mixed stirrings
hard to place this constant ire rising from ashes of a fire not quite, yet felt
stir into that melting *** the sum of miscellany unknowns
all wrought from the unsweet gifts of quotidian sighs
no need to wrap the present, baby, for it's already here
twinkling in the birth of every moment
we hardly know it nor acknowledge
so busy wrenching pain from secret places the darkness loves to keep

yesterday brought unsought smiles of outer space dust
then space in pushed into the blue spit bubble of crayfish folly
and fear frozen into place on cauldroned cheeks
as tendons pulled fury tight on a cocky bounty's cry

I want to carry that sweet loading joy
which scorches my receptiveness in astringent non reciprocation
I die to please that spangled energy so much
which holds back its cagey kernel, far from my prying hands
I kneel to take in out of the blue blessings
which fall slapdash on this preoccupied trajectory, forever waiting in sozzled hope
I take the package you flash and cast heavy
which leave sweltering whiplines across my insides
all fine, all just a fine melange

beneath your magic fontanelle lies a sunken cache
there are painfully few privy to that miracle
I live in hope of neither looping nor taking
but just to be happy to bear witness to the shiny array of your gem stock

you are like none other, inimitable and hard gemstone (inside)
a mix of purity stirred in crazy, along with star shine and fire sparks
*my angel with honey eyes

I am shades of midnight, shards of the same galaxy collapsed and contrasted to tiny little ***** that grow like eggs not subsumed by Mars quakes.
I am faulty genes, x-rays, heart scans, and red cells insufficient.
I am sexuality in a world yet to be explored by I and me.
I am a jar of dry camomile leaves turning to shades of sunlight spreading over the river leaving spaces for evening lights.
I am petals of the stars waned to the fragrance of flowers travelling with wanderlust from world to world.
I am insights from colours of black, white, golden, everything. I am a sanctuary of solitude, edging on certainty.

I am the oscillation between feeling brilliant at birthing my art and really quite derided at churning consistent literature.
I am the east London girl left with derelicts of poetry originating from Alfred Hitchcock films.

I am the walk by the sea that gives the feeling of the wind coming off the waves. I am the travel between seasons on railways to off-the-beaten-paths destinations through countrysides and beyond to flea markets collecting memories, soul and travel tchotchkes.


I am Sunday breakfast and tea in bed, buried inside heaps of sheets, using body warmth for shield.
I am pure joy, one whose heart howls with laughter and a face whose grin is as silly as the scowl of a Cheshire Cat with a hissy fit. I am a numismatist and I am the girl who collects stamps and inherits vinyls owned by my father from the 1960s.
I am coffee without cream. I let the days and the weekends amaze me like my time in Hamburg.
I am the random stroll to the local Signorelli bakery to have an almond croissant and fresh Italian latte and a nice chat with the ******* lady.
I am a creation inspired by the likes of Thomas Hardy, Francoise Sagan, Zadie Smith, the humour of Lucy Mangan, and the wit of David Sedaris.

I am her, ambivalent between jaunting between rural and suburban villages, bustling cities and seaside towns. I am soul inspired songs by the Upsetters and likes of Otis Redding’s ‘cigarettes and coffees’. I am stuck between layers of diversity notwithstanding an identity of complexities.
I am the cheateu in the north of Bordeaux where we did that thing and the grandfather clock chimed and we laughed so hard, we choked.
I am excitement yet forgettable like the confetti that drops to the floor after weddings.
I am midnight in Paris and late night strolls on 57th and 6th in New York.

I am a result of the birth of a post term delivery caught unduly unprotected by the amniotic fluids of mother.
I am layers of skin shedding in green and yellow slime because mum had me at the 11th month with a fontanelle that retained ground rice which she ate when she went into labour. A fontanelle that never left and each time I braid my hair by someone new, they tell me of the dent as if it was something new I only just discovered.
I am June created on the first day of summer like Marilyn but could have been April beautifully bore in Spring like April in the TV show, ‘Mistresses’.

I am the heart heaved at a belief swooned towards a soul immortal. I am one who never wants to stop making memories with you, my ‘buh’.
I am ménage a’ moi and I am the Pas de deux as long as I am joie de vivre, then la vie est belle.
I am altered by indie and foreign films that tell elegantly of French girls admirably in love like that of ‘Jeune and Jolie’ and ‘Blue is the warmest colour’.

I am the smell of my ‘babuska’s’ saliva plastered all over my palms as she wipes them clean with her wrapper cloth sealing them in prayers for good destiny and good health.
I am the crux of the patron of St Andrews representing Bajan maidens, Danish singers, Scottish spinsters, Argentine migrants, shell shocked survivors, women wanting to be mothers, gouts, jaws and sore throats.

I am a spanner in the works aggrieved by familiarity and **** taking. I am all there is, transported in my ******, prayer and thoroughness, clear and bright like a snowy Christmas sunny morning.


