Glue

The pineapple sticks
To the glue
We are making tea
Dormouse rattles the cup
Tips the teapot
Spills crumbs
At our feet
I don’t think I like this
Says Alice
Softly
We do not want to wake Dormouse
As he crawls back inside
Trip skip slip
We want to wear time
The right way
We unfold the dusty map
The one kept in our pocket
Long since tinted by the sun
The lines on her palms
The tips of her fingers
Synchronized
With mine
She puzzles
Trying to work out the answer
You know I really don’t think there is one
I brush out her hair
Smile
At the first chance we should
Use the glue
To stick down
The tea pot lid
Then we must
Use the steam to blast ourselves
High up in the sky
In the sky we can stand on the cloud
Spin the second hand around to twelve
Then we can begin again

We can go home Alice
I say softly
For all the minutes
In every day

The pineapple melts in our mouth
Like sunshine
A tincture
That warms us
Inside
Like everything is right
All the seconds
Tick tick tick
Integral

Lying on the red blanket
Under snow laden skies.

Upside

Time is upside down
Again
Like we are tuned to the
Wrong radio station
The flower clicks
Counting every second
Savoured
Like an exquisite
Liquor
Resting on our tongue
We lie on the floor
The red blanket
Nestling our edges
Cold brushes
Our face
We catch it in our hand
Slap
Crisp
Like a second
Been and gone
All that we need
For now
The clouds pass
In a slow dance
Turning the sky
On its head
The branches
Bones
Glowing
Aching
With words
Years
Slowly growing
Like liquor
Ageing
We close our eyes
The silence
Gentle
Magnificent
Swelling inside
Our belly
All that we need
For now
We breathe in
A second
Time resting on our tongue
Clean the edges
Tune the radio
Gamble across the stars

Time is upside down
Again
We stand on our heads
To figure it out
Giggle quietly
As the red blanket
Holds us in the sky.

Over

I fill the red kettle
Listen to my dreams
Boil
The water level drop
Split
Listen
As the spiders crawl
Follow us
Down the side road
Dark
Like real
Something we must attend
To
The chain has been kicked
Already
It echoes
Bounces off the beige
Walls
Body
Brain
Intact
We shuttle around
Breathing
Clear vanilla sky
Powder clouds
Grind them up
Make a paste
Fly
Clear
For a moment
Thud
We fall pulverised
At the end of a dream

The memory is bigger than the house
A curiosity
And a dread

The floor bends as the door shuts

I forget to ask what it means

She holds my head and whispers
It is over.

Chair

On the little chair
Sits a thousand
Unread words
Like a heart beat
Dull
Forgotten
No bones
Under the
Black flowers
A crater that cannot be filled
Love
Lost
Missing
Person
Knock the door down
I am not home
Never have been
It’s all just time
Waiting to be filled
Like sunken skin
Slip trip
Lost my footing
Time trick
Tricked
Tricks
There is no electricity
To combat
The static
Bzz
All is gone
Little white cat
Jumping through the mirror
Face sliding off the door
Thumbing its nose
Every foot print
Worn into the wall
Into the stone
Bone
Bones
Loss represented
We cannot lift our head
It lolls sluggish
Not ready
A broken phone
On the road
A thousand
Words unspoken

On the little chair
A story
Bound
Untouched
Unexposed
A heart beat
Dull
Forgotten
Waiting to be extolled.

Thirteen

Thirteen
Under clay
The simple angel
Snatched me down
Wrapped me safely
In a box
Blue
Blanket
Cover
Waves
Ringing in pairs
Like a bell
Fixing things
Quietly
Under the splinter bed
A trap door
A rabbit hole
A little girl
A pale blue dress
A pretty face
Dashed like pepper
Weathering the lies
Thirteen
Under clay
They tried to rip us apart
Simple angel
Unpeel me like a powder purse
Tear my head from the sky

Thirteen
Simple angel
Under clay

Trip skip and hug the floor
We are on the bright side of the moon
Wiping the clay from our eyes
As it shines

It was not luck
We tremble
We clawed our way out
Three hundred and sixteen days
Seven thousand five hundred and eighty four hours
A boulder behind us
In our throats
That one day we may swallow

Lucky thirteen.

Seventy Two

They string the dolly up by her head
Like a message
We creep past
Say hello to the tall man
Open the door quietly
Play out this
Service

Back and forth
Back and forth

It’s all a calculation
Forty eight hours
Five little petals
For a beautiful black flower
Nobody gets to see
Six today
Seven tomorrow
Next day
Stop
Seventy two hours
Start again
If I could stand
I would laugh
But I roll
In the red bed

Back and forth
Back and forth

The voice
An instruction
Do it
Stop it
Why did you
Submit
It controls you
You don’t control it
Thud

I am naked in her arms
Glowing blue
Black
Red
No end
Illuminated
No highlight
To ride
It is all going down
All I want is the silver out of my head
It won’t shift
However hard I try
Smile
Lock the door
Calculate the hours
Click my heels three times
Read the pocket watch upside down
It really is such nonsense
A piece of work
Nobody gets to see.

Advent

I am in pursuit of this wild prison
I look to her to be loved
Me and Alice through the lens of good hope
Her skirt ripped and cruel
The cash filthy in my hand
Our voices croak
Long nights spent huddled
Over the potion bottle
Licking the magic dry
Which never comes
Which never comes
This is the first day
What happens on the twelfth sobs Alice
What will we become
We have no pennies left

Come down my sweet
Sit with me in the dust
It is like a cloak
To keep us warm
To hide us
Though we want to be seen

We must stand fast in our enchantments
Our stories
Let those who study the heavens stand up

Alice interrupts
She knows the next line
Will they save us
No

But those who gaze at the stars and each new moon
Predict what shall befall us

See

I am not sure
Shakes Alice
No. Me either

It never pays to change a story
An enchantment

Her tiny body rests against my slowness
Venus
Love
She joins the dots
With words

To love a thing means wanting it to live

I hold her
Tightly
My little love
My hope and end
Her little blue dress
And weathered shoes.

I turn away so she does not see
My tears for her
Absolute love
Swallowed by the rain.

Shock

I press the wrong button
On the coffee machine
Back in the place
Where time wears me out
I could cry
There is no sugar
To help the powder down
To help the powder down
How far away the bench feels
My little line of hope
My little line of hope
Sat on the kitchen floor
Gagging at the feel
Of them
My little line of hope
Where do we go Alice
We are at the bottom of the well
When they think we are at the top
All is a mirror image
Reality stares me out
Pink eye
Blown up
Blown up
Head
Like feet to large to walk on
Sinking
Sinking
Into the immaculate fix
Hanging in the back like an axe
I should fear
But love
I have these words I need to say
But I can not
Cheshire Cat chews
Messes them up
So they are nothing
Not even sounds
Just say it
Fucking say it
The thing you need
Is what you fear
And yet inside
At the end of the potion bottle
You know it doesn’t exist
I drink the bitter coffee
Shake my head
Rub my leg
Now is the pain
Now is when it hurts.

Fun

I tie off my leg
With a pretty blue bow
They’ll never look there
I am so clever
Clever
As the dick
Who spray paints
Their name on the wall
The comfort brief
But necessary
I own my body now
A little trail of
Magic and powder
An eye stuffed to capacity
With silver
The comfort brief
But necessary
I am so clever
Stuck on Deuteronomy’s column
Powerful
Powerless
All
Nothing
The snake thick and orange
Bending up the glass
For air
Survival
A nagging insistence
Though every minute
Aches
Untidy as a frayed blue bow
That drops
As I drop
He is still stand up tall
At the bottom of the mirror
Dorothy was on the other side
I chased her for a bit
Like walking down that alley
With the stain on my coat
Hiding what’s exposed
I am so clever
Watch me tear apart
Strong as three-ply
Not so clever in the morning
When the mirror doesn't spin and
Dorothy is nothing more than a word

A fancy
Swept away in dust

You look better in yourself
You know
Thank you
But I don’t know who myself is any more
I cry and laugh on the cleanly stained floor

When the owl calls again
I will be blown home
On a cloud of frost and stars
I sit and wait
And wait
For her.

Force

The pipes in the dead house rattle
A laugh rumbling through the splinter bed
Shut up
Let me dream the right words
Find the border between awake
And alive
The road in the floor sinks under
Free fall plight
Echoing
Empty
No forces or foot soldiers
Standing behind with shot guns
Ready to fight
For me
With me
Apples on heads
Bullets of breath
Trouncing me
Taking me down
In sight
Out of sight
Standard issue fatigue
Fatigue
So tired
Shut up
Let me dream the right words
I can learn to hold you right
Right
Love
Pulls like silver heavy in my eye
Life inside windows
Behind doors
Strangers who raised hell inside me
On me
Burnt fire into my skin
Shut up
Let me dream the right words
Alice are you there
This dark is like molasses
A sweet crisis we could gobble up together
On a pretty picnic blanket
Thankful hit penny drop fix
Dependable as gravity
I want this place to end now
Shut up
Let me dream the right words
Hurry down blue sky
Silver ladder
Pink balloon
Golden car
Soft boots
Shiny key
Green bus
Orange light
Shovel through the rubble
Of this war
Collect your heart in a jar
Stitch your soul back on departure
Run Alice
We must run
And never look back.

