A Poet's World

I sit in the crowded room only half listening

to the girl reading fragments of her life

from notebooks clutched in hands that

do not dare to admit they tremble.

My mind running away with itself,

a dandelion seed on the wind,

as is its wont as of late.

I feel rude, not giving away my full attention -

as if I have something better to do

or somewhere else to be.

But then I forget what impertinence can look like,

too at home with my own arrogance;

I am no sticky handed child touching things she ought not

to be handling, therefore I am blameless,

no - I am too busy

playing with the yellow reflection of the light

in my phone's dark screen;

my fingers dancing in the blind spot

where my optic nerve and the back

of my left eyeball meet.

My eyes are a Polaroid camera,

and every picture is out of focus.

I stare into the wall sconce lights of the bar,

marvel at the shifting Rorschach pictures

that emblazon themselves into my eyelids

in silence

when I blink.

Shifting shadows undulating like waves

in the breakwater.

I listen to the saxophone playing itself out

on a loop in the background.

I take in people's faces, see eyes

in various shades that are neither looking at me,

or for me.

Watch faces masquerade as solar prominences;

in the same instance I am reminded

that time is both infinite and limited,

much like the human mind,

or mine at least.

And I keep track of the seconds and minutes

by counting each pulse through my neck -

I can't hear my heart beat over the pounding

of the blood;

I do not think they are exactly

the same thing so do not

try to tell me

that they are.

A jolt of life, a red sine wave through carotid and jugular,

versus the soft blue hum of electricity - a bedside lamp

with the dimmer switch as low as it can go.

And days later,

under the fading light of a solstice sun,

the sky cracked open,

blood pouring from the wounds,

I count myself lucky.

That I am seen in both my light and darkness

and not just when each is absent from the other.

That I currently live in grey shadow,

perpetual potential,

just a few hard shakes away from a final form -

or so you might think.

Shield me from that which caused me to be,

so that I might actually become what is meant for me:

spectrum, not only of light and dark,

The clock speaks, but has no voice.

Ticks and tocks are dashes and dots -

Time sings in morse code telegraphing our lives

in parallel, simultaneous,

overlapping twenty two times a day.

You once made a joke,

something about not being able to read in analogue.

I counter that you can translate the language of me in ways

that no one else can.

The clock has hands, but does not touch.

At least not how you and I would feel it;

Time's fingers trail along my life lines, the same as yours;

hands unstitch the skin at the corner of my eyes -

trace crow's feet deep into my face

etching out angels or epitaphs -

depending what glasses I'm wearing today -

whilst your words kiss laughs into living almost to a fault;

my cheeks are tectonic plates and you are the earthquake.

The clock runs, but has no legs.

Time is a marathon I could not run

without you beside me,

behind me, pushing, spurring me on.

The clock pits daylight

against night time;

they each play in the shadows between Time's hands

whilst we watch the stars traverse heaven and earth -

with you, I don't know which way is up.

And I don't want to.

I could be anything, anywhere,

and it wouldn't matter.

But the clock watches, still.

Though, for once, it is finally silent.

Hands stopped at ten to two.

If I cared enough, now, to look,

I would swear Time was

finally

Duolingo asks me, in Spanish,

to translate the phrase,

"how many languages do you speak?"

Cuantas idiomas tu hablas?

And in that moment, I wonder.

How many languages does Love count as?

It cannot be one.

Surely.

The love between my mother and I

does not directly translate to the love I have

for my friends,

and that love does not exactly correlate

to the love I have for my siblings not by blood

but by choice,

and then there's the love I hold for him.

There are levels to the language;

in the same English,, when I say "I love you",

it does not always mean the same thing.

I will love my mother until the day I forget

the name she gave me;

I will love my friends until my breath

leaves my body, or until they do;

and there are no words to describe his -

bottle the sunlight, the sound of laughter and a kiss,

it's easier to put it that way.

Love as a language goes far too deep

to count it as just one tongue.

So when Duolingo asks me how many languages I speak,

I cannot really give it a straight answer,

There's English, French, Spanish -

the latter two are fragmented attempts at truth;

I would never yet declare myself fluent -

and Love, of course.

So technically it's three,

I am doom-scrolling. Again.

I would not call this pastime a "favourite"

of mine,

however the air miles run up by my fingers may

paint me a liar in this case.

Videos and memes flash like fireworks,

like stop signs, like the notifications from Fitbit

"it's time to get ready for bed"

that go swiftly ignored

when my attention is grabbed,

and my attention has been grabbed.

On my feed, a time lapse pops up.

It is of the life cycle of a sunflower;

seventy five days squashed into twenty three seconds

like ten heart beats can adequately capture the lifespan

of any living thing.

