you know that feeling you get?
after toast and jam,
looking awake but feeling asleep,
where is my castle?

the panel think she's a 'beautiful girl with an amazing voice'
where as i,
think she's a dullard with eyes as black a great white shark.

i lost the brooch that everybody loved.
it was pinned to my black coat.
it was a pink brooch, made of pink silk and shaped like a large flower.
it had burnt edges which made the petals curl.
it was the best thing about me.
everywhere i went, everyone i spoke to,
commented on the loveliness of that brooch.
i told friends that it was lost,
they miss it already.
it was the best thing about me.

if nothing else

i wonder what it is that i'm trying so hard to not think about?

a list of smoke and mirrors:

* biscuits and egg-snow
* fierce bitches and deletions (hanging up boas, 12 girls but only 11 pictures, no rose for you on the one to one etc. etc.
* sailor jerry and free hennessy
* her, having my eyes out with that shit
* quilted leather
* the going-to-sleep-dream of horseback riding
* fury at the children's noise
* what's in the fridge?
* pet land and all its pit falls
* myriad of problems with yr wife/husband
* old cat's milky eyes
* glowing box plus swivel seat
* lists of lists

i know that i'm tired of being earthbound; clutching an anchor under the covers, fingers too fat for a ring of silver, never visiting
and never telling you why

and last night's heart attack?
i'm so over that.


(homework)

what's my status?

* nicky sees a frozen birdbath
* nicky feels she might die by means of an exploding boiler
* nicky is hiding
* nicky has spilled rum on a rather important document
* nicky is trying not to be eaten alive by it
* nicky wants to ride a horse with a veronica lake mane
* nicky dreams about punching you
* nicky at 11:03
* nicky likes american boy
* nicky has more books than hot dinners

i wish you would

easter sunday 12:53am

demerara rum and ghosts
single bed and yr scented lips

(come back)

curiously, this morning,
i awoke with hair like the archduchess of austria
and a phantom nosebleed.

• professor of copycats
• infestation of tin moths
• butter
• letter of apology to spring lamb
• teeth-together smile
• of course i have a limit
• spilt on sketch
• taking a lend of me
• damp notes posted into hedgerow
• it's picturesque, milk-light on face of girl clinging to beech
• the sorrows of young werther
• i love you too much for that mammy

sleepwalker seeks same
apply within

the history of my life: part 1.

unfayre

for sarah

you were right, neutral would have been nice
we came to yr home, drunk
in daylight
played chopin and laughed at you
like hyaenas owned by witches
you behaved like a perfect gentleman, prepared cups of tea.
i'm sorry
i'm just so sorry
i disagreed, defended
myself for twenty years
and you were right, neutral would have been nice
loyal
loyal's better.

dying swan seeks daredevil
for frills, kills and telephone bills
must enjoy long walks on short piers
experience of natural disasters a must

i pleaded with them to let him join the band but nobody listened.
how come i'm the only one without a nose?

1. the most memorable winter
2. i could still run
3. hard ground, no gloves
4. i don't know if he believed in heaven or not and i dared not ask and he could not speak
5. i was hungry but did not want to go home
6. i started to believe at some point that i was my father, not just like him
7. of course i imagine him under the ground, no doubt so does she but all we talk about are the hyacinths and miniature daffodils that make his bed
8. always coming back to this / these thoughts / this field / that day
9. winter sun / son in my eyes

i'm scared.
i have an overwhelming desire to re-organize my whole life.
but not today.
today i just want some soup.

i miss you like puffy misses biggie

i've just realised,
i walk like a zombie when i'm carrying toast and tea.

sometimes, i just really miss drugs.

i can't sleep.

i'm haunted by lovers i've never met (william black, aged 19) and northumbrian folk songs and a tour of a bauhaus exhibition that i can't escape from and hives on the backs of my hands that only appear in my sleep and mysterious coughs that make me sit up and panic.

