Donations are essential to keep Write Out Loud going    

White Widow

 

I have been lost,

tempered by a wind as wide

as the colours of a solar eclipse,

and the cold winter downs

that grab my hairs

in exposure.

 

I am pure in sadness,

the look of me, weighed heavy

with the white shape

my face sheds,

unlovely - the mad

truth, kept by

those

who say I am.

 

Aloft, fragile,

a salmon sky designs

...

Read and leave comments (4)

Infant

I am made from all things –

a whisper in your ear,

the rip of your distance in this,

the swelling menace of a split,

where you reach and reach:

“...give me all”

 

I am frightened of

the left places in my head,

the sounds of empty arms.

Throw, they say, throw everything

into others,

they will be there - in the show

of your asylum later,

...

Read and leave comments (4)

Make Believe

It is the only thing worth the wait,

the bait of some unresponsive

destiny, morphing and deserving

with all the fancies of the heart -

 

the glance of some, positioned perfectly

for my love, the kind that dipped into me to help

or stood outside and never knew me.

An unimaginable amount of things

 

suspend themselves in the hint of love,

the ripe clut...

Read and leave comments (7)

Idea

I have met a stranger

hanging from the point of nothing - 

where no wretched parochial fashion

disembowels,

no fellated Pop,

the prop of some, is angled in, exquisite –

no,

 

the dilation of his eyes

met me on a disc of white -

the hands of mine

spinning the entire weight,

 

hurtling from a place

of  uncontrolled proportions

of nothing...

Read and leave comments (9)

The Witch's Brew

They arouse suspicious dreams, circling her –

these words of want

bitten on a message left, where no space is left for her.

They have a monopoly on all things –

her conscience, her motives, her inner switch.

They feel her pulse and decide,

reign the veins in

and position the bridle –

take her to the water to drink.

 

The pail is one centimetre wide, sug...

Read and leave comments (4)

Daisies

I lie back

and feel the grass come through my clothes –

my shoulder blades and backside damp,

a rub of earth in my hair, combed down over the hill,

woven with the chummy white heads, bending near my ear,

ready.

 

I pick one and twist it around in-between my thumb and forefinger.

A little yellow comes undone.  I feel bad, despite his docile dance

and run my ...

Read and leave comments (4)

Amorphous

I am no particular kind,

hinged in the retrospect of other movements.

Damaged, some may say, by the lack of my own peril.

 

I am left

in the evaporations –

where a bare foot meets a wooden floor,

peeling the press

of a child running into summer.

 

I am the hair

falling from your scalp, that convalescent

each day united

with a disappearing wil...

Read and leave comments (0)

The Scarlet Prophecies Part One

"How did you get this scar?”

 

From laughing horizontally, the floor took on a Dictaphone characteristic

and I presented it with my mouth, in solvents and kisses.

 

“You were pissed.”

 

I reserve that right for you.

 

                                    *

 

She gave herself Anastasian developments in this story,

she was looking for something, we ...

Read and leave comments (2)

To a Lost Friend

 

Saying goodbye, it really did rant bad.
The frame around - just guts and snapping,
quick and scratching for the furthest point,

saying not too much but much too still,

the insides of us left, with good parts shivering.

 

And when it did, the faulted smell

of places too close to our heads, said ill things,

the spoke of which, turned others still

to drive...

Read and leave comments (0)

Season

 

In the spring, the parts of them,

the soft, paper thin made up faces,

littered the alleys and the folds of a park -

 a throb of alcohol ladening everything.

Safety pinned and tilted,

they had the world at the tip of their cigarette.

 

In the summer, they went east -

their hair full of incense and the calculations

the heart presented

over coffee, po...

Read and leave comments (5)

Trip Wolf

 

I made myself in the room.

The dab of this and that -  it swept me up in the carpet,

flickered a groove,

a voice needing abit of spice to.

 

I tried to uncover myself,

away from the city, to find a place where the outside

could hurt me - amber bites, and a call

that could strip me of the way I stood on two.

 

I took the fast words I hear us talk,...

