Spider vines that creep.
Under my skin, beneath the bone.
Touching you there, where I knew you’d feel something.
Underneath where the devil plays.
Where the intent whispers like a tongue on the breeze.
My witch’s familiar licks the blood from these fingers.
Sticky and sickly sweet.
Hunting you down.
Seeking revenge and reason for you turning my head.
And throbbing my blood.
With your idle care.
Now at the whim, of my idle hands.
Weighted, not by gravity.
Or the tear that hangs like lead on a golden cheek.
But pulled and suffocated by a lack of understanding.
A love you swept underneath those neatly placed rugs.
Pushed me to the back pages of the book you barely read.
Maddening words and itchy eyes.
The scratch on your heart you cannot itch.
You replace my thoughts, pull them away like calendar days.
Leaving me wandering in a limbo with ghosts as friends.
Familiar now, to those empty souls.
Who roam and moan in a void you will not listen to.
But the love is there, I saw it fly like a sparrow into your ribs.
It flutters madly, though you clipped its wings.
Locking it away, with your tiny golden key; kept under your tongue.
Behind all the masks on your face.
A world now sees only callousness and indifference.
But you are so different.
Underneath.
The noise was smothered by the night.
Lain down in god’s whisper.
So deep the mind fell.
Beyond fossilised creatures and secrets in tar.
The moon hummed in its milky orbit.
Delicious solitude descended.
A quietening of existence.
That is where I’ll find you.
Beyond the chaos and the trauma that litters these lives.
Your sanctuary for my soul.
A marbled palace adorned with tears and precious memories.
A temple I wish to practice our religion.
So light those candles and sing me to sleep.
With conflicting thoughts of tomorrow.
And your voice crawling over me.
That when the day blazes into this skin.
Purifying each sin.
The renewal within, is possible.
Only by your sweet vow.
To remain.
Cocooned in a love that had died.
Brought to life once more in this time.
In a moment, connected not by space or matter.
But by the golden dance of hope and perseverance.
I’m on the verge of ecstasy again.
So I swallow it down, keep it all in.
The smile I suffocate with my lips.
Breathing in the heady acceleration of this future.
Trapping it in amber.
No words come from you, yet I hear your voice.
Within, spinning spiderwebs of trust and delicate touches.
Heaving my ribs to make way for the love.
Expanding.
Melting this iceberg.
Though this moment won’t last.
As I feel the morning rays creep over the windowpane.
Threatening today.
And tomorrow you my choose to go away.
Now is all that matters.
It feels, as I collapse into forever.
Washed in your eyes, the drenching of starry hazel plumes.
Making me divine.
So I keep you in time, trapped like beauty.
Forever.
Mine.
Blood stained and bare.
My fingers smeared the colour of your lips.
Gripping, and clawing onto this love.
White knuckled, they’ve pulled at the loose threads.
Of a tragically imbalanced affection.
Unravelling the clothes of an emperor.
With an iron taste on the tongue.
And cold like the sun, I pull the feathers from my own wings.
Dropping them on the meandering path away from you.
Scratched by thorns, yet tied to the clouds.
Blinded by reason, and the light from surely an early death.
For the further I tread, the less I live.
Growing colder in your diminish glow.
And your indifference to our circumstance.
Never let me go.
The skin falling away, sucked at by mortality.
Surrounded by naysayers and sad eyes.
And all was black.
When the light began to prick apart the void.
A voice echoed.
Thundering down the halls in my soul.
It shook the dust from my memory.
Yet smelt of only yesterday and frangipani blooms.
The ones you insisted on, to mask the death that lingered.
A sorrow set the sparrow inside free it seems.
Clattering against the door, then out into the exhales of god.
You cannot kill a dream you say.
As I stand, entrenched and elated.
Seeing you there, a ghost on the threshold.
Not asking to remain in the cold and the darkness.
But to draw me out into the light.
You always pushed me on.
I want to peel back the pale ribs.
And let you take me on, inside and out.
Licking the walls of defiance, beating the death that they thought prevailed.
With those who won’t believe, they don’t have the eyes to see.
Or even contemplate the beautiful dream.
That is you and I.
In the seen, unseen.
This love is obscene.
How it builds to a waking dream.
Your hand in mine, as we cross the great divide.
Stepping into now as the cliffs crash below us.
I’ll be your aeroplane, your rocket to the moon.
Smear the sugar on my heart.
So numb to the taste of artificial sweetener.
You’re the real thing.
Familiar reflections dancing with the shadows.