half drunken

• the double cocktail, naturally
• film i love, film i don't
• horror all red
• croissant and pikelet
• the book of shellfish
• i would give myself a round of applause if only i could stop biting my lip
• love letters galore, read aloud, make myself cry
• i saw yr parents and they were holding hands
• jaw ache
• i dreamt i lost yr kitten - not real but sorry anyway
• didn't feel like one of the family unless you count the black lamb
• i will travel but i must prepare
• ask me please
• watercolour kitten
• iris

i asked you to marry me once.
you won't remember because you never heard me.

she was a ghost
until she met him,
now they're both
just demons

notes from travelling:

• i got to a place in the country where everyone calls everyone 'love'.
• her fluffy pink gloves were unneccessary. she looked like she was missing the rest of a pig costume.
• longing to be beautiful; curled up small under train window, night scenes passing; ruffled, flushed cheeks, wearing a soft knitted hat.
• sufjan stevens/strawberry chocolate/ham, greve, mustard
• gloves continued: ridiculous affectation, impractical for both eating jelly babies and untangling i-pod.
• it just seems so sad in this light. like rushing to complete yr homework when in fact you left school twenty two years ago.
• i think they're sisters. it's like little women with chunky knits and styrofoam coffee cups.
• all the way from sheffield to darlington it felt and sounded like the train was derailing. it put me in mind of italian air travel.

i'm all over the place.

i can't eat my eggs and my hand looks like a pink cushion.
my real cat sulks in the shed and i have lost the ability to type without hitting two keys at once.
my white gladioli are looking funereal and i'm covered in scratches.
i can't remember the poet's name again, i don't want to go to the post office and i can't stop googling useless things.

most of all i miss the kitten nesting in my hair.

curiously, this morning,
i awoke with pink eyes and a strong desire
to say goodbye to you.

dedicated hermit seeks grey-eyed german prince.

must love hide-and-seek and letter-writing.

experience with ponytails preferred

but not essential as training will be given.

must have own umbrella.

things i found i'd written in the little red notebook:

1.

and sleigh rides will never be popular in your town
so you might as well be living
in black and white and
only come alive in the bedroom.

i miss you

my profile is haunted.
three times now it has tried to portray me as an accountant from afghanistan.
also,
my dashboard thing is in german.
i bet if it were a room
it would be unnaturally cold.

• i love jess, the telepathic twin
• one can't be weeping over schubert all of the time
• and the days grow short
• slim in berlin
• squealing for a living
• imagining that mr giles works there
• colossal youth
• sleeping outside the chatty cathy caravan
• yellow pen reveals
• miniature cat's smaller brother
• robert
• vouchers stay vouchers
• yesterday i rediscovered a freckle
• big fat dahlias under the sea
• you don't have to be a music lover to be moved by jungle drums
• medicine is the best medicine
• stravinsky's symphony of song armwrestling carl orff''s carmina burana

unfinished


can we have a bit of hush
for an unknown ache
and other fables;

one girl asking
permission for a hair cut,
packing her horse into a suitcase,
name stitched into
everything she owns
preparing to be a
ghost this evening;

one girl a guerilla
only held up by bows
on her shoes,
apologising in her sleep
and strung
like too-early
christmas lights.

last night i had 3 dreams.

one: i was in the street and my ex-lover was laid upon my back,
this made my mother furious but i quite liked it.

two: my father was alive again, he had been dead but was now back and dropping his tobacco all over the kitchen as though it were breadcrumbs.
this annoyed me, even though i knew i should just have been happy he was alive. me being annoyed, annoyed my mother.

three: is lost to me for now.

my mother never gets annoyed with me in real life.

a few nights ago i had a good one.
all about christian bale.
he picked me up in his big manly* arms and swung me around
then he flew me places in his plane,
until it was stolen from my crime-ridden town.

poor christian.
one minute we were antique shopping and the next minute..
his plane was gone.




*i don't fancy christian bale.

i'm being quiet
but i'm still thinking about you
and it's ok
because that's all i'll ever do,
think about you
and that won't do anyone any harm,
will it?

you can't escape my biology

Gift

We met the British in the dead of winter.
The sky was lavender

and the snow lavender-blue.
I could hear, far below,

the sound of two streams coming together
(both were frozen over)

and, no less strange,
myself calling out in French

across that forest-
clearing. Neither General Jeffrey Amherst

nor Colonel Henry Bouquet
could stomach our willow-tobacco.

