January 2012
1 post
3 tags
Marjorie Matthews, 31
The dust of morning swirls in the toepath the dark’s fleeting detritus leads a gentle way to the warm grey of the city
A quarrel of branches go their separate ways pitched against the girders while witch white bark flakes away on the breaking breeze
Landing on the face of the earth in its sodden card tomb in its sodden down coat jeans and jumper and children’s pyjamas
A...
November 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Legacy
Stamp the moon dust off your boots at the door you had the world funnelled into stacks boxed and yours for a sticky price ending ninety nine nine nine nine recurring
hide the righteous bite and concentrate the cowardly sneer to be leveraged over dangerous down until it’s thick like leather and our teeth are blunted on the grass of the acid white field
you’ll be treacherous...
2 tags
813,881 words
Oop, hello ground it’s been a while you look well gritty and hard like I remember
good old ground we’ve always got on right? me and you
ground I promise I never forgot about you it’s why I thought we wouldn’t meet again
alas here we are toe-to-toe hold on a sec my heels want to say hello
oop, alright sky how you been? I just saw the floor and I’m...
October 2011
1 post
2 tags
My first break-up
It was an amicable split despite all your emotional blackmail n’all
I told you I couldn’t love you anymore
then we shared a packet of crisps
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
Tuesday day Tuesday night
But the crisp and cold
the shudder of the morning and the burn of burnt tea
But the smell of toothpaste And skitter of cereal
And then you say I love you But don’t stay to hear the answer
And then the day the bleak forgiving blue
And the indolent obstruction of everything in light
But then the dotted dark where it’s harder to hide
where the crisp and cold And the burn of burnt tea
Are...
June 2011
1 post
2 tags
Take a seat
We’ve stood here forever two dandelions two daffodils two happy yellow wellingtons ruling on the edge of this cliff
keeping the waves in order counting them in as we count them out while they dutifully shave away the rock face
hidden like the daytime venus until we hear again the mourning growl of the train to hold our backs to
our job like always is to stand stiff and be seen...
May 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Just questions
Ask me loaded questions that turn my laminate foundations to jelly, and custard, and ice cream
that taste delicious in their chaos and push those comfortable mirrors back under the bed with the real goblins
Ask me questions covered in childhood nettles, bearing a fresh sting which let me recoil to you
upturn the vacuum packed trunk and let the sharp-cornered detritus of my life fall...
2 tags
That's why
He told her she was beautiful not to make her happy or for the sake of truth he told her she was beautiful not because he was weird or to pilfer her affections he told her she was beautiful because she was beautiful.
2 tags
Flower
There was a time when the bright corner of a petal was where it was sharpest when the flex of a stem hid a shock
but now it can stand proud and healthy in a pot of sand on the moon sheaned and seamed and full of ink ready to appear without a smell or a sound or a second.
January 2011
2 posts
Kicking off my socks
Make it warm first spread our bodies’ heat through this exotic cotton and listen to the juts of the radio the pound of the news while we haze away from the world and roll up tightly in each other
Send that brave pilgrim free already from the day’s multi-colour entanglements over the cold mountain of knee down the coarse-haired calf past the thick ankle
push your fat toe ...
2 tags
Your siege
Leave yourself here long enough hang around under the wheezing shadow my affections implant slices of your clear skin in my unremembered dreams fend off the listless crescent night and cast colour into everything
You did all this for me? to be thrown out naked into the thankless tundra of our bodies to be kept in that little cellar of yearning I keep in my heart’s heel
I can be...
December 2010
1 post
2 tags
Dream #1
You are an hour and 21 minutes
twelve seconds of eye contact
a brushed hip
I’d have stopped then been happy for that
and a kiss
now you’re folded in the blank pages of before, and before then
a plectrum of fictionalised fascination an infatuation
to pluck my own heartstrings to prove they’re still strung
but it’s okay because I’m dull and you’re...