Dead Letter Day

Home is a blanket of warm
Water around my ears
Your voice
Your face
My fix
Mixing into
Orange light
I love you
Gets lost
Even if I spell it out in falling skin

The pockets of air in our mouths keep us alive
Like letters spilled out of a bingo machine
Where the caller is stone
And the prize is a row of pennies we can sleep on

I stick a silver flower under my skin
Wish for it to grow
I will pick off the petals and give them to you
You can put them in the slot machine and win a prize

Home is a door which cannot be opened by anyone else
Home is you
Standing in the hallway
Hiding behind the curtains
Watching me go

I love you
Gets lost
Even if I spell it out in falling skin.

Simple

Leaves
Brown
Crisp
Like fresh paper
Twigs
Like pencils
Rolling out words
Breath
Cold
Pouring out
A ladder
Leant against the wall
Holding him up
The green bus
Real people
From houses
With orange light
Steam on the inside of the windows
Breath
Warm
Pouring out

Their eyes kind
Smiling
Soon it will be over.

Infinite

I’m bored yawns Alice
I know
Nothing is curious any more
She swings her little feet
Over the edge
Her socks grey and tired

You know the last rush
Is the best rush

Her feet stop swinging

Of course
I’m not stupid
You know

I have been here since the first rush
I am stuck with you until the last

She sighs
As if the inevitable weight of me grinds upon her tiny shoulders

I assemble dead outfits
On hangers
In the wardrobe
In the house
I am not allowed
To
Be
In

Read backwards the sign on the shopping centre door reads No gods
Alice squeals

sgod oN
I mutter
Wary not to offend her

She is my only friend

When the outfits are pressed like skeletons
I scrape the silver over my skull
Like his words deep inside me
Like the loss of her love

You know the last rush is the best rush

The one where we never hit the bottom of the well
The one where the floor sinks into infinity
The one where the powder never runs out

Are you scared asks Alice
And I realise she is older than me
She has tread this path before

Yes I say
But it will be something
We cannot wait for nothing any more
You have more places to go

I see her in my eyes
Or hers in mine

Everything stops like the last choke hold
A broken pocket watch
Swinging over the edge of time.

Kind

There is a gap
Gathering
In the back of my
Head
Where all is
Dead
Simmering
I hold the silver in my
Eye
It won’t undo
The suffering
Stop
The cycle
I did not choose
I am ground down
Less
Than
Like wood whittled
Into dust
Stuck
Stuck
Stopped
In the grinder
They create
Blood
Bile
Bilge
They hold me under
Virtuously
Of course
As if a hand
On my
Throat
Neck
Leg
Is kind
Regard
Their habits
Are worse than
Mine
Quick
Think
Escape
Hatch
Plan
We cry on the bathroom floor
However hard we dream
We cannot get
Out
Bugs

pop crunch snap

In the back of my
Head

I am never going back.

Jerk

I serve up my next dose of silver
On a china plate
The tail end of a hypnic jerk
Flight
Going
Down
Base
Jumping
Bottom
Landing
Hanging
Decoration
The face on the door
Almost dropped off
I paint my finger
Red
Slip on the frost

The sun tastes sour
Feels sharp in my throat
Going
Down
Digging
Deep
For
More
Than
Sleep.

Seventh Heaven

I lock the storm in my room
Not my room not the sweet line of powder silver dust inside
Bitter spat splinter line fixed like a handle squeezing me dry
Manipulating me though I am tight built up powder silver dust inside
Crow swings in the wind
Seven times seven heaven home hanging on by a wire
A thread of perfection I cannot reach cannot keep cannot lock up inside.







all apologies if i don't return comments this week..wonderland is far from..

Bone Ladder

There are bodies in the earth
A cold snap
Of bones and stones
Lying silky
Snap crack
On the grass
Worn out

Wake up Alice
We need to talk

The forest is brown
Dying
Not even your little red coat will save it

We really must stir

Quick race
Stumble jumble
Quick sticks
Stop
Thinking
Isolate
Pain
Razor
Whiskey

Please don’t hurt your little fingers

Shh hush
It’s ok

Look at the word puddle
Dripping around our feet
So much
In the murky soup

Pick it out
My little prospector

Connection between mouth
And breath befuddled
Chaos confusion crash
In the monosyllable marsh

Hold my hand
We will make sentences
And cake

Hatter clambers up the bone scaffolding
Lanky laughing
Lighter than the breeze
At the end of the world

Climb run
Splitter splatter
Let’s climb up the thought ladder

Come on Alice
Hurry
To end we must begin.

Be

If I could dream from
The splinter bed
There would be a calm hand
Touching my cheek in the night
I would not hear feet
Coming up the stairs to check
On my body
I would not hide my face from the
Light they shine
On the hour
Every hour
I would not wake up
Wishing the day to end

If I could dream from
The splinter bed
I would not have to see the blood spilt
Simply because I breathe
I would not have to hear the screams
Of another person
Wishing me dead

If I could dream from
The splinter bed
I would be wrapped up in flowers and red
Sleeping next to you
Your quiet air would rock me back
Warm
Comfortable
Into sleep
And dreams

If I could dream from
The splinter bed
I would not have lost my time
My self
On the bathroom floor
Rocking
Crying
Moving the silver in my head
To stop the pain
To stop

All
Of
This

If I could dream
From
The splinter bed
I would be
And be
Safe
Tripping skipping over ordinary things

Light switch
Door lock
Clean clothes
My smell
Strawberries
Vanilla
Peppermint tea
Quiet
Air
Space
Thought
Rest
Laughter
Smile
Mirror
Music
The fat red cat
Home
Safe
Free

And on and on I would be.

Dust

The sun tumbles jumbled through the
Colour window
A kaleidoscope of time
And thought
Etched in wood
Soaked up through nose and mouth
His arms on fire
Smell like jasmine
I close my eyes
Steal the rubber bands
Wrap them round my wrists
A feint line of pain
A feint faint trace of my self
The silver has shifted
Stuck in my brain
I wrinkle my brow
It hurts
I close my face
It hurts
I stand under water
It hurts
There was a limit
I sang it quietly
When I should have screamed
Now the silver is a secret
The face a knot of fabled skin
All a story
On me
In me
But not
Ah. But it’s real you see

Not that anyone wants to see
Feel
Wonder what it
Tasted
Smelt like

Grotesque
Beautiful
The world elevated
Illuminated
Heightened
But going down
So slow
So fast
No difference between
Nodding and dying
Not if you take the silver out
Before they come
You know

It was real
You
See

Not jasmine and a dream

The magpies flutter scutter
Hard to decide one or two

I scream the wrong words
Scare them
I want to pin myself up
Lay myself bare
Dissect away the aggression
And show them
Every single thing

the smell the taste the fear the head drop the piss in the night when your insides scream no body stuck to the floor head sinking through to downstairs spinning scared sweating heaving nose bleeding pins and needles everywhere inside outside no gentle confusion ugly black red bile snot puke shit blood skin pus powder dust sink so many hours at the sink why is nobody there why is nobody here

Ah. But it is all too much for them
The light plays on me

I am more than dust
Though to dust I will return.

Drill

The humming bird
Drills in my head
You little shit
Pitiable
Nothing
Victim
Nothing but your own fault
Little shit

Like I made her boots kick my door
Kick the soul out of my breath

The humming bird
Drills in my head
You little shit

day month year
second minute hour

My shoulders buckle
Absorb every word
Deep in my bones
Not the soft curve of a poem
The sharp edge
Of erosion
Instant syllables
Like gunfire
Shooting me down

bitten chewed spat
at out on

I close my eyes
Hold my head
Try to navigate the darkness
Don’t bite back
As long as I am missing
From myself
All is fine

(For them)

Shut up. Shut down. Survive.

Me
I am sick and tired
Prostituting myself
My dignity
To stay alive

I am sick and tired
Of the spiders in the splinter bed
Of the dreamless nights
No light
No vision of

more later when

The nails pierce his feet
I am out of blood
I live in a whisper and a daze
Graceless

The silence has worn a hole in my shoes
Every stride wears a hole in me

lonely lost lamentable

But I am bad
Bad for not seeing the loss of me as a gain

I would lick the acid huff the powder swallow the silver chase the dust
Just to have myself back

My
Self
Back

Like the wind from the east, I will scatter them before the enemy. I will show them my back, not my face on the day of their calamity.

