Chamomile lines
In a cup filled with sorrow
As they swirl, rise and burst your eyes burn on.
Ice-blue, yet warm
As the morning in winter
Feels like I'm breathing dragons and walking through fields of silver.
Spider web catches
The rays of the sun
Rising on the horizon, is it called a horizon because of the rising?
Hawks drop and whirl
It's all so romantic
And it makes me feel sick to my stomach because I'm just a wandering girl...

You're a beast in the den
You're a wolf in the lair
You're the wood for my fire
You're the breeze in my hair

But I never asked for a den
And I wanted the lair for myself
And my fire should be burning with coal not wood.

And the breeze in my hair? Well that's just annoying
The affection you lavish on me feels like cloying
Reproaches from some kind of horrible clown
All lathered and slathered in wet eiderdown
It's leering towards me, its horrible face
Lifts into a smile, an ugly grimace

And I realise suddenly
That my mind is painting grotesque scenes
Over the beauty of the one that I love

But then how do I stop it?
How do I stop it?
How do I stop it?

You make me feel putrid
We laughed when he said that
Yet love lies niggling at my insides like a blister
That I don't want
And yet it's mine
Mine
All mine
And I want to keep it
Forever.

But what is a full moon anyway
When you are not with me to fill it?
And what if philosophy leaks from my brain
All the time you're not there to instil it?

Can I speak my own thought, can I hope my own dreams
Can I tread on a path that's been torn?
Can I carry the mountain right here on my back
Or sit on it to welcome the dawn?

If I torture you first will you confess your sins?
Will you scream if I stretch you out here on your back?
Would you tell me such secrets I couldn't have made up
If I just ensure you have time on my rack?

If I save myself for you will you spend your time on me?
Your silver is not what I need at this time
But if you were to keep me wrapped up in a blanket
I'd come to you midnight like Mary divine

And I'd stand with my candle and call to the angels
We all would assemble the shepherds of old
For I know how you love to see men working nature
Freeing other young creatures from nightmares untold.

And when nighttime is over and my dawn is broken
I'll swallow my stories back behind my chest
I will remove the nails with which I had bound you
Roll back the great stone and lay you to rest.

Of a night on a battered red leather sofa
It's moved with us three times
It sits in a room with a broken bay window
And we sit on it too
And we sit on it too

Drinking yellow anise from mismatched glasses
With ice, not warm water
Singing stories, spinning yarns with broken bottles
Of girls with leopard-print hands
And the straw man in the moon
The straw man in the moon.

The cord hangs on the wall:
A symbol, but not symbolic
As chords rise, break off and fall
All a sham, but not shambolic
A sham, but not shambolic.

Swapping tales and anecdotes of cars parked between cake stalls
And days with names that don't suit them
People dying for causes they don't understand
And war is an island; a land hyperbolic
A Green land, a war land; unplanned hyperbolic.

Linguistics are twisted and brass tales are dropped
A cork is unwrapped from the web where it popped
But the darkness is rising, the hours are ticking
The side is hitched up so we all know we're doomed.
We hear children singing in the guitar strings,
Their screeches rising as they fall,
Our speeches diving as they fall.

And speaking of speeches, he says, a performance is mine
But in France, man... in France the markets are open
And the fields of Provence roll down to the menhirs of Carnac
And Brocéliande lies to us all,
And Brocéliande lies to us all.

Beware the fuzzy rolligog
That smithers in the myre
(Confuse it not with golliwogs
In fuzzy blue attire)

Beware the rolligogan wrath
(They can breathe fire, you know)
Just feed them up on tigermoth
And bathe them in the snow

Beware the rolli appetite
Which consumes dozy trees
Where zigazots and clambermites
Weave pathways through the leaves

Beware the rolligogan song
There’s poison in its tune
As rolligogan night grows long
Prepare: they’re coming soon.

I lift it up, I plunge it down
And bang! There goes my childhood
Open my heart, yet make no sound
And bang! There goes my life.
I sit through life, I watch, I breathe
And bang! There goes my innocence
I turn, I spin, I help, appease
And bang! There goes my life.
I poke, I ****, I read, I write
And bang! There goes my memory
I lose my hearing, breathing, sight
And bang! There goes my life.
I touch, I tear, I bite, I kick
And bang! There go my youthful dreams
I run ‘til I make myself sick
And bang! There goes my life.
I hear the door swing back and forth
And bang! Remember vividly
A million times I’ve run this course
But bang! There goes my life.
I surrender, I wave my flag
And bang! My soul inside a box
And from the depths my self I drag
To bang! My way through life.

Lithium, light they write,
Like it’s right, white delight
Striking bright, better tight:
Fine and dandy.

Glamourised in our eyes
The surprise as you rise
****** heroised,
Bitter candy.

Pump the ***, dump the dot
******* it hot, spatter spot
Sing a lot, dream but not
Craving luncheon.

Skagging sweet sweaty meat
Blisters well under heat
Take a seat, come compete,
Beating truncheon.

Vie d’artiste, or at least
Rising yeast, bubbling beast
Trickling triste down your cheeks,
Ever daring.

Rising up, sup the cup,
Acid drop, fizzle pop,
Shoobie-doo-doobie-***,
Death to caring.

every other time
i have defined myself by aiming at what i want to be
and then moving towards that.
i have sketched definitions in murky biro
on rumpled pages of my notebooks
and then taken my aim.
i have written long-winded histories
describing the stories i want to unfold
the way i would want others to speak
as they told the story of how i was when i walked in.
i have used evocative words:
"creator" "badass" "gypsy"
to describe what i am, in some cases -
my race and the race
that i run, but also
the way that i want to be, and the navigation of
the path that i want to find.
but now there is no defining
no definition will do
because this is not me sculpting myself again
out of lumps of clay that i pushed back last time
and now am causing to reform.
i'm not even made of clay anymore;
i am not malleable, but stripped raw -
pulled down to the most basic of essences,
and yet i do not know
what that is.
perhaps in time i'll find out,
but for the moment
i don't even know how to try.

the people swarm like ants
that’s what they say, isn’t it?
but they’re not like ants
at all, really.

ants have a purpose, a structure
they scrabble across the pavement as the sun beats down
with a common goal
carrying huge leaves between them
thousands of times their weight

nor are people like wildebeest
who stampede wildly across the plains:
LIONS! RUN!
their purpose is logical
their goal is survival
but people

people swarm in great swarthy swathes
sweating their way through the summer
slipping and
shivering their way through the snow

there are so many of them, and
their goals are so individual
so complex

not for them the ingrained logical processions
not for them the sole desperate stampede away from danger
no.

they have a society
have a culture
and wrapped in the cloaks of their conforms and their norms
they slither through the daylight
take up the space around them
give no heed to how they’re filling it
or who must take it next.

it’s why i like the early mornings
and the late night times
when the world is empty
barren
silent and pure
untainted by the congestion of the day.

And so today I sit and stare
Whilst wondering where I stand
A gypsy child of bright red hair
Far from her family land.
I watch and ponder, sense the wind
The leaves lie at my feet
Serenity I have found here,
Far from the bustling street.
The autumn leaves that grace the earth
By falling softly down
Leave their home trees, find their rebirth
In repose on the ground.
The leaves and I, as kindred friends
So far from knowing home
Are appeased as we comprehend
That we are not alone
For having quit our family trees,
We're closer to our roots
And as wind moves beneath the leaves,
I feel Life underfoot.