There are no curtains
At our windows-
Our room opens into the sky street
Of black -
An asphalt continuum
Broken with a glaring street light
That fizzles like a cloud
Into the edges of the sky

One day soon,
We will clothe our windows
And envelope our home in a
Blanket of cosiness
But for now, I enjoy
The nakedness, the vulnerability
Of an open chasm, as though
We are still camping, perhaps,
Under the rockies or in the atachama
Like we used to, can I say when we
Were young?
When inside, I still feel so young as the night
falls,
Or does everybody?

There’s a pigeon in our chimney
His cooes are like an unreliable
Cuckoo clock-
Your face lights up when he calls,
In recognition - something you can place
In this brand new world
You are still discovering
His voice echoes down the chimney
And lands in our dining room
Whilst you are eating tomatoes
The vibrations are playing tricks on us, as
Though he might just be a metre away
BIRD
you call, and I nod, yes, a pigeon
Which sounds like it might be
A contradiction
So I smile to reassure you
Every time I see your delight
In the everyday
It’s as though I am remembering
Or perhaps discovering?
Just a little each time
What it means to be alive

when you call out for me again
and another hot plate of food turns cold
with  each second that I hold you to sleep -
I remember
that I am teaching you what if feels like
to be loved without consequence
and never to accept less from anyone

when you say ‘mama’ and hold out your arms
I remember
I am creating a home in your heart for a hug
that reaches to your soul and warms you from the inside

when you tug at my ankles when I’m making tea
I sigh - but then I remember
that one day you won’t be glued to my hip
and you’ll sit moodily through a meal
desperate to return to your room

when you’re having one of those days
where you need all of me - and it feels like there is nothing left
I remind myself
these are the moments you might not remember
but that will stay etched like a blueprint
and become a part of who you are becoming

So I will read you another story
and I remember
that together, we are writing yours.

You are reeling in
an unformed cord
gently tugging yourself into existence
through my longing

Like a grain of sand
in a soil bed
we cannot know
if you'll see a day of light

if you'll bloom
into a million thousand cells
like petals opening up
to a star filled sky

like a universe
which may or may not exist
in light years of time,
will it be, or matter?

He turned us into palm trees, dusty toes
pressed into my inner thigh.
A cold wind of collective breath,
breathing in, breathing out,
pulls me sideways and under
yellow man remains inert, straight-faced.

Then we fold, the room breathes in,
breathes out, my calves whimper.
Toes and fingers pull like magnets
my rope in place of his elastic,
unravels.

Now we are dogs, my paws crawl
to the front of the mat. I think I am
a Labrador, downwards facing,
upwards facing, breathing out
breathing in the stale studio air
I want a walk, or a biscuit
my spine extends, somewhere in my head
I growl.

Yellow man wants us all to be cobras
our spines dissolve, we twist carefully
slide a wave across the desert floor
and swallow him whole.

You had sand in your hair,
freckles under your eyes
where the sun kissed your face
as I would have liked
I watched your hands as you drove
watched them turn the wheel
not knowing how in seven years
those hands would make me feel.
That they'd be bound by gold
and a solemn vow
to love, to hold, through any how
and that, by then,
our plans would be
entwined together, endlessly.
That we'd have seen the sun
from each hemisphere
balanced on the equator
lived out of a backpack for a year -
that you'd become my home
with your arms as the doors
your eyes as the windows
your feet as the floors.
That we'd bloom together
throughout those years
explore with each-other
our deepest fears.
That one day we'd stand
with our dearest of friends
and make a promise to
make-do and mend -
to patch up our souls
even when we find winter
might creep in and freeze up
and love might seem splintered,
that we'll wait for the spring
and that when the frost thaws
our stream will flow free again
fresher than before.
For now your heart lives within me
I'm keeping it safe
I'll cover it with feathers
of love and of grace.
Those hands that once turned
the wheel of that car
will now hold me through life
on this road that is ours.

