If you stay awake with me long enough to watch the sky give birth to the colour blue, long enough to watch the moon finally deny it's 7th encore that night... if you stay awake with me long enough to see the streetlamps go out... I will be 6 feet under before I forget your name.

It's ironic really. Had actually been that far underground your sound would still pound across every surface it found including... my sleeping skin... and in the face of anyone who asked you, "Are you trying to wake the dead?.." you'd say no... the people at this party are already taking a break from living... the dead you speak off is everyone dancing, everyone singing, everyone drinking and getting really ******* annoyed at the one guy with all the red shells in super Mario kart. This is our Día de los Muertos. Our day of the dead, organized by the dead for the dead. Death was seen as the ultimate escape, but we're too young for those kind of commitments, so we fled the world in what little ways we could. Often found in bottles or cans, or in the arms or hands of others. Some get lost in the beat, let it travel from our ears to our feet. Greet our friends in dance moves as if there is so much noise in the air, it's the only language we can still communicate in. I ... invite you to the sofa... where there is already a gamepad with your name on it, and what we play is never nearly as important as the fact that we're playing. However... at some point I will expect you to play super smash brothers and if you dare pick Zero Suit Samus I will call you a ***** and show you the grave error of your decision... Unless you beat me, at which point I will commend your skills with the utmost sincerity... *****....

Regardless that's my 2nd favorite thing about parties. The thing I love most are all the people being more than how they appear. Spilling life stories of their glories and tragedies, watching the guy with the with the topknot become the warrior who survived several broken bones after a motorbike crash. See the girl who loves flapjacks become the next Beyonce in the making hear her voice light fires in the in the minds of those who had forgotten what talent looks like outside a TV screen...

See the the one in the corner with a mouth like a clam shell, finally show her pearls. She told me told me about all the things that were hurting. All the people she's scared of losing all the drugs she was using and all the people here... who were amusing. The fact that she can feel so broken but still hold herself together here was a greater compliment than anything her clam shell mouth could articulate. She had finally explained all the bruising, all the excusing, all the substance abusing and she found it confusing that I was still approving. I said 'tonight what you told me was moving. You've proven you're more human than what people have been assuming so.... smile for me' ... It will be a long time before I forget your name so I want whatever I remember of you to be good.

If you stay awake with me long enough to teach me 1 reason you're hurting but two more why you can keep smiling, long enough to have us make memories out of cheese burgers and tap water, Carl, Danni, Matt, Alex, Eden, Jade, Sean, Sebastian, Katy...  If you stay awake with me long enough to watch the street lamps go off, I will never forget your name.

She said I want to be a mother.

These words froze me.

She was an old manager of mine. When I'd spend my days on the phone, sold products like stones thrown at homes of customers whose windows were only mildly less valuable than the stones I broke them with...My manager looked bored, So I asked her... "What would you rather be doing than this?" she said "I want to be a mother."

At her managers post she earns more than most but would rather play host to...a baby girl or boy, trade orders for toys, she'd write work programs for her maternity like vows on how somehow... She and her partner would raise a baby.

I asked her... "That woman you're with... Do you love her?"... Yes.

I couldn't find the words to articulate how I felt so I told her what she said make me feel like the opposite of my heart breaking.

I don't know much of her past. But with me having more unexpected oddities than anything you can purchase for less than 73p from BnM bargains I know how hard it can be to be anything less than normal... And despite how far we've come in accepting women who love women or men who love men, I wonder how many people have told her... She couldn't be a mother without a father around. Whatever deep-rooted bigoted or religious grounds they may have found, it's not an excuse to put you down. They'll turn their feelings into frowns wear their ignorance like crowns and do everything they can to prevent you wearing a wedding gown.

You wanna know what I think.

