On Selfishness

She sat there and told me 'Death is not as bad
as heartbreak' and I was so angry I bit my fingers
all the way down. That she followed it up with 'Grief
is very selfish' was no real surprise; if I knew how to use
my tongue I would have told her then.

My Priest asked me 'Are you not crying at all or
can you not stop crying? Tell me which it is so
I can explain that that is the perfectly normal
response.' (this exchange would be perfectly plausible
if I had a Priest, but alas- I have no God, and no
mouth to call him with.)

It is hard telling people, naturally, there are many
times at which it would be inappropriate-
I imagine telling them over vol-au-vents. Salmon
and lemongrass half-way to their mouths they freeze,
tongues glutted, and I down my champagne with a
flourish.

As if you are my trump card.
As if I do not remember your arm around my waist
and how that felt.

Lurgy

This brings out the worst in her/me/him/her
No-one's really sure. But it definately brings out the worst
in someone.

of course- you were not there. you did not see it.

I don't remember
how it started. Or rather- I pretend
I don't remember how it started.
Actually, I'm too embarrassed to mention
what actually happened


and I have so much more to say, and I think
"I must tell her/him/her this" and then remember
that I can't

I imagine she/he must think "why am I here?
what have I done?" but, of course, that would
assume that they read this
and that they understand the meaning of divorce


It's like a death. A tiny, insignificant,
miniscule death that only you have noticed-
a man lies in the middle of the road with a bicycle wheel
through his/her sternum;

a woman steps over his carcass
to get to the bank.

The Door That Opens And Shuts In The Manner That Most Doors Often Do

...

A man sits on a bench in the park talking
to himself in verse, and all the passers-by
ignore him, because he is mad

and do not notice that he speaks honestly
of the sound of the sun bleeding
out of the sky

and how nice it is to feel couplets
dropping off the edge of your tongue.


The ducks hear him, too, but they
also ignore him, not because he is mad
but because his verse is widely considered
to be very poor


and in the distance, a door slams shut.

October 31st, 01.36am

I have been counting myself out
in twos, hoping to hit upon something
that divides me up between you with no
bias,
and yet what remains is my hands,
containing what I have and what I do not;

two fingers living somewhere they should not,
and two eyes looking at something they should not.


you see, it is all very well in principle-
your friends are your friends are your friends
are your friends
are not your lovers. Will not hold your hands
when they are empty

Will not close their eyes or say 'yes'.

Will not breathe quieter than this.

THEY MADE US EMPERORS

although there didn't seem much point-
we had already taken over.


we would go out and drink
and kill, and fuck
moaning with our eyes open
and laughing with our mouths shut.


we closed all the temples,
put all the priests in cages
and you rubbed your finger across my mouth
in front of them.


never mind the teeth we lost-
gums are better to spit with.

...

I refuse to write any more of those poems-
oh, you know the ones;
they speak openly of the forbidden, splayed-out
and dissected on my desk

they are dangerous, the ones that snap at me
in the night;
that catch on my strings and pull
and pull
until I choke.

On Discovering The Downsides of Fidelity

you like to drink and dance
and fuck good-looking boys,
your thighs white and smooth
cracked open like eggshells.

when I first saw you, you were all knees
and jangled wrists
(and I don't know whether I imagined it
or whether there was a firstlookfirstlookaway/
secondlookfirstblush situation or not)
but a part of me wanted to tell you
how I adored you;
whilst the other part wanted to cover your mouth
with my own
and kiss you over and over until my lips
were fat with it.

I would promise you that this wasn't just about fucking
and the redness of your hair


(and I swear that I would mean it, just as long as I had you
pressed against those sticky walls.)

dirty work

in the bowed timbers of my ribcage,
I have sorted-out my feelings into piles-

those by the lungs are emotions
visible to everyone.
I breathe them out daily, in coloured puffs.

but those over there? Oh, we don't talk
about them. for they concern you,
and you simply make me uncomfortable.

Friday Night/Saturday Morning

They told her to count her blessings, said
it would help her put things in perspective.
So she counted 1. I am alive. 2. I am well.
3. I don't have a horribly disfiguring disease.
4. I don't suffer from bladder weakness. 5. I have
somewhere to live. 6. I rarely have to bleach my
facial hair. 7. There's some quite good TV on
at the moment. 8. I'll be dead before the planet
dies.

