Penance comes to me on the eve
Of the second coming,
Awash with promise and horizons
That have never seen the night.
I know my own name clearer
Than any punch I've ever felt;
Or slamming door where I am
Standing on the wrong side.

My name is Amelia and
I am stronger than any storm
You have ever weathered;
More powerful than a hair in
Your mouth, or smoke in your eye.
I stand before you as Atlas,
Holding up this world with the sheer
Determination of someone prepared to die.

I can see the new world through
The same eyes that used to show me
Darkness more terrifying than the day,
When light would fall into every crack,
And bounce across every word I said.
Now as I move to meet my maker,
I do so calmly, yet without caution.
I know my own name now.

I sit with my face to the sun trying to catch it's warmth
But the winds quickly snatches that away
I'm quite content right here
Under the baby blue sky
Sitting in a sea of yellow flowers
They almost glow reflecting the joy of the day
But nothing breaks the chilly winds of change
The flowers scream to the sky
As the Sun's rays reach down
Like a mother for a child
The wind drags in the clouds
To blind each other's view
Mother Nature starts to cry
The flowers bowed thier heads
The sun just hides her face
For everything knew the winds of Chang where neigh

I hugged you in my dream.
I wrapped my around your waist and pressed my cheek against your chest.
A light blue shirt. Maybe plaid.

I showed you something you would need in your future.
A tip.
And you inspired me to do better in mine.
A light.

I hugged you in my dream and I can still feel your vibrations, your warmth, your thin waist in my arms.
I can still feel the hesitant beat of your heart and the cracks in your voice as you speak.

Last night, I hugged you in my dream.
I'm pretty sure you hugged me back.

Introduction
I stroll through green fields and realise I am home.
I bump against soft sandalwood: a fence –
And hang my head and weep

For Ginsberg, Whitman, and all the other cats clawing for tender acceptance
Strolling through ashen fields in rainbow night
Tugging on tender trestles of old mother crop of hair south
Casting to sky thine eye as black and white lights
Of rainbow night do fizzle and pop and – Oops!
Great incomparable fusion atom generator on the fritz
Once more the Centre of Cosmos choking and clouded with splutter.
As thine eye doth dissolve and revolve and resolve and see, from vantage point on high:
O Hell! O Eternal abyss of Chiaro-night, I am surrounded!
Thy Holy field lies cut and sliced by old tree corpses – lined up in terrible order by tender hand imbued
Thou might turn and run and screech impaled or *whisp inhaled by gasping trees, by dying trees, by dead trees who breathe.
And spat upon the lawn whence thou were born,
No matter the crop nor scenery.

Squint scurried.
From rooftop to rooftop,
He skipped and he flipped as he
Scrambled amongst the tiles,
The blur of slate was his domain,
As, through the haze of reckless speed,
The slowly revolving City
Did imprint upon his vision.
So that as his sly lids descended
Its outline he admired;
Its screaming centre he desired.

In the end even Squint cannot run forever.
So he will slow, and shade his eyes,
Catch his breath and gaze and sigh.

And when he’s had his fill of the sights and the smog.
Down he slides amongst the pipes
Of better folk; of harder folk,
Of those with Proper Names
Like ‘Welder’ and ‘Melder’
And ‘Roland’ and ‘Fairer’.
Names that came after a ‘Mr’,
A ‘Lord’ or a ‘Sister’.
Names that one Day he would have for his Own.
For in the Glass City, Names were always changin’ hands.

Squint.
Not much of a Name,
Even for one so young as he
It would seem he would deserve
A Name of much more worth
Than simple, humble ‘Squint’.

But Squint lived up to his Name.
He may look young and full of fun,
But crouch on a wall and you might just
Be appalled to see that not a moment after
Squint is left alone, his eyes will glitter.
And if any Man’s flesh could ever express such malicious scheming,
It was the writhing face of our humble Squint,
Once his eyeballs set to gleaming.

one evening, like all others in most every way,
as I wash my face, brush my teeth and prepare for the coming night,
I look farther up than my chin in the mirror over the sink.
I look up, into my eyes, staring mostly blank into my reflection's eyes.
they're thoughtful in the way a sleepy child's are, half-lidded,
vaguely thoughtful, nothing inspiring, wondering what comes next.
my eyebrows raise slightly, startled by the revelation of existing.
I exist, in a human form that is my own. every millimeter of my body is mine.
I'm frozen for seconds, maybe hours, watching myself breathe, feeling my realness so suddenly that it could crush me with the weight of actually being a person,
and then my eyes cast to the side. I break my own contact, **** in a sharp breath, and continue my routine,
to pretend I never noticed myself.

The storm rages, winds pulling and pushing,
Wrapping around the legs and chests of the world,
Stealing away their breath for instants.
Cold-lipped kisses patter on their hair, the backs of their necks,
Arms of thunderstorm air wrapping round them,
Watching, the sky darkens, lightens,
Morse code.
Damp earth and wet pavement kiss sneakers and boots
And the soles of bare feet,
The earth and the sky, pressing on all sides to reach each other,
Allowing those of us here to become caught
Between them.

You put so many words in my mouth
Sometimes it's hard to breathe.
All you show me are warped faces
I look in the mirror at a monster.
Words in your voice are different
"Grateful" means subservient.
My time, my thoughts, my being are worthless
But I need to keep trying, because... Why?

Preludium, or, *what has gone before:
A man makes his way, alone,
Through rocky ash and bluff,
His feet a mass of ****** scabs
His throat gruff with rust.
In his savage thirst he sees, delirious,
The City from whence he flees;
The City that stole his Name.

Furious! O righteous hate;
Bubbling! Consuming! Melding with his haze of pain:
Fickle Justice! Intangible Law! Humble Equity!
Alien words for an alien time
That has quickly descended to muck.

But we must leave this Nameless nomad
To his dark visages, for now.
Perhaps we shall return
To plough his tale and groan
To find him drowned in thirst;
In self-pity, the liquid fire.
For now- to the City, we are bound!
And the mind of one so fortunate, as to still call his Name his own.

Hobbling over rock and dust,
The Nameless winces with every weary step.
His soles scorched and torn
By the unaccustomed roughness underfoot
The jagged teeth of a prickly piping earth.

Alone he makes his way
With tiny treads towards the dying dusk.
Fatigue dragging at his limbs
Bowing his neck to leave eyes downcast
And unfocussed; seeing naught but blurs and
The swirling and swaying of the trembling past.

A city:
Grand buildings stretching as one toward the sky;
Great lions waking from their feast and basking
In the brilliance of noonday air.
The bustle of flesh coursing about their purpose
The tight press of bodies all around
And the chatter and the natter and the laughter and the anger.

And then the silence.
The fear and the glares.
The hunger
And a guilty aversion of one’s eyes.

The shattering of glass
The raising with fire and boot.
And the stealing of Names.

And now here he trudges.
With tiny treads and into naked night.