Black spot, red spot.

We didn't always live here, love,

when I was little we had another house.

In the garden there was a bush,

a lavender bush.

Every summer the bees came and

buzzed around the flowers,

and windows.

One year, I remember, the plants

turned red and black.

We thought they were dying, but

really, they were coated

in ladybugs. The little red dots swarmed 

all over the garden,

and I loved them for it.

I asked my mum if I could keep them,

and she said no. But you know me,

I don't listen to no. I stole a 

salad bowl and I filled it with bugs.

I hid them under the lavender bush, but

it rained that night.

The next morning I checked on my

bug-pot.

The lid wasn't enough to keep the rain out,

and my ladybirds had all drowned.

I never told my mum, 

because I knew she had been right.

I didn't care about the bugs who died,

I was young. I cared because 

I didn't have them anymore.

let me just say

in the light
your skin looks like gold
at the edges

you are cool,
soft,
a gentle presence.

i am noon and you
are midnight,
my balancing piece.

uncharted waters

I lay on the water and just
breathe
gently at first, then deeper and deeper,
feeling myself rise and fall
like a balloon in the breeze,
a girl caught on a unnatural tide.

I couldn't swim before, blaming
my teacher, my father, the planetary alignment
for being out of breath,
and underwater.
Now, you make me want to learn,
to float and be with you.

My strokes are clumsy, I breathe more
chlorine than oxygen,
but I'm moving. You are so far
ahead of me, but you wait, and I catch you up.
You are moulded to the water,
more fish than boy.

My arms are weak but I don't stop.
Where I once resented the water for holding me,
your kind words, and your
gentle insistence have worn down
my resistance. I do not glide, but I move,
I turn onto my back and continue.

The water is in my throat, my lungs, my ears.
My kicks are small and my arms move lazily.
I can see the sky, shining through the windows
of the pool roof. I wait for the cold bump
of stone, that means I have reached the end,
that I have finally made good.

That night you hold me,
lust replaced by love in the heat.
I run my fingers down your spine, and
your hair smells like chlorine.
Now I can follow you anywhere you go,
land or sea or sky.

nothing's impossible. it's just not very easy.

it's too easy to be alone.
too far to walk to the door, arms
to heavy to lift,
skies to dark to see through,
hearts full of learning and pain.

we sit in planes and we
fly
to other countries and
we don't care, because
it's what we always did.

years ago, we thought the stars were gods,
and the world was four square feet.
we thought that flying
was for birds and witches
we thought we were gods.

now what do we have?
we have facts, and we hate them.
the gods are dead,
their temples rotting into the sea.
we don't care.

does nobody care, that
the sky goes on forever from blue into black
spotted and splattered with
burning balls of gas that pull in planets
and that we've broken orbit?

of course you can't fly if you stand still
and flap your arms, child.
but you can fly if you care, if you fight
and sew and jump off cliff faces,
or if you just fall asleep.

we are the dreamers, we are the children of
nothing and nothing is what drives us.
we eat ennui and we drink hopelessness and
if we could just stop thinking, for a second, together,
we could bring back the old gods, as our friends.

unsinkable (titanic love poem)

i think i could be malfunctioning
my stomach is churning butter
patpatslapping away the seconds 
that you have been gone

i am filling my room with my things
piling them up on the floor
so when i get scared at night
i can curl up in them and sleep

i wake up with reciepts stuck to my elbows
and half chewed chewing gum 
tangled in my hair or under my nails
but it never makes the monsters go away

cigarettes and windows and bruises and glass
never were the me i wanted to become
warmth and sand and milkshakes 
and never being answered fit so much better

i get these headaches sometimes when
traffic lights and police sirens and rainy weekends
sprout words like flowers on the tv
opening and unfolding before your eyes

the letters of the words of the sentences
are crowding up in my head and the 
sharp M and the hooked
J catch and tear and oh it hurts

i write tiny ideas down squishing
fitting and folding all these feelings into 
one tiny idea like you fit our 
life stories into onelittlekiss onelittletouch

i remember in summer i would walk out across
the roads near my house
with just my bare feet and the hot black surfaces
eating one layer of my sole at a time

that was only one road and the black is shiney silver 
with rain and oilslicks but i promise to jump out the window 
and run to your garden gate tonight
if you promise to hold me when i get there

according to the accordion

can i play you a song?
it won't be well composed
or in tune
and you'll wish i never tried
but
it's the thought that counts
and i'm thinking of
all those promises we made.

it was like being in love,
i was in love with how you made those letters
cartwheel through chemistry books
and the night sky, how she 
could say those things built to scare
without worrying me.
she was in love
with how my eyes sparkled,
and how you heard everything.

