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Monday 19 December 2011

Christmas Father

December in the dust.
Hammanskraal heat
And one grubby Christmas decoration
Long way away from Sandtons sparkle.

Do reindeer even know Hammanskraal?
Christmas Father can use donkeys here, if he comes.
We'll hear their clatter on the corrugated iron!
But we'll stay in bed tjoeps quiet
Pretending to be asleep, to not scare them.

We don't have a Christmas tree for presents.
But we have a tree outside in the yard.
 That's better, it's a shade tree

It has 84 different names from
The 84 children here.
We wrote in them, the names, in the dust with our feet.
 so you know who we are.

Use that tree, donkeys, Christmas Father. Its big you can
See it from faaar. And
We won't clutter it with presents before you
are here. We'll leave space.

We don't have mince pies but we've got Bakers Choice, you can have...
... The best ones, the strawberry wafers, we'll
Leave you one! Two! Ok, one and a half. We are many here, everyone wants.

And for the donkeys we don't have carrots.
We have cabbage
They look rotten but
just peel
The outer leaves away. Anyway
Donkeys aren't fussy, sies, they
Must be happy you need to use them here!

So, Christmas Father, for Christmas can I
Have a swimming pool?
We have such a big yard here
And its nothing just dust!
Imagine 84 of us splash splash splash!
No, maybe it would get dirty and we'll have to clean. And the water would get finished. And plus what if the small small ones fell in?

Can I have a bed of my own?
We are 16 in this room you
Know!
No, maybe... Nights
Are scary sometimes and then being together tighttight is nice like, even
The snoring...

And I couldn't be the only one with my own bed.
We would need 84 beds and then
We would be sleeping in the yard!

So maybe, Christmas Father, I'll just ask
You something easy?
Can you light our Tree?
Maybe do it secretly, so I can
Just see it if I close my eyes
Like that!

It's lighting up our names,
What we wrote in the dust.

December in the dust.
Hammanskraal heat
And one shining Christmas tree
Brighter than all Sandtons sparkle

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Silver (teeth)

Hey fairybaby
You’ve got mud on your shoes
And grit in your teeth

You’ve been tied and
Tired and ground down
Until you fit
Something recognisable

And once in that shape
You shouted that it was yours
(because oh baby if it
wasn’t then the universe is
scarier than you could fend off)

but baby no shape could hold you.

Each ,in each place, yourstyle
Yourscream kept in and your monsters
Whispered their world stories in your ear
(no amount of headshaking would clear them, no
upping the volume could chase them
out of your head)

and as they whispered you
grew adding their dance strides
to your dance steps until you
couldn't remember whose feet were whose
(and yes you stood on some toes, baby)

and as you grew ties snapped and your
teeth turned silver and you began to
look more and more like the moon

and people got scared. But only the
people who made the ties. Only the
people for whom monstersundethebed
never held any hope.

People who see size as measured in
More and Less, not Who. Not When.

People who see outlines only and not the 
Squintfor rainbows, the cloud shapes in
The middle.

Because fairybaby you could never
Let your monsters go. They are your home as
Much as you are theirs, you are their Moon and they are your
Wild and some people will always be scared.

Because whatever shape you
Make yourself:
Small or straight or homemadedinner
Shaped, your teeth will always someday(night,hope)
Start to glow silver...

So, FairyBaby, moonsunwindchild,
Dirtchild Wildchild lets go and paint
Cities while they sleep! Lets grimace in
Peoples windows and let them think
It's the moon, intruding in their dreams

Lets howl and dance and spinstories
Until we get a goldgrimaceglow back
From some windows

And we will add Monsters
To our band.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Megan


I love your CAPITALS

Your voice that SHOUTS about
IMPORTANT things
And EXCITING things

And MAGIC things
And shouts for ME

And ANYONE who can
See the MAGIC

Your voice that takes me
STOMP STOMP STOMP

Back to our garden
And me FOUR and you SIX
And you EXPLAINING the
WORLD to me.

