POETRY

Weathered Wants
(2021)

Time wastes weathered wants away.
Though without wonder they wane,
When wisdom unwraps under maelstrom waves.
Memories fade yet we remember mistakes made.
Now we no longer feel the same.

Me, Memento
(2021)

One day, you can be:
a pair of earrings,
a necklace, a bracelet,
a poem, a portrait,
a stone in a yard,
scattered across the world,
ashes on a bookshelf,
the key to one’s health,
or a memory at the forefront
of those who knew and loved you.

Rapid Eye Movement Credit Score
(2021)

Unswept debt;
have you slept?
Is the lightswitch
in your wallet
on or off?
I’m sure you’re on it,
I’m sure it’s chronic,
I’m sure you’re unsure of sureness
and you want to solve the problem.
Tough luck, get some sleep.

The Scent
(2021)

Pluviophile's euphoria...
To take shelter by fire
while rain falls overhead.
"Petrichor! Oh, I adore the scent
of freshly watered earth,” we said.

Freshers
(2021)

Dead wasp tongue
“what are you, gay?”
helping a homeless man
from getting his head kicked in
skipping class, dusk taxi,
dawn taxi, the loss of time,
freshers.

HaHa
(2021)

Eudaemonia in the throes of trauma;
demon smiles and youthful mania.
Sometimes we laugh when we
want to cry harder.

Rent
(2021)

Landlord of nothing,
Baron of shit,
Living nepotism,
Cordoned imagination,
Four walls and two fingers,
We can take this outside
But I’d rather you not linger.

Orange Juice
(2021)

With bits from concentrate,
you hate it but I love it,
a sunny taste and I feel okay,
for a while, for a while, for a while.

Marvin Magic Wand
(2021)

I’m the shiver wizard,
Magician of shakes,
Actor on a stage.
Pick a card as you leave.
Any card, please, my prestige
Is to vanish and appear
Up my sleeve.

Hungry Pigeons
(2021)

They say to always listen
but it’s a well-known fact:
feeding hungry pigeons
results in hungry rats.

Givenakey
(2021)

Given a key
to unlock the
door of Me -
with a rusted
handle and a
busted hinge,
it creaks harshly
when I close it.

The Sun, The Ragged Beast
(2021)

It was a whining whelp;
a lonely pup circling itself,
and rarely requesting help.
Fur caked in dirt and eyes
sensitive to light, it hurt
to live a life that it might like.
When humans approached,
it’d foster hope, but bite
if their hands got too close.
Now aged, it basks
in the glow of the past,
eyes used to the star,
with a bark that remarks:
“I’m healthy and clean, at last."The Prague astronomical
spins the Apostles;
orders Death to strike
the fear and hour into us.

Playing In The Fields
(2021)

Frisbee, spin and twirl,
be free - may you earn
what you deserve.

Career
(2021)

Nine to five
fluorescent lights
and the feeling of a life
outside slipping by –
I can’t go back but where’s forward?

YESTERBOMBS
(2021)

Feels like every time
is slipping by me ///
I glance out the window, down my street
to see the day reduced to rubble
like yesterbombs were released
tomorrow – or so the history
books foretold.

Float Through
(2021)

Eye beholden beauty
comes unnaturally to me
through contortion of my angle
to appraise a different view.Sexy has always been
a temporary thing,
as skin seldom arouses
what words already killed.I’ve lived and lust and seen
the beautiful and ugly
faces of many
people.

Art
(2021)

Whittle away the
brittle parts until its soul
can escape the shell.

Magritte Moi
(2021)

One day, you can be:
a pair of earrings,
a necklace, a bracelet,
a poem, a portrait,
a stone in a yard,
scattered across the world,
ashes on a bookshelf,
the key to one’s health,
or a memory at the forefront
of those who knew and loved you.

The 1997-2021 UK Vitality Transfusion Circuit
(2021)

I’ve met vampires –
marked my mind
and memory.
Sucked my vitality
by Whitby abbey
and the funhouse
of Southport pier.
Met some here,
some there –
all across Britain –
and I bit, myself,
on occasion.

Magritte Moi
(2021)

It’s a mirror man – scarf wound
around a brittle neck and knotted
proudly with gloved hands;no face to be found,a bowler hat slightly tilted down
to obscure a ripe smile or sour frown –
we can’t be sure.

Bell's Paddock
(2021)

The owl turns its head
Sat beside a flower bed
And waking at night

Mangaka
(2021)

My curtains: drawn
by other artists
who bled into morn
with aching wrists
until the sun rises.

