up, screaming

The night is divided into fifteen minute parcels
fits and spurts and the sensation
of falling, the blind terror of being lost in your own body,
of having nothing to catch you for a long moment
as you spiral
downward
like dead wood falling through water,
third person, high angle,
watching as the girl plummets, screaming
and the hero, the eleventh hour, the fifteenth minute comes
just as she crashes into a nothingness thick enough to break bones.

i hunger for you in the emptiest room

"I want to hear you say something dangerous, to touch on something more than the two of us, to turn these midnight whispers into plans (these words to shaking in the earth)."

Your days are your sonnets

This is the last night you will ever be young,
she said
as you barrelled headfirst after buses,
slipping through streets with your hands fisted in the fabric
of your top where it fell, buttons through worn holes,
and you trailed smoke and scarves and laughed at mirrors and tasted,
for the last time,
like someone you'd never really met,
and this was it this was
the ever-unfolding night
it was something bright and shameful and beautiful and you felt it,
running faster, as you slipped and skidded and swung
arms out
round lamp posts, free-wheeling circles and shapeless noise
this happiness, trailing after you like
scarves or smoke or messages on mirrors saying:
this is it, this is
everything that you will ever have to look back on
the last night you will laugh with your arms wide and your eyes open
and not feel ashamed.
This is the last night you will ever be young.
And you will fall through cities when they're fever-bright
and lie barefoot in the sun
that shines into your locked room
and you will dance to music you do not remember
because this is it, this is all, this is the end
of the beginning.

But you're running
and screaming
your final secrets
so you do not hear her,
but race on, happy, through the night.

Your monthly dose of disgrace

Vines on vines

You’ve yellowed since I saw you last.
Shrivelled and shrunken,
curled inward like heated paper,
the same tea-black shade.
You’re sour and shamed.
I can’t pretend
to understand what you pretend or why,
or tell when your laugh
is genuine and rising as opposed to pebble-water cold.
These things are codes
which I cannot consciously unravel.
I can merely twine myself
around you,
vines on vines,
choking out life with our hands clasped
tight in borrowed understanding.

I can tell when your heart’s up,
your heat’s up, your skin’s
pricked with sweat even if I never knew
the marks drawn dark across your
yellow-paper spine.
There’s an ocean between you.
A cavern of mildewed cold
where the small stones of your laughter tumble,
like the clink of held hands,
togethertogether,
towards the bottom.
Towards the beach in the bay where the sunlight’s stored,
paper-yellow and pebble-cold

where you’re frozen
squinting in the light of something long gone and smiling.
There’s an ocean.
Three feet of cotton and an eight hour night
which you stare at
and pray to
but cannot cross.

I'm here to lie and look beautiful

When I have children I will be
ancient beyond counting and wield infinite power
with unimaginable cruelty.
I will go on epic journeys in infernal machines
which spirit me away to the exotic lands that lie
at the other end of the motorway.

These journeys will be epic.

I will travel to the edges of infinity and return
with brightly coloured plastic parts which,
fitted together correctly,
make nothing like a car.
I will pretend that my life is as interesting
as their small scale makes it seem,

that I was once the sort of person who
woke up naked on foreign beaches
and ran faster than the police,
whose lives I held like spun glass in the cup of my hands
and who, along with everyone else, I spared
in my infinite mercy.

(On my more deluded days I clench
my fists into bitter balls as if to crush
the glass that isn't there.
I bite my nails to the quick and squeeze).

When I have children I will probably be declared
an unfit mother. The law
will see my ragged palms and hand
my babies to some girl, some smiling woman
with scraped-up hair and too much truth
who will betray them with the closed fist of her kindness.

scooters, vacation, fall

There's something in rushing out early
with your hair wet and your make up off,
dressed in the clothes you spent the night in.

Something in the way the creases concertina
round your joints, the folds of your favourite
positions. Something
in the smell of sweat gone sour and warm, of dirt
and home, the way they crumple
like brown leaves, brittled
by their winter between doors
on the bottom of a boot
creased tight in the corner of a checkered floor,
as you sweep out into the spring.

Open the windows.
Let the light rush in.

*

I will probably edit this later, and probably badger people as to whether "light" or "fools" works better in the last line. Until then, yay! Something new!

these are a few of my favourite things

possibly slightly less ancient than the others. hopefully.