Love requires patience, and patience is a liver. It can handle a lot of toxins and forgive a lot of poisonings, but overload it and it will die. For that reason... I went through puberty without a dad around. I had one war monument of a woman to ensure that I would grow to be a man who wouldn't poison livers. That compassion would be my arrows and respect would be my quiver. I'd send shivers to the spines of anyone who dared me to be anything less than everything they could see and... That I'd be a boy to be proud of. A woman and a man gave me bricks and cement, but only one woman helped me build a home in me... So imagine what two can do. It's such an outdated cliche just because you're gay doesn't mean you can't raise kids the right way.

I mean... Do you think two grown men can't change a *****? Can't stitch love and care into the clothes that child would wear, they pull out the hair stressing about the same questions that a straight dad would...How warm should this bottle be? Is it normal for him to eat this much? Is now a good age to have the talk? You can be a child's guardian but father or mother is a title that must be earned and with no doubt I believe you'll tick every box.

You've been mum to this office floor for more years than I've even spent in employment. Your throat holds the best kind of resume that no one can takeaway,  and when you make the transition from manager to mother... I know your child will be loved like no other.

I wrote you a poem, about why I'd write a poem for you. You caught me one time trying to tame my mind with lines of rhyme, when I told you it was about a woman we both knew you said, next time... why don't you write about me? I said because you don't inspire me. The easiest excuse for writers block... I need to be inspired. I need to be hotwired into a matrix of men and women who are driven by every feeling they are giving. I need rhythm and words. The pen is a decipherer and the page a treasure map where we will write our way to gold. We sold ourselves on the belief that we could... write smiles onto people...

So we write. Muster our might and write light into the dark times. Stitch beauty into the scars of the harmed,  arm ourselves to the teeth against those who act beneath what is considered humane. With ink in our veins we write like we fight. Unafraid of a broken bones because the next blow we throw will be through our throats. We are mouthy poets, and the most powerful weapon in arsenal is our battle cry. And should one of us die on the field we'll uproar, we'll outcry, we'll encore and we'll breathe life into what remains of our fallen and give them the best ******* send off ever.

And when we finally reach home after our time together ... We'll keep writing. We'll write worlds out of words. Write instructions to the sky and orders to the ground will write love notes to sound and have this all down before the next sun swings around, with metaphors abounding and similes astounding we don't clown around with the words we've found.

We write in skin grafts. We talk the hollow into wholesome entice oppressed into the inspired and paint the lonely as lovely. We fill in the gaps. We are the ifs the ands and the buts following the 1 word answers to the big questions. Do you love me? What are you angry about? How do you feel?
And we'd say, yes! If I was terminally ill and have the doctor prescribe me you, because you make me feel more alive than I've ever felt!
We'd say, everything. Sometimes I just feel trapped in my own skin like the society that we live in has made jail cells out of my skin cells!
We'd say... Okay. I feel like his smile told me, he'd catch me if I should fall. We write so we can say it all.
We write in passion and love, we write an apology, we write in admiration, and affection. We write in absolution as much as uncertainty. We write in purpose as much as apathy.
We don't write because we should. We write because we can and It's everything we are and everything I am.

This!.. Is why we write.

I've walked through the locked doors of a mental ward to go and visit someone considered a danger to themselves. Half starved girls make short steps past me and I double take to check if I'd seen a ghosts.
But ghosts are the ones looking for their mortality not the ones looking to drop it. So I turn my face away... And despite the nature of where I am I manage to crack a smile because somewhere on this floor was a small room with lost and found and I had some misplaced love to turn in. The young women on this ward have been here anywhere between weeks to years and they considered it a hell away from home. But the Afternoons I got to spend there will continue to be some of my greatest memories.

There's a lot going on up stairs. Between our 10 fingers 2 eyes 5 senses and 1 voice we're going experience this place one way or another, and your experience will be unlike mine and mine will be unlike his but we can go to sleep knowing that what we felt was real.

So I imagine it's scary being told by a medical professional that some area of your viewing experience is not as it seems. There's dead pixels in your screen. You've been meaning to redeem the warranty on that broken dream of a reality you've been living. But the company that sold you your world is out of business. That is to say when you check into insanity, there's no reception to show you to your room. Every spoon you're fed tastes real, but the people sitting across from you sees no meal. You feel scared.

