Every year now, I note the differences:
the changes in the stones,
the retreating car park and what
is new to the waves.
It is slight. You try to hide it by
presenting the same places and
lacing them with memories that
all correspond.
But you are changing.
You take new beatings, and I can't
help but wonder if we are alike.
The process of erosion has caught
us both, and year by year,
cliff by cliff, it's wearing us down.

It was always supposed to happen,
but what if you change too much?
What will happen when you change
irreparably, irreconcilably?
Even now you are only an
imaginary home, so defamiliarized
from the dream I demand.
I know you promised me nothing.
But I had a deal you didn't know about
and you've ceased to make me happy.
I can't help but be a little angry
with you for letting the
storm break you down.

But is it really you, or is it me
who has done the changing?
Is it not my eyes and my erosion?
Is it not the attrition and abrasion
and the long shore drift
that has welled up inside my own soul?
Is it you or I?
How can we know?

blue
my favourite colour is the shade of:
    -happy skies
    -wonderous seas
    -hyperthemic lips
    -and the depthless
     deepening void of
     disgusting sadness

yellow
colour of my childhood bedroom,
you bright insipid lying shade of
promise
i can remember the image of you,
the way you looked in different lights
but i can't remember the
happy feeling of living under you

red
the colour of
-my stomping boots and
-the blood outside the veins
isn't it odd how it bubbles along the lines
strong colour
i feel you match my blue

orange
bitty juice
and sticky tables
and an empty plastic cup
peeling and peeling and hoping
what is inside won't be bitter
orangensaft
(you make me think of swimming pools)
(you make me think of being sick)

purple
nightingale poison
stained mouth
is it a plague or is it grape juice?
is it pain or is it pleasure?
purple, you sound as if you should be luxurious
but there's something cunning
and deceptive in your swirls

green
the colour of an island
-beneath a grey sky
-a patchwork of green scraps
-rugged and wrinkled

How have you been? I hope you’ve been well, but I’ve been thinking about how

A poem does have too much
person in it to be a tree.
Too many clichéd feelings,
too much sadness and inadequacy.
All of it pressed into words
that are too tight because
poems are always a size too small.
You’re right, a poem is nothing
like a tree.

I’ve been busy too, kind of, but I just want to say

Forget the miles,
and give me the woods.
Give me the dark and the deep
and the lovely.
I’ll leave the horse,
it’s better off without me and
I’ll imagine that the woods
belong to no one.
Just give me the woods
and the snow
and the hypothermia.
Give me the frozen lake.
I don’t want your miles
of tired positivity.

I think we were talking about faith last time, but I don’t think that’s quite it. You see,

I don’t need God
to do the battering.
There’s already something inside me
pummelling my cheeks,
leaving invisible bruises
and a lack of air in my lungs.
I don’t want to be ravished,
and besides, even this
monster won’t ravish me.

It really has been a while now since we last wrote

But nothing’s changed,
for the day I was born,
a week early, afraid
of being late,
I caught a glimpse
of the world and changed my mind.
I tried to turn back
but got a cord wrapped round my neck
and nearly choked.
They plied me out with pincers
anyway, wailing:
leave me be.

But I’m alright. I’ll be okay, don’t worry too much. Things happen and

Maybe after that,
I should have seen
that it’s not worth the fight.
Maybe it’s just lucky
I’m lazy.

I’ll write again, as and when I can.

Every morning, I wake up and tell myself to seize the day, and every evening, I'm still where I started: happiest when daydreaming, worst when living.

So I'm trying to write this out, as if it will help.
To write from the heart, or straight from the mind, as they say, but my fingertips and realm of feelings don't always connect to one another.
But here it is, How I Feel:
It's like an itching beneath my skin,
one I can't scratch unless
I peel it off and claw at veins.
It's a pain in the chest, that doesn't lift.
It's a restless sleep, half awake, half not.
It feels disgusting inside, like I'm tangled, mangled up.
It all feels disconnected. Like this Is Not Real.
Like the wires to reality have been severed.

It's the Big Cliche.
What can I do to make my feelings original?

I'm just smiling on the outside, to make it up to you,
to pretend, again, but I hold two conversations
simultaneously, one in my head
and another with you.
It feels like I can't move.
But I do and I don't want to.
There's a world out there,
but I'd rather be in my head, but maybe it's that which makes it all worse.
And yet going out only makes me feel more useless.

Look, how I've descended into whines and plain language. I guess this mind's just not poetic enough to make these feelings look pretty.

The problem is is that the problem doesn't go away.
It won't get better because I keep scratching at it,
it's out of my control because it will inevitably happen, there is nothing that will make it go away.

That double is. It's ugly. But how do I operate on language and make it work my way?

But these are excuses, everyone else's and mine too. Just stop worrying, as soon as you get on with it,
it will be over.
Smile, it might never happen.
(It has.) (It will.)

Yet here is the Problem, the Contradiction.
I don't know what I want.
It's wandering aimlessly, looking for approval and appreciation that I can't take when it's given. Everything feels tacky, everything feels bad.

Life's like a gift shop.
It only looked good when I was seven.

It's like being crowded, when nobody's near.
Don't touch me, don't talk.
I'm making monsters from all the bad I can find.
I'm running from the things I've made with my own hand.
I could explain, but take it as you will.
(Can you guess?)
(I bet you can.)

And these are just images I've described so many times before.
But they're the ones that stick like worn out phrases in conversations.
Dead metaphors.
It's like itching, like mosquitoes
have landed beneath my skin and are eating me alive.

I'm torn between wishing today was over or hoping it will stay to put off tommorrow. Just go with it, I try to tell myself and nothing happens.

The sky was cerulean
Above the graveyard
Where unused toys
Were laid on the
Pregnant bump
Before the headstone.

An old man and his grandson
Watched the procession
From the hospital window.

my favourite colour is the shade of:
    -happy skies
    -wonderous seas
    -hyperthemic lips
    -and the depthless
     deepening void of
     disgusting sadness

Let me fall back into your heart,
And lie besides you
On this purple, diamond sea.

Let me unpeel your skin from your bones
And find again the love within you,
Running blue against your wrists.

Let me still visit like an old friend,
There to protect you
From those burning sienna skies.

Let me take from you the bottle, the dagger too,
For I will not let you
Lose yourself on these frothy, hemlock waves.

Let me, though I am dead, still beat in your heart,
For I will not leave you,
Until you too are ready depart.