Schnapps and Cigarettes

If you were to kiss me now,
I’d taste of schnapps and cigarettes –
a different brand, as if to mark
the distance desperation put between us.
Now that I’m out of my bracket,
my socio-cultural depth,
I feel the need
to cling and cry, be comforted
by tear-softened words about
the old haunts, the old times.
Thirty-eight days is far too long
to go without familiar whispers,
far too much time
spent lost among privileged, precocious faces
who know more than I’d ever dream.
(You are their best reflection,
their wisdom and refine without their air of superiority.
My blasphemies and ignorance endear you,
you see me as a different kind –
a sub-species, a Darwinian freak,
to be held and helped and guided to the lighthouse,
and there bathed in sun-like beams,
my imperfections burnt away
by the dazzling glare of infinite knowledge).

I’m minute-counting now.
I am pathetic.
But, should I taste sour and deformed,
I know you enough to bring me back,
a swimmer plucked from the flood
as the undertow threatens
to take me under, smother me
in unfamiliar waves and take away
all I ever hated; all that ever,
in the end,
gave me any definition.
I am an Ilson girl and through my veins
runs not the solitude of hillsides, stone and earth;
not the capital’s diseased yet vibrant beat,
but squalid concrete and sick-stains,
starving mutts and morning drunks,
paint stripper booze and Richmond tar.
I am an Ilson girl who knows big words,
who writes verse in crooked syllables and thrives
on her suburban contradictions.
You are the caffeine-coloured star I steer by,
my familiar waves
and in this storm of schnapps and cigarettes
I wait for you to pull me under.
I wait for your embrace.

modern romance

I was given the first line; I have no idea who wrote it originally.

Movie of the Week

They drove to market with ringing pockets
suit new-pressed
hair new-curled
gun new-loaded.
The car was slickly shiny, dark,
an insect before Beetles
in a prophetic shade of black.
Although the day has pressed itself
against our enthralled eyes
in shades of blue and bloody crimson
the wounded ones maintain
it was a tragedy:
Two star-cross’d lovers take the lives
of twenty cops and half a town.
They’re gunned down running
hand-in-hand
a grisly parody of cartoons
and the kind of sappy pictures
you show the kids on Saturdays
to keep them quiet while,
with ringing pockets,
you slip into the car.

trawling old files = rhythmic spam

"Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness. These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the Seers, ‘see no more visions!’ and to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions.’" - Isiah 30:8-11

I: Isiah’s Flares

We wander in the dark
in gravest silence
like broken notes we resonate.
We’re holding out our hearts
and in these vessels
Isiah’s oaths will detonate.
We spark like dying light
intent on seeing
our fading flares illuminate
in the day’s remains we fight
our shotgun’s violence
still bold enough to fascinate.

Like signs cut into sand
we basement creatures,
although concealed, are not erased.
We’re a sickness on this land,
a plague of answers
to questions which were never raised.
Our martyr on the pyre
has now been silenced,
cold ashes where his beacon blazed.
We’ve yet to find the fire
which formed our features
(like stone or steel we are engraved)
but soon we will emerge
in sunlight screaming
as one by one we learn our names.

II: No Man’s Light

There’s no romance in meteors,
those starlight suicides on which we swear our love.
They’re second hand celebrities as best,
their lust limited to spyglass specialists
whose huddled elite
repel all newer members.
A façade, an image, a bumbling cliché
which minimises mass appeal:
"The province of old men in fields."

There’s no romance in meteors,
those starlight suicides with which you grace your tongue,
but they’ve found their niche below ground level.
No stargazers with sightlines in the dark,
but a following of basement creatures
whose crooked eyes and crooked minds perceive
none other than a perfect blazon,
a badge of honour for their cause:
a star, which learns its light from no one,
brought low by a dead man’s law.

III: Fireworks

We slither through the leafmould and the cold November grey,
a denim throng that weaves its way
through rubble, corrugated ruins,
bearing putrid market fruit.
(A symbol of life already rotten
strangely fitting on this day,
this day we celebrate destruction).
The Alchemist with his home-made fuses,
his chemical compounds ripped from China,
has found our perfect emblem –
we’ve made ourselves some falling stars.
And in this autumn grey we share our knowledge,
our youthful lust for malattention,
our hunger for some unknown power
to demonstrate we’re of one mind,
that we can penetrate the sunlight,
tear this autumn grey apart.
We light the fuse with pride then cower,
hide behind obscene graffiti
asking for protection from the words we don’t believe.
Burrow down in grim excitement,
smoke and sparks and scattered seeds.
This proves that we can rival nature
make its order disappear;
exploding over many miles,
a raging storm which has no source,
a metaphor for silenced voices
a symphony for our discord.

All the coolest kids are pretentious cunts

(the youngest of the old, which means I wrote these...about a year ago? Oh god. Bully me a lot, mmkay?)

