A mothered voice
was a cloud-drop
in the quarry; she would keep running
with the patterned footsteps of a fool.
needles that glitter become
gold in this abyss.
one licked scar remained
of the two of you-
a day blackberry picking;
when you dried weeps
from the petals and pressed
them in a book.

Dip your toes
into receptacle of embellishments

whilst
hoisting your trouser-legs
above your shining ankles thus
preventing traces of
immodesty.

conjure an entire
genus of rhombi
to  think
                                                                              outside of

at interview:
bubble
and dress
in clothes, preferably.

try not to fold your arms or look bored
and always remember
to be someone you are not.

Sometimes we would make it
down the corridor
to bath-time,
As penguins
Teetering; me, and tall; you.
Your giant feet
Were my stilts as we waddled
Left, right, left
All the way,
To the brass finish line.

In September, we missed the bus
And walked for miles
In the Cornish rain.

We laughed as it licked every
Square on our bodies
And squelched into our shoes

Turning our socks to flannels.

The asphalt had become beautiful
- it had drunk the sky
And rehearsed the whispers
Of the sea.

We were the only humans in Cornwall
As the sun went down
And you put on your head torch

We climbed through mirrors
Of trees and bends.

When we got back to the cottage
We did a funny dance
To peel free of our clothes.
Then we toasted our bodies
And watched television.

Today i viewed multicoloured eggs
And tangled my eyes in a giant grid .
Got angry at the scorpions 
For getting in the photons of my stolen glitter.
I contemplated train  prices and cursed the wiry cellulose
In sugarsnap peas that catches in my throat. 
On a bright pink carpet 
With tiny rectangles we talked 
About words with words.
Then, later on, i thought about whether 
Not saving =
Killing
And wondered why we aren't doing any more. And then 
I closed my eyes 
Because that is what 
Everybody Does.

Owls on bicycles might be riding the ridge
on the ceiling which, for now is nameless
but has a concept
that it’s escaped- for an owl somehow balances,
quite  s e r e n e l y  
but this isn’t sleep
it’s a fragment of my brain
falling off and dribbling down the p
                                                                i
                                                            l
                                                                l
                                                              o
                                                            w
into the papers to be glazed over.
Insomniac lust for
memory consolidation
or brain function restoration
(perhaps)
Escape through paralysis

a world you can rule
without lifting a fingernail

A nocturnal paradise the other side of a boundary
I
can’t
break
through.

She is eight or nine and she sits
in the playground
on the bench
with the teacher standing a
happy distance
Away and her lunch on her lap
She watches all of the people running
and crawling through legged bridges
to set each other free
and inverting their bodies
so their legs dangle,
confused at their new-found
flight
And she thinks about how
it seems there is a screen
where the
paved slabs meet the grass of fun
and that if she should
press
her face against the divide it should
crackle
the same as the one
At home
and if someone was to sit on the remote
The children would mould into black and white jumping rectangles that shuffle and bump shoulders and hiss.

I love you,
Eternally and really, really.
But somewhere on the way out of
Our message history
And between my lips it got lost
In a translucent bubbled tangle
Of instruction and expectation
And I accidentally
Made it seem like
Hate.

But there's something inescapable
About this deoxyribose stuff.

As though its winding skelter might secretly
Hold all of fate
In its innocent-looking strands.

Kashtanka had lost him on the street
Instinct had stung her mongrel brain
tiny legs had span out of control.
And when she looked back
a grey desert hid her friend,
And had she been human
Tears would have pooled in her
Gummed ducts.
She padded through pavements for dog days as
Umbilical hunger for a scratch behind
Ears pulsed through her vital organs.

Simultaneously, it was ethanol that pulsed
Through Luka's.
And had she known how little
He was thinking of her,
Her tiny canine heart might
Have faltered.

You're asleep, I think
I can tell by the way your lung contents are squeezed from your nostrils
In ever so slightly a more
Forceful motion than when we lie awake
hiding from each other behind eyelids.
And your recycled air brushes my forehead
And I think dustily of how the same molecules
Dance in my lungs
That have visited yours.

And our skin coloured mountains form scapes
On the expanse of wrinkled bed sheet
And I am dead still
As I try to keep this frozen hug
In a capsuled memory
To recall on one of the nights
You can't make it.

He filled up the bathtub with ink
and told her it was art. She asked how they
should wash. He shrugged his shoulders, and
then he mumbled something about buckets.

She cordoned off the  kitchen,
said he was not allowed in and that she
was conducting experiments
regarding the solidity of limes.

He exploded their duvet so
Feathers pirouetted and flew again.
He said they had found their being.
She said that maybe it was time to leave

He followed her down the street, just
a few steps behind. Watching her hair bounce
upon her shoulders he wondered
what would be the best thing for him to say.

She breathes in their shadow-
the terracotta dust sands down her weeping lungs
she curls in silence, tearing.

They have dented her skeleton
enveloped her dreams in a pounding cloak
she crushes her knees with her brow.

