Flicking through yellowed pages
Of words written by younger hands
Of tormented scrawlings
Of tear-soaked memories
And love-eyed tales of autumn
Hoping to find something new
In what mattered back then
Or how the world looked
When seen through a mask

Perhaps I have found
A better place to start from,
Or nothing will change

If I saw this light from another angle
It would take upon a different shade
Where I have arrived now, I could only
Have got here from just one way.

It's okay to think "Why did that happen?"
"Why couldn't it have been easier for me?"
But we are the product of our trials and commitments
Are tested and strengthened through difficulty.

Lord you are the queen of my heart,
I am your daughter,
Invited into your royal house,
A place I don't deserve,
And invited to share my place
To share a wondrous gift
Allow those I love to be loved
More than I could ever love them
Alone

He will never let me down
Never lose the fight
The glory of his word
Stands up against the night
At the centre of it all
An everlasting light
Hope to the hopeless.

Our fear set free
But still human beings,
So hesitate, worry, panic and doubt
That everything will be OK
That our problems can be sorted out
So easily
So simply
Beautiful, merciful,
Graceful Grace
Beyond comprehension
Broken tension
And proclamation:
We are his.

Here, in truth, we're found
Unified upon this common ground
Divided hearts held together
Secured by jagged edges.

Here, in hope, we're loved
Wrapped in scarves and gloves
By an over-fussy mother
Determined to keep us warm.

Here, in strength, we stand
Arm in arm, hand in hand
And we know we cannot fall
We are: One for All

From the far-off edges
The voices jumble in disharmony
Lost, confused dissonance commands the air
But drawn in, by unseen will,
Unknown intentions reach them
And you
Close to the centre
As words merge, overlap and mix
And in glorious difference declare
We Are.

I am an author, except
My plotlines are mostly inept,
I have lots of sparks,
But no story arcs,
So poetry's where they are kept.

Lost in translation
The fire, passion, hunger,
Reduced to charcoal.

Time slips over me
Pointless thoughts command my mind
Another night wasted.

I am unremarkable
My being here makes little difference
To more than close family
Yet I am told I could
Be something more than that
That I could run alongside and
Pluck reality from its path but
I am unremarkable
That I am unique and different
Offers no importance to my existence
Nor does it foster pride or courage
Rather it reassures my belief
That alone I am too small
To change anything
I am unremarkable
Yes, I am a minority but
That never made me happy
Nor does it make me interesting
As more than an exhibit
Who am I is not who I choose to be
So judge me on my choice to be
Unremarkably human.

In the heart of the evening,
Alone but for the passive hum of the fridge,
Waiting for the creeping force of fatigue
To press down upon my eyes.

He comes each night to interrupt,
To steal away my hours that march on unwavered,
And pass by without interest
In a solitary sleeping girl.

And from Him, She takes my limp body,
To sweeten the inescapable emptiness,
With promises, tales and memories
Crafted from my own

How dare they keep the camera's eyes on her face?
That's not what 'everyone' wants to see!
What purpose does she serve but to be ogled,
Or give Him something to live for?
And what is it with films these days,
Handing out female leads?
How am I supposed to immerse myself
In a body so weak and vulnerable to attack
From people like Me?
And how dare they let her save the day,
When she's supposed to be rescued?
How can I feel important if I can't be the one
Protecting her with the muscles I earned by being
Born one way, not the other?
And why isn't she falling apart and crying?
It's so unrealistic that she'd be able to keep
her fragile emotions under control,
Shouldn't she be scared at the sight of danger?
How is He supposed to comfort her
If she doesn't need it?!

How is she supposed to believe in herself,
If every time someone tells her she's capable,
You're** there to prove her wrong?

I could be a machine
Built by thousands of men
Staring at clipboards,
Statistics and spreadsheets
And another thousand
Staring at my chest.

I could be a lab-rat
Bred to play a game
I can only lose
While they laugh,
Joke and decide what
I can't do.

I could be a slave
Kept captive by stolen choices
Shocked into submission
By charged metal round my neck
Yet when I break down they're
Shocked by my weakness.

I could be a number
Manipulated to fit the
Wishes of our rich,
Powerful 'leaders'
Leading me against my
Wishes.

But I am a woman,
Not held or kept or built or lead,
Not confined to the blueprint
Of a designer in an office,
I am a woman
And I will be free

Water drips down my shoulders,
down my back and flat chest,
Clothing me in
A torrent of shimmering skin.
My ears are blocked for a moment,
Muffling the creaking
Of my weight shifting from one foot
To the other.
My eyes are closed,
Lest I see my reflection
In the rapidly steaming up windows
Turned mirrors in the night.
I cross my arms over myself,
But it does little more than
Remind me of the
Wreck I've become.
I try desperately to wash
Thoroughly without touching
My anatomy too much,
Letting gravity do its work as much
As I can,
Wondering if I should just
Ignore some places in favour of
Beating my mind
Into the wrong shape
Again.
But of course I must remain clean,
Even as my mind grows thick with
Grime, muck, blood,
That agony can be
Slept off,
Or hidden,
Or left to dry,
Or wiped away.

