modern, female poetry about adulthood and the masks we wear
you got your foot in the door
yet again, a beautiful ghost at it
once more
starve you, I tried
there’s whispers you care and you
want to make things right
but I throttle those whispers
they slip lifelessly into unconsciousness
I’m lighting my tongue on fire
just talking to you
but it’s not the same adoration
lingering like perfume
in the air
not the
drop-everything-lets-text-back
frenzy that once furrowed by brow
made me mad with “love”
drunk on lust
in fact
I couldn’t give a fuck.
boredom creeps
and the tinted, dirt speckled screen
is no company
when up against
the blood orange gaze of the sun –
burn covering my chest
from yesterday’s bake off.
there’s no escape from boredom
when you’re not procrastinating
because there’s nowt to do
in the first place
but the level of pressure
squashing that nowt
is not nowt at all –
it’s a monstrous fun sponge
sucking life and love from limb
rendering days dry
and desolate
mouths open
but nothing to say
fingers shoved into gussets
in search of redemption.
lemon groves and Spanish marble
sultry Split and Big Apples
so rosy your mouth waters
are so far away
you can’t taste the freedom anymore
and pearl-stained beaches
are no longer on the horizon.
Why don’t you loosen the reins
A gentle tug to prompt
Purpley, sunburnt
Sooty shackles to the ground.
Why don’t you lower the bar
Before it slices your head clean off
Making you wander
Like some mad headless chicken.
Why don’t you point the gun down
So your temples can stop
Throbbing
And your glands
Can start acting up.
Why don’t you let your smile fade
Take it off like boots after a hard
Day’s grind
Slip sweaty socks off
And leave them on the landing
Feel your gums breath again
Feel your teeth
Whisper thank you.
social media is awash with colour and rage
opening the app releases a tangle of feisty, hashtag-stuffed webs
everybody’s mouths are wide like venus fly traps
everybody’s tongues are wagging more than usual
everybody’s Stories spewing #BLM
celebs compelled to stick their oars into this sticky
systemic umbilical cord too
but coming off as disinterested, forced.
people are preaching and protesting and praying
spray painting their social media palettes
with the colours of death and deceit
hot on the heels of murder.
i’m cocooning, unsure how to proceed
followers vomiting up advice and financial gestures
go to this site, donate to this organisation
sign this petition, educate these people
money feels like a luxury, but slippery to pin down
and dock into the right place, like a slimy space station.
hate is running amok in society
omnipotence handed out like inappropriate candy
necks squashed like bugs
guns loaded too hastily
fists misguided, slamming into jaws
let’s meet those who’ve ventured down dirty paths
of death and decay
with rehabilitation
and the full weight of the law.
Oh coffee cup
Symbol of wealth, fragility,
Can’t get my kicks, can’t start my work,
Until I’ve sipped you, slurped you, talked dirty to you
Oh wonderful crutch
In my palm oh so much
Once a day when the dawn is yawning
And the desks are filling
I’ll dodge the queues
Trek upstairs to abuse
That frothy little mouth of yours.
You’re a white girl’s wet dream
A bolt of electricity
That mini panic attack shooting through me
As idle hands make their way around the city
They stumble onto you
And wrap around like an octopus
A rite of passage for the working youth
That I’ll fill with sugar to claim that boost
Because I can’t stand the taste
Of this drink that has such a place
Such a presence
In society today.
And she sat up there
Words like rose petals floating from mouth to floor
And I’m just perched here in awe
Having travelled an hour and a half door to door
To listen to words that are honey-like
Dripping into the mic
Sweet and inspiring
Forehead perspiring (don’t all of ours)
And I’m fearful for tomorrow
For the fruits it’ll bring
A dark shadow sewn into my skin
Brain etched in a fog
Burnt out by the London smog.
After the gig I paced up and down Tottenham court road
Like a wildly indecisive runner
With too much time on her hands
And a stomach full of Dr Pepper
Couldn’t bring myself to go back in
And bare my soul to someone new
Whose job isn’t to listen to me natter
Burst my thoughts forth in glorious splatter
So I trudged to the tube and hissed at tourists who wouldn’t move
As quickly as my marathon legs
Short and strong
I made the hour journey back home
Walking up a dimlit alley I’m fearful of tomorrow
And I’m laced with sorrow
It permeates my core
And leaves me sore
But strong all the same
For ever more.
