A Place Like Home

There are chalk marks on the sidewalk
Blue crayon houses
Pink candy sky
There are ink marks on the building blocks
Houses
Crescent moon
And an SOS
There is a chalk man on the bench
Wearing a bowler hat
I wish I could save the pictures
To remember the map
The signs
Which have navigated me to into the lap of
One more day
One more day
There is a key on the wall
Not in the hands of Saint Peter
I do not pick it up
I leave it on top of a crinkled piece of paper
For the next person to scribble an SOS
Like a prayer board
Paper
Marks on paper
Thick black lines
Tiny and shouting
That is the answer
It has always been there
I have left only one demand
Take me back safely
To the firm black walls
The pink candy sky
The thick beige
Comfort of home.

Sparkles and Glows

I follow the little girl
Through the tunnel
The tips of her sneakers sparkle and glow
This is a place where little girls walk on diamonds
One hundred and sixty four days
And I take the steps
Not the door
The steps lead me to the park
At the park you can buy ice cream
And sausages in bread
You eat them around little wooden tables and chairs
A party
The little girl skips by
I want to buy ice cream
And a sausage in a bun
But I am old
weary and labouring
In my blue woollen coat in the sun
I would like to take it off and skip
I would like to remember young
My old toes wear through another pair of socks
alwaysmovingalwaysmoving
ifyoumovethennothingsticks
inawayiamfive
Five days
I pass the bag
time after time
Like the pins on the church window
A test
But the test is easy
To pass
And to fail
The bag is not candy
Not treasure
It is shit
Every minute saved untying it nudges me to the stairs
Time is not spent in minutes
But in following sparkles and glows
I am worn but I am happy
Old but Present
up to and into the minute
Like the little girl following her mother
I know I will never get lost
As long as I keep moving
As long as I keep following the sparkles and the glows.

Silver Tray

The flowers are croaking and poking into my feet
Like needles
Bruises
Purple track marks of loss
Like the line in my ankle which will not fade
There are eight days left
Eight days
Filled up by empty noise
The labour of nothingness played out in three rooms
The bathroom
The dining room
And room 23
How I loath room 23
I look at my face in the silver tray
Upside down
Eating soup in this place of strangers
Time becomes elastic as I hear the sounds of an emergency
But not mine
Two policemen stand outside the window
Maybe they are upside down too
I want to go to them and say
Is this ok
Am I ok
Please help
But I know that would be futile
Instead I go to St Peter
He has no keys
Not for me
There are no keys for the doors that lock me in
Locked
In a head I would like to cancel
In time I would like to stop
In breath that is relentless
Pointless
It kills me
To speak
I know my truth is not good enough
I carry it until it overflows
And becomes tears
Piles of ash in the feast at his feet
How much of the world I carry
On this tiny silver tray
Which hides my faces on one side
And confronts me on the other
I want to whisper
Here I am
In the tray
Behind the frosted glass of room 23
Here I am
Sitting on a bed as sharp as needles
Falling like the petals on a flower
As cold and loss punch through its tiny veins.

Butterfly Bones

I saw a butterfly
It crossed my path
Fluttering
And buttering
Its wings heavy with powder
Carrying the dust away from me
The butterfly is red and black
It rests on the white wall
To gather its wits
I can’t wear colour
Not here
My thought shifts out from black and white
But upon me colour is drained
Wasted
I will pack the green and blue
Wear them like wings when this place is gone
When this place is gone
I try to find quiet
To hear the wings
Lapping against the sky
The pew creaks in the silence
The emptiness of a shopping bag that cannot be taken home
I bought two oranges
Raspberry water and a bag of Reese’s pieces
It rains and I am cold
I swallow the sugar
Like holy wafers
But not quite as good as powder
The butterfly is unsteady on its path
Fluttering and buttering
My scrunching is too loud
Under St Peter
The giver of keys
Dirty
Graceless
Like scrunching butterfly bones
Like chewing up the chaos.

The Builders Are In

I walk past the bag
The bag of knots in the bushes
They are building a house
Next to the bush
Where the bag is
Next to the walls
That are broken and ruined
I feel relief
In a way
That the builders are in
Next to the broken walls
They make the decision
To go
I have to leave the black bag
I smile at one of the young men
He smiles back
As if his hands
Full of brick dust
Foster in me a comfort
A protection from my own dust
I walk past
Many times
I remember when I did not have to leave what I need
In the bushes
In the dog shit bag
(black is less visible in leaves)
When I could carry it with me all day
And all day the nagging in my head
screaming shouting laughing
do it do it do it
So loud that even the angels in the church turned towards me and laughed

There are fifteen days left in room 23
I don’t think that I will be coming back.