November 2010
4 posts
2 tags
Your Welcome Pack
Felt-fenced faux-wood cells segregated soldiers in your halogen oven
relentless banks of Leering Corporate Debauchees pasteurising your probity
we don’t need to bleed you it’ll disappear soon enough and of its own accord
it’s a cyst you know a phase a cycle you’re at the end of your last jump from the swings
you’ll find it easier when it’s...
3 tags
Preferable skills:
Be simpler kid break up your opinions make them delectable scythe the sense out and sell it
grease up your smile solder your teeth in sand your palms make your eyes white it’s an old man’s game
be happier kid breathe in the anaemic grins and take inspiration because “this space is all about thinking”
express it in concentric circles and tight diagrams make it...
You
You infest every second
I breathe
Your stone white eyes Sift through Every inch of me Closed But always seeing
And I just Offer everything
And mean it like blood
The dust Of knowing
You’ll never Ever
2 tags
101
For a minute lets pretend we’re real people with sensible shoes and honest intentions Lets play the wash the grapes before we eat them and the check the windows are locked games Lets say things we find acceptable rational and straight sentences like on the telly For a minute lets pretend our hopeless human lungs aren’t full of water Lets make this minute an hour a day a week a...
October 2010
4 posts
1 tag
Made me
She strung those moments together and they played perfectly for us a fleeting tune, that I’ll hum forever so now when the wretched din of confusion drains the rhythm from life I can still find it between my fingers.
2 tags
I wish I was a stick-man
The carriages plunder over rolling rocks warping their way through fog slung fields When a pip pipes up “Mummy I need wee” to a pained patience from mother whose two jobs barely do “You’ll have to hold it Glen,” The conductor’s girder-bone jaw cracks while he tumbles between the polyester jackets And long-ruined leather “I can’t hold it...
This love lark
This bristle of questions Limp and pursed A small tower of accusation Built on a sand bank of shot looks and skittering glances In the waning haze of Of a street-light orange night Our white knuckles combine And dissipate that distance Down the truculent bones Of our spine So simple this love lark Just plant your ink and go Frolic down your new-build path Faun in your saleable beige...
2 tags
Growing Up
It just goes through me now
The kisses
The blisters
The goals
Sifted sensations
Grains of dust
Falling through
A hoola hoop
On the way to nowhere
Never
Was it ever a smile
The worn little loop
That you once wore
On the folded flesh
Surrounding your gob
It’s placation now
I mean you no harm, infact
I don’t even see you
I’ll grin sporadically
Just incase...
September 2010
2 posts
2 tags
That's Entertainment
Fold up your brain and put it
In a safe place you’ll forget about
When you’ve such potential
And yet you choose to flay yourself
Choose the clodding fodder
The things that don’t ask
Be uninterested
But it suits you like a snout
It’s not the easy way out
It’s an emergency exit
From challenges
And thinking
You’re open to the grey
Wheels, that go round and round
But you’re...
1 tag
Metaphor
There are no
figures
here
No swirling oceans
cast
out
No red ropes
of love
No frozen tractors
No cold ovens
No thinning ceilings
No cloying mirrors
Not any
such conveniences
because
It’s rarely that easy.
August 2010
3 posts
2 tags
The dullest tune I know
It’s the dullest tune I know but I listen to it daily hanging around for you and your tiny trinket voice Once you plummet through stories splitting them up like little jots on a stave I’ll bend them around you In your tiny mezzanine thick with blankets and dreams and forgotten notes from Grandma And sickly little children with sickly little smiles reading about Rapunzel ...
1 tag
A short story.
I was asleep on top of the piano when I realised it was summer again. It felt like six years since I’d seen the sun. I opened my eyes and saw the sharp beam struck across the room, falling warmly on my chest. I rolled over in it, letting it touch every inch of my body. I knew it wasn’t a dream because I was still here. I saw Scarlet stirring in the old breadbox on the window sill....
