Collected sea shells
from every shoreline she came to.
Held onto a collar
from every animal she had loved.
Shelved old receipts
from every memory she could cling to.
Drank to forget all
she could not hold in her hands.

Moths stir the windowsill
preparing for her next cigarette.
She had lost interest.
A long time ago.

Agentic gratification:
the sugar hit,
the line of sniff,
the awful ***,
the pin-drop peace,
the loneliness.

Collected tattoos
from every song that saved her.
Gathered dust, the silhouettes
from every trophy of conquest.
Hoarded suitcases
from every time she had ran away.
Stayed inside to forget
all that she could not see.

Moths stir the windowsill.
People are just noise in the streets.
She had lost interest.
A long time ago.

The line of freedom was drawn,
fortunate passports found
amongst the rubble of Ground Zero.

The future was not a boot,
more, groping hands through
intimate pockets
and blue light that decimates
the privacy of dreams.

No concentration camps,
Bernays fuelled the fire­
in a wolf's disguise
until the crowd would herd itself.

No Aryan prophecy-
hatred more efficient
when its hands are untied.
Small disparities linger
the stem of deception:

the bottom-feeders are sterilised,
benefits withdrawn, foundations exposed
as ******* palms gather the loot
they lifted through the ceiling.

Sensory comfort provides
the leisure of a clouded mind,
a blood sugar spike,
the Soma of our time.
Under halogen lights
they make love in the high-rise

then labour in sleep
for what love cannot afford.

Continents divide.
Africa: the cold shoulder.
Asia: the factory line.

Oceans swell in neoprene heat
as sling-shots are drawn
beneath a dying star.
Old skull of Palestine,
cross-hairs on the White House
and a contusion in Pakistan.

Doors of perception only open to addiction.
Separate from G-d ,
draw more blood from the ground
like a smoker in the inexhaustible
process of quitting.

A belief in infinity
that will last until the world's end.

The line of freedom was drawn.
Everyone believed that they were on the right side.

They took down the eaves
after all shelter was destroyed.
Left a pay packet
and the desolation of ailments
that sang long after
the contract was done.

Fed the blade across my bicep,
irretrievable fault lines
from everyone I had called a friend.
Every message in a bottle
was a disturbance to still water,
the peace I gathered alone
but could not sustain
with two hands, one mind.

Stole the salt from my hunger,
the youth from my face:

I would not let them take the music.

Filled every cup to feign optimism,
clouded eyes that had seen too much.
Every plateau I took to,
they steeped the gradient,
each flower, they reminded me,
came from death.

They took down the saints of kindness.
Cut each nerve ending
as I slept on broken glass.
Left a pay packet
and a phantom of good will
once I finally loosened the strings,
sailed away at a snail's pace,

my boat savaged by the tempest,
my sails torn and weary,
my flag falls low, at half mast.

Winter left behind
a labyrinth of addictions,
chains of solitude
that took you the whole summer
to break,

Long sleeves on a sunny day,
pockmarked with exhausted pain,
delivered in fractures
only you can see on your face.

The mirror: a split-screen
of everything you see
versus
everything that you feel.

You have been staring
at your plate until everything
has grown cold.
You have drowned yourself in changes:

it is no wonder you do not feel whole.

Winter left behind
a fraction of yourself.
You scale the branches
in the bloom

only to wake up ******,
alone,
another winter's afternoon.

Tried to fulfil
the caverns in my eyes,
sleepless nights that echo
the chamber of creativity.

So much to do,
so much to do.

So many symbols to contrive
so that when I die,
I do not leave.

When did this ridiculous past-time
become a reason to be?

There is more truth in the flute
than a lover's tongue,
more heart in the metre
of well-formed words
than there is to belong
to any God or anyone.

Tried to fulfil
the hunger for movement;
restless flicker-book
that rearranges
the same old routine
of skipped pages
and human error

into art and reason.

Took to poetry when I learned
only pain gives perspective.
Happiness an impossible horizon,
fake as a headline,
a mirage, a migraine;
an ever-setting sun.

Mistakes are off-set paths
neither trod nor spoken of before.

Ghosts of old wounds and insults
slew the grain of progression,
each forecast of the future
births one thousand skeletons;
one thousand potential lovers.

An overdose in Dublin,
French lips; a slanted bow.
Blue feathers at the festival;
a taken woman who changes
the colour of her hair
when everything else stays the same.

Took to poetry when I realised
The Moment does not lie
on the tip of the tongue,
nor the beat of the drum,

that sense only comes
long after The Moment has gone.

Love swallowed you up

Old tyrant in shapeless clothes
Lining the pillows with used tisses
Blew smoke rings for the illusion
Of an open door

Arrhythmic moods
That collide in the hallway
Love were the moments
Locked inside the bathroom
Alone