coldwinter

love me back
and they won't ever find me again
in the houses of my friends
or the clubs
down my the river
lending my lips
to him, her, or any other

love me back
and find
our dark heads
side by side
like sleeping children
my hands,
my turned warm
sweat-palmed hands.
are yours.
voice,
whisky-softened

because winter is coming.
____________________________

broken

She keeps comparing those
feelings to those eyes with
feelers like dandelions that
bright these damn days
right.on.up.

And all the choices in the
world could never make
those wishes and fill that heart
with those loose eyelashes
that fall when you blow
like children on false
garden rows.

I don't have the heart to
tell her that loneliness she
feels won't be filled with
the flesh of her missing
because she is who she is
and she thrives on when
the roots parachute away.

I don't have it in me to
tell her that all the
false gardens in
the world and those
body parts she involves
in her sling shot heart
attack will never be
enough to make
the beating start.


All the beats in the world
couldn't get you off.

gorging

after the fingerless starvation
of a sunday hangover
women brought me bowls of soup
in their masses
and i chewed at the spoons
but left the group
to speak of midnight
fast in their senses
of pure wrong and deliberate right
no wonder to cast
here, they are slight
in their aprons and size six dresses
whose bones are protruding
and poking
into the cake tins
homemade biscuits and scones
tossed in the bin
there is cooking without eating
when the world wants to be thin
but i'm too hungover to count the calories
i'll just drink gallons of water
and carry on with the bread shoveling
open mouth, and in.

subtle

i read the scrappy paperbacks,
from cover to cover.
imagining
the dark
folds of the tent.
so here we are,
lover.
shadowed eyes
and soft skin.
the slightly full lower lip
floral blush
and the musical notes.
drink deep,
from the ice and mint
as the smoke rises
from the candles
and we play absently,
with hands
and hair
and lips...

more

i cracked at the skeleton
ink-stained in wonder...

it's this kind of futile poetry
that can't bend bones-
instead
it inspires a silent,
dormant affair...

it is not my fault
you are so easy to yearn for;
words so resonant
i feel closer,
i feel
more...

and between the commas and aphonic rhymes
i remain there

blindside

i shivered
until i was cold-blooded
and wiser
and love is not getting blisters
or pretending to be a boy,
or a girl or neither
it is waking up at six
and coming to the door
and re-opening your heart
to that familiar dozy girl
with the hair
and a hood up
and an odd vacant stare
that one often employs
after passing empty windows
where my breathless gasps
make no noise
among the sleepers

and it feels as if only you are alive
and watching those still lakes
silently freeze over
in the darkness -
you do too.

and after crying into a stranger night
and filling up half a bottle of water
where caps are few
i questioned my over-dramatics
but she told me i was right
for us, to rush
because all this time
she loved my hysterics
and my histrionic flight
into the blind nights
of our love.

sail

an off-gold silence
spread to your fingertips
there,
upon our cold surface
ships now setting sail
into blunt eyes
and bringing back light
and lust
that just might inspire
a breast
and beneath it
a hard heart, beating
shallow...

in the darkness of honest speaking
and the doldrums of flight
we were ever so lonely
but now we are as battleships, fleeting
into a late, late night.

still

i do, by the way. still.
it can't be turned off
even if when you try to force me

your fear
is your own
unfounded

through forests
and thick undergrowths
dying in the darkness

in places
where we both know
and all of those places
that we don't

i am tiny
and my hands are shaking
because poetry
is this

and then it is more than
absolutely everything