Flower

I pick the flowers from my hand
As the light fades and nobody comes
The same song of stone and dust
Wraps around me in the hut
A false protection
From the storm

There are stones in the drain
Wires around the pipes
The powder washed away a thousand times
The sticky trail
Makes me gag

Remember
Remember

You missed fireworks night

Yes
Once and forever
I missed it

I steal a pencil from the church
My hands are palsied
I can't write
There is no electricity left inside to amplify
My signal
My words

I am nothing more than a body to be searched
A mouth to be silenced

I wish for the building to fall
Or for the world to stop
It is unlikely
Unlikely that anything I need will happen
I must scrape and bawl through endless days
To try and regain myself

Whatever she might be

I look across
The old couple huddle
Over their own puzzle
Quietly
Together
They smile and scratch out answers
They have each other
They have a reason
No time to waste peeling themselves away
Their own worse critics

I close my eyes
Hear the blue lights
From a thousand lives before
The time when I swallowed
And jumped

Somehow it is still better
That time

I wish that when you were there
I would have melted into rain
Dissolved into you
Safe
Warm
Kinder than the edge of the bench
Piercing my thighs

I splutter out my dictionary
Through snot and tears
deprivation dislocation degradation desperation dissociation deficient dead dead dead

The chills rush through me like a quiet moan
The sign for the looking glass shop
Long since emptied

Feel nothing even at the end of the day

The plastic cup won't hold this flood
The frozen cherries will not feed me

They fabricate lies in the middle room

I pick the flowers off my hand
As the light fades and nobody comes

My body nothing but a history of itself
Empty in the darkness.

Creation

I leave my book of letters
In the woods
An invisible whispering
For someone to find
I was here
Here
I am
Like a fallen leaf
It will be one hundred percent
Degradable
As
I am
A trail of candy dust
Infinite
Hitting
Head
On hand
Fists not strong enough
To break
Skull
Let
Brain surge
Out
Relentless rhythm
Impulsive
Precise
Like the storm
Shaking windows
Blowing over cold bare toes
A message
Bound to the attic room
Home and safe
So far away
The distance cannot be measured

I find the bones of a bike
Cycle barefoot through the rains and storms

The wheels emit a buzz bzz
Cold skin on piercing metal
In blood
The pain forgotten
In movement
A gentle conversation
Spoken through air and thought

I am the root
The bright morning star
The city has no need of sun or moon
To shine upon it
For the glory is its light

I smile
When the road ends
And my feet wear through
I will kneel at the start of creation.

Drained

There is a book about blood
On the shelf
Shelved veins
Pulses stamped
Hung up to dry
Like a flower strung
Upside down
Colour and fragrance
Drained
Ruined
It is a full circle
Coming back to
Bad
Black
Blood
The clock is stuck
At half past one
The clock is stuck
At half past one
Half
Past
Nothing
You wrap your beer in a napkin
As if I won’t see it or feel it on you
Tell me what the purpose of these steps is
He asks
They kill you
And they keep you alive
I reply
Now we are in the mirrored tea shop
Trying to solve riddles
Ridiculous
All so very
Ridiculous
We float on an upside down umbrella
Past the books
The words
The letters
The blood
Leave the man in the orange hat
With his napkin
The same napkins
The white building provides
All so very nice to hide the
Bad
Black
Blood

The clock is stuck
At half past nothing

The fable hymns the legend
As it chimes.

31

My bones
Scrape
Ache
Like
Dried
Vanilla
Rattling
Round
Empty
Bottle
I search
The
Sky
For
Butter
Salve
To
Solve
My
Spirit
All
Is dry
All
Is cold
The orange
Light
Thirty one
Lost
In webs
And
Funnels.

Ruined

I am sick
Sick and tired
Of this
Intervention
Detention
Fuzzy and frayed
Torn up
Ripped apart
No longer
No more
Less than
Shit
Fucking shit
On the nod
On the nod
At the peace bench
It is better for me
They say
But I,
I am sick and tired
Of this intervention
Detention
Fuzzy and frayed
Like my brain
My memory
I like it there
At the peace bench
The wind lifts a little of me away
The little me
The horses move
They understand
Time
Nothing more than grass chewed
Fingers chewed
Such a waste of
Time
Time
Gone
Like
I am
Gone
The quick rip of a plaster
On the bathroom step
How she laughed
Now she has my keys
But not the key to me
I will never give that away
I will never say another word
That will speak volumes
Shh
Secretly
Funny
So
Sick and tired
Fucking funny
The intervention
To raise my walls
Built them up stronger
Sharper to me
I will draw them around
Never let them be stolen away
From
Me
Again

I will rise
Make my feet upon some kind of path
I always do

But I,
I am in ruins
Ruined by this depression

This sick and tired
Intervention
Detention.

At Sea

The sun breaks through the clouds
It cannot reach me
I am stone. cold. metal

(but not)

No life in the pulse
No desire in the breath
No thought worth thinking

(but not)

I am warm inside
Arm pumped up pink like a birthday balloon
The house of friends closed
Boarded up against the storm

Sunday Procedures

The coat bends in the breeze
Like a flame in the hearth
hearth heart home
Hurt
No safe place to find
A yearning immeasurable
Feet stuck in clay
Sinking
Sinking
Further into the bad dream
Every waking hour
Lost and wasted
Wasted

Happier are those pierced by the sword than by hunger

How I wish for an end to come quickly
This slow hunger aches
Erodes my guts
Lets no muscle
No bone
No thought
Stay still
I cling to the church walls like a ballast
I am adrift in a ship with a sail of paper sheets
My life spilt overboard
Diluted in brine and breath
An unexplained body

A message lost in invisible ink
Help. Me. Out. Please
Please

False hope
Fat chance
Fuck all

I shiver
Pull the blanket of pebbles
Around my body
Over my head

The rain floods the splinter bed
Shh
Keep quiet
Let the waters rise

All can be lost
At sea.

Thunder

The white cat sits on the green hill
Outside the door
We cannot open
Not without their key
The one that jangles up the stairs
Night after night
So sleep becomes meagre pickings
Something craved
But stolen
Body and head hungry
For rest

I make my way up the moss steps
You cannot slide walking upwards
Inside I know the day will come
When Hatter rats me out

I stop in the arm of the nesting tree
The place where I threw the little blue bag
The bag that holds a secret
Of sorts

One day the secret feels safe
The next it fights back
I empty it into a bottle
Throw it away
Start again

Pennies dropping in the wasteland

My head spins
Guts drop
The sink came this time
I could barely hold the scissors and tape

Standing in the toilet
My hands shaking like a myth
Half laughing
Half crying

Do the right thing
Do the right thing

Each day starts where the other one ends

I want to erase it
Every minute
Let it explode like thunder on my skin.

Delightful

The stones wiggle underneath
The thoughts
The skin
Crafty
Insidious
Little worms
Green crickets
Clickety click
Do it
Don’t do it
Shut up shut up
It is all quite ridiculous
Pipes Alice
She has brushed her hair and polished her shoes
She has that trill back
Like
Maybe and rainbows
It is only time
We must tread it like water
She orders
Smile
Wave
Fight the tide
That thing that so easily pulls us
Down and under
That thing we don’t have a name for
The thing we stick to our skin
With tape and braces
We must rip it off
Flush it away like the bad cat
Who ran through the mirror
And turned the world upside down

Do not go out into the field, or walk on the road; for the enemy has a sword, terror is on every side.

Ah, but swords can be melted and terror;
Terror is nothing more than jam which can be wiped from the scones and devoured

Alice has quite the little flip of her pretty hair
The less we say the more we reveal
We must tell the Red Queen
More words
The right words
We will be greasily delightful
She declares

I look up
The sky is moving
Though time is not

Yes, I think
The right words
Are the key.

Sink

The body expels the bad gold
Like a mouth pushing out gravel

Everything has changed
But not

This brick balanced on the chest
Is an amalgam of past and present
A vacant breath

Skin is superficial
A hollow fence
That covers nothing
But all

The car has been harvested for parts
Not that we can drive
Not in this world

Rule number one
Never look like you are running

She asked for so little and gave so much

There is a hole in the feet
Again
The guts bubble and ache
Like cheated trash
Peppered and butchered
Left on benches and trees

It is hard to believe people get old

Hand pick your tweaker with a free candy bar

The body waited for the sink
Which never came
Like the kite working with the wind
Ties like tentacles
Supply it with air

She loved this place so much

Every bench an epitaph
For the use of everyone

Except there is no one left

Just one body
One breath
One pulse
Unnoticed
Ready to explode

A cut above
A cut below

Rest and be thankful
Never comes
Never comes.

Caller

The telephone rings high and happy
Sparks like water in a powder cup
Hello caller state your name

I do not have one they say
Time sticks like a stone in my throat
I sip some coffee. Think of the next move

We rest in silence both reluctant to go
Thank you she says and the telephone goes cold
I send them out to find her. I hope.