you didn't know
the moon leaned drunk in another hemisphere
or that the street-steeped colours would dye your soul

that you'd forget how bread melts
instead of noodles that slide down your throat
after three months
of breakfast.

that beaches would cling
and that children playing football in the dust
would be painted yellow in the echo of a memory

how the crumble of a chocolate cookie
is what you remember about that mirrored sunrise
and pips from a lemon speak  
as you let a crashing waterfall envelope your pale limbs.

didn’t you know you are brave enough
to ride the back of a motorcycle
on seven hundred and sixty two turns
to a jungled hot spring and a wailing band

but on the tip of a domed decision
you’ll crumble into the altitude
with four songs spiralling in your mind.

you didn't know it would finish
and rain speckles of memories onto your tired head
so you’d ache for no mattress
where you once hoped for a shower.

In my eleventh full moon of freedom,
her soft contours are memories;
scars speaking tales of collisions
like the pale dots sandflies left on our ankles.

a pearl gazing to a thousand faces
how can we breathe like we will remember
teach our feet to paint the paths from the mountains
into a story we won't forget?

On the news, they said she will be blue,
not in colour but occurrence
twice in the month of July.
A blue moon, once in our blue year.

So we stand beneath the open sky;
we watch her rise as the sun sets
and the belt of venus draws a soft lilac curtain
across an aching night - we wonder

will the moon feel the same
from our grey pavements when we walk home
in a yellow-tinged darkness
or is she waning into her final sky?

We are growing together an album of stars,
of countries, and oceans and freckles and scars,
of songs in new tongues and new airs that we've breathed,
mountains carved with rivers and divergent trees.

There's nowhere we're going and everywhere to be,
We spend days chasing lookouts or swimming in seas,
We learn from the people we meet in the streets,
We fade out our clothes and wear out our feet.

And every time my toes meet new earth,
and I discover a new corner of the universe,
I glance back behind me and your eyes see it too:
Nowhere is everywhere when I'm with you.

I dipped my hair in the ocean head-first
and a wave gulped me up and washed into my breath.

I chased you with a fistful of sand
but the shore caught you first
and swallowed your feet whole.

as we walked home
the moon tickled the hood of the waves,
lacing them with pearls

and the glowing beetles mimicked the stars
on the cusp of the jungle.

at last -
our routines collide;
a daily walk, kiss, sweat,
our letters turned post-its
phone-calls to real life sound waves
bounding home.
The strange comfort
of arguing - knowing you're in the next room
not the next stretch
of foam-etched ocean
away from a 'sorry'


and knowing
it still grows, away from the distance
the aching, the halflife,
it's growing,

maybe more than before.

It scares me that a muscular *****
and repeated rhythmic punches
are the only things keeping you
from being eaten by the ground.

It scares me there will always be
cities I will die without seeing,
always a little more
I could have done.

It scares me that you like to rock climb
and balance three fingers
from a cliff face, four hundred metres
above the ground.

It scares me that when I go to sleep,
I lose eight hours I will never get back.
Sometimes I lie awake
and ******* eyes aching.

It scares me that the world
could consist of electrical activity
raging inside my skull
and I would never know.

Your nails are crinkled,
like a soil bed ready for seeds,
they lived in water like soggy tissues
when you were nurse.

Now you live under a centipede's
back, an exoskeleton of notched
houses, with the wrinklies.

You keep falling now, but
it doesn’t seem right
that they can't pick you up,
like you used to, them.

We converse in loops,
as though my face triggers
a cassette tape you recorded
eight years ago.

You like the view,
you can see the church spire
and the road is quieter
in the evenings.

You wish that you could still
ride a horse, and
you never learned to drive
because he said you would **** someone.

They tell you not to put
bird food on your balcony
in case of acrobatic rats.
You feed a friendly pigeon in secret.

You are possibly the only adult
who understands me. We walk to
the Co-Op and you buy me nail-varnish
and a magazine.

We spend hours in your jewellery box,
each gem has a story.
You drape a coral chain around
my neck and tell me I have fabulous
collar-bones.