we were indestructible.
we were going to fly halfway around the world,
take you dancing and drinking,
show you how to loose your money and your mind.
she'd promise Elvis she loved you,
and you'd promise not to let her fall.
we'd break the laws of the land and the people and our own nature.
we'd break bones.

will i still wake up in her arms, 
your legs on mine,
glitter in our eyes and alcohol
sticky in our hair?
put aside your liver and your heart
and let us lead you into the night,
let our laughter ease the hurt,
while neon signs reflect off
wide open eyes.

forget lust, and love, and what you want.
let go,
i'll teach you how to fly.
she'll teach you how to dance, and
you'll show us where
the bright lights lead innocents.

fallen stars in your pockets

i used to wake up and wish i'd made yesterday worth living past and then waste that day in the same way and never once think to change it.

i used to cycle in the rain and cold and across the concrete by my bloodied palms and i used to give up.

i knew how much love cost and how much i could sell it for, how to lie better than i knew how to truth, and that is where he comes in.

he should have been a director, he knew how to get behind the scenes in my heart and change all the continuity errors.

even though the bike is rusted and the milisecond phone calls have gone, they are still part of my molecular structure.

memories are all we have to set us apart, memories and wars. 

even the worst of what we created was still new and exciting in its atom-bomb proportions of intimacy.

but cvilisations change, though the land inches slowly on. i am your country, your homestead. i am familiar.

my seas plunge deeper and darker than the dead eyes of a killer, whilst my mountains touch the skies like old lovers.

i am running away from solidity, viscosity, hoping that if i can just build up enough speed i might fly.

i run with bare feet over discarded bottlecaps, and leave concentric rainbow gasps on shallows of oil and old beer.

my contract to you is bound in stone, one milk-shined sphere for every promise i made you with touches and small words.

they are bound with smaller circles, each one interconnected, each bead intertwined with a nervous system made of darker colours and shadows on my skin.

the skin of the promises is thin, as if they may burst out at any time, catalystic consequences from dullard chrysalises.

it is a gift, too large and too heavy for my thinned bones, but held on by foolish hopes and soft whispers.

my breath is fluttering in my throat, the knees bleeding and my vision tunring green-green-black-blue as my steps increase.

my muscles are burning and i am turning my pulse into a combustion engine, and a contract must be signed by two parties. 

i swore on heartbeat and hopes that when i was done running, when my path had ended, i would return to you.

a small girl, with frayed edges and bitten-to-pieces lips, who can barely stay awake, alive.

i promise to remember every note

one) i promise to stay

three) i promise to make you smile

seven) i promise to fall in love with you all over again every time you look at me

four) i promise to return, always

five) i promise to fill your days with real joy

two) i promise there will be buttercups

six) i promise to be warm and soft and to hold you

this is where i am

morning. open windows.
head on your shoulder, sleeping.
sunlight on your face.

mirror, mirror, go to hell

hey there,
you,
yes you.
you behind the glass:
smile.

is it so hard?
watch me, i'll do it.
no,
you're doing it wrong.
you should mean it, and you should
look pretty.

stop mocking me,
i'm trying to help you.
i don't have to,
you can
rot
in that glass room,
with your greasy hair and your 
achey jaw and your
crumbly lips and you complete lack
of hope.

i know you can hear me,
i've been watching
as you folllwed me. i'd see you
in coffee-shop windows
pretending
you didn't expect to see me.

your room is airtight, you know?
i've tried to get in,
to break through. the security is just
too advanced. 
if i break the door down,
i can't get in.
it seals itself completely.

you'll run out of air.
i'm running out of patience.
maybe i should break the door,
so i don't have to
see you, at night, when i wake
watching me,
a blur in the dark.

i hope you suffocate soon.

fourty watts

my lungs are

b u b b l e s,

i can't feel anything in my chest
but air,
but it's
nice
to think that if i tripped,
and crashed my ribs open,
the silvery surface of my lungs would
w
o
b
b
l
e
and reflect whisper-thin rainbows
all down the curves
or their bubble-y sides.

my bones are straw,
hollow,
my blood like water,
my heart
a flickering candle.

you
you are no doctor
but you have a white shirt
and
that's close enough.

you 
p o p p e d
the bubbles with a kiss,
and the rainbows were gone.
replaced them
with
rubber band balls
smalltightpressingdownonme
when i see you.

they are RED and BLUE
and GREEN
and they 
w
  e
a
  v
e
around my ribs and 
down my spine.

my bones are titanium,
but
achey titanium.

you blew out
my candleheart
and swapped it for a 
star,
a flashlight,
a lamp-post on a dismal london street.
any light that
lasts.