In the kaleidoscopic blackness
She dances shapes into her mother’s softened guise
“I am thinking of you”

A crack in the atmosphere barks,
Shooting splinters draw constellations beyond her eyelids
She crawls underneath the table.

She prepares the book to be closed.
Bends back the spine so they will know where she stopped reading
The next half will be different.

We are gathered here today in a space
cluttered with you and you who I’ve cried and tore
The voices that I’ve played in my auditory canal
When sentience has made me raw.
And our collective limbs have babbled through fields
or roved on roads of tyre
Watched mitosis play with our fingers
So our heads float to bricks that are higher  
We are sewn together by memories
Shooting synapses bounce inbetween brains
The first time she wobbled a milk stone
The pink cardigan left on that train.
We will stretch out our patience to mountains
Nearly burst in our tallies to ten
But there’s always a rope shared between us
Always straw in our symbiotic den.

When his eyes first fell upon her
She was choosing avocados
In the fruit and vegetable aisle.
And he watched how her thumbs lingered
On the base of the alligator pear
And pressed, maternally.
He feigned interest in the cabbages
Whilst sensing her delicate architecture
Through his peripheral gaze.
He thought that somewhere,
In real or imaginary life,
They would soon bathe together.
And when they did,
They soaked for years in secrets,
Details suffusing through their lips and arms,
Water-hole satisfaction and moonlit deserts
To make them feel they might have transcended cabbages
And be pervading a rhapsodic realm
They forgot their friends watching in greenery,
Subsumed by each-other,
They felt no need
To live in a world of relativity and apples.
Their love-traced sphere tightened around them,
Until it ****** at the edges of their skin
And wailed when they parted.
Tighter it grew, elastic dug into their humid thighs
Contorting their once harmonic bodies
That used to fit like crosswords.
And they each became ugly to the other
As the seconds ingested their perfection
And they bickered like flailing urchins
In a deep sea soiled darkness.
Decisions were made and paroxysms detonated
And they were taken back by their
Fungal friends with tissue offerings
And ethanol.
Time passed, and memories were binned
Periodically on tuesdays
Until neither knew the other
And they would pass in the supermarket
With no more than a quickened gait
And a silent thud in each ribcage.

But neither could buy avocados.

You haven't looked back for weeks.
As though you've forgotten how
Your life lines are straining through my palms
Up, you're reaching, pupils fixed on Pluto

I watch your hands bite
To a hold out of their reach.
Your hungry fingers
With their goal set to the clouds.

You chalk your grip
And the white dust trickles-
Spirals though the space between us
And lands on my sweater.

I haven't dotted your mind
Or crossed your dreams
Though
- the rope hooked to your stomach
Dangles in my fists.

You haven't looked back for weeks.
As though you've forgotten how
Your life lines are straining through my palms
Up, you're reaching, pupils fixed on Pluto

I haven't dotted your mind
Or crossed your dreams
Though
- the rope hooked to your stomach
Dangles in my fists.

They had played for too long.
The stretching shadows sang in minor
whilst tackling gusts
scratched the colour from his hands
and tugged wire through her clutches.

Their fettered aircrafts swooped
in plunging shifts:
seconds of clouded rhapsody
and cotton screams-
equalled in deflection
and discord.

Their colourful counterparts
climbed higher, twisting
in solar breezes.
They gaped upwards with
tense suggestions
neither knowing
how to sever
their tangled kite-strings.

It was mutation. An  aside that pushed
the boundary and slipped
further than madness  
                                           (Distilled water sank
                                   the cup on the sideboard.)

Necessity prevails,
                                  But
(sister, don't project your ugliness onto me)
It aches. The muscles of normality (the ones that pretend)
                           burn with the acid that used to feel satisfying.

Now, chiffon veils tug away in fingers of
neon sprites              (floating over Naumburg)

A spirit can only be free for so long
before it's locked away.

I still wonder of those whispered words
you latched away
in chains of a tongue
I couldn't reach.

I wonder if they were slippery nothings
to erode my clumsy fences
or denizens of your subconscious
written in a bolder ink

I envied your elegantly robed secrets
as the morning sparks
brought the weathered realisation that
we had waded too far

A glimpse- and rushing
Your fingers rough
But warm as they find the skin  
beneath my hair-
grasp the back of my neck and
we’re embracing through heavy coats:
a sturdy crush to reach our organs,
placate the crave for your trace.

It’s always elation, first.
A squealing burst I stifle-
My brain is jelly in the station.
It’s a stinging cold but I won’t wear gloves
as we walk home and
our united skin blends as our fingertips
grow numb.

I’ll say, “I’ve missed you”
and mean more- only because the words are missing
and it’s easier – less syllables
to say than to explain
how you’re the colour to my scenery;
and without you, my kaleidoscope gives
only grey triangles.

