When I put my eye to the telescope
to explore the dark depths of the universe,
I see a man standing on Mars. He has
a sword in his hands and blood pouring down
his face. He is too far away to hear
but I know he is screaming. His war cry
writes itself across his face and those wild
eyes haunt me when mine are closed. They are white
with rage and filled with the brutal, violent
love of war. He has a beauty which is
old with skin that has turned into rubble,
skin the colour of rust. Blood is embedded
in his surface and creates cracks, edges,
borders to old rivers long since evaporated.
His body is laced with the order of
a soldier and War traces the smooth skin
around his lips. I peer at him through the
darkness as he sleeps and the violence seeps
into his dreams, singing its lullabies
of explosions and ******. He weeps his
masculinity into the earth and
slowly is pulled into the endless dust
which stretches its way across his planet.

There's a love blooming between us
that makes me feel as if
I don't need
the romance of old movies
and the warm hands of a friend
to hold in mine
might just
be
enough.

Flocked stitching looks just like the birds,
swooping and swerving, finding their way
to a better life south. They leave here
to a brand new world where flowers bloom
to a pure, dazzling white
and animals sing with the wind.
There, they will live in vivid colour
and cry with fervent joy.
They will rejoice in the pure green
and unite in song. When the time comes,
they will leave their southern home
and join us once more in the north,
where swallows skim the weary grass
and the spirits hum their ancient melodies.
Somewhere along the line, they will almost forget
about that paradise they found
so long ago, the paradise
that allowed them to outshine
an eternal winter. But, like all life,
they'll find themselves in a haze,
with blurred edges and foggy minds,
wandering over borders
with a thirst
to find the heat again.

Everything is falling apart again;
my head won't create the words I need
to sustain my fragile state of mind. I
cannot even bring my thoughts forward to
help you understand, or write them into
something cohesive. I am completely
unable. I am terrified that this dreaded
block on my hands will never lift and
I will never get the power of words back
which I use for entirely everything.

Before too long,
I'll fall in love with her.
Glorious as the summer wind,
bright and easy
to handle, she'll drift
and weep her joy
into my soul.
Before too long,
I'll fill myself with salt
and sing an ocean song
to catch her currents in my storm
and my heart will explode
when she touches my hands,
playing me like a piano.
Before too long,
I'll fall in love with her
just like she wants me to
and I will be left a fool,
stranded
in ice and brandy.

I may create and belong
and language
which seeps so effortlessly
may pull and bind my being into knots
but I bleed for knowledge.
My lungs fill with words and I choke
on memory as it hits me.
Mastery, meaning, crushing definition.
Division, collision,
a crash of colour and lightening
crushing my skull in anticipation.
Knowledge of death
worse than the idea of dying.
Nerves tied into knots
impossible to untie
unless I know the code,
electric pain
with my limbs
flush to the flames.

It won't be long
until I'm somewhere beautiful,
green, serene,
with clouds hovering
in front of my eyes to hide
phospherous tears.
It won't be long
until my eyes fade,
clean, gleam,
with speckled fireworks
bursting like life
in the midnight
of my pupils.
It's not far,
it won't be long,
I can feel it on the horizon.
I can feel the spark, the life,
the igniting sense of betrayal
warming me,
making me new again.

High in the clouds, above this town.
Lost and forgotten because I've been gone
so long. The dizzying
haze of stratosphere glues itself
into my mind and I reach boundless
heights, distances so far
your limbs would stretch
through time itself
trying to reach me. I'm gone,
speeding, don't shy away
from gazing at me in awe above you.
Scream in terror as I dive and swoop,
losing control,
dying.
Run in fear when I fly again anyway,
hooked on the high
of thin oxygen and silence.

I was lost
and you were gone
but here we are,
together, complete,
and there is a symphony
waiting for us
somewhere better
than this.
I'm sorry I thought
the light
had left your eyes.

