The ice was thick on the hill
but I don't remember being afraid,
only the warmth of my breath
on my frosted tongue.
I had put my feet against the ground,
hopped from place to place,
prayed to the earth
so She would forgive me,
but winter is unforgiving.
I remember the smell of wet soil, rot,
the snapping of twigs
as I fell backwards.
An eternity
all at once,
the boiling sky blurred, rolled,
my limbs calling
for the silence,
my spine meeting stone and fury.
Agony, relief,
sliced me open.
I remember trying to stand,
how my feet wouldn't move
even when I pleaded with them,
begged them
to forgive me.
How black blood is
when it pools in your eyes,
how hot
and itchy, molten,
against your eyelashes.
It doesn't hurt
when your lungs fill with blood,
it feels warm.
Like a mother comforting you,
screaming for help,
asking why she wasn't told,
grasping the arms of doctors
and patients.
Losing patience,
too much blood on her hands,
it felt like thistles, weeds,
reclaiming my skin
and repossessing my breath.
Drag me under a blanket of moss
and cherish my open wounds -
I created a valley of red,
crimson, so bright
they all fell in love with me,
my namesake.
I contracted, clotted,
but there was still blood within me.
I was still alive
yet no bleach could remove
the stains from my surface,
it left its mark
in scars and the dark
and all that remains
is two eyes peering
at me.

Touch the sky with me
and we can fly, fly, fly
away from these places,
wrong faces, all the traces
of the spaces we created
between our lonely hearts
and forgotten minds;
the parts of us that shouldn't exist
crying in their cavernous
pinholes, echoing
and rupturing in feeling
through the waves of something
more, something undeniable
and true. The pinprick
in which my emotions
are contained
is gargling with a blood
that pours black yet,
as it trickles through
me, I can feel it restoring beauty
to the yellowed valleys of my skin.

Just take me -
                              take me home.
I guess I thought you might.
                              Despite everything,
I still hoped that you would save me,

                              yet you didn't.

There is a sad song within my heart and
it is echoed in the quiet of yours.
Something about that silence, the lack of
a voice between rushed heartbeats, contains a
strange certainty which makes me completely
uncertain. Your whispering thoughts have drifted
around me like ink swirling through water
and you have somehow swept me off my feet
with the power of the cacophonous
choruses, which I have only before
felt in the winds of the sea. How, my love,
can you make me feel such madness when your
entire vocabulary merges
into only three words when you look at me?

I cried a single tear;
Painted my bedsheets blue.
I sobbed and I sobbed,
But nothing came out,
Because all I could think of was you.

Give me that liquid fire,
which burns my throat
and blurs the edges of my existence.

Where is my language
and why can't I speak it?
It's being replaced
with a haze of Spanish eyes
and olive skin
casting shadows across itself
in the mid-morning sun.
I would be one
to remember the days
of what I could say,
words integrate,
binding my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
Colder, colder, migrating south,
hold my hand and tell me
it will be alright.
I wanted to know how the bird in flight
felt to have its feathers washed from its body,
how the decaying leaf
felt to be buried in snow.
And now all I want to know
is how it would feel
to be the world's smallest organism.
How it would feel to divide, divide,
roots so shallow I can't find my feet,
swept away by the smallest rush
of pins pushing against my body.  
How it would feel to be torn apart
in the name of science -
would I still be beautiful
if my ribs were inside out?
Would I still be beautiful
if my heart bloomed like the winter flower?
Would you love me if I could be anything,
a wasteland with a clear surface,
water being poured down the drain?
If I was a sequence,
the number of steps before the next system over,
would my DNA align just enough
to make me reflect you?
I'm hapless,
lethargic,
entirely theoretical,
and I'm counting the number
of substitutions I can make
before I no longer exist.
What will it take to wipe me away?
How many cells do you have to remove from my spine
before it is no longer my own?
I used to want to feel
the air breathing with me,
to know what it is
that makes the water love the earth so dearly.
Now all I want to feel
is soft skin on my hands,
the curve of my waist as I sleep,
the skin pale under the sheets,
beauty sighing from between my blue lips.