The Pilgrim Begs the Mountain

I cast it off, like a bad dream
I cast it off, a plea
to empty heavens and a hollow hope
that this wind, this bristling wind
that tears away my breath in angry clouds,
drags the words from my mouth like some
sick leech that gluts itself on ancient air
and offerings to the sky,
will take my words from me.
I beg for quiet minds,
for eyes that show nothing
of the lives reflected within their scattered
irises but which, like quiet water,
carp-filled pools of desperate calm,
will merely show the world’s reflection.
I watch my sickness seep into the hills,
draining like some infant stream
into obscurity, where it will be distilled,
preserved and handed out
to those who come here looking for gift or sullen curse
(either one’s an openness,
a voice that won’t be silenced,
a glance which cuts deeper than any penetrating stare).
Will my hatred be absorbed into the earth,
where grass grows crooked roots and trees
cast shattered shadows in penance for my wrongs?
Can I ask inanimate eternals
to suffer for my crimes?
Will the water travel backwards if it’s forced to pay my time?

I press my fingers to the dirt,
the soil sodden, thick with rain
and evident foreboding. I beg
to see these things as merely images,
as cells and clear chemical lines.
I do not want the shadows,
do not want the ghosts beneath their skins to
creep into my pores and nestle in my flesh
like the eggs of some malevolent worm.
My face is cool upon the rock,
its jagged edge’s imprint
pressed upon me and I (want,
hope, pray to) believe that it may take my
sickness from me, may cut away my stunted tongue
and leave me, clean and pure and empty,
with no more visions, no more songs.
I could be happy with illusions,
my life fulfilled by empty lines.
I only long to see the pictures,
no bloody fingerprints behind.
I cast it off, like a bad dream
I cast it off, a plea
to empty heavens and a hollow hope
that this wind, this bristling wind
that tears away my breath in angry clouds,
drags the words from my mouth like some
sick leech that gluts itself on ancient air
and offerings to the sky,
will take my words from me.
I beg for quiet minds,
for eyes that show nothing
of the lives reflected within their scattered
irises but which, like quiet water,
carp-filled pools of desperate calm,
will merely show the world’s reflection.
I watch my sickness seep into the hills,
draining like some infant stream
into obscurity, where it will be distilled,
preserved and handed out
to those who come here looking for gift or sullen curse
(either one’s an openness,
a voice that won’t be silenced,
a glance which cuts deeper than any penetrating stare).
Will my hatred be absorbed into the earth,
where grass grows crooked roots and trees
cast shattered shadows in penance for my wrongs?
Can I ask inanimate eternals
to suffer for my crimes?
Will the water travel backwards if it’s forced to pay my time?

I press my fingers to the dirt,
the soil sodden, thick with rain
and evident foreboding. I beg
to see these things as merely images,
as cells and clear chemical lines.
I do not want the shadows,
do not want the ghosts beneath there skins to
creep into my pores and nestle in my flesh
like the eggs of some malevolent worm.
My face is cool upon the rock,
its jagged edge’s imprint
pressed upon me and I (want,
hope, pray to) believe that it may take my
sickness from me, may cut away my stunted tongue
and leave me, clean and pure and empty,
with no more visions, no more songs.
I could be happy with illusions,
my life fulfilled by empty lines.
I only long to see the pictures,
no bloody fingerprints behind.


The Author of this Work Is Dead


The man who invented eternity
shares my sadistic sense of humour.
Why else would people look on eyes
desperate with the fever of dying,
on hands now hooks whose ravenous claws
bury themselves in flesh and beg for brief extension,
and proclaim them immortal?

The man who invented eternity
plays cruel jokes on embittered eyes,
tells aching souls embittered tales
of how a man's not dead if his name's still spoken.
But the whispered voices and scrawled, blotted words
of history will only say,
"The author of this work is dead -
you have no need to speak his name
He will never hear or recall
the prayers you offer in the night
while his sad music plays,
nor see the tears that scar your face,
those jewel-slick trails that stand in place
of words inadequate."

But the man who invented eternity
weaves sweeter lies, a false and fatal hope
for old eyes determined to take
every breath they battled for.
There's a gleam there, but it's not of life.
It's a sickness, their fever burns bright
as their shrivelled frames
grope clumsily towards immortality with
clutching, pleading fingers
(pale as bone and fragile as ash,
scorched by some internal fire
which drives their futile continuity)
and they screech like harpies hellbent on remembrance.

And the man who invented eternity
leans forward through the ages
and writes on the new-turned page of the present
those immortal words:
"The Author Of This Work Is Dead."

I haven't written anything original in ages. Bully me back into it, please.