Ocean Room

This room has never felt as huge as I sit in the centre of the plastic wannabe wood covered floors, my knees pulled up to my chin as I try to collapse into myself. All I can do is think now, my prose that constantly boast lengthy and intricate lines, simplified to one word: Sorry. I trace the whitewashed walls with empty eyes and paint pictures across it in my head. I paint Pictures of us in autumn shades and I wish that I could change how certain things have happened. What did I ever do to warrant your distrust, to push you so far that you would need to rely only on yourself when you know I’ve given you everything?

If I could, I would do everything right, but I’m only human. I’ll only let you down.

This is all I can think about as I sit and drown in this suffocating room. A room that has grown so large around me that it might as well be called an ocean in the middle of Sidcup.

Questions and Memories and Bite

Don’t touch me,

Your hands as I remember are ice cold

Full of spite and accompanied by the taste of blood

And sick and head splitting migraines

Don’t use words that don’t suit the shape of your mouth

Sorry is the word used by those who feel

Sorry and love are feelings felt

How can you feel when your eyes see nothing but you

You and your fists and your words

Words that cut as sharp as your fists wound

Who were you to do that

Who are you to come back and live

As a ghost in my hall

Who are you to shadow my decisions

And who are you to place your hands on me in memory,

To cause violent shivers when I’m on my own

Who are you that make my memory a place I must hide from

Who made you a god

Who gave you power

Who made you untouchable, fucking godless

What kind of hellish world spat forth

 somebody who could destroy

Like you do

Memoirs of a Lipstick Rabbit

I shiver silently, painful body spread across the blood stained floor of my jail made from cold steel. I can hear others crying out in pain, some who are only babies. They lay alone and scared, sores made by one of you rippling over their body. My fur, once pure-white-as-snow is now stained and tainted by your wannabe lipsticks and poisonous perfumes. Are you pretty now, will you ever have enough of your favourite blood red pout?

As the bulky doors open and let in a blast of light the others around me cry for help. I’ve been here long enough to know there’s no use in it, empty hearts ignore the pleas of the wounded. We all wait; crouched into the corners of our prisons to see who the next victim will be. What colour will your spring line be this year, coral or peach?

Hard steps echo around the room. They’re loud and hurt my burning ears. The smell of rubber gloves and sterile coats reach me before they do. Vacant eyes peer in at me: an experiment or a number. I don’t think or feel to them, I just make money. The cocking of the door lock sounds and I close my eyes. There’s a thunderous shriek as the jail door swings open. I feel Hades’ hand slowly approach me, and then it snatches my ears and pulls me violently from my jail. For a moment I’m in the air, swinging from my cage forcefully onto another cold metal slab. The impact on my body should hurt, but I can’t feel anymore. My nerves have suffered enough. They belt me down to the slab with leather straps. I look about me as they yank my ears up again, pulling the skin on my face tight. The vacant eyes stare into mine once more, surveying my soul. There is something shouted across the room and I watch as they bring a needle filled with green liquid across to me. They find a space which hasn’t yet been made raw and pus filled by their experiments, my last patch of white fur. They ready the section, and then I watch them plunge the needle into my flesh and feel the liquid bubble under my skin then spread through my body. The mint green juice travels rapidly through my muscles, making them contract painfully. My head feels like it might explode as my eyes grow heavy.  My body is full of scurrying fluid bugs which attack my every sense. As I lay in the throws of death, I hear the others of my kind crying out around me. They watch their future, because if they survive the tests they only have death to look forward to anyways.

My body shakes and I feel myself fitting, but because I’m held in place tightly by the binds, I just vibrate against the metal slab. The noise sounds odd to me as everything grows dark. I can no longer feel much of my sore ridden body; it has beaten me to death. The skeletal, black cloaked, scythe holding bastard: come for me at last.

