"fairylights" poems
(Give me a London girl every time…)
*- I want to push my hands into your hips and smack you back to front against the wall, bunching your **** little skirt in my fingers, unclipping those fifties plastic beauties that cling to your thighs and I want you to be a right proper girl for me, a right proper girl -*
(…I’m gonna find one, I’ve made up my mind…)
So she got her phone out and
Smiled her Madonna-Gap smile,
Fine lines floundering
Like speech marks
Either side of her mouth.
So romantic!
A girl with a face of
Punctuation!
***** pennies,
she said,
Your eyes are
*****
*******
Pennies*
She would finger the holes
In my tatterdemalion
Charity coats,
And my shop-bought medals.
She would jab her fingers
Against each point
Of the Burma Star,
Spookily,
As though it were a
Pentagram.
She’s a washboard,
Her ******* are thumb-tacks
In a cosmetic shade of
Gold,
With a crucifix stamped
Like a dagger glyph
Right between them,
like a silver sneer,
on her precious metal chest.
*- I want to take your photo -
I want you in Pippi Longstockings
And to angle you just so, my no-knickered **** with her goosebumps on show -*
I’ll never forgot when she told me
She owned a leopard-skin
Pill-box hat ,
And I said
* “You’d have to be dead
Not to fancy that…”*
I’m not sure how aware she is though,
Of how many people
Tongue- to- the -floor want her.
She plays bored on purpose!
I’ve watched beautiful boys
Go to pieces
Trying to entertain her
With a curly straw.
She’s a real cheekbone feline,
And around her pupils
Rages a ring of jagged orange,
Like a jester’s ruff.
And I think of all this,
Whilst she stands there,
Moving from toe to toe
In her zig-zag heels,
And wooden bracelets,
And her little lycra
Landmine that
Shop assistants sell
To girls like her.
And then she clocks me.
and she doesn’t say a thing -
she just swims smilingly over
Through a parted gaggle,
Letting me grab her
Like I mean it,
Spanning her waist with my
Hands like
A corset -
And the fairylights
Are just smudges
Across her sequins,
And her mottled shoulders are
Ten shades
Of mostly white.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 9:35 AM UTC
I dreamt of smashed
fairylights.
Trying to weave through the shards
sparkling
piercing, it was night
but light outside.
The sheets tangled my limbs,
hot mind,
in little bits
Scrape it up.
Scrape me up.
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 3:00 PM UTC
Stare up,
I see escape,
A universe,
Overflowing with,
A million curiosities,
Waiting to be found.
Stare up,
I see beauty,
A whirlpool,
Of pretty fairylights,
Dotted on the ink,
Soaked sky.
Stare up,
I see wishes,
The eyes of,
A hopeful child,
Who believes in,
The night time magic.
Stare up,
I see home,
A place I belong,
Even if I,
Am an alien to,
Them.
Sep 4, 2017
Sep 4, 2017 at 5:01 PM UTC
She commandeers my attention with a modest sleight of hand
The boys in the band all write ballads just for her
I ignore their tune as she slips out of the room
A creature lithe and limber has no reason to linger with a man like me
She's carving sin on the back of a bedpost
She'll show you eternity
Her eyes advise against this ill-requited course of action
As the ghost of tomorrow falters in the doorway
Pensive thoughts of uncertainty: her duplicity is second only to catastrophe
Fairylights cause retention of the shape of her thighs, too lewd to mention
Though branded in my mind is the fluttering of her linen dress that night
In her wake, she left the air charged with esoteric energy
My fingers far too clumsy, fumbled to bottle it for my own
Foolish fantasies rose to life in my mind as her hand brushed mine, and she suggested we go anywhere but home
Of crackling records in Exeter, over-watered succulents, and fresh ink on vellum; I averted my sight
Opting to stare instead at the passing streetlights, trying to hide my blushing thoughts, though from her face it became obvious that she saw
And the secret in her smile, knew unlike I, that tonight would survive only a short while
Feb 24, 2018
Feb 24, 2018 at 5:00 PM UTC
I
Always remember things.
That way, you know: It’s moments.
II
Ness Boy walked back through that forest,
with the walk of someone who was lost,
and shared glances with the ghosts of him,
walking the other way.
They were crowned with browning leaves,
from when winter turned to summer.
Like the trees outside my window,
they went and changed their colour.
So Ness Boy had remembered that little pond,
where storm had left him all alone.
He remembered that path through trees, where we
went when we din’t want to go home.
And that bench, that view of the mountains,
and how beautiful it is to climb,
From that bench, that view of the mountains,
he remembered all that wasted time.
And as he walked back through his years,
he felt just a little bit sad.
But there was a part of him which felt like smiling,
because now he understood.
III
At the edge of the forest,
my father’s car is waiting to take me home:
Home, where I’m no longer tired,
and the world is swept away,
your little garden getting brighter,
my life it’s brighter too.
Home where I can’t stop writing,
and the writer in me’s a spy.
Home where I need to revise,
but revising ain’t on my mind.
Home where mum ain’t here,
but that’s how it’s s’pose to be.
Home where she never were,
but that’s how it would always be.
Home where I got the best education.
Home where I came back late.
Home where I introduced you to my father.
Home where we played in the bath.
Home where I learned how to iron.
Home where you made the fire.
Home where you always were.
Home where you aren’t anymore.
Home where I swore I’d never leave,
when I laid in bed that night.
Home where you swore you’d never leave,
then you switched off your fairylights.
Home was where I ran from,
because I didn’t know who I was s’pose to be.
But home is where I am now,
because this exactly who I’m s’pose to be.
But now there’s water on the sunroof,
and the trees are rippling.
IV
I used to dream and cry a bit,
wishing all these things,
wishing I could hear from you just one more time,
wishing I didn’t just walk away when you invited me in.
And now it’s time to sleep,
and your skin’n breath ain’t there no more.
Those Dollhouse Mountains are smaller now.
I’m talking to myself again.
But even when the bad things happened,
and we fought our way around each-other,
and you were frightened of conflict,
and I broke our door, and almost my glasses,
when we ordered Chinese food and I never finished it,
and we wasted money in London and Liverpool,
and never ****** in that hotel in Blackpool,
even though now we’re just memories to each-other,
and that night may have really been the last time we ever gonna see each-other,
even though soon I’m leaving this city behind,
and even though our world is now just an old view,
there were stars.
Jun 19, 2018
Jun 19, 2018 at 4:54 AM UTC