Monday 30 September 2013

temple

build a temple around me
of marble and oxygen
place me in the doorway
a body that is no longer real.
build a temple around me
plant vines that coil and twist
up around my skin until i am among the stars
my roots wrap around the earth.
build a temple around me
sing songs that thrum a primal drumbeat
stitch my skin senseless with words
and drench me with the sky.
build a temple around me
in ecstasy and hidden things
so that i can become the landscape that worships
hands stretched forever.

Tuesday 24 September 2013

psalm for heartbreakers

discard discord
into splintered order, perfect chaos
oh i don't even know what your tumbling words mean
why do you insist on speaking
are you so incapable of feeling silence
can you not hear the quiet
no
in the same way that you cannot
understand why the ones you leave behind have broken hearts
you move like a song
and you make them love you while adamant that you are unloved
then you grow tired of their need
without realising it
you move on searching for meaning
and leave them junkies without drugs
without any hope for what sustains them they waste away and
you don't care
you don't even notice
because that is who you are, my dear
killer!
murderer!
and still i am no better than the rest.

Tuesday 17 September 2013

staring

something a little different today

Her mind was far away and falling headlong into waves and wonder, and her thoughts wandered away from her body. Earth and sand and paperwork were songs of other places, because she was gone into lights on the ocean and the moon over the sea, the evening streetlights orange over the water.
The gentle touch on her shoulder startled her, and she jerked away.
“Don’t stare too long,” the man said. He had kind eyes. “Your mind wanders, down and deep and away, and one day it won’t come back.”
“I’ve stared before,” she said, still looking, still lost.
“Your mind is used to wandering. You are on top of the world, and you’re not afraid to fall.” She felt herself begin to reel back in, back to the empty shell of her body. She managed to glance at him. His kind eyes smiled.
“Why is that a bad thing?” she asked.
“In itself, it isn’t. But you go places, and if you stay away too long you forget who you are.”
“Sometimes that’s why I go.”
He nodded. She dug her toes into the sand, gazed past the cliffs and down into whatever lay beyond.  “I want to go places,” she whispered into the wind. “I want to live by the sea and sit on the sand every day and lose myself. I want to work when I want to and not have responsibilities I don’t care about. That’s why I stare. Because the sea is fickle and free and it doesn’t care about anyone else.”
“You can still care,” he said softly. “I still care.”
She glanced sharply at him, and saw his fingers begin to lengthen; his legs slowly shortened as his hair grew to flow down to the sand in a gentle wave of salt water and the memory of a smiling man with kind eyes.  

Thursday 12 September 2013

roses

the desired girls
pretty little girls
can tilt their heads coquettishly
and say
'they are all pages
from the same book.
doesn't he know roses have been done before?
can't he see I'm bored of the same
lines?'
they can go through
those boys
like a passionate, vicious wildfire
without a care in their pretty little minds
but I am neither desired nor coquettish
i just want
you.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

swallowflight

swallowflight
autumn came and left again
spurned her lover
begging the sky to
take her away
and time was never her friend
nor mine.
swallowflight
rain on tarmac in a crying city
headlights find her
pleading the wind to
take her away
and the light fades into
evening and i.
swallowflight
winter passed through quietly
spring came looking
for the girl who could
take him away
but she broke a heart that was
never hers to break.

Monday 2 September 2013

didn't you want this?

do i begin in the early hours
for owls
and stolen kisses
hidden in the dreamtimes
- or -
is it you who started there
in secrets and shadows?
those were our moments
when i carved my name
deep into your skin
rewrote your soul
so it had me in it
and we danced under the light of the moon
because it said so in the stories
take my hand, darling
just take my hand and we'll go down falling
nothing to cry about, honey
we're just destroying all we've got
didn't you want this?