Late Last Night

We sat in your car late last night, the heat from your dashboard warming my face.  I looked at you and tugged at your hand, a hand which so often grasps mine, a hand which had so often warmed mine while walking down a crowded street. A hand which had been the first show of love between us back when you had waited two hours for me to play my stupid games. You refused to pull your fingers closed around my hand. The hand that was the first part of me to touch you all that time ago, when I tugged at your shirt, the first night our souls touched. Your hand just hung limp in mine, no warmth flowed through it into me. No love flowed where it so often has.

      Late last night, I fell onto your shoulder hoping you’d wrap your arm round my waist and pull me close into your embrace. Instead you turned slightly and commented on the smell of booze and smoke that clung to my clothes and breath; the sign of a heavy night trying to get your face from my mind.  You lifted your hand to your lips as you faced the window away from me, running a finger over the contours of your lip. I watched as you shook your head. You felt so cold, your hand limp in mine, your breath short and your eyes tracing shadows that danced outside the window which had started to form a film of pale condensation.

      Late last night, sitting in your car at the end of my road, I pulled your face to mine. Hoping that our eyes could meet, as they have before. Hoping the things that made you fall for me as often as we lay together under your covers would be able to save me tonight. Instead your eyes met mine and looked right through them. Your eyes, my saviours, which had always managed to pull me in and soothe me; last night they damned me. You didn’t look at me and smile; you just shook your head, causing flyaway strands of your hair to bounce along from side to side. I could take the limp hand and the body that no longer fit like a puzzle piece. But the eyes that rejected me now, they pulled me into a dark room. They pushed me into a corner and locked the door, leaving me to fend off the ghosts of my past on my own. Your eyes had regaled me with tales of your love without your mouth ever forming the words. That second night we had met, your eyes guided me to you. Your eyes, I realise had become my best friends. Your eyes, had been the parts of you which ran over me as I got dressed in front of you, hurrying to leave. They had taken me in so hungrily before, seeing no imperfection. But now they saw only the things I couldn’t give you.

      Yesterday you needed me and I left you to fight the thoughts that corrupt and worm their way through your head on your own. Yesterday anger had built up in my baby, anger that I ignored for someone else’s pain. I left you for somebody who had hurt me, an event that you had held and comforted me through. Instead of loving you like I should have, I left you to drown in the vicious undercurrent of reality on your own.  Because of this you denied me your wake, the calming tide of your love. I left you on your own to fend for yourself, something I promised to never do.

         I’ve sent you others’ sonnets and poems so often, to explain my own feelings. Feelings which belong to the young, because they’re something the old just don’t have the heart for. But late last night your car contained one broken heart and a heart that had gone fishin’. Maybe love like this has finally become too much for you, our age gap finally showing.  An age gap which had never mattered to us before as we built our nest out of your sheets and pillows, as we found a home in each others arms. Maybe I’ve let you down  one too many times, maybe the comfort you once found in my presence has become a novelty, maybe I’m just not enough anymore. For all your poorly judged words, saying ‘I love you’ was the worst.

 Late last night there was only one person who said I love you and meant it. Because the other had already given too much love to the ones that got away before I came along. You had only limited love left for me. The rest of it belongs to somebody else, the person who shared your life before me.

L.O.V.E

Baby, if you just lay here

keep me in your arms

I’ll care for you and prove you wrong for the rest of our time -

together, I’ll always say that word

L.O.V.E… and mean it

I won’t mind your stupid thoughts

if you’ll just laugh at mine

your bed can be our castle

the likes of which this damn world could never have designed

we can stay here and build ourselves a home

out of sheets that stick with sweat

and pillows that have fallen off the bed

In the name of Honour

In memory of the hundreds of dis-honour-able killings that take place every year around the world. May these women lead the way to freedom for all.

