'November 1st, 2009' - the piece sighed.

On being so, your senses heighten, so much that you can sense the very animals moving hidden in the trees.
Of course, nothing is just given to you, after all, a gift must be unwrapped.
A breath of night is always the first of a new life.

I paused, as I,
Entirely myself, contented by the previous days had,
Those the last of October,
This that first night of November,
And I looked through the doors windows,
The pubs lights off now,
Just the lanterns of the streets outside,
And there he stood.
A profile to me,
His hair a-skew to the golden damp cobbles,
The moon bearing down upon him from the very centre of the parting sky.
His arms, so full yet so fit,
Holding up the umbrella he packed away to bring inside,
So I must avert my eyes, must take my body from the window.
I’m sure he sees me enough.


On leaving did see, his hesitation in fingers through his hair,
Though about me, I shall never have an idea,
He followed but he left,
And so I went out alone onto those very same cobbles,
That harboured him just minutes before.
The moon sat still as ever,
As I stood aside the bridge tonight,
It lit the sky more powerfully than even the sun,
That I never see.
For a lamplight it always more appropriate than the main.
Every cloud dashed past,
Painted softly as the lines that ink my back.

Dark figures don’t haunt me,
Dark silhouettes pass through my life,
As I walked along side the river for Novembers very first twilight,
Through the leaves, through the crunch, through passers by and bitter breeze,
I saw a figure passing in time between the pillars across the water.
Though daylight still strong, but shaded,
I could not make out this to be a man or a woman,
But it walked as I, hands in pocket, head slightly bowed,
A fine silhouette of entirely black, from hair to clothe
Our steps met at the bridge, and though it went a different route to myself,
His eyes still met my own for a moment,
Before we crossed separate roads.
As I crossed my own, I saw him pace off, hands still in pocket, a cinched in waist by his tailor,
He appeared entirely a black image,
Mute and strong
Against all those autumn leaves that dashed the cobbles of Castle Park,
Every one else had features,
He, not a trace of detail,
And yet I was drawn,
And again we walked in time,
Though this time, through trees not pillars did he disappear.
No red this year.



“You, I spent my life missing you….” Hesitation gripped her, the last three words trailed from her speech, yet carried on in her conscious mind, “And I shan’t stand it a moment longer”.
That life of the damned, so they called it, may just keep my own life from wanting him any longer.




A park lit by moonlight, soft lanterns and sound tracked by tapping rain that fell from the leaves still on the trees, and insulted those that now led upon the floor.
It’s pathways decreased by what now mostly led,
What looked like bodies of leaves on the ground.
And so I stepped, in time to old music,
Hearing the modern talk of those around me.
Oh a girl, old before her time, hath she no where to go but the leaves of adolescent trees?
Moments and memories, all stirring my mind,
To a consciousness that decides who and who isn’t in my life,
And reality, that reality
That dips in for shock factor,
And so my self may never rest,
Oh tender hooks.
On edge.
My mind, revelling now, as I near just twenty human years old,
All that has passed,
And all I have become.
For fear I spent years,
Of living an ordinary life,
But never has it been just that.

Some how I seeked happiness, and that was a wooden floored home,
Rugs, soft lighting and a family around a tree a Christmas,
An odd time to receive it,
In doses that were unfamiliar,
And yet ordinaire was my fear.

My senses so wrong as a child,
Hear I every sound a house can make,
See every shadow that partake,
In every nightly ritual of sleep.
As I slip further into nocturnal ways,
I recall being so young faced, fresh skinned,
Sat upon the padded seat of a warm family restaurant,
Busy on a weekday summer evening,
And my body ached with fear,
Ached with being sick of being in fear.
And suddenly life around me was but a question,
But a question of where in reality I really sat,
If my mother and then-step-father really sat before me,
If any of these people were really here.
Where in parallel did I lie?
And if so why, when in those arms I miss, did I feel so almost alive?

I wanted it all to stop,
And I prayed upon myself amnesia for a very long time…

Years, my years,
Only almost twenty, barely scraping it’s milestone presence,
And already my mind is that,
Of the girl who walks the city at night,
Clutching a cane,
And considering the sky,
And breathing most deeply when the moon reveals itself to her,
Whether close to the rooftops, halved and tinged in gold,
Or dead centre the sky, hanging full and ominously pearl,
My own footsteps my company,
The sounds of the earth around me.
Rustling come red come gold come dinge of the waters that travel around me.
My own gentle hum the only apparent sound.



