Tag Archives: writing

hole

I watched him die
slowly
six years,
three quarters of my little life
I watched my mother die
next to him
although her body did not decay.
I watched her
ripped apart by love
spit and stamped on by love
I watched her clean up
puddles of love’s vomit
heard her drown in it
wailing for release.
the cries of grief are not made of rocks or sand.

I watched my brother
my sister, die
over the years to come
and I watched myself die, too.
how could you expect us to live
after seeing what life can do?
the rancid stench of sickness
stuck heavy like petrol in our air
the honey of hell
dripping off our tongues.
and what could be done?
we could not ask
Mother for help
because she died that night
just after he turned into yellow stone
she died as his mind bled out his ear
as his eyes, still blinking, became foreign
she died as she fed him (dutifully)
raised us (dutifully)
cleaned him (dutifully)
stacked supermarket shelves (dutifully)
told everyone he was sick and dying (dutifully).
and so it was that she died,
dutifully.

all those little deaths will kill you,
eventually
and you only realise when you ask yourself to love
and there is nothing but a dried up hole
in your heart, where love is supposed to live.
then, the fleeting offer of degradation
seems prettier than the promise of forever.
“you fools don’t know that forever will be what kills you!”
screams the hole, the little mouth
such a loud voice for something so
extinct.

what if he dies those
long little deaths
before my eyes,
dragging me down to hell
as my father did to her?
and I, the fool in love
will I sit dutifully as he dissolves and churns, alone?
a whole life’s sacrifice for love,
only for him to die on me?
my
this psychology is so complex
withered roots tangle and kiss in my
little mouth of little deaths

learned the lesson that love is pain
love is death
love is grief and anguish
and put my theories to the test more than once
proved tout a fait
so suffer, screams the hole.
good reason dictates life is worth it,
suffering only a lesson
just neurons and nerves
but good reason cannot answer to
fear that feels bigger than all of existence
to pain that sets my face on fire,
turns m limbs into twigs and
my breath into acid.

but will you die on this hill, girl?
will you take that left fork
and cut off you arm
to stay alone, safe?
it’s what they all sing about
love, love, love.
and I know now that life is lovely
at the very least
and that good reason
it dictates love is not
always loss.
but I have to feel it
to believe it.

I have to open that gate
oil the rusty hinges
find a compass through the noise
and chatter of death,
let my feelings marry my reason.
life is not living if
controlled by fear, after all
and maybe it is a bird that I need
to string to my wrist
and guide me home.

mother

perhaps I should
go to bed earlier
I would then be
part of the well-rested masses
but
as I stand outside
two and a half hours
past midnight’s chimes
the icy wind biting
at my naked thighs
I look up to
my mother in the sky
waning gibbous, the
full three days gone
with the innocuous
sounds of suburbia
ringing in my ears
(a chirping bird
the wind
and a car door slamming
somewhere in the distance)
I know that this is
my time for being
no street lights shine
but I see such sights
of wonder and peace
and even as my hands
turn numb in the cold
I breathe the night air
and feel the balm
of home

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.

virtue

she extolled unto me these virtues of purity
jesus’s little namesake, the girl who carried
all of the world on her tiny shoulders
she fell in love with my father because he
took care of himself and loved his own company
she created me and poured me into her mould
of self-flagellation and crucifixed guilt
I take responsibility for my childhood actions
somehow still believing I could have
controlled what I understood at the tenderest age
be merciful and meek, Jesus said
lie down in the dirt and open your heart for
those who scorn and deride you
be quiet, content and suffer, he said to the child
with the imagination gifted from heaven
or risk burning and writhing in the pit of agony
for all eternity and more, sin sinner.
well all children’s stories have a moral to keep
I suppose I kept those ones especially close to my
little heart and kind, and let them reave me deeply
all of us are bad by nature of existence, my Sunday fathers told me
only the good Lord can save your sinner’s soul, little beauty.
meanwhile, my father stayed in his shed, dying
of cancerous ravages, tinkering with boiler parts
fixing his stereo, and considering the Kew steam
engines that came on every second Sunday.
God, what have you done?
what tortured women are you trying to create?
I escaped out of that adult world I inhabited
that world of emotional torment and suffering and fear
into my own internalised mind fantasy clutches
swirling and whirling on the badness of my character
well
at least I had my dolls and their hundreds of outfits
there were no adults in their world to fuck things up

trip

six months of an acid trip
life is full of revelations now
little epiphanies woven in
to my days
threads so glittering wind
through the halls and
stairwells, turning
cobwebs and dust into
pretty paper chains