As for the unusual
scent when the Colonel shook out his hand-

kerchief: C'est la lavande,
une fleur mauve comme le ciel.

They gave us six fishhooks
and two blankets embroidered with smallpox.




Paul Muldoon, 'Meeting the British'

curiously, this morning i awoke with heartburn
and hair like little lord fauntleroy.

i'm practicing my dirty looks at yr empty window.

thoughts:


*he touched not only his (elaborate) hairstyle but the shadows of the raindrops on the windowsill (of the bus).

*when i finally get to town i am surprised by the number of people who appear to be talking to themselves.

*the bad news has given both you and i leopardskin.
i am not a bit surprised.

*i will forever associate the smell of disinfectant with brief scenes from the 1979 film scum because my mother was cleaning the kitchen as she sent me to bed.

*even though i was in pain and they were worried, we still had quite a good laugh about the fake doctor googling our symptoms at yesterday morning's hospital mini-drama.

notes:


*fuschia potted - £3.95
*salvia nem. caradonna - £6.99
*eccles-on-sea wait for me
*dear dragonwind
*by hand/do not post
*the tea towel that would be cushion cover
*everyone wants to see you jiggle...it's only natural
*ascot cunt
*darling, step on it will ya?
*tora, tora, tora
*i'll bring my bruised head over to yr place and we can mull it over
*one day i'll stop referring to you altogether and then i think, you'll cry
*non-stop begonias

I'm sorry they drew a treasure map on your breast.

it's just one thing after another

it's too much of a shock on a morning before yr breakfast to turn on the television and see a woman hissing and scowling like a demon at a son who boasts about sleeping with 700 men from 18 to 80 and who licks his lips like a predator.

is it wrong to want to dig a big hole and bury all these people?
i'm scared 'cos they're all over the place.

• it's been a long time, i shouldn't have left you. without a strong rhyme to step to
• gardens can prove to be upsetting
• am i angry 'cos yr so rich or so interesting to me?
• even yr wife sounds like me now
• the melancholic downwards glance of tina modotti
• dining out on the tale of my banana skin unconsciousness
• happy birthday but yr brother is a creep
• iron on mender mends nothing
• drinkwater boulevard
• all the stupid things you eat that just sound pretty
• i didn't want you to tell them where i was and that's why i buried myself under a dog rose
• in my mouth
• you burned in the sun right before you drowned in the rain
• congratulations - i won
• jenny greenteeth
• wizzards clipp
• only a baby noisy ghost

my new driving licence just came and i look like a murderer

it's all about you joe

imagine buying a house just so you can perform a six month long magick spell that will enable you to have a conversation with the holy guardian angel?

wow.

the storm is coming but not fast enough.

i often wake up feeling heartbroken.

for some strange reason, this morning i woke up depressed because i wasn't natalie imbruglia.

friday morning:

the bad night
the horror show at 35 ainstable
the unwanted cat
the bad review
the bus timetable
the chinese warehouse
the night before
the rum
the friend with a fever
the printer ink
the seaside
the broken freezer
the narky aunt
the australian models
the bra that's seen better days
the clotted cream
the aching heart

dreams, the kind you have at night:

• there is a show on tv about a teacher's first day on the job. the woman teaches jewellery and crafts to gifted 2-3 year olds. she falls in love with a co-worker, a chemistry teacher who wears a white lab coat. in the dream, i am at home watching the show (it's a good show). i am also the female teacher in the show.
• i am at a 1930's art deco hotel with a group of people (including kate moss) and we are trying to check out. every time we try we are told we must provide an object (such as a piece of coal from newcastle and a rubber band) before we are allowed to leave. we also all have to leave together, kate disappears to go shopping which causes problems. finally we are all together but still unable to check out. this is when i have a revelation - i am actually dead - and this is why i am unable to check out, i'll never be able to check out because we are in some kind of purgatory! upon realising this i metamorphose into a big burly cowboy character. this was a happy dream, despite the fact that i was dead.
• i smother a girlfriend to death. she pleads for me to stop but once i have started suffocating her under a sheet i realise if i stop i will be in big trouble. so i continue until she struggles no more. i consider how i will get rid of the body. i also change my mind and stop (things like this happen in dreams, don't they?) she comes out from under the sheet and i apologise. everyone hates me for this and i continue to apologise. i don't get arrested.

