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.

And indebted.

And to what do I owe,
This beauty that has surrounded my waking hours of late,
The nightmares that lay in the resting hours laugh!
Yes, the words that surround me are of different voice,
Now my familiarity,
The world at my window now that of crisp, clear horizons,
Of the new, the west and exciting.
What power has given me what I once dreamt of,
Only to taunt at sleep, to claim that I owe?

''Oh hopelessness, oh loneliness, to search the ends of time''.
It sings, so quietly in the back of my mind,
It lay undisturbed, long gone in green light.
How might I go about clearing it, the dwelling and the dust?
What has nuzzled into my vein today is sweet and harmonious,
What lingers from before bitter, and alone.
Still i feel the clutching fingers, not cold, but slick and of grease,
I attempt reconnecting with the world before me,
It laughs behind my back and wills me to join it.

When you have lived a life, in the dark of the back street,
In the dim of a room well hidden by bed sheet,
The moon a beacon with vendetta;
To have a light, so graceful, not white,
Appear before you,
In welcome, in slight appreciation, in wanting of you,
You must owe.
There must be a force that has worked out a click in the pattern,
Has mis-stitched too late,
Has moved the stars ever so slightly,
So that you may indeed be granted a life like the other,
And you must owe.


The photographs of my loved ones must be stored for today,
I feel a slight shame in their gaze,
For here is the girl, who sort of disapeared,
And, really, was found too late.

Ocean 2009.

Like wandering the streets at 7pm,
Looking for breakfast in this bustled city.
People in business suits walking along side folk with their heads shaved on bikes.
Who else could create such thoughts within me?
Sitting beside it, or glancing over steep walls into the water.
Records you can see through the lake and streams of grass for us to lie,
Summer wasps in the air,
And lack of obligation for our adolescent stares.
Slowly giving ourselves the summer out,
And slowly we begin to show ourselves the lives we want.
Somehow tearing us apart at our joined hands like pulling paper from its rings.
The letters I wrote you and your right hand in mine.
I see your careless mouth but your thoughtful eyes turn over the scenery,
Just as though you never did see it.
Within your head you think you'd spend day after day with me,
But within the miles between us we could spend a dozen other lives.
And don't you fear missing that?
Cold to think I may leave you, yet missing,
and miss,
Are two very different words.
Explanations you just didn't want to hear over a cup of coffee in the cafe on a rainy autumn afternoon.
Trains that don't take me all the way to where you live,
And buses that run me off the beach sides.
Standing on the pebbles, undetectable in the darkness of the summer night,
Each one as damp as the ocean that threw itself upon them.
And my shoes wearing thin and through them, bare legs and a horror dress,
And my darling in his suit.
Watching what he can see of me darting about the ocean side, down by the burnt out pier.
Safe in the knowledge my feet are still on the ground as the pebbles are forced into one another.

Oh of all the other lives we could be leading,
The different clothes we could be wearing and the people we might know,
The jobs we may slave at and the social we may partake;
But tonight, that night, in the past we, you and I, stood together on a breezy well-known beach.
And we knelt in the stones,
Each of those a part of the mountain that held us up.
And the ocean collapsing black upon itself, the stars overtaken by floating fires.
Shadowed faces almost as haunting as the skeleton that emerged from the sea.
No horizon or cut in our skyline,
Just constant darkness at our feet.
The black that continued rolling threateningly toward us, then pulling out softly as if a tease eternal.

Perhaps sleep should come? I wondered almost as much as Trevor's wife did the keys.
Rolling images and music that no longer is made nor sold.
Footsteps between us on the pathways of a seaside town,
And our bodies beside walls of religious B&Bs.
Not wanting to part the us that was between every one else.

Tonight I see summer breezes I once detested that remind me of moments I once missed.
Meaningless teenage romances and conspiracies,
And faces I no longer care to see nor fears I no longer emulate so powerfully.
You came into a life that messed itself up and attempted straightening out a few kinks,
Before falling for them.

I came across this piece dated 11th August 2009. It is not a love story.

Salt and Sand.

As of late, I have caged that washed-out summer feeling, and once again it is encasing my emotions. Death has reared it's claw to another familiar face and voice and distracted with the masses elsewhere. It's being disgusting at the moment, I am not sure why, not that any are, but I feel it too common a place.
A friend, not so wise - it must be said, once said to me after the death of a very close loved one to us both;
''How old are you now? 19? -Here, he shook his head, fiddling with his thinly rolled cigarette- It's all down here from here, one after the other now''.
Of course, he was referring to deaths. It was a terrifying thing to hear, no doubt. But I remained calm, and responded only with a tilt of my still mind, a glance at him that he did not return, and the idle fiddling of the gift from her who had passed in my hands.
I have not been in that living room for quite some time, but then, it was exactly as she had left and decorated it.

