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.