♡

I’ll be wearing my full skirt soon as Christmas

I come to you, hands parched and shoulders pinned to my ears,

Placing my finest for you

To glance down like you’re a bank clerk

And I’ve just asked for a loan I can’t afford.

I know that look because it’s how I look at him

Only through clouded glass, only when necessary.

He brings me, my keys, a bit of seaweed, radiant laughter

I look deeply into my shoes,

Into the pot, full roll, I’m intent on my vegetables.

I touch him through vegetables,

We both fail to thrive.

How small. How perfect.

Like the view from a tremendous distance -

You in that glass tank they tried to make you sleep in

Me rocking in and out of my skin

You were born in a cold sweat.

We speak only in sweat signals

Hot, sick tethers, biologically

Necessary. We breathe

Only in the garden. I place you

Down with the shovel, pick, coffee cup

Everything passes through your mouth

Dirt bound, all grasping. Your hands

Are sweet little turnips. Your hands

Are the architects of my destruction

Pulling down the curtains

To stuttering glances. My sweat

Will surely drown you. Your mouth

Never learned to close. You

Were never taught. But now

I planted a tree in your name. It bears

A single plum each season. It bears

Lemons fall from trees at my will. Wind

Laps at my boulderous thighs.

And all things seem smaller. But why diminish,

When you can brush up against the world as an equal

Refashion all creation. Ineffable forces tremble

Before this table, this poem. Witness

All that is natural, bent under my weight

In unrelenting tenderness. Part eternity,

Part sweat and a few nails —

I’ve crafted the chariot which will carry my soul.

Moss seeps through the cracks, its antennae drooping

before a beast, fearsome and magnificent,

Slouched in stained leggings.

It’s a fine day for world building.

The atmosphere warps around my bulk.

Suddenly

gradually

I started dreaming

in video games

and all raging

varieties of silken

hot spectacle

take me

from behind

All that I can

know for sure

is that I seem

to be a walking thing

but I don't want to walk

not without

a podcast

about a television show

not without a wetsuit

not without a spare tyre

I hunted and gathered

you some eggs

and Sunday mornings

in fulsome traffic

my car

off-gassing

directly

slow-acting

a sun tan skyline

Forgive me

I’m clinically

nostalgic

for 20th century

anxiety

they don't make it

like they used to

and all that

I know for sure

is that we are

shitting things

made of bits

of stars

Leave me

on the forest floor

plastic wrapped

and cushion soft

driving home in silence

as an exercise in thought mining

as an exercise in poetry writing

and the best line I could think of was

we’re all poems in the end

or would that be the beginning?

and you said there’s a poem in that

and I said yeah a bad one

I can’t write long poems because my world is very small

mostly it’s a kettle and a bed

but these distend and retract as required

sometimes over the kettle you’ll swell and scatter

like sugar through fingers

your timelines hatch chromatic

from that crystal that hangs in the window

and I want to know all of the people you were before

even the ones who creep into your sleep

just to embarrass you

like the one with all the hair gel

and the one with all the frills

I'll pluck them from your family album

and cradle them in my palms

I’ll say it’s okay

I know it feels bad right now

but this will all be a poem in the end

or it would be if I could capture them for you

so I could show you

their finest light

and beamingest smiles

neatest hair

first beer

first love

they’re someone’s favourite son

fastest run

funnest time

I’ll show you what I know

and I know that they were all the best people

they had to have been

because they led you here

Summer plums, half baked already

on their boughs

are begging to drip into our mouths

but the wind has lost its chime

today

All my teeth are trying to scream

I’m the dusty plastic plant

that you’re tired of watering

Look

Look at me like I can still breathe

Touch me as if I’m warm

Hold me as if I might be going somewhere,

someday

I want you to look at me

like that rare bird, who by chance, happened upon our hedge

that day

by chance I came across your face

in a crowd and it sang to me

at a frequency only I could hear

You

pluck my nerves like a harp

Let me shiver you

like the clouds when they’re so close

that we’re in them and you say

Look

Look at the clouds

there’s one shaped like you

as if you were a painting

by one of the old masters

Look

Look at you drifting

———

Frightened hands

Eating quiet words

Folded in between

Layers of butter and thickly

In looks across the table

Wide as night

Your breath through my hair like

You’re gorging your lungs out

I’m so big you can’t see me

Shrinking

Oh tell me how to look

As small as I feel oh god

Help me

I’ve fallen out of love with the sky

Forever

Taking cover

Never knowing when I’ll be pressed

Like a flower between pages

Under such heavy words

———

Soon you’ll be living

In the house right next to mine

And when I borrow a cup of sugar

You’ll say you love me for all time

Your cats will be cautiously fond of me

Like a father

I’ll feed them all the fish I catch

Soon I’ll be learning fishing

Soon I’ll be self sufficient

I’m knitting my own crossbow

And pickling my own poetry

And whittling my own company

So some day I can live in a cabin in the trees

But I will never do it

I know you like the finer things in life

Like electricity

And running water

And I like the finer things in life

Like you and me

Together

knowing that they few of perfect size

and unblemished exterior were selected for display and my heart aches so loudly in the cheese section