They drove off in the car
and you gave me a smile
and a wink. I had free reign
over the sweetie drawer.

We were infinitely happy
eating Werther’s Originals
and watching Countdown
on your pink velour sofa.

I asked you why you walked with a stick,
and you said that your legs were worn out
from walking the whole of England.

I asked if anything else could wear out,
but you grown-up
smiled and did not answer.

It’s Sunday.
You are collecting rhododendrons
from the front garden with kitchen scissors.
I’m searching for ladybirds–

a new population has sprouted
and each flowerbed crawls
with scarlet beads.
I block their path

with an outstretched palm,
and when they climb aboard
they tickle a spiral around my arms.
we have built them a paradise,

a shoe-box of beetle dreams.
Our favourite is Arabella, who
has one spot out of place,
but we think it makes her more beautiful.

These are the days when
nothing feels like a poem,

when biscuit crumbs
form a cloud in the bottom
of a teacup and you know
what the week will hold,

when april showers
mutate into bath time,
and the trees drip fat drops
that find their way to chill your skin.

When you hear bad news
from no news, and each second
leeches all your hope, one
vertebrae at a time

until at the base of your spine,
you submerge.

This time, a single breath unbalances  
the silky parachutes
and they float into the hedgerow.

A watch reads seven,
but it stood for the year that
slithered through a broken sand timer.

you look but you don't see me
you see her without looking
you look at me whilst seeing her
you look at me without seeing.

she sees me when she looks at you
she looks at you without seeing
she looks at you, seeing her
she sees me seeing.

I look at him seeing her
I see how it's looking.
I slide out the door without being seen
despite them both looking.

one morning, Jack awoke with a distinct feeling
that something was not quite right.
as he peeled his eyes from a crusty sleep
his suspicions were further aroused by a marked loss
of sight from his right eye
as though he was peering through
a thick charcoal jungle
he clutched his hand towards his face
and was alarmed to find
a rather substantial lock of hairs
protruding from his right eyebrow.
wondering if perhaps he might
still be in a world of waking dreams
where one couldn’t really trust one’s intuitions,
he wandered over to the light switch,
flicked it on/off a couple of times.
having reached the conclusion that
he was definitely not dreaming,
and that his retinas
(or his left one, at least)
were definitely receptive to fluctuating light levels
he made his way to the bathroom
to inspect his face, with one hand
bemusedly fondling his recently grown eye-brow fringe.
in the bathroom he stumbled
across his wife sitting on the toilet.
on catching sight of her hairy husband,
she let out a deranged scream.
"darling, you'll alarm the neighbours" said Jack.
but his wife, who did not seem
to be sufficiently worried about
alarming the neighbours,
or anyone in her resident universe
continued to make strange warbling noises.
so, Jack instead decided to study
his growth in the kitchen sink.
although not made from
exemplary reflective material,
the sink was able to confirm
his impression that his right eyebrow had,
overnight, been subject to an alarming rate of growth.  
his wife appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry for screaming.
it was only because I thought you were a pirate”
she said. and though he knew
that this was just one in many
of a long string of inter-marital lies
that bounced between them,
he let it pass. a decision having
been decided upon in perhaps
not the most democratic manner possible,
Jack's wife fetched the kitchen scissors
from the drawer by the dishwasher.
as she snipped away, chunks of black
fell soft like feathers from sunburnt wings
and landed on the Lino.
Jack felt inexplicably sad.
they went off to work as usual,
and no one noticed
the jagged edge of his once pirated-eyebrow.

they don't know like he does how her bottom teeth overlap at the front like boat sails / or that three moles on her thighs are the perfect example of an isosceles triangle / they don't know that when they sleep their feet fit together like bunch of bananas / or that when she traced circles in his hair it made a direct imprint on his soul / that's why they say she's not worth it / that's why he knows they are wrong.

