her eyes were mountains
floating in a sky unseen
to any other than she
her hair was wind
cheeks pale with snow
gaze mountain peaks

her footsteps stumbled
mind painting the streets
and she slipped away
caught in the wind
cheeks pale with snow
eyes worlds away

her face serene
patience spinning peace
into the thread of her scarf
tugged by the wind
cheeks pale with snow
eyes beautiful masks

her eyes were mountains
floating in a sky unseen
to any other than she

I love you grey and orange,

Brown earth and bonfire sparks

In those dark nights

Whispering to sleep

Breathing words

I miss you red and blue,

A gash in my front

Green-hearted jealousy

Watching you walk past

Faraway smiles

I hate you pale and yellow

Creamy scones and jam

Your head, your hair,

When you would turn up

Unexpectedly

I forgave you colours

Clear like crystal and sugar

Too many, too much, too fast

But it seems like forever

Goodbye

And it hurts

I remember your laughter;

I made a fool and I knew

Each laugh was covering a smile

And smiles were suns to us then

I remember your silence;

I listened to you listening

And our breathing reminded of life

Just another morning to go

I remember your poems,

I cherished them less at the time

Each word felt like trust in my mouth

And trust was nourishment enough

I remember your tears and darkness.

I didn't know how to help,

And you dying seemed like death

Of a world, of my world, of me

When I see you now and talking,

Friends, life, success, confidence,

I think to myself that maybe I never knew you

After all

as my fingers trace your marks,

Ghosts in ink on trees in paper

Pen and sharp and elegance tripping

Over itself, spilling

From that nib like tears of blood or

Love, written as letters;

Life and laughter and pain

As my eyes consume that portrait

Moments caught in oil and water

Brush-scrapes harsh in places, cutting

Pieces out, pointing

To those thoughts we hid and shed and

Shared, written as letters;

Life and laughter and pain

As my mind recalls your way;

Sharp, the blurs, and dark, the light,

Keys enthralled by silent fingers

Playing

Always and saying

Never

What was real and false and

Meant, written as letters;

Life and laughter and pain

Quand je les fais, tu me manques beaucoup.

She finds worth in scattered images,
Fleeting moments brushed on glass
With a soft brush, of horse's hair,
In a quick breath
And it fades

She seeks worth in a stumbling system
Holding candles above her head
With eyes shut, flame burning bright,
Though windswept
And she tires

She lost worth out among those hills
The green-grey moor in her mind
With a bare wind, cold and white,
Thriving lungs
And sockets

she finds life

Worthy of a grimace,

Lips pulled back

And teeth, sharp, staring

From inside her

She finds life,

Crawling on her belly,

Hackles up

And hair a mane that shrouds her

She finds life

Sifting in the ashes

Dirt and skin and feeling

At her fingertips

Wild like, inside her,

She finds life

cryptic and critical,

Covert and covered

With all of the layers of liars you've piled

Laying them one on the other around you

And making their mantle your cloak.

Compulsive, repulsive,

Insightful inciter,

A wilful menagerie of miscellany,

Mixing and merging the maudlin marauder

With shards of the mask that she broke.

Fragmented, augmented,

Revised, it compiles

To an unnatural sequence of notes,

Nicking and jarring, it steers through your hearing:

That vulgar, verbose way she spoke.

deprive me of sleep, 

why not take just a little,

The hours of darkness congealing

And shifting through the night:

Why not wake just a little? 

The ceiling blurs in the shadows

And dims with the faded light.

Deprive me of sanity,

Why not take just a little more,

Vision keeps merging their bodies now;

Welding arms to faces, faces to walls-

Why not take just a little more,

Send me over the edge, I had too much

To start with, too far to fall.

Deprive me of humanity- 

Why not take all of it;

This senseless casing still functions;

Brutally efficient, no regret-

Why not take all of it,

Bleed me dry, emotion, mind,

Heart, life, till nothing is left

So I lied, so
What if I'm always lying,
Hiding and twisting my face around
Some fragment of glass or truth,
And what if I lie to you, too,
Take what I want and leave the rest,
Would it matter? Who am I
In your mind?

So I lie, so
What if my lies grow stronger,
Seething and writhing and pulling down
Towers you're building from stone,
And what if my lies are truth, too,
Take what you like and bleed out the rest,
It won't matter, even in my
Pitiful life.

I am confident that

Time will fade the pain of love,

Dim

The blood it draws

Daily

From my side,

And I am assured that

Mine is all the blame.