All off stage, and now out of sight.
Those long forgotten poses, positions to the left and right.
Wanting it all, wanting only to be wrong.
Your eyes are devouring me and I swim in the stomach of your love.
Crushing bones and the tar that used to keep me together.
Swallow it down.
Change my blood to gasoline and set me on fire.
To light our way.
To drift away, into love once more.
Eclipsing the moon tonight.
Elements converging as the seasons split.
The yoke of God dripping down your lips.
Feed once more on this honesty.
As your fingers plunge into my heart.
We see clearly, through sea glass.
Kaleidoscopic colours dancing in my skin.
Soundless movement towards eternity.
Stretched out over the seabed.
This world is nothing without you.
Like the ocean without the waves.
Crest and churn in my soul as this love deepens.
As sugar-spun trust follows.
But never leave.
Never lie.
Tie your heart to this bow and let me slip inside again.
And let me taste you once again in this summer rain.
Breaths coming, like exhales from heaven.
Lapping at me like the tide of eternity.
I watch you dream.
Capturing the stillness, frozen in ice.
Long have we climbed.
Battling ourselves and the elements.
Shouting into the wind.
Now all around is still.
Silent like the first snow.
I taste you like that snowflake on my tongue.
Tasting of winter, and childhood memories of safety.
You whisper out, calling me into your dream.
Puffs of words escaping your precious lips.
Cracked open like an oyster.
The white hurries.
Ghosts vanish.
And you tell me, this was never a dream.
Abandoned in the world to greatness.
Whispers from divine lips.
Go seek the light in body.
Numbly I stumbled, feeling the way.
Watching as the darkness split apart.
The yoke of the world bled out.
Covering me in you.
Shake away those lives before.
Reframe a pleasant memory bubbling to your surface.
I was there with you at the beginning.
We intertwine, your hands in mine.
Stroking my heart as it fumbles to a maddening beat.
Slip inside and crumble like every lie.
Hold on to me, as if we breathe the same.
Hold on to me, as my heart is encased in yours.
Hold on. Just Hold on.
Quietly, lay me down.
Shutting out the light until the fears vibrate.
Onlookers shuffle, whispering like the clergy.
Greasy eyed and apathetic.
Coughing on incense and strings of my childhood.
God strokes me into calmness.
Tenderly, like a plant struggling to grow.
Needing the care.
I whisper grace, and slit the throat.
Letting the eyes glimmer in the dying light.
The ghosts shudder at the demise.
Fluttering ethereal remembering eyes.
The air turns foul, and I gasp into life.
Sucking in sweet alpine air.
Death spirits away such needless past.
Life offers such beautiful future.
Words tiptoe across my skin like those across a gravestone.
They fade in your light.
And you blink away the past.
Taking my hand.
SOFT LIKE A SIGH
Sleep speckles these eyes.
Leaving dreams like fingerprints on my eyelids.
I break that vision of you down, prismed and scattered.
Tasting like crystal.
When the fragrant sound of your voice touched me.
I unfurled like a bud awakening to the morning song.
The sheet of love hangs across my heart, pounding like the rain.
You step inside, feeling the walls to my lungs while you breathe new life in.
Breath like ocean spray and the hint of gladioli.
I mark this dream, for it’s the only place I can find you.
The only place I trust you to be there.
Collected and kept like a shell on a mantlepiece.
Placed for my own enjoyment, and a sign of a well-travelled bones.
Yet the possession bothers you not, for you rise like the moon in daytime.
Defiant against the sun.
Casting long reaching shadows that follow me throughout my day.
Cooling my skin where I touch upon them.
Touching part of your soul, those bits you let escape.
It must be a waking dream that haunts and carries me.
Keeping me contacted and close.
Cuddled against the consternation of being alive.
Being of being, with you so far away.
Beyond this place of darkness.
That covers us like oil.
Beyond my biggest weakness.
Far past the pain and toil.
A light will come on like surprise.
As the weapons start to rust.
And shades of love will cover those eyes.
While the agony fades to dust.
To err is human…
Forgiveness can be the most impossible. How many wrongs can twist inside a heart to make it a victim? How many grudges must we carry, pulling us down like gravity? A life led in ordinariness attracts its fair share of hurt and trauma. But to dwell in the oil, will only make the soul dark and heavy.
To forgive then, is what we must do. Here lie letters sent to those who can be forgiven, composed in all honesty. But it’s the forgetting which is the trickier part of healing. With a splattering of poetry to wash the wounds clean, these words hang like olive leaves on tough branches, soaked in blood from the scars that are still healing. Forgiving though, of course, makes us divine.
