I have a hole
Inside my chest
I try to fill it up.
With voice
With words
With love
With dodie tickets.

Nothing sticks.

Like glitter in the wound,
I bleed out.

I wonder how they do it
Those immaculate girls
With butterscotch hair and honeyed smiles
So sleek and streamlined,
So very contained
Gliding through life without a care,
They are the definition of grace.

My life is more haphazard
My room a bomb site of to do lists
My hair wild and frazzled
My shirt untucked
And my eyes bright-
Not good bright, though,
Not sweet sunlight bright,
Feverish, they dart with static-
My hands pirouette through the air
My teeth slightly crooked but smiling broadly
Dark circles under my eyes
And a liberal spray of spots on my face
Because who has time for face paint
When the mornings are reserved for catching up on the sleep you lost
Exploring the universe in your mind?

My words from my poems to my texts
Are long unending sentences
And stop-starts
Littered with exclamations!!
And I swear I'm articulate
This explosion you're hearing is vomited onto a page
A direct translation for a brain that flits and stumbles over itself
I beg of you to like me

My laughter bursts into your personal space
And I do too
I always get too close-
I come on too strong, apparently
I love too much, too hard and too fast
I fall far too easily and break my own heart
And drive people away
Because I'm not aloof or cool or distant
There's no thrill of the chase with me
Just honesty
And an eagerness to please.

I lurch between seeing these
As my most wonderful assets
And my greatest downfalls.
But *******
If you are one of the people who has made me believe the latter
Sure, I can be intense
Sure, I can be hard to love
But you have never known loyalty like mine.
Never will you find such passion and intensity
And that's a ******* good thing, you hear me?
That's a good thing.
I am vibrant and alive
Where you see cloudy days
I can find a kaleidoscope of colour
My energy comes not from coffee
But from this white-hot centre of my heart
This supernova colour-clashing burnout explosion of me.

And it's a ******* honour
To stand in my presence
And feel my warmth.

Faulty factory toys are fun to use, at first
Blue eyed girl with the white blonde curls
From dads side of the family
They coo at her
Before she learns to walk
And talk
And talk
And talk
When they built her in the baby factory
They must've forgot the little red button
The one that says
"Shut up for one single solitary ******* second and let someone else speak"
She doesn't pause to allow the other person the liberty to flit words through the air like songbirds
Instead hers land like pheasants
Shot in the skull
Trickling out opinions that were never asked for
With the brain fluid.

She's got a lot of them too
Opinions
And they're all right
She knows everything there is to know
At seventeen as well
What a prodigy, she thinks
What a nuisance, say the wise men
What a delusional idiot
What
A
Bore into her skull and all you'll see
Behind the kind eyes and philosophy
Is a witch
Entranced by the enchantment
Of her own voice
A selfish *******
Who buys her birthday presents at the last minute.

At least the parents got to have a test drive
A prototype
So they knew what to do right this time
Factor out whatever it was
The ingredients with the sell by date
That made this thing so near to right
But odd enough to be 'not quite'.
This time make one that's not lazy
That's not selfish
That doesn't want to be a ******* artist
That lets others speak
That can contribute and participate
Not sit on the sidelines
Heading for burnout
Heading for disaster-

Uncheck the box this time that says
Sordid mind
That says
Can't reply to texts
Even when friends are on the edge
of suicide, For ***** sake.
Tick the box that unveils the beauty of humanity
Fix it's eyes
Teach her to see these sacks of meat
The way others do
The way you're supposed to
Instead of like puzzles or pictures or packaging for a soul
Create a person not afraid
Of making mistakes
that can make her own decisions
This time make a mind
That can jump through the hoops
Society left behind
Fix her this time
Don't make another freak
On the fringes
Never quite fitting in

And the funny thing is
Even after this ******* perfect kid
Comes along and shows that blue eyed blonde-haired girl
Just how to do it
She's an old *****
No use teaching her new tricks
She'll shut out little miss pretty perfect project two point oh
She can't seem to help it
She thinks the best company in the world is her head
Her head?! Have you seen it
It's barbed wire and sunshine
It’s a rose choked by thorns
Do not touch her-
She will make you bleed.

Take me back
Where all is muffled
Blanketed
Lights filtered through meshed pink
Sanctuary
Harsh sounds of existence slurred
Safe from harm

Ophelia, drowning in flowers
Escape a world I don't understand
Mottle my fingers I cannot see
Where I begin and the air ends

I wish to be this close to you again
Connected by a cord
That can never really be cut
Feed knowledge and experience
Into a pre-natal brain
Etch your wisdom into whorls
Thicken the pads on my fingers
Envelop me
The beginning and the end of my universe
My Dôn
Is it any wonder I cried when I left?

Take me back to a time before language
The only foetal words I know
Are the drum bass of my universe
I am, I am, I am,
And soon I will echo your confident staccato
I am, I am, I am
Okay.

The comforting warmth of a crowd
Never fails to amaze
Food and friends and *****
What more could a girl ask for

"Sexuality!" Somebody cries
And we groan
But we talk and talk anyway
We explore ourselves
Touch-starved children
Rejected by brothers and lovers
The pretty and the beloved of the world
So we reach out to each other
Curl into each other's affection
For we have so much love to give
And this-
this is the only place where we know
We can give it freely
For others will take
Take
Take
Until we are bled dry.

I hear of teenage parties
As if they are mythology
Of people hooking up
And falling out
Puking guts and gossip
Like there's no tomorrow

I'd much rather this
Using streetlamps to guide our hearts
Staring up at the stars and asking
What all of this means
Who all of us are
And what would happen if we were gone

Soon we will scatter
Like leaves in the autumn
We travel far and wide
But though we may be apart
We will never forget
The tree to which our roots belong.

You said you wanted these eyes in your sights for the rest of your life
You want the heart and soul of me but you deny the whole of me
You forgot about my wings
Those hulking, iridescent things
They sit on my shoulder blades and long for the skies
Even I migrate to warmer climes where I might find my piece of mind.
Out of the two of us, I find it is I who follows the teachings of Christ
Of love for all, and forgiveness too
But I also follow ipheginia, boudicca, Joan of ark and any other woman who had her spark quenched by a man
I know you did not mean to rein me in
Your fear was your scalpel, and you clipped my wings
I know now why the caged bird sings
And I know why the house bird hisses when you bring him food
He longs for the open skies
Doesn't care what lies beyond the curtain
And if in the end he dies, at least it'll be on his own terms.
You didn't inflict a cage on me
I tore those wings from seam to seam
Thinking that wanting you should be enough for me
That wanting anything more was heresy
You made me think a part of me was broken.
That it was selfish to fly south for winter,
Even if I'd die in the cold.
You always used to shout at the birds when they sang too loud,
And I wonder how I didn't know before.
You said you wanted these eyes in your sights for the rest of your life
But if we did that
We'd never be apart.