Read and leave comments (3)

She Changes

 

Things you see in her open arms

 are like tiny lives tunnelling; fibre optics

of puberty and motherhood, pulled to

in season, neon watchwords

to the inner heart

 

swelling, the bell of, the jelly fish -

the tides inside; transparent switches of mood.

Sometimes, sometimes,

she decides, the sky is better on its side

 

stripping her belly with yell...

Read and leave comments (4)

Silentium

 

There is a hard art up there,

as it was before,

before the strung beads of sweat

set a face lost into this.

 

The name of it is unsure,

outside science or introduction,

a Braille hinted, the landscapes

say.

 

The settling, not a thought, exact,

but a movement of things taking shape,

is a real thing – a tact

witnessed in the company of

...

Read and leave comments (3)

Panic Attack

Things gone from me -
beautiful orange fish, that swim, threaded;
a moustache, twitching in the sea,
and the music green and grey make
when dark, bewitching hills, embrace.
 
A summer window sill, sweet all day with sun,
spider plants, and a cat's soft nose -
they seem like a still thought, outside me,
gone.
 
Violins - my veins erase, tulips tut; my...

Read and leave comments (3)

A Morning Ritual

 

I step out of,

the presence of, a tangled green

sharp dress; the sleeves split with tongues,

hissing.

 

Rinsed, these scales fall down my back,

right down and to the porcelain,

where I stepped into the bath,

her toe barely underneath mine.

 

I have a job to do,

kicking through the clogged up waves,

have to do it right,

stand my ground...

Read and leave comments (1)

The Death of a Tree

Bending down, amber becoming,

the furthest thought of,

combing,

she sends her children to the earth,

the spiced percussive hazel girls,

with eyes like warm chocolate cups.

 

A moth brushes the afternoon,

grey flecked hair from mouth to wing,

and waits on her beating heart,

quiet,

her arms rising

in the tender wind,

where he loves - a moving ...

Read and leave comments (6)

Convalescent

 

Go into the garden, she says,

hurried, leaning away from me.

Something is wanting, locked to the moon -

I watched from the window, those rolling pales.

She is not with me.

 

I came to, with raspberry bitten fingers,

a vast place.  Each glance

 littered the dawn, out of reach, with lawns

sheared, transparent.

Smudged with memory, I looked for her.

...

Read and leave comments (3)

Sleep

 

She reaches out, and the covers heave;

a thick sea moving east, morning peaked, and unforgiving.

Turning,

an arm releases the sounds of being far away.

 

He talks to her in his sleep.

 

She sits, her knees pulled up to her heart,

bent, taken. The still air attracts her gaze to the wall,

 an exact silver,

and she draws her arm up across the running...

Read and leave comments (2)

Poe

 
 
The flaxen flickers, shadow boxing,
keeps the corners of the room close -
makes angles significant, dance, giddy,
and my fingertips, now large, take the shape
of a bird or a devil’s wing on the wall.
 
“Keep me safe.” In spite,
the gold ceiling grows
terrors of what is half known,
that weigh heavy upon my chest,
in the laughter smitten with th...

Read and leave comments (4)

Juliet

She wraps the silk around her limbs;

tight silver tendrils, to touch as peeling lily skins.

The thought of  it would last forever –

over the rip, the fall,

 it would.

 

The pleating whispers, lavender skirt and hush,

 blue dipped fingertips rush.

The hurting,

spinning sphere of youth - 

it would last forever.

 

Folding, rolling,

the two ott...

Read and leave comments (2)

Pilgrim

 

I looked for you

with blunt knives and forks,

and dull silver backs of spoons,

assumed you’d appear,

wearing white,

a milk sweet bride,

a communication; laced and corseted.

You did not.

 

I pulled a pair of sleeves apart,

the frays of wool, fly trappers,

and nuzzled,

it made me think of itching,

and your face in the heat;

arachnid ...

Read and leave comments (3)

The Wind and the Water Kiss.

 

It cups my chin, and if it could give,

it gives -

a white smoothing porcelain, to tether, bitter on my lips,

fast into the air, pulling on my coat;

a dance, a positioning of feet,

and an embrace that, true to form,

evaporates,

and leaves me so unsure.