Because it was IMPORTANT

To MUDPIES and MULBERRIES

And imaginaries in BOXES AND BUBBLES

To bathtime ADVENTURES, where you
Were PIRATE QUEEN but made me, nearly
Always FIRST mate (and sometimes the parrot)

To FIGHTS about the colour of the SKY
And my first introductions to spectrums of truth, BLUE
I would say, YES NOW, you said but MAINLY PURPLE

And I cried frustrated tears about MAINLY

And we STOMP STOMP STOMPED
STORIES.

Mainly stories,
riddled with truths,
like
The earthworms we
saved off the tiles,
After the rain.

Monday 31 October 2011

Fizzers (Fingers)

We were insane
 You and I
   Stretched out like
     Fizzers, in the sun

And mashed into each
 Other like small kids do with
    Fizzers, here
  My pink
Your green
And look! magic! twistscurls
  Swirls round and round and wrapping again and again
    And thinner and closer and how
 Tight can we make it until until
I want my pink and
 You want your green

But they have melted into each
Other, in the sun

So we put our mouths
  Together and
    Sucked
 The two flavours out
 End from end

We burned holes in our
  Tongues
   And still couldn't pry them apart,
(my green your
   pink)
      and we wrapped them
    round our sticky
fingers and
   pulled and pulled
     until they stretched out so far


one thin thin tightrope
                                 until the snap-
                                             when it came- was miniscule

until the only thing left between us was distance

Sunday 9 October 2011

Beat

if i have a word
in each of my cells

then i am paralysed
by their weight
their order

if i can get still enough that
my heart is the only beat

then i will find a way
to flow them through my
fingers and
out

into something new
(or old, but something
told at least)

but in this paralyses
i cannot
get my fingers
to move
and cannot get
my heart

to beat and not flutter

Saturday 8 October 2011

(and an ending)

if i lay quietly
and invited ants,
to eat away at me,

tiny mouthfuls of
skin
hair
flesh, then bone

would their mouths tickle
as they ate?

eating away years
and fears
and hope
and leaving empty
air
and an ending.

Thursday 6 October 2011

Cold coffee (In seeing you still)

Cold coffee and
Comfort
In seeing you still
In seeing you still
Here
But
With
Calm stillness collecting in you

In seeing you still
You against the rushed backdrop
Of capetown sea

(That sucks the movement
From city
Dwellers)

And remembering
A laugh

A spark spark (short
Sharp) of humour

I forgot layers my
Foundations (carefully
Chosen by my parents - made
Beyond my making)
---
In seeing you
Still still settling
Down

And I can trace you in
The insides of my feet,

My base
My conscience

I'll sip my cold coffee
And smile smile
Smile
You out to sea

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Spark

There are still pieces
Of you in 
Me

Shrapnel like

Shards of dark turned light turned dark

As the memories of us sparkle
Then spark
Then glow red hot 

(and the ache
Is addictive)

Before cooling 
Back into
Their places spread
Out
Through my cells

Monday 3 October 2011

topsy turvy

Topsy turvy
Wavy curvy,
Spin me silly,
Clown

Tipsy turvy
Save me, hurl me
Inside upside
Down

Topsy turvy
Blind me
whirl me
Til my covers blown

And red and Raw,
just sea
No shore

You have me where you want me

And clung to you
And flung from you

I gave up my sea for your promising

And drunk on you
And sunk on you

You dissolve. And I am left swallowing

Salt and tears
And death and fears

You have me where you want me

Tipsy turvy
Sneering surly,
Release me,
Sticky Clown

Cake

I am living only
By half ways,
I get glimpses in
To a whole

(Pretty pictures presented
Though success and togetherness
Well toned stomach muscles well
Trained pets
Well developed relationships)

My tongue sticks to
The glass, I
Can almost taste the cinnamon
On that perfectly baked
cake...