The mothbitten light streaked in from the yellow moon, dodging
between ribbons of old curtains and dust, and bounced
from your quiet face in stunned silence.
Your clear and cloudy grey eyes transformed into diamonds,
staining your face with a reflected blue too
beautiful to ignore and not at all dulled, igniting
blazing fires within each iris and bringing them to life.
Wild and honest like the wind, I fell
apart when you looked at me
for you have all of the stars in your eyes
and I wasn't ready to see them yet.

Where dawn meets the sea she lies, broken,
her laugh echoing the moon
and pouring with salt
across the morning waves.

I never expected to be the woman cauled in grace,
the tall beauty who caught herself in movement
elegant enough to make her a force of nature.
I drift through life like a leaf on water,
aimless and carefree. Words of ruth
tumble from me like a wolf howling in vain,
desperate to be heard. My youth has stained
the derailed girl I was when I was old.
Those crumbling bones were wrapped up
in an unexpected life - bones growing
into momentous trees, dancing
among the clouds like skyscrapers. I am
the floating girl wearing red in a sea
of black, melding and merging with the world
like the ever-changing depth of dappling light.
I am the beauty in a whirlpool of chaos, floating
out into the ocean, washing out to sea,
leaving only my handprints in the dust
and a train of thought woven
with the realisation of who I truly am.

It's impossible
to sleep for all these wayward
thoughts concerning you.

I,
for a moment in a vast space of time,
was angry.
Not at myself,
not at the world,
but at you, for you, *because of you.

Hatred turns my mind to liquid
and it seeps through your fingers, clumps
pouring down the drain,
punishing me for ever believing
in something other than the crippling
nothingness that haunts my horizons. Sudden
emptiness is brooding over me,
soaking me, and
soaking I am. I think I'm going to die here.

Some girls know all of each others poetry off by heart.
They find assonance in their laughter.
Their linked hands echo in sybilance.
I sometimes sing as if I am one of them
but what if I can't hum on key?
What if my elegies are the ones nobody reads?
Words, words, words. They rush over me and out of me
to a dead audience.
There is no innocent brush of fingers
or sweet laughter, only the perverse desire
to write something more than myself
and wait for an empty orchestra of applause to greet me.
Perhaps if I write as I am
then I will become who I am not.
Perhaps I will become one of the poets,
harmonising in time with the rest of you.

There's no deeper meaning or connection
here, nothing at all to spark my brain into
a chaotic explosion of thought. I
can't even use my words to string you up
to some greater power, or an invisible
force that is controlling our lives, because
you render me useless and simply apathetic.

She is dancing in a cloud of rain with such reckless,
joyful life that she sings a thousand melodies
with her limbs, flying by grasping
at the air around her. She forms paintings from the dark
clouds above her and, screaming
her laugh into the night, is free. The embodiment
of beauty, she is the newness of the green spring and the
sweet smell of cherry blossom which comes so easily to
the tongue; a fond memory. She is the coming
of something new, the feeling of freedom and love
which fills the hearts of the young and naive.
She is beauty embodied
in the face
of a month.

The garden was overgrown now. Cold hands
traced flowers of dusk and brooding darkness,
hands which so willingly lingered
on the fractured, broken hearts
which beat so feebly between breaths.
A carved, angled smile
cast minute shadows across a face, vague,
etched into the surface of smooth,
painted flesh. Eyes are always there,
drifting smog, glaring
with colour swirling over skin
like oil on water, dragging beauty
into the depths of the ocean
along with all of Nature's grace.
Hands, needles, they left a crude,
ugly taste that coated lips like dance
dripping from the drunken limbs of children.
Talking, mumbling - something
about the dying robin
singing the same old song to the trees,
season after season. Poetry.
A brooding sadness echoed along
fingertips, the stained fingertips
of an artist, and a haze of blue smoke
seeped from a mouth, choking it,
stealing the language from between its teeth.
There is a storm flickering in that gaze,
midnight burning ivory to the music,
falling into a fire of burning leaves.
Red.
A painter
but the eyes were always the masterpiece,
black and evil and filled
with all of the dread and loneliness
and stars, stars so bright they flash
when you close your eyes. Stars so bright
they are desperate and afraid
and jagged, calling out to you,
begging you to never forget them.