Strangely, when she proudly showed them
the list she had compiled, their faces
snapped sideways and their mouths pulled
at the edges of their skin like drawstrings.

Day 30 (I WIN I WIN I WIN!)

I have a blister on my foot- oh,
I know what you may say. you may say:

that is no blister, that is a tiny man,
sweating under your skin, pummeling
his fists into the underside of your foot.

you may say, that is no blister-
that is a damp sack of blood hanging
from a washing line.

that is a water bottle turned on its side
slopping up against a tideline of skin;

or a bolt of lightening in a plastic cup.

Day 29

"I'm not dead" I said,
but they told everyone I was-
even my family; my friends laid wreaths
at my door and ignored me when I called out
'hello!'- I never liked them much anyway.

Day 28

I have recently realised how pleasing the number '27' is-
that rounded numerological pool, slapping up on
the shore of plurals, wave licking her apex;


leaning against this ideological, womanised figure
is the stoic number '7', known for his reticence
and his cigar-smoking,
arms folded high above his head to form a shelf
to balance his judgments upon.

Day 27

first blue, and then white,
it blooms across me,
a developing polaroid freeze-framed.

I am submerged in chemicals,
shake me, and I dissolve
as the faces of the photo emerge.

Day 26, hideously late

I was talking to Jason Matthews the other day,
and he thought that girls were totally hairless
from below the head. And I mean totally hairless,
like, not a scrap of stubble in sight.


He said girls were just born that way.

He said that's how all the girls he's been with were,
and I was tempted to lift my skirts
and show him my very own path of righteousness;

but I wasn't brought up that way.

Day 25

(again, I'm sorry this is late! I got carried away making tea and things)



your gums are pink like raw fish
and suckered like moulds around the roots
of your teeth.

I get a great view every time you stretch
your mouth wide, tongue flat like a bishop
caught out on the wrong square.


"write one about me
and how sleepy I am" you said;

so I did.

Day 24

They told me there were clouds
gathering in my pelvis,
a darkening in the bone;

When they found it, I remember thinking
how pretty it looked-
like a wine stain spreading across a tablecloth

like a work of art hiding in the wrong place,
or a final bar of music ringing out through my tendons.


but later, when everything else had dropped away,
I remember thinking about what some lecturer
had said to me once: art is never about art

art is about life.

And I remember realising
how stupid he really was.

Day 23

(today's poem is brought to you by last night's homesickness and this morning's nail varnish fumes)

IMPOS[T]ER

I have started listening to the noise my headphones make
when no music is playing;

It's like hearing my heartbeat rewinding,
as if my body has to run to keep up with me;

Or it's like hearing it muffled, from a distance-
a drumroll rumbling beneath the busyness of blood vessels and pipework.

It dies the instant I unplug, and I feel
like the rhythm of my life has been interrupted;

like I am an intruder on my own body.

Day 22, Getting Homesick

you said:
"our planet is a yo-yo, spinning at the will
of a very bored deity,
Its skin crackling like bubble-wrap;

one day It will tire of us, we will fall
down the back of the bed, like old toys
and It will not miss us.

our lives will go out like lights in a powercut,
and It will start juggling with Jupiter and Venus"
you said,
but I shook my head-

"our lives will explode into hedonism,
our faces electric and our fingers as javelins
will spear all our wishes like fish;

and Its popping skin won't sizzle without us."
I said.
And you shut your mouth tight with a snap.

Day 21

'A Fridge In The Clouds'


I took your picture and kept in in my drawer,
you said it was terrible but I've kept it ever since.

I never look at it, it's one of those things-
I feel that you've changed so much now
that it won't look like you anymore;

it would be like a part of you was peeled away,
neatly, in strips
like pva stripped from a child's finger

or you were now faded more and more into the background
your jumper matches the foliage behind you

But I keep it there to remind me
I still own your soul in a jar.

OH BOY, WHAT A NUISANCE

so, I'm off to Derbyshire for awhile to visit lovely Hannah Morley off of that there creative writing course, and I'm not sure how much internet access I will have while I'm there. So, I will TRY and continue putting them up, but I imagine I won't have a chance until thursday. Alright?
sorry, all two of you...

Day 20, Financially Pleasing Day

I want to stretch all my limbs out so far,
that when they are relaxed
they twang back into their sockets with a shudder.