I leave behind
a signature constellation of half scraped
blu tack smattered across the walls

a scrawl in braille to the shell's
next inhabitant: life is out there

I was here, living
I drew a picture of an elephant
for no real reason

I didn't follow the news enough
and skimmed books like stones

I persuaded three friends to beam
from a glossy page at a birthday party,
I cut a cottage from a magazine and
tacked it with a daydream

I hid from the clocks
and watched pounds stick then fall
stick then fall

I lived in this room,
now it's your turn

I tried to turn you into a poem,
to reach my thumb to the crown of your head
and compress you, deflate
and swallow you like the pill.

I never made you into a poem
because you had me pressed to the wall,
and the blinking cursor couldn't swim
in our plastic hugs.

Now I've made you
into a poem, and squashed
three months to thirteen lines
I can fold you up; crumple
you into a sock drawer.

now I see you were chipped from these streets
and your beauty sings like a starling picked from his nest
you don’t belong with us, our sun can’t colour you in
without going over the lines
and our drink will erode the stone beneath your skin
you had better return to your glass city
before you hold too many of our hands
and we pull you into our grey sleep.

she swims around me, curling through veins
in a roller-coaster cart. eyelids slowly
opening to existence,
my own miniature ghost

she has your toes. finds a fold
in my skin and follows the line westwards
walks a tightrope with your balance
and my echoing laughter.

they said it was in my mind,
that I gave birth.

that year, we scrambled the seasons

so a summer yolk bled gold

into our white winter pages



leaving our islands on a plane

we watched the clouds pull a mottled curtain

between ourselves and our mothers 



in a camper van, we etched lines

into the pale stretch marks of America's belly,

littered mountains with conversation 



we built our own climate with our lover's arms

wound a thread through an atlas
cross-stitched 
with icicles and sandstorms



we entered the new year with sepia forearms

a thousand rivers gushing through our heads

stomachs rounded, full of sun

one year, we will scramble the seasons
so a summer yolk bleeds gold
into our white winter pages

leaving our islands on a plane
we will watch the clouds pull a mottled curtain
between ourselves and our mothers

in a campervan, we will etch lines
into the pale stretch marks of America's belly,
litter mountains with conversation

we will build our own climate with our lover's arms
wind a thread through an atlas cross-stitched
with icicles and sandstorms

we will enter the new year with sepia forearms
a thousand rivers gushing through our heads
stomachs rounded, full of sun

if we run into each other
fast enough perhaps we’d
collide and fuse
like atoms in the sun.

our lips would melt into one
spark heatwaves
to warm planets, keep
them beating, beating, beating

on. our freckles would inherit
the force of their creator,
turn to sun spots and
spit fireworks for new-year

like dragons. a humble human dream,
we'd be stars, we'd be one.

I carved her face from a pumpkin,
spooned out the flesh to a red bowl
traced out the lines where I wanted
her eyes to be.

I retrieved her heart from a pip
unravelled from the lungs of a satsuma
it was sticky, oozed a milky wine
so I wrapped it in tin foil.

In her sockets I placed half-boiled eggs
sliced down the centre
the yolked irises dripped down
orange turgid cheekbones

When she woke up, the walls shuddered.

there, the air is thicker
it hangs full, like the ladies

all the sadness lived in the
capsules of trapped air in
woollen jumpers left behind

men with their toothless
smiles and shining skin
coax laughter from a steel drum

the market boasts a rainbow
of sarongs, papayas, star fruits
offered in jangling song

it was a medicine.
the coral blooms in the reef
are teeth in a dog's mouth,
guarding.

leaning uncomfortably backwards
on the dentist chair
mouth gaping, strange
thick latex fingers
poke borrower weapons inside
and contort my lips into shapes

would it be easier
if we could excavate all the 
decay in a body
with a drill and replace it
with a shining pearl-cap?

start with a bucket of dusted gravel
tip into a cold pan, a wriggling jungle of alphabet
gasps.