that a business man asks if I need any help or any food and god bless me

I am trying to decide what dish to cook,

the one that will bring you home and keep you there

but nothing profound happens in the supermarket

and window dressing your wares

waiting to be plucked

by somebody who’ll say

Who can say about the future?

Isn’t really living is it?

Setting your life like a scene

and waiting for characters to populate it.

That’s no way to spend Christmas

to remind us of our limitless potential

from the safety of our beds.

Infinite freedom,

tucked in tight

with crushing expectation.

You could be an astronaut.

You could be a poet.

Anyone can write a poem,

all you have to do

is take all that is most achingly beautiful,

vastly small,

and terrifyingly true,

and make it about you.

A poet is a black hole

with a heart of densest everything,

supermassive in your chest,

crushed like a can.

I want to grasp the universe

and paint with it a discount shadow.

I’ll take the Milky Way.

It’s the only way.

Poetry is the edge of space

and I’m a billionaire

in a private shuttle,

expelling carbon faster than the speed of light.

It’s the impatient toe tapping of the nuclear apocalypse,

it’s the heat death of your parents’ marriage,

it’s when you want to eat the clouds,

don’t force it.

Poetry is having a boner for the world

and then crying about it.

It’s that trickle down your body

when you’re getting kissed

or hope is draining out,

for one last time.

For the last time,

don’t forget that

you have a galaxy inside of you,

nobody can see.

You could be an astronaut,

metaphorically speaking,

you have limitless potential,

———

If you didn’t want to be worshipped

You shouldn’t have come when I prayed

You shouldn’t have appeared to me

In pink back light

Your face reflected like an omen

Like a sigh

Like a sign of better days to come

In a puddle of leaking dishwasher water

In the nightclub

If you didn’t want to see me on my knees

You should have chosen a form

Less appealing

To my every waking dream

Your hair shouldn’t curl my toes like that

Try to smile less like the sunlight on a spring morning

If it’s too much to bear

If I see too much in you

You probably should not have

Gone and existed like that

What a thing to do

In order to answer the question

Of what it is I am dreading

We first must establish

What is meant by the term dread

Seeping in nature

You don’t realise you’re numb

Until you’re dripping down your front

And the bottom has fallen out of your self concept

You really should have reinforced it

A cold but transitory state

I am not built for sterility

I am conscious of the pasta sauce on my shirt

The dirt under my skin

Prickling until it bursts

Common characteristics are

Waking up reluctantly

Like you kicked off the blanket

Accidentally

Waking up reluctant

Play acting civilities

Miming your errands

While the incessant fizzing

Rebuilds you from inside

Gradually

But like a freight train

Your chest is full of marbles now

Migrating to your legs

There’s a knocking on the door

It’s been getting louder

If only you had listened

It’s that fear of the invasion

Vulnerable soft bits

You left yourself open

Don’t say you weren’t warned

The smallest voice in your throat

Getting louder

And gagging

Invade yourself now

Overcome

Eat your fears

Lie down and take it

Everyone has to

Sooner or later

You’ll just have to do it

Shove yourself down

Just go to the dentist

Melt my body down

Wrap me up in formlessness

Give me dissolution

Crushed into the crowd

I’m a spilled drink at your feet

I’m the supermarket ghost

My body an unwilling host

Gold panning for meaning

My dream catcher’s full of nightmares

I can’t even feel my body

Just buy me some time please

Leave me to dissolve

I don’t want to be alone

But I can’t hold together

Leave me to dissolve

There go all my thoughts

Spinning down the sink

————

I found your heartbeat under your skin, under my palm, through our arms, a meandering stream, where our hearts meet, in dull harmonies, against the wind, through the window,

cigarette smoke from the neighbours house, on the air, between our lips, where our breath meets, in a singular haze, and I wondered how much of the air in this room was once ours?

I think I heard once, that the microbes in bread, match those on the hands, of it’s unique baker, like the bread is part them, and they are part bread, and I wonder how many microbes, that were once yours, live in me now?

And could I be killing bits of you, every time I drink too much, or I don’t eat enough? That probably isn’t true, but if that’s what I need to think, that looking after me, is really looking after you, then let’s allow it to be true