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.

Silence that bleeds
And breathes across
The cavernous void
Dividing us.
Consuming our words,
So haltingly uttered.
So fearful they fall
Ripped unwillingly
From this broken whole.

Heavy grey sky
Irrepressibly looming,
Descending, a sheen.
Cleansing the houses,
The streets.
And I,
Another wan figure
An aspiring dove,
So crushed,
Now only a poor pigeon.
Another watcher
With no part to play,
But to release my breath,
Pearlescent clouds
Ascending to the grey.

A vast unfeeling sordid breath,
That scalds my naked doubt
Grazing the space unfilled.
Lost in the waves
The summer an oppressive embrace,
Infecting this town.
And I am alone from here.
The stagnant tsunami,
Creeps up from the depths
Untiring in its attempts to overwhelm me.
But I'm already so tired,
Bone-weary.
I give up on my fight to the heat,
To the eternal god that glares
So balefully from beneath heavy clouds.
Have done with me now.
Leave me to the tide.
To the uncaring winds
Anywhere beyond the sweat of bodies
And incessant hate
Of the sun.-

She is long dead,
Her secrets lost,
But still they hang to you,
As faint as her perfume.

You are matched with others now,
Though they have no excitement,
No secrets.
They have no scars.

A breath that that bled through days
Seeping between our bodies,
Hushing my skin to fire
And laced with smoke.
When did air stand so solid
Between intimacies of another?
Lightly greased with desire,
A soap bubble barrier.

Oily futures chase each other
Across violet hues.
It is only so briefly whole, untouched.
Your breath caught
And me with it.

I am flawed,
An inner fault, though I appear whole.
I can feel it grind with each breath,
Glass on glass.

One look and I am young again.
A thousand doubts to build a girl
Who refused to cry
And ran through fields

One word and I am crushed
Beneath half a life of memories.
Layers of varnish, too many to dry
Too many to breathe.

One touch and I spiral,
The fragments descend.
A rain shower reflected in your eyes,
Hot with desire.
A hitched breath that rounds the edges,
A balm of boiling water
On ice.

The shard between us shatters
With your fingers on my skin,
Tracing constellations in my freckles.
It's as if the years never existed,
But the splinters harden,
Crystallised with lies
And growing milky with
things unsaid.

Despite the night,
I grow colder with secrets
That choke me.

Where we were then,
Beyond the fields
Beyond the ideals of our parents
And their ceaseless appeals.
Where did we get such strength,
To flaunt our freedom so readily?
An open rebellion of wheat.
We were golden in our abandon,
Escaped from our dark houses.

Shifting apocalypse in a bleeding sky,
Wind whipped fire
And the maelstrom that hates at it's centre.
A dark eye
Malignant,
The unforgiving blackness
That hides beneath normality.
And the soft cloud layer, suspended
Above the broil of bitterness
That threatens to overwhelm.

I have nothing now but my pride,
Which may not keep me close
But we have never dealt with emotions.

Now you leave so willingly
My only choice to be as you are,
So cold and closed.

But inside I am drowning,
And like the lanes
it only takes one weakness to let in the flood.

We were young and touched by fire,
Yours natural, mine inflamed.
You remember those happy days?
When I had curls and smiled
Before being embittered by time.
A lost youth spent rambling
Across grey country sides.

Now you are a cold old flame
Who matches me by bitterness
And no longer sees what could have been.

Velvety liquid, lit from within.
The hidden shadows that plot from the folds,
But what betrays the dark
And flees to the latte light?
Amongst the cream the winged creature rises.
A seraphim birthed from crimson.
What forces oppose so vehemently?
Tectonic plates without countries
Or continents.
Giants in their own right
On their own terms,
On their own.

Where have those glory days gone?
When my mind was a solace,
When I built castles and held court.
Now I stand on a mountain top,
Looking at the cold valleys and wondering
When it got dark.

A family house, long dead
And dusty
Filled with books,
Covered with words that hold
No joy or pleasure.
Just bitter memories
I try and forget.

A serious face glares through the snow,
peering to the depths. The city hums
with the pierce of sirens, the murmur of shouts.

His pulse slows, His body thrumming. He is another part
of a jutting skyline. A heartless moon bathes the scene.
A lost battle. A massacre.

A broken ragdoll below warm the pavement,
beauty set in stone. The flakes track the dark leather,
pooling on the granite, being watched

Yet oblivious, the eyes glow through the screen.
Too much shadow for a plain bedroom, too much normality
For the sordid abyss of Gotham.

Has such insignificance always bred heroism?
Hours on laptops create such brooding scenes
of emotions that you cannot understand.
But who can understand the solitary idol?

The ground rumbles, the desks shake,
we all pause in our panic
breathlessly waiting to see if school will stand.
The tremors fade, so we file out in rows.
All in height order.
Waiting to be swept by the incoming tide.

29 feet of unstoppable chaos
spills on to a flat plain. Safety lies
just metres away, yet we are not told to go.
They argue as we stand in rows,
dismissing the threat along with the lives
of the seventy four children that died.

My mother waits with the sea eagles,
a year has not dulled the grief, as men search
for my body among the rest of the debris.
But I cannot be found with the silt,
like my brother and the rest ,
I am simply gone. My body lost.