Aside from baby-blue ribbon and no Meyhews
opposite Joneses
I want to invite all our exes and give
them their own table
They can have the duck a la orange
but go sparing on the Brut,
especially him at 4b, he's a drinker
but you remember
finding me panda-eyed and hot
with stitched-up pride
spilling drinks and not
apologising but you knew I was sorry anyway and
walked me home
though it was light
Perhaps she will soothe his narcissism
and her apartment needs anyone
to check dark corners for
black eyes and crooked hands.
But I'm not afraid I'll
pull them from their cobwebs
leg by nasty leg
as long as we can see the flies
and pick them off together.

As it's different, when you're weaned
on the stinging foam on chins and hair
Hearing the sighs of the sea when
you fall and no-one's there
as if to say, I'm here, but I won't help!
You dash stones in rage
that she simply swallows
and thanks you for with a
particularly ungrateful wave.
Spiders in bright buckets,
***** in between toes in rock pools
a dog-**** buried in the sand.
Worst, are the bat-eyed gulls
swooping on candy you
guarded from bigger kids
but no-one hides from gulls
and sweeping swallow a bag whole
one gulp, unremorseful,
one eye, always watching
stoney, black.

So now, I am older and
we are sun-bathing,
or rather, you are stretched out glossy
and smiling like a good haul
where I pick sand from my belly button
and shade my iPad from the sun.
I see two gulls, eyeing up your Pimms
cocking their heads in angular decision,
I offer them some Smoked Salmon,
they ******, you shout which
spooks the birds who fly
away, yet together, gliding parallel.
You storm away, stamping sand in
drinks and electrics alike
but I am anchored here
watching the gulls flying duo
tied from their throats
and then their stomachs.
The more they want to pull away,
their bodies pull them closer

skeins spiral above coffee
where the screen remains unsewn and
blank as the seawater that
day before you flung stones and
disrupted the smoothness of my stomach
sending concentric voices
whispering to the shore where
tongues in conch shells
lapping say they won't be here long
we can break but we will not move
and I don't know how to tell you
that these letters we crochet
and stuff down wires with blunt pins
may stitch holes fraying in our hearts
but cannot knit a staff
that can part the sea

They used to give chocolates; you remember
sausage-worm fingers diving into
boxes of the unknown, sharp, sticky
tears as someone is pushed too hard
the box springs to heights unfathomable
here, it hurts just here
but only two eyes are on the boy's chest
pupils up at a dappled ceiling where
wet paper crackles poster paint dust
making promises to spectral parents
as not to get that one which gets
stuck in your teeth.
Now, you hover at a mouse
waiting for someone to toss you
two letters, maybe three
unceremoniously
like a wrapper in the wind.

I’ve been given my yellow ticket of leave. Freedom tastes like burnt coffee and soggy toast; I just can’t make breakfast the way the NHS and 10years in psychiatric medicine at Oxford teaches you to.
Everyone in the neighbourhood knows The Housing. Even if they didn’t, the residents that arrive every few months and are gone after nights of screaming and wolf-howls give it away. These sounds will sing around suburbia until something stronger than insanity stops them. The pavements aren’t quite at peace and the buildings seem to sag in the satirical sun in shame. Even the streets just don’t seem quite sane. There are always the telltale signs. The closed curtains in the blazing heat on all the houses on only one side of the road. Or the grinning garden gnomes arranged in a straight line, crushing golden petals beneath their terracotta wellingtons (their smiles glisten like bear traps). Or the flash of a white coat in the sun, dissolving into crevices in the façade of identical houses, row after row.
I don’t think I was destined for dissolution row. But the same old story rears it’s ugly dead; been there, done that, found someone better. Her, not me. I always had an overactive imagination anyway. Like Tourette’s, but in my head. It’s all irrelevant now anyway, because I’ve been chosen.
On visiting The National Gallery of Google, I stumble upon Edvard Munch and absorb. Anxiety, love, death. The flowing figures restricted in brush strokes and paint, but free in immortality and fame, beguile me with their drooping, hooded eyes, until I can hear their delineated tongues like a choir.
Time to stop procrastinating, start prognosticating.

