wrote this when i was 13 or 14. was a pretty big deal to me at the time.

Sticky eyelids hanging over,

Blind and sluggish on the sofa,

Slimey tongue

Shriveled lips, tasting of alcohol and

- Pink Floyd? -

Greasy pastry (sausage roll)

And cigarette butts in an old china bowl

(No one can be bothered fetching ashtrays),

He comes upstairs to where the lights are out and my little feet are cold.

There is something wrong with the man in this room.

He is watching me so I am naked in some way.

He's clearly got a lot of money for this perverted charity

(And yet I don't think he had money for the taxi ride home,

Because he borrowed it from you some time around dawn).

He says he knows I like it

(Textbook)

Says it’s okay to like it

(Textbook)

And I can't really tell what I'm feeling right now

Which means he might be right, but I don't think it's okay,

In fact I'm certain that it's wrong, so there's no way

I'm ever telling you and mom.

the pros and the cons of the ana-mia loverboy

who pills and swills and ills and in his misery is

all

yours, little flute, you! fluting, willowy, we,

what? but not him, he, whose bones are lacking in self-

will, won't we? stop? for just a moment while i moment

while i

don't know, but the ana-mia loverboy won't, no! he carries

buckets shaped like upside-down shapes up beside the bathtub, filled with

bleach for swilling pilling purging surging burning heart and

girl heartburning, makes a shape like

fiery islands sands and peach

is the colour of the, coming

from

the bathroom is the sound of, baby-man-boy manifested by boy-infested feeler,

feeling feverish? need to free this? why don't you throw,

the tide comes in the froth

is forming, falling for

me, why don't you

throw me, why don't

you throw me up, and give

me a little

taste,

taste of death and ip-ip-ip and cackle, cackle,

cackle

in here,

smoking and soft, imposing

on my box,

weighing it down a little

more,

hidden tricklings in my bloodstream when i watch you and i curl

like cigarette paper, shying from you and becoming hot.

would it be alright to take

my own hand to this?

here,

where the palms and fingertips make the

pressing,

to remember this more vividly

i am pushing,

and it pales underneath a deeper movement,

it only feels harder.

i would be sorry to forget

the very first taste of your mouth in

that alcove and first

knowing

a new secret in those crushed up moments,

that split the box open and spilt

an old weight into a dolorous climb around my popping piece of muscle.

i

sucking cheap red off your face,
i paint saliva on your teeth
and touch that perfect pelvic place

you are the only thing i'll eat.

collecting vodka from your tongue,
we finger games beneath the seat
and tonic biting gin that stung
the only thing i'll eat.

fumbling with your aching zip
i curl the smoke with bending feet
i swap my glass for ripened lip

you are the only thing i'll eat.

you were sad last night when i came over

i'd washed and shaved and cleaned my teeth
spent all day eating mango and avoiding coffee

base make up with no mascara

i walked the icy mile from my bedroom
to your bedroom

and sat around quietly
waiting for your mood to change

so that we could fuck
and i could finally go home

but you only kissed me
and you lulled me to sleep

and i go home ashamed the next morning wishing

that we could not be anything any more

and that we could be nothing at all

covenant

archangel fingers unzipping his jeans, no,
that's not your name, correct me, but
a moment ago you said

michael,

call me michael, lifting to the ceiling with the smoke from my cigarette.

and now michael stands interlacing the scenes with a flexible moan that
ached through me.

i knew

that somewhere under the swollen gallop
lay a fresher specimen, ready to be cut open,
sewn back up

ready for the split

call me michael, he says, but no,
that's not his name

if he'd floated down from the sky on the wings of a dove, or even just
the tangled ropes of a gleaming parachute then i might have believed
he was michael

and no angel would ever set upon me like this, see, i know he is nothing but
a porcelain mask. virginal, maybe,

nothing divine.

and in that case, 'michael', you are not mine.

16

and i wish i was beautiful like an arcade machine
a flushing silver dream your white hands cup beneath

and in between feeds i'd slip under your sheets
on the floor, while you work with the television screen

and for the time being
i no longer mean a thing

but i'd still be beautiful like an arcade machine

14

rain gropes the glass like tentacles
i sleep to dream of rape and indifference
lazy and swirling in sore, muddy waters
clutching onto tight dirt-swollen veins
spilt over broken boot-trampled feet
bones bent out - prongs on a fork
and your teeth dragged out those foods from me

13

sting-
nettle-
a skeletal vessel, split skin blood metal
fingers mine in your mouth tongue nectar rose petal
spring flower bed-
mud and dirt, tear-shedding
desperate to spit, slid away from ugly
young loved blood-plump skin
a once lovely thing laced with sugar and sweat
now spent lonely
in a daze of regret

11

crawling through a whirr of spoken word,
spelunking through the rumble;
the little noises people make,
cacophonies of aching hearts;
birdlimed and drowned and crashing
down, a sliding door of sounds;
the pink alluring girls that swallow
cocoa cabana by the bowlful
(no room inside for soul)
the beauty's in their bones;
you don't see where all this sweetness goes,

but the beauty's in their bones.
and when a rising arm will fall again,
smacked down hard by gravity,

come little noises from the floor;
when the neverending drum of words
grows less, and less is more more more;