Much of this, many of these thoughts, have provoked nostalgic, dry, white thoughts of the East end streets. The common, natural, and ever flowing longing for returning 'home' has returned. I see the crowded buses without faces, the tube journeys and the summer heat between Dagenham east and Barking. The cool tease of the tiled floor of Chadwell heath station, the dusty dry streets just outside of his home. The suspicious eye of the shopkeeper as I buy a countless amount of Jamaican Hardo Bread, listening to the likes of Amy Winehouse on my i-pod. The cracked, white cool of his kitchen floor, the strange and unidentifiably comforting scent of his then home. His final home.

The sky here at present is muggy, it is grey and lightless, thankfully, but the heat still rests at the door.
It is a home, that is for sure, but I find it rather difficult to connect these two places. It is not the first time that I have felt like seperate people, that I have been torn right in half for want of one place and need of another.
My life is pleasant, magical and astounding now, oh the thought that ran through me just weeks ago;
'It's my turn now, to live my life'.
My heart screamed out and turned in my chest, I have more than one home, how fortunate I am. But the people, those within those homes now, what do they scream?

And yes, I am having my summer block. Writing is difficult to structure, thoughts will not meet my lips with ease and my skin is tightening beneath the glare, but still I am here and to try. This rolling upset, this longing, these photographs, yes, they will always breathe down the back of my neck strangely alluring and soothing...
But what I have before me, oh what I have.. There are not words for the astoundment. I have not a way, yet, to describe how fortunate I feel. How scared that my lips tremble a smile. It is true, some people have it handed to them upon a plate, and squander it mercilessly. But at the moment, I feel like the only one. I grip this beautiful thing in my hands like the sand on my so-missed seaside, discovering silver shells and shimmering pebbles as the grains fall.
Water collapses at my feet.

Yes, I do miss you all, but I am aware that your lives are a little too advanced to be missing me too.
Moving photographs so I can see the waves, a stone heart beats softly into the sand.
I'll never know another day like the one that my uncle and I sat, getting rather off it on Rose from plastic cups, upon the seaside. Oh the pebbles and the sand, we waited for something that never did come about, throwing rocks at a coconut on the water's edge. It was our sunny evening.
The train back, the scent of sand and salt, tearing faces from the news papers and putting them upon others.
My hair was claret and blue, yours, of course, was slap-head. And we did.
'Your wondering now, what to do, now you know, this is the end'.
Taking notice of my music, reminding me of yours. You truly wanted to know me.
Oh how distracted we all were.
And then, there were the nights. How voices still run through the memory, the smell of whiskey and wine. The sight of Jack bottles in the bin outside, the constant damp of the garden. Amy wording the back ground, dices rolled and how I always managed to 'get the glam questions'.

It has grown cooler, the nights will begin to leak in earlier now. I ask the winter, the winter I have confessed my Love to, to treat me well this year. To be kind.

''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.

The Muesem.

Is it the quiet,
The dead of the night?
Oh, so may I ask of you,
A favour of your being.
Just be by, you see I've a vacant plot,
I sit here often,
Oh won't you stay?
Not long ago did I weep alone,
So sweet were my blues,
I tried my house into a home,
And oh, tired china, dim glass and heavy curtain,
I find here, by the window, I am alone again.

A crackle, the breaking of bone beneath feet in the garden,
The usual desire that you should be visiting me at strange hours,
Such is the thought that brings you not me.
Terror left my eyes just years before,
Oh vacant plot that sits in these glassy rounds,
Won' t you be the one to fill them?
To breathe life into a glimmering reflection,
I see wood, deep mahogony,
I see Gold, Oh Browns! ... I see ornate chains!
And a movement undetected.
Sir, have you taken my hand?
So cold that you are, I could have mistaken you for dawn's gentle breeze.

You see now, I am saving myself,
So simple it is when you have no desire.
But the electricity you pulse through me,
My need to create at your side,
Had it passed by me, I would have been but an empty, ornate shell,
A treasure lying upon the sands of another ocean.
But we would have ended up in the same room at some point.