The shovel bought the innards of the soil up

Up to the surface to bathe in the sun’s light

They dug the hole deep, so no hope

No hope to climb or claw could be found

They wrapped her broken body in the black cloth

And threw her into the darkness below

Her eyes flickered as she tried to move her beaten body

The body of a sinner, the body of a woman

Born guilty, guilty of the urge to love

At only eighteen she had dared to love a man

The source of her downfall

At the age of eighteen she fell in love with the man

Who would deal her final blow

She took away her veil for him to see the smile

He brought upon her virtuous lips

She let him bring her to his bed where

He gently pulled the virginity from betwixt her legs

There was no jury that day, but the death sentence was cast

He was only twenty, the day he threw the largest stone

At the girl he used to love, before she became a black mark

A secret, spiteful word whispered around the village

They said she was being punished in the name of honour

But there was no honour in this killing

Enveloped in darkness as a sack was pulled over her head

Bound by the rough fingers of rope around her wrist

And her body buried in the sand and dirt below

So that the only target were her women’s breasts

And her eighteen year old face

Without looking into her eyes they cast the stones

Without hearing the plea, that had no time to escape her lips

They beat the love out of her, their daughter, sister and cousin

Her woman’s curse died with her that day

As they shovelled the unravelled dirt upon her

And cast her off into the shadow of death

Where she was greeted in light, the sin of being a woman

Not enough to keep her from paradise

It's a bitter world, but I'd rather dream.

Inspired by the words of Adam Young. Thank you for the soundtrack to my daydreams.

I find myself in this place often; a field of bluegrass that sings in the suns’ tendrils of light, boxed in by a vast lake which has no visible end and is crystallized by the sunshine, it encircles the island I end up on every night. It’s hard to walk through, this uncut bluegrass, my legs feel like lead, but I know I need to get somewhere. There’s a destination somewhere here, a clearing in the centre of the woodland in front of me, I just need to reach it and my body tingles as it pulls and leads me towards my finishing line. I’ve seen the clearing before, on my visits here. I get to the point before I lift my foot, heavy under the weight of extra gravity, and push it triumphantly from the shadow of the trees that form a roof above me into the blinding light that fills the place where these great oaks, redwoods and pines have failed to grow. It hurts my eyes to see it, after such darkness as I’ve known from walking under the bitter canopy of the woods, but I know through the haziness that it’s beautiful. I can smell, almost taste, the sweet nectar of my daisies which shine red, yellow and white, their faces pointing towards the strong midday sun. Yes, I’ve found myself here often but never have I reached my destination. Never have I achieved what I know I should achieve. I’m rejected at the last minute, every time my foot lifts forward hope rises within me, only to be suddenly torn from this beautiful world into my own. I’m always thrown back into the tidal wave of reality where I drown under the pressure of the real world. Maybe this world I dream of is my world of Forms: my unchanging and perfect oasis. The paradise I’ve been searching for my whole life. Or maybe it’s just the dream of a young, inexperienced and underachieving yet over hopeful girl. But I can’t forget, I won’t forget, the taste of the musty woods which lingers in my lungs, even whilst awake, and the feel of rough bark which I so often caress with my hand. I could never forget, even in my waking state, the shades of orange, red and brown which cover and dance across the littered woodland floor, reflected from the dead yet alive leaves above me. I feel like I belong here, like I belong where angel rays find holes in the armour of branches above my dream self to form patterns of light on the bare skin of my arms and face; a place in which I walk a path flattened by my own laboured footsteps, and only mine. It leads me from the field where the grass is blown from side to side by an unfelt wind, to the edge of the forest wall where trees whine under their own seedlings and leaves. The path that I tread is soft underfoot, it is untouched by rain yet the mud which dwells below the overgrown bluegrass is damp and spongy. The journey within the woods feels like forever on my lonely island, feels like days within minutes and hours within seconds. Even though I’ve seen it all a hundred times, even though I’ve been here so often, I still manage to fall in love again and again with my trees that surround the dream version of me. The version whose eyes light up like I wish they would, whose cheeks glow pink without any help. The me whose copper hair flies in a halo around my head and shoulders, in an almost boudiccan style. A version of myself whose smile is never unfaltering because they are never in a place they do not belong, they never have to inhabit the real world. My eyes trace the words impressed softly into the façade of the trees who whisper their ancient secrets to me. It’s autumn and summer here, there’s never a winter or spring. The trees are always alive, even the oak which of course is not coniferous. The only sad touch of change here is the change in the colour of the leaves above, the process of death which has been stopped in the static world around me. And although I follow the path, every time, although I listen to my body which leads me through, I never reach that special place. I never reach my haven. But I know that I’d rather be here than walking the streets along which I am forced to walk in the real world, because although my reverie  is a bitter one, full of heart stopping discontent, I know that I’d rather dream.