Bone Dead

The man on the radio
Says he doesn’t
Have
A
Suicidal bone
In
His
Body
I stop
And
Think
Hit my head
On the low beam of this
Attic
Trap
Maybe all my bones
Are
Itching
For
The
Jump
Swallow
Thud

I hit them

(my bones)

For an answer

(there is none)

We are under friendly fire
I whisper to
My
Dear

It’s not friendly
She croaks
Back

I go to the
Place
Where there
Are
Men
In
White
Shirts
And
Black
Trousers
I want to
Tell them
Tell them
Everything
But
I am
Daunted
Mute
Sick

Holding out
Holding on

We can’t decide

Love those spiders baby

Yes
They are fastidious
In the
Webs
They weave
Healthy and fat
Wrapped up in silver thread
So fine
It shines
And sings
Come into my parlour

The woman hums as she sweeps
The front
Of
Her
House
I would like a house
My house
To sweep
A front
To hum in

hummingbird hummingbird sing

Tell them
Tell them

So fucking loud
So fucking quiet

It doesn’t matter
Which
Voice
They
Will
Never
Hear

These are my bones
Telling you
Enough
Enough

Spiders
And
Bones
In
The
Bed

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face

Look
Upwards
I tell her
Close your eyes
Feel the light
How brilliant
It is
How intense

Sing my bones

This time will stop
By my hands
By my hands

See.

Bind

I place the silver
Humming Bird
Around
My
Neck
At the place where
The
Bus
Stopped

The blue sky of spring, let the humming birds sing

I think of her
Of the bind
Between us
Against us
The expectation
To mend
End
Like thunder
Splitting the world
In two
Us in two
Two little girls
Born
And
Lost
Drunk on dreams
That never come true
However hard
However hard

I spit on a tissue
Clean the dead screen
Hope
Hoping
If only I could feel you
Like I feel the yellow skin
Slowly peeling
Healing

We are not together now
We weave a circle of words
A basket
Connected
Apart
Bending pennies in the pews
As the sun turns

Our love falls
Through
The holes
Like time
Like dread
Dripping heavy into
My guts
That it is
Too late
Too late
That you are gone

No game with White Rabbit
This is the edge of the world

The people counter rests on the font
There are 46 of us left
Though we never come together

Hail Mary full of grace
Margaret May might rain

We pull trumps
Broken glass and stones
Waiting for a prophet
Old flowers and broken words resting in the dark

Ah, but an answer cannot come without a question

I walk with my eyes closed
Into the sun
Not that I am sleepy
The powder deals with that
The dread
Sick
Deep
I have lost you
I have lost you
Don’t think
Don’t think
Thought keeps time alive

Be calm
Be quiet
Be true

I write my story
On the sitting stone
It hurts

This is not a beach
It is a fore shore
In the other world
There was a wedding
They took a photo
The camera case flaps in the mud
Empty but for a name
Which means nothing now

The glass falls on the church floor
As if Jesus
Says
Enough

We say enough too
She whispers to me
Shaking

Yes, my Dear
Enough

Life eternal
Love immortal
Such a dreadful hope
And
Curse

My head is stuck
Love
The only thing I need to find
And
Give

But I am empty
Bad as a bruised rib
I feel sick
Deathly sick
Dragging glass over splintered skin
To make it be
And not

It is cold

How I wish we were
How I wish we were.

Bounty

The steps are a bounty
Of chaos
Broken glass
Potion bottle
I wrap them up
In leaves
Precious tender
Drink me
I laugh
As I climb
Skin aching burning
Against the desire to
Stop
Just
Fucking
Stop
Drink me
I laugh
As I climb
Like that will solve
The fucking problem
A horror story
Penny dreadful
Rolling off the pew
I walk in circles
I will never change
I will never change
Short change
Nothing spared
Penny
Dropping
I laugh
Try to run
But it is sinking mud
The bilge sticks to my trousers
I have no choice
No other place to go
Except the dead place
The white place
Near the other place
Where the young boy screams
Through his lunch time torture
His horror story
Kept behind bars

The pervert hangs signs on the pillars
Smile
You
Are beautiful
As beautiful as an oil canister
I have met you before
And brought you down

It’s you I should have burnt

I go to the church
The lady picks up her flowers
Smiles
Have some peace for today
She says

Like she knows
Knows more than those who
Continue

Sustain these binds of wire

I cannot drink oil
In the house
That keeps my Love safe

The flies buzz hungry for blood

I only give a drop
A hasty scrape

The sea laps against the pews
As the tiny blood falls
On her pretty blue dress
There is a taste
In our mouths
Of nothing
Of everything

Of that word we cannot say
In haste

That word
That word
We want so much

That no broken bottle
Or piece of glass will bring

We sit on the rocks
Wishing for it
Hoping for it

We know it will never come
Not to us.

Marked

I sweep her
Hair and tobacco
Out of the splinter bed
Not my bed
The red bed
A nest of sweet dreams
And stars
I had thirty minutes
To see it
Like a blink of
Who I was
Who I am
You can pretend you are walking
In the middle of the sea
She hoots
As the blue light chases
Who I was
Who I am
Crow fights apple on the mud
Flats
The flesh brown
Far past ripe
Like my secret flesh
Clever little holes
Like bullet marks
Peppering
arms hands face
The plane descends
With a quiet groan
One last pleasure
One last chance
To feel
Before the
Thud
Crash
You left your mark
I died
The wind wraps
Around the water bottle
As you pick up stones
I wipe the cherry liquor
Around my lips
salve solve salvation
The pitch fork moved
The smilers left their mark
White paint on the blue canister
Broken
Basket
Oil dripping out
The smell of my hair
Fixed to this bad place
Bubble gum and grease
sweat panic fury
Cherry coated in a smile

Let me out
Let me out
Let me be

The snakes weave around the bench
In a dance with the cockroaches
On a powder trip
A trip which melted wasted into my skin

He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace

I saw myself fall
Like the plane and apple
I saw my flesh
Fall off my bones
Pecked by crow
Like tender meat
I saw them eat me
Devour me
Kill me
But still
Still, I cling to the red bed
Follow the safety of the blue light
To an end
To the end

This is who I was
This is who I am.

Spent

There are spent cases
Around the church yard
A recess in the bones
Of stone
That keeps time
Concealed and ticking
I hold my head
On the edge
To keep from falling off
I am thirsty
But cannot move
The rain falls on
My coat
Mixes with the metal
Blood
I lick it up
Like milk
I need water
To keep myself alive
That is what they ask of me
Stay alive

(so we can kill you)

It can not be real life
Holding my chin
To let the air in
Like they must have done
Over and over
The starlings swirl and curl
Tuck themselves into the arc
Of their own story
For a moment
A small moment
I fall asleep on the rock
It is safe there
Safer
Than the white place
In which they
Lock me up
Lock me in
No proposal of an exit
- Or an end

We can not do this any more
I whisper to my Dear
She falls feint
Shot spent splintered
We walk across
The crushed bells
Gold and squinting
In the cement
We walk to the end
Shuffle on broken limbs

I hold her sticky fingers
And we trip a simple prayer
Over and over
Love me til I die
We heard it somewhere
Back when the world still was

We are not empty
Like they allege
We were
We are

They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web

We are unknown to ourselves
Tiny breaths
Tiny footfalls
Tiny bodies
Love me
Love me
Love me
Love me
Til I die

There are spent cases
Around the church yard
A recess in the bones
Of stone

We count our ribs
And rub the blood
Around our lips
A pretty place to kiss

Our hands defiled with blood
Our fingers with iniquity

I cannot tell you
That this is the end
My love
I cannot tell you
That we are
Spent

Every time we fall
We rise
The blood fades
The metal washes off
And we,
We keep breathing
No matter how hard
We wish
We wish

The penny rolls off the pew

Adders’ eggs and spiders webs
We survive it fucking all.

Inflammatory Response

Their power swarms
Unbidden
Around the edges
Of my existence
Frayed
Afraid
There is no place
Left to gather
To hide
To worship
Where are we
She asks
And asks
I do not know
I do not know
Like the blue ghost
At the altar
I float through life
And death
Alone
Watched through glass
Unloved
Unforgiven
A sickness so deep
I cannot sit still
I read the world
To stop the world
Thank you trees
For a place to kiss
They are so very pretty
The sharp little kisses
Red hot on flesh
The inflammatory response
Kicks in
(Again)
It really is an exact science
Falling
Warning
Steep drop
Dropping
No fucking kidding
No hillside to jump from
No water to drown in
Patches of mud
An endless path
Brown paper arrows
Worn down by shoes and feet
So tired
50’s and a metal tin
Sweet spilling out into
Pockets and tissues

All so very easy to go back
All so very hard to get back

There is no anchor to pin this to
Dress maker tacks
For a skirt I will never wear

Ah. But they do not tear my flesh
Not like the teeth of time
Chewed
Spat
Buried
Wasted

I want my time back
The theft hurts
Red hot

The piercer calls me sweetie
He wears a black hat
His voice is like the Cheshire Cat
Smiling
He fuck
Fuck
Fucks
With my head

For he shatters the doors of bronze, and cuts in two the bars of iron.

You have to have a tin
To bake the powder in
I create a little box
Which is the world
And ends the world

We are where we are I tell her
She shivers and spits the spare sweet off her gums
It rests bitter on her finger tips
On top of the stale blackberry juice
Prison is prison
Shh
Lie still
Close your head

We will never get home
Or rest in the red bed
It is not ours any more
I will tell you
I will tell you when it is time for this to end

Shh
Close your eyes
We are falling.

