Kate Nash without Mouthwash

If we’d never met I’d be

A hamster without a wheel,

Kate Nash without mouthwash,

A spoilt child with no Happy Meal.

If we’d never met I’d be

A castle without a princess,

Cupcake with no frosting,

Ouran High without the incest.

If we hadn’t met I’d be

A grrrl without a riot,

The internet with no cats,

Santa Claus on a diet.

If we’d never met I’d be

Facebook without like,

Tumblr with no Potter,

A hipster with no fixie bike.

If we hadn’t met I’d be

N-Dubz with no Dappy

(…I’d still be whole,

But I wouldn’t be happy.)

Dome of Pleasure / Arc of Time

When pleasure-fed did Coleridge

Import a poem of Xanadu

But some have guessed and others know

His sickly visions to be true

There is a demon and his name is Gore

With raven claws and whores who spit

His flashing eyes, his floating hair:

Such features that cannot be writ

By mortal hand, though some have tried

‘Mid dancing rocks and scattered offal

He curdles the milk of Paradise

And whips dreamers in his hellish brothel

The dome of pleasure, the arc of time

Both curve towards the Heaven’s crest

Though in their shadows some will pine

Denied their claim of eternal rest

So dreamers, draw your covers close

To close your eyes with holy dread

Lest this vision beckon you

To dance in the fortress of the dead

i was afraid that we wouldn’t suffer

afraid that one drink would follow another

quick succession of blood lines and liquor

blurring faces until – –

everything is encompassed everything isolates

coughing shaking drops of some amber liquid

dark jim henson crystals bloom before our eyes

and it doesn’t matter anymore – –

what your mother will say

what will fill and flood the floors

razors cut wire cut canvas cut me

we lay together, and everything is the same

Requiem for the horses

the winter of our discontent:
rolled-up twenties softly spent
I can’t remember what it meant
irrelevant / irreverent

each of us clichéd / alone
and Patti’s inaccessible poem
in the sky, a glowing womb
illuminates the make-shift tomb

(the sheets, rice-paper, petal pink)
I feel, you say, I do not think
I smile and fill a glass with ink
while butcher leads me to the brink

years pass and still you reach for me
under my cloak of invisibility
pretty (im)perfect pair are we
who abdicate normality

I grow feathers, issue a warrior’s cry
spoon breakfast off breastplates and learn to fly
oh darling, oh dearest we’re ever so high
but if they catch us we’ll surely die
but if they catch us we’ll surely die

The Raven and the Matron

There is something that they do not know:

At night she feasts with the carrion crow.

She eats the petals but keeps the thorns

So that every child comes out still-born.

And though she’ll never be forgaven

She gives their corpses to the raven.


And though she says she’s no regrets,

she wears their chords around her neck.

Dusk

inside the music’s blaring and she’s swearing at the barman ‘cause she thinks she’s been short-changed so half-deranged on mdma and alcopops she stumbles outside for a smoke has a toke and notices the guildford girls with their blonde hair and rah rah ah ah are you kidding me shoes and now all she can think about all she can shout are tori amos lyrics as she looks at their chests while they smoke cigarettes for the little fascist panties tucked inside the heart of every nice girl.

Poem for a Poet

You find me crude you ask then so be it darling

I couldn’t even think you Talent with your one

calculated strand of hair your too-many sips

you’re talking too fast. Slow down. And leave

your locks to chance. Pretension persists but

sincerity mists.

[You don’t need any more lines;

Poetry or otherwise.]

How could I even begin to forget the way that me and the mermaid met?
Down at the coast with my cigarette, I caught her in my tan fishnets.
She takes my hand and we fall into the sea. I think I will surely drown but she
touches my palm in a way that comforts me and I wonder how this marvel can be.
Each thinks the other is a myth. How is it that we both exist?
The dreamer and the solipsist; she created me from loneliness.
My body’s a novelty to her seven sisters. They caress my skin until it blisters
and something in my companion stirs: I cannot kiss more lips until I kiss hers.
An orgy of pearls and shimmering scales. A bed of sand which coral veils.
Overhead, the fishermen adjust their sails while my fingers seek folds but find only tails.