Hands brush the tears from my cheeks.
Hollow hands with hollow bones
that are supposed to belong to me.
My hands can create works of art
so beautiful that my eyes can’t keep up,
they can play the piano and dance
and run themselves through someone’s hair
when my heart is too afraid to speak.
My hands hold a pen like it’s life support,
they revel in the words flowing from beneath
sharp fingertips, they rejoice in the silence
of those who hear me speak my poetry
the way it’s supposed to be spoken: aloud.
My hands are works of art and yet I feel nothing
when they touch my body. They are cold
and numb and I feel nothing.
It only feels good when they hold sharp objects.
Not to my arm or my throat, just between my fingers.
I enjoy the fear of pain it instils in me.
My hands hold a knife the same way
they hold a pen. It keeps them alive.
The only thing that warms them up
is the danger of blood
pumping through my veins. Naive I may be
but I dance like the seductress
with blood draping itself over my skin
and desire burning behind my eyes.
I know what I want when I look at him,
dancing to the music,
inhaling and exhaling smoke like perfume.
I know what I want when his leg touches mine
and I feel the anger blazing inside me,
the anger blazing bright and wild
that I never want to let go.
I know what it feels like to burn alive
when I see his eyes looking elsewhere
and my hollow hands reach desperately
towards the darkness, reach desperately
towards his hollow face.
I find myself swaying to the music of the shadows,
my hips tracing the ocean’s waves,
my eyes glancing upwards with ****** charm
through lowered eyelashes.
I know what you want when I look you.
I see the lust behind those umber eyes,
it drips from you and you bite your lip
as I approach you.
You bite your lip
as I hold your face in my hands.
You bite your lip
as I allow your arms
to trace the waves with me
until I’m the one biting you.
Biting you so you can’t get away,
so that you’ll never want to,
because the feeling of my teeth on your skin
is one you’ll never forget
or get again. Because no one knows how to use blood
as a weapon or *** as a tool quite like I do.
No one knows how to bite you quite like I do.
I know what you want when you look at me,
you want my hollow hands which come alive
on paper, music, paint, to touch your skin
and taint your soul. You want me
to coat you with oil and destroy
your feathers, to pluck the beak
from your mouth. You want me
to make you human
and trust me, I will.
Just you wait.

If you listen, you might hear the patter
of children's feet as they run
to their fathers' arms.
You might hear the croon of infants
babbling through the darkness,
or the sound of love and laughter
coming from the gentle gaze of young lovers.
You might hear the ocean, ringing its bells
and floating on a wall of noise.
If you listen, you might hear honesty,
singing a song of home - small alleys
leading to the beach, lined with seashells
and memories. You could hear it.
But you won't.
This place is quiet in a way
that sets your teeth on edge,
so quiet that it is thick with undetectable
white noise. There is no soft sigh of sleeping
loved ones, no gentle waves or rolling pebbles.
Only quiet. Quiet. Quiet.
The feeling of never finding home,
or never finding feeling at all,
it's a sound. If you listen, you just might hear it.

Yesterday is blue,
tomorrow's fading;
we'll fall into your sunrise
as I'm yours for the making.

Bipolar sunshine;
Life's periodic lullabies
Changing me,
Waking me from ash to animal,
Trapped in the cage
Of my past lies,
Present cries,
Future demise.

But underneath this skin,
I'm still a human;
Boats of evergreen
Floating on tideless seas,
Yet I think I'm dying,
Unready for breathing;
Wild waters, blood oceans;
Mind lost, nightmares healing.

Dispersing into dust motes
As you catch the light
And glimmer as the stars do
Behind the clouds filled with my tears.
No sunshine on rainy days;
Without the sunshine from your gaze,
I am effortlessly lost in my efforts to be empty.
No need for sadness
When the cold freezes my heart -
My mind cold and dark
As songless larks fly nowhere.