Grotesque

I have sweet on my lips
Five times five did nothing
I go back to the bottle
In the black bin
In the church
A place of rest
Sanctuary
A place of endings
And love
The powder is melted
Like sugar
Twisted up in cake mix
But not
It is something a little more grotesque
The toilet lid
The burger bar
The smell of fat and desperation
For what
Filth filth filthy
Wrapped in sweat
Which keeps me
Stuck stuck sticky
In this nightmare
It is all a circle
No end
No time to wake up
Or not
How sweet that would be
Like a blanket of earthy
Goodness
The sweet sweet taste of being nothing
Just a body
And a gentle machine
Beep beep beep
Shh
Everything’s ok
Everything’s ok
But it is not
We know
We know
The end
The conclusion
Once declared
Like a nonchalant cunt
I am not sobbing and contrite
Now I am
I am

My face
My face
Is the grotesque story
Of what was done
And what was not
I will carry it
To the end of something that will never come
It will mean everything
And nothing

It keeps me in this half life
When all I want is none

I bang my bones
Home
Home

But I can’t make home
Out of bruises
Out of everything that’s wrong.

Piercing

On the seventh day
The piercers rest
I pull the silver out
Turn it round
Count to three
Push it back in
I cradle the same
Story
In my hand
In the toilet
Behind the beach hut
Up the steps
See the girl fit
Claw at my skin
Her skin
Which is which
Search search searching
For what I do not know
(Or forget)
The door will not lock
Keep me safe
But I am locked up
Inside and out
Crushed
Buried
I knew it was bad
That everything would
Fall out
Fall apart
A wish
A rush
A rash
Of all the secret words
The pieces of my self
Piled up and tumbled down
The clues
Stolen and swallowed
Spewed up
I lose my voice
Asking why
They peer
Laugh
Smoke
Turn the good man away
I try to see him
From the fence
For help
Yes
For help
I have lost it
See
There is no purpose
To my being
No spirit
In my head
In my hand
Just the mark from the broken nail
On the fence
A trail of bruises
Hand foot knee
The place where the silver fell
See
Ah. But no one sees
In am in exile
From my self
Locked up
Inside and out

On the seventh day
The piercers rest
I pull the silver out
Turn it round
Count to three
Push it back in

Stuck stuck sticky
Like a spider
Trapped in the middle
With misery glue
No way forward
No way back
No sight of the apple tree
Where we would
Lay out and rest
Now
Now there is no home
No far away tree

See, he scatters
His lightening around him
And lowers the
Roots of the sea

The black horse draws
A circle in the sand
Round and round
And I scream
I scream.

The Pale Angel

The Pale Angel
Waits on the concrete steps
Part of me watches her
Part of me watches the fire
I am the girl
The girl who can survive
Anything
I am the woman
The woman who fell to Earth
There is a leaf
In the
Splinter
Bed
An old leaf that needs to be
Turned
I cannot decide
Is the angel me or her
Am I a fact or a fiction
We are so tired we barely care
The five pence follows me
toss turn spit
Rolls from the beach hut
To the filthy floor
Underneath the
Splinter
Bed
Stuck in my shoe
Easy
Going
As
Time
Brown horse
Blackberries thick and heavy
Flush a toilet
Turn a tap
What is really real
We are so tired we barely care
toss turn spit
The horse hair lies on the gravel path
The nail stands up on the broken bench
Like the boots
Full of blood
Ah, but you were so handsome
I would have walked forever
For
You
toss turn spit
Why can’t we go home
She asks
The girl
The woman
I don’t know
I don’t know if it is even there
If we are not
We are so tired we barely care
toss turn spit

The Pale Angel watches us
From the concrete steps
One day we must believe
That she will let us be
All thoughts must come true
All fires must be started
The world will turn again

We touch the curls
On the head of our Pale Angel
We cry in stone
In dust
In powder
The door so heavy to pull
We fear we will stay
Buried

There is nothing here but me
I say into the darkness
The Pale Angel smiles
Like a child
Like a mother
Ah, you see
Now you have found
Everything you need
She strokes my face
And leaves the steps

Me
The girl
The woman
Will scrape away the dust
Grain by grain
Piece by piece
Until the world is mine again.

Fall

I fall
I fall
From the violet spread
Of plane
Vapour
Onto the single wooden bed
Thud
Eaves
Dropping
Splinters of nights
Short Change
Sticking in my skin
Wake up Wake up
You cannot linger in your dreams
Empty your head
Clear your vision
To
Static
Dead
TV
Acceptable
The vacuous standard
The low bar
Of being
That gets
You
Out
Out
Fuck that
I think with a manipulative smile and wave
I trade myself in reluctantly
For the circles I have to re-run
For the circles I have to re-run re-run
I feel sick as the empty currency churns in my stomach
A slather of fat
Undigested and mean
Far from the sumptuous feast of silver and powder
That keeps me safe
Alive
We are so very far from that
Grey
Plain
Flat
So
So
Empty
No way forward
No way back
A hole without a ladder
Or Rabbit
We are stuck on the dead screen

Alice quietly asks
Where are we
Are we real
I don’t know I whisper
As my guts ache
And the colour drains from my skin
And from my dreams

We have a world of colour
Inside
More
Alice, Me, Rabbit and Hatter
The red bed
A pulse
Strong as a clock
Vibrantly climbing the stairs to midnight
Chiming vivaciously
The magic of night taking over from day
Buried dreams being resurrected on the final stroke

If only If only

So much further Alice
So much further
She does not cry
But how we ache
For the master
Key
The magic potion
The silver powder red bed
That once was real and now is barely a dream

I fall
I fall
From the violet spread
Of plane
Vapour
Onto the single wooden bed
Thud
Eaves
Dropping
Splinters of nights
Short Change
Sticking in my skin.

Again

Close your eyes Alice
We are not home
However hard we try
The crazy lady screams
I wish you were dead
(again)
All of this is
(again)
We stumble
Tumble
Into another room
Twelve
This time
Like the disciples
I am like Thomas
I certainly will not stand up
Follow
Hollow
Obediently
We are stuck in the attic
There are windows to a sky
We cannot reach
No clouds to cling on to
It is no blunder
Each room
Kills us
Methodically
Clinically
So we don’t care
Who wishes us dead
Because we are already
Dead
We don’t cringe
At the talking girls black finger nails
Her smell
Rancid
She touches the fruit
And leaves her teeth
On the table
There is no point in crying
No point in screaming
We will never get home
Home is not our reality any more
It is a mere digression in time and space
We hide the plastic bed clothes
Wrap our empty dreams up carefully
In fabric which smells
Strange
Like people have been here
But not been people

I whisper to Alice
Run
Leave me
I am nothing but a shell
I cannot give you jam or tea
I cannot give you anything
But she does not move
Her hair drops out
In my lap
I try to comfort her
She will not let me put her pretty little shoes
On
Her bare cold feet
We will die here together
That is how it is
That is how it was always meant to be

The red bed will never be ours
We will never rest
We will never
Be
Again.

More

Pay on Exit
Is what it says
On the sign
At the Multi-Storey
I smile
I have already paid
They stole my world
Two times over
There was no change
I throw my heart
In the bush
In the hope
That someone kind
Will find it
Keep it safe
And whisper
Magic words
To fill me up
Inside
The next place
The next bed
I am stepping
Out of
The
Bell
Jar
Only for a minute
Mind
Enough time
To wipe away
The stain
Of this bad place
These bad people
I look up
See the stars
The sisters
The planes
Feel the cold joy of
Movement
I am alive
Outside the fences
Whilst in the fences
I exist on the other side
Of the Mirror
Thriving in my own dimension
They hate that
They have no dreams
No intrigue
Dull as used paving
Paving that I will take
An axe to
And bury
I leave with no answers
I am the answer
That I already knew
The cold
The pure silver
Of the sky
Makes me shiver with possibility
They hate that
They hate that
I
Am
More

I have paid my time
But never traded in my soul

Lift up your eyes Alice
Soon we will be home
Where we will live
In our garden of
Simple beauty and
Quietness

All that we want
All that we need

More
Than they will ever know.

Blossom

I wipe lavender
Through my hair
Expecting it to
Blossom
Except I know
It won’t
It never will
I am in cement boots
Chained to the end
Of this story
I have never wanted to
I have never wanted to
So much
Except I know I know
I won’t
I never will
I am in cement boots
Chained to the end
Of this story
I sit in a room
Where my life is written
Where I feel nothing
More dead
Than the death they thought I created
I shouldn’t have
Let
The wolf through
The door
I shouldn’t have let
Anyone through
The door
Now I am nothing
I have no place
All I think of is the
Powder slippers
My redemption
My peace
The blossom of my flower
You chew my name
Like dead leaves
Spit it out
Into an end
I have to play
Over and fucking over
I cannot wait
I cannot wait
To
Be
Gone

I wipe lavender
Through my hair
Expecting it to
Blossom
Except I know
It won’t
It never will
I am in cement boots
Chained to the end
Of this story.