And yet through all the poor unfortunate souls to behold on this ward one of them taught me beauty in the crazy, and seek these lessons in all of the other people. I want OCD to teach me to arrange my audience in such a way that you all look perfect. I want ADHD to teach me speech. Let me cradle impulse in every corner of my mouth and when it finally flows out let it roll about like a newborn who had it's mother craving haribos and red bull for 9 straight months. I wanna start speed dating for the narcoleptics and insomniacs and see if either can sleep on their wedding night. Watch them grow old together and have no concept of time passed because who the hell knows what time is is when your sleep patterns been ****** with. I want tourettes to teach me that this feeling is uncontrollable let our hearts be uncapped, every open armed come back, every face to face sweet embrace you give to those you love feels so natural that words like 'can't ' or 'no' become unfathomable.

But I can't pretend that these are easy gifts to accept, so many tears gave for the labeled and named, asking what's inside my brain, can I be called sane?

So my friend in the lost and found department of the ward taught me, recovery and stability are part of the beauty. Her dress size was the fine line between happier times or a cut short life. But now the time she's kept out of hospital grows like her smile. She's come miles and miles and and all the while is a living monument to the phrase 'things get better'... and that's all this is. Despite reality itself being an uncertainty and and the skies throwing all kinds of weather in the end, we're all birds of a feather that flock together and we need to remember that the sad times aren't forever, so this is a handwritten love letter to the things that get better.

She wore a smile like a scented candle. It was warm and comforting but… too easy to extinguish. This other girl existed on one end of a knotted piece of string suspended between 2 tin cans… It was hard to reach her, and when you did, her tongue seemed as knotted as the string.

But on days where these two can’t seem to stop smiling. When their bow tie tongues make phone calls sound like miracles… we say things like..

Don’t jinx it.


When underdogs bark like poodles but bite like alpha wolves. when the up-and-coming upstarts undercut higher overseers. At the risk of burning too quickly or too brightly, we say…

Don’t jinx it.


When the meek and the naive achieve more than we perceive.

When we dream on Christmas eve of what we may receive.

When we say things like ‘We’ve been through worse… she won't leave’.

we say…

Don’t jinx it.



The human condition demands so much caution and fear, we shed tears and rub our eyes till all we can see is the least of what we can be and we… live like slaves to the thing that stole our confidence away… ourselves. Somewhere down the line or self belief was found K.I.A so when we try something new, we’re already D.O.A.

So when we play pika-boo with our power, appear like a shower of rain in a desert when you’d already chosen dehydration as your only way out, we dare to tell ourselves, don’t jinx it.



Ladies and gents, boys and girls, you don’t have to rule the world. You don’t have to cure a disease or discover new species or banish hatred from the hearts of man or travel the and experience sights and scenes that only in your wildest dreams did you think you’d see. You don’t have to do a single thing!

But you can do anything.

When Martin Luther King said Let freedom ring, he didn’t fear jinxing a single thing.

And when the Beatles sang love is all you need they weren’t deceived by the forethought that their song wouldn’t be well received. They believed that they could plant the seed that would lead  this musical scene into places unseen.

They believed that all you need is love. That they had the stuff to turn lyrics into legends. They wrote songs so deeply entrenched into our musical history... you’d need a yellow submarine to find them all and… they didn’t care about what they jinxed along the way.

They held their hearts like David held his sling when Goliath told him he was too small, and so should we all, we should stand taller than our legs can and every man or woman who said you can’t you, you shouldn’t will fall! Fall silent like when the voices in your head are all in agreement and are screaming yes!



Confidence is a bag of marbles with a hole in it. You’ve got to think back to where you’ve been to find it again. But whether you’re happy with your marbles, still looking for those you’ve lost or if you lost them entirely… we can share. We’ll stir sweet smiles into your coffee, stitch compliments into your clothes and we’ll garnish every plate and bowl with the untold hope that you’ll believe in yourself.

Like I believe you. Because I do believe in you… and I won't jinx it.