The way the rain may make me feel,
So very early houred morning,
The way the crowd carried me that night,
And dropped me back on stage,
To the last I’ll hear his voice again through mikes I’d always known.
I’ll never know this feelings,
Unless I’m walking alone,
Glancing up to the church I live beside,
Seeing hours only I seem to know.
For spending this autumn walking along side the pale,
The ‘one’,
My eyes may be clouded,
My vision rotted,
Ignored,
My previous admiration slanted.
I must see these things, whilst I am alone,
For if the next one has me looking and only looking at so,
Then perhaps beauty will leave me in toe.

An awkward conversation.

There was a dull chill in the air, a handful of stars in the sky. Her skin had taken on a pale defence to the night's weather, and yet still she sighed contentedly. She must've been sat on this mound for around four hours, more or less. Her legs had become slightly numb, but she needn't have realised for lack of movement.
"You don't always come here, do you?", Came a sultry Voice without intention, as though it had always been there.
"Well... no", she replied rather obviously, glancing downward slightly to the mound on which she sat.
"Oh", came the Voice once more, as though expecting much more of an answer, "Well... You aren't planning on leaving?".
"No actually", she replied wistfully, her colourless eyes fixed upon the few stars and the lack-lustre blue beyond it.
"Well it won't go away..." came the Voice, now seating itself beside her, though she paid it no attention, "That is to say, it won't come back? Well you know, that, that down there... it won't go away, but, the thing that it was, well... it's... gone. Yes. Quite gone".
"Aren't you supposed to be a little more... informed on this matter?", the girl asked quite naturally.
There was a pause after this, in which the Voice sat quite calmly at her side, imitating the girl's glance toward the stars. It shifted it's weight upon the earth now and then, and applied itself to an itch upon it's arm, but otherwise it was rather still.
"It just becomes a little bit of all the same... if you follow?", the Voice queried as an unidentifiable bird swept past heavily with one lift of it's wings.
"I don't I'm afraid. I'd of only assumed you were here to offer me something".
"Offer you something?", the Voice's velvety slithering tone took on a slight crackle.
"Well yes, advice, a choice, an offer, an exchange... Is that not how the stories go? The stories I had read as a child...".
"Well that should tell you it all! You were a child when you read them, things have changed", the Voice came with a classic huff, had it have bothered moving it would certainly have folded it's arms and turned it's head at this point. But it's ancient-tones shared enough.
"I am eighteen years old. And these stories have been passed to my school from the Greek times. I do enjoy reading you know", the girl maintained her wistful tone, her eyes ever upon the blues and silvers of the night.
"Well... do you not suppose you should be at home, reading then? There is not a sweeter way to mourn than to read into another view of life that you only wished was yours!".

Her expression did not change, but she said no more. A desperate and rolling cry came from somewhere nearby, of which the Voice assumed to be that recently passed large bird. It ceased, and the general clatter and scurrying of the middle of the night (which It was so very used to) became clear once more.
The Voice rolled it's hands around one another slowly, and glanced back to the mound on which they were sat. The girl had slightly sunken into the fresh mound of earth, having been sat on it for so long. Little tufts of grass from either side of the mound were poking through and swaying in the breezeless eve, and the stone of which the mound leant slightly against glistened silently and still in the silver glare of the moon. It looked alone, and for the briefest of moments, the Voice felt rather sorry for the girl. But it passed, as it always had done.
"Look", came the Voice once again, after a long quiet, "I didn't mean what I said, I suppose, well... you know... you've got that job at that bar and... well, don't you just get irritated when customers tell you how to do your job? Not to say you're a customer... Or even a client, I mean, this is different...".
The girl looked slightly toward the Voice, and sighed. He really was mumbling on about nothing, and with her view on life as it currently was, she was aware that she no longer had time for such rambling.

"Suppose I were to just stay here with you", the Voice's classic tone said later, "Suppose I never bothered others again, nor stalked the night, nor exchanged anything or made any deals..."
"Have you not collecting to do?".
The Voice went to reply, but for the first time in history, was politely interrupted.
"Excuse me for stating, but in all the stories, in all the books and the unwritten legends... you are rather important. You are feared so much as you are necassary, or something along those lines. If I were to grant you to sit beside me forever, mourning upon my loved one whom you did not even know, I would not, in some twisted and strange way, be doing the earth any favours".
"But I'd be doing you a favour", It said rather simply.
"But you do not grant favours, you only exchange them. And any way, I never asked for any company tonight, I was quite happy to be sat upon this heap alone. Thank you".
"It is only a dog you know...".
"I beg your pardon?".
"No... no, I didn't mean that either, I know it's a human. I apologise. That was uncalled for". The Voice began to wring it's hands again, referring it's glance to the mound and the stone. "I suppose we could carry on arguing though? For quite some time?".
"You really dislike your job, do you not?", the girl asked the Voice, pushing her feet comfortably into the disturbed earth.
"Yes. Quite.", Came the Voice.