Seed placed in soil in perspex box gives perspective;

I realise that I've forgotten that everything that grows

grows down first: builds roots like roadways into the city

of their bodies - it's day 7 before the first signs of life

show above ground.

You have to get to day 50 before anything looks

remotely like a flower; before

head erupts from stem like a flag emerging, defiant,

from the battlefield -

I am here, I am.

Only recognisable between days 57 and 75 -

such a short space of time between the having become,

and the having been.

And I wonder, if at 29 years old, maybe I am still

just a seed, burrowing into warm soil.

The sky was bright today.

I wake, rise into the quiet of yet another

seagull symphony.

The joy of living close to the sea - but

I wouldn't change that.

Slink from bed to chair behind desk,

rub the dreams from the corners of my eyes:

I am half awake.

These days I feel like I am only ever half awake.

The sky was bright today.

Sun streamed in through the singular window

at the front of the house, South-South-East,

dripping down the walls;

the hand of a lover on my back.

A distraction. A temptress.

A desire. A want.

A need.

The sky was bright today

as I left the house.

Bright as iron,

spring cold as steel, a dagger in my chest

as I exhale.

My hair wet from the swim,

eyes itching from the chemicals,

brain not clocking out, clocking in

copious amounts of overtime, as it does.

Rises over love, and over hate

through the iron sky of my skull.

And the sun sets, red as rust,

as blood; she stains the sea

with her hands as the birds quieten

for another night that grows less long,

but no less dark. And I settle.

I settle into a semblance of

settling.

Sometimes I wonder if I am not

just

Tired tastes like a cold tea,

with no sugars when you really,

really needed one with two or three.

Tired feels like a cumulonimbus cloud;

you know, technically, it's basically weightless,

but the rain is coming and you aren't sure

whether to smile or scream.

Tired looks like all the clutter on my nightstand;

the books I've promised myself I'll read,

the games I really want to play - Tired

is the cannon fodder for the running joke.

How is it possible to be so full of everything

and know hollow the way hollow knows a bird's wings?

Tired is my brain crackling away,

a fire whose embers never quiet,

at 4am. Instead of sleep,

each half of my consciousness

plays shadow puppet charades on the wall

in the half light of the phone screen and the

unquietening flames,

whilst Stephen Fry speaks lullabies

to try to soothe my inner child.

He does not always talk of magic now,

myth is more often the story of choice -

at least for the moment.

She revels in the glow of the single star

that shines through the back door at 1am.

She thinks it's Jupiter, or Zeus - they're one in the same

after all. She cannot be bothered to reach for her phone

to check her star chart app, so she presumes she is correct.

The star, or planet, or God - whichever it is -

winks at her, blows kisses, makes her think for a second

that she has a chance with heaven (she doesn't;

heaven is far too far away, and besides,

that is a touch that would not make her feel the way

his does - this, she is sure, is true.)

In the grey dawn, she stretches, a spring uncoiling

only to snap straight back into its rigid place -

cog in machine eight hours a day, loose canon

when everyone is watching because that is her state of existing,

loved both because and despite;

she is a fighter. Scars scatter her body, her hands,

like stories and tales that go unread -

she tells them, she does,

but only when she thinks there's no one listening.

Her pounds of flesh more like stones

that go uncarved; she does not cut the silhouette

of an angel or an hourglass,

and logically she knows she has no time

to be weighed down by the technicalities of beauty,

but she is. More often than she would care to admit.

She knows people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks

but no one ever said anything about breaking bottles on stone.

And yet, despite, she knows love.

She does.

She knows it like blood knows the peaks and valleys

of her veins and arteries.

She knows it

like her ability to carry an entire world above her shoulders

and have nothing in her crack except a smile.

She knows love when it is written in his hand.

The world stares skywards, awaits inevitable.

A cosmic dance between two celestial lovers

known so well that we ourselves can trace its steps

across the galaxy.

And if I never again move from this island,

I will have seen ninety six rotations around the sun

before she meets the moon like this again,

before they coalesce with my being. Before fate

coincides once more over my head...

It's the only time a swathe of darkness

is met with wonder.

A deep shadow, cast a hundred and fifteen miles

wide:

if I were in Texas, I'd be attempting to translate

my English to birdsong, forcing my throat

to contort, spew forth a high pitched warble -

communicate that the world isn't ending.

That there's no reason to be frightened.

And then I remember my reference point

for fear, and pain, cannot be compared

to anyone or anything else's.

That my knowledge of darkness

may be different to a mockingbird's,

The water ripples

as if it is touched by rain,

though the sky is empty.

And she wears a smile

on just kissed pink lips -

a quiet thing.

