Anniversary

I died a year ago today.

I cannot count the ways in which the word 'died' applies.

Physically, emotionally, potentially.

An entire future blown away in an instant of 'I'm sorry'.

Yes, I had seen that look before, but

Somehow had managed to pull you back

From the edge

With a pledge

That if you kissed me ever again you'd better

Never let go

Don't say you weren't warned.

My reaction was not even close to a woman scorned

because, fool that I am, I loved you. Yes.

My heart beat on, weak and distraught

but not a tear did I shed for the pain that you wrought

and ravaged on my being in every sense of the word.

Blame doesn't even come into it.

Feel and remember as I do, yet what do I do now?

In this moment, in this place, in this 'new life'

that I've made for myself: What am I to do?

This longing for comfort, for warmth, for Something, anything I reckognise

puts thought in my head, things so unwise.

Like fucking a coworker just to feel the weight,

and the effects of big strong hands.

One night stands are for the faint hearted

and my beat is coming loud and clear.

A single step.

A flash of winter in my approach to summer, you are.
Snow glittering on the pavement, melting in the road.
Cars drive fast, over my neck, as I walk away
Away.

Away from the memory of the moment, of the movement
Trying so hard to walk, not run, away.

Planes fly so fast above white clouds
and blue skys, through the stars
But even stars cast a shadow.

The memory of the moment, of the pressure, receding
I missed, I hated, I longed for, I ache.

Halfway around the world.
Now it's you turn to run. Don't walk.
The rest of the way.
All the way back into me.

Smoke and Mirrors

You were my sweetest downfall.
Sweet like the sugar in my coffee
Too much quickens the heart,
sends shooting pains through the legs
and dizzies the head.
I dread the day we meet again.
I will always remember when
my whole being was yours
and I gave myself over to desire and greed and
self-preservation and lust and fear and envy and
You were my sweetest downfall.
Sweet like the chocolate on my cake
that sends chemicals rushing through my blood
and flood my brain with an illusion of being in love.
From dizzying heights my heart would take flight
taking dives towards knives that would cut and slice
Mental scars and the shards of broken mirrors
left in my chest, knowing what's best for me
despite my own struck perspective that I may have been all you needed me to be
if only I'd let you be and if you'd let yourself be happy.

You were my sweetest downfall.
Falling down from a place too high to catch
my breath or a glimpse of the beauty for the brightness
blinding me to the truth within your blackest eyes.
YOU were my sweetest downfall.
Sweet like the wine that pushes the blood tearing through
the neck you bit down on in passion and desire.
All an illusion. Just false hopes and empty threats
of the loss of something never possessed.

Where the home is

Called my mother the other day.
Said she wasn't feeling too great
The house is a mess with the rest of the
stuff we kids left behind and the stress
is turning into loneliness
when my Dad doesn't prioritise the way
that she thinks is wise.
But he tries to disguise it with smiles and words
like 'I love you' and 'I'm so lucky just to have you'
These are not lies.
But the rooms are never neat
and the bathroom's incomplete
and between the sheets of paper in her letters I read 'Help!'
If only I had magic hands and
could take away pain replaced by gaining
trusts that things will get better
With acceptance of things just the way they are.
But I don't, and my arms don't reach that far.

Light as

A feather falls from the whitest stained wing
Falls, drifts, floats on a breeze, through space and matter
Always down, down.
Light as it is yet it sinks, nothing to catch it
Falling forever, in silence, in solitude, in submission.

A breath, an exhalation, an inspiration stirs this
token of what once was flight.
It trembles and flutters like the heart of a sparrow
caught in vast, soft, warm hands.
Oh to answer the call of the wild, yet so safe
and endlessly present the unexpected haven.
A breath, a blow, an updraft.

Caught, spiralling, throwing patterns through air
in billowing lace.
Up, up, always up through shadows and dust and
faded memories.
Ascending through mist to the clearest sky, painted
with indian ink and neon blue and red flecks across the moon.

I am made from junk

I am made from junk. I come from junk. I live in junk. I am destined to junk. My head is a burst football, given up for a dog’s chew-toy. My hands are the remains of the wiring inside a computer. My legs are loosely made up of an old cricket bat, broken in the centre; a discarded crutch from a run-down hospital where people come out sicker than they go in; battered chair legs, fistfuls of mud, all bound together with old cassette tape. My hair is a dusting of rusty nails, falling over my sour grape eyes. My ears, only outlines, mug handles stuck on with chewing gum. My spine is a broken telescope. My heart is an old radio, scratching out the tunes of whichever waves it can pick up.

I live in a junk yard. My home is a muddle of unwanted things, bicycles with broken wheels, dead cars, stinking matter. I moved like an eel, slipping in and out of the junk with an elegant awkwardness. I do not breathe. I have nothing to breathe and nothing to breathe with. I hear nothing but the scraping of insects. They infest the ground beneath my plated feet, scuttle across the corrugated iron above me, crawl inside my open wounds. The Earth’s heartbeat is a foreign sound and drives me scared into the dusty corners of my cloud-darkened world.

I see only what I want to see within this disused space. A home. A place to rest. A bed. A table with food, a roof for shelter. These things I see become bitter when reality sets in, as the sun comes up and shows the comforts for junk. All junk.

The people I know are but wisps of smoke through barbed wire. Their sharp words cut me but I cannot feel it. I have no feelings. I am numb from the neck up, a self-inflicted comfort halting all sensations. It makes life much easier. My family are junk, mannequins lifeless and stiff, lying prostrate on the hardened mud and stones. Their eyes are stones and they have no thoughts in their heads but where their next blood meal will come from. I feed them with my own blood, engine oil, but they spit it back at me, into my stomach, and I lie destitute, waiting for the flies to lay their maggots inside my rotting brain.

Where I come from I do not know. I do not know where I am going. With the wind blowing through my veins I drift from one corner of the scrap heap to the next, leaving agony and dry heat in my wake. Rats flee at my approach, but the insects remain. My only friends. I hate them, and their indifference burns my tough hide, through to the inky black within, revealing it to the world.

That Silver Orb

Two deep wells in his face reflect the night
And my enchanted face, but not the moon.

His hands were strong enough to offer me
The swirling universe, but not the moon.

His honeyed serenade hid a wasp’s sting;
He spoke of many things, but not the moon.

His shoulders bent with the weight of the world,
He held up the heavens – but not the moon.

He owned everything but that silver orb,
So I carved out ‘Samantha’ on the moon.