~

Unedited.

Collective Monstrosity.

Oh collectively!
Each sin, oh what we are,
Together beneath each sheet
This wretched, nasty being,
This monster between us,
I will be any thing with you.

How you push unto me,
And the blasted creature tickles a claw against my stomach, it lurches into my breast and it breaths so terribly heavy.
It won't let me to you!

How I want to give in,
Oh banish this as a sin!

Whilst this sinful thing within,
For I am truly, I am,
Wanting,
and in my young skin I should be able!
Blasted creature!
Leave me to my one,
For he, and he is mine and only: he;
He gives in.

Is able.
Such pathetic pen this is that scrawls.
It yearns to better its words, to practise it's give,
And like me to he,
It gives only what the creature between does filter.

It's scream will be audible to me only, the night it is torn from my skin,
wrenched from it's ever-home!
"Die Monster Die!"
Crawl, will it, up the spine to the base of the skull,
Will it linger at my neck, breathe into my ear,
Such is the snarl,
You nuture the other.

Can I possibly ink this thing whilst I am with he?
Can these tangle of words distract it long enough so that I might just be?!
Please, just a moment without one of these creatures to lure it's foul head!
Banish it from my bed!

There are always monsters behind the curtains.

~

Let us cherish our sin,
Even, has the creature forbade me from use of it's words.
But still it does whisper.
You are italics on parchment, my love,
You are the rose blooming over the once dull, routine wall that I pass on my journey.
You knelt in black, did my heart ever wilt.
Those eyes so sadly framed.
Let the monster rest for this caress.

''Something I cannot, can see me''.

An aged story.


Will I spend my life doing this?
Taking on the old information as if new?

I heard the trees anger last night,
As alll that filled the 4am streets was my own whisper,
Ordinarily.
The rest that filled the silence was suddenly all collapture.
To look above me,
My footsteps ended,
Paused, and slotted into the cobbles.

The damp road an empty stage to the rustling and the breaking above me,
I could almost trace the sound with my eyes,
It moved around as if some thing on all fours ran-a-mock on the tree tops,
Beneath the shielded moon.
I was a build up,
A tension.
And I waited for something to drop,
As I spied a star through the mess of leaves.

Some of autumn, some clinging onto what was left of the weather,
I waited.
Surely a branch would have stopped breaking?
But the sound of ripping bark and clattering leaves progressed,
An orchestra building up,
"Something I cannot, can see me".
Was tonight, my ordinary night, The night?
For all the shredding, the grinding rips,
Nothing fell on the floor.

But I waited, I even stepped into the dark from the lamp's light,
Directly beneath the sound, willing it to test me.
But perhaps I wanted it too much that night,
Or maybe I wasn't truly fearless,
They saw me unfit?
Still I pictured this creature on the tree tops, lining Queen's square,
All that was beneath, such ordinaire,
And are all above such hair tinted creatures?
Drooled and thirst?
I ached my neck back,
Realising the horizon was lightening, for it was apparent.
And all in such short time,
the climax came too little.

Little but what the creature had left,
That was swaying wood out of eye's sight,
And the fluttering leaves that rumbled humbly in disturbance,
As if attacked and reacted,
As a body would to a needle.

All but tonight.

Nothing saved me from my plight,
I was just another colour under midnight's light.

Wake me from this, I wondered,
Pondering on an ending,
Or not seeing beach light again.
As I left the cobbles closer,
I ran thoughts through a bitterly set mind.

Surely, if I cannot sleep as alive,
I shan't sleep when I am dead either?

Commited to a wander that is mood lead,
Waiting to be accepted into eternity?
See, I think they're watching.
I'm waited.
I'm watched.
But I'll go out in daylight today,
It hidden by grey cloud and musk.
And the goers by,
Suits, ties, and nine to five thirty,
Scurry as rats do to the sewers,
To the train stations, to the bus depos.
As I rest weary, moon streaked eyes,
And pace out around them.
A slower, more tuned walk than they, gushes by,
With worries of such,
That I once would have dreamt, yet dreaded having,
As a ten year old wishing amnesia upon my self.

And wishing for all the woes of an ordinaire.
Yet the moment I spend my ordinary walk home,
Claiming and comparing,
To be as ordinary as;
Those who eat ordinarily for a living,
Those who ignore the ache in their side,
Those who pine for those they cannot have,
Those who find those of a similar life,
A tree snaps before me.
And they wonder if I'm truly ready.
As do I.