drown.
rock the pan of words in arms
agitating the line-breaks

the twisting plait of water
spurts the lightweight
sediment over the edge

to a scrap pool of dog-tailed idioms
the rest charges, a collage of schooled fish
the pulse in the rubble sinks

like a dictionary to the base.
ransack the salt-swamp of dazed stanzas
as a malnourished mole

catch a lump, grasp between digits
it twinkles under caked mud.
free it from parasite-adjectives

strain from the crocodile water
a chiseled torso of words in the rock
all along.

she has wound
mental stitches through
her oesophagus so her bones call
to her skin,
reel it in. ten million krill
trapped in the suction
of the line of a fisherman.

in art lessons, glue stuck to fingers,
a double skin sunken into
the contours of their tips.
it felt like touching somebody else's thumb,
an imposter branching from my palm

each time you left, I coated
my ribcage in PVA. There's
a gap now, between my chest
and my mouth

I'm searching for the edge, to peel
back the film
strand by strand &
shed my snake skin

gargling laughter pours
through hands and
cloaks fingers in slippery
oil
so they slide helplessly
around the pencil
like a fly creeping up a
car window only
to thud back to the leather,
but

lexicons bloom
like cancerous lilies  
when the gentle flicks
of the black letters kick
a barbed ball into your
lungs.

conversing in loops,
you seem content.
they burnt
down your home, I kept a bag
of the special things next to
the door for a time.
Now you live under a centipede's
back, an exoskeleton of notched
houses, with the wrinklies.
your nails
are crinkled like a soil bed ready
for seeds, they lived in water like
soggy tissues, when you were a nurse.
you keep falling now
but they can't pick you up,
like you used to, them.

She made a cake
beat with memories, sickly
sweet buttery kisses
and stuffed it into his half
open lips. he stayed frozen,
a plastic figurine
allowed her to smear
coconut icing into his eyes
and pipe a clown smile
into his waxen cheeks.

she covered
the moulded walls in
their stale photographs
recurring  coal eyes
hiding the red
that flashed inside like
a beacon on an emergency
                                 vehicle
his clones all stared at him
willed him to do something
but he sat, numb to her
numb to himself
and decided to go mad.

when the doll's hair
became so tangled a
wild toothed comb could
not soothe it,
I took the big scissors
in wild frustration
from the drawer in the kitchen
and hacked away at
Lucy's hair like a drunken
maniac.
her duck-speckled
printed eyes
closed their mechanical
lids each jolted snip
and a soft tick ticked
as coarse lashes hit
**** plastic
the more
that fell in chalk white chunks
from one side the more
I extracted from the other
like a wonky scale
until the spilt strands
covering the floor
tumbled tears down my  
fleshed pink cheeks
and I ran away to hide
under the duvet.

rocking the metal pan
side to side, agitate
the sand so swirling
  water
lets gravity push the
worthless sediment
over the edges into the
pool

gravel-dust gathers
momentum
swarming in a circular current
allowing the golden
nuggets to sink to the
base

fingers as feet through
quicksand
explore the grey salt-swamp
cold makes them slow and dumb
soft skin complains as grains
scratch skin a thousand times
toy fingernails clawing


catch a lump, hold it
between
thumb and finger, bulge with
fulfilment as your gobbet
glints beneath its caked mud
set the pan upon rocks
clasping tightly, pull the
stone through the pool,
freeing
it from the clinging dust
  
release it from the depths
of the crocodile water
and the ugly mound of
chalky mud submerged will
be caterpillar to
butterfly, a solid
gold nugget lying fat
on the face of your
soggy outstretched palm.

Is it not magical, fantastical, terrible
the way my body expands and contracts
like a peach balloon
the more or less I digest.

If I wind mental stitches through
my oesophagus - my bones call
to the skin,
reel it in. ten million krill
trapped in the suction
of the line of a fisherman.

In gluttony, the same line
spills, the tide swells
and multiplies cells
Lipids blossom and my waistband
leaves a discrete red line of rubble
on the shore.

I rotate around you
on a slanted axis that
shows you more of my left side
and less of my scarred eyebrow.