I think this would help me understand
what it is like to fall off a cliff, and smack
face-first into the sea,

or let me experience the feeling of loss so acute
the glue holding me together is loosened
like a drawstring, and my extremities
uncurl like cats.

Day 19

when I die, I want my funeral
to be more dramatic than the most ridiculous wedding.

I want there to be invitations, and I want
there to be exes sobbing about how beautiful I look;

and my husband will be proud, stood there in his suit,
as I swan up the aisle covered in flowers.


and I won't invite anyone I don't like,
and nobody will mention the box in the corner.

Day 18

There's a seagull on my roof, where
it does not belong
and the branches of the trees are not like limbs
or fingers, but like crooked stereotypes
of themselves;
bronchioles coughed-up
from God's own lung...


I lie down in the grass,
pray it doesn't tangle my hair
as it grows around me;


and a thrush is caught off-guard,
noose severing its warble mid-song.

Day 17, My First Late Day

I am SO SORRY this is late, I've been so good so far but today I ended up going to the pub and staying there a good while longer than I was expecting to...

18:18

and so we are taken down a peg or several,
and so we begin to distance ourselves from
what we see as ‘real’ and what we see as ‘pretentious’.
There Were Words Spoken.
There Were Glances Exchanged.
There was definitely the overuse of capitalisation.

and as the ringing in my ears
faded to the rings around my glass I realised
we would never become a capitalised ‘Them’,
and I was thankful.


and although we have come so far and been through so much,
I still cannot bring myself
to pick up the phone and call.



it must always be your voice on the end of my line.

Day 16

Dystopia



We live in a place where couples
can only kiss behind their hands,
a tongue sliding between the gaps
in our fingers is cut off;
holding hands is almost an act of defiance.

Strangely, sex is seen as ‘cleansing’,
so we do it outside, on damp grass
with only the sun to burn our naked ears.

Day 15

[Surrogate Mk2]


I have been thinking far too much about
the thickness of her lips, and how they affect me
when she parts them-

I remember exactly the position they assumed
when I sank my fingers into her skin;
this memory sickens me with something
I cannot say aloud.

I can measure the distance between
her outstretched thighs in hand-spans,
but all this makes me think of is
those nights we got too drunk

and those nights she would whisper ‘you set
me on fire’ into the caves of my ears
to soothe me to sleep.

Day 14

Lying awake at 12.33am, 'feeling vomity' and listening to you sleep


Your stomach made a noise like a wet fish
slapping against a wet deck,
like an empty bucket filling with water,
like a bullet fired against a rubber band.

I felt as if I only had to press my face against yours,
only had to feel your hot breath on my cheek
to push back the sliding door of your unconscious,
and waltz, uninvited, into your dreams.

Day 13, A Botched Job

a star the size of a ford fiesta
crashed into my back garden,
and all you could think of to say was:
‘oh, has it squashed the primroses?
I liked those primroses’

I'll be honest- I think you
were the only one.
Everyone else thought they were
too much of a cliché to include within
the rest of the poem.

you climbed my back steps like
they were the bone ladder
of Death's own spine, and I could only
spit in your tea for revenge.


your face sticks in my mind
like a smudge on my elbow,
that I crush every time I fold my arms
or rest them on the table.

your face is a battleground,
I stamp my fist on new soil for England.

Day 12, Heavily influenced by Trainspotting

I ended up having to cover your face with a sheet,
and, of course, it's all your fault-
I still won't budge an inch.

I remember seeing you,
blue lips like the tongue of a lizard, mouth
opening outwards like the petals of an orchid;
tongue lolling down like its heart
cored and on view;
cavities like fists knuckling into your skull.


But I'm sick of writing about decay,
I can see myself exactly like it.
and I'm terrified of leaving myself exposed.
















(yes. I genuinely know how bad this is. intoxication doesn't always help with these things)

Day 11, blocked again.

Alice Strikes Back

-

she returned, her pockets full of empty bottles,
and the last spirals of smoke coughed upwards
from her lungs.

Spit-ridden, she lunged at you, laughingly;
sniffing at the back of her hand like it was holy
and gabbling stories of giants and lizards
and the taste of the back of her head.


I found bits of your broken hand in my shoe,
and tacked it to my wall out of spite.