How do you not shake, with such worlds inside of you.
Looking into the orbs of your soul, I see galaxies forming.
My heart swims across those burnt hazel pools.
Breathing hydrogen and life, watching comets disappearing.
Love mirrors and love remains.
It flows inside our veins.
Showing up the places that are broken.
Unconditionally we cloak each other.
Covering the scars and bruises of memory.
Cloaked in rose kissed armour.
Light as angel sighs.
Defiant and enduring, like a kiss upon waking.
For love cannot be undone.
Each part of this love is a moment.
Strung together like rosary beads.
Blessed and cherished, but never betrayed.
Clutched close when the darkness threatens.
The light of our love gleams through those cracks.
Cracks which show where we pulled our pieces together.
And I will kiss each wound with a prayer.
Devouring a genesis, as our skin meets.
Collapsing in time.
Around our heads.
The flowers fall.
Crowning, yearning.
This history of touch.
Memory of want.
Speckles the skin.
Compressed by time.
Lost by lies.
Rusted and old now.
Tired, like a dream.
Once sold.
AUREOLE
Changes take you to the place.
The feelings, dressed in faith.
Little voices whispering your name in silent spaces.
You take me there.
Gripping my hand which shakes and flutters.
A heart, in flight like birds of paradise scratching the sky.
The only thing that fades is the darkness of the past.
The bright light I see in your eyes illuminates and disorientates.
An unknown, which used to creep like ghosts, now welcomes like a field of poppies.
Oh that heady take on life, blurring into our bones.
You come to rest on marbled floors.
An altar in which I can pray.
But you lift my hands and shake your head.
Kissing me with our new commandment.
The only religion is love.
You fall into my skin, changing the air I breathe.
Needing me, as I need you.
Worked from our souls rising.
A Perfect circle.
Taken from Everyday Miracles – out now
Sleep speckles these eyes.
Leaving dreams like fingerprints on my eyelids.
I break that vision of you down, prismed and scattered.
Tasting like crystal.
When the fragrant sound of your voice touched me.
I unfurled like a bud awakening to the morning song.
The sheet of love hangs across my heart, pounding like the rain.
You step inside, feeling the walls to my lungs while you breathe new life in.
Breath like ocean spray and the hint of gladioli.
I mark this dream, for it’s the only place I can find you.
The only place I trust you to be there.
Collected and kept like a shell on a mantlepiece.
Placed for my own enjoyment, and a sign of well-travelled bones.
Yet the possession bothers you not, for you rise like the moon in daytime.
Defiant against the sun.
Casting long reaching shadows that follow me throughout my day.
Cooling my skin where I touch upon them.
Touching part of your soul, those bits you let escape.
It must be a waking dream that haunts and carries me.
Keeping me contacted and close.
Cuddled against the consternation of being alive.
Being of being, with you so far away.
You hear me breathe.
But you cannot see.
Masked by the skin that makes me.
Inside, a love blooms and flowers.
Rising with the light I see in your eyes.
You are the pull of this tide.
Circling me with your lunar call.
My heart, the lonely hunter.
Howling and yearning for a touch.
For a kiss.
For a word that escapes in embraces.
A love so precious that makes the angels cry.
How you slip inside my mind like truth and temptation.
And you know the worth.
The war that was fought to earn such love.
The battlefield strewn with such bloody parts of this heart.
Now drying in the southern sun.
I want you to keep me forever.
Placed into the pocket of your soul.
Safe and secret.
Dripping with dewdrops of infinity.
Born out of our early morning birth.
I want you to hold tight, squeeze all the love from me.
Hold on to me, until there’s nothing left.
Stand in the middle of the wreckage.
The galaxy of regrets wash at your feet.
All open fields.
The tidal pull within you, feasting on black waves of idealism.
You bring your dreams to god.
Such food for a hungry beast.
The wind washes away, the dirt and decay of mountainous failure.
And who really cared. Who really cried over forgotten chances?
The road just diverged.
You detoured to this place where you can feel the grass under your feet.
Grounded.
Predisposed to deletion, to erase what was the stain and the dirt.
Such grand destructions.
But now it lies, bleached into your eyes.
Hung up in the gallery of your life.
And we now admire, devouring the stories of your past.
All parts that assimilated to the messiah of the meadow.
Here. Now. Living, breathing.
Being.
Havoc and Consequence 