I – circular formations slide behind my eyelids and leave me dizzy, swinging like a snake in a tree. temptation comes to mind and thinking of the garden of eden, i wonder this: does it matter that it was eve? did it make any difference after all? do we really delude ourselves to believe that without eve the apple would have remained uneaten, and the world untainted by sin? i picture myself growing from a man’s dissected rib, only ever a fraction of the life i was stemmed from. snipped like a cutting and grown into a potted flower. created to belong. not to nature, as i would like, but to a man. do you think that snake just told eve to eat the apple? or did he tell her more. perhaps he said the taste of the apple would fill the empty chasm in her chest where identity should lie. perhaps he said the apple could allow her to be a person in her own right. and can we blame her? for biting into knowledge? a woman who was born into ownership dared to taste power. and we stomped her into history as the villain.

II – i become tired of this space where birds can no longer fly. i want to be free. i don’t want to have a body, i want to float around in space as a ghost. shame is such a human emotion. i want to bleed in technicolour. i want to be free.

III – and so i sit here eyes sombre and cold, and i stare out into the candy coloured skies. the clouds look so close i could almost taste them if it weren’t for the blood in my mouth. and the green of the trees calls to me in a language i don’t speak anymore. somehow i see their words echoed across the skyline. calling me home. i know it’s too late. i go back inside to fight the tumbleweeds in my head. It only hurts me to remember.

IV – i look down at my hands. for a fleeting moment i hate my petite body, and i want to be a monster with spikes and huge sharp teeth. i dismiss the thought, lay down on my bed, and dream of creation. i dream of being the ocean’s daughter. fierce and strong with salt-hardened hands and strong swimmers legs. born of the sea, running to the trees who call to me. it won’t happen now, but i can dream. i wake, and see the sky shouting in pastels to me and the trees echoing in muted jewel tones. i run out to them and for a split second I feel alive,  but it passes. but it always passes.

Poetry is an act of narcissism.
Poetry is screaming into the ears of other people.
Poetry is the art of begging strangers to look inside your mind.
Poetry is therapy with the ******* cashflow reversed.
Poetry is an act of narcissism.
This poem is a cry for forgiveness.
I wish I could call It an epilogue, but that it is not.

Hi, I am the poet and I am also an addict.
I am addicted to the attention and love of other people.
I am addicted to the feedback and approval of other people.
I’m 20 and I still act like I’m the only person on earth.
It probably has something to do with my parents.
Or any other way I can shovel the blame off myself.

Sometimes I hate selfless people because I wish I could be like them.
I have not said that out loud before.
I never ******* grew up.
I have not said that out loud before.

Today I spent £20 of my Mother’s money because I convinced myself I deserved it,
Because It’s hard getting out of bed,
Right?
                                                                                 Please see my thoughts.

Today I convinced myself it’s not my fault I get jealous of other people,
I’m a blameless product of my upbringing,
Right?
                                                                          Please tell me they are okay.

Today I wrote this poem and lay in bed,
And you should pat me on the back for that,
Right?
                         ART IS DEAD WE KILLED IT ARE YOU HAPPY NOW


Poetry is an act of narcissism.
I am a poet.
Forgive me.
Forgive me.
Forgive me.
Forgive me.
Forgive me.

I think about car crashes,
And the wind in the grass,
Summer was just hot enough,
For our small souls to bloom.
The path I traverse over and over,
I’m coming back to now,
My life appears to be re-walking,
Re-tracing.
My heart and your hair,
Did you mean all the things you said?
When you were drunk and I was keeping you upright,
Safe from the wind?
I love you in the ways that matter most,
I’m sorry I’m not very good at it.
I’m not confident, or perfect,
I’m not easy to love.
Should I be easy to love?
I ask that a lot,
I know I ask too many,
Questions.
And you don’t have the answers.
But why is this day,
Aching at the heart,
Flesh ripped from flesh,
I never really understood you,
Will you leave me at the altar?
Am I the stars above?
Sometimes I feel like I am nothing.
Shallow
-under the night sky of influence.
Would you argue?
Would you complain?
And is it worth it, our lengthy refrain?
I keep it at a distance.
But I think I know.
At least the stars above and earth below continue to hold me,
Keep me still.
Until overturned cars,
And the colour blue,
Stop making headaches twist and rot behind my eyes.