I am certain that

Life will hurry past like cars,

Fill

Our peripheries

Daily

With harsh lights,

And I am not sure that

I will feel the pain.

I am convinced that

Lies will fill the chasm of my ribs

Warm

These blue, cold lips of mine

Daily

With fire to burn each sigh,

And I am altered by that

Every single day.

remind me of something, the sun shone

Down through its morning sky,

Piercing our lives:

Remind me of something, the concrete,

Harsh, unforgiving, stares

Up at our lives

With grey eyes.

Convince me of something, my mind can't

Be all that is waking this morning,

Choking in words:

Convince me of something, my life can't

Take control of this moment again, and

Corrupt it with words,

Pollute this new world.

Rewrite for me something, this sentence

Forming innately is clumsy,

Breaking the air-

Rewrite for me something, this pretence

Occurring lately is roughly

Splitting the air,

Stripping it bare.

and there I stood, under that white sky,

Looking through pools of grey and blue

With the rain washing the words from my mouth

And water filling my cupped hands

And the wind shaping me new.

And there I stand, under that dark sky,

Gazing at the silver shot through the blue

With the night washing the wounds from my heart

With stardust coating my face

And the wind shaping me new.

And there will I stand, under that pale sky,

Watching the day rise up into the blue

With the dawn washing yesterdays out of my mind

Holding the sunlight in my hands

And the wind shaping me new.

on a sad day the rain is yellow and sharp

And hollow hearts couldn't hide if they wanted.

The box snaps shut and life lies shattered,

Salt stinging like bees in my eyes,

Like that matters.

Look closer and smudges of pavement stare back

Softly they whisper their song to me

Your voice is pleading and rough

But I am not sure any more I believe

That perfect is even enough

Your smiles are cruel to my side
They slice, sunbeam sickles,
Innocent and trusting
Well, that's not true.
Your eyes brush past me,
Glue me to pretending,
Tricked me into trusting
Someone who's not you.

It makes me so sad, looking at you,
seeing your eyes start to fade into your skull
as though nothing's there but two

little stones: I can't believe
we came to this, yet come we did,
mashing and crushing life under our feet

Like the white berries on the bush
that we used to count, silently in our heads-
but that is done, I will not push

myself into your dying aura,
yellowy candlelight slowly bleeding out
into the darkness you weave under

your feet with each tiny step-
but no longer; you're striding boldy now,
gone is the tentative beauty, left

behind like a second skin and you are
fading behind that new face you wear
and in the midst of it all, your weakened heart

is crying out for what you used to know-
too late! You are gone, and the wind does not care
where you are, and where you go

when you are alone in your mind,
well I used to know - remember- but now
I will not venture to attempt to find

the girl I used to know among those tons
of secrets and silences which pile up in your side,
because she will not search either; you have won.

honey, I remember; I remember it so well
and I take it in my stride
that you have fallen further than before
and risen with those wings it gave you

honey, I remember; I can sense it still
the whispering of paper then, when we were not us
but we belonged and fought and wrote
until the pen dripped its tears and music

honey, I remember; I won't let it slip away
but number than the pain we felt,
rain on a cold face that doesn't care:
the silent laughter in those happy eyes of yours

honey, I remember; when all is said
we're done, that's fine
and you are smiling sharper than before
less blurred because we are not crying

honey, I remember; it made us who we are
and never will I tell you
treason though it is, I wish you were still hurting:
Your pain was mine and drew us closer

honey, I remember; I wonder if you do
but doubt clouds life now you have gone-
you're brighter, nearer, like the sun-
and empty halls echo with my feet

and I, stupidly, reached out my hand

Palm up, fingertips poised, to you.

And I, foolishly, reached through my mind,

Fought all the words, the colours, the lines.

And I, naively, bared my soul,

Raw and aching to your warm breath.

And I, madly, showed my heart,

The secrets and feelings I hid in the dark.

And you, silently, without a word,

Took all my paper secrets and hid them away.

And you, serenely, like a careless child,

Swept past and thought you'd pretend a while.

And you, secretly, behind the eyes that you showed

Slowly, like trust, well, you didn't feel at all:

And you, quietly, in your pale head

Of fairy tales and lies, you watched as I bled.

she runs and she hides,

Hither and thither in her maze,

Finding shelter in the ribs of the land

With darting eyes and breath

But a steady heartbeat.

