Proverbial Paste Dogs would trade their homes for bones, meat is worth it's weight in stone.Trick or treat? Take the trick, too many treats will make you sick.If cutting onions makes you cry, you'll find they're jealous of your eyes.To build a castle out of cake, firm foundations must be baked.Words for the wise are better spent on plastic bags and good cement.Apathy is a dish best served late, preferably on a dirty plate.Friends that want you in their lives don't disappear when death arrives.Dreams are fairgrounds in our minds, fall asleep to take a ride. Party girls conserve their tears which soak their brains and brew for years.Bras
Drugged Her tears tasted like the real dealdistilled and purified,she was petrified -purity personified.I poured her out -drank her down,choked.Distance drains the heartstretches its' sinews from coast to shore -drawing out the poison.
Clockfaced Tick faster time I have no desire, to dawdle at your doorstepknocking seconds into eons -Oh! How the saccharine smell of cherry piescooling on your windowsill,transports me to infinity.
Pity-fest You're a blur in every photographa stifled fleeting glimpsea shadow spoiling for the stairsa man more hair than mince.Your mother can't conceive you,your girlfriend is a mythbirthed of malingered desperationa girl all guts and grief.You're the savior and a martyrto some piss-take of a cause,a rainbow damning coloura shriek of deaf applause.Your father forbade silenceto make your sister scream,she never learnt to whisperand it fritzed your self esteem.You're a rusting hunk of shipwrecka spectator baked on glooma staggering epiphanyof life beyond the womb.
Off With His Head I noticed the other night that you had taken it upon yourself to visit me whilst I was sleeping - calling in and sneaking through the broken windows of my oblivious subconscious. It's not like you simply came for tea. You took me in your muscle-man arms and started (practically stalled if we're going to get technical) with a bolt of bemusement; which began boulder rolling with jubilation down a hill of expectations. All because I hadn't yet slept and slagged my way from Birmingham to Dover. What am I to do? Taking you to bed is just too drastic for this mind of mine. Then again they always said that I'd be partial to f
Secrecy I mean, the guy was no looker, though he could strut around a room with an attitude which screamed "You know you want to bang me". Unless you were a guy.He got pretty freaked out by that sort of thing, you know – guys liking other guys. I guess you could have called him homophobic. Secretly I used to imagine him lying awake at night, drenched in a cold sweat and rigid as a dead cockroach, moaning – throbbing at the thought of men.Anyway, the girl he was with, she was worth looking at. At least that's what I thought. I ended up choking on my own enthusiasm though; right after spying the tent being raised fro
The Glass House Through sulphurous sands he cleansed his hands and spun sweet yarn from sea to stars,thus enrobed he sat upon a crystal thronewithin the ethereal, curving dome of his glass house.Though late to bloom, the sour perfume of ivy tendrilsmouldering gently under Summer's weight,formed a cloud - a shroud of scent which upped and left at Winter's behest,And still he sat amongst the glassy din of window panes and spoilt Spring days,with beard grown tangled round his softening gaze,within the eternal, swerving maze of his glass house.All those that skimmed over glinting wavesroving thirsty plains in search of shade,
Sleep Gardening: Part I Beneath the spotlight of the sun a half forgotten garden grows. It wavers in and out of consciousness as each recollection of its own existence sends shrubberies sprawling, spluttering with surprise. Tool sheds and wishing wells clamour for attention; a flower pot here, a hanging basket there. Hazy patches of compost sluggishly wriggle with worms. A dusty gravel path winds itself in dejected circles as if grovelling for a footfall. Whilst barren borders (bereft of Begonias) lie begging for the bounty of a by-gone era.A clutter of colour oozes from under the patio and onto the faded piece of lawn, cutting this delusional example of horticul
Hortus Venenum Cultura The rarest flower - all vine, dead leavesearth.A death blue hueto match the tune,of winter’s heart.Do they not feel?The damp of dawn,wet soil, the bodiesso many little lives…the insects, the vermin -bearing summer.Rotted flesh feedingpoppy fields in France,for peace -for opium?Healthy anarchy dimmedby a flow of ecstasy,oh joy - for green leaves and mellow afternoons.Forests fallen -giants lain to restchildren slaughtered,to lace the sky with diamonds.
