Winter sun, premature
The birds distance themselves
From me
While the world waits
To come down, heaven and all
All upon my head
That permanent thinness
Dusky sunlight
Winding through trees
Washes my back like ice water
The empty darkness
Detached
Cumulus cumulating
In my throat
Choking back blackness
Colourless
Seep into sepia
Painting the tips of the trees gold
Stretched out to sleep across the fields
Forgetting my heart beats
No echoes
Sinking into the dirt
I want to be somewhere
lie in the quiet of that otherness
feel the stars tingle through my skull
pounding bright
the solace of an unhurried tumour
bury me here in the heaving cold of the night
hunger for feeling, anything at all
whispering black
horizons of my thoughts dipping below the curvature
deep cool darkness, liquid absence
tangible warmth all but faded
all but my fingertips still glow pink
and then they will fill the room
inedible masses, indelible eyes
unblinking candour baleful in this canopy of falsehoods
which is falling through.
When I stretch, I hear my bones crack
spluttering
staggering
stunted trees hobbling through a gale,
their knotted roots
gnarled, arthritic branches
horror stories trickle
in through the door.
I left messages for you
trickled along your parting
the last bars of signal
I saved, in the distant hope
that the storm wouldn't tear
our phonelines down
and yet here we stand
and the calm has ripped us
into shreds,
long hair cut to the quick
and holding our breath
as long as we can.
Dear mum, can I
apologise? If I hold my hands
over my ears,
will the blood beat
within my body once again?
Because my organs have been
dislocated from my arteries
and I can only try
throw my crutches aside - no, I will walk alone this time
dear mum,
I have loved you
and dad
and myself
like a broken lullaby
sung in a foreign language,
hummed into the gaps
I can see the colour of your eyes
refracted in the rain.
I can feel the warmth of your skin
against my tears,
the shaky bone of your jawline
and your tender hair.
I can feel the destruction
in that single moment
the cracks in my skin and the
light bursting out.
I can see the death in your face,
your heart on your lips.
The memory licks like flames
around me, holds my head
beneath the waves of salt and blood
until it's all I'm breathing.
Until it's all I want to breathe.
The air is too heavy to breathe
it swirls, uncatchable
sinks to its knees like fog
whispering its way over the tarmac
watermarks on the bedposts
high tide
footsteps crumbling away
rotting under the star-spangled sky
light fumbling its way
around the edges of the curtains
hurricane gales left it sprawling
glass rattling, nights turning
heartbroken runways.
Crouched between gutters
grey with longing
bleak movements in the darkness
birds setting flight paths
across the fenland
tapestries of meadow,
hulled from the waterways
half-drenched in the morning sunlight
chiffon, dew-speckled, a gift
a final resting place.
The cold hard riverbed
i
I lost you
in darkness, in stumbling alcoholism
the words tumbling over each other
end on end
the breaths tumbling inside my lungs
tripping over each other
in darkness
cascading
wide-eyed, bloodshot words
spilling from my lips, spat from my heart
leaking out of cracks, crevices, corners
wreckage
and the way home was unclear,
debris-strewn
star-struck
alone.
Can you see the tragedy
all around us? Sweet lover
don't forget the day
the last of summer, stars unfurling
cooling as they dart away.
My own blood seeps out
steeps the carpet, insidious
as if the weight of it all
my vertebrae crumble, crushed
one by one
my spine but dust to choke upon,
bones heartless
that I might puddle myself
a flat expanse of skin and
barely-breathing-brain
vinegar-soaked even
as the night comes
creeping
calling
crawling
heaving push & pull
retching scum and froth against sheer cliff walls
that which is not truly mine
cluttered around my floor,
tattered like ribbons
against the star-strewn sea,
autumnal leaves,
corpses
Hey babe
so much of the world looks like love to me these days
and though I always come back to you,
voices have flavours --
colours in the background of so many lips
the decadent spinning of the rush-hour traffic
and a heartbeat in sheer terror
at the speed of it all;
Hey baby
not me
not me
not me
it's not me in the mirror this time, shrouded in forest-mists,
dew-drop animals,
as simple as a game of imitation, a parallel angle --
taps are dripping, love is leaking everywhere
urban rivulets --
fawns graze on the cityscape;
Hey babe
I burnt the prints off my fingers again
leapt over the edge of the world and tumbled back down right into it