Sometimes I wonder
If I have stolen life from the world,
If my existence has a purpose
Or if it simply grinds against
The ever-turning gears of time,
Resisting the absolute certainty -
The inescapable reality that all
Must end,
Everything will fall apart,
And all I'm doing,
Is watching half a gasp
Of life's refusal to die.

We put our teenage lives on hold
And played like we were twenty
We went through phases
With every change of clothes
We sat outside, talked and felt alive,
And wasted our nights
Just to get back at life.

I can't stop now,
I'm looking out for you
In every shade of the sky
Every hint of spring reminds me
Of the warmth of your smile -
I can't stop now,
No, now I'm spending all my time,
Waiting.

We can't stop now,
We're running out of breath
As two lost souls unite
As I find my comfort
With your lips on mine -
Now the words flow,
No, please, Never let me go,
I'm waiting.
Waiting.
Resting in your arms.

I don't want to write another poem about your eyes
But every morning when you wake up
And let them drift open,
Is like a second sunrise
And every night,
As you fall into dreams,
I can just sit there for a while,
And hear as the very earth,
Breathes slow and rests with you.

So stay with me tonight,
In the dark, be my light,
And gently,
With but a whisper,
If at all,
May I repeat my worship
Of two glistening gasps of creation.

An industrial fan drags my hair across my face
As I lean a little down to the slightly-too-short microphone
And with an audience of a few hundred
I begin my protest
Disguised as entertainment
They don't realise what I'm saying,
Not yet,
Not while they're learning the tune,
And my message is still building,
But now -
Now they hear the words
As my backing cuts off
And I am left naked in my beliefs
And I sing, with power
With certainty and hope
For a future I can't change yet
So I can make someone's now
Better.

Emptiness has no place
In human souls
But creeps in,
And pulls hearts apart
From the inside
Without warning,
Without mercy,
We are without
Anything to hold onto,
Not even the bitter relief
Of crushing sadness,
Or the burn
Of anger can lock away
The overwhelming
Lack of...anything to feel
Anything to love
Anything to aim for.

Anything

I know when I'm lonely
All she has to do is hold me
And all of the pain fades away
As the rest of the world falls away.

I know when she holds me
She's never going to let go of me
We could run away
Just us, we could escape.

Then she holds me tighter
The flame between us brighter
Suddenly we're running free
Her and me: in our dreams
She's leading me to a fantasy.

Who cares about the storm clouds?
When this could be our breakout.
My hand runs through her hair
We could be anywhere
Because tonight
Is our night.

She's not a lighthouse,
I'd rather bask in her gaze,
She's my North Star, wherever we are
And she's pointing the right way
I'm following her
And when I'm her girl
I'll be home

Her eyes made me realise
How far I was away
When she called my name across the bay
And said, "You're going the wrong way"
I held my heart out,
I said, "You be the lighthouse,"
She said, "No, I don't want you to turn away."

She's not a lighthouse,
She's Ursa Minor A
Except she holds my hand
To remind me that
She's not 400 light-years away
When I'm lost at sea
She's leading me
Home.

My friends aren't therapists,
They're the reason I survive without one
But I need to learn not to
Lean on them
Or when they go
I'll lose balance and come
Crashing
Back
Down

I cannot exist
Away from
Friendship that holds me together
Just about, not because the glue
Won't stick but because
I lost some of the pieces already
And I yearn for such senseless
Wastes of time as
The days
I used to savour and
Used to keep me smiling just
just
About.

Ok I admit it
I'm hurting
I can't think like I used to
Can't smile without turning on each muscle
In the corners of my lip
I've lost faith in the future
And blamed myself for it
And killed myself over and
Over in my head
Just to pick apart my brain
And find some explanation for why
Every night is so
So
Heavy

Concepts pulling,
Fatiguing, stealing my breath
My concentration fading,
And falling off a cliff,
To end me.

Breaths screeching and trembling
As my legs shake and mind drives in
Confused circles around what I need to
Convey with some degree of
Beauty but inside all is
Screaming and strange and over-analysing
Every hair of their eyebrows.

I have neglected my passion
For too long now,
Leaving in its place
Promises and deadlines
Which I never met,
Along with all the stress,
Chaos and energy that
Needed an outlet
In the form of some black pixels
On a screen curving themselves
Into stories, patterns, thoughts,
Dreams, hopes, rants and love tokens.
So now I return,
As a potter to the wheel
Or a pilot to the stick.
And from my rest I have
Gathered up swirls of madness
Anger and fear and
Mixed them with hope
Until they have some kind of
Honest message.

Finally,
I have ticked enough boxes
To be called an 'Artist'
Which I think makes me
Less of one than when
I just wrote random words
On a page to see
What would happen.

