1.
Followed his friends
wherever they went
That’s how he found himself
in the barn that first night
Seig Heils and venom
Impassioned and celebratory
His awe and fear
Why he was chosen first
Branded like cattle
in what was supposed
to feel like belonging
Belief sown into skin
1.
Thursday night in the city / 10pm-ish I think / I’m busy / doing nothing / watching / the girl in green as she trips down the escalator & cuts her knee / it bleeds a little & her friends scream. Apparently / once lost / sanity is hard to find; seeing is believing & I am blind [drunk]. I can’t remember exactly where I lost my mind but I might well have lost it here / Kings Cross no apostrophe / where the streets are mean & the people are mean(er) & I myself have nowhere to be & no one to see (I was meant to party with a drag queen but he’s pulled a sickie) & I must stop praying to a God who doesn’t believe in me & yes, the Eurostar is tempting—Montmartre in the morning—drunken dreaming? clearly: I don’t have the fucking money for properly escaping. And look at the men on a stag-do whistling / grinning / leering. Misery hates company but danger becomes me. Where I end up this evening remains to be seen but for now / for right now / it’s just me, Chablis & Sarrazin (Patti gave me Albertine for free) & the grime of city life trapped between my grinding teeth.
Today my husband told me
I must know the ABCs of poetry.
”Take it seriously”, he said
It’s no longer A for Apple, B for Ball, and C for Cool
Now it’s a game of AABBCC and ABABAB,
Alphabets will stay closer together.
it’s wonderful, frankly,
being comfortable.
and I spent so long
in search of suffering
to breed a poet’s
soul. I had – and we all have –
my romantic aspirations,
but there’s nothing else
like this, or shouldn’t be;
like falling over
You understand worlds I do not, pull them
into words I cannot, but it is more than your brilliance
I love—
it is how you wrapped me tight, a weighted blanket
when I was spiralling, spiralling,
spiralling so dizzy I was heaving,
spinning out of control, my molecules
colliding
when you held me tight,
and made sure I was fine in the morning.
‘i just have a lot of feelings you know.’
– 2016
Traverse along the pebble-filled potholes,
wander aimlessly through the aisles at CVS,
gazing at every variety of potato chips in their
plastic bags whose wrinkles glisten ever so slightly.
buy something just because you’d feel awkward
going somewhere and coming back with nothing.