You are flawed, but that
is what made you so *******
great in the first place.

Fragmented into a billion nightmares,
Bliss became silence when I crossed the void.
Opening eyes into sunlight but only seeing darkness;
Afraid of what I already had been, what I was yet to become.

Two days have passed since I last dreamt of you.
Lights appear before me and my eyes glare,
oceans, diamonds, blinding brightness filling me
to the brim. Eyes closed in the darkness,
I feel those heart feelings calling to me
once again, burning and twisting
in that dance we do when we’re together.
That blue, grey, blue mist,
heavy as the silence upon us; we watch
it rolling closer in the intermissions, eyes open
and breath fast, bodies fluttering closer in confusion.
Lonely birds are quiet and unnerving,
and nothing sings as the mountains disappear
into a lilac sky, white limbs devouring the forest,
edges of trees echoing through the blank earth.
I hear you bouncing and gleaming in the blindness,
that deep, white blindness, and you scatter me
all at once, render me wild and impatient.
I see your hands in her hair, shadowing
Josephine, the colour of your skin rippling
through the room. How do I tell you
that I am a dead end and you are a valley?
Petals on the river, in my hands, my feet,
I feel you leaving
all over again.

Why can't I love you like I used to?
Now I just want you to go away
So I can breathe and be happy,
But that isn't going to happen.
You have captivated all of the people I care about,
If I were to leave then I would have nobody.

I am all alone,
Even when surrounded
By the ones you have brainwashed.

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 came from the old times dancing on a
hillside which toppled into lakes, tipping
down into endless valleys of green and
blue, my hands in the palms of a stranger.
I kissed him under fog as the oil rigs
skittered across the water, finches swooping
to protect their young. As a laughing melody
hummed between us, electric and satisfied,
I felt our hands shining so brightly in
the darkness around. I sang an old song
in the woods and it echoed back to me.

Roots run deep and wild. At first they lay quiet,
toes buried in moss, and I wondered if
the leaf felt my touch as silken, smooth as
water, or jagged as the stones beneath
it. And then they were livid, raging, boiling
under the surface as I stood above
screaming water, churning the earth from the
edges of the river, eating away
at the land I was bound to. Desolate
and sodden, I faltered on the borders
of my home town, longing for the heaviness
of salt to catch on my tongue once more.

And then I changed, or grew, and forgot what
it was I had lost. Now, looking down upon
empty forests, I no longer remember
the song they are singing, yet I hear the scent
of a dead earth, the sound of a mushroom
breaking at the stem. Lying on lamenting
sands, I feel a droplet land on my cheek
and, for a moment, feel a whisper
of home. Carrying my feet from the meadows,
I'll mutter softly, singing my melody alone.

Your shattered souls will, one day,
Be remade by someone new
And returned to you,
But I understand that right now,
You are just a group of disintegrating hearts,
Smiling in the daytime with pretence of happiness
But falling asleep behind curtains of tears
In the lonely darkness of night time.

Don't you cry now,
Your world will always be alright.
This chapter of your life is one of many,
So don't dwell on me now I'm out of sight.

I'm starting to cry now,
As my world has never been alright.
I'll have to end these painful chapters short,
So you won't dwell on me once I'm out of sight

I smell the energy rising from you,
drifting swirls of vapour hitting me as
your heat embodies itself in the air's
molecules. I smell the importance of
you, significant to everyone except
me. You're a drug, coursing through their veins and
giving their brains exactly what they have
been craving, yet I am resistant to
your eniticing ways. The promise of that
electric focus as my heart picks up
the pace to follow everyone elses...
it doesn't appeal to me anymore.
I lost my hunger for you a long time
ago, when you started to wear me down,
and now the only drug I will ever
crave again is him.

