Feel the Quality

Feel the quality she said
And I did
Deep inside her
Wiped the water over my head
And the paper
Watched the words wash away
My throat feels burnt
Even though I didn’t do it
Couldn’t do it
fuckingpatheticwelldoneyou
The man was at the train station
I bought a hot chocolate
Smiled
But not really
Left
Changed my mind
Always changing my mind
There is a blister on the roof of my mouth
I worry it
The rough edges of my tongue on the words
that need to come out
I am tidy at watching
Rubbing out the trails from my lips
Colour jostles the white wall
I imagine it as smell
The fragrance of petals
Scouring out my guts
Like bullets
And butterflies
It’s a shame really
How she’s let herself go
The wind chimes
The wet cement
The red ribbon tie
I am good at tidying
Sizing up the fabric
Picking out the remnants.

The Taste of Summer

The fumes from the sink make me heady
Heady like summer should be
The sun creeps in through the window
Uninvited
Makes me shiver
There is no place to lie to make day go away
I try to make the call
It is engaged
I give up
The phone rings three times
Uninvited
Makes me shiver
There is no place to lie to make them go away
I can’t bear the minutes
I leave each one
Second by second
On the floor
Over the sink
Just fucking go
The anger makes me heady too
How nothing registers
How I don’t register
notsignificantgrosslyintact
demandingdemandingdemanding
But I am not even in the room to make demands
There is just this body
This thing
Evasion trips out of it like sunshine on lips
I still want to be found
(but not found out)
I try to erase it them
But every year name and time haunts me
Keeps me up
Skin on the outside
Echoes within
Too tired to sleep any more
Ninety six hours until the phone tears again
I still want to make that call
I am scared pressing the numbers will do something anything
I am scared it will do nothing at all
I am stuck here forever
Over the sink
Over the edge
I know the rest of the story
I taste it
It is heady like summer should be.

Her Voice

The baby sock rests in the car park
Its stripes worn down
Away
By the gravel
Gravel which grazes and grates
rips and tears
Forcing its way through skin as delicate as a plum
A thin little layer to keep the world from biting down deeper
I go home
I feel uneasy
Thinking
Locked inside these stories
Nurturing my desire
tojumptocrosstoholdoutahandtothetrucktodowhateverwhatever
itdoesntmatterwhatever
At home I know what to do
I pin my hair back so I can see
Look in the mirror
Take a picture
(no one else will)
Years marked out in the changes
A trip here a fall there
It all grinds you down in the gravel
Like an amateur
But there is something I find
When she sings
I smile
Almost cry
There is the fire held diligently inside
She shouts it out for me
Picks the baby up dusts off the stones and breathes
She says don’t follow me close
And I am happy tripping and skipping in her wake
Feet like rainbows stories like rain
Just behind her I will be
Catching the tinder flames
Wrapping myself up in her voice.

The Secret of Comfort

The blanket is red
Berry red
And soft
I carry it in a bag under my arm
Hidden
I walk quickly
Down the steps
Away from the road
I pass a little girl in a pink coat
Not one with sparkles and glows
Dirty pink
Honest pink
It is 10am
She holds a bag of chips
Her little black finger nails clutch the bag
Its greasy contents warming her
Her feet swing
A distraction from a sore dripping nose
She looks cold
I get cold
Lying on the floor
Underneath the window
Curled tight
Hoping the doorbell won’t ring
Three o’clock
The shrill buzz ricochets through my stomach
Around my head
Like a bullet
But less kind
I shout fuck off
Silently
Desperately
But it won’t go away
The intrusion
The interference
A few steps and a knock on the glass
I nod my way through the allocated time
Everything is fine she writes
In the log book which sits like a disaster under my chair
At least the hot chocolate stays in my stomach
This time
The red blanket comes up to my chin
Warm
Sparking as the electricity falls out of my head
Finally safe from knocks and bells
I hope the little girl is safe now too
full and clean
When the sun comes I will pass the blanket on
open up the secret dampen down the dreams.

