and rough rides have taken it out of us.
We both gaze outward
legs just touching
both needing contact to stop from getting
lost in the green newness of it all
Arrival.
The heat dark and thick
bellies full of water like puppies we climb
onto beds and between sheets
fitting together like we always have done.

I drank the sea
No one was watching but me
The salt crystallised my bones
But the water made me free
Shells covered my lips and eyes
Seaweed lay as hair
And slid down throat
Sand layered like skin
Pages of a diary
Formed by waves on waves
I smelt of fish
And open air
I raged all over
Threw my spitting hands to the sun
Let it evaporate away my sins
I tossed my hair to the wind
And danced pebbles as my feet
I rolled with the tide
Tossed here and there
Fishermen tried to ****** parts of me
But I eluded them
Flowed ever faster to the shores
Picked men from rocks and threw them back
Sank deep and long
swam out again, to the deep
I rolled with whales
sifted krill through my teeth
tumbling currents rinsed my skin
Quick-silver flashing in my belly
coast to coast I roamed and rushed
and as the darkened tide turned,
I slipped out again to the deep
not content to walk when I could *swim

Make love to me in the half light of the early morning
Make love to me like you said you would
Make love to me like I'm the only thing your body needs
Make love to me like losing yourself in me is the only way to keep yourself sane
Make love to me as a prayer and a thanks and a love letter
Make love to me like my skin is healing and you're broken
Make love to me like in the last log in the water and you're drowning
Make love to me like I'm the last oxygen left
Make love to me like I make you smile because I do
And I love you
Make love to me like you love me the way I do you.

There's something about an empty tube carriage
Not even so late at night
That makes me think of stars
And lovers
And mostly loneliness
And the endless possibilities of humanity
It quietly fills as you sit and write this
And life continues;
The city breathes again
And so you just smile
Because you tasted a little of the infinite.

I'll sleep between your legs like its nothing.
mine part like waves
blood orange at the close
tangled roots of our desire
twisting vines, skin to skin
you taste
like warmth that i've been missing
like me when you kiss my neck
then me
sleeping in your eyes
your affected music soundtrack to my awakening
to life
to love
and heat.
You will forever have an imprint on this body.

This was the year that I learnt how to be silent.
Sometimes to allow others to speak.
Once because I was afraid.
Twice because my eyes were too full of the love in front of me to allow my lips to move.
Often because silence is solitude and I am lonely.
Every now and again because I was wary of what my voice would say.
Rarely because I was in awe but mostly because I am weary and to speak is to engage.

My willingness for you
Knows no bounds
They say love is knowing flaws but loving nonetheless
And it's true
Because you are certainly not flawless
But my willingness for you
To touch and taste and love
Is endless and beyond anything that I have ever known before.

The year passed by in a blur
Of stress
And crying
And joy and laughing
And all the moments that signify teenage years
Are coming to an end and adulthood approaches.
That the safe cocoon of youth
Is no longer big enough for us
And even starts to reject us a little.
There are key moments picked out in my mind
Nights of sleeping next you in that high room
Cold mornings of your smile as we opened the front door to the frost
Days with tea and toast and hot chocolate
As we sat, sweaty from the afternoon
And laughing at silly things that only we knew.
Endless mornings draw together where we all sat in that hall
Me just apart from you all
And listened to inspiration
Or not,
Depending on the day,
But still we sat together.
And that last night
So uneventful as we all went our separate ways to bed
And the next day as we all got drunk together
In the walls that before had encased our childhood
We laughed and smiled and cried
And thanked god
And each other
For all those spectacular sights
Those days that made us giddy with hope and friendship
Those nights that made us weep and ache
With the pain of one another
Oh it was so glorious and so strange and so perfect,
That no words can really cover how grateful I am
To all of you,
the shepherds of my youthfulness.

I am what I am and I am ugly
But that is ok
My life is meant for something other than to be looked at
And craved after by many
Although this too is noble in itself.
No, I am different, am other,
too loud and proud and caring.
I am meant for different things where
I sketch skyscapes with my words
And turn minds with my musings
And I don't need appreciation for the body that does it.
I have lumps and marks and redness
But my arms are strong for lifting
And my brain quick to change the things that I see fitting.
So, do not cry that you are ugly,
Be happy that you are, for you are made for different things
And different people too.

All that was left after you'd gone
Was a little bottle of scent
I'm not even sure that you were wearing it that night
It had been kicked under the bed that you gave me and my friend to sleep in
When another friend had forgotten.
But somehow
This little bottle made its way into my makeup bag
And I found it a week later
Took the cap off gently
- scared of stirring it
And raised it to my nose.
It smelled deeply of you
Warm and musky
Like your hair that night when my fingers were tangled in it,
Like your clothes in the morning when I turned to face you.
I don't know why but each night when I began to miss you
I'd roll some on my wrists like silk
And lie in my bed
And wait for you to come back to me.
I inhaled at my wrists as you had done at my neck
Remembered how you'd whispered
That you loved the way I smell.
I'd rub my wrists together
To get that warmth that I'd felt when I woke in your arms
Locked so tightly round me that I almost struggled for breath
And even though I haven't seen you in weeks
months
And even though I barely knew you
- just a few days
I still fall asleep every night with your scent on my arms
and the feeling of your love etched into my body.

my inner body has been touched
by none other than me
no less times i suppose
and pleasure no less too
but feeling
and craving
and breathing
of another that i love
i have not yet felt in my aching walls.

