The outside is off limits and a doorstep becomes a dais,
To show frustration and sympathy,
To light a candle, to mourn
To stand with others when we cannot touch them.

The world is in chaos and the doorstep is a sanctuary,
To appreciate and commemorate,
To clap and laud,
Yet people are not paid in applause.

The doorstep is a safe space, but it is not a powerful one.
Isolated, a single tealight in the night,
No change is affected through a clap in the dark.
The doorstep is where the buck stops.

Another candle makes our streets no safer,
As women and flowers are trampled,
Pinned to the ground by the colleagues of a murderer.

A banging pan pays no person’s food bill,
As you judge your neighbours for their lack of civic pride,
Smug that you do your bit,
While you vote for those who have forced nurses to foodbanks.

A doorstep is as far as you go to remember loved ones,
Whose funerals you could not attend,
Whose deathbed you were absent from.
A doorstep where you miss them and ponder
Who is responsible for their death.
Is your doorstep where the buck stops?

My city is not built of walls,
But memories cemented by senses.
A Colosseum of an evening;
Of rustling sheets and the smell of ***,
Bright strawberries and smoke on my tongue.
A Forum of conversations,
Of late nights sat on steps,
A little worse for wear.
Piazzas and Palazzos
Of dinners and nights.
Each stone a touch, a look, a kiss
Until our city is as eternal as this,
Populated only by me'
Watching it crumble.

A turned head to hide from your eyes,
the mistakes I am about to make.
Our inability to avoid the hurt
that drags it's way closer
with the inevitability
of rising suns
and incoming tides
is a mere demonstration
of our humanity.

And yet our very hope
defines us as human.
The positivity despite the tearing pain
that darkens to vulnerability
deepening chasms in our self esteem,
leaving us unable
to connect on any level
until we are hollowed out,
a mere vessel
of crystalised deceit
and lies,
a sharp statue of cynicism .

And then another one comes along.
And we shatter.
And the circus starts again

I cannot forever be walking on this gravel,
This glass shingle
Grating beneath my bare soles.
A translucent beach
Of insurmountable rage
That I navigate warily
Fearing the tide.
And yet still I walk these well worn paths,
Tracing my ****** footprints
That mar the crystal beauty
Of this terrible coast.

Two bodies matched playfully,
Taught and stretched
Entranced in the lines
That bloom like gullies
And mountain crags.
A landscape of man.
Each burnished by the sun,
Berry plump
And both ripe,
Not thinking of autumn.

Wishing for brevity,
As the heavy heat settles
And this mocking breeze,
Plays merrily
Between the aching stillness.
What would I give
To be in the sea,
So liberally graced with diamond dust?
But I guess with all things serene,
It is the treachery beneath
Unknown and unseen
That actually incites the lust.

A life conducted in these four walls.
It grows so hesitant
And blooms brave.
It rages
And screams
And throws my favourite things.
Then it dies
And I am alone again.