 

Hurried, the part of the lake

that I am, is held back, and yet cautious,

and lonely still...

Read and leave comments (1)

Present

 

Ungainly placed, on a chequered board, sits

a chameleon.

It yawns, gluey lungful adolescence.

Each eye hurries, confuses syntax,

keeps clumsy fashions,

knocks over everything.

 

I wake up to this - a breakfast table debacle;

agitations over toast, milk smirking sick,

eggs peeled, juice, primary decisions,

and that gaze again, somewhat spurious.

...

Read and leave comments (3)

Escape

 

She is a sweet doll, three tiers high,

a nipped in, ivory dumbbell.

Her nails, bitten down, flash in the crook

of his arm.

 

She looks duped, evangelical;

her face catching the icing underfoot

a little.  

There is communion.

 

She steps forward, pressing her hand into mine,

our fingerprints, lost in glass -

uniforms, shapes of dust,

her...

Read and leave comments (3)

escape

The Undertaker

He walks through the day to night,

a celestial seismograph under his heart,

buck toothed, taken from the mother by force;

a palm stroke, affiliated.

 

Carp-tongued, summer stilted, starched

with collar book marked chin,

he is not amphibian –

spreading legs, to grow with groans, a form meandering,  sucking air through ripples,

 

he, being taken from the h...

Read and leave comments (1)

The Wreckers

 

 

In came the gulls;

the slate wings, surfing capers,

lobster snatchers, snapping,

baying.

He gripped the rock, batting, curses grizzled,

and slopped his cigarette.

“Come in” he spat, frizzes of beard gone green.

The dark sky merged with the coast, twirled compasses

sick,

and he bashed his torch on the slick jutting knives;

made hysterical light...

Read and leave comments (1)

Narci

 

“If I dyed my hair red,” She cooed,

“The sun would be jealous,

and dip her fingers into herself.”

He felt the swish of her hair

as she crouched to stroke the lake;

a smudge of strawberry on his cheek.

 

She grated the moon’s reflection with her hands

and sighed,

“see how pale my arm is in the night”

and bit her hands together like a dove.

“Some...

Read and leave comments (7)

The Burnt Bee

He is a smite of calligraphy;

tendrils, amputations, whiskers,

husky misplaced feathers,

a tobacco, a poppy seed head,

stretched out like a clumsy sentence,

in the dry arc of the afternoon,

coughing under spotlight.

 

Consumption; a sticky lung,

a honey comb bled red,

passes over the fields, summer whipped,

and a scythe winks in the sun,

like...

Read and leave comments (2)

It felt like a long winter.

The outside is well,

with tiny hairs hooked to every breath,

growing crystalline, a spider’s cradle,

swabbed with angles, blue, precise,

and surrounding, growing sharper,

moving forward; the hurt is ice.

 

The date is helpless, unabsorbed,

and the pause is thoughtless,

the places gnawed, between the faces

and rewards, of one of the faces

being yours.

...

Read and leave comments (5)

Merlot

 

To consume is necessary;

to tilt my head, smack through the water,

gilding my sin,

 

look, gnaw, and press,

fingernails gritted a shifted grey.

The night clawed,

 

hissing laughters, a spittle with fears,

gurgled, and shackled,

hasty, and good.

 

Good for a second, the part played,

in the sip - the hiccup

separating us;

 

b...

Read and leave comments (1)

Booklover

 

I have tasted it, second hand;

felt it rest, brushing my forehead -

outside the reach of my fingers.

 

A curtain moves; some warm whisper -

an eyelash,

paper -  the moving air -

and turns and sighs, a full smile of sleep in me.

 

Falling on the floor, a bursting heart

dreams; a font, a solid way of saying,

“this is the life that I wou...

Read and leave comments (7)

Cerebratorium

We all have rooms;

great whale bellies that echo, calcium deficient,

with Spectres clutching heads,

waltzing in nausea.

 

In these rooms, we are a spectacle;

too solid and growing, but bent

from lack of sun -

we watch our feet all day,

walking at eye level

and cuss.