She loses time,

Swirling and churning in her side,

Speaking only in the hush of the dunes

With mocking tones and smiles

But a steady pummelling.

She's getting tireder,

Over and over, she starts up again

Hiding behind words that taste grey in her mouth

With shudders in heart and limbs

And burning in teeth.

She's gone for us to find,

Swallowed and hollowed by her game,

Surviving and still passing for human on the outside,

With barely a remaining trace:

Inside she is chalk dust.

skin, translucent
gullies slice through flesh
pale silk draped over bones
cold and silent and deadly
the warning hush echoes around
a crescent moon flashes, white
once in the sea of lines
words fall

And I trembled
in the stone my heart
was sleeping.
To you I thought
I could go,
take, take,
and splutter on,
I couldn't go.

And I mumbled
in the ice, my words,
my thoughts, my words, my soul,
take, take,
and splutter on,
I couldn't go.
And I stopped:
you couldn't know.

I'm not sure I can do it
any more
my words skitter
breathlessly
across the paper
the paper skitters
crumpled
to the floor
my heart skitters
randomly
in my ribs
my thoughts skitter
meaningless
in my head
rebounding off their cranial prison
stifled
suffocated
desperate
and I blurt them out,
all wrong again

At last it's together again,
lying at my feet;
the pieces still sharp
fragments of peace
lying there in perfect sleep
and the little people
raise their pastel faces
to the noise:

She smashes them under her boots like toys.

He walks,
tall in a slouch,
black Elvis hair
like the music he always loved;
look how grown up he's become!
No more tracing-paper drawings
or muddy cheeks and knees.
Ducking his eyes,
hiding smoke behind a tree,
traces of the past touching his face like
shame and remembering-
then they go
and the shadows are back,
dark shapes that flit.
This change was too soon for me,
and it hit.

I knew there were differences but
it was so nice
to play pretend,
forgetting all games come to a point
where
they must end and
I didn't want it but I
warned you and
I wasn't sure quite what to do and
although it seems
silly that I've shut all my doors,
I'm just not that same little girl
any more.

Different, I thought you were
the new dawn,
clear pale air in my throat:
gulping down the clean white
and honey gold spinning cobwebs on
my skin, I thought
you were hope
that survived on the wing of a kite,
ribbons still flailing and
streaming along,
on its back I'd be safe,
wind carving my cheekbones and
whipping my hair
to a frenzy, I thought you were
a fortress of solitude,
you invited me in whilst I rebuilt
my own;
in a funny way, I thought you
were home.

Her face was a mask of porcelain as she stumbled out of line,
with the wind whipping shadows around her face
she tumbled out of line,
and a lark broke the sky with its morning trills,
echoing a warning around the hills,
a beacon from a fortress up on the hills,
clad in a cloak of cloud
as she moved beyond the line,

Her eyes wore a veil of secrecy as she fumbled with the catch,
gaze darting across the silent sea of faces, she
released the catch
and the rust-coloured scales sailed down to her feet,
glittering like gold-dust along the peat,
a frosting of fine powder coating the peat,
crushed by the rush of hard boots
as she broke apart the catch.

The uniforms all mingled as they marched towards their death,
with a single trail of mud in their wake
they went to meet their death,
silent hearts breathing out misty damp air,
counting each step with an unnoticed care,
trampling dirt underfoot with their cares,
harsh on a hazy horizon
as they hurried to face down their death.

Look at me, little creature,
I have cried how you have wept.
I took the monsters' freedom
while all the people slept.

Come with me, little creature,
breathe smoke in their eyes,
put them in-between the mirrors;
leave them there to die.

Bare your teeth, little creature,
snarl and bite and spit:
You may not conquer nature,
but you can surely anger it.

Live my lies, little creature,
follow in my steps;
we'll tame the crooked monsters
and visit where they've slept.

Die with me, little creature,
cocooned by my deceit,
silent as a whisper,
our last breath cheek-to-cheek.

Take them with you, darling,
hand to my hand, we sleep,
lain down in the shadows,
little creature beside me.

The crows cry out from inside,
wings poised and glistening oil-black.
In the corner I try not to hide.

Wings poised and glistening oil-black,
they snaffle their feathers and croak.
I lean out of reach of their snaps.

They snaffle their feathers and croak,
damp whispers escaping their beaks.
A dry mist coils round in my throat.

Damp whispers escaping their beaks,
like shadows of chattering knives,
that slash and sting, slick on my cheek

Like shadows of chattering knives,
the crows cry out from inside.