POETRY
Page, Afraid
Glaring at a page, afraid
Mountains of and mountains and, nothing to say
Get on get a grip,
A voice says you should quit
Those childhood and teenage dreams are long frozen
In a block of ice you made of mummy tissue
Feeling!
Vibrant then resounding silence
Silence of spirit that wanted so much, still feels so much
But too jumpy and now static to know where to put it
To put it all. One big dump
No that does not do, I used to know where to put you...
I used to.
Blank page is an entitled bitch
No wonder its the TV by which I now sit.
This Morning’s Soundtrack
The tap is dripping
A baby’s kicking
And screaming down the street outside.
The radio’s static
Is some hellish racket
I wasn’t equipped to fight.
It’s nine am,
I wish it was ten
And I wish this thick fog would pass
The fog in my brain
Where nothing’s the same
In my life since I saw you last.
Don’t want to get up.
Why would I get up?
For another month without you.
Without you here,
Like most of this year,
And without you loving me too.
Phone buzzes,
That’s not what love is.
It’s fine cause it’s not you anyway.
I chuck it from me
Cause I don’t want to see
Anything or anyone today.
This morning’s blue
And I can’t seem to snooze
It like my alarm away.
How unfair
I’ll just have to stare
At this plastered ceiling for today.
Childish
We are children, chasing each other through a gallery.
Irreverent, and unaware, we hurtle amongst the dead’s memories.
The tip of a wave that took five years to create,
Only the author could find mistakes.
We tear into a room,
And immediately, rebuked by a struggling muse.
Our ears shock red as we dart to mother’s coat to cling to —
For she is the one who invariably forgives you.
What I’d Do
What I’d do for a cigarette right now,
To clasp between my lips.
To inhale, and exhale deeply,
Smoke dissipate in the mist.
What I’d do to have you here right now,
This moment mine and yours.
We would see this same cold night,
And quiet breaking of the dawn.
What I’d do to fall asleep right now,
No longer have man’s thoughts.
But these hands don’t stop ticking, you see:
I am alone, like the astronauts.
Drunk
Walk on the wall
Shush I’m not gonna fall
Good cause I’m not going to catch you
Ha ha ha
Charmer you are
My heel gives
Surprise
You’re there for the tumble
Giggle and scratch in hysterics on the gravel.
It is the way back from the party
We are drunk on wine and naivety
I don't know if you know
But you should probably know
I like you but I won't tell you so
I won't tell you till you're one inch from my face
Till we’re locked in a black and white 100% this-is-not-platonic embrace
Till the physical stance at last silences my loudest doubts
I accept it’s ok
Lower my guard
3 seconds you kiss it away
Yes yes this is it
A swarm of confidence and bliss
Who knew electric could pulse as slow as this
Unknown years have waited for this kiss
I’m touching every inch like I’ve never seen one of you before
Reaching and digging for what could have been uncovered before
It feels like
Swimming
That Face
That face
That face has seen
Felt
For aeons
You’ve been a young woman
You’ve been a child
You’ve even been an embryo in a womb
Pressing against mother’s walls with unformed fingertips to understand
But here you are now
Circa fifty years of age
Fingerprints and all
Fifty years of taste and touch
Confusion strife and heartbreak; these topics don’t even cover much
Your skin wears a negligible fraction of your encounters
The immortal contusions, scars and stretches,
A more ephemeral and recent bruise that darkens your arm
To the unwelcomed newborn wrinkles on that face
Oh they will last
Last and multiply
You will no doubt buy a cream that lies
Whispers the kind of empty promises you learnt the hard way
To stop
Believing from the boys thirty years ago
So wise and yet still fooled
By a cream.
Are they so bad?
A wrinkle
The word
Like an itch
Or a tickle
I prefer tickle
More innocent associations
Maybe you should see
Your wrinkles as such
A tickle of life where you have learnt
And lived
Tangents I have taken
To write about a woman I glanced once on a plane.
Mute
I can’t formulate an argument
Or a single thought that’s eloquent
I am tired of saying — So good! So nice!
Words cheat me when under threat of speech
Become bland, or bubbled, stalky, those words don’t even mean
Afraid of being misperceived
I’ll tell you a lot more on a sheet
Or over a long text you don’t seem to read
Thoughts are mesh, so much unrest,
So vital to me you know them in full and what a rage of feeling!
But they stumble over themselves in excitement, in the line to be said
— that’s too much or that won’t make sense
Milk On The Mountains
Milk on the mountains,
My hand was your scribble of chewed up and spat out names
Anger you never ate
Built up on a plate
You turned up your nose for the wet filth of it
I stole you back
And you stabbed and you stabbed
The pencil slides to the crack in the floor — the pulse of the door
Vexes nerves you didn’t own before
Pastel dream
Never asked to be thy enemy
You were so asleep,
Barely breathing, nights of sheep
To count, again and again
Awash in peace,
Running out of sheet
The Order of Love
The order of love
Who you loved most?
Surely your child, entering your life half lived
Stole the last spot of love and stole it all up
Lick lick round the dripping chin
Grinning at having got last in, and got all
Partner is once removed now, from the spotlight of love
Confused, darling? But I gave birth to it
And I set up ship for you
Mixed my bank account with you
And said on an anchored altar ‘I do’
Original sin from the high chair grins
King of love and king of kins
Screem Time
Stiff sheet’s cradle
A forgotten treat
I am childishly avoiding
The glared gaze of the screen
Searching for former comforts
Before there was so much excess need
I can’t remember the last time
I sat down to read