You cut my every morsel
Grip and pull it downwards 
My earlobes hang like lead 
When you visit 
Germs 

I’m not your safe space you know 
The place to go when it gets cold
I’m a person in here 
But you play your game 
Rip rip - then you laugh at me 

I don’t know if you know this 
But when you come 
I would swap everything in the world 
For you to leave
Me

That probably ignites another of your cackles doesn’t it
That rattles
In my vertebrae 
As this chest 
Weakens 

I want to say I’ll win 
Kick you 
But I am succumbing
To your 
Serum

1

Those fucking words won’t come 
Out under the melting tongue  

Spit your truth 
From the booth 

Wish I could 

2

Verse is stuck 
Blocked and chocked 

Dry lips 
No good 

I should 

3

Rhyme out  
Structure in  

Pop your mind 
Shoot the 

Shit 

-

I cannot configure 
This view 
Absent of you 

Time without
Punctuating commas 
Like this 

A routine  
Lunch or
Breakfast 

Dinner maybe 
To hold  
This moment  

The inevitability 
Of these 
Years 

Is their pace 
Day to 
Day 

All the while 
Held 
By this 

Just sit 
And eat
With me

I stand and wash in this syrup 
It is soft and yellow and gentle and kind 
Drip drip

I taste the golden tang 
Open my eyes and remind myself 
Sting sting  

It’s like the bath you washed me in 
The one I splashed in 
Luke warm

Now it comes down from above
Raining memories 
Drop drop 

Smoke sniffs up and out    
A deep inhale of mist for my longing lungs 
I pull and release 
Justified by the young gay souls
Smoking near 
In a bar I will visit only once  

It bellows from soft lips between thoughts  
Rises under me, from students
Who sip wine and spray black breath
What is my wish, if not these clouds  
To hug, to ground me
Here   

Who would I be without this yearn
To soak the air of its spell
By a waking mind ready to kneel 
To my vice of choice
And it’s wish to vanish 
Down my hollowing throat 

I pick life from the blackened earth 
A one pop pull and through 
With spikes green and an orange tube 
Now ascending, from the blue 

Her dry skin of ordinary touch 
And soft hands yet to feel 
Now clasp food the rain makes 
She intuitively knows its real 

But time will tell it’s story 
Slowly and begrudgingly so 
For the truth will bare it’s naked fact 
That food, it cannot grow 

Drugs and pills litter fields
In every square but this 
It’s rare to find your food grown 
From nature’s natural lips 

Maybe she’ll live to a greater age 
That knows not of this place 
Where only the elements of god bathe 
The ground with nourishing grace 

Yet she’ll have been here now, today
Just the once in her early youth 
To pick her dinner from sturdy ground  
Lived it’s glorious truth

Climbing the stairs 
Finding your seat 
I’m here  
A home for the evening 
The theatre of Lords 
Under floodlights 
The white ball swings 
And the clock ticks 
And the wind slips 
Between cracks in the seats 

The chase is on 
70 from 50 
To be out there 
Bearing the pressure 
Rising to expectation 
What if 
Those hopes of youth 
Had become truths 
What then?
Who then?

Dreams are just that 
Dreams.
Necessary 
Moments 
Of hope
My envy 
Recedes into gratitude 
For lost ambition 
Making way for love
And company 

As we scatter out of the ground 
Along the road 
Through the station 
And into the tube 
I pause 
My camera snaps 
And I am overcome   
Thankful the stars 
Aligned themselves 
Without my doing 

I find water in spring 
Beneath sands of the desert 
Where dry golden caps 
Protect rivers below 

Through the summer I plant 
Without care for the sun 
Seeds beneath the snow 
Hiding sparks yet to come   

In the autumn I find  
Silence in the city
Where songs of sirens
Rain through the streets
   
Under darkness in winter  
I live for the night  
And stroll with the foxes  
Until the rise of the day

And when I searched for hope 
She was everywhere 
And I smiled 
I could stop looking now

A thousand leaves 
Bristling in a bounty of air 
Gave outstretched shade
To a stranger 

Like fingers those thousand pieces clenched 
Became the familiar shape of her birth
A Fern 
My shelter from today 

Did she know   
Her destiny was not limited to her   
Solitary 
Self  

A search for the sun 
Once daunting, now complete
She was never really
Alone

Invisible to me 
It repeats
An endless cycle
My careless eye
Catches detail 
Without context 
Systems of humans 
Appear self made 
Will I care to notice 
They are not 

This strawberry leaf 
Droops like her sisters fruit 
Lightly weighing 
On her mothers arm 
Lipstick petals 
With pale green rims 
Enclose her jewel 
Now protected 
Like a child 
Held

This tree of birth 
Short and stocky 
Firm to the floor 
Pyramid shaped 
Celebrates hierarchy 
It’s top down approach 
By creating beauty 
From its order 
Strength 
From its system 

My ignorance 
Rarely connects 
What binds life here 
The beauty I notice 
Created by systems I miss   
Like strawberry's 
Made from leaves 
On a tree
I wander
By