I am an aroma trapped in the haze,
So sweet and friendly like the taste of decay.
I know that I am sciatica and sage,
Reminiscent of an older age.
I feel like a cherry tree falling apart,
Season after season, a forest of art,
And candles burn in the bottoms of hearts,
Chocolate and smoke on the steps in the dark.
I can taste the fire on your mouth
And all the birds are flying south
But I can't bring myself to look at you. Not now,
Or maybe ever,
Because through this earth we've come together
And how do I know that two birds of feather
Can fly over mountains and valleys and heather
Without falling apart? Words over eyes,
I am blinded by the sun in the sky.
I was fog and shadow 'til you parted the vines
But what if this feeling that I had tonight
Is just your voice ringing in my ears,
Tinnitus, words that carry my fears.
The taste of your name is wild and fierce
Like the rowan or rose or stacks on the piers.
I am tripping and falling over all that is clear
In the water. So cold.
So cold, I have nowhere to go.
I am drowning in a world of all that I know.
I no longer have a place of my own,
I remember the scent of your laughter and prose
And I am all alone.
I am devastation, like sorrow and lies,
And I will crumble and wither until the reprise
Yet, despite your mouth being so close to mine,
I don't know what the touch of your hand implies.
Downsized.
I am lesser than you.
The shadows are warping, the valleys are blue.
My tongue is caught on the taste of the yew,
The water is rising like prayers on the pews.
Collapsed and free, I'm tumbling through
The oceans, the ashes, a lark full of rue.

My home cannot be here,
Which is where I choose to stay,
For I gave my heart to you,
And you are far away.

In my mind the music I write
is for an instrument that is not mine, unknown
to me. It cries and rings its wailing
tune and a chord of despair sings its way
into my core. I feel the pain
of the music I cannot write, the song of a million
cuts spreading its way through my skin.
Instead, my music plays through cracked sobs
with my instrument pressed
into scarred skin, tears mingling with blood
on the bathroom floor. I muffle it
so it remains my own secret, a song
for only me to hear. Music
makes no sense to me anymore, only
the sound of infection and dripping death hits
my ears. I look at my reflection, vacant, tracing
my used lips with blood stained fingers.
I am hollow.
No amount of heartsong
will fix those wounds.

There's a molten ground of explosions and fire
beneath my feet, somewhere
wretched souls go to manifest their hatred.
A light in the distance is slipping
from my fingertips
and I can't reach it,
it's flying beyond my grasp
and I am going to be left alone again.
I can't find the strength within myself
to hold onto it and slowly, oh
so slowly, everything
is becoming dark and dreary.
I am afraid
because there is a corner of my heart
which still feels
and it has been washed a cold,
fractured blue
whose song is that of broken
mirrors and bleeding hands.
Why can't I love?
Why is there a battle of lost,
defeated lovers within me
which never stops raging, a battle
of fear and pain and loneliness?
Why can I shine so brightly
to the newcomers yet become dull
and lifeless to those I have seen
every side of so easily?
Why is there no guilt within my soul
yet the dark truth of death
knits itself through my brow
and seeps into my lifeless eyes
with such haunting truth?

Sticky trappy honey, I am a fly -
Hungry, greedy, drowning in you.
I would like to see you again.
I think about your mouth
More often than I can laugh away.
Your eyes and limbs linger gently
After I leave for the night.
I noticed the slow peel of your eyes
Leaving mine, the reluctance and weight
Of the motion. Is this not in my head?
The touch of your hand brands me,
White hot metal flaring against my wrists.
I think about you when I'm alone,
Can hear your accent tilting
Over the shape of my name.
I stand close to you and look at my feet,
Go home and write about you
Like you're someone else.

I spend too long thinking about words.
About what to say, when to say it,
When to get the words out of my head
That choke me, suffocate me,
Put me in desperation,
Sadness, need, greed.
I shove them down my throat and hope
They will keep me going for a while.
I consume my language quick
So I can't move or breathe or see,
Words filling me from tip to toe.
On a vacant breath I will spill into your mouth
My poetry and lust, predate upon
Your silence. Know that this is just
Temporary.
Fleeting.
Almost over.
Almost.

Sunday morning, dark and grey,
Coming home from December.
I can feel myself wasting away.
Look down, the skin is a mystery,
All I see is the history.
Too much history.
For a moment, I forgot.

The ******* the furthest right,
Skin too thin and preciously white,
She was in the hospital.
I want to be that way.
Six and half a dozen,
It was all a bit of nothing
Until my bones started breaking
For no reason,
No reason at all.

Stress.
Too far from home,
From what I know.
Not the hands touching me,
Every night from before I was ready,
The trauma in a bedroom
Hanging icy on the air.
A name on a label hanging hanging
Icy on the air.
Packaged hands waiting
Behind university doors,
Unknown,
Afraid.
A kind face telling me to come in
As I hesitate in the open door.
Do I remember the way,
Can I really run faster?

I don't see him anymore,
Not since summer.
We sat on the shore,
I almost hated him,
Hated myself instead.
It never takes long.
There must be something wrong
With me.
Went home to the city.
I didn't sleep.

