When I was young, I set eyes
on a bike, tough as a killing moon.
It’s trinket muscles,
Onyx like panthers, it hexed me,
Garbed me in leather
And waltzed me through
the quixotic night.

Nothing ever came
of the puma pack and I.
A beckoned fly, a pixie’s sigh,
I probably fit in the bearded mans pocket but
Now still a Bengal, I will push my luck with a tiger’s bite.

Cheshire monkey
Is talking in his sleep.
The ramblings of an old man
Comes alive in the dark.

He wraps his floppy arms
And ***** smile around each nightmare that finds me
Like a helter skelter anthropoid.

Amnesia becomes him
As he forgets paddling pools,
By the ears on the washing line
And strawberry puke.

He jumped from vine to vine,
Lily pads of the Avenue
Just to get back to the pushchair that left him in the cold.

Watched from Butlins windows,
Happy to see the adventurer in me
When I take him from place to bewildering place.

Breathes whimsical words,
Amour propre,
Everything that makes him the best friend I ever had.

Opals turned sideways
Was the shape of her eyes
Though one sagged, the other in a dream
A cluster of halo lids came a muse it seems.

Her hair unraveled
In wisps of barley, freckles of snow
“I inhabit cloud nine”
Said the strawberry mouth, glossy with plump plum glow.

She mumbles us a lullaby
Of what life means, of apple pies.
Made up words that make sense to her but they lose it.
They stop her in her tracks.

I want to speak up
Though it’s all too heavy.
It’s heavy for me while she’s light as plumes, drifting and drifting
There’s something about her that’s loopy.

The woman is from another time,
You can’t make friends with her.
This conversation skyrockets on
Until I’m in the corridor
And I can’t see her raincoat anymore.

Woven with yellow, the rivers blues, a lack of haleness suffused with daffodils
Sends the sailors head over heels
As she floods the room with hailing screams.

Watch out, watch out, watch out I say, I’m too anxious to talk today.
I’m numb all the time and so is she - I think she sees this and approaches me.

She is there for a second
And then she’s the sunset
Here to shine the day goodbye without articulating it
Like mist

A trick of settling upon the hebden moors
Only to manoeuvre her own country shores.
I step in
And the world is no more.

My eyeballs bolt
The moment it’s twelve,
I was a pumpkin before the ball.
Thirteen hours till blazing lights
Thirteen hours of fright.

Night owls hoot,
I’ve become one myself
Fawn and soft like puppy’s paws.
The man i dream, he is a fox
He knows to open Pandora’s box.

Aurora strikes,
I’m banished to the satellite
That orbits London in track record time.
Six hours in, I’m golden bound
Being chased by thunder hounds.

The goblin king glares at me
Eyes alert but aglow
They wonder where I’ll turn.
Left or right, in or out, either way is bad, either way you’ll go mad.

I wait for the fireworks
As they’ll inevitably come
The sirens to evacuate us off.
Three measly hours to search limbo
Three hours, I still won’t be home.

Staircases fall
And just when it ends,
No bellow is heard from Jareth.
Thirteen hours up, he grits his teeth
Thirteen hours luck, I just breathe.

“There are two sides to every story”, he says.
Though I know he is wrong.
He snatches the letters away from me,
my hand which quivers with the spirit of her husband
is now empty, searching for more history.
An apologist is not worthy of having them.
They are astringent, they are hysterical and they all happen to be women.

“If she was alive now, you wouldn’t like her”.
He gives no insight except she had depression,
as if that made up for the don’t meet your heroes routine.
Her husbands blood is yours, you should wear it with honour
As if your roots aren’t riddled with petroleum
He said he loved birds but killed two with one stone
How is that genius, how is that mine?

It was supposed to be beautiful,
Change my life forever.
I was to have a new outlook,
A fresh perspective on keeping myself alive.
But I’m still cocooned, still too afraid
I can’t even do what I love.
I love it more than anything in the world
So one day I will.
I will.
I will, I will, I will.

The train stops panting
I start to breathe
Poke my head around the bramble
See if it’s real

The artery of the station
An ever-winding sweet pea forest
A woodland cemetery
Black beauty’s still there

No splinters to my soles
Ankle cuts instead
Ball of fur that prowls and cries
But warms my lap at night

Yorkshire tea, toast with butter
Slumped in the rabbit hole
Then the fairy light switch on - not like Blackpool’s poor attempt

Twilight comes, I wait for bats
Scratch go the branches
On the bathroom window, I shudder though I’m not scared anymore

Weddings under the arch
Between me and my love sleep
We drink pink lemonade
Grow roses round the shed

I’ve magic in my finger tips
Spouting only when I’m here
Fields of an un-jaded me
For miles and miles and miles