You can wear pyjamas on the plane
Look sharp
Brighten up
Get noticed
Aspire to be
To be
I will be nothing
Tick tock
The bell chimes ten
Two hours gone
A hundred waiting
Wish granted
The white hand marks the door
A chalk alarm
Beware
Look sharp
Brighten up
Get noticed
We huddle in the corner
Slurping tea
And powder
So much powder
I dangle the bag off my arm
Like
Take it
Take it
Please
Look sharp
Get noticed
Brighten up
The static in the hallway
Stains my hands
I wipe it on you
Beastly
Terrible
Tick tock
The bell chimes
Nothing
I crick my neck
I can’t bear my skin
You see
Stuck inside
Locked in
Barely moving
Where did I go
Look sharp
Brighten up
Notice
The land is dead
The fields
Sprinkled in dust
Like sugar on a cake
Do please come for tea
Do please come
I look in the sky
For
Vapor
Trails
They never come
Or leave
You can wear pyjamas on the plane
Look up
Look sharp
Be noted
Careful now
A word can be lost
If you look too hard
I will hold it
Keep it safe
Right here
Until you come.
The words cut out
Like the skin peels off
Some kind of binary confusion
Am I pretty she asks
As she rolls on to her tummy
I try and imagine her
A little egg
Stuck inside me
A form I cannot trust
You were
I say
I am sick of her
I wish she would
Cut out
Peel off
Fall away
All entities in the world are spherical round or spiral
We go to the dark building
Get our catalysts tested
She follows
I never bring her
The chair is plastic
With pock marks and dangling melted shreds
They give us a mug of something
She squeals
My heart screams
Tired of the trial
Profound and total nothingness
The day falls dark behind our door
We come down
From on high
Well, she does
I scramble up the same thoughts
Over and over
Like an engine turning
Par for the course
Being young is a bad thing
He says
As I am held
Under the water
I count the seconds
Leave my face
Behind
I am a bar of soap
Washed away
Falling apart
I see her peeping over the side of the tub
Laughing
Blowing away the bubbles
Him
fuck off fuck you fuck me
The spiders run through my bones like code
Am I pretty she asks
As she rolls on to her tummy
You were I say
I am sick
I am sick of her
I am sick of keeping her inside me.
We went all day on popcorn
And handguns
Our hips knotting
An insatiable quest
To feel nothing
The old lady puzzles over the skull in the cage
You will never be old
Reality drains to my feet
Reality drains through my feet
The paper flowers are blown up next to
The fallen tree
It is nothing more than the loss
Of electrical function
We all know it is more than that
You are gone
You will never be gone
The picture of the flies
Around your mouth
Stays inside a cage
Inside a head
Inside me
your’e a good kid
you’re a good kid
So why did you leave
You knew you would
At the top
Of the multi storey
Multi story
You told me
In the same way
You never told me
Did you want me to come too
Not one shred of you is real
Now
Except that you
Are
The reality written on
Me
My muscles and bones are feral
They chase down
The size of you
The sound of your voice
Your name
I suppose you have no more decisions
I have one
And a million
Biting at my flesh
We went all day on popcorn
And handguns
You hair was red
Like a fire
Now
I burn
I burn
Every thing that’s left.
I have lost my ankle
And my knee
Black cement screwed onto my bones
Which now I feel
I feel
I reach for Alice’s hand in the dead treacle night
She is waiting
Waiting for me
To
Wake up
Scuffing and tutting in the shoe cupboard
She has always been a strong, brave little girl
Tough like frozen honey
She will take me to the Red Queen’s court
Later
In the dead treacle night
That is what is done
For me
To
Wake up
The Red Queen likes it when I fail
She laughs and holds me upside down
Like a party trick
I am bashed open
Alice collects my innards
Spilt like candy wages
Long overdue
Such a funny game she squeals
And I turn over
And over
Aching and safe
She’s there you see
Framed in my mind
Like scaffolding
Supporting me
Holding me up
Strong as a virus
Eating through our flesh
Blue dress
Shiny shoes
Vanilla hair
Sweet as sugar
Tough as frozen honey
A sailing ship in the dead treacle night.
I found you old man
Underneath the fall
All those years I looked at you
Yesterday
Yesterday I saw your face
You
With time added on
Just as time is added to my skin
You asked me to smile
Say hello
I thought I did
But my face
My face did not move
It was soft then
Like a heart
It did not show anything
No lines or barbs
Then time turned cruel
And ghastly
If this is a game
The key to the green lock
Is in the right shoe
It’s all there
Everything I am
Laid out on the carpet
Falling through the floor
They took your letters away
They flapped and made the black box unkempt
They were comfortable as bricks to me
I could see them piling up and up and up
measure
assess
control
Like the cigarette bed I could not close my eyes in
The pain will come
It always does
Just as everything heals
And stops
Monday
That is when I found you
Old man
Everything
Falls
On
A
Monday.
I flap around the consulting room
Fat forty five degree angle cunt
I got stuck in the jacket
Broke the zips trying to get out
Fill in the gaps
Gather list flow
Spit it out like a routine
Every syllable rings
Considered so much it’s invisible
I plucked at the sugar sticks
Put the sweet sweet
Under my skin
Vanilla and milk
The only thing my body seems to sing
It grows and aches under needs that are nameless
I don’t think it has ever been real
This
Invisible ink dripping down my shins
Everything hidden under fine nylon stitches
And clips
You all grasp
Pull
Against my body
Against my head
A jacket which cannot be shed
I want so much to fit
I want so much to fit
To shrink
But the words are always immaculately typed
Waiting for me to spit
Guts
The sweet sweet
Under my skin
A sticky stream
Of me
The book is washed up under the tree
Waiting for the weather
Like the green slip of paper
Stuck in my bag
I whisper to it
Soft and loud
I don’t think I have ever been real
Quick to church and dead to grave
We ring
We ring.
There is a thud
Five forty five
He is back
Now there is trouble in my head
And on my head
Trouble
Like the best trouble
Like her
He is not here
But is
Like her
They spread through my blood
Like a DNA marker
A line of useless kisses underneath a name
Boots broken chapped aching
I have the desire to
Fuck
Nothing will accelerate time
Or stop it
You are the plague inside me
That won’t wash off
The shot
Bang
Thud
Plywood door drilled into my skull
They are very clever
Your tears
I am where you want me
I am very clever
See
I could have learnt anything
I could have learnt anything
But I chose you
And I am the perfect murder
The beautifully passive
Body and corpse
Funny
How they all believe you
And I am lost
The rogue beast trapped in a wonderland
Where the powder won’t change to tea
Or love.
I am held remotely
As everything is held
Things make sense
Then pass like clouds
The gift
A beautiful red bed
Because I never had
A bed
A safe bed
Sometimes it is cold
The bed
Though I love it
And you
Head awake
Bones concrete
Stuck
The body can be cold in the bed
It does not sing electric
A dull metronome of dust and ash
tick tock
tick tock
Never ending
Always waiting
For a connection
The spark of synergy between me and us
I tiptoe around the edges of myself
A stranger in another’s dream
Balancing potential and loss
Days of feeling everything
Squirrelled under the mattress
Like currency
Losing value
I miss it when it is gone
Time
I miss you
Under the water
I try to form it
An alternate
To this
To what I am
Smash the concrete break the bones
be better
be better
It feels like the pages close
Wrap tighter
Hide the apple tree
That bucolic place in summer where we will be together
Happy
There is a blade of grass
In the pages
From where you left last summer
It drops out when I open it
And try to tell our story.