The ocean moves like restless hands these days.  
Abrasive: rubbing cliffs to sand and dust,
their spirits crushed to foam. Alone too long
is what I think, Aegean fathers pull-
-ing back their sons. But myth is myth, I must
admit. Instead, the water beats the shore
for natural want, its swells and frothing tides
some violent children, asteroid-born, conceived
from outer orbit kisses. Moon-side, roar-
ing waves arise, as high as mountain peaks.
Their tensions break and churn up flotsam: jag-
-ged wood from ships reclaimed. My lips, too, crack
apart from frigid air. The blood is cop-
-per salt to taste. But salt still, none the less:
familiar sea foam flowing through my veins.
Genetic instinct winds me back to shrines,
the Greeks and Romans knowing more than we,
Poseidon having planted home alread-
-y thick upon their lips. Ensconced in coves,
Amalfi’s citrus piers had housed the songs
of sirens, trilling hymns to Venus. Her
divine softness, human-wrought: distilled
from strong eternal surf. I think it wants
her back again. And so it hurls itself
against the shore to beat our body’s blood
back into foam. My feet are cold atop
the rocks, the goose-flesh prickling needles deep
in skin. My head is past the precipice,
suspended at the point of no return.
My arms are tingling in the rain-drenched squall,
beginning to dissolve as salt is known
to do. I take a breath before the fall–
a retrograded Aphrodite’s sigh–
now flooded as the clifftop leaves my soles.

I like to call this counting crows.

A boy told me he liked me while I was high and crying listening to some indie *******.
My ex girlfriend smoked everyday, 3:11 pm, after school in her backyard, and I guess that is sort of cringeworthy.

Tell me you like me.

I like to call this counting crows.

And I wish I was pretty without make up, but I sold my soul and became demoralized. 

My ex boyfriend split his wrist one day and blamed me, and I guess that is sort of cringeworthy.

Tell me you’re okay.

I like to call this counting crows.

And you really can’t call me pretty because once, I loved someone and they called me pretty, but now he says I’m not the same-
He said I’m glass, but I always thought I was marrow.

I like to call this counting crows.

And I keep throwing up water and candy and syllables, but you won’t like me once you reach the smell,

And I’ve been empty for a long time,
but eating and eating and eating will only make you nauseated.

There is a pit in my stomach filled with sand.

I like to call this counting crows.

And I didn’t expect to meet you here, but there you are smiling at me with top and bottom marbles that I’d love to play with someday.

And here I am rubbing my knees trying to stand up without looking as feeble as I feel-

I remember little things.

Princess Diana died on my birthday.

It takes one man to change a light bulb and a woman to light it.

What the **** was the punchline?

I really want to sleep.

My best friend keeps making plans.

I want to kiss you shoulders.

Please lock the door”

here is a love letter for you,
the one I so desperately crave to love:

please wake up. 
please realize that we have not showered in five days, and this is not romantic, 
it is actually disgusting.

I love you, dear, but the thought of sharing this life with you is a bit unsettling.

I love you, dear, but I hope I die before you because I’m not good with funerals and your sister still hates me.

I love you, dear, but you can’t call me beautiful and then spit metaphors into the sink, you know that makes me uncomfortable.

and did you know the word “get” makes the English language so hard to learn? I learned that in my junior year.

that was the year I cried my eyes out every night over a boy who left me on July first,


and I still cry over him.

I love you, dear, but I can never be in love with you.

and there is a lion gaping at my thigh,
I cannot have your children.


but I love you, dear,
I love you I love you I love you.

when I was seventeen, I kissed one girl and four boys, five people who tasted like a different kind of poison.

when I was seventeen I drank actual poison.

when I was seventeen, my friends never asked how I was doing.

but I love you, dear, how are you doing?

you know, this is a rectangular metaphor.

my senior literature teacher always looked so happy.
he loved poetry.

I love you, dear, but I am not happy.

I love you, dear, but we haven’t showered in five days.

I love you, dear, but you cannot fix this.

I love you dear, but

I love you dear.