uncle

sitting on the boulevard eating cold noodles, its late september and summer has crept away. the sea is full, swelling and pounding against the wall with growls like great thunderstorms; spraying and folding over itself, straining at the barriers that hold it in. At Hellsmouth a great black wave rises and falls into grey and green gradients. the debris of summer teeming with flies black and buzzing. everything melts away. i woke up this morning with a cosmic wound.

poems for this 2019 (broken bones)

_____

Its passed down, the hole >>>> I used to play in a hole at the end of the garden, my hidden spot, the moss growing on the compost bin, the cracked glass of the dusty window on the shed lit with morning light. I would hide & spit worlds into stones with sticky baby fingers and primary coloured plastic blocks covered in specks of dirt, I would bury them deep in the ground with my secrets. 

— 

Buried deep in the snow were my secrets; buried deep down under piles of ice. I forgot that a place could be so white, so heaving with thickness. White ice piling like soft pillows reflects the spots in my eyes. I’m eating lukewarm bread and peeling eggs and everything is frozen around me. The whites of my eyes are reflected in these great puddles, like round white eggs fried on the ice. I’m trying to remember my insignificance, surrounded by tiny shards of cardboard picked apart by nervous fingers, here and here and here. Tonight I sleep restless in an attic room. 

—-

In Iceland, I felt so bad I wanted to die.

—-

Undulating 

___

Warm wriggle against skin, I dance inside you

Your rhythm moves with my breath

Grey, blue, white

The moon pulls you off of my skin

I haven’t got anything left

My lips fall apart like rainwater crushed against skin crashing with seafoam

My bones turn to sand underneath you

—-

 

Im not turned on by anything. flicking through the TV channels, the night is alive outside, dark and teeming with the kind of life that surfaces on the streets of london after 12pm on a Friday night. I got stoned and crashed out in the hotel room. The ceiling was painted with fake clouds underlit by that same blue hue emitted by a sleeping laptop, or rather the blue hue that keeps you from sleeing. Fuck, the clouds were so realistic. I ate a whole bag of jellybeans and fell asleep with the television on. I woke to a text from a girl on Tinder about sunshine but there were no windows and I felt like I had been pushed through a time capsule, my head was dense with sugar and nicotine. The maid kept knocking on the door and I just couldnt get off. I woke up again a few hours later to the tv blaring and emitting an orange hue.                                                                  >>>>>>>>

Sticky walls, water. Babyfish, swimming upstream, I Dont Give A Fuck About Your Art World

my head is full of cotton wool I self medicate to eradicate

——-

His hands are black, dirty fingernails and he shouts at me in the street and grabs my body and calls me a bitch. My tongue is heavy in my mouth heavy slippery stuck erupting sensation tingle reverberation across my back shoulders shockwave shaking muscles low key pain undulating belly rot heavy and expanding flutter dance black liquid seeping through my skin pushing against my sea wall. The belly undulates. The belly undulates

(give my another chance baby, Ill never hurt you baby)

———

I wanted you

To rip me in two

Like petals in the wind

I wanted to be carried on 

The waves

your body

Stretched over mine 

Until I disappear 

Into Dust

—–

My lungs expand with smoke rot, the belly carve, my name into the fleshy underside

Of a tree we planted in your memory

The soil packs around my bones heavy underneath damp skies 

—–

Relapse

I never thought I would be here again squealing for my morals 

skin stretched under

Yours like a horse corpse

Shed on the bathroom floor

My fucking body quaking

Under yours the bullet

Slung from sinking ships

Red lipstick kissed the rim

I dont trust the boy

Who breathes life in lips

—

Sun kissed the windowpane

Silver lips walled up

Shining curve of light

—–

The sky went grey before i had a chance to feel the water licking my body

—-

She is made from stone and gold-plated. Flies settle on your legs hairs sprout from roots. You are uprooted – deep –

breath – 

Waves lap and children scream as cold water shocks their diving bodies

Stationary boats rock to the beat of the ocean current

I dug down deep into the sand beneath me to find gold plated stones 

Flies circle my body waning

Sails flying a crisp breeze like biting into an apple

Bellyflop, 

I worked to the bone. 

Under the undergrowth, the piles of seaweed rot

Your muscles flex in milky waters, 

Give me something to believe in. 

_____

reading lists

> Everything has been so potent over the last few years, the political backdrop to our lives unravels into chaos and we slowly slide, hiding, into digital worlds that map our thoughts into timelines & unearth curated selections of memories. Meanwhile we navigate growth and becoming, personal lives, (un)/employment, lack of clarity, love and heartbreak, depression and joy. You may imagine it as two interlocking timelines.>,>

> I can trace these years through books read, instagram posts, tweets, people encountered/loved/fucked, bouts of depression, and moments of joy. Memories become so important. I don’t know if everyone does it, but I relish in them, glamorise them, repaint them over and over in my mind as details fade and dissolve into sketch-marks. When I think of the time I have spent depressed, it makes me feel like I’ve not been fully alive, and so I want to hold onto every moment of life I can, and keep them in this special gilded box in my brain. Because when it’s lifted and it’s happening and it’s life and I can feel it, everything is technicolour and I want to throw my body on the waves and hold strangers and everyone I ever loved near.  

> All of these texts are stuck in my memory, as traces of the last 10 years, voices read aloud pinpoints of an event, a moment in time that managed to slip through the cracks. 

Remembering being read aloud to, or repeating it back to yourself like a mantra, or passing it daily in the street. 

All of these texts are stuck in my memory, I share an intimacy with them. 

They hold me, as I may hold their weightyness in my hand, it is a comfort.