this morning in the graveyard i saw a man, one of many walking his dog.
but this man was different, this man was clever.
and i was envious.
the man was surrounded by crows.
they swooped, flapped, hopped and squawked.
they dropped comically from tree branches and jumped about like excited children do in puddles of rain. they followed him all the way through the graveyard which was otherwise beautifully quiet and spotlit by morning sun through fat trees. of course, it became apparent that the gentleman was not a magician or a crow whisperer, he was merely feeding them.
why didn't i think of that!!
i adore crows.
i dream about them often; they nestle in my hair and walk up and down my arms, i find them hiding inside my coat and once had to rescue a pair from an unsavoury, badly lit east end nightclub.
i fantasise about one adopting me as it's friend. sharing my home and garden. sharing my dinner.
the clever graveyard man had obviously done this before. the crows seemed familliar with him and his little dog as he strolled along sprinkling a trail of the mixture on the ground behind him, hansel and gretel style.
next sunday, i thought, he'll have competition..

notes to self:

1. tell my neighbour about the forest growing on his lawn (my fault)
2. phone the witches council
3. find buttons/sew buttons
4. make list of those i have kissed
5. don't worry, there's always tomorrow (unless you die tonight)

the moon is, after all, nothing but a rock

not burning but dodging

i've made a pact with my lip.
i'll stop biting it,
if it stops being so tasty.

loyalty is sexy

curiously, this morning i awoke with no voice and hair like a powdered wig.

mid way through my research,
i found it.
the entry in the ledger, written in purple, now stained with tears.

it was there.
i was shocked.
it was clear.

i did...

i held myself under,
shot myself in the foot,
cut my own throat,
did myself in.

i was trembling and couldn't return to the start of the book,
when you would touch my skin and remark upon it's softness.

i was thinking about the old days.
the good old days.
when anonymous loved me.

• yesterday, whilst walking up the haunted street i was nipped in the head on my way to the dentist who painted a special bitter varnish on my sensitive tooth
• i'm sorry that your cat is dying too, soon there will be nothing left
• the sun is out but it is not ballet slipper weather
• i saved an unwell butterfly from being stepped on; it's wings were like dying petals, all curled and heavy.
• no pussy blues in the posh car - just for me
• dried hair in the sun and jeans in the tumble dryer
• soon it is your party and i hope you like yr pony
• envious of yr baby? ( - that's so not me)
• voting for the redhead
• i don't need a little brother, thank you
• are you not on the secret side?
• we have decided...yr not going to like it...

do you remember that autumn in 1977 when the poltergeist kept throwing you around our room?

it hid my polyvelt shoes over and over again and i kept accusing you and we fought about it all the time.

and that really scary night when dad took this picture...we got no sleep that night, did we?.

the worst time was that weekend when it kept playing 'electricity' by orchestral manoeuvers in the dark on the casio keyboard you got for your 13th - 'cos i hated that song. looking back it was really weird. i mean, the keyboard didn't even have a plug on it (dad put it on your hairdryer, remember?) and 'electricity' wasn't even released until 1979.

i was a teenage daydream
i was a teenage petty criminal
i was a teenage nursing shark
i was a teenage coconut shy
i was a teenage dyejob
i was a teenage balladeer
i was a teenage wife beater
i was a teenage alarm clock
i was a teenage asthmatic prince
i was a teenage monoprint
i was a teenage mute
i was a teenage spirit level
i was a teenage sodastream
i was a teenage oil rig
i was a teenage conquistador
i was a teenage zodiac
i was a teenage coincidence
i was a teenage lapdog

this is my neighbour,

she has scratchy plaits and gin blossoms. her children scream like their throats are being cut when they play in the garden at teatime.