 

Sometimes in these rooms,

 we are the marrow;

cement oozing fr...

Read and leave comments (10)

The Grandfather Clock

 

Of what mechanisms, are we?

I reach in and grab your tonsil.

 

From a mime, I learnt such conversations

of a back and forth, and a back and forth –

a batted ball, a wall, of a mouth and a hand –

 make clockwork,

a life’s work.

At your feet I sit, imagining your knots

are tangerines, dropping fizzing

pills straight into my stomach,

where they gr...

Read and leave comments (1)

Remember Me

                                                (Only Connect)

 

Remember Me – 1

 

Take your curls,

your sweet birds, the way you look in him;

nights threaded with ginger ale,

chilli wits,

blue-eyes spinning.

The laughter catches my kitchen’s latch,

and clumsy your ribbons are

in my grey stained hands.

To steady, I will take

what youth spar...

Read and leave comments (6)

Reading (Sestina)

Ian Hayles started a discussion about the Sestina form. Thought I would give it a go...was a little bit of a headache because I just picked the six words at random - book, fooling, apple, mouth, chair and tower - before I had my idea but see what you think folks...

 

 

Reading

 

From the echo, declared the book:

“My fruits are never fooling,

dangling words, a tease o...

Read and leave comments (8)

Neptune's Daughter

Her hand draped; met with mist

and calmly laid. Blue and milk

and midnight kissed, cooing porcelain

 

down to the sweet drip,  where rose petals

drowned, and rose again, like Annabel’s hair

pinched in the air, and the trawler nets from the sea.

 

The curtain snitched, a maid, threadbare, gave to the wind,

and the moon stared. He drew her fair,

watched th...

Read and leave comments (12)

Untitled Bubble

 

The sun streams my lifted arm,

dressing me with winter petals.

 

All here - commence,

safe minutes mine,

like a morning hare,

with pinching grins, kicking. I feel you in my chest -

suspended, unravelled,

unreal, unspoilt.

 

Everyday, you are,

 

and just enough. Enough, enough for me,

 

that you exist here when I am alone.

 

...

Read and leave comments (5)

I cannot write.

It stems from a time I imagine to be November coloured;

a damp grey, a playground painted like a paramedic’s jacket,

a green surreal field amongst concrete, a black tree

with one plastic bag leaf.

 

I stood with the cold that wouldn’t stay still, that would follow me,

come between me and a bar of soap,

stare at me through the eyes of a doll;

the cotton of her d...

Read and leave comments (5)

Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously

It really does not abide well,

this lack of light, this insight,

festered by what you might do.

Talking in my dreams, I see you;

a kissing gate, we both pass through,

you outside me, me chasing you,

through us, life of her, I could not out do.

I do not know her yet, do you?

Oh you! Oh you! Oh! ...you.

I’ll love my hate until then tight,

but night - you ...

Read and leave comments (14)

Generation T(shirt)

How do I compete with you?

My head down; hair lacing a frosted door,

stumbling around a supermarket, pissed.

Bloodshot, angry, giggling all the same.

 

I need to feel again; sharp cinders in my lungs,

exasperate, fall back on the plastic floor,

pucker my lips to you in the florescence.

I need to explain.

 

But I digress; take my pasty limbs and words

...

Read and leave comments (7)

Hikikomori

 

He is the outside of glass, off the spindle of a most athletic wind,

almost transparent, and I put my hand up to him.

Our veins together; the light takes there to here,

the red, amber, fading green,

and I see

that if I had ways to make words do,

they would not do to out do

Ten aims of this tool, rather

agitate,

and my heart would stand slammed,

like...

Read and leave comments (2)

On Reading War

It could almost be read.

 

“We are spent, criticized past martyrdom,

walking mirages, forming what the wind calls winter;

tall spindly angers, coughing, arthritic animations,

struck dumb by bullets – past us, through us, ruby bridges

underfoot.”

 

A jitter can paint a chest, fixed transvestite splash back –

A man loves a man dead, trapped in print, hanging

...

Read and leave comments (2)

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Find out more Hide this message