Shifting panes,
I drop the channels,
We are an island.
Stranded, docked horizons.
I think I was once better
than I am now.
You asked me where I was
but I don't remember,
but I don't,
except for the body somewhere between
my hands and my shoulders.
I wish I was being eaten alive,
teeth on my shoulders again as they were,
as they were a hundred times before.
I think about you all the time,
cry your name into the sheets,
snapped under the weight of it, of all of it.
You keep touching my hair,
circles on my knees,
but I think I'm a distance
scuffed over and over onto the walls.
I can't bring myself to move.
Hazy nights again,
I don't know where I was, how I got here.
I wish I could kiss you quietly
with no avail, no consequence
or release,
but you touch my hands and I'm away again,
somewhere far away inside.
Raining all the time,
unstable, agitated,
it always keeps me close to you

I stared at her all night
before she came to speak to me.
No such thing as lost time.
I imagined what it would be like
to kiss her, and despite her anger
I knew she would come.
I didn't have the taste on my lips
but it filled my mouth the same way
it always did. She had her head
in her hands on the beach that day.
I couldn't stop staring.
Like a dream that is endless, relentless,
she laughs on the doorstep and waits
to be invited in. She walked me home,
held me close for a time,
but left me alone again.
Excitement clings, her bones strong
against every edge of memory,
every nerve and eyelid.
Every line on my hand follows
the curve of her thigh,
deafening and beautiful.
She makes me small and insignificant.
For a time, I was in love.

Discarded memory pursues and abandons,
a sour scent falling
through an empty room.
Tired, unwanted, I rest within
grieving borders, edges crumpled
in agony. Pillows cradle heads,
and lights go dark to hide their shame.
Staring into the darkness of a blank
wall, I clench my jaw.

Forgotten, repressed, are the details
of what happened, swimming now
in viscous history. Yet still
the pressure, fear and betrayal,
bellow through with agony.
My tongue passes my lips
to taste familiar salinity,
I am blinded by red walls
and boxes on the floor.

Did I really lose an island?
A bloom of flowers?
I can recall a light, a youth,
something I had before.
But I am now
isolated, guarded and hostile.
The water is gone,
I am lost in the dry sand.

Everything is uncertain, and has been
for some time now. Panic on the air,
we rush across an empty city
in a daze, hoping we didn’t forget
the important things. I left
the freezer on. The taste
of dust in my mouth, I forget
what day it is, am consumed
by the stress of curfew, distance
and isolation.

Eyes closed in darkness,
burning and twisting feelings
call to me.
That dance we do when we're together,
childish and insecure,
soaked through
from the blue, grey, blue.
We watch it rolling,
dull, heavy and silent,
in the intermissions,
eyes open and breath fast.
Our bodies flutter closer
in confusion,
My feet won't meet the earth.
Two eyes beam and glimmer
in the dirt, a deep,
white blindness, and they scatter me
all at once, render me wild
and impatient.
Lonely birds are quiet,
unnerving.
The mountains are consumed
by an advancing sky.
Nothing is singing.
Trees echo over a white world,
limbs crawling over the earth,
a single cry playing on repeat
until it slowly fades away.

Crooked, narrow heart. Blazing bright,
right through the gaps and slats
on the way to the rippling waves
of breath. Eyes are tilted in laughter,
discreet and unassuming.
Subtle glances, warm skin,
touching again.
Magnets on a countertop
intertwined.
Fistfuls of skin.
I can't get close enough.
Deafening quiet eyes looking into me,
nowhere to go except into you.

When your teeth trace my skin,
and lovers' worries seem to disappear
beneath tides of lust and gin,
I am most myself.
Sweet daffodil memory
tied between eyes shut wide,
seep in, soft nectar.
The branches twist through me
and sway to the flow of your breath.
Children fawn over one another,
crashing and tilting all
through the darkness. You leave
a honeysuckle trace, bittersweet
and barely tangible.
You always have to leave,
but still remains the scent
woven through my body.
I close my eyes and drink in
the sweetness all around.
It lingers between my eyes.