I want you to walk with me to somewhere
better than this, where the sky
won't be black as pain or tortured and blue.
You are adopting my heart
as you take it beyond the furthest reaches
of joy, to that place where your beauty
comes from. A land of music and freedom lives
within you and now I can see it.
I need you to hold me with those peaceful arms
cradling my weakened bones as you drape
your soul over mine to thaw it,
heal it, let its bruises fade. Keep me safe
when the blood stops flowing
and the tears stop burning
and all that is left is your fingers
brushing the tears from my cheek,
your concerned eyes on mine,
your tan skin glowing umber in the candlelight.
When your eyebrows fall
under the weight of my burden,
your sealed lips will trail
your dizzy thoughts across my mind,
words of beauty unspoken, heard.

Bandages to stop the bleeding,
Long sleeves to stop them seeing.
Quiet words to keep from crying,
Believe it, even though you're lying.

Pour the wax where you'd press the knife,
Bathe in pain, it signifies life.
Pull it off and melt it again,
It brings the feeling so call it a friend.

Do not trust, it'll only hurt you,
Candles are your only virtue.
You will not trust, even if it hurts you,
Candles must be your only virtue.

Capture me in a moment of whirlwind
as I dance by the sea, floating
bursts of fabric backlit by
the midnight moon. The water calls me
in to dance with the waves
it sends to me but I cannot go
there, so I must keep dancing
for the water so it
will continue to love me.

I am becoming so sickeningly
happy, and now all I ever want to
do is dance to the music that your words
sing to me.

There's something about the way he holds the
door open, something about his strange, straying
eyes, which scare me. Maybe it's the charm within
them, the blonde boy acknowledging my existence
without ever hearing the heartbeat which
goes with my name. Maybe it's the lost boy
who left her behind and is now paying
me the same regard, looking at me with
a kindness all too familiar and
an eagerness so unwillingly accepted.

I stood, unseen, as the lights faltered and
I heard a heavy thud. A wave rushed through
me. My friend, out of reach, disappeared. Vapour.
The ceiling was gone - stars, stars. I couldn't
feel anything, it was all normal. Then,
the ***** came. It burned all down my throat
into my stomach, bitter bile tearing
me apart from the inside out. I couldn't
walk. Local hospital, apparently
I had a 50/50 chance. They filmed
me for evidence and I killed them in
the process. Cancerous. I was shipped to
Moscow, my wife being left in the dark.
Confidential. Contagious. Dangerous.
The ones who died were lucky, we were burning
alive from the inside out. My hair fell
from my body. My skin wept after the
false calm of nothingness. The dead skin fell
off in clouds of black dust, my flesh being
eaten and turning a violet black.
I can never have *** again, in case
I contaminate my wife. No more children.
Chromosonal damage. She was afraid
to touch me when I saw her again in
case she would die too. My skin will weep forever
and they call me one of the lucky ones.

So maybe we can hide,
all the others meet
over on the better side.
Maybe all these chips in me
are just because we're tired.

So maybe we're out of time,
all our love, it fleets
over to the other side.
Maybe all these chips in me
are caused by our desire.

So maybe we have younger hours,
where we broke one day
yet never gave up to the cowards.
Maybe all these chips in me
were made by who we are.

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.

Is his mixed up dream a long, long journey:
noisy, jolting, terrifying? He remembered
a wind cold against his ears, for the first time
the chill was sweet. But night was coming.
The sun was behind clouds - was it clouds,
or was it shelter, smoke rising red? Words printed
on muslin curtains, just like a house.
Steps to the back door, a canvas screen fastened
to cheerful fire burning on the grass.
He turned and fled. Pattering feet behind him
fell in a heap, what? what? what?
No alarm, no cross-over. He filled the ***
from the warmth of the fire. Only vaguely
had he admired the damp, apologetic starling,
who was pecking a hole in the sun
to ride with the circus. Quite right,
lucky he found the far away tomorrow.

I am sinking deeper,
beyond possibility,
into the grime.
Sloshing, dark waves are washing
over my body,
pale and thin,
and cleansing me.
I will treat it like I would the water
and bask in its horror,
metallic and harsh.
I will allow the copper flavour of blood
to rinse my mind.
Purity.
Feel the dry sandpaper skin
and the gravel in my eyes
as the rending of metal
tears my mind from itself
and I resurface,
gasping for air.