And now, in ruins, my body lay beside yours.
Oh how the tourist come,
How they tap on the glass, how the children stare.
The guide, he fingers at objects, once warm in your hand,
He indicates the stare, he guides to the detail,
He works a thin point to the intricacy you left.
My eyes ache to my side,
Together we sigh,
You're broken; wired hand in mine,
A machine or two for life.
Oh, what have you made my dear?
Interest still in dusty eyes,
You smile that familiar grin,
Obscured by spectacles that light the sky.
You made it, Oh you made it.
The great inventor, don't you know?
And now we lie in wire, we lie for custom come.

Once Upon A December...

I can't sleep for thinking about you.
I can almost feel the air running through my chest.
When you held me I could barely breathe through arms,
But I heard all I had to in a safe embrace through bone.
I don't think I need to say any more,
That I do not speak of this,
Nor soften at a touch so strange.

I can think of nothing more worth doing,
Than writing you a letter you will never read.
I can lie quite peacefully, and sleep better, alone,
But I'd prefer to feel that warmth of morning skin.

All these memories I have, but they have come from no where.
I'm smiling some where, and figures are dancing,
There is music, bass rolling and yet I cannot hear it.
Please don't shatter this, darling,
For once I was allowed to dream,
And simply dream
Until I reached the age where this was not enough,
And crushed myself into reality.
Oh somewhere still, i dance, I'm held.
And somewhere soon, you'll leave me alone on the tiled floor.

Oh and, there you have gone and lifted me somewhat,
I feel my bones cracking within your grip,
And my heart, it swells sweetly with excess air,
I hold my breath and you say it all again.

I was listening dear, I was.
I suppose lying here is out of the question.

Oh but i want to fall in love, be that so bad?
Can i not wish to find a person as a person and want it all the same?
Be that woman,
be that man.
My love will fall within the fascination of that life of some other.
And i know, i seem to know,
that I shall spend the most time with some one I've yet to meet.

Not chance,
Maybe chance will bring him to me,
Let her find me.
My eyes will ache to bitter winter sun,
My skin will pattern brown beneath a summer,
and they will fall upon my lap,
Will shield a glaring ray.

I'm the one who will stop,
I'm the one who won't speak heart until whispered,

And they will be the one who i wasn't ever in love with before.


Find me for whenever,
I'm not sure death plays part,
but if you stumble upon a soulmate,
Dead before your time,
Have you a life beyond that?
I can't wait upon soul and fate,
I wait upon erosion by the sea.
Hearing footsteps of any one who fancies,
stepping in on me.


They'll have no shame, she says,
her hair won't even be straight.
No eyes in sight.
Shame, they'll think.
Faded beauty within the reasons she never gave.

My fingers tasting each gone flesh,
love for someone i never met.
Perhaps the sweetest touch is that,
Just want and tragedy before and after.



"They simply don't understand!" She cries, and drives yet another way.
Distant factories hum their industrial glare,
A reflection upon red horizon.
The motorway fades into dim orange lights and the cars sweep yellow across.
And there i lay upon junctions-by,
Listening to the travellers shoot by.
"Baby won't find me here, nor will the love" hummed to one.
Wondering that money nor image mightn't get you what you need,
but most certainly what you aparently want.

Bore, I, in a jungle tribe?
My want would be of a man in another village,
My goal in life to birth and give plentiful to my family.
Bore, I, perhaps merely here, where i sit tonight,
And were kept,
Then perhaps my skin would remain and my thoughts a one way stream,
No colour upon my nail, nor dent through my flesh.
I'd probably have a child, I'd probably be within University
Single minded yet fearful of life i were taken from.

But no, hail no!
Throw me in the back of this car!
Sit me between the cat box and your lies,
and hide me away for years.
Look into the back seat of a darkening car,
and whisper sweet endearments, so tenderly spoken,
I almost fell prey to gullible,
I beleived you merely forgot my meds.

Would I be this!?
Would i have met him? Does it matter for I'm to fall in love with any one!
So any one does cross my path with a dark glint in his eye!
Lamps facing upwards, my thoughts piercing the sky,
the Church beside, where end up did I,
it's threats to God, so tall and loom, pierce it! Pierce the sky!
So my stars fall into the blackest of nights!
The sound, my voice, a pathetic plea among millions,
for a life of indesiciveness.
A misery if not intoxicated,
A wonder when looking beneath the oceans waves...



And breath.
There i float.
A hole in the ice.

As if swimming off the edge of the earth,
as if swallowed by the very hole said religion did pierce.
Amongst my stars, float. Breathe.

"Darling" He whispers, though never to me, "I was waiting, a while, and my darling... You just can't win".

Oh gosh, nothing's meaning any thing.
Here, round again. Circles in the clubs again.
Turning on my feet once more,
to songs I've never heard before.
And still wishing for a mike and something painful.
To enter a room and make you want to cry.
So sliding hands did nothing any more.
A year and a half and an over the mark.
Lips much too bitter and grips not so tight.