“girl,” he says
looking up from the ground floor
“why are you always so
guilty?
let go of that conscience, girl”

I say fuck
I always had the words to
describe myself but
I placed them on the page like
newspaper cutouts
a ransom letter to myself
I never glued them
down, so they blew away
into the wind
and I shut my windows hoping for
sense

I sink into my trip
but I’m not in a daze anymore
not a passive witness
not a powerless princess by
the closed window willing
my hair to grow a little longer
this trip is mine now
I embrace the others
that join me
and kiss the ones that
leave me to soar

and I don’t feel
a stitch of remorse
or pain
or shame
not anymore, girl

caves

the water washes over me
the wave cleanses me
i was a shipwreck
but there is no
longer any driftwood
splitting from my keel
the currents are warm
rough
calm
exciting
new
old
all at once

i looked out onto
that bay and its
frostwhite-tipped waves
for so many
years, never really
knowing it at all
instead I preferred to stare
at the grotted river bank in
the next town
heaving corpses from
the mud with my bare
hands and bones
trying desperately to
bring them to life
what a thing
to see such an ocean from
my own window
to pass it no thought
other than a drink at
a beach cafe table
now and then in summer

what a thing that
something so known
could be so new
could be such an adventure
could be so full of
fear and magic

i praise mother earth
my own bay
may not be in any
tourist guides or
hiking holiday books,
but it is here
at my window
and it is mine
to explore,
from the lapping shallows
that kiss my feet and ankles
to the deep and dark
storm-waves that crash
between my breasts
to the doors and caves in dripping rocks
full of natural treasures
that I can discover

all of it
has been here
all along
and what a joy of luck
that only now
have I begun to see it

devotion

what do I remember?

not the nights I stayed in alone, for fear of encountering something worse outside.
not the nights I spent talking to empty, strange men online at four in the morning.
not the nights spent asking google the same panicked questions over and over again til my eyes blurred and the sun came up.

pain has a way of getting away from you. this is the brain protecting you, you see. childbirth hurts, a fucking LOT, but women do it all the time, repeatedly. no pain, no gain. was there e’er a truer cliché? no, probably not.

for all the nights of my life I’ve spent saddened, alone, anxious, defeated (and there’s been enough); recalling the pain now is dull and old, even only days later. but the nights I’ve spent screaming with laughter, forging friendships, exploring things I love, making even the tiniest of bonds with people sat next to me on creaky old couches? those nights are clear as pealing bells in my head, whether years or days or decades have passed. joy remains. always.

life is a pointless piece of shit, but that’s no reason to waste it. that’s no reason to cage myself in a four-walled prison of my own making. I stay awake late anyway; if I’m going to be tired, I might as well be fucking entertained.

I’m not a disease, I’m not a disorder, I’m not a diagnosis. sometimes things will be bad, because the brain gets tired, the brain goes wrong. but it always gets better. it ALWAYS gets better.

the inner monologue, the one that tells me I am too fat, too ugly, too stupid, too unstable, too broken. that voice is the disease. me; beautiful, strong, smart, singular. I am not those thoughts. I dare now to answer them with petulance rather than acceptance. I dare to tell myself that I’m wonderful; to offer myself the same love and devotion that I wish so often would come to me.

we must love ourselves. we must not neglect ourselves. we must take care of ourselves. one of the most wonderful aspects of humanity is sharing, communicating, bonding. but I alone inhabit this particular sack of mobile meat and bones, as you do yours. we are truly alone. if we cannot even fall back on our love of ourselves when everything around us turns to shit and the world lets us down, then where can we fall?

don’t fall into nothingness. embrace yourself and treat yourself with the kindness you readily offer to your lovers, your friends, your pets. you deserve it.