But I am drawn
Out by the rain, by thunder
By earthsky connections
And cakes
Are forgotten and if I
Remember then I know
I will have lost the recipe.

I can make you dreams
Of mercury thunder storms.

But I cannot make you cake.

And while you
Are part of that picture
That I am peering into,
(Or want to be part,
Or while I want to make you safe like
That
Stripping my cells of their shine)
I am only living
Halfly

Lightening playing beyond my reach

Saturday 1 October 2011

Swallow

I swallow names they
Make up my cells
Each taking up residence
In my foot my stomach
My gut and when
History is written painted too
Big they shiver and shift me
Into nausea into dance
And I must hear them
I must hear them

I swallow names they
Trip into my head
They converse with my thoughts and
Take over sometimes
And when I am still they
Are there with the braai and
Their tears, chairs scraping as
They are pulled together for
The conversation

I swallow names
They are there with their
Ancestors, lineage lullabies
And smallbig tales
Behind my crown

How can you
How can you still
How can you still pretend?

You have sat and
Drawn your
Testaments in the dust for
Years while reality floated
Away from you

How can you still pretend?

Thursday 29 September 2011

Building

We are building on
Spiderwebs

But it is working.

Slowly slowly
And, steps only this way, careful,
Careful,
This one falls
That one falls

But we are
Slowly
Slowly
Rising

We are building on
Volcanoes (here)

Round the bubbles
And sink holes
Careful here, this
Ground looks stable but it's
Just crust, really, building on red hot
Red hot

And we all get burnt
Battle scars painting songs on
Our faces

But it's working
Slowly
Slowly
We are rising

We are building on ghosts (here,
Comrades)
Careful of this ones
Face,
That ones mouth.

And we need to understand
What they need now,

To build them into our
Bricks like graffiti
So they can still sing
So they can still scream
And we can not forget

So we can see them clearly
And lay flowers before them and
Not pretend. Not pretend.

Because this one fell
And that one fell
(and tears, tears fell)

But we are building.
We are building.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

On your birthday

On your birthday

I will take your daughter
(my mom)
To breakfast at Zoo Lake

She is Wonderful.
Did you know?

Sharp and soft
And engaging

AndKind
( a spreadingout kindofkind
That touches further than you
Can see)

She plaits the world into
Combinations
That no one else could see

(but everyone can recognise as Wondrous)

But,
She is sometimes inexplicably angry
And she is sometimes inexplicably sad.

On you birthday we will go to Zoo Lake
And feed ducks.

Monday 26 September 2011

Dance

Life is easier
Where it is not real

Where the divide between the
Rich and the poor
Is continents

(No matter how
Much of the foundation
of Each the Other
Has provided)

Where the divide
Is seas and
you are not

Constantly
Constantly
Faced with stories of
Hell and Hope and Home

And face and face and faces
And each Some one, Some one's
father, daughter, some one's Hope,
Love.

Life is easier, when you
Can reach over the seas with
Your sterilized gloves and study
Us,

Sprinkling food parcels where you deem necessary
To perpertuate
The situation.

But you cannot hide forever.
Not all your seas,
Your visas
Your borders
Your 'non EU' arrivals halls
Will keep us out
We are coming in our
Millions

(More than in your nightmares)

We are coming
We are coming

(more than in your dreams)

We are coming to save you.

Because
we cannot just let you
Suffer, suffocate,
That's not our way.

You are our children,

No matter how hard you tried
To forget that in your Fancy New House

We are coming in our millions
To spoonfeed you
Our Hell
Home
Hope,

Until your ancestors wake in
Your feet and you
Can taste again and
Dance and Dance
And Dance

We are coming
In our millions
To Dance you into freedom
To Dance
You
Into Freedom

And dance
And dance
And dance

Bold and Bright

If I forget
(on purpose maybe)
To draw my curtains

People see a corner
Of bright yellow

People standing on a square of mountains,
A preacher, arms raised,
constantly redeeming,
Shacks built below a
Sagging telephone line and a tiny taxi
Perpetually disappearing into a tunnel.