Dressed To Kill Death need not appear in funeral wearno drapes of gothic silk shouldshroud that impish frame - folds and furls about her curl the shade of coal, the shape of pain.She little caresif these threads be spun from silver sun or lilac moon, his blushing colour drained,her kiss shall fall from spider lipsdewy - crystalline.So dressed in shuddering scenes of life a blooming flower - a dying flame,she treads the patterned tiles of fate to still the blood within our veins.
Hidden Treasures A key turns in a lockrust creeps from hole to hand -cracks splinter from wrist to floorthese doors shriek,tongues shudder and pump lead -the metallic heat, feverish, lovingwound around leg and arm,as I am held cold, immobile - against what?Blinking in unison, thousands of lashesfeathery frames malting like dandelion seeds,rendering my lungs opaqueclogged with breathy wishesthe unnerving flick of identical irisesrinsing themselves over each limb,bones click - eyes in the walls,ears twist the light fixturesstraining for soundsensations are dead, metal on the minda head floats -banging like a headboard
Mapping Memories There are spaces where we used to meet;pavements, coffeeshops, doorwaysThe architecture survives our absence,We're nothing special to the stoneworkwhich watches people while it sleeps,I'm not as hard, or cold, or wearyI smell you on the clothes of passing strangers, I see your shadow's print on every street.
Dreamers: Dancing Bear There is a shadow running back and forth through the embers of our campfire with no clothes on. I fall asleep curled back to back against my sister, as beer cans char and dew seeps through the lining of our tent. Dreams burst in with bolts of sound and shrieking light.I wake up, search for socks, set off towards the source of all that music. Hours thump past and everything is mud and sweat and movement.I wake up and sense the silence. A shape shifts in the pasty darkness, she sees my open eyes and mumbles "You sleep like a corpse".
Dreamers: China Girl There's a china doll sitting on my window sill smoking a cigarette for breakfast. She's been watching me sleep and it makes her smile; I look so serious when I'm dreaming.We trace the shape of our dreams with words and drowsy gestures, circling the parts we can remember. A cold wind stirs the ashes of our campfire. I dream of teeth. She dreams of taking herself apart and putting the pieces back together.
Dreamers: Toy Solider Boy I've been reported missing. My phone flashes triple-figure missed calls and the imp who keeps me hostage scratches sleep from his eyes like a vulture menacing a corpse. He cracks a grin and croaks "Do you like my walls?", they're lime green. It's a question that he's asked before.Dawn creaks in. He strikes a match off my tongue and grants me every name under the sun except my own. He tips my face to his and says "In my dreams... I dream of killing people".I shake my head, I roll my shoulders and I stumble towards home.
Amature Heroics Superheroes can catch bulletswith their bare hands.Prise open your gushing palm -a lotus flower in scarlet bloomunfurling to reveal its precious metal seed.Save the day, get the girl.I swear to swerve around the many multi-coloured obstacles of life, with the same degree of tenacity.I will juggle it all no joke, no rehearsalsand like a pantomime villainthey will chase me from the stage.These lies we sell ourselvesare like fervent prayers,to a disembodied deity who offers only dreams,or doubts.
Good Night He'd spent ages plundering shop fronts,dredging through a dirge of back lit taxi lines;with the sweat slick smirkingof revolutionary well wishers,drizzling in his ears.He'd cut up his feet with a pair of pumps, fizzling ethanol and a stack of sad photographs.Mangled, bedazzledstock still and smoking, wanting to leavewaiting to spontaneously combust.You're born, you're five -eighteen, fifty-nine,sore, dazed then dead.He'll spend decadesdeciding what comes next.