I don't feel much when I'm with you,
But it's a lullaby that will do for now,
A lilting swaying song bowing at the knees,
Stuffy and overbearing.
I'm a line hanging on the horizon
Endless, muted,
You chew me up and spit me out,
Viscous paper foaming on the tarmac,
A receipt glued to the window,
Discarded next to bins
Overflowing
With a plastic ocean,
And I'm floating away,
Further and further from you,
On a whisper of cellophane
Lulling me to sleep at night.
Lurking in corners, I sit foot under foot,
Dreaming of wider eyes.
Less to offer is all I want for myself
And us becomes them, something else
That I don't think I want anymore
As long as I can have someone to hold me,
Someone that my heart breaks for
Twice daily like clockwork

All good things
They tend to fade
Leave you reeling
It’s no simple feeling

Like some silly coincidence
It flutters in the distance
I never saw you again

They prayed the night you left
I stood under the temple lights
Never felt a thing
Waited for you to come
Through the heavy doors

The trees won’t speak
Not like they used to
Your alto song whispers
In the forest that festers
With the age of you
The age of you

I shovel the endless yellow ocean
and I am the rug, the floorboards,
opening and closing beneath quiet feet.  
Skipping stones and drifting tones, the world is quiet
and uneven, full of meadows and sadness.
Children jump through the bright haze
like lovers to conclusions, heavy with dulcet words
and poetry. I watch their edges blur
as they ricochet off one another
and I can barely remember.
neither here nor elsewhere; I am okay,
a feather on the waves. Something of a memory
shifts across the surface, glinting on my tongue,
and leaves again faster than before.
Woven with the wool resting on your eyes,
I am sure that your bonds are my bonds,
but skin is soft and isolation climbs underneath it.
I am a horizon endlessly unravelling
and you are an echo of a distance I can no longer recall

I wait for the lights to turn down but they burn my eyelids.
I hear animals scurry into the darkness that I am waiting for.
Aching limbs, strained eyes, tension,
The soothing words grind between my teeth patiently.
I wait to be grounded, by the soil in my toes
Or the light passing between my fingers.
The time filters away, washes my feet with tenderness
And begs me not to go back to the city.
Although formless and absent, it sings sweetly
And reminds me of my loneliness.
Maybe I will stay for a little while longer

Far on my right, I can feel a sense of presence
lurking between your eyes.
You make me sort of crazy.
I feel like an insect in the moss,
ethereal worlds all around,
choking me, enveloping me,
whirling every other direction in the tangerine wind.
I fall into you every day.
7pm again and I don’t remember the date.
The bright of your eyes is whizzing away,
trees are peppered like windows with spray
by citrus scents blooming under a Scottish sky.
Your head always fits into mine,
we’re dancing and I hear the tune you’re singing inside,
an echo, a little breeze, subdued and quiet,
vaguely entering the room.
Echoes in the hallways, these walls hold no place.
Your arms around me are a city,
loud, relentless,
a ring of light pollution
hanging around restless sleep, tapping feet,
all of this just another haze
or darker phase come to take me away
from this place I have grown used to.
Paranoid and half-dreaming,
I'm not sure if you're somewhere behind me,
always writing love songs,
or if you're still only stringing me along.
I wait like paper under needle
weighing down the rest, nerves float into my chest
and I didn't hear what you said to me
in the breaks between the strings.
I am sometimes stuck,
motionless and out of sync,
suspended in the air we breathe.
I dream of living within you,
of how it would be to see the lonely tree
from your eyes,
the one with the leaves that emerge from nothing.
I think you also feel done in like a winter glare,
cold shadows going nowhere.
I think you know what it is to be a shard
of the blue, unwatched and unknown.
I only feel alone when I'm with you.
I know it's the same.

I didn't dream of you in particular
but there were flashes of you everywhere,
racing through my mind.
Snippets of poetry unspoken, unwritten,
I know they are lucid and true
somewhere. somewhere.
I wish I had asked you to stay,
for when I lay without you
I swarmed with unknown desires,
pulled you close inside and for the first time
since before valentine's, I slept the entire night.
And I wished so vividly for the ocean sound
of swelling breath to linger, gentle and fleeting,
in the warmth above my lips,
hearing again you whispering my name,
fingers tracing histories on my thigh,
sending shivers down my spine

Limbs on my limbs, back to my back,
fingers dancing everywhere.
The hair on my arms is tall.
I don't know what it means
that last night I dreamt of you standing
in the cold, October night, breathing smoke,
that safety lives in the weight of your head
on my shoulder. Whispering into my ear
all of the beautiful things your heart feels,
I am lonely and unseen. That heavy feeling
only seems to fade when it's your heart
beating next to my heart. I almost love you
in the dim lights, the taste of a name written
between your eyes, the way I loved her,
recklessly and without abandon.
I see your eyes shining so bright,
so close to mine,
and I wonder how the world would be
written in your broken verse.
Splinters and thorns, I split apart.
I leave over and over again,
I no longer remember the way.