Disgust

Two magpies nod in their eternal dream
The pigeons on the fence
Fuck
I watch
Funny
How
There is life
Sitting on the fence
Of this death
I watch her mouth
Open
Food falling out
I can’t hide my disgust
I am sick before she is
The tomato soup
Coming back through her skin
Her hair
A strange sour odour
Thick as bad powder
Stuck in my cheeks
In the time
Before
Festering
On the right side of the mirror
I can’t sleep
Not without it
Under the pillow
The gun
The narcotic wad
My trousers are losing their grip
I pace and hold them up
They think I am
bad bad
I try not to cry
Never cry
Keep Alice and the red bed safe
She pouts and stamps her little feet
When are we going home
I don’t know I tell her
I don’t know
All we can hope
I say
Is that the magpies keep us in their dream
She lifts her chin
Dries her face
And we keep moving
Keep moving.

Shoot Out

I can’t find the words
I can’t find the right words
I can’t find any words
To describe
The Loss
The Pain
The Death
All I know is that when I hear your voice
My face becomes wet
We are so very far apart
I remember
I remember
The only time
He could close
His eyes
Was when he found her
But he was young
He still had time to rest
I am so tired
My heart sways sick
To every beat
Old
Finite
I doubt that moment of peace
Will ever come for me
The doubt
Bubbles scarlet bile
In my stomach
Like oil sat on water
Water at home
Where I am walking
Now
On the surface
Not quite absorbed
Running inky words
Falling through paper water
If I threw a match
It would spark and glow
Spark and glow
Like the tip of Uncle Bill’s rifle
How I wish he were here
To shoot me out
Shoot me up
He is in every feather
That falls
Every blackberry picked
Blood resting on fingers
Desperate to find the right words
Any words
Blast through a can
A window
A door
Find rabbit to push me up the hole
Out past evil days
To stop waking up sad
To stop waking up

I can’t find the words
I can’t find the right words
I can’t find any words

To describe
The Loss
The Pain
The Death

So very tired

All I want is this iron to be lifted
To breathe again

Wake up, O sleeper
Rise from the dead
Heaven is real
And you are not.

Wanting

The fly bleeds
In my hand
Like the blackberry
Blood
Carbon Monoxide
Sweetness
Next to the Multi-Storey
Where the white butterfly
Reaches its final hour
And spider tumbles down down
I throw out the tape
That held me together
I am gone
Like the charts and graphs
Left in the bin
Redundant
As I leave
I want
I want
All that I can’t have
I am fat
Gorged on misery
Watch the candy she says
Like I am nothing
I cannot say
I eat the candy because
I am not allowed life
Sugar has to do
Filthy berries and fallen flies
They burnt their houses
Made the news
It wasn’t the house I burnt
I want
I want
All they turned to ashes
I am gorged on the sugar of false reality
Like nectar drowning breath
Where they are good
And I am bad bad
I want
I want
All that I can’t have
My forehead is bronze
My thoughts frozen silver
Beyond feeling
Beyond being

The same feather falls from the sky
Each night
I share the ground
With the blackbird
Bat
And angry clouds
And
I want
I want

Sleep
Dreams
You
Me

Home

You wrapped the tree in powder
Burnt the leaves
And everyone
And I
I am left wanting.

Fear Is Not In Silver

I catch time in my hands
It doesn’t disappear
Quickly enough
She scrolls
Through her family
I watch
Over
Her shoulder
They stole me
Mine
The picture of myself
So strong before
I shuffle through days
Hospital corridors
Benches
Walls
Cardboard piss bottles
Chipped off murals
The wasp lingers around
The bus
Stop
I turn my back on it
It does not go away
There is so much dead skin in the air
It floats
In anticipation of
Something
One more today
Two more tomorrows
Ants in the sky
Birds underfoot
The vicar asks if I am ok
As I sit
As if at peace
Waiting to be received
Maybe I go
Just for her to ask
You know
The silence
Is neither fearless
Or serene
It is a false rock
Stuck in my belly
Waiting to be spewed
There is no kind face
To look at
To look for
I barely see mine
Me
Any more
She draws bridges and paths
A stick figure in a skirt
I want to scream
Enough Enough
Shut up Shut up
You are tripping up time -
And I do not wear a fucking skirt
Instead I nod false boulders
That is the trick
The lie
They think it’s real
But a life with no magic
No silence
Is very far from real
It is a death held in dandelion arms
minutes seconds hours
Drifting away
Lost
Summer’s last hoorah
You fucking idiot.

I have tested you in the furnace of affliction
See, I have refined you, though not as silver

Silver waits inside me
All around me in blue.

Normal Service

Thank you to all who continue to visit my space and leave comments - which make a bad deal better..

I hope soon that I will be able to return comments and read your pieces..

soon soon

we hope

Thank you for sticking with me

J :)

Red Line

I have red lines
On the bottom of my shoes
As the police car
Passes by
I sit on the
Junk bench
I want it
And I don’t
Like pieces
In a kaleidoscope
Trying to make pretty
Something fierce
Keeps me safe
Something that cries
Enough
The lines
The car
The junk
The bench
The powder
The cause
Effect
Solution
The wasp lingers
Around my hand
Chasing the spilt sugar
I know the way out
Always have done
Soon Soon
Me and Alice
Will be chasing south
Like a runaway train
Smile as broad
As a solitary track
We hope We hope
Keep quiet
Shh
Do not spill the secret
Filter every word and movement
Before the bad people
The jumpers
Sabotage
Wreck
And spoil
One throws up in the corridor
One looks to check you’re looking
We will not miss
We will not miss
This

The rain washes
Away
The red lines
The car is chasing
Someone else
I am down the road
Far away from that
Never will we double back
Never will I double back
Skinny men holding bruised arms
Shitting up fear in filthy toilets
Wired up
Racing
It must be gone
Blown away
Like Dorothy Gale
Gusted back to black and white
To what is safe
To what is real.

Bad Candy

Bad catches in the back of the throat
Like candy
You can taste it in the air
You wanted someone to watch you
Jump
Had a plan
Like we all do
I watch the moon
Like a street lamp
Falling
Behind
The trees
And the fences
Always fences
Another sentence has been served
Off with her head shouts the Red Queen
We are all stories
Our messages distinct
In some ways the same
We sit behind the same fence
The one outside
The ones inside are very different
They -
The ones who watch but do not know
Throw words
Like stones
Rude
Sullen
Less
Than
You cannot show the bruise of fury
Or the stones will come harder
They have the right to touch us
From the outside
To write down who has shared our beds
But we are not real
Not even stories
Just bad
Sour
Candy
I watch the clock backwards
It is real
This world on the other side of the mirror
More rational than
Existence on this side
There is no kitten to follow through
The fence
To get out
To pass every relentless test
The tea burns my stomach
It is so empty
It churns
Like minutes turning over
Without reason

Bad catches in the back of the throat
Like candy
You can taste it in the air.

Dream Space

I dreamed of a space
Where I could spend
My years
Nestled
In the light of your arms
If only I could have persuaded you to stay
To hear the water
Pour on stone
To have a vision of
More
Than the shot
In the neck
On the toilet floor

I dreamed of a space
Where I could spend
My years
Not awake
Not sleeping
But nestled in your chest
Gently breathing in
Blue

I dreamed of a space
Where I held your heart
And said
Enough

I dreamed of a space
Where we could play
With stories
And words
Nestled in the hammock
Under the apple tree
We would spend our
Years there
Turning gently grey
Smiling
Hand in hand
Warm
Cheek against cheek

I dreamed of a space
Where reality came
To an end
At the bottom of a plastic bag

I am poured out like water
My heart turned to wax

We play a silent tribute
In the shade
Light the candle
Warm our hands
Our cheeks
Our hearts

I dream of a space
Where we will spend
Our endless years
Smiling
Together
Strong as all our bones
Melted into one.

Wishes

I kiss my wishes silently
Under the covers
As the bell rings again
False alarm
As usual
No sleep
Silently wishing
In the dark
As usual
For this to be over
Although every wasted day
Makes me sick
Like empty birthday cake
They hold me
Choke hold
Me
Laugh
Whisper
Whittle me down to
Nothing
Small as Alice
After taking a sip and a bite
There is no cherry bakewell
Or jam sponge
No sweet elixir
Just a poison
That turns distraught
Into an empty smile
We must regulate
We must renounce
Who we are
At the door
So that our absence becomes unnoticed
As habitual as the abuse
As the words that cannot be spoken in reply
How I wish I had swallowed them
All
How I wish I had run
Now I am deeply distressed
Agitated
I cannot move under the weight of what is
I must accept it plainly
Plainly as a burnt face
I must smile
At the soul exterminators
As they strip me down
I kiss my wishes silently
Under the covers
How I wish
How I wish

The lips of the righteous know what is fitting
I wipe my hands clean as I enter the special room
Ready to be received
Into the flames.