Letters to Cthulhu Dear gelatinous squid-man of curiously disproportionate dimensions,the noxious gases manifesting from your many orifices are - nauseating,their intent, purely malignant, their stench, quite unnecessary.Your squishy head, spherical-ish like a massive fleshy watermelon, makes one recall, with adequate 'horror' the consistency of blancmange.Scrap the claws, the cultist aspirations,your superfluously tentacled faceonly creates a stir, amongst fans of hentai porn.The ocean floor is not yours alone,so keep your pickled-egg eyes off my monoliths.Yours, Dagon the fish God.PS. Your wings look ridiculous, like a
Loved Ones Shut eyed children of the revolutionplucked sleeping from their orchid sheaths,suckled dumb by hummingbee-winged mothermelding cherry blossom mouths, to plastic teats.Dull eyed children of the revolutiongrown hungry for the salt of stars,drew breath, blew steam soaked languid bowerswith cinnamon dewand apple hearts.Bright eyed children of the revolutiondrank laughter, sweet as slithers of peach,sewed halcyon spring from honeycomb seeds, swept Mortality's scythe beyond their reach.Tired eyed children of the revolutionno longer bound by wires and flumes,kissed the stems of sup
Visionary Man alive, you're looking awfulpretty tonight. No shoes, no toesno luna-park forty thousand foot dropas my brain floods green and blueand gold. As my stomach flips,as my pupils trip on your whitewater luminosity. Boy, everybodybreathes, but you make it seemso easy. Just oxygen slipping into something more comfortable,the hot pink slipper of your lungs, like lingerie. Just bronchibeckoning each breath to skipover your tongue. Just flickering time transfixed by the rising tideof your ribs. Just you. Pretty thing,the cause of Cupid's wandering eyes, no longer blind but gorgedon sight. My answer to Cleopatra,
Where We Started Liar, liar,who spooled the silver lining from my lungs to spell a namein Arabic and braille, in crop circles and cloudswho knew I search for symmetryin everything I say,who wouldn't let me peel away the sticker of my skinor poke my palsy face through portholes in the sky,who blinked and brought me to my kneesas black spots spun and spattered, cursed and canteredwho said I did it betterbut couldn't bare to cross a word,who teased me through tobacco flavoured nights, as wastedas a firefly he charmed the Perseids to Earth,who taunted me with a peacock tonguewhich winked and wandered, blamed and blunderedwho swore I
Creator God's yellow eyes are open,in technicolour spit he illustrates his omnisciencelike a child, waxen with despotic frenzy.Step upon his spectral stair,cavort malnourished through his scrawling sky,settle where the deaf kings cast their dice.I discard my mortal coil,stain aphrodisiac verse on scriptural fists,strain in vain for paradise, my Maker's kiss.
The Colour Blue Marble spheres of blank sky dye, forget me not sweet lying eyes - though those subtle seas and icy tides, drown these dreams of lovers' sighs.
Gravity Cast upon the purple whims of spacewith supple wings of spider silk and ivory you fly, like a man possessedcaught up in your wakefulness,the planets trace their subtle silhouettesacross the flaming surface of the sunI am atomised as you pass by,my particles marooned, aloneon some distant asteroids shoreas time is fleeing -time is something which you taste, seasoned with the yellow spice of yesterdayyou are an eclipse – a momentboth divine and darkyou plunge me into candlelight and I am subject to your gravity, my heart.
