my health, my health
your kingdom for my health.
I gritted my teeth for so long
that they have become sand,
and I am not a liar,
so I will not deny that I pray
for your body to be cystic,
anxious, cancerous, unappealing.
I don’t believe in god at all,
yet I clasp my hands to my face
like a raggedy Carmelite
cloistered in my living room.
at least I have a living room-
where do you imprison yourself?
you don’t believe in anything but
your own superiority.
hopefully that will be your
encrusted downfall,
an intellectual toaster
in the bath, as you scream
“this cannot happen to me!
I read Vonnegut!”
my anger has turned into a
hot spare tyre.
of course, I cannot
scream in Abbey National
or the Docklands arena
or the Blockbuster Video
like my Divine mother
once did.
I just swallow the burning.
the sand in my mouth helps.
Tag Archives: pain
body
deem only my body of use,
so I use it.
my rage has no outward path,
so I use it.
I make the marks of rage,
weave with it, the raffia thread
across and over my skin,
the only thing I have of use.
like Frida, like Sylvia.
only my body is of use.
so I decorate it with
black sheaths and red ribbons.
I cannot pick up my pen or paintbrush,
and my outward rage has
no use, no road.
but my body is my totem,
so they say,
a nationalised service.
I do not get to say what is wrong
or right.
so I decorate and mutilate,
pour water on this block of clay.
this will not end with an armless Venus.
it is not mine.
I tremble with the shining scissors,
and wonder why I never
comment on the ugliness of
Male shoes-
yet the shaved head of a woman
makes me Feel
apples
scarecrow,
you cruel bastard.
you never scared the birds away.
the little sparrows used to line up
on your tattered jacket sleeves
and they’d sing into your false ear.
they should have been frightened.
I had a field of fruit trees.
I put you in there, amongst
the bright green granny smiths.
they were mine. they were mine.
the birds weren’t interested, but
acid poured out of your rotting guts of straw
it burnt holes in my crops.
you did not do your job,
you cruel bastard.
you did not protect my apples at all.
apples are not supposed to bleed
but my neat orchard was broken
and awash with a clotted red river.
you were not the last, either.
I got better at making scarecrows
no thanks to cruel bastards
or bad fruit that stewed on my tongue.
I don’t need a cruel blue doll
like you around any more.
I have covered the orchard with electric nets.
the birds die, but they come anyway.
daughter
2017. excerpt from a song
my brother’s your other
I would have had your daughter
I’m not the tiny creature
you think I am
I’m the big bad wolf
incubus succubus
evil eagle pecking out your eyes
I could have stayed and laid
there forever with you
forever with you
you leak out of my eyes
like a traumatic head injury would
I could have stayed and laid
there forever with you
I don’t know what
I want from you
but I know I don’t
I don’t want you
prince
I used to think he was a prince,
and I wrote about him with diamonds
flowing from my pen.
I stared at him in wide eyed
wonder whilst he slept
in my bed, and I so wanted to
plant myself in his soil
and grow my smothering bindweed
around him.
I let the waves of
obsession and lust
wash over my heart,
and oh,
those waves were so
lovely for a time
(until they came crashing down
and I screamed for three
whole hours when I realised
he did not plan on falling in
love with me).
then he was gone and
I was powerless and
angry and consumed by
my need for his
royal validation.
“I hate you!
come back,”
I whispered into our letters,
and my pen flowed
not with diamonds but
poisoned well-water.
then time passed
and I grew and
flowered and blossomed and
shed my buds and became
an oak.
and
when he came back
(because that is what
always seems to happen),
he wasn’t a prince and
his hair wasn’t spun gold anymore.
he was just a man.
I wasn’t his arrow
and my burns had healed
no longer so susceptible to
drops of water and kisses.
I revelled in our connection
and nothing more.
I looked at him and he at me.
uncomplicated and free
and true in our humanity and our
normalcy and our faultery
and our fuck ups.
maybe now that I am a tree
and not a twining unwanted stem
I can be like this
and feel joy for its simplicity
instead of dissecting its
fragile meaning.
or maybe I will muse and see
that my desire for his turrets and towers
ebbs away with the moonlight
trickling down my thighs as
the lap of the warmest tide
goes out.
we shall see, little prince.
dew
I’m not there yet, but I will be soon.
my heart overflows with grace and gratefulness.
I suffer, surely.
but this humbles me
with a reward of
pure, composed contentment.
how could I
enjoy the dawn
so auroral,
argent and glittering with dew,
if never to live
in the mirthless night,
the sepulchral darkness?
if never to lift up my arms
in the unoiled sister-shackles
of pain, and furious fear?
the dawn comes,
and with it
the heavenliest sigh;
“freedom.”
garland of pearl 