Path

The baby in the pram
Has concrete eyes
She stares ahead
Dead against
Her dirty face
Knowing
What is ahead
Like the old woman
Who wipes her rheumatic hands
As if to wash
Away the words
What is
What is not
They offer me lemonade
Whilst I am shopping
For soap
I smile
The circle illuminated
Stark as yellow
Piss
Powder
Dust
Pay attention
A solution of lye and water
Well. You know.
Like we all know
Our paths
Scattered
Like bread crumbs
Collected in misery
Round and round
The Ginger Bread House
Lost
But not desperate enough to enter
Not yet
Although I would happily
Lie in the furnace
To stop my head from pounding
To keep down the vomit of reality
I am not allowed to spew
If I show myself they will strike me
Down
Down
Down
She whistles and pretends not to hear me
I don’t shout the real words
The words that matter
I won’t waste them
They are set in concrete
Like baby eyes
And worn hands
Hitched up and ready to run in my worn out trousers
Ready
Ready
Ready

I paid attention
To the wet kiss
But it left me empty
Sat in the pram
Rubbing my hands
Wishing
Wishing
Wishing
For the greatest moment of my life.

Label

I hide the name label
On my drink
When I go out
Out
But not
You know
They have labelled everything
My past
My future
My self
Which is real
But not
Me photographed
Against the white wall
In case
I run
You know
As if the pattern
On my face
Needs duplication
A label
As if when they find me
(As they always do)
They will quibble
Is that her
That is in the pattern too
Grab me
Take me back to the place
Which drives me berserk
You know
I try to say through thick powder lips
That I would not run if I was not chased
Like rabbit down the hole
I take a copy of my duplicate face
Drowned out by the
White wall
White walled
I am not going home
You know
There is no place to run
Just this endless wait
For nothing
It took two weeks for the banana skin to turn black
Like dead skin waiting to be cut off
Skin is easy to remove
These labels are heavy as nothing
Unmoveable
I trace them back
To the blue plastic glove in the sink
The powder
Waiting in my slippers
Not ruby
But magic enough to take me home

How I wish that it wouldn’t have been
How I wish that it would have been

How brave you were to chase your fine line
To three last lines
How brave you were to say enough
How brave you were to love me

The rats scurry in the raspberry bush
Beside the Multi-Storey.

First Day

On the second day
The birds wept
And the world fell
My head
Was tethered to the clouds
By a thread of gravity
A sense of being
Stuck
In a world
In which
I cannot draw breath
My shoes squeak
Along the sodden path
In my hand is salt
I wait
For the moment
At which to throw it
Salt and water
That is the solution
The plans of each falling
Pigeon and Crow
Directionless and All
They show me
How to stay and
How to leave
Amidst the collapse
Of air and water
The salt stings my skin
As I sweat
Ready
Ready
Ready
(But not yet)
I must abide
By the shadows of each minute
Cast upon my shoulder like
Stone
Brick dust
Sick dust
Bad dust
I hoist my black trousers
Dry my feet on the grass
Ready
Ready
Ready
To run
(But not yet)


On the third day
The world was silent
And my breath
Boomed within my skull
The salt and water
Flushed my thoughts
And I was empty
I had no shadow and no form

It smelt like rain
Grass chewed up in blood
The excitement filled me
Like the song of a thousand birds
A thousand minutes free
From this cement
You set me in
And I smile
I am
Ready
Ready
Ready.

Back

The tea rests in the Styrofoam
Quietly brewing
Flavour into liquid
Liquid into taste
The air around the cup
Flaps the napkin
Like a white sheet
Like the white sheets
In the last place
On the bed
Which wasn't quite mine
My bed is dismantled
The red wrapped in black plastic bags
The steel frame
The good silver
Lined up
Ready to be stowed
Kept away from me
I trip over my shoes
I trip over my shoes
So tired
As this bed absorbs me
Devours me
Steals me
A light in the eye
Every hour
All hours
But I do not cry
Not now
Tears make the key slip
And if I cannot hold the key
I cannot get out
Alice whispers in my ear
Don't drink it
Don't eat it
She has hitched her blue dress up
Ready to run
Ready to scuff her little black shoes
I listen to her
So hard
When this bed changes into the next bed
And the next bed changes to a different poison soaking into my skin
We must be ready to run
We must
We must
Ah, but Alice has taught me
To run
Is to sit quietly and sip the tea
To keep in hand the nuts and bolts
Ready to re-build
That which is stolen
That which is lost
I smile
I am glad that Alice is back
When she is with me
The solution is right
A fresh cup of tea
Seasoned with dandelion dust
Blown on the breeze.

Slugger

She glugs the orange drink
Wide as the kitchen hatch
Tiny mouth
Absorbing sugar
Like life
Like sun
And breath
I can't see past her
Or any of them
Who block the air
Block life
The sun
No matter what level I climb to
There are fences
All around
Cameras
Men in fluorescent jackets
Look
Smile
Tip Away
In a take out tea mug
You fucking jackass
Two days
Two days
And all is ruptured
The broken egg
In pieces
Under the tree
Under which I sit
When it is dry
When the noise
Bursts my head
When I only want the concrete
To see what I feel
As if that matters any more
Everything is just splendid
The smile
Big as the sun
Like a sword in the back
Of my head
Like tea with Alice and Hatter
Like sleep in the red bed
But not
I turn in circles
Around the square
Layers
Of The Multi-Storey
Multi Story
What to do
There is nothing
To do
And all to do
And I must
Find the sugar
Like the wooden bee
And spread the light
On my bones
Until
Until
This dream is over
And I can see
Beyond the big girl
Beyond the hatch
Over the fences
Up the tree
And out
Out into breathing
Out into life.

Dereliction

I stand on top of the multi-storey
Multi Story
At home in my derelict mind
I have no apologies left
It is my fault
Always
All ways
No apologies
Can be written or posted
I smile at the woman I was as she passes me by
The arm explodes (again)
I can heal the skin
I cannot take out what is inside
Multi Story
I smile
Like a silver lining
In a box
About my size
Fuck up Fuck up
Always
All ways
There is no way to fix
What is stuck inside
What is not inside
The dereliction is so heavy
My head falls
Locked
Looking for an answer that does not exist
Run Jump
There is no third way
No safe way
To soothe the silver
No powder to medicate
The loss
I will never get home
I will never get home
Not to Alice
Or the red bed
Never
It is even lost inside my head
I stand on top of the multi-storey
Multi Story
The fences
They are meant to keep me safe
Funny I think
How they tip the scales
There is no end line
No last word
No letter
No mark
For the end that is coming
I cannot wrap it up
And tie it with balloons
What they have done to save me
Has killed me

I search the storeys
And the stories
And I feel nothing
Nothing
Lost in my derelict mind.

Dream Bones

I lie down but I do not dream
My dreams are in tatters
My life dust
The cloud bones
Hang like a knife in the blue sky
Ready to fall
To cut through the fences
The pretense of safe
Safe safe this is not safe
Cries Alice
At home in the red bed
The place I cannot think of
In case my heart stops
Stops stops I am stopped
Piggy's dream is to run a burger van
I smile as her fat fingers
Clutch the phone
All day every day
It is a fitting dream
Bully's dream is to be at the washing machine first
She stops the button
A smooth traverse from sofa to laundry room
Quick quick quicker
Thank she asks little girl to make her tea
All day every day
Little girl mother
Scuttles down the corridor in her pink plastic shoes
Always smiling
I wonder if her children do
I sigh
I do not understand
The rules within the rules
Our system within their system
In which I am stuck invisible unknown
I need Alice to solve the riddles
She is in the safe place unreachable
Where the good woman
Places the broken bird on the vicarage wall
And hopes that it will heal
My head is in knots
Too many butterflies fall from the sky
Land in my children's bed
Except I am not a child
It is the role assigned
To sieze power
To sieze me
Every cloud bone and broken bird
Crushes my spine
Crushes my soul
Squeezes my breath
And I wish
I wish
I wish they had left me for dead.

Milton Keynes Library

Dear All

Thank you so much for keeping reading and encouraging me - i am on my maiden voyage to MK library.

Not sure how often i will get here but wanted to wave hello and say thank you and thinking of you

j x

One Shot

You came to visit me in a strange land
Rooted around the good night tree
You rubbed my hips
They ache
From the tiny ball I sleep in
Curled up like a question mark
Dreading morning
When nothing comes
And stays
And stays
Once you handed me the gun
Said to pull the trigger
We were too old
You left
I am even older
Your stains on my face
My skin
But it was better then
Even though you left
I slept on my own floor curled up like a question mark
The floor I lie on
Is not mine
Not yours
It smells of so much loss
I wander in and out the dark room
Lost
You are in the dread dreams
That make my hips ache
Bones ache
A hapless apple knocking on my head

You came to visit me in a strange land
Rooted around the good night tree
You rubbed my hips
They ache
You hand me the gun
Once more
The cold steel brings you back
Your delinquent smile
And I want you
And I hate you

I pop the bullets
Line them in a row
Lie back under the good night tree
And wait for a better dream to come.