The Warm Hand Sonnet
(2021)

Have those cold hands ever touched love before?
Yes, they’ve felt it. Each finger has felt warmth:
Flirting, dressed as monsters at a platform.
One singing, one strumming on a guitar.
Unique teen moments: cocoa coitus breaks.
“Such beautiful shirts,” my green light cried out,
Lit by the afterglow of a first date.
The second: candlelit... Hands hot throughout.
Two dark figures dining in Wonderland,
Doodling dreams with pens and tongues like warlocks
Poking red string with winter market chants
At wrong times. Like unwound hands on a clock.
______ㅤㅤThose warm palms imprinted upon the heart
______Of a spark - near or far - and sculpted art.

In Mud
(2020)

The pip’s in utero, without disease,
until the soil concedes and the seed is free
to see brown, blue, green, and sun soaking reeds;
apathy, fury, greed, burning, wants, and heat -
Plants lacking humanity,
may stem in mud far from seeds.

Cognitive Optometrist
(2018)

O’ precious serotonin!
Bitter inhibiting medication
the likes of fluoxetine,
with her reuptake kiss cold and mean;
a pretty Prozac that left me
passively prosaic, and aggressively lethargic.

After, citalopram came
promising to help whisk the blue away -
and she did! Diluted that blue to grey,
from languid golem to static clay.
She’d replaced my melancholic myopic monocle
with lopsided monochromatic and broken shades.

Those glasses were removed then cleaned
by higher dosages: pregabalin and sertraline,
marijuana, ecstasy, nicotine,
and alcohol – though never listerine!
So, hope remains, yes?
Takes a drag to see…

Therapist, optometrist, saviour.
She restores my vision though it wavers.
Cannot start yet never stop.
Trying to ride a merry-go-round,
uptown from downtown
by spinning on the spot.

Tiny Lungs
(2017)

Following three nights
of weakened young lungs
releasing bronchial cries,
you left Loved by Mum.
Your boot fell uneven
off the lax foot it hung,
and as you were leaving,
the other loss sung:

“Granddaughter, your passing
reminds me of another,
who, thickened lungs collapsing,
ignored his pleading lover
to take refuge, post-flames,
in nicotine
lighting and a solemn face
that soured the pre-war teen.”

While his worn-in pair
inhaled until ill and blackened,
yours released a youthful air,
a timid winter chill,
then slackened.

Unfinished Work

The following are from my To O' To One project. I wrote multiple poems of varying quality a day from January the 1st, 2021 to January the 1st, 2020. Many have been thankfully erased from existence and memory, leaving the ones I finished and the scraps which follow. I'm reticent to delete them entirely but am unhappy with them as they stand.

Koi A I’m
01.21
I’m a koi – I’ve been
swimming without pause yet I
can’t seem to realise

Petals
01.21
I’ve wrote of flowers
born from tainted soil
much like me
and I grow weary.

Unit
02.21
Singing, with sawdust lungs,
four chord songs.
You’ve sanded at the contours to find
an imperfect circle.

Beneath My Bridge
02.21
I eat.
Oh, I eat.
I chew clocks as if delicacies;
munch love until it’s hurting me;
bite the sharpest anxieties,
savour themswallow them.
For when I’m hungry, I eat.

Naked and Old
02.21
I’m a skeleton
with a bleached bone
to pick with the sun –
my flesh is not my home
and so I wander in a tomb
without the guts
to face my problem.
Can you remember
the direction I came?
It’s back this way,
then back again.

They’re There
04.21
Can I tell you a story? It’s of the old tree.
Big branches, heavy leaves, standing by the cemetery,
waking every summer, protecting stones from other
natural entities that mean harm.
That tree, those marks, in memory can be found.
They’ve vanished now,
washed a w a

Watching a Film
05.21
We were a ribbon,
hooped arms wrapping
the present like a gift
from the past that lived
boxed in the attic,
held together with string.

UNTITLED
05.21
I’m a bad idea.
In all respects
don’t come near;
I speak what I feel
and what you don’t want to hear.

UNTITLED
05.21
Mayfly, mayfly,
dead by June -
a testament to endings
coming too soon.

UNTITLED
06.21
Lips: take me,
grace mine sanctuary,
the sensation of comfort with
none of the guilt. Could we be
interlocked forever like this?
No kiss, no kiss.

UNTITLED
06.21
Bounce back like a yoyo
On a string taut and worn,
Perform a trick, do a spin,
Then stay on the ground.

UNTITLED
06.21
Middle of the road,
year half empty, year half full,
once again at June.

