a birthday card for my brother OR too many fairytales.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOBI!

Once apon a time there was a prince. He wasn't really a prince, but one day he would be King. He was a child of Big Ideas (Big a warm and loving father, and Ideas a clever and generous mother). One day the prince encountered an evil witch who went by the name of Life. Now Life was capable of being many things, and came in many unexpected forms. Life came as crying lovers, educational endeavours and once as a strange family meeting with a therapist. Sometimes Life made the prince's sister vicious and downright mean and sometimes Life twisted the prince's own self and made him withdrawn and sullen. But where there is bad there is good, and where there was an evil witch there was a good witch called Dreams. The prince soon learnt to follow his Dreams (he felt quite possessive of this witch and referred to her as such) and although sometimes Life got in the way he knew his Dreams would get him somewhere wonderful. With Dreams he made strangers laugh, he made friends shine and grow and flourish, he made the whole village appreciate art and words and the magic of being human. He built worlds. And in many ways the worlds had built him.

The prince was now 27 years old, and with some help from Dreams, Big Ideas, and even a little from Life, he had become a King.

(at least in the eyes of his little sister.)

shit shit watery brown black red tar shit shit hard shit blood shit vomit shit.
my life coiled around the toilet bowl.
and the doctor will say 'there is nothing wrong with you' and dizzy from dehydration, blood loss, the exhaustion of this all i will smear shit all over their smug face.

"We're out of milk" King sobbed in to the floor, praying (to Whoever) God hadn't listened when he'd suggested shag carpet in the kitchen earlier that year. There'd been disagreements all round over tile colours but at this moment he rejoiced in apricot. God took the hint, grunted, and left.
He walked to the end of the block, made himself as small as he knew how and wished he knew who to pray to.
"If this is my world...if we created this-
then I have no one to blame."

King pictured himself running down the street to God, scooping him in to his arms and kissing him tenderly on the mouth.
"There is no blame. There is no regret. I have loved every moment."
He fetched the mop from the tiny cupboard in the bathroom and cleaned up his mess.

Somewhere in the middle God and King Kong had an argument over dishes, God screaming "NEED ME." King hated confrontation and promptly wet himself, stickying the apricot coloured tiles.

when It ended, they huddled together. hands sunk in someone else's pockets, shivering beneath patchworks they'd stitched along the way. one's eyelids sagged and drooped and dropped to close. 'if this is The End' they said 'i don't want to see it.' another shoved them upright and held on tight. The last star began to fade.
Soon the sky was black.
The two sat, hand in hand, and stared in to the dark.

In the beginning there was God, or King Kong, depending on who you spoke to. In the beginning there was God AND King Kong, sharing a pokey bed-sit above a shop in the Nevada desert. They both agreed it was a nice enough place for the first apartment, even though King never kept the place tidy and God was always a few days late with his rent. They were, for the most part happy.
In the beginning there was a man who carved lovers from his bones.
In the beginning there was a chicken and an egg.
There was a single flower.
There was a seed.
In the beginning there was no land, no sea. Or there was sea but no land. No rushing waves to rocky shores. There was still.
There was a single star. There was sky. There was a wish.

on holding the man i love (and taking up the bed at night to do so)

like a game
of sardines
i fold
in to your decline
stretching my fingers
over any flesh
i can find
and claim
as some wary explorer
with a tiny flag 'i was here!' 'i discovered this!'

in these small moments i try
to memorise everything
i venture,
taking frantic notes
of scars, angles, textures-
love measured in your very form,
life measured in these little journeys.

i want to slide
through any open cavity
latch on
to your blood cells
find home
somewhere beneath
your skin

hoping i can match your beat.

(what a terrible collection of words.)

this time i belong in a matchbox of your collection.

i hope it is wrapped beautifully, i hope i rest on a cotton ball gently torn to hold
my frame and sometimes when you wake you open me up like a gift you never told you wanted.

place me tenderly there
(i shatter at your touch)

this reads like a collage.

someone who doesn't know me well and has their own motives to say such things, said of me "she is just looking for love". which we all have a good joke about in the context it is intended...sweeping statements about sour girls who just need the right man and an apron and that picket fence house to box you in. am i meant to be looking for love? a comment not on women but this woman. put emotions in a locked cage throw them deep in the water hold them down don't look up- one day when i die i will virginia woolf rocks in my pockets (my father says, i remind him of her.)
history of the kerith proves obsession with love and relationships and misrepresentations of forever ideals and what prevails is a very cynical and sullen girl. with leftover fairyfloss weeping from arteries sticky, sugary and on the whole bad for you (with a funny texture and an analogy that's getting me nowhere...but with a lovely sense of whimsy no?) which means? creeping out of me from peculiar places laughter and lingering touch, a stare that lasts too long and leaves me shaken. what if i am not as strong as i believe? what if i am not as weak as i believe?
so have fun, carry on, cry at any chance you get, journey, evolve, never change.
be content with your contradiction. and when the ego gets too much to uphold dissolve and savour that familiar distain.

in one breath absolute fear feeling everything and knowing nothing but emotion somewhere weaving in to the hairs of my arm my cunt on end looking in to glass sharp and glistening you keep blades behind those eyes too you keep something monstrousbeautiful and i run full speed in bleeding from my eyes like some religious fanatic finding faith in all the odd places.

i took some odd step-ball-change to get here. i took lovers in my stride gripped them in fists with big stories i can repeat now with a laugh to linger. would i change it? would i change? hahaha why would anyone want to change you, she said, aimed to mold when the time was ripe. she liked me this way best. here's me free-form a well rounded Yes to any question, statement, pause. a Yes between breaths. i am not a person in pieces to be rearranged, i am a stream to take unexpected turns, waterfallsandfull of any journey of my desire.

a tribute to the cicada.

you wait
thirteen years,
seventeen years
wrapped up in dirt and blistered
of your own skin
lying in the dark
til time splinters
through with large eyes
wide feeding off sap
with your wood flesh shell
like eating yourself
singing a loud
proud song
of a nymph's refrain
singing for the next generation
singing because you can
because she likes you that way
because your voice brings voice
to those still burrowed in the dark.


