Portobello Driftwood
 
After Edward Hopper
 
I
am drifting, long shore-wise,
under granite skies.
Everything, a different
shade of grey.
 
I am a gilded leaf,
floating in what we used to call
tornadoes – the wind was
always there, but the autumn let you know it -
I am a tree with something of the empathetic night about me:
from my leaves to my roots I am
covered with bugs, creeping and crawling and
consuming my skin, but ...

Portobello Driftwood
 
After Edward Hopper
 
I
am drifting, long shore-wise,
under granite skies.
Everything, a different
shade of grey.
 
I am a gilded leaf,
floating in what we used to call
tornadoes – the wind was
always there, but the autumn let you know it -
I am a tree with something of the empathetic night about me:
from my leaves to my roots I am
covered with bugs, creeping and crawling and
consuming my skin, but ...

half an hour, half a bite, half a life
there’s a lot of things i haven’t told you of the late

haven’t whispered in your ever listening ears
or told your coconut hands
that always catch the words in my tears

when I yawn I fall into the vacuum behind my ears
where magicians find their pennies, and on the good days
quarters

the fan is silent tonight.
it is every night.

and yet as I thrum with exhaustion,
I...

the sun slants through my window
the final lights of day
the smell of lavender and raspberries linger
the zephyrs blow
my hair into a crown
all round my face
like an upturned umbrella

I wait till I can see the dandelion crater
till the shadow of our planet engulfs 
the reds, pinks and yellows of the day
just to reveal the hiding treasures
that we couldn't see at dawn
they sparkle and shine
charismatic to their comrades
that make...

girl in the butterfly wings,
why aren't you flying away from here?
girl in the butterfly wings,
do you ever want to disappear?

the world is broken and hurt,
shadows chasing light out of the sky;
bloodstains cover your pink skirt,
yet i never seem to hear you cry.

is there something i can't see?
how much pain do you bury inside?
you could be gone, even free,
yet you choose to stay, suffer, and die.

perhaps one day i'll...

the cancer crept up on her;
one day she was laughing
and the next there was a lump
like a golf ball on her neck,
there was a needle in her arm
there was a needle in her chest
and there were her friends,
hopelessly hoping that death
would say not today.

as her hair fell out
as her body got thinner and thinner
as the chemicals invaded her body
as she threw up at 3 am, 4 am, 5...