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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.