1 tag
The AAA Supermarket
The intermittent white line Snakes Like 4 years Burnt black by the summer sun Through towns of 20 And villages of 10 Under Martin’s pub And Vera’s chip shop Murky eyes and groaning organs Preach nephalism To youthful posts Full still With the diluted spirit Of chemical indulgence 26 stone of 46 years Finds a brilliant slumber In the back seat Amongst the dreck of fun While some...
July 2010
1 post
On the train
It’s a simple cut In the air A frozen little tryst Of particles Of breath On the breeze With the backs Of our fruit against Each other We’ll joyously Ignore one another Until the engine stops Short of the station And your toes Like little soldiers Reach out for peace We can share Defeat Like an ice cream Cold and sweet And rapidly Melting
May 2010
1 post
1 tag
Your bedroom
dust drenched cherry stones make a pile for me on the sill on which you sat a pile I’ll take in my pocket to sew in the streets I walk so faithfully, through stones that now splinter in my teeth find root in my gums and lead lies down my throat each its own flavour its own shade of white stolen from diesel red kisses in the middle of the night
March 2010
1 post
2 tags
Jobs
Folding up a trick
In words
Letting it leave
Footprints the size
Of whales
In the margarine
Leaving a morsel
Of my skin
In your sourdough
But fret not
You fretless tune
You freltess soul
You’ll never find it
And if you do
I’ll stop my game
Shred my name
And let it leave
Like a dream
February 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Nosebleeds
That man in the glass is you your burst blood vessels sit like sentries guarding the passage of time and that leaking thing that growing snub is your shneck bleeding isn’t it? you’ve only made it bleed fatal looking like a walnut dribbling on Juan Leon because that’s what he deserves your fingers are made for death and so happily they seek it red streaks, hide happily in your...
Aches are easy
I woke today with a new little whole a tiny gape that sat like a tuppenence on my chest but instead of a head there’s a question mark it’s replaced that familiar ache I had hoarded the one that flared at 00.01 and knew what to make of me but this coin though smaller is sharper precise like an answer I woke today with a start because that little tuppence had melted and covered me from...
December 2009
1 post
Clever
A clever little spine languishes like a memory in a trunk in my loft in my house on my street waiting like a bee to make me remember A clever little letter you left in my gut whose ink won’t run whose words remain trussed up like christmas turkeys full of glee A clever little picture I found on a thumb Of your taciturn grin against a sheer night’s gin while disco lights make a din two...
October 2009
6 posts
3 tags
No Puns Here
Tricks you’ll call them but they’re just words I mean they’re my hands and my eyes and from them I’ll puff and bang a rabbit made for you a woman sawn in half a bullet in my teeth but like a nail bent double laughing they’ll pierce without noticing and sear with your feet planted firmly and your eyes sat on the horizon you know now without them
2 tags
Left and Right
Cracked, like the skin of a sun-parched russet you’ll hang happily from the end of my legs and we’ll not think about one or another but when you split and you flake I’ll wince with guilt while you try to ache But you won’t hear my sincere sorrys I know what you do you know where you’ve been what you’ve seen I know I can be mean You hard-souled props that...
2 tags
Radio Four
Like my ears you are always there always listening little radio you’ll wake me to the important things first then let me sleep and then Woman’s Hour gentle wit lets me sit and sip no time to set and just one station the world at one or it seems it here, for me because of you little radio.
2 tags
Holloway Road
It’s never a grind on this road the traffic’s never static the pram pushing grans go busily home while the earnest preechers teach the cobbles forgiveness a skill they’ve always had the school kids provide the whine of the engines plastic franchises squat in lines while the rain remains fleeting and thick and the air makes your black sick little punctures though abound in a fresh cacophony of...
3 tags
BBC News 24
She draws the morning
content under covers
content to twist away
while this sycophant
gropes
around unwieldy words
like some September pen