And we thought we were philosophers, and poets, and lovers. And we were all of these things and none. We were wallowing in an infinite present of youth and naivety. And we lived it.

Thoughts glanced off me,
lying like stones in the sand
I ran
quick mind over quickened feet
hands ripped open by bushes;
rich thickets that sprung
from the very land
that my own soles scorched.

I chased skies
chased words away from mind
and wept imprisonment from inside,
howling at the chains that kept me bolted to the ground

I threw both time and space at my feet,
like the clothes of a slave.
As my legs lurched for length,
I swept eerie visions of my past away
like wind across my skin.

My toes pounded land;
my eyes searching the horizon
bleeding ears catching the groans
of the earth that my hands clawed at.

A ravenous beast;
my feet sought still to devour the world
as it lay sleeping like a lamb
woken only by the lush rip of my teeth
stopping its temperate pulse.

My lungs gasped the air that my sweat left humid,
no more was I condemned to life
my empty chains
cracked off
by pulsating limbs.
My insatiable teeth
gnawing at the very land itself
no longer was I able to sit amongst the trees;
or gaze up at the stars
I was not content to watch the world,
but eat it;
taste the bitter earth
and force it down dried gullet
drinking in the seas
to quench my geographical thirst.

And still
my wide eyes searched for their next slaughter
the next nation
to ****** the life from.

A dialect
so different
that gargles from our gulping mouths
was formed in the teenage years
the gap between child and adult.
It was formed in between the steaming windows
of our first shared room
was wrought by the sticky fingers of our midnight-feasting.
It developed over time,
your African ancestors licking at the chocolate in your teeth
sharing mingled moments of warmth and sadness
with the carefree twang of my pacific past.
We lay together
your dark skin melting into mine
and over time
our throats sculpted their own language
as Babylonian linguists rejoiced
at the Genesis of us.

But over time
the grammar stumbled
and diplomacy broke between us,
and the shared bed of our childhood
was cracked open by the semantics of our youth.
My tongue clung to the dancing prose,
as if to return to the moment of our first embrace,
my sheets ached for the scent of your skin;
Arched back missing your equatorial warmth.
I gushed out words for you
Choking on damp notions of our shared past.
I tried to force in the commas
that married your phrase to mine;
straining to utter those sounds that were so sacredly ours .
But my verses had no meaning,
when the apostle lost all faith.

And then
one day
like breath returning to a body,
our dialect once again filled you
head to toe, heavy with the wet weight of love.
And just as before
you spilled into my arms
Our tongues mingled in a garbled kiss
Of language, more physical than my owns hands
clinging to your butter-skin.
I felt you breathing against my heart
heard whispered extracts of your internal litanies
drifting out through parted lips.
And I felt again
the mangled words
the beautiful drawl
This dialect, so definitely ours.

I will never call you beautiful
Because beauty implies stillness
You are more than this
You are electric
Magnetic
Can't-take-my-eyes-off-yours kinetic
You pulsate with an aura of need
And poetic heat
That drags me in
And in
Until I'm melting in the flames of you.

He picks me up and dips me in cool water
And I sink
Unable to swim in his heady lagoon
Of love
And pleasure
And coming to my senses,
I drown in him
Before I even knew that I was wading.

I will not be silenced.
No matter how many times you tell me I'm too argumentative
No matter how many times you tell me it's "unladylike"
No matter how many times you scoff at my words because I tell them with force
No matter how many times you're contemptuous of my passion
I will not be silenced,
Not now, not ever.

And if I could go back
I'd never tear my lips off your neck
Never unlock my fingers from your hair
Keep my nails etched into your back
And my eyes locked
Straight on yours.
If I could go back
I'd take your earlobe in my mouth
And whisper
Until the words were burned into your dreams
Don't let me go
Don't let me go
Don't let me go
Don't let me go.

I want her to tell me that she needs me.
That she loves me.
That she can't do without me.
That I've helped her so much and that she's ******* grateful for it.
Like I help her when nobody else can.
Like I understand her like nobody else can.
I want her to say that she enjoys spending time with me and loves me for me and has things to say to me and it's not just me being crazy and it's not just me obsessing over a girl who will never quite love me like I love her and who finds me so intensely annoying but ultimately harmless to the extent that she just keeps me around because it's easier but all the while is pretty disgusted at so many aspects of me including my mind my body my personality my beliefs my desires my achievements what I love and what I hate. What I look like and how I'm not cool and how it all just adds up to me not being good enough and me loving her so much that I just want to sew my skin to hers like a parasite or a conjoined twin or a clown beneath the mask of her. I want to be so close to her that her blood mixes with mine and our organs **** together like wet sand and we globulate and tessellate until there is nothing left of us apart, no white and black, no confused and certain, no happy and sad, just a huge, *****, grey mess of monotone colours mixed and mixed and oh it will be so beautiful and so sad and so unlike anything you have ever seen before.