I am June

Amo la libertà dè tuoi romiti
vicoli e delle tue piazze deserte,
rossa Pavia, città della mia pace.
Le fontanelle cantano ai crocicchi
con chioccolìo sommesso: alte le torri
sbarran gli sfondi, e, se pesante ** il cuore,
me l'avventano su verso le nubi.
Guizzan, svelti, i tuoi vicoli, e s'intrecciano
a labirinto; ed ai muretti pendono
glicini e madreselve; e vi s'affacciano
alberi di gran fronda, dai giardini
nascosti. Viene da quel verde un fresco
pispigliare d'uccelli, una fragranza
di fiori e frutti, un senso di rifugio
inviolato, ove la vita ignara
sia di pianto e di morte. Assai più belli
i bei giardini, se nascosti: tutto
mi pare più bello, se lo vedo in sogno.
E a me basta passar lungo i muretti
caldi di sole; e perdermi nè tuoi
vicoli che serpeggian come bisce
fra verzure d'occulti orti da fiaba,
rossa Pavia, città della mia pace.

a black boi/girl prays that they aren’t so black and blue in the new year,
they write the manifestation and burn it over orange blue flames.
in the evening, blue-black girl’s stomach is swollen with wine,
they sit  and think of the blue-black boi with the heavy eyelids
and the dark Pisces eyes they have been dreaming of drowning in.
day-dreaming of the warmth of their breath, short of breath,
warm mouths, shared cold showers between the two of them.

we get our start in liquid – do you remember the states of matter?
     solidliquidgasplasma
drowning in you sounds like a game of memory,
a nostalgia for beginnings, the dreams of a fontanelle filled with memories yet to already become, a yearning for something that has yet to have happen
a futurity encapsulated somewhere inside of our dna.
I want to drown in her brownness and let it saturate my
     lungsmouthnoseears.
I want to taste you on my lips when I first wake. like you fill my every inch. I want your essence to effuse from my pores, to feel like my teeth are still at your ear.

do you remember when we first found each other? my heart broke from the levees and you opened your arms. you felt like the warm stillness before the storm. you remind me of the way that the summer time humidity hangs in the air.
i’m not suffocating in it, i’m drowning.

Earl Grey on cracked, parched, lips
Neanderthals with fused hips, no fontanelle
Homosapiens probably hunted them well
Sent a whole species to hell, inheritors
A sleep and a snore, feeling hunted
Remembering so many days blunted, lost
Another horseshoe toss, genocide and loss, us thinking meatbags
Reason says, empathy bags stolen at gunpoint, shoot anyway
Any day you want it you can find it
That I wanna die ****
Just make a choice

HERE NOW I HOLD YOU

I hold you
astonished at your newness.  

One hand cups your ***
the other cradles your head

you **** into my palm.  

You smile your smile
still unused to it

and its magic  

wave a tiny lazy hand
as if you were royal  

& I an adoring subject.  

The music of you
plays  in my mind as if

I were  a mechanical piano
notes played by invisible hands.  

Your skull has yet
to get it together  

the fontanelle pulsing
as if each thought could be seen  

beating like a bird
against my hushed fingertips.  

Years later my hands
so much older now

I cradle your crying
stroke your punk goth hair

as you weep
over your first

'real' boyfriend  
(he obviously a ****)

your constant wailing:
'Why... ... didn't it work! '  

My fingertips caressing
where thought once pulsed  

your sweet secret self
hidden from me now

  in your growing up.

Amo la libertà dè tuoi romiti
vicoli e delle tue piazze deserte,
rossa Pavia, città della mia pace.
Le fontanelle cantano ai crocicchi
con chioccolìo sommesso: alte le torri
sbarran gli sfondi, e, se pesante ** il cuore,
me l'avventano su verso le nubi.
Guizzan, svelti, i tuoi vicoli, e s'intrecciano
a labirinto; ed ai muretti pendono
glicini e madreselve; e vi s'affacciano
alberi di gran fronda, dai giardini
nascosti. Viene da quel verde un fresco
pispigliare d'uccelli, una fragranza
di fiori e frutti, un senso di rifugio
inviolato, ove la vita ignara
sia di pianto e di morte. Assai più belli
i bei giardini, se nascosti: tutto
mi pare più bello, se lo vedo in sogno.
E a me basta passar lungo i muretti
caldi di sole; e perdermi nè tuoi
vicoli che serpeggian come bisce
fra verzure d'occulti orti da fiaba,
rossa Pavia, città della mia pace.

Amo la libertà dè tuoi romiti
vicoli e delle tue piazze deserte,
rossa Pavia, città della mia pace.
Le fontanelle cantano ai crocicchi
con chioccolìo sommesso: alte le torri
sbarran gli sfondi, e, se pesante ** il cuore,
me l'avventano su verso le nubi.
Guizzan, svelti, i tuoi vicoli, e s'intrecciano
a labirinto; ed ai muretti pendono
glicini e madreselve; e vi s'affacciano
alberi di gran fronda, dai giardini
nascosti. Viene da quel verde un fresco
pispigliare d'uccelli, una fragranza
di fiori e frutti, un senso di rifugio
inviolato, ove la vita ignara
sia di pianto e di morte. Assai più belli
i bei giardini, se nascosti: tutto
mi pare più bello, se lo vedo in sogno.
E a me basta passar lungo i muretti
caldi di sole; e perdermi nè tuoi
vicoli che serpeggian come bisce
fra verzure d'occulti orti da fiaba,
rossa Pavia, città della mia pace.

HERE NOW I HOLD YOU

Here now
I hold you

astonished at
your newness.

One hand
cups your ***

the other
cradles your head

you **** into my palm.

You smile
your smile

still unused to it
and its magic

wave a tiny lazy hand
as if you were royal

& I an adoring
subject.

The music of you
plays

in my mind
as if I were

a mechanical piano
notes played by invisible hands.

Your skull
has yet to get it together

the fontanelle pulsing
as if each thought could be seen

beating like a bird
against my hushed fingertips.

Years later
my hands so much older now

I cradle your crying
stroke your punk goth hair

as you weep
over your first 'real' boyfriend

(he obviously a ****)  

your constant wailing: 'Why...
... didn't it work! '

My fingertips
caressing where thought once pulsed

your sweet secret self
hidden from me now

in your growing up.