savage sweet dreams

I sit on the bench
I should not be baffled
This is the same story
Just the next page
And yet my throat burns and the tears fall on to my list
My thoughts are stories she says
lies not truths not real
They feel real
They scream as loud as the woman on the street
say it to my face i dare you come on
People stand outside the shops and listen
I walk by
With a bag of food I find hard to carry
Hard to choose
Tin cans stabbing my back as I haul them over my shoulder
They bruise
Like the words
Sour as the poison Alice drank
Until she shrank and shrank
No bigger than the bottle which made her small
A negative equation that will not balance
I cannot keep my appointment of care
It hurts too much
exhaust exhausts exhaustion
I buy fruitcake and hot chocolate at the train station
It makes me sick
I wipe my mouth and watch the mad hatter move stones
An elegant stain on his trousers
I feel sick again
At the thought of moving the boulders inside
At least now I can watch the train
I leave the bench go back to the bench
I should not be baffled
This is the same story
Just the next page
I fill it with ink
An unsteady truth
A glimpse of real
A story of savage sweet dreams.

the petals were fresh

The petals were fresh
Seven days ago
Now they are mulch
Their flavours mixed up and separating
As the water hits the soil
And they fall
I am mixed up. And separating.
And my head is falling off
She gently holds it straight as she cuts
And tiny curls fall to the floor
They will be swept up and brushed away
Like tumble weed
In the room they didn’t teach me about the next minute
Or the ones before
And I am falling
I am mixed up and separating
fuckingpatheticfuckingpathetic
The room only taught me to endure each moment
Now the moments are gathering
Both at speed and painfully slow
And I don’t know what to do
I wish I held the petals
When they were fresh
Kept them in a photograph
Caught a little piece of reality that glows
There is just my face now and it is does not glow
there are so many petals to fill and i crave them and i hate them and i wish they were over cut off swept up and brushed away over with done done done
In the room they didn’t teach me about the next minute
Or the ones before
I am falling
Mixed up and separating
As the water hits the floor.

Magical Call

The girl with the magical thinking tries to call
I think magically enough not to press accept
My hands and eyes trip and skip
I can choose
I can choose
I erased her
But I follow the trail of numbers
Back to a thousand stories
A hundred bruises
A handful of truth
This is the sixth day in the beige place
My body run out
My head races then pause races then pause
Ticking over like a deviant engine
Trying to throw me off course
Away from the sparkles and glows
Into the bag of knots
Except I don’t need knots
Not here
Not home
Every minuscule scratch of powder is accounted for
And studiously forgotten
I have picked the phone up twice
Here
At home
myvoiceoverexcitedoverexplaininghingedonthetrivialbecause
ifyousayanythingrealthe bodymeetsthehead
andwhenthebodymeetstheheaditallturnstodust
No mind
It is better than the quiet voice
The quiet voice that came when there was nothing left to fight
The girl with the magical thinking tries to call
I remember her voice
Loud
Relentless
No gap to pause
It made me tired
And yet I loved it
No room for reply. or thought.
The girl with the magical thinking tries to call
I think magically enough not to press accept
I can choose
I can choose
When to race
When to pause.

Without A Word

They drove me home with the little girl
The one who hugged me
The one who cried and screamed in her pink dressing gown
With white hearts
Burnt with cigarette ends
Please let me come with you
One hundred and sixty eight days and I could not say
No
I want this to be mine
To be something
They drove me home with the little girl
She sang and clapped her hands
yawned burped and squealed
She felt every turn of the wheel
I felt nothing
I felt nothing
Until I found myself in the car mirror
And thought of my way back home
Who I am
Who I was
Who I will be
And I smiled without moving
I smiled for surviving room 23
They drove me home with the little girl
They dropped me first
Carried my bags up the stairs
Without a word
Without a word
Snuck me in without looking
i think they knew i saw everything every hand out of place every comment that stang
just sit in the back seat and think of your mum
not terrible j terrible j who did not scoop you up and join in clapping hands
They drove me home with the little girl
Left me in the hall
With the foul smell of room 23
They took her to her mother
Maybe sat with tea and jam
Ignored how she cut her hair in different lines
How her hands were palsied like claws
ready to cry. or scream
Now I am in the beige place
Silent and warm
The sting pulled out
The smell washed away
I search my thoughts and smile
I am no longer with the little girl
I am home
Without a word
Without a word.