I was fractured until I met you;
the boy who saved me from halfway
across the world. Somehow, you pulled
me from the waters I was drowning
in without being there to touch
my pathetic body. You taught me to swim
rather than pulling me out;
you never were afraid of taking the road
less travelled. When I finally met you,
touched you and saw you only to cry
when saying goodbye, it was as a complete
person. I could look you in the eye
and love you the way I should have
for all that time. I was your equal.
I wasn't fractured anymore.
I'm not fractured anymore.

The viper will entice you with her weaving
figure and gleaming eyes, but when she wraps
herself around your body you will see
the fangs and scales likening her to death
itself. Her jaws will retract and she will
sap the colour from your being, discarding
you once she has stolen it all. Once you
become colourless, she will move onto
the next one, never hesitating or
wavering for a moment and turning
everyone into the blue stone that will
become of us all eventually.

I'm the ship that doesn't sail right:
no wind is strong enough.
Weak in strength
and short in length,
I am tired and over-rough.

I'm the colourless sunrise:
never beautiful enough.
Red in the wrong ways
and blue on warm days,
yet here I am, if I'm enough.

Why can't I sing like they do,
the way I'm supposed to?
There are a million melodies
trapped within me,
like golden dust of darkness
blazing with gilded sparks
in the depths of my bones.
I've had enough
of this wretched game,
where I follow the line
leading to the bullseye,
trailing steps bigger than mine
and falling into dusk
with nothing left in me.
It's time for me to open the doors,
for me to shine with a light
as bright as yours.
I can feel it in my chest
as it tries to force its way out,
craving the best
sounds I could make before,
when I was alone.
I need to sing like they do,
to sing like I'm supposed to.
I know within
that it's what I'm fated to do,
to consecrate this ground
with music only I can make.

You make me feel this way somehow,
as if I am so beautiful
that the earth will shatter
if I move like I know it.
And I know it now,
so let's watch me
break this world together.

Your starry eyes and my galaxy mind
dance together in the depths of the night.
No matter how bright I may seem
or how darkly you gleam,
no light compares to those stars I can see next to me.

What am I without this
toxic insanity that twists
my every move? Nothing,
that's what I am, what
I would be without me.

Maybe feeling normal would
wash this burning passion
for difference, which I love so
dearly, away. *If that is the case,
I will be abnormal any day.

Vulnerable years gave me sound advice
and I turn it over in my mind.
The advantage of sadness took my voice,
crumbled it,
sealed away my words
and left me to become unusually communicative
in my own reserved ways.
I understand that I maintain habits of a curious nature,
that I make you the victim
of sleep, preoccupation, hostility.
I know the secret griefs of your wild, unknown hands.
The way you love me
is laced with plagiarism and gesture,
filled with opposite alphabets and slurred speech.
I may be destitute and old
but my skin will weep for you,
my body will be soft,
my words will linger like syrup
in the cracks of your palms.
After an unknown point,
I won’t care what I’m made of.
Judging you is constant waiting and infinite hope.
I am certain that my decency will become snobbery,
that my tolerance will fade
and I will become impatient.
East from here, west from here,
is the sun – uniform, under intricate attention.
If I am the unbroken chain
of successful gestures,
my body is but betrayal
waiting to be unearthed.
Will my repulsive nature
disturb your peace,
the way you rest so unattainable, so beautiful?
What foul dust floats in the wake of your limbs,
so close to the useless sorrows of younger men?
It was a prominent, descending tradition
of pride and fault.
You were supposed to look like him,
a delayed man from long ago,
the centre of the world.
You bubble and boil and brood
and I make you restless
in a warm, wide season.
Too warm, too wide.

The hourglass runs out of sand,
So I flip it and watch the sand fall like liquid again.

Time brings order
To the wretched chaos of our universe.
It coats all things with a thick film
And paints life onto blank canvases.
Such a beautiful little thing, time is.

Dandelion hours float away on the wind,
And the everlasting cycle of time
Brings all things to their inevitable death
With breathtaking, morbid beauty.