Swan Song A man with liquorice eyes sat at the edge of my bedand said, his scotch scarred voice box trembling;"I'll make a liar out of you yet."Long ago, he'd been sailing underwater, an Albatross in towon an ocean of arithmetic where numbers swam in shoalsand the women looked like Wolverines.There, he met a girl who wasn't one to kiss and tell, he fell for the kind of bird who circles in Kestrel-like slow motionsky-high and sunburnt as a lark.She could draw the velvet shore up to her shaking knees,stashing foreign fears beneath his sea-blue sheetslike sunken submarines.Together mornings felt like rambles in the countryside,pa
Dilation I touch the rainbow stain where with tender shame she daily smears a smile of stolen beauty,I lick my lips, as the illusion of her sweetened tears settles on the amalgam palette of my memory.Curling my mouth around the cold pink shell of her ear,with humid breath I pulse my tongue into her brainuntil I taste eternity.She wakes in waves and cries like Aphroditeas gentle pangs of hunger treacle through my thighs,she bathes within the amber stripes of streetlightsand strikes a beat with restless feet, naked as a lie.Stumbling, drowned in sullen sweat as the drowsing tidepollutes our bed; a crumpled shirt, a cracked CD,
Book Covers She was no stunner,mayonnaise complexion, grease rope barnet,eyes which conjured visions of freshly varnished decking,garden fences, compost, soggy instant coffee, sour beer, tea bags.Piss stained gnashers,with their own patented layer of plaquey grouting,her smile a metaphor; pub toilets, wheelie-bin slime and that one time you saw a vomit plastered student collapsed in a skip, with no knickers on.She would pucker her lips,slurp a drag from my last fag, dribble vodka down her hairy chin, catch me in the sticky fly trap of her stare,"Here it comes..." I'd gag, "I've had them all" she'd swear.
Bed Time To be inside you,to squirm, to swirl with dreamscape delirium,to wriggle between your snowflake folds, enshrined, enslaved in pillow talk.To be within you, to toss, to twirl with sleepy serendipity, sequined by flecks of former lovers skin, foetus shaped and rockedby narcolepsy.
Eat Him Up His adder addled lies sinful as an apple skinHis briar blurred eyes wily as a river's kissHis collar carved throat divine as ancient marbleHis danger dared hope nimble as poetic trustHis ever erred art fiery as a phoenix oathHis fuchsia flushed heart bittersweet as lemon pulpHis gunner gutted stride giant as an avalancheHis hunger honed pride virile as a vivisection His idler imbrued stink sickly as fermented spiteHis joker jeered wink
Origami I never did appreciate the art of folding paper,the simple stars which fell between forging friends and text book conversation,to amaze, win praiseland misshapen, wasted at the bottom of a blazer pocketthose hands which creased the heavens into angles,years later, took pen to paperDear upon - dear upon - dear?letters which could read themselves -sealing their own envelopes,prophetic wax lipsdotting each delicate ‘I’with a kissyou soldered our memoriesinto a frangible faux fictionand I, the poetfound an apathetic knack,of seldom writing back.
Witching Hour Suki sought paper bats, magic bottles -raked them off the walls with her sick grip,hissing spit which longed to singe and throttleeach two-legged insect which dared to tripdown hellish stairs, past the hour of three AM.Stunted cell mates lined her tracks, mouths lipless like barren tunnels – murmuring bedlamas she sauntered past her vermin children."A world without witchcraft isn't worth a damn!"All Suki desired was a cauldron,a centre-peice for this rotten, raven nest -adding to the decor of her demon den.
Biology You are your insides, mobile meatsearching for a softer centre - the elusive inner self,composed entirely of innards.Lips are scorched, curled in an ever open 'Oh'a gateway through to tongue and throat.Diaphragm scowls - contracted, clenchedscrewed up; like a face contorting in disgust.Trachea trembles; choked and cloaked and clogged with colour, echoing but voiceless.Alveoli fatten like swollen berriesripe to pluck, their juices swelterthick with smoke.Blood contemplates and circulates,hot and bubbling beneath the skin,clotted with temptation.Nerves which flutter; sparking
Girlfriend Her spine is knitted with stitches,a crest of twine, flushed and crustedteardrop sores dreamily leaking,my blistered sisterher finger knuckle necklaces,chinks in a chain of cold blooded crimesnaked, she sucks the meatfrom their bones.
Sta.sh