There is absolutely no doubt about it. The signs are clearer than a pool of melted diamonds. But no-one believes a person without a PHD in theology and a 2 foot beard.
The world is ending.
I tried to warn them again today, but they can’t see past insanity when they look at me; I seem to scream it in wild eyes, or perhaps the scent of crazy is leaking from my pores. Dark shadows around my eyes no extortionate amount of sleep or light could chase away. Once – before I’d gotten used to the insomnia – I took the razor to my head and freed the languid hairs; cleansing my own microcosmical globe of all irrelevant past discretions and pollutants. The human body usually purges the blood of most chemicals within 78 hours, but hair retains traces forever that will find you; bite you in the back. However, I still can’t sleep even though I should now be pure as a newborn baby and the chaos theory is thus disproved, and my ingenious-at-4am idea does nothing but further isolate me from any kind of credibility.
The world is still ending.
I can feel it in my bones, and taste it in my sweat. I may appear to be crazy, but under the surface I am still and so, so sane. The galactic metamorphism begins. A new seventh sense stirs within me. It takes a while to adjust but now I can see into the souls of anyone and everyone; I see their sins and their destinations. I can leave the house now, self–assured with a new burst of determination, laughing at all the five-sensed ****** without a clue. I will be the only one making the most of my final days. I walk along the pier, buy a six dollar ice-cream, and fill my hours with watching others. No-one stares anymore as if I am slowly fading into translucency. Those with evil deep-rooted are black, like coals waiting for a spark, any excuse to catalyse destruction and pain. ******, Stalin. Even without my monotone-rainbow sense it can be identified in the coldness of their pupils; their glassy exteriors. They will turn to the coal they are inside, literally, fuel hell and wish they’d listened to my warnings. The heroes of the world are white, pure white, but there aren’t very many of them. Most people are a ***** shade of grey. In between and undecided; neither here nor there. Purgatory. I am green, because I am sick. No-one cares where I’m going. I don’t care.
There isn’t long left now.
With life in black and white the sky becomes awash with colour. Shepherd’s delight tonight, and what a perfect night to die. The clouds are pink, painted coarsely over a glowing red azure sky. It makes sense to me. Finally, I am not alien, I am not in the dark, confused, alone. Instead, it is everyone else without foresight. They are isolated together, and I am solitarily integrated. I am told to go back to the pier, say goodbye, and watch the world literally, actually, flash by my eyes. It’s my gift, my reward for my broken brain; I am at the theatre and the only one with dramatic empathy for the characters led by convention. I float down the pier, and now I know I’m not mad. The sky pulsates, angry, vengeful. Particles expand, shrink, and re-inflate.  I can’t help but laugh at the beautiful hopelessness, and the ultimate despair. A song of delight, true, genuine, hilarity explodes out of me and spills into the thickening atmosphere. Two blacks, glare with their telescopic eyes, old me would’ve ran, hidden, driven by fear, but for the first time ever, all humankind is equal. Money and power, the drivers of society are null. Soon I know the men will turn to ash and blow away.
Mid-laugh, the sea swells, becomes beast, and swallows us whole.

Roses are red and baby, my eyes are too;
we’re wilting in a world that knew
It’s not easy to be good and kind and true,
selfless and gentle in all the things we do.

Between germination to fallen tree,
there's so little time for us just to be,
To find the earth to set our roots
To reach the light towards which we shoot

Instead we grow the only way we know
and this bed we’re borne is lined with thorns;

The daisy doesn't wish for chains
The cactus still savours the taste of rain
The violet didn't choose her blues;
but it's no excuse to be abused.

Turn sharp to break up hardened ground
Grow tendrils to search for simpler ways round
Build traps so we could have our way
with those who’d steal our leaves away

For lilies can't weep their mustard tears for those who sleep their endless years.

These Storms and Droughts our days receive
reveal an innate thirsty greed,
Prune us back down to seeds
To appreciate the garden as the aphid sees,
To learn the shapes of Autumn's breeze.

It's no wonder we forget to seize
Our Fevers; and be the forest for our trees.

And you're still there
The boy in the sky
I love a bit of you
In everyone I meet
Find you in the milk of their thighs
In the soles of my feet

You're still there
The fly on the wall
Though I can't see you
Your smell spills on the clouds
In the light that burns my eyes
I know you're just behind

Somehow you're still here
In the curves of the rocks
The hollows where my hand fits
And our fingers lock

and wrecked
a Perfect Night.

Locked by the fingers, but something still runs free.
Stirring up seeds in a place that can't be seen.

Above us the sea sizzles, the sky burns at our feet. I'll hear her voice for centuries.
Taste her lips in every fool I kiss. Breathing malaria into my hips.

For what no man can be she is, sees all, feels all and brushes it under your feet.
Her rust fingers find the zing of metals; from first to fourth mirrors burst, life calcifies.  

There's still sand under my toenails, salt crystals in my eyes. Marooned where too much lives and in the surf I'll lie.

I would hold you in my paws,
And keep us warm in all the rain.
Dig holes for us to sleep in,
So we’d never be apart again.
I would find us lots of honey,
So life would always be sweet,
And lick and groom all my furs,
To impress everyone we meet.

I would roll myself in autumn leaves,
And give you the best hugs of your life.
I would sharpen my teeth on our enemies,
And grow nails, or claws, or knives.
I would sniff out all the insects,
That hurt us with their bites.
And sleep for all the eternity,
Otherwise known as lonely nights.

And if I were to catch you,
Alone with another bear.
I would slash and rip you open,
And crawl in to cry in the tear.

standing is a memory lost between sheets
Breaths linen pressed
Families repressed
Strangers
Just wanting to be held

Where are all our wooden boxes?
Their bronze gilded edges
and old price sticker glue.

We worried them away from charity shops,
haggled over foreign coins in bazaars.
They travelled by the heat of our legs
cradled, but chipped from the bumps in the tar.

Like Russian dolls from different cultures,
dysfunctional birds of a feather
storing together
Our lives segmented then closed in the dark.

Wraps of late nights and later mornings
Odd earrings, shells, letters and old keys
the leftovers of utmost importance
Finger sized buoys steady through our coastal breeze.

Do they still nestle in your corners?
Wearing blankets of somebody else's skin.

Are they still filled with our faded receipts now?
Or hollow from within.

Golden brown or yellow livered
a field of blows await
Spring to be delivered
as waters turn from
snow to dew
Your yellow crown peeks and pushes through
over summer's flowers bloomed too soon
underneath Your shadow wilt and swoon
as long as roots can drink their fill
remain reflecting in Your windowsill
Echoing I'm your Daffodil