I'm 'sophisticatedly' sticking a pen
in my mouth, pretending
to smoke a cigarette.
I don't have the courage to hurt
myself, but
I do.
In 'subtle and implied' ways, he
says.

I make watery coffee and convince
myself, my happiness
lies in there,
floating. And I pretend
I'm in a Parisian cafe.
But these are pipe-dream dregs,
nothing else.
I guess they can't substitute the
vividness of being,
living.
Of sharp technicolour experience that can be
smelt.
Dregs, indeed.

Today, I borrowed Birthday Letters by
Ted Hughes from the library.
I'm wondering if
salvias were his favourite
flower.
His favourite.
I can't figure it out.
For his words are only stricken,
messy with the rawness of
too-technicolour experience.
Beautiful.
But sharp
enough to pierce and
poison,
like Paris.
My Paris, your Paris,
our little Paris.
So startlingly, breathlessly
red.

I suddenly know why I have written this.
The colour of salvias,
of Paris,
of me and you,
is my soul's favourite.
His favourite.
And salvias, their fragrance, it
douses the fire that's threatening to
suffocate, swallow my
life whole,
incomplete.

Red is my favourite colour.
And it's yours.

But I really don't think I want it to be.

I have starry lights on my breath and
I don't know what to do
because I'm
choking.

Why did I start writing,
feeling
like this?
In an attempt to fill the spaces
in my narrative?
They gape open like
self-forced split wounds.
And yet are empty, so
empty
and bloodless.
Just numb.

Every **** self-help book
tells me it's my choice
how I feel.
I've been thinking and thinking and
I disagree.
It was never my decision to
paint my rib-cage blue,
to dull out and flatten, like a piece of
wood, my eyes into a lifeless faded varnish
that others mistake for spark or
mystery.
Or to stuff my head with
cotton wool that won't stop
pressing,
pressing.

I've just realized this is a not-good poem.
Forgive me, I'm
choking.

the modernists believed that
a whole life could be
represented in a day
like a strand of DNA
representing the whole
of a person.

if that were true if life
all of it
could be fit into
a day
any day
this day
then

this day, my day,
is cold tea
and empty rooms.

I forgot to have breakfast
and tried to write.
notes
post-its
pens
are scattered across my desk along with
empty cups
and passing thoughts.

if this day, my day,
is all of my life then
there is
so little
love
in it.


if this day is all there is
it has so little
meaning.


living for a day is dangerous she said she wrote

I wanted to walk alongside a river
to see where it would
take me

instead
I sat
at my desk
again

today
is what my life is.

Toy guerilla warrior
his voice is pagan smog
                                                 his eyes are bitter coal
                                                 a rolling pebble

pinning a breach
upon a hedgerow path                       

                                                               he is a Golem splitting a wall
                                                               freeing a maiden ******

                                                               A Summons to a devil
                                                               shoots their tin hearts

                                                               a Decoupage screen is
                                                               no trust in a redeemer

                                                               and I'm on my knees
                                                               this All Hallow's Eve.

My mother held me,
and asked what was wrong with my world.
Her rubbery hands in my hair.
"I feel like a plastic narrative," I said,
"and there's nothing I can do about it."