(another insect obsession.)

this is the house that we built
falling down
at all angles

i made promises
to many
but i always kept
one eye open
(not with you. with you i trusted the both of us, open doors, too open for your heart)
for fear i should have had
one of us to betray
one of us to fall
the walls collapsing
around us
-------me

you rebuild with
someone else
in your bed
(the bed we made our own
those sheets belong to
us)
you rebuild
you rebuild
you rebuild
you rebuild

the walls collapsing
around me.

Once apon a time there was a girl who loved Love. And Love loved her. It waited for her in dark alleyways to spring itself around her throat, 'I can't eat I can't sleep I can't breathe' this either love or some kind of mental illness. It took her briefly- in two days we will know if white picket fence dreams are reality will you marry me will you impregnate me what will we call our children when we live in provincial france writing poetry on napkins will you want what i want for as long as i want but longer still? Sometimes it lingered for longer than expected and held her too hard and strong for her to bear. Sometimes (most times) it came at the worst possible time, breaking ties already formed hurting anyone that had crawled in to her web
[my friend says some spiders make webs out of sperm, this is what i produce perhaps]
nestled in comfortable, a little too tight for their own good [this is when i eat them, my loves, too big for me to stomach] Usually Love found a way of making it all feel all right, all justified. One giant quest for a little princess where i am my own sword, my own kingdom, so all decisions in the quest for Love are right.
Once apon a time there was a girl who destroyed Love. And Love destroyed her.
So she buried the quest neatly as a dead violet pressed with love sonnets in pages of a notebook. One day it is nice to think she would come back -love blooming- with out thoughts of CherryBlossoms and she would embrace all Loves, big, small, awful and wonderful simply because she could and for Love which we all know works in the strangest of ways.
Right now i wait for Love to end when the relationship is Very Over.

there is a pause
between the door
and the door handle,
a line to each step.

i take off

stagnant in my
disintegration

i remain.

this which does not creep
that leaves me cowered
storms with sharp stride
to take me.

safer still
in the blank gasp

in decision
and indecision.

----

*safer still definitely has been used in other poems by me...everything is borrowed even by myself. is it blog time again really? i suppose i must be going mad again.

the bee saga lives on

when we die out
fuck you pretty
there'll be barely green to protect you
only fading
rose tattos on fat arms and arses
baron petals
without the burrowed kiss
of gone
silent wings

a poem i wrote a while ago...yes sometimes i do still have them in me

You shatter,
hiding knives in bottles and
things I wouldn't understand.

Your song
sifts through the sea
with a low moan
and an ache,

waiting for time
to carry you-
over the waves,
held to shore.

arms clenched around your back i grabbed you pulled you back to me and i could imagine breaking you vicious with bruised knuckles which is horrible terrifying for 2 seconds at most and then i released you and your soft skin and you will never know what you had coming if only for a breath.
i will never hurt you as overpowering uncontrollable as this love can be.

involuntarily i pull your chest to my ear listen to the beat i can feel in my thumb wrapped to your arm i think of my limbs impetuous with the veins in your heart ripping through clotting arteries from my jagged self climbing and slipping round your insides tearing at loose ends and tying them in to pretty bows with red velvet ribbon the kind that looks nicer still on satin sheets/the ones i find in your bedroom/the kind that feels like your skin on mine. some strange calm almost like sleeping/i am holding on to every waking moment next to you not to miss a shared beat.

we were bound
tight
by our matching measure
the weight of love
i saw beneath,
loved fool
fully sunk to
every moment
shared
in code.

i couldn't shelter you from the world.

(i tried. i lost).

you offer me
everything,
silent.

the moles on your chest
i'll take
with the blood
blister
under your thumb,
which is mine.

i would injest
your blood, your spit, your cum
have it dance
of infection
under my skin,

which is yours.
under my smile,

which is mine.

she would hold my hand all gentle finding fingers can fold in to each other and some can turn to fists and fight but these things we'll find on the path to come or maybe we'll just find each other, hands clenched to hers/mine, hands weak but ready to run Together.

"why would anyone want to change You" she said.

and i laughed.

and she meant it.

pretty a poem as yet unsung, free to ride the wings of my own creation-and yes pictures seep through the cracks i see some crazy images only i could chase staring through my closed waking eyelids. but at least it's interesting. it's always fucking interesting. and i am not frightened of visioned voices maybe it has something to do with my ability to break dvd players with wandering thoughts maybe i am a gift maybe i am my own God, my own something to believe in.

Happy.

some live in ideas
bouncing around
between mindlines
and printmines
i live by
the feel of a breath
i live by
the sound of a voice.