They cannot see so far as my baobab tree,

My heart made of Historical Barbed Wire
Painful for whom it kept in
And out
Or my cementsolid, glasslight Cross
and Star
From new Bethesda (owlhouse
Where I first learnt the depths
Of light and
Dark)

On the opposite wall they see a
Smear of
Royal blue
Bright and bold and hopeful

They cannot see,
Maybe

My picture of a girl jumping, Flying out
Of demons mouths painted by
A dear dear friend
Who is just beginning to jump
Out of hers...

But they can see the sunflowers

Bold and bright
And easy yellow
Against the blue.


I hope this makes them smile.

Friday 23 September 2011

Dreaming of pink

Rape is an amorphous
Monster

A gentleman dressed in a
Slick
Suit by day,
Recognised easily in
Public.

But as night falls
His shadows stretch into
Corners where

He is not recognised and the chill
He brings
Is not acknowledged and
The nightmares

That he breathes
Into your ear
Into my ear

Are not justified,
Cannot be labelled


(it is only his shadow that caught me
I cannot scream and cry
Because I invited him in)

But when I said no.
Again
And
Again

I didn't mean yes after another drink.

And didn't you notice?
That I was a dead weight?
That I was dreaming of pink while you,
While you were sweating on me
Stinking on me

Squirming in me

What part of that told you it was ok?
What part of that made me part of your game?


And when I came back to myself I didn't
Have the humanity let to scream but
I pushed you off me
And I cried


And I slept on a small corner of an unknown
Bed to sleep of the
Alcohol
(or whatever else you used as a lubricant)
Before I could cry my way home.


And
Then i had to stop crying because
It was only a shadow
That touched me

(so many women
Who have lived so much worse)


And "gentleman" rape is easily
Recognisable in the day

It's only at night that his shadows stretch
And his fingers clutch

It's his nightmares that crawl my skin
And his voice in my ear

Whispering

'but you said yes... You said yes'

Thursday 22 September 2011

Thursday 15 September 2011

Dimensions

I love your
Dimensions


The way you go
So far down deep sometimes

I hold my nose as I dive
in to fetch you.


The way you go so high
sometimes

I gather my balloons to float
to find you.


The way you go so Widebig sometimes

The whole world is in you, heavy and unwieldy,

Giving you indigestion, making you so grumpy.


The way you go
So thin
Sometimes


You turn sideways and disappear
And I have to speak
Nicely
To the wind so i can
See you again

Keep

There is a bar through the
Window. 
Thick. Solid

Dividing this side from that.

On the one side, a dove
Settle in a tree fork
Gentle grey against the gentle
Blue sky

Framed from this house
That always feels like its floating.

On the other there are burglarbars.

Straight
Regular
Trappings

Designed to keep
Keep
Keep.

On the one side is me.
And the other there is you.

(the dove has flown now, happy metaphor, 
And we lie here wordless)

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Did you

Did you know
That you would love her when 
Her hair turned grey?

Did you know that 
When you turned 59
she would give you a baby lemon
Tree? Not symbolising
Anything. Just an unspoken
recognition of
Green and Growth.

Did you know she 
Would give your middle daughter
Her nose?
And you would give that daughter your habit
Of standing 
On tables?

Or was it just a leap, 
That day, 36 years back, of faith?
into humanity, 
Into God 
Into yourselves?

(I am asking. To inform
My leaps)

Thursday 8 September 2011

Sleep shape

We slept in heart shape:
Feet touching
And a world between our heads
Sometimes your arm
Sometimes mine
Trying to fill the gap

Wednesday 7 September 2011

there was a country

Kwesukesukela
There was a country
disappearing.

lank lank gelede
kwakunesizwe

wat byna verdwyn het.

Once upon a time
Everydays flickered
in and out
of breathes in monotone.

Kwesukesukela,

Rocks became pebbles
To keep them from being small
and breathe was shot out
so people held it,
just to keep it.

