She looked like a prophet,
Like she knew where she was walking.
Id follow her in a heartbeat,
Though I know she is blind.

She felt to me like a fire, in a hearth,
That is always kept burning,
Or a scorching star sending letters to
Three million lightyears in the future.

She smelt wet like the summer
Like pools gathered from the slow trickle of rain, resting in the valleys carved between mountains by ancient streams that giants bathed in.

She tasted older than civilisation,
like the medicine, in the bark and the sap,
Like the soft sweet fruit in the tree,
And the poison in the thorns on the branches
And the blood that ran down my arms as I climbed.

She reminds me I’m a human
when I am sick

She reminds me I’m an animal.
when I am hungry

the sky is always the same
my evenings bleak and deranged
however far I run
it won’t change the shoes I’m in

the creeping grief that I used to see
has turned invisible and followed me
a thousand miles is not enough
to escape my crawling skin

the dark in the hills feels invasive
no kinder than the dark in the city
the cars make no less noise
the winter is no less chilly

the earth and the sky are both heavenly bodies,
and we are just stuck in between
reminded of our mortality
in every place we have been

the grass in my back yard
the grass in the south of france
all sound the same in the wind,
all whisper the same secrets,

the city isnt the monster,
the atmosphere is not alone
I am what holds this feeling
this feeling is my home

i am as slight as a feather
when you strip me
when you hold me
do you hold my vulnerability or attraction
how could you be so sick

when im faint as a young boy
when im feeble as a young girl
when temperament demands respect
how could you give it

do you like me when im sedated
wound up and medicated
it isnt right to satisfy
the whims of someone so degraded

i wear your shirt and my sweat smells like yours
and suddenly it is now instead of then
if i asked you to be a child with me
would you choose to stay a man

help me then and love me now
how perverted could you be
to seek the parts that make me small
in fragile vulnerability

Spit out the blood
Sniff your snot dry
Wash yourself in the greywater behind the jungle gym
Try not to cry

Silent son of atlas
Lays on the cold bedroom floor
Staring at his arms
Red and raw

His sides are bruised and ugly,
Shades of blue purple and yellow,
He asks his mom for blueberry custard
She says no.

There's no craving for fruit until its rotten.
No hunger until the food is spoiled.
When the days are long and peaceful,
I find satisfaction in watching the skies roll above.
Oranges ripe in jasper grow by hundreds in the orchard.
Flirtatious specks of citrus fan into the air as you saw skin,
It bursts as you bite, dripping and running,
Stinging nectar like sweet acid burns my tongue.
I can never have more than one without singeing my stomach raw.
Love in the heat of spring seems to stick to my skin like sweat in clasped palms.
Like the tacky film of fruit juice dry on your lips.
I leave the oranges to fall apart.
Sweet nothings that drift like cherry blossoms on the summer breeze
Fall like snow in the winter
by June you are gone
And my fingertips are left to freeze.

The Sunbirds set the rhythm.
Eremomela lead the afternoon in soulful funk.
Amber heat blisters through the gaps in the trees, the southern summer melting the horizon into rippling wax.
Chords are buzzing through the city dust, vibrations carried on cables and static.
Cicadas resonate electric frequencies hidden in the lush vegetation.
A dense wood wind cascades like hot resin down the mountain, it fills the space between branch and leaf, running under your arms, through the gaps in your fingers, it touches the earth and the sky in a single caress,
Humming like a low pan flute,
Stroking the sweat off your cheeks.
The insects love the heat,
Crickets rattle shake and chirp with the rasping of toads in their shady river beds.
The ochre strokes of grass brush up against each other to whisper and hush as they dance in the drift, humming bugs bumbling and darting from brush to brush.
Hot car horns call from afar, wailing to get out of the radiating sun as their metal bodies turn to gas ovens and windows turn light to laser beams,
Engines rumbling, motors chugging, percussive as breaks and beats.
The glowing day rocks on a thick composition, the air pulses and echoes through the dips and bends of the land,
Over the streets,
Across the african sky.

I lie awake and dream,
of living forever.
The impending end suspends
It smells like cheap cologne
Smoking up the air


Sleeping visions fall apart.
I am swallowed by the ink black vacuum in the space behind my eye-lids.
Clear and vivid and full of nothing.
Fourth walls folding in on themselves in vague near lucidity.

I used to dream of dying suddenly as my body got ready to wake me.
Lately Ive been dreaming of the end of time.
Of immortals in a dying reality
Of lone figures running out of matter to be made of,
A bitter goodbye at the heat death of the universe.
Even there,
At the summit of existence,
I watch and weep for a few minutes longer

A single street light flickering and the crackle of a forgotten record playing.
The lanterns pale glow only reaching so far.
Where the light fades the world falls off the edge.
Film projected onto unseen walls, light through smoke.
The air is still.
There is no air.
There is no one.

As the expanse of space gets abstractly smaller,
The walls close in,
I try capture the end of infinity,
My quickening pulse pulls me from my dying dream.
There is no fear
Only rapid grief,
I imagine this is what it feels like to die.
Forever is not long enough.

I lie awake and stare into the dark corners of my vision,
Until the shadows warp and lean inwards,
Until my eyes are covered in ink spots and negative space.
Until the world disappears.
And I disappear.
And I forget about living, so I might forget about death.

I dream of being infinite,
and it is still not enough.