If I were a whale
my phonic lips could sing
the distance away
through an acoustic habitat

but I must rely on outer space
to deliver my love call
in tact - for I cannot shout
loud enough,
I am too human

I am too small
for this love, I can't make
it reach you,
you're too far away.

she lived on the only street
in Rattenberg, the smallest village

in all Austria. because it was all
she knew
and all she loved.

in the summer, she lived in the
kitchen
away from the flies and
the itching glow of the sun

sketching designs of glass crystal
and playing records
her father played from his armchair
when she was young.
the blinds closed, the shadows

of pedestrians drew sloping
templates of bodies large and thin
she guessed their faces and painted
girls with small noses and round chins
and made the men look like him.

her sister, from the neighbour town
called in the winter months, when
Rat Mountain devoured the sun and left
Rattenberg in day-night. she invited her
on walks, said it was not good
for her complexion to live in shadow

unmoved, she
preferred instead to pace the only street
in the welcome midday greyness
and smile quietly
at the pale faces she passed

when plans rumbled of a
contraption of mirrors to steal
the day's shine from her sister's town
she prayed to the moon

he would let them leave her alone
in the shadow of Rat Mountain
a child of the night

the girl who preferred the dark to the light
the lady-moth determined to stay in flight.

Lips around the base
of a sweetcorn yellow balloon
expanding, turning translucent
its atoms straining, reaching
in a purple attempt to touch fingers
with the next.
Inside, my mirrored breath in lungs
incapacitated
and dry. Sand,
they brought deck chairs and lay
beneath my expanding solar
bubble I am
cultivating, in a gassed
mansion of glass
oblivious. Singed edges
and twisting cells replicating
they laugh in cones and
board planes until there's a

Bellow
And without
Nourishment the balloon
Gulps to die.

Each day the wood-chipped path
would creep in through lace holes
and scrawl its earthen signature
upon her socks.

Collared wind blew
the secrets of the leaves through a tangle
of whistling hair

The labelled trees, landmarks to tourists
on the nottinghamshire tree-trail
reached to her
when she froze on the bench
to miss the dining hall.

birds of paradise
chirping in a minor lament
of their chicken-wire palace
understood,
only.

when they drained the lake to search
for a body,
and the parched park cried leaf-crisps
in red and orange, they were warned
from walking alone
and the grass stretches ached for
musing students to sprawl
chatter on its back.

then, as seasons cast a veil
on the rumours and caution,
she was
taller, and handed
to a boy.
they deciphered
the war memorial's
foreign symbols
for something to talk about.

The arboretum watched her grow:
each day the wood-chipped path
would creep in through lace holes
and scrawl its earthen signature
upon her socks.
When she could walk on her own
the rustling blows tugged
the secrets of the leaves through the hair
she refused to fasten;
so it danced, rebelliously
on her shouldered landscape.
The labelled trees, landmarks to tourists
on the nottinghamshire tree-trail
linked outstretched arms in solidarity
around her when she froze on the bench
to skip the dining hall.
And the birds of paradise
who chirped in minor a lament
of their chicken-wire palace,
understood, when no one else could.

When they drained the lake to search
for a body,
and the parched park cried leaf-crisps
in red and orange, they were warned
from walking alone
and the grass stretches ached for
musing students to sprawl
chatter on its back.

When the time-dust sprinkled a veil
on the rumours and caution,
She appeared
taller, and hand in hand
with a boy.
They tried to decipher
the war memorial and it's message
in foreign symbols
for something to talk about.

The Arboretum has not seen her for
years,
but its crafted script
Is carved like wax in
her mind's journal.

It is time
that devours us
In its envelope of becoming
It yearns for our uttermost
Rose-flamed desires
For its own
immortal daybreak.

we talk to autumn
about his delayed decay;
the truculent end and
tousled beginnings of hibernation.

how did you term the coming
of the razored howls.
will you calm the smothered
pebbles in
chalked glass
or leave them.

what do you say
of the canopies’
demise. fallen
in a big mesh bag
to measure litterfall.

and when door-mice
bite into slumber
where can you hide
as your leafy raindrops
turn to stone.