This feud should never have been
Yet now it has taken over everything
And stands between us and stability
Like a wall we couldn't afford to build
But did anyway.

This hatred has no base but in his
Jealousy and frustrated lashing-outs
Against whoever it was that ruined
His chances (Apart from him,
Who is not to blame)

'There is still time' I
Tell myself again just to
Excuse my failure

A CD is as good a bat as any
But nothing beats the kayak paddle
Or the one-hit-wonder bicycle helmet
That decimated the feather duster.

Turn around,
And you'll see someone
More lost than you,
With less hope,
Less chances,
Less belief.

That's not a victory.
That's what we fight:

Not a nation,
Nor a religion,
Nor an ideology,
Not even terror.
We fight suffering.

And we fight with words
Designed to drill
Deep into your minds
To constantly remind you
Of what you'd rather ignore:
The person stood behind you,
Who needs you to turn around.

Sky blue is
A gradient from pale to
Deeper tones
That save us from
Staring at eternity
All day.

Did you hear they took him?
They took him yesterday,
They ripped him from his family
And they made him run away.

Did you hear her calling?
Calling for God's love,
She screamed and wore her throat out
For something from above.

Did you hear the gunshot?
Ringing in the night,
It struck them both and killed them
For searching for the light.

Did you hear it coming?
Or did you just pretend
That their lives didn't matter
Not even at the end?

Did you hear it's over?
I'm sorry, that's not true
The suffering keeps on going
Because it isn't you.

Did you hear a nation?
Falling to their knees,
They crumbled from the inside,
So stop this madness - please.

Honest lyrics work
Much better than shallow lies
Put to melody

Free-roaming means data is off,
Eyes are up and headphones drop
Take a breath, taste the air
Take a step, no need to stare -
No shock, no bait,
No status update,
No followers to feed
No limits, no need
To restrict yourself to one-hundred-and-forty
Characters that aren't quite you,
No, for once, feel it all in one go
Not in a ten-second video,
First-hand experience is better
Than cutting down ur lettrs
Time to rediscover the world,
Through the highest definition
Four-dimensional,
Multi-sensational,
Live-stream of consciousness:
Reality.

Freedom is only as good as the people you share it with

Throat closing as we
Join the
Motorway
Vision blurring
Losing feeling
Oxygen blocked
Panic growing
But lost
Caring
Too much
Going through
My brain
But too
Slow
To understand

The steady click of a pen
Punctuates the drone of
A teacher who thinks she gets us but
Loses our interest and focus until
We realise we don't understand because
We were too busy clicking our pens and
Writing poems.

Am I worth keeping
Alive more than some other
Broken-hearted soul?

She loved to quickly and fell too far,
Little care taken for that little heart,
Beating so strong, so furious still,
Though now limp and leaking,
Ripped and ragged
From one loss after
Another.

She tries to keep smiling just as before
But her lips were spat out again, onto the floor,
She followed then, soaked with rain and tears,
Her trust tackled,
Quivering, quarter-hearted,
And pulse fading so
Fast.

Rain soaked windows
drag a hand the world,
stretching, distorting,
long ripples curl
as if in a wake,
the houses obscured
and tree branches fluid
their currents disturbed
everything altered
and painted with grey
as oil paints run
from the sky down a pane.

These days would be
Easier
If I just hid away
And stayed quiet
To let it play itself out.

The conflict would be
Simpler
If I ignored my own feelings
And just let them
Find their own solution

This journey would be
Shorter
If we just stopped following me
And kept to the
Paths they need to walk.

Coloured shards
Now nothing but the ashes
Of the beauty they once held
Burnt in an instant by
Stupidity's servants'
Brutish hands.

I scream at the wall
As if it could understand
Or even hear me.

My fingers grip tight
Around nothing but themselves
Nails in my palm.

The air grows heavy,
Dripping slowly down my throat
Sticking to my lungs.

My vision closes,
The room's shadow grows stronger
A closing tunnel.

Now my eyes empty
Themselves of all their sorrow
Onto the carpet.

A too perfect green paints the field
In block pastels and petals
Like God is some child
Making a piece of scrap paper
Into a display piece to be stuck
On the front of some heavenly fridge

The air has no bite today,
It is little more than a sigh
'Gainst the skin of a lover's neck,
And her caresses' heat
Reaches below the surface,
To calm the stirring of the soul.

We settled back in to a rhythm
That had never quite felt right
And seemed to impose itself
Above the beating of our hearts
And took over our breathing
In favour of 'more important' things.

We fell out of time
And into the emptiness of
Lives without purpose
But that we filled with our own
Unrecognised goals.

We broke ourselves away,
As the gears had eroded,
And started to slip between
The cracks in the machine.

We lay for a while,
Unmoving and uncaring,
But content with that.

We became a new being,
Aiming only for the future.

We set ourselves free.