You remind me of fresh dew on the grass,
In the morning when it’s cold,
And still dark but the sun is ebbing,
Just below the horizon.

In the sort of calm way that a heart,
Can open,
I wake up to you like snowy mornings,
Mild frost and a chill in the air,
Just enough to make me feel,
A little more alive than usual.

Something crisp, and delicate,
Begs beyond the surface.
Is it the siren’s call?

Your sweetness is like honey,
The kind that has weight to it.

I had a daydream that your lips tasted like marzipan,
Sweet and rich like almond, sugar,
After the thought I had to take a sip of water to cool myself down,
But then I thought,
Perhaps not marzipan,
Maybe more peppermint,
Sweet and hot,
Like taking a ball of fire into your mouth,
But somehow at once hot and ice cold,
And I have imagined you smell earthy, intense,
Like cedar or pine trees,
Like you have a forest under your skin.

We could have a kind of farm,
I suggest,
With a little shop attached,
We could make jam and lemon curd,
Maybe chutney or,
Other things in little packaged jars,
I could bake things,
You could sell paintings there too,
We would only grow vegetables,
And fruit,
We would cook things with love,
Labour the earth with love,
Live together in love,
I feel sure that I could work the soil,
I have always felt an uncertain hard need in my bones,
To give something back to Mother Nature,
And I grew up in the country,
So I feel sure I would acclimatise,
But it is only a fantasy,
A sort of a story,
Even though it does sound nice either way.

60 days down the road till I am,
rippling like a pond for you,
make me writhe with wet storm clouds shaking my horizons sending waves,
still me with heavy heat summer days where nothing moves and earth is coarse with love and honeyed thick air,
move me gently with a cool autumn breeze soft mornings strolls,
commence my tides to enter and draw back steadily day after day never quit pushing me out and pulling me in,
the moon and the wind fight bitterly over who owns the water who moves who stills,
But i am tuned to you alone.

I have been thinking about how fictional worlds thread with our realities,
how if you read a book,
watch a film,
see a play,
the subject matter and themes will unconsciously make their way into your daydreams,
I had been watching pride and prejudice,
thinking of Pemberley Estate,
the countryside,
how English hills can flood with hanging low mist,
overcast and soft,
mild, almost ethereal,
or how it may tear itself open,
on ripe summer days,
the ground verdant and full,
I see an image of us, by a lake,
perhaps an old-fashioned picnic basket,
cherries, peaches, strawberries, plums,
feeding each-other grapes,
we could dip our feet in the water,
laze and kiss and,
have all in the time in the world somehow.
I would have a book of poetry,
Sappho perhaps, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson,
I could show you the ones I think you might like,
feed you a strawberry,
read you wild nights,
our hair and hands all tangled,
our words and thoughts entwined too,
and we forget all about the beautiful countryside, and the fruit, and the poetry,
for moments and moments.

There is no fail-safe.
The heart wants,
What it wants,
And oh, I am miles from safety, now.
No going back.
There is no mechanism in the heart,
To bring it down if it overheats,
To bring it down at all, darling,
(But would you want to?
Don’t you like it when I make you heat up?
Bubble over...?)
I suppose what I’m saying is this:
Remember when people didn’t know you should only heat oil in a deep fat fryer?
We would put hot oil in pots and pans and we would leave it there because,
Human beings have a tendency to be distracted?
And the oil would get far too hot and catch fire,
And we’d try to put it out with water,
But because of the oil it sinks and expands and makes the oil shoot out of the pan in a fireball,
And consume the kitchen in flames,
But,
Isn’t that love?

My great aunt eats,
Pancakes and apple ****,
And stays in bed all day,
My grandmother thinks that,
She is trying to maintain,
Her figure,
But she is 97 and I think,
I think she is doing what she must,
To survive,
They had to take her bike away from her when she was in her early 90s,
And more recently had to tell her to stop going for walks.
I come from a long line of people,
Who refuse to acknowledge their old age.
My grandfather on my father’s side wrote poems and painted and had a girlfriend,
He went to the theatre,
Nobody stopped him from living,
Like he was in his 20s.
My great aunt has surely but slowly had everything,
Taken from her grasp,
And I think she is just,
So tired,
So she eats pancakes and apple ****,
And stays in bed all day.