Lank lank gelede
      (before new spaces were
fought) everydays traced
themselves
in whispertones

with silence facing the static

Once upon a time
anger was steeped in silence
and silence coloured everything
_____

Kwesukesukela there
was a country

That disappeared.

Saturday 20 August 2011

maybe

maybe history
(my profession, yes, my
lifeline)

was all Humpty Dumpty
and no Kings men. and what's more, no king!

maybe the voices
we write, the Right the Wrong and mostof all the
InBetweens were really
just cogs in the clock.

and if, (on the outside, inside chance)
we can climb out of this we
might just see
the clockface.

monsters

i will scream
you away

i will draw magic circles
 and these invisible
entrenched expectations will
dissolve in sunlight
moonlight sleeplight


somehow.

no insidious expectations
or fighting from the trenches
or brinkmanship, no.
not with these stakes.

monsters i will scream you away.

and then.
then we will Grow.


i want to write

i want to write hope
but right now that word is islanded in me

i want to write help 
but right now words are all i can do 

i want to write futures, 
PathsAndPossibles, but 
right now 
now is all. 

cigarbreathe

i wore a gold dress that night 

(my birthday one 
your hand 
between my legs) 
and

my tears. on your cigarbreathe 

(and there are no more words)

giving blood


your old smell
and saggy flesh

i watch with
       fascination the drop
of your blood sink
inthe blue green liquid

eyelevel for me then.

i watched the
needle. your arm.

your thicksnakelike vein.

i sit on this bed and watch
this blood flow out of me
like a sigh.
like an umbilical cord.

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Space

(first installment of a first draft of a story)

once upon a time, there was a Moon. She (moon's are Always she. Except in Exceptional circumstances, when they aren't). She was a very good Moon, and in the generally Moonlike way of things, she went about her busy ness around our small but (to us) all important planet.

She Waxed and she Waned, with both purpose and precision, taking her duty of the rise and the swell of tides seriously and pridefully. But with her work she was also a joyful, rolling round our planet bouncily, laughs that would never quite reach melting off the ozone layer.

This Moon (our moon, really) had one hobby, one weakness, one fascination. Every day, (every night) she would peer down onto our planet, and entangle our heart with things that we would find, well, really very ordinary.

You see, this Moon was enchanted by the Everydayness of humans. The small things we do in our fidgeting around on our planet that we think of as being of no consequence really. But She was watching...

Oh, there were the big things too. The things that grew or shrunk her heart, that raised or sank her Spirit (always in a controlled way, she could never go too high or low, she had to look after the Tides, remember). These big things, explosions she could taste the dust rising from, music she could feel the vibrations from... but these were not her everyday explorings.

Her everyday explorings involved things more like: peering down into a city (our city, lets say, because i can now feel her Moonlight on my face) and peering into one specific square, in one specific school. Girls in the playground. Skipping. Skipping!

Oh, she vibrated with the excitement of it! She hid their laughter tucked away in her many moonsurface craters and she longed...

Because, and this was the problem, and this is the story, our Moon was not only fascinated by our everdayness, she craved it. She longed for some of our everyday laughs and loves, our runofthemill aches and pains. Because the truth of it was, our Moon was very, very lonely.

And so she peered. And she longed. And she peered. And she longed. And before she new it the rhythm of the skipping was being absorbed into her and suddenly...

She was moving! Up and down, up and down, starshine sunshine mercury mars...Inside, outside inside ON!

On!... She bounced onto the orbit she spun around the earth and pinned it down, gleefully shedding moondust. Oh how wonderful skipping is! But....

(because of course there is a but! Our celestial bodies cannot simply behave in any manner they wish!)

she began to think of this, maybe, and peered nervously down at the earth...

Where sure enough, there were angry shouts and cries and yells. The tides! what on Earth (because we battle to get our focus off our small planet) was happening to the Tides!