As we rolled past the river
The monuments
The gold-clad beasts
Shaking, bathing in the glow
Of the water’s edge by Waterloo
Your duvet lips spring to mind
Permeate the creases of my brain
Invade my thoughts with a pick axe
Cutting down the others
I’d been growing
Like sweet nectar.
I melt beneath them
Chew on their plumpness
Get high on their juices
Those rolls that seal me
Like an envelope
Your loveliness cuts through
And bubbles beneath the surface
As the train tracks roll by.
I think of you when the night curses
And the day yawns open
And when my phone buzzes
And my body yearns to be touched.
The week after, I’ve been left with flaming wreckage. A plane engulfed by biting fire and yapping sparks has been laid at the foot of my bed like a weak old party balloon.
“Is this what courting is?” I find myself saying. Sounding strangely like a grandmother with clotted cream hair and purple eyelids.
Is it supposed to be buried beneath a flurry of sexualised messages, dirty whispers and cyber seduction? Is this how dating goes in the modern world?
These otherworldly, devilish letters and icons lead me through a maze where the end point looks to be a thick fluffy duvet and steady breathing, moaning. Crumbs lurking beneath writhing derrieres, squashed by midnight blues and swollen purples, beg for mercy.
Where’s the inane chat? The everyday tube dilemmas? The tepid English air making you croak out messages of discontent and strife?
The ‘whatcha been up tos’, the ‘how’s your day goings’ – those have frittered away in the sweat-saddled heat, morphing into ‘i want you nows’ and ‘talk dirty to mes’ and that’s where the courting feels alien. Messages sent from another planet from a little green man with an erect penis.
I had lengthy midnight cyber kisses with a boy who looks like Jim Morrison.
The conversation grew on feeble, fecund words about sports and television. We reeled off quotes like a game of table tennis and peculiar deep self talk.
You asked me to describe myself as if I were in an interview. And after my thumbs clicked and words harpooned themselves onto my message bar (the word “typing” forever appearing) I knew I’d become stuck in the treacle-like web that is lusting after somebody I’d never met before.
It’s a sticky mess of pink and grey – a stark contrast between what you think you know and what you actually do.
He’s the Jim to my Pam. He’s the waffle I want to wake up to. The whipped cream I want to guzzle. The song I’d like to keep on repeat.
Or is he?
Maybe he’s vacuous and selfish. Artistically-driven but pretentiously-inclined. Beneath his beard are lies and beneath his eyelids are sadness and maybe he’s not what I think he is.
Still, those midnight cyber kisses prevailed. I felt my eyes become doused in fiery fatigue, begging to close, but unwilling to do so while the conversation flowed like melted chocolate.
He said I was attractive and that’s when I fell to my knees. Too busy relishing in the idea that somebody liked me, too caught up in this fleeting feeling of self-worth that I found it hard once the medicine had worn off… to be pleased with myself.
Because if I can act like that – like a slippery, giggly schoolgirl whose self-esteem bar has only just begun to lift off the ground, then I’m further back than I thought. Further down the gym rope than I’d anticipated. Further back on my journey of tube stops to Self Confidence Street or Extoverted Alley.
Eventually we said farewell. I left my phone off airplane mode, longing to hear that chipper buzz in the small hours… a sign you were thinking of me.
And then I wrestle with my duvet and push my face into my pillow and scream.
Because I don’t even know you, Jim.
And I’ll stand in the middle of the carriage
Entwined around a bar
Legs wedged around rucksack
Head resting on the pole
And instead of feeling exposed
In a sea of people – the only one standing
I toughed it out and remained there lurking
Could have hop-footed to the end
And hidden by that menacing window
That blows your hair to and fro
And is too stiff to raise
(I know, I’ve tried)
Instead I stayed stuck firmly in the middle
Of this leaky, foul-breathed carriage
Where coffee slurps and morning angst
Flood through like creaking sludge
The middle is where I was
Until a seat popped up
Like those rarest of Pokemon
And I snatched it and sat
Content with my mini achievement for the day.
talking to my pillow. 