/ˈhiːlɪŋ/
Learn to pronounce
noun
1.
the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.
*
Healing as a process and not a one-time action,
As a continuum,
As a pathway that doesn’t exactly end.
Recovery as a repetition,
Leaning and re-learning.
Learning that healing doesn’t happen,
Overnight.
I am not going to wake up one morning and realise I’m better.
In fact I don’t believe I will ever be “better”.
But I might in retrospect,
Look back at myself and think,
“Hey I don’t worry about that little thing that I used to anymore”,
And repeat.
And to me, that is healing.

You pushed me from my home,
The moment you mentioned sanctity,
That I‘d be dirtying something,
If I touched it,
I’d be ruining it for everyone else,
If I took part,

But what is sanctity anyway?
Am I capable of being god’s child?
Must I strip back layers of my love first?
But can I love god,
If I cannot love myself?
Can I love myself,
If I am not myself?
I can’t help but love.
And I’d quite like to get married,
And maybe to have my first dance to Elvis,
And to throw the bouquet,
And to hear the words:
     “You may now kiss!”
Does that sound unclean to you?

I want to honeymoon, somewhere in Italy,
I want us to cook dinner for one another.
Is that impure?

I want to have and to hold in sickness and in health till death do us part.
Is that ******* *****?
Does it make you sick?

The moment this country said no,
You are not love,
You want,
To ****,
Love.
Even when other people were saying,
We understand you, you are good, you are clean,
You are love.

This stopped being my home,
You tore the ground from under me,
in the name of “sanctity”,
I’d love to stop being angry about it,
I would love to,
But my policy has not changed my policy has not changed my policy has not changed,
My policy will not change,
And that is all you and I will ever have in common.

My love,
You are the sun moon stars,
Familiar like trees behind my home that I’ve known since I was maybe 2 foot tall,
Giving like water in a river that spreads life throughout the forest,
In you I see nature’s greatest works,
In you I understand the belief in divinity,
I have devoted myself to you,
Devoted my body to you,
I understand what I saw in the holy book again,
Know what it’s like to feel wholly compelled towards one being,
What it’s like to feel wholly committed to one singular celestial body,
My line of orbit surrounding you,
I plant my heart in the soil of your body,
Entrust it’s growth to you my love’s convent,
I’ve been thinking about comets my love,
I’ve been thinking about planets colliding,
Connections that cannot be denied,
Birth of supernovas,
Birth of Aphrodite in the seashell womb,
How roses unfurl slowly as they grow into their delicate bodies,
How your love feels,
Delectable,
Rich,
Transcending any other pleasure,
My love is,
Larger than Jupiter,
Sweeter than honey,
Wider than the body between us,
I know it is fatuous, cliché, over-sweet,
But I only wish to be wrapped up
In your soft edges,
Like a bee,
Enriched by golden nectar,
From the most beautiful rose.

I don’t always like to write my words,
But I know I want to immortalise them,
I know I hope in 200 years young romantics search out old books still,
I hope one finds my words written,
Scrawled in my messy cursive and curled
up in leather-bound book,
With ink smudges from my eager hands,
And they read,
So they know in their future lives,
You are the one I loved,
Whoever you and I are,
And smile,
And we live on.

I never wake up to rain.
The morning seems to slip through my curtains by whatever possible means and I am not granted hazy awakenings.
Glaring snow.
Hot sun.
Bleak white skies.
Anything but the gentle taps of rainfall on my window,
I wake up to my world on fire,
I wake up to chaos,
I spend my day,
I hush the skies back to a gentle pattering before I sleep,
To begin again the next day,
But I never wake up to rain.

Ophelia drowned slowly, surrounded by petals, weighed down by cloth,
Ethereal, damp,
Watched but unhelped,
A sort of needless death,
Frothy, frivolous, decorated,
A pretty death.
A good woman brought to life by a man must live and die in pastels,
Slip passively away without complaint,
Go mad through a rose-tint,
Never pause and gasp unflatteringly for breath,
Even when she is drowning.