Stench

They gave me a dead TV
No picture
Like I am dead
Now
No picture
No end
I know I know
Every time the bile rises indignantly in the back of my throat
2 a.m. in the stinking room
Hot mesh trapped locked in
Spitting in a sink that holds no water
Like a plane sink
Overused on a long flight
Except this sink is static
No escape from the stench
Of the last girl
Of reality
I dream in sweat
My hair grey
My jacket cut up and lost
It hangs redundantly on the back of the stained chair
I need no jacket
I cannot go out
I am gone
Dead
Static
The sweetly manipulative girl eats
Always eats
Every tine of fork scraping
Teeth scrape gulp scrape gulp teeth scrape
Bulging mouth
A mess of food and spit
Open close open close
I am not hungry she whines
She is always hungry
As if food is her home
And the fork her ruby slippers
The bulk of her flab rattles all our plates
It is all I can bear to sit and swallow
The bilge and the bile
I keep my eyes down
Always down
Too foul to look up even for a second
This will never end
Like TV static
Over and over
Relentless
Painful
Chaos
Drowning sinking burning
The pictures in my head
The beauty of words
Falling down the filthy toilet
In the filthy room
In the filthy place
So very far from home.

Cuckoo

I walk in the rain
Get a rhythm where it is not about
Home
Except it is all about home
(Not)
Feeling it
Seeing it
Being it
If it reaches my head
Home
Like a weight pulled upwards
My steps will crumble
Lose traction
Trip on the slipperiness of misery
Tired as nuclear dust
Not the dust I know -
The dust I can sweep up and put back together again
The birds sing at night
When the light falls in the dark room
A tortuous call
You cannot dream you cannot dream
I think of Bird Man
He'll be wearing his pink tee shirt pale blue jumper
His face white and quiet
A soft line of a smile walking in the rain
Understanding
Home
I walk in circles
The rain gently flowing like my feet
Cuckoo spit garbage on the lavender bush
Like pollution on my skin all around me
It is imperative
To keep moving
To keep moving
Home

It makes sense now
The patterns and lines
The circles and time
The smooth kiss of a trach-line
One clean try
Enough.

I walk in the rain
Get a rhythm where it is not about
Home
Except it is all
All about home.

As if by Magic

I catch a rose petal
Call it silver
Put it in a box
With my red heart
And space for words
Ready to be pulled like a magic scarf

J-Words

J is sorry not to be able to send letters to my friends. I cannot get out to buy stamps as yet and still can’t email.

~Dearest Annell…I miss our letters and pictures of Beau. I have changed wards. My sister has the new address – I also have to use my ‘official’ name. I think of you in your studio in Taos and send you much love. Alice is keeping me safe.

~Dear Robin (Old Egg)…thank you for the cards and love…have no fear I am not easily swayed and have no intention of picking up bad habits…I hope you are still telling the story of Ahu…

~Dear Ann (Bunny Girl)…thank you for the Maelstrom…It passed customs (nobody understands words so there was no trouble). My sister read the last email you sent before I came here. It sang like a bell. I will indeed pretend…reach the final step…and find my recovery…I think it’s always been there waiting to be found…thank you.

~Dear Amy (Sharp Little Pencil)…thank you for your letters and pictures. They always make me : )   I hope the letter reached you.

~Dear Kim…I hope you are all well…I miss the color of your words and pictures…thank you for your thoughts…I feel them…

~To anyone else who drops in…I miss you all and hope to be back and blogging soon.

Fly

The butterfly is fading
Her wings limp
Her colour flaccid
Once she held the blue of moon
White of clouds and dreams
She clings to me
Like a ghost
Her lines disappearing
Phantom like
In today's lost
Hours pale
Minutes suffocated yet frenzied
I sit under the tree
Try to find the rabbit hole
Quietly whisper
Alice Alice
But she's silent
All gone
I cannot write my book of colour
I cry
Secretly underneath the leaves
I cannot write my book of colour
When the pages are dark
Crumpled up in puzzles
Half chewed
Half done
Half left behind
Half gone
Bouncy balls on filthy carpets
Crayons painful as daggers to hold
Women lie on the floor
They become children
It is safer that way
Their limbs grow heavy
Their heads loll tired
Abandoned by the agility of life and breath
I breathe
Feel the rain
The leaves move
The sky breaking through cloud
Keep going keep going
The book of colour must be written
The butterfly must regain her wings
And fly
We must fly
High above the fences and carpets
Never will we stick to the floor
Waiting to be mended
We are not a puzzle chewed and spat on
We are
We are.

Lavender and Sugar

I found the lavender and the sugar
But I do not know which way the clock turns
I am in a room bound in leaves and wire
Darkness
No sky
No way out
I want my home screams Alice
I want my home
We are in the dark place
The dark place where time and life are stuck
In prison I cannot write myself out
My words will not dissolve the bars
Not like the powder dissolved me
I am cut off from her. From me
Not a clean cut
The slow serration
Plastic orange knife
We are so scared
So very scared
They chuckle darkly in the laundry room
Where real lives are hidden
In socks and dirty pockets
The life we want back
Self we want back
They stare at us through glass
Like a carnival clown
fortune teller evil silent laugh
Future etched in ticks and crosses
No words exchanged
No feelings measured
We dare not show them or the bars will get tighter
Light falls in my dark room like a surprise
Like it doesn't belong
Won't stay
I am stuck in tangled leaves and wires
Silently wedged in the piss stains and baby talk
I should have run
When I had somewhere to run to
Dreams don't come here
I tell Alice to go away
RUN RUN RUN
I found the lavender and the sugar
But I do not know which way the clock turns
Funny really-
How every second burns.

Fractured

The day starts with the bird falling
Its head fractured but still breathing
The solitary bee pollinates the wooden garden
The magic number was three
Now it is fifteen
The concrete and fences
Climbed the ladder
Over the top of consciousness
I walk past the spot the baby bird died
Brush my hand over the bush
It is soft
Like hair
Baby hair
Nestled safely around twigs
Like skin around bones
Determined to thrive
To remain undamaged
Stuck in the wooden garden
Slap slap wake up
I am wide awake
I must get back
Back to my world of mirrors
The right side of shiny
Tornadoes and red shoes
A rustle of happy
I will not walk on the flowers
Like ego and soul ground down in pestle and mortar
Only my hand has a legitimate claim
On that which is precious
On that which is me

The days ends after the bird has fallen
The killers still gabble on the roof
The solitary bee is still busy
bzz bzz
The bush is soft
My hands are busy
bzz bzz
Writing
Dreaming
All that is mended
All that is mine.

Lodged

In December I was in the red bed
Dreaming
Soft curls
And peppermint dreams
Now I am awake
But the world is not real
No Cheshire Cat smiles
No rainbows or magic flowers
We are lodged
Which means staying
stuck stuck sticky
No view
I left Alice
Safe
Along the way
I do not want her fingers
She scraped the concrete walls
I do not want her
To see
Belt chains
Keys
Windows
Meshed
Hear the alarms
The shouts
Door after door
Slam bang
shut shut
We are stuck here
On the other side are the bad men
I do not belong here
It is all such a terrible mistake
But the Red Queen cannot hear my cry
So my head stays on
Like concrete
I do not belong
I am property
Listed and ticked
The flowers are tired
Drained and forgotten
I do not remember
What I look like
Feel like
Smell like
This is all a terrible mistake
I whisper to Alice
Who waits safely in the red bed
I wish I could say I was tired
But I feel nothing at all

I am lodged
Which means staying
stuck stuck sticky
No view.

A Bientot

Dear All

Thank you for all you kindness and support these past years - personally and for my words..

I will keep you all with me as I venture out on this next stage of the journey..which unfortunately goes via a mental health unit in Milton Keynes..funny and unreal in many ways..but not fun..unfortunately..

I may not be able to blog but i shall be scribbling - thinking of survival guides..gentle encouragement..hopeful wishes..literary quizzes..Maori villages..brave words..gentle words..most importantly my friends..

Thank you Thank you

We will return..whisper Alice and J..

Until very soon

x

Shift

The shift is coming

My heart closes

Like an anchor

Around my words

Around my insides

The wolf

Is like a beam of light

Teeth shining

At the end

At the beginning

Tongue wet with spit

Ready to rip apart

The layers of our being

My being

Curious

How that has gone

My

Being

Swept away in the current

Not electric

BzzBzz

So gentle

Not water

ShhShh

So cool

Harsh

Pulse

Through head and veins

Blood

Red

Pulling me down

Pulling me down

Down

Down

Tree of cups

Bowl of flowers

Tea spoons on the window sill

I should not be here

It should not be going there

Home

Is lost

A luscious dream

Dead

Cold

Out of range

I wish for it

Have forgotten it -

So it can no longer be wished for

Be calm

Be still

I hold Alice

And whisper

Unsure

Unsteady

The shift is coming

My heart closes

Like an anchor

Around my words

Around my insides

We will endure

I tell her

We will endure.