The daily rise and fall by which fish and fishermen (and many beachgoers. and surfers. and lovers) lived their lives, had quickened! The tides slapped back and forth up the beach!

Inside
outside
inside
ON!

(Although none of us thought to apply the rhythm of a little girls skipping game to something as ancient and elegant as the tides. And if anyone had done, I'm sure we would all have thought them crazy.)

Sheepishly (have you ever seen a Moon looking sheepish? it is quite a ticklish sight.) she climbed off the orbit, and slowed her breathing to restore some normalcy to the worlds waters. Before she got completely back into her rhythm, she sighed deeply.

Skipping. Another thing that was thoroughly off limits for Moons.

After a few months of being on her Best Behaviour, of shining extra bright in the right spaces (when people were driving, perhaps, and only she was there to light the way) and being gentle dark in others (when people were falling asleep, perhaps, and only she could tuck them in), she began to feel the pull of her favourite pastime again.

She began peering inn windows, and under doors, licking up crumbs of our normal everdayness, absorbing them like treasures. And, she was still lonely.

She picked, this particular night, one house. (Again in our country, our city). She loved this house, because of its magical JungleGarden, and how often its magical owner was awake to keep her company at night.

This night, feeling tangylonely, she slipped into the girl (26 year old girl, 29 year old girl, 32 year old girl) 's bedroom. She found her, for once, deep asleep. Slightly disappointed Moon set about to light her dreams with silver, when she noticed something.

Round this girl, sleeping on her, through her were her Pets. FoxDog, BearDog and her giant black cat. Their breathing, together, making a protective pocket for this Girl to fall asleep into. Leaving no space for loneliness.

Pets! thought the moon. Pets pets PETS! And she rushed out of the room leaving a dark, thick black, to go and see what kind of Pet would be most appropriate for a young and boisterous, (but very responsible) celestial body...

(to be continued. First draft, courtesy of Insomnia, curtailed by lack of battery power)

ghost spaces

ghost spaces unsettled
in me, filled
tightwith curledtight
streamers

shifting uncomfortable
with eachnew
(new, now, not you)
turn i make

Tuesday 2 August 2011


I began having
Sex, before
I knew
Anything about it.

I posed. Grotesque
My tongue
Doing something to
My lips
I thought it should

My body stiff
Something needing
To be dissembled
Rather than melted
Into.

(Caught in a picture
My stiffness
Is hardened over years.)

I can claim my grotesque
Now.
Fear of not the unknown
But the will
Of my own soles
And joy even in that

(but know, for you
I tried. And you could
Have been kinder
With my attempts) 

Thursday 14 July 2011

old fingers

you deleted

cleared
everything onhis
computer

you told me chattily.

my goodness, you said
he must have found that back-up
button and
never stopped using it

you said.


and your words create
a
strange hole in my chest.

a picture of my grandfather
old, hunched,
gnarled-tree like his
fingers growing into the computerkeys
as he hits Control S over and over.


I ask, knowing the answer,

if you had saved, any, maybe
one
or something,
of his backups.

Oh no, you said,
i didn't see anyneed.


and i swallow
hard and quietly
blowing silent
kisses to his old
(gone)
fingers on the keyboard.

Monday 11 July 2011

one year in

you turn me into
chewing gum


flavourless
and wrapped round your
teeth your spit
making even
my staying power

not strong enough

Sunday 3 July 2011

this

this. this is about
something that mattters.
something that is urgentinthe
momentnow. that wont wait will
come out,
through these hundreds.

hundreds with their
own urgency
to feed on yours
with their fingers,
licking your inspiration
off them.
because this.
is something that matters.

and your face
in that moment. onstage (mikemagnified)
but bigger than stage
and alloftime(hope)
in one moment and all the work comes down to
THIS. because, this. Is some
thing that matters.

sometimes

i am stretched
thin
and elastic sometimes.
(but only sometimes)

and your smile can
bounce off me
and boomerang
back round the moon, grow bigger
and...

