a friend of mine
said i should stop

and i said that was silly

know your limits
said she to i

and i said that was boring

i'll drink all i want
and then i shall stop

so she said that was stupid

but the i drank until i
slid onto the floor

and then i said time for home

but when i stood up
i fell back down

and i said i was fine

she said to me
that i should stop

and i said that was best

but i cannot stop
until i forget

and that's all i remember

I do not love you because you are funny,
or kind.
Or because you're beautiful.
It's not because when we first met you were reading Virginia Wolf,
and when you looked at me
I saw emerald and amber in your eyes.
Your hands are like pebbles,
worn smooth by the sea,
but that is not why I love you.
My heart doesn't skip at the thought of you
because you kiss the back of my neck
just before sleep
takes me.
Not even because you
make the best brownies
ever.
I love you
because you,
are you.
And I am me.

I never understood why
girls cried over boys
until razor blades took
my best friend away
from me.
I drove around
then I bought one
of those energy drinks you hate
and every time
I thought about dying
I took a drink
but it was half empty
before I made it off my street.
So I ran until I couldn't breathe
and then I ran until
I collapsed on my knees
but I got up and somehow
I made it home and
now I'm washing
you out of my hair,
trying to find you,
are you in my veins?
Or should I carve into my lungs?
You have to be somewhere,
I can't live without you.
I think I understand now.

I found myself, trying to be,
a little bit like you.
I don't know why.
Maybe I just realized that I wanted to be
a little bit like you.
The world was such a happy place,
whenever you were near.
I'd love to be able to fill a space,
with the joy you did.
For all conflict, you could erase,
just by smiling.
I wish that I - poor, dreary and
corner-of-the-party-bound
me.-
could be like that.
To have such beauty,
and such grace.
To really be like sunshine,
on a rainy day.

But the way you sleep
taut, ready to
pounce.
Your spine, it curves and sits,
when you twist your hips.
How you wipe a crumb,
from the corner of your lips
makes me.
When you cry it makes me sick,
grow a pair,
when you kiss the inside of my thigh,
when you hold
my waist and your thumb strokes.
I want you.
Your voice rumbles like kitten thunder
when it says "I'm leaving."
Well leave then.
If he wants me to say that I
love him.
He can make me.
But then you mummer in my
listening ear
something.
That I cannot remember
It's elemental, this
sumptuous, self-indulgent, sweating of lovers,
In a second I see your gorgeous eyes
and I remember.
You are every girl's dream,
and for that I don't
love you.
Go **** yourself.
Sell the courtyard flat in London, Lyon, Kathmandu.
Sing Fleetwood Mac in an emptying bar.
I refract your love to other women.
£4.50 for a pasta salad, a rip off.
Rip it off, quick, the plaster on your daughter's finger.
Now there's arthritis in my fingers
I drop the phone
Bend over
to get it
come back up
too fast
head-rush
startlingly
remember your mouth on my breast.
But how your shoulders looked in the rain.
A hand on my belly as we slept.
See a leather cord with a shark's tooth on it,
a battered rucksack.
The smell of decaying leaves,
long after the end of Summer,
Summer, the time for lovers.
We were lovers without the time to
love.
So what's the knock-out,
abstract line at the end?
The quote that teenagers will put on their walls.
Where is the profanity?
Is it not there?
Or do I just fail to see it?
Should I say
after it all
that I loved you?
A burnt out cigarette **** in a glass of cheap red wine.