Lord, save us from our pygmy dreams
That bear fruit long before
We leave safe harbour.
Send us out to only come back home
Once we have defeated land-locked fear,
Hurdled every heaving horizon
And found the stars.

We'll return to show you
Our deep wild bruises
And war torn scars.
We'll submit our worn down egos
And weathered souls.
And only then gladly enter
Eternal harbour.

your melodic memories haunt
on perfectly pitched darkness
I see you through this blindness
won't you just let me be

bluish bruises you mark me
iron taste as I see your face
can't you let me run this chase
please dear, let me be

The honey in the lion sounds like a delicious thing––
a gentle balm capable of subduing
the cruellest of monsters.

According to the stars and tattooed,
you fancied yourself king of the jungle––
lazy in hot African afternoons.

Golden and tawn with sleepy sun-gold eyes,
shaggy mane, muzzle red with
the blood of a gazelle.

Did you think me such easy prey?
Or was I so much fermented honey,
only a sweet intoxicant.

Sun warmth seeps from jungles of cold concrete.
I mistook your gargoyle wings
for those of a guardian angel’s.

I overlooked your rough skin, your
crooked hawk nose and your skinny ribs,
and assigned fine things in you that didn’t exist.

So duped, I acquiesced to your slimy kiss.
Your mouth a neglected cemetery,
teeth a row of mossy tombstones.

Vampire. Incubus. Your seduction like grotesque death.
You named me tempest in a teacup,
but I was the eye of the storm.

Until the night the eye was eradicated,
and the storm blew in,
striking me dumb with your sound and fury.

But no spattered blood and no spreading bruise
to be found in the pattern of the kaleidoscope.
No cause for alarm.

Today I am lost in a picture show,
a beautiful world coloured by nostalgic past.
Women’s lips the vivid red print of a velvet valentine.

Head in the Clouds, I fantasize about a certain scene.
Because you think violence is ****––
retaliation – ******* in my dream.

Give me an eye for my eye,
for all the eyes you plucked, from women and breadwinners.
Give me blood running down your back, sweet as honey.

I am not a
perfect being.*
Flaws,
and imperfections
weave the
canvas of
my skin.
The scars that
mark my body,
tell a story of
where I've been,
who I've loved,
and who's loved
me in return.

Blackberry kisses
form on my cheek like bruises,
but won't fade away.

Shielded in Met. blue
I shoulder my silver numbers:
a Papa-Lima protector
on south-east London streets.
Riding shotgun and
fueled by adolescent adrenaline,
I scan the A-to-Z grids
for grateful victims,  
and bury my delinquent doubt
beneath the cool blue strobe.
-
I'm a juvenile constable,
thoughtlessly abandoned
to law's sanction
to bully, to bruise,
and perhaps to scar
for good.