UNTITLED
06.21
O, Misophonia:
when I chew, I chew quieter;
my jaw is calmer;
the world is dimmer;
does it matter,
Misophonia?

UNTITLED
06.21
I earned a medal in patience -
it tugged on my neck,
awarded me a mounted head,
contorted face similar to my own
to decorate the fireplace.

Twitter
06.21
Birds tweet on my street
nasty remarks and songs
made for you, them, me...
It’s all homogenous -
I’m whistled at by ‘geniuses’
who never learned to shut up.

UNTITLED
06.21
Once more around the dinosaur,
spinning balls and shooting holes,
we’ve swang about this park
like we’re sitting out of time.
Drowning, now.

UNTITLED
06.21
I’m cloud fairing
from Magonia,
a tempestarii here
to steal your wheat
and take it for
the rain -
do not tempt me.

Jazz
06.21
Just a storm. Perhaps even rain.
Isn’t life operatic? Violent?
Even yearning offers upset.
I know, now, of what
time holds and takes,
flying overhead relentlessly:
some upset, regret, emotion.

UNTITLED
06.21
Someone was here,
enraptured by the queer
sight of something
headless and hatless;
through a lens they
watched the rapturing
and dreamed of something reckless.

UNTITLED
06.21
Eggdrops raincracks,
whipdreams daylash,
melttime nightdowns,
bloodtimes firstrush,

UNTITLED
06.21
I met a girl from Russia
Who could speak with birds
And had trust issues
Stemming from a cold city
Not made for pretty soaring eyes
Or a wandering mind caught
By the backdraft of time that
Would keep them in a cage
Painting art - her name was Daria.

UNTITLED
07.21
PNS 3,
Hypo freeze,
Dorsal vagus collapse
Fluttering eyelids,
Noticeably pale complexion,
Inaccessible cognition,
Help, my parasympathetic nervous system
Doesn’t want me to survive.

UNTITLED
07.21
It’s July, that time for
glass half empty minds
to celebrate they were right
and we’re running out of time.

UNTITLED
07.21
More flesh, please.
I’m feeling Ancient Roman,
Ancient Greece; the kind of
tantalising skinship seen
by warriors and thinkers
who would show a little bit
instead of a little less.

Re-Assertion
07.21
Judith draws blood across two canvases.
One: frail and soft. The other: aggressive.
Caravaggio withdrew her agency
and authority of the moment;
Gentilische painted the tip of the blade
but she’s the one who drove it forward.
Holofernes, Holofernes!
Achior warned you of your deeds.
You should have looked ahead,
now you’re dead,
and artists worsen how you bleed.

Long Winded Online Love
07.21
So beautiful…
sleeping on call.
Hips reverberating
to your circadian beat,
half naked. How
did this happen?
The gust of air
that drives you forward
lifts your chest and
shrugs your shoulders;
don’t shudder, I’ll
comfort you.

QE. I
07.21
Matriarch of the patriarchy:
your autumn light has left.
Eyes, lips, mouth adorn your cloak,
your greying hair is red.
You caught the rainbow,
and sent a flood
to rush the River Thames.
An iron fist snaking around
the necks of feeble males.

UNTITLED
08.21
Execute a life.
Execute a program.
One for starting.
One for concluding.

UNTITLED
08.21
Thank you for looking at me;
taking a moment to appreciate
how long it took to be me;
waiting by the garden gate
in order to meet me for a walk.
I’ll whistle once in a while,
listening to the gentle cries
of a younger me thrashing in pain.

UNTITLED
08.21
Summer heat has me
feeling like a dying bee
starved for nectar...
Oh, honey, I’m feeling
yellow and black again,
bruised skin glowing in
a light so sobering.

UNTITLED
09.21
Elongated, my vernacular
is a daddy-long-legs in a skirt
that can’t be expressed with easy words
and needs culling.

UNTITLED
09.21
The calender is fake:
we basically came up with it yesterday.
I must remember through to December
that there are seven days to disappoint
and more than three hundred to entertain -
but the hours grow both shorter and longer
and midnight is midday in the mind of a loser.

UNTITLED
09.21
Rome Antics
used to make my heart beat,
toppled by reality,
a state usurped by royalty
into the sea.

UNTITLED
10.21
I propose
I am pro/post,
both before and after,
the timing of a toast.

UNTITLED
10.21
Labyrinthitis spins de walls
and diverts de eyes
slightly out of focus.
Depersonalised,
derealised,
dissociative
and desperate,
I’ll flee from de minotaur
and search for de exit.