The Twins

I look over the library railings
There is a leaflet
Less is more
Right in the spot where you would land
If you jumped
Though you might hit the pigeon wire
And be left dangling
In your filthy coat
The one you can’t wash that smell out of
Of room twenty three
Now they lock the toilets
You have to ask to piss
There are 1728000 seconds left
28800 minutes
480 hours
This week’s lesson
Numbers in a story
Of a story
Nothing really
One bowl of soup ordered
Going cold as the fire alarm rings
The second swallowed down
Past chapped fingers and splitting lips
Opposite tables of pretty children
Who won't haul their piss through twenty years
Thirty years
Who won't cry at the sound of keys
Or laughter

My toes throb and sob
Walking in this empty place
Full of useless noise
Foul faces
Evil hands

The tears come out
In front of the little girl
She hugs me
I feel small
Smaller than her
I cannot control this chaos
It is worse than the chaos I wrecked upon myself

I don’t want to leave the little girl here
And yet I know she will be ok
Better than me
I am not strong
I am empty
What I am looking for cannot be found

We all look into the camera
With blank open eyes
There is nothing
No lesson to be learnt
Just a future we don’t quite own.

My toes throb and sob
There are nineteen days left until I can rest

‘We all have an identity we cannot avoid it
It’s what’s left when you take everything else away’ - Diane Arbus

Occam's Razor

It is control
To be the one
Holding the flesh
To be the one
Tearing the skin
Like he worried the flesh in his side
I will bear witness
To the blood
Of my being
I will hold the ink
Drip it into black
Onto paper
I should have picked up the red A
For Alice
But it is so hard to find treasure
In a head full of razors
I wrap them up in words
To stop them poking through my thoughts
But they chase me at night
scratching catching
every thing that is wrong

I should not be in the blue toilet
I should not be hanging on to my sides
I should not be waking up here

It is control
To be the one
Holding the flesh
Tearing the door open

It is control
Leaving room 23
The simplest exit left open
For the next person to die in.

Bad Bones

I have made my bones bad
Except I am not bad
There are little shoes on every wall
I find names
Like Lessons
Samuel
Hadra
I wonder how they lost their names
Like I lost my name
Inside
How I lost my being
And wear through my shoes

When there is a mirror
Do you choose to look in it
Or do you jump through

I can’t look
Not at my bad bones
It is hard to jump through a mirror
When it feels like a wall

Rough and grating on my hands
And face

I don’t light a candle
For fear that I might hurt her

I run my fingers through the sand
A shallow trough of wishes and prayers
Little fires of what’s inside

I consider the prayer board
The messages are written on orange squares

In black pen

I read them
Think about how a stranger can take the pin from your wish and make it so
Every hope
Turned into words
Words said out loud

But not loud enough for the person who wrote the wish and ran
Jumped
Didn’t look

My face is like the Cheshire Cat and jam
Disjointed
smilingcrying

Not sweet like candy tears

The mirror is empty
On this side and that

I am my own witness
I am scared by the bag
But I love it.

I have turned my bones bad
Except I am not bad inside.

Twenty Minutes

After twenty minutes comes the jolt
The surge downwards
Inside yourself
I await it eagerly
Like scouring out my guts
And my head
I await it eagerly
Foot tapping
In the band stand
Or the toilet
Ready to burst
Like an aorta
bang bang bang
Blood going down going down
In order to feel up
I check my neck
It rings and sings
This is the moment
The electricity
Alice Awake Alive
The only part of me that I am not detached from
This is J
Maybe the lid of j not the belly
The smooth curve
Which somehow keeps all of J safe

I feel the shape of j
It has changed
I like it as less
I can feel the bones underneath
The lid
The top of my head
The belly
Like a pepper pot
Traces of powder around the lip

Two magpies pick at the rubbish bins
An arrhythmia
peck peck peck
They scour the dust too
Until the electricity runs out
And all the skin is picked clean.

The bag of knots flat lined main lined end lined.