10

i could be something softer

a collection of feathers or plunging fur

won't someone touch me? a fingertip would do
there's a quicker way

to something better
lying back with her and listening to xiu xiu

9

peacefully persephone delivered to me sweetly
she softly soaped me up to listless lathers quite completely

and they were razed to my frail feet
and they dissolved to perfumed sleet

while powdered-white persephone curved out her skin so neatly
and swept the waves of water in a pulse that wetly beat me
my teeth began to bite and break her skin and now so beastly
i demanded she defeat me
yet deliver to me sweetly
and come for me quite completely

for my feet my skin (not powdered white)
and milky teeth were set alight
with ever-present coloured flames that ever-after eat me

persephone for setting me alight she won't forget me
and when she ends this unchaste bend she'll come home and collect me

8

i leant in
to fill your head with diamonds,
the softest sort of love,

the way your hands may cup an apple,
or a baby's cushion head

you would sink your knives through,
weighed down and heavy
with ripened fruit.

this whole body smells of the gentlest of foods.

my little darling heart
you are an apple i can bite,
a fruit to split apart

7

pressed,
gently squeezed, between
your finger and your thumb

cloudy-apple eyes
hypnotise to some crumbling
crumble
crumb

milky white light blots over me
and i think of this face

and i pretend her chai tea-coloured skin
was something i pressed my teeth into
instead of him

6

squirming in and out of love

your silkworm charm
my little drips of luck
an unbuttoned stomach
and a weaving on my front
wriggling between us and coming unstuck

5

do you want me? my little bleating heart
or any other part at all?

right through my middle
the systems adjourn
the arteries argue out which way to turn

i melt into the cracks of delicate pavements
pressing out my folds

love you or not i will pop you like a bug
mosquitoes nestle and feed
in the uncomfortable ears of the wrestling needy

i will stomp stomp stomp
shaking the river
until you were never there at all

4

Sabine, in the apple orchard
makes all the spin-tops spin
in my hand and in her lap
and sweetly vitamin
between a finger and a thumb
pill shake bottle gentle drum
Sabine makes all the spin-tops spin
Sabine calls all that will not come

beneath a league a leaf or two
a german flag the hitler youth
Sabine serene the same salute
jerusalem artichoke, choke, pollute
the same Sabine, and ripened fruit
tugging branches of my hair
Sabine oh german debonaire

Sabine, in the apple orchard
fruit tug apple peach bruise tortured

∞

when your sights allow

ink blot realities
mundane technicalities
bath foam and razors mean

all things amazing i'm
clicking my knuckles and
gently erasing this
face i am only

creating to cover what's
left of the other ones
under my peers' thumbs
my father he turns a key to

rooms full of everything
we need to keep breathing
he tells me i'll have the key
"if something happens to me" and

then it's all up to me and
what would i do would i
bail out immediately
and run so far as the sea

bubbling up to me
and swimming through ecstasy
the temperatures changing
like fevers from freezing

remember the way
that the air smelt on monday
it filled me with something
like worry or memory

nostalgia tells lies and the
future says nothing while
here in the present it
still won't narrate for me

twenty-three hours ago
i decided to go home
and only read books all day
wondering whether there

was any use in
returning at all when i'm
leaving here anyway
to something i can't explain

under the smell of the
things i don't know too well
looking for logic just
further entangles me

all this exposing me
glowing disposably
a room full of fructose
and full testimonies all

milky and white was the
world on that evening with
everything lit up by
snow and elation my

skin's sensitivity
nervousness day and night
complete inability to
turn off the bedroom light

back in my room is there
anything left for me a
tiny fly died in a
small pool of orange juice and

all the dead insects and
dust in the light-shades from
wings turned to powder the
legs are too much for me

i run my tongue under and
over my lips and they
seem to be oily with
something from yesterday

where was the money from
i spent so much last year on
secret things nobody
else knows about but me

i made the bed yesterday
today it is twisted the
pillows are flattened my
skin is perspiring

as soon as the door closed the
walls all shook everywhere and
scattered departure all
over air particles

still up past midnight and
scared of the bed i am
sipping the orange juice the
fly later floats in dead

and this connects everything
and all of your meddling
it cannot do anything
to keep it from emptying

running through timeframes and
all my own mindgames the
silvery slug trails all
what has been left behind

standing in yellow and
reeking of perfume now
sitting down next to me a
day before yesterday

and even before then a
bus in the evening while
asking me questions i'm
giving the answers but

so inaccurately
completely unknowingly
a few weeks ago there was
no more to do to me

remember how easily
we fell together now
will some kindly symmetry
reflect in the contrary

to see our infinity
zoom in on your periphery
and soon you will see less than
four has no boundary

and that's what it means to me
that's all it needs to be
shut down your sights for a
moment of clarity

erase all the memories
erase all the memories
melt them back into dreams
and go back to sleep until

then

1 iii

let your skin begin to shed

its cruelty onto mine

pull my muscles from their sleep

and snap my waking spine

2

there is a bathing light
between my hips
and down my thighs
where an old man's face
has made me filthy
and an old man's face
has eaten me alive

the petals and the leaves
beneath me in a tree
they flutter perfectly deceiving
now it's raining, i am weeping
soak my feet in curdling white
sink into the bathing light
between your hips and down your thighs
you deliver me cupfuls
to make me clean
and i draw out cupfuls
when i eat you alive

1 ii

he and i collide between
the gap so tenderly
bending all the segments of his sticky spine for me

1 i

my lover and i crawl
over tables and walls
crushing time into the creases
of the unmade bed