UNTITLED
10.21
Thus here’s my thesis
on furious fevers framed as Gods
we fear with awe and wonder
when they manipulate at best!
Prometheus, oh Prometheus;
brought fire to us and bled -
like one fallen slitherer who
provides broken souls a bed.

UNTITLED
10.21
The letter, ‘K:’
a crown for
kaisers and kings -
and on its side, a book
rife with novel things.

Gustavlust
11.21
Kiss me,
oh beauty, full
of tastes long past you -
I’ll turn away...
You know me,
ukiyo-e prince,
muddy shaded royal,
and that’s a shame.
That’s a shame.

Triggered In Moonlight
11.21
The boy who cried is
the wolf who ate him;
sixteen teeth ch-ch-chattering...
a tongue loose, plied
from its root at the back of my throat.Awoo - Awoo.
I hate full moons;
lies and midnight are a
plight at the back of my throat.Tooth and claw,
truth no more
but ragged breath
and rabbid saliva
and ratted rags
wrapped around him.What a state
at the back of my throat.

UNTITLED
11.21
Fire chased me
around stone walls and concrete towers
through woods to the beach:- no ocean /
no rain -I will not be melted wax again.

UNTITLED
11.21
Apple: lodged in my back,
between my teeth,
in your eye,
on a tree.

Like A Month To A Day
12.21
An oceanic firmament.
BONE DRY, MY SWEATING SKIN.I breathe - - -
in a bird wing flap,
a ladybug landing,
a breath or two to feel
something like summer;or, at least, a gold, warm winter.
Winter was a cold, white summer.
And all is all and none is none.
And the months revolve
and evolve the dying sun.
And they are each other.So, I breathe - -
inhale June snapped grass and croaking ducks
and rainbow umbrellas overhanging ice
cream trucks, and the snow
and brown leaves that never left
and never returned, like a river
rushing unheard somewhere,
unobserved,not quite still but still there -
and I exhale in May.

Old Kid
12.21
There was an Old Kid with a watch
who worried they hadn’t wound it enough –
the arms would walk forward
and they’d count down in horror
with the choice to ignore it or watch.I am the moon that watches as you spin,
the stars that guide from afar,
the rain that wets your aging skin,
the wind that moves your arms.

Old Kid
12.21
There was an Old Kid with a watch
who worried they hadn’t wound it enough –
the arms would walk forward
and they’d count down in horror
with the choice to ignore it or watch.I am the moon that watches as you spin,
the stars that guide from afar,
the rain that wets your aging skin,
the wind that moves your arms.

The rest of these poems were written either before or after 2021.

Ludo
07.20
Mind games exhaust me.
They clog my memories
with insecurities when
I'd rather play with cards.

Blizzard Living
07.20
Life's snowflakes.
Rolling down a hill,
gaining speed and
picking things up
along the way.

Ammudancer
07.20
No chasing or baiting any longer;
I'm a lover, not a hunter,
but my heart sounds like gunfire.

Wyvern Wishes
07.20
Steadfast, helpful, and nice –
none have stood by my side
or adjusted to my life to
the extent that you have tried.
You craft drakes that look awake
like the vivid shading in the lakes
and trees of the breath-taking vistas
you reanimate with paint.
You read, make, and write,
train the eyes, and play with reptiles,
distract your mind to pass the time,
stand tall and try not to cry.

Subtext Connection
07.20
.InowUnowWnowUnowI.

Room
02.20
Raindrops roll down the window.
Blue-tac on the wall.
Bed, unmade; duvet sprawled haphazardly near the foot of the mattress.
The cluttered evidence of business and tiredness.
The Gecko licks its eyes.Thousands of pages collected and bound.
Green screens, tripods, and lights.
An acoustic guitar, thick strings tightly tuned.
Graphically designed pop culture posters.
Hundreds of books, clean and regularly removed from their shelf.Dry, dusty tobacco.
Socks with holes in them.
Recently formed cobwebs.
Wood panel flooring.
The sound of cars.One broken silver-framed clock, one broken digital clock.
One bookshelf of journals, well-kept and daily maintained until 2020.
Dozens of binders filled with printouts and reference material.
Thick, heavy, psychology books: recently neglected.Half empty Dr. Pepper bottle.
Seven face masks hung up on the door.
The blue glow of a high definition screen.
Empty Dr. Pepper bottle.

Two Coiling Snakes
05.19
Many things rely on
the idea of your idea of me
and my idea of your idea
and its significance
and insignificance.