How could I not? When there's a cliche attached to every thing said.
Coming third was never best.
But i clung to the number, claiming it's luck,
Until i rolled over, thirtieth.

Just like clinging to rails on the underground,
And the turn rolls the heads of every drone onboard to Victoria.
Each end of each Metro page wilting like a rose dying fast,
Each eye widening as a book leans away from them.
The black outside.
Underside.

Taking my own pen to other people's paper seemed a way to put it out.
Feeling as though every thing should be written,
as not to forget any details in future.
But what am i saving them for exactly ?
No one really wants to hear them,
just to respond with their own opinion.



~

Trains.

I told myself yesterday. But I mimed it coherently today.
I heard the plug fill up with water, gargling and choking if only for a few seconds.
I'm sure the eye down there had squinted.
Maybe i shouldn't have called him
A lovely little thing.
Because he got the bus before last.
The centre of town had so many lights,
And I'm sure that water in the dock was deeper than it gave away.
The steel bench was grated and cold. But i was rather content,
in my tit and tat, with my tailored coat.
Waiting then, for just about any one.
I could see some stars, speckled in the gap through the clouds.
Still, they looked rather silver, and i decided they were standing in for the moon.
Who's place they had clearly stole.
My fingers were sort of, stained red.
I'd made a decision three hours before.
At home my bed was covered in cat hair.
And most likely dust. For a home from home was a then a permanent lust.



Some one ran in from the streets, they bashed through the door,
They were yelling to get there,
Screaming obscenities and love.
I must of been addicted to him by now,
For i was in the carriage behind.
Distracted by words on the door, I missed my stop by an inch
And had to leave with my hair behind my ear.
My ear not particularly present, what when stuffed with sounds and wires.
Shining like chocolate on a photograph,
I decided a greeting card wouldn't have done.
And thus my presence regained in your odd little town, 5 over from mine.
Demanding less subtle answers,
I called once more. But only through mobiles and automatic doors.
Constantly reflecting and smiling now and then.
Sinched in at the waist, hair really in for a trim.
You'd of mistook her for a local,
had a suitcase not entailed.

I almost forgot to write, and so to end before a story begins.

Bits.

Did she run away again.
Making so much 'little effort' that the walls ached from all that approached,
intense in waiting.
Could've carried out three different notes,
but she stuck on the latter of things.
Perhaps raised voices of aged women scared her.
Perhaps tea wasn't just 'sweet enough'
And dreams of emotions she'd felt before, but visually
did thrive through the nights the heating was left on.
Moments like bitter felt, wordless greeting cards
and Momentums such as clean, round pots of moisturizer
and lactoste milk.
I recalled the smell of the wood by the fridge,
as a child sneaking chocolate from it's noisily accessible depths,
But kinder faces shon over.

She wondered where to go,
but only once already on the train.
The leaves driving past on the trees at her booth's window,
swished into one such as a paint pallette tilting,
And with it her head lulled,
and a passing stranger called for 'any one who was a doctor'
And her eyes felt so dry, cracking open, so raw.
Her throat was a blister of a direct route to the depths of her insides.
But pale warmth, the fridge as the child left out in the sun.
Losing will, the dull white of the room around her gave a metal clunk of a sigh from it's walls.
She only looked as far as the post at the end of this metal framed bed,
and he writhed one de-frosted hand beneath the scratch of tight cotton spread.
The door blended in with the walls in this room,
and she settled upon calling it Ivory,
not cream.

Oh look at that, said the creak in the wall.
And a birds shadow skipped over the room,
The bones in her neck, attaching her head
scathed percutaneously.
The sun was grey today, and the trees were a canvas just done,
but the houses outside, shon different oranges, brick-a-brack sweet
and council fresh.

Homely, she lifted the blanket from tuck. Swayed her dress along with legs around and down from the bed.
Such pretty shoes, her broken toes fit wonderfully.
Did she already know?
Hearing the wireless in the other room.

A glance, a shudder, a complete freeze within her stomach,
did bring empathy to disco rooms.
'You've inspired me'
And not long later, half the bottle was full.
Optimistic girls in tights and waistband-dresses
Such ways did the boys pop their collars that the combe did protude from the sleeve.

But what do i think ?!
What do i think?
I kept recalling the fridge until some one gasped
a claim of not knowing what i think,
but questioning me once more with my own output.


Conversation. Small talk appears to be creeping up, and luring beside us. I hate it when it reaches that point due to physcical contact.