(only sometimes)

Tuesday 21 June 2011

photomemory

you are brought
back to me
through a curve
in a photo

and a heartflutter
(still,
as ever, nothing
to hold on
to)

Monday 20 June 2011

milestones

babyshoes,
eat

life is too huge
and you are too beautiful to
shrink yourself like this.

your cheekbones branching
out like whiplines

(mirrored in your
mother's worrylines, darling)

babyshoes, eat.

you are too tiny and
life is too beautiful
to leave yourself like this

(collarbones sticking out
like milestones,
where you have receded from, darling)

and your family. stretching.
calling you from
where you started.

you are So loved

babyshoes, eat.

Wednesday 8 June 2011

insomnia

Insomnia (megan)

I send my hands to cup your head
And rock carebears
Into your dreams.

You hands round me
Basketwise
And stories, you fed
Me (halfArchive
HalfImagined)

When our fights were
Selfmade safehouses
-junglegyms we understood
the how to’s of, the length and breadth of
and we ended, if we jumped,
togetherinaheap.

I send my hands
To cup your head
And rock Safe into your
Dreams.

silt


I work with memory.

I hear peoples
Stories and flow
Them through me

Sift them to separate
The words I will use
The ones with the stories
The motives
The motion

And the silt that’s left
Behind sits in me
Like unimportant residues
That clog glaciers

gaudi


You stood behind me
And watched
As I deleted the photos of you

(we were somewhere beautiful)
you announced yourself
and I started
(somewhere magical) caught
in the act of the lie
that would make this weekend
(where we could be)
disappear

mousie

And that newyears that
A baby shrew (or something)
Fell out of the thatch and
We adopted it.

All five of us, littlemothers
 holding
It under out shirts,
To keep it warm. Take turns
With three hour feedings

With
Five mothers, it should have
Had a chance. Thissimple
Thing we could do. Body heat
And eyedropfeeds,

But there were things that had happened
Before we couldnot fix and
We couldn’t fix the inner workings

And you buried (you, fragile
Hands, fragile ribs, strongpulled
Mouth) him, wrapped
In a leaf, on a South Coast Beach.

(this simple thing)

Monday 30 May 2011

midnight stolentime

i have played role reversal
i am hiding from sleep
and

tomorrow can come when it wants

now. for an hour or two
i am hiding with my self
and my desperate housewives
and my letters of Vincent van Gogh

sigh


This
Space through which I
Cannot touch
you

This blackness through
Which I cannot
Put my
hand

As your voice disappears from
My sightline I dissolve
Into a loneliness in
Which I do not
Exist

I am a sip of a sigh
Floating in the
Air above
Basel 

Wednesday 12 January 2011

snail like

You are my
Casing

You know me
Belly button out
And still miss some
Important bits so
We can sit and pull streams of
Words out our mouths
Like magicians flags on
And on 'til we choke

My Clown.
Our tango is clumsy
Too full of passion and shouting
In awkward
Ways and too leaning - now
We fall this way
Now that but.
But ( if you look
At the dream visions
We paint with our feet,
Incidentally)

And i have too
Much flesh and you have
Too much
Voice and it
Is only when i am so scared
I am made small
(Snail like) and i let
Your hands cover me.

And your voice mend me.

And i realise that you
Are my casing.

Thursday 6 January 2011

writing box

I inch myself
In
Carefully

(I fit tight
In this box)

Controlled
Feet crossed over each other -
So.
And slide in at a slight
Angle,

So i fill it
All up and then

Then this is easy!

Four solid sides
And contained space,

And colours that
Will not change under my
Feet and pins and needles
Because of...


Not. All this mess
These strands i cannot find
(Let alone tie)

And the people i cannot
Look at
Let alone touch

And the floods and
Floods of words
That arrive uninvited. And in nonsensical orders.

So i inch myself
Into my pink and green writing box slowly.
And i will sit - to write -
And the words will arrive sedately.
Politely.
One at a time.