Where did I go?

When you love, you lose yourself. The feel of their skin, warm and soft replaces the feel of yours. The long fingers, nails bitten rough, which hold your hands in a close embrace replace your own smaller and pinker hands. When you look at your eyes in the mirror they are replaced by their green encircled hazel eyes, with that stupid adoring look etched into them. The truth is, when you love you just aren’t you anymore. You become a mutant or a cross-breed of boy and girl. Your bodies which are pressed together so often, limbs entangled, fuse into one. The whole five-foot-three of you feels a foot taller. Their name dominates your life; conversation with anybody is said in their voice. Your jokes are jokes that they would make and your laugh is now theirs. When you’re out without them you’ll see reminders of their face on the faces of strangers. You can’t escape, even when you clutch at sleep as it flutters by, it is them in their entirety which will fill your dreams. Your life will be dominated by them. By an us. There is no I in love. No individuality is possible. You will be ‘his girlfriend’ or he will be ‘your boyfriend’. You’ll find yourself asking, “Where did I go? When did I lose my name?”. The final step is the loss of all ownership over yourself. Once you give them everything you have, every inch of you, every feeling and thought, you belong to them; but only because it’s just easier to lose yourself in all of this than to lose them to the masses. And although you become one, it will always still be their arms that pull you close when you lie together in bed. It will always be their eyes and goofy goddamn smile that find a way to soothe and comfort you and make you smile in turn. I guess the real truth is that a day passed without seeing the look of concentration on their face, lips slightly parted and eyebrows raised, while they drive, a day without them laying between your legs and resting their head on your chest whilst sighing slightly would be a pretty lonely day. It would be a day made a little darker by their absence, and in fact every day that you don’t lie next to them or touch them just to prove they’re real…every day like that breaks your heart a little more.

When you love, you lose yourself in the moment.

Why Would You Ask Her That?

He asked me did I think it only took a dick

For a person to be a prick?

So I told him that many a woman without a dick

Was also a prick

But it takes a dick with a prick

Or a prick with a dick complex

To make a woman feel like shit

I said it takes a dick five minutes

To make those of us who are dickless

Feel like we’re witless

It takes a prick to run a country

And a dick to run a business

But then again

What would a woman know?

I said that it seems like I was born

A woman in a mans’ world

A spanner in some tools’ toolbox

A bitch or a chick or the bird of another dick

It seems I’m always referred to as

 An animal ready to be fucked over

And then passed along

But then I bit my lip afraid I’d let slip

All my opinions at once

Then I carried on and said to him

You see,

I wasn’t born with a coveted appendage

Or a tree trunk full of white spunk

Or pants full of junk, except what I haul around in my

So called ‘trunk’

Wasn’t that how you pleasantly referred to it

As you grabbed it or slapped it

As you took my short skirt to be an invitation

To my assets or to my cunt

Because you think a flash of the cash

Will make me fall into your arms

Like some dickless, witless

Bitch or chick or the bird of another prick

So no I answered, in a pretty round-a-bout way

I don’t think it takes a dick

To be a prick

But it sure takes a dick to make me

Feel like a prick

And to take something like my cunt

And make it into something taboo

All because I wasn’t born with balls and

One engorged member, like you