Unkulunkulu arose from combusting reeds,
Conjured snaking kalaidoscopes to colour the bony landscape.
He summoned oozing crocodiles,
Mud encrusting their jagged rinds
whilst the newly vomited sun pummels it to solidity.

Then seeds descended from Nzame's hands,
Scattering, he watched the devil strive
to swallow the sun with his eager muzzle,
only thwarted as Kamui’s crow flew down his throat:
Kamui and Aionia chortled smoke as he retched.

Then, the first peoples.
Their frail bodies of earth, chickweed for hair,
Willow spines that would bend when they turned old.
Sandals sprung into leather squirrels,
Tarantulas span cord webs to create the earth-ball,
supported by posts to stop it rolling,
Steadied, it rotates:
a roasting world on a spit.

Nigredo
Crawl to your calignous cave, where
The carbon walls will encroach your gray matter.
Choke on the ebb of your gnarled reason. Left imploring,
You will breathe the expanse, planets will taunt you.
Negligible, your ego will dissipate,
For you do not matter, are not matter, will not matter.
You will take the cathartic dragon,
Purge the soot from its gaping nostrils.
Shadows will multiply and thunder your eyeballs
Quick silver tears will swarm your porcelain peel.
So below, As above.


Albedo
I erupted from my candescent pool, where
The ivory baubles pirouetted in the cerulean sky,
Stimulated faith, insanity, rhapsody.
My unblemished chalk fingertips traced star-letters,
“I do mind, am mind, will mind.”
Bathing in this serene elation,
I released the congested swallows,
Scattered feathers upon the wasteland.
As above, So below.


Rubedo**
Soon will be a crippling inundation of crimson diamonds,
That will shred and tear her dusty membrane,
Waning shards will slowly clear and stitches will surface.
Recognition will ignite from her shadows and
Golden love will germinate in the sandy dunes.
Leaves will gather to crunch her toes.
The vitality queen will reign from her throne,
Encrusted with life, stone in hand,
So above, As below.

She explained, as she passed him the coffee,
“I just keep dreaming that I am a couch”
His eyebrows lifted,
a smirk played on his lips.
Asked her if it was the couch they were sat on now,
Crushed green velvet and
endearingly hideous.
She glowered, said
She wished he’d take her seriously.
“But your body writhes in curious convulsions,
You fill the cottage with ear piercing screams-
Can it be that bad, being a couch?”

She declared that he would not understand,
Could not see what was worse
than his dreams of combat;
gunshot night terrors
she’d never hear.


He insisted, “explain”. So she told
of the aching void beyond her couch-body.
How paralysed, she would flail vainly
Cushions muffling her hungry screams
of longing for oceanic adventures.
He watched the sun through the sway of the trees,
form a moving lattice upon her shoulders,
Mused of his cravings for their living room
from his bunk at sea.

She watched him, watching her,
and knew,
He’d never understand her couch-dreams.
They sat in silence, holding their coffee,
And accepted their anharmonic lives.

The Torn Cartwheelers

“In the first place, let me treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it; for the original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;- and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round: like their parents.”  -- The symposium, Plato

- Back when we were cart-wheelers;
we rolled in unison with braided spines.
A woven chain of muscular fibre;
our interlaced vertebrae
assembled a duality of one.
- Made of moon, we lived as stars.
Invincible wholes, we felt like Gods
Free-wheeling on our myriad limbs,
tumbling through clutching forests,
Basking in our lack of direction.

- We grew arrogant,
Toes tight in our four shoes.
We hungered for dominion, impregnable,
Never conceived of life apart;
how we might be broken.
So we were reckless; scorned Gods.
Bulging with trepidation, they conspired
to put us in place.
- Ripped down the middle, we bled
until roughly stitched with forlorn seams.
Our unfurled marrow now two in place of one;
Female, male, we were earth-scattered.
- Jumbled and lost, we torn cart-wheelers
Were compelled to walk.

- Inconsolable, we wilted,
Unable to function as halves,
we combed the earth for our whole;
Calling vainly on spindle limbs.
- A handful triumphed and united,
Only to drown in euphoria when
their entwined locked bodies, starved,
Yearning only for fusion.

- Now we are accustomed to solitude;
dissipated stitches left tougher skin.
- Until we meet a silhouette of our half
Imperfect but concurring
our jarring zips catch often;
some irreparably,
But we feel again the semblance of solitude,
Crave to be two halves of the moon.

Knotted Cord

Rebekah- Hebrew, meaning - Captivating; knotted cord. Wife of Isaac in the Old Testament.

I am a knotted cord,
Of chattering reactions,
and alphabetical perceptions
straining to elude me.
A tangle of cerebrum crammed to my cranium
snarled loops that hear light in code,
or see voices through pulsating synapses.

I am a knotted cord,
A grey rope of countless nucleotides;
fashioning my own skintight survival manual
from my own regenerating song.
Rough edged coils of yesses and noes,
Spiraling into collected silence.

I am a knotted cord,
A scrambled array of ambition,
Stitched with the lethargy
of an unraveled thread.