Day 10

Apollo's Thumbprint

They say every rose has its thorn,
(except thorn-less roses, which surely
must exist only to force cliché writers
to invent new ways of describing things;

such as a piece of toast, resplendent
with Apollo’s thumbprint, or
smeared with the sooty conscience
only truly warped carbohydrates can have)

but I don’t see why that has to be
limited only to roses- why deny the cactus
its romantically debilitating spines?

and why limit it to plants? Why not
mention how every door has its lock,
every window its catch,
(except for those that are broken, and
swing open like the teeth of a snapped jaw)

why not mention that every letter
mouths its secrets silently into the dark?



























_____________________________
(with thanks to miles for being my earpiece on this one)

Day 9... 10.51pm, it's headache central

-


and so we begin to spread apart like her legs under my weight,
pulses tripping over the nerves as they rush up her thigh

I know this is my fault so I let you throw your tea in my face-
it stings horribly, but your face has that look that says:
'say one word, say one fucking word and I'll snap your legs
like the shell of a beetle'


so I don't say a word. In my silence, I am afraid
you will hear the rustling of all the love letters
whispering in my pocket.

Day 8

Drought


you found me by the sink, clutching these
leafy tendrils, roots splayed-out
like crab hands,
settling in drifts around my shoulders.


my skin began to appear
in patches, spreading like
saharas of dryness, sucking the follicles
back into my skull


but when my eyes blinked
skin-to-skin
like un-framed pictures
and my backbone split with the tension,

I felt your arm around my waist
and shook it off.

Day 7, Scraping the Barrel.

Today's poem is brought to you by Wheetos cereal, and the Union Of Undervalued Scarecrows.
_______________________________________________


Bad Alice

you wouldn't let me leave,
so I suckered on like a loose-limb
flapping in your socket;

soreness spread like a stain, and
you shook me off, itch beneath
your skin;
terse reminder of your voyeur days.

my hair snapped like a brittle wrist
between your forefinger and thumb;
pulled apart, crows picked at the straw.

I fell back, spat-up a claw,
gathered my edges.

watching the harvest,
I sank into a field full of eyes.

Day 6

-----



Because Everybody Needs Comforting, Sometimes



They are rolled-up around each other,
mouths snapping, wind-up toys;


bodies spent like wet sacks
propped up against the headboard.

His forehead, cracked as the shell of the earth
shifts beneath rags of skin

And she puffs her cheeks out to feel more important
in comparison to him.

Day 5, Well Runs Dry

She was thinking how good he would look
in black-and-white;
his face losing all definition,
milked-out of the darkness

the bones beneath his skin without contours,
without limits.


and he was thinking
how sulky her natural expression is,
chewing on her lip like a
piece of meat

the skin around her eyes like the sleeve of a coat,
a rag dragged out of the gutter and slapped on a pole.

Day 4, A Very Poor Effort

Food, Again.


your arms smell like sausages,
your hands like chips;
(I've never understood this inconsistency)

I've essentially let a fried breakfast into my bed
to sweat all over my sheets.

Day 3

so as I reach day 3 of the month-long challenge it becomes apparent I am embracing the writerly lifestyle, and have become a dishevelled, suffering, alcoholic writer. Sort of...


[untitled]

I stared at the sun for so long,
it baked four fairy-cakes into my retina;
my fingers flattened into door-wedges,
I could have tied shoes with the lengths of my tongue.

If I submerged myself in water I would
start to dissolve.
People would come to watch me, see my eyes
flipped open like switches,
my bones emerging like sunken ships from beneath
an ocean of skin;

my hair floating like duckweed
on the surface of the water

and as the last tiny purses of my breath
burst against that underwater ceiling,

they would sound like bells to those
trapped underneath.

another poem about food, for day 2 of the challenge...

I am ravenous teeth gnashing
at the foot of the bed.

I am curled around you like
bent fingers, thumbing the core

bass of you, humming deep-
throated, like a lover.

My hunger floods you, my tail
lashes at your spine.

I am buzzing beneath the
strum of your life;

and I crunch your future up.

american poetry month

so it's american poetry month, which means 1 poem a day. for a month.
and miles has bullied me into this, so if it's terrible, blame him...


A Poem About Food

I had a jam tart today-
homemade, you know the sort:

thick pastry crusting around the edges,
one bite and the flakes
crushed-out forever.

the jam inside cradled, slopped
messily against its sides;

thimble of stickiness,
multitude of sins


a grass stain on the inside of my gut.