Her heart is heavy at their departing,

with longing, with want, not need -

there is

a difference.

The sun stretches, yawns,

its mouth open wide enough to devour the world,

its arms spilling light like a gift

or an afterthought: a girl

so keen to be loved she would empty herself

of all that she is for it.

The waves throw up spray; a tempest,

a protest,

trying so hard to be a mirror the girl can use

in order to see herself clearly... but

she excavates herself looking for something

that was always there.

Brushes away, tenderly, at bones,

labels them the discovery of the century;

the epitome of a lifetime's worth of work,

but will not,

cannot,

name them her own.

For this is to admit to brokenness,

rather than to realise you can be whole alone.

Crows dance upon the crests of waves,

wet beaks and talons glint, shining like jet

in the winter morning.

Their wings delicate in their movements,

powerful in their purpose.

She names herself "full" as she stands there

hollow and gaping.

Watching the sun rise and wishing

Language is so full of nuance.

It is the Spider Man meme - each phrase

points to another

points to another:

A triad of meaning.

Here's an example:

when I say I miss you,

I mean the sky wouldn't have looked grey but blue

when I stared up into it earlier on

the way I gaze into you;

it means the rain would have been a warm kiss

instead of a cold poke, breath like smoke

on the wind except it's now April

and I thought things were supposed

to be getting warmer.

It means that I could be sitting in the dark

and there would be so much light

I still wouldn't be able to see.

And I know physics says the world spins

about a thousand miles an hour,

but when I'm with you it goes so much faster

and yet doesn't seem to move a muscle.

A held breath; the black queen dancing with the white king

as she moves into a check;

A suspended piano chord echoing to fill the empty space,

but embraces our bodies

as we do each other.

See, when I tell you you're an idiot,

I mean I love you.

When I tell you you're ridiculous,

I mean I love you.

When I tell you I love you,

I mean the world could be moving

a million miles a day

and the stars haven't got a hope in all that is holy

to sweep me off my feet,

to coax a smile from my cheeks,

It's my 10 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

I know I don't post much on Tumblr anymore, but that doesn't mean that my poems aren't being written and performed everywhere and anywhere. On Friday night I competed in a poetry slam in Edinburgh, my home city - the competition was fierce, the writing and performances were top notch and it really could have been anyone's to win... and I only went and won!

My anxiety has an appetite only

for my fingernails.

I fidget, rip, chew, spit out,

sometimes in a semi-trance I forget

what I'm eating, what it is that's eating

away at me

and I swallow.

Gulp down on so much air as if that

will sweeten the taste of my shame:

it doesn't.

I carve shallow graves into the flesh

of my thumbs,

always tell myself

"This time will be the last one,"

an inevitable lie told often but not

out of choice. At least, not always.

Too comforted by the dirty habit,

by the unintentional half-addiction -

I could stop if I wanted,

if I really, really wanted, but then

what would my fingers do?

It's a family business;

I watched my mother cut her teeth

on herself for years before I took up the trade.

But you can't coax a living out of clenching knuckles.

The cuticles are too tough to unlearn

the lessons I have taught them -

the lessons I myself was taught -

But maybe I've been looking at this all wrong.

Maybe I just need a new metaphor:

to stop seeing nails as nails and see them instead

as claws - my best weapon instead of my enemy;

or maybe they could be wing-tipping feathers,

so each touch would be softer

than just that of my well worn fingerprints, or

what if they were scales, an armoured gauntlet

ready to spring to my aid -

it's all keratin after all.

I imagine it could do multiple things

if only I'd let it.

I could be hard as nails

I trace the professions of your love

with trembling fingers:

your hand once lay here,

where mine does now.

Your pen danced its graceful steps

across this paper, left its mark for the ages.

And yet there are still moments

where ten years feel like yesterday.

I wonder if your skin remembers,

as mine does. If

there is any truth in the concept of telepathy,

like does your heart skip a beat when I think of you.

If, across all the untouchable distance of time,

you ever allow yourself to be in those moments

with me again...

in music rooms, or on kitchen floors,

or half-buried in snow in my garden,

stitching ourselves into the constellations,

intertwining our stories with ones that have gone untold

for millenia.

Of course ours were better.

I fear I was never much of a realist.

But then again, neither is love.

Love wasn't ever easy

or one dimensional.

No one ever said it would be, either.

I suppose I should be grateful that it isn't,

or at least,

that ours never was.

Sometimes I wish I could unpick our legends

from my life's tapestry,

but who would I have been without you?

How can I ever hope to forget,

when every winter evening sky is laced

with your breath, and the sound of your laugh?

How can I forget

It's NaPoWriMo time again. I'm posting all my poetry on my Instagram (same handle as here).