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.