In the time I knew you, I hadn't a home,
We'd send two letters at a time,
The night's sweet creatures, just sweet,
You and I only just finding 'our' feet.
I remember one of the first places you took me,
Rum served by Jerry,
A piano keyed by a man in smart dress and a topped' hat,
Low hanging, off lilac net curtains,
And ornate, slim, gold and floral seating.
A beaten leather suitcase subdued in a corner.

Not a single lamp matched,
And a river ran nearby,
Small silver bats flitting off it's surface,
Back into nothing, I'd sigh.

Since you, I have forgotten story telling,
And my words linger in my throat,
Until the moment has passed.
Bitter, unfelt and sunken, they slip back down,
He never wanted my stories,
How freely I can speak by the sea.
We never went there, he and I.
He wouldn't.

Do you remember meeting?
A lugged suitcase, your cobbles,
A bar that we seeped to the end of,
And yet found another door to outside?
Im sure I drank Rum again, and off you toodled for a cigarette,
But I heard a crack in the sky,
The heavens opening with a sudden lash,
An indescribeable amount of water, as if saved,
cascading over an old tiled roof, each cobble gleaming in protest,
And another crick in the sky.

Our, Us, it went a little like a storm,
The rest of the way.
It travelled just the same, patched up just the same,
It even came the same.


Suddenly, I slowly feel myself again.
Remember, I used to describe things?
And I haven't read a book in two weeks,
That is where the space is. And why I feel so alone.

My beach hums distantly, as you used to, some where far from here.
And I hear our old conversations running dry,
And laugh at my own leaving your letters at my other home.
I cannot leaf, and so i sigh in photographs pinned to my door.
The winter's evening sun sinks into my bedroom,
And lightens the detail on a memory captured.
I'm sure I'll find you behind the pier,
The wreck and the carousel.
Do you remember how we used to be?
I am, for now, sorry I was not ready for you.
I'd adore a cafe in the south, you and I, a book or three between us.
Conversation through eyes, a thin trail of your cigarette smoke,
A linger of gin and the way a kitchen smells when a cat eats there.

I buried it in the sand. (Revisited)

"My my, such whispers, such night...."
A little echo amongst the brambles and spikes of graveyard hedges. His head turned as quickly as his sensitive hearing picked up upon it. Not a movement, and silence regained, as if the voice from his very throat had moved the air around him.

Such necesseties were pondered,
through like-minded fools of age.
Five hundred, moving on six and still they little but grew,
I made such an effort, were such thoughts a daily delay;
To withdraw my feeling from each subtle feeding and take upon madness, a stride.

I gazed into eyes that had long since sunk back,
and I cupped hands around heads of the new borns.
I could see life in each, and the tide did receed on the beach i had only now begun to call home.
There were footsteps on the beach, some were a thousand years old,
I could see them engraved in the gristled sands,
Some more aparent than most.
I realised now, such soles of feet were ones i had become aware,
past lives that I'd known, past spirits imprinted upon my stone,
A whisper in midnight's light's breeze.

I heard his laugh,
And i saw another's eyes.
I touched familiar skin and I winced at usual words.
Regretted a person i was, appreciated change in my ways.
"Look, there it goes" came a strong whisper unseen. "Our lives right ahead of us, i can see it now;
One of us alone on this beach".

I buried it in the sand.

"My my, such whispers, such night...."
A little echo amongst the brambles and spikes of graveyard hedges. His head turned as quickly as his sensitive hearing picked up upon it. Not a movement, and silence regained, as if the voice from his very throat had moved the air around him.

Such necesseties were pondered,
through like-minded fools of age.
Five hundred, moving on six and still they little but grew,
I made such an effort, were such thoughts a daily delay;
To withdraw my feeling from each subtle feeding and take upon madness, a stride.

I gazed into eyes that had long since sunk back,
and I cupped hands around heads of the new borns.
I could see life in each, and the tide did receed on the beach i had only now begun to call home.
There were footsteps on the beach, some were a thousand years old,
I could see them engraved in the gristled sands,
Some more aparent than most.
I realised now, such soles of feet were ones i had become aware,
past lives that I'd known, past spirits imprinted upon my stone,
A whisper in midnight's light's breeze.

I heard his laugh,
And i saw another's eyes.
I touched familiar skin and I winced at usual words.
Regretted a person i was, appreciated change in my ways.
"Look, there it goes" came a strong whisper unseen. "Our lives right ahead of us, i can see it now;
One of us alone on this beach".