Guinness

You had layers like a pint of “Stella, please”
At the Beaconsfield
Tonight is going to end behind bars –
I’ve got the attitude if you bring the jars

You had layers like a pint of “Jameson, geez”
You’re buying a bottle from Akdeniz
Let’s end tonight upside down
Caramel dreams white hot no sleep

You had layers like a pint of water
Drinks in faces, cup and saucer
Tonight “I’m gonna put you in the ground”
Guess that’s finished Fox and Hound (but we can’t go to Spoons either because your mum got us barred)

You had layers like a pint of red sauce
Meet me at the seaside golf course
Red knuckles, red car, red knickers
The arcade sings to us, our eyes glitter in the neon
The world is ours, nothing has ever been sweeter

You had layers like a pint of pickled onions, marbles, orange juice, thin air
Blood, gravy, green beans, paint stripper gin
Pour it out or drink it down
It was only ever a pint of
And a pint of and a pint of and a pint of and a pint of

A Belated Thank You to S.J.H

“I’ve never seen anyone so ecstatic,”
She yelled over the rain
Ankle deep in mud we danced our answer
We shouted love and the world applauded
It was our show, I’ll never forget it

Some people wear sadness like clothes
If you see them, welcome, you’re one of us
You’ll find us at the exit in the half-light, waiting
“We’re here,” he’ll whisper
And your heart will finally crack like a fallen tree

New Thoughts On Old Feelings

He always said you dressed like your mother
Well now you’ve turned into her too

Inevitably, but it’s all a bit performative and that surprises me
I always saw you as defiant, even angry
It’s why I admired you, albeit in secret

Fear and envy, in time,
Turned to….fondness?
An unspoken, one-sided alliance

But now I’m just disappointed
This life you have now, this twee, sentimental performance of flowers and dusty virtue
Is just no fun to watch
Because I’d expected more from you, and your ruinous beauty,
And thought that you had too

Sunrise Problem

Force myself to eat but it all tastes like damp soil, wet silicone
Can’t smell the air outside,
Don’t recognise myself in pictures

Tell myself it’ll go, and I’ll come back in its place
Like each other time before now

But the bird wakes and sings every day, until the day that it doesn’t
What does that mean for me?

Wine Drunk

All I wanted was to look in someone’s eyes
And meet the opaque shutters of another will
Instead of just myself, a reflection of my sad wants

I look at you and see everything I don’t need
Someone who doesn’t fit, someone I’d never have made
And the relief floods through me like intoxicated blood

Blood & Water

First, She was an Almighty thing
Who from a formless, raging sea,
In that exquisite, unimaginable Darkness
Made heaven’s roof itself
And hung the Earth and stars like majestical baubles from its canopy
The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals,
Hers.
From Her belly, from the serpentine, muscular tendrils of Her hair
Came every new thing under the sun
From her mouth came those immortal words, “I AM!”

And they worshipped her.

He wouldn’t have it.
There was just too much power in that unthinkable mystery
So he made her base, vulgar,
Unclean, subhuman
The barren, dusty soil to his potent seed
An afterthought, a piece of broken rib
Incomplete, hemorrhaging, defective
She is a bleeder, a wound, a hole
An object of the most visceral disgust.

He calls her inhuman names to make her forget that unfathomable power that is Hers,
And Hers alone.

Let him try.

Let him try and pretend a Woman didn’t make him out of blood and water.

False Ribs

Early this morning I thought I dreamt that it was laughing
Heavy frame convulsing, jaw protruding, leaking oily tears of mirth
I started awake, and lay with my back to it,
rigid,
eyes like moons,
Until I dared turn and saw
In the orange glow of the streetlamp through the window
that it was smiling.

Sometimes in the seconds when I first wake there is
no skeleton in bed with me.

But then I stretch an inch too far
And find the spaces between my fingers are the cold spaces between ribs.