STUDIO PHOTOSET

I am in the kitchen.
I am nine.
The kitchen, littered with coffee filters,
stark tiles, strip lights, grated cheese
Gordon's paper bags and floppy disks.

The office kitchen
Where I have summarised,
Where I have been taught to hate you,
You and your sticky salt water fish eyes.
Where I measure myself against the big, black void of the plastic bin,
Where I wait for Terri to stop delivering,
To come back and show me pictures of plastic surgery
cat brides.
Jocelyn.

The nail in her tyre,
The dog in the street, rescued.
Pig legs, flapjack.
You have to go to Impress.
But I close down and play on with the attack of the womb.

Janet -
I hear,
Is, infertile. Oh,

Perhaps this is why they surround themselves
with hundreds of fish and eggs,
their scaly water babies,
Gills drinking bucks fizz.

He is, Leo.

The green grass on the wall will not last for long.
With time the vegetation will peel off. Brown, but yellow too.
It will reseed upon the pillow, a fresh lock of hair growing whilst you sleep.
Cutting and shaving of the hair forces strong and thick regrowth.

Is this how you feel for me?

The Ringmaster tries to tame the lion upon the grass, which, is now dead underfoot.
The lion will never be tamed, he is
Leo.

Maria does not care for letters,
She burns them with her one million and one candles.
Neither does he care for these words, his letters addressed to him written on the back of her producer's face.

Produce this:
A love that is everlasting, but never beginning.
I challenge you to lay on the grass, and read the stars and their signs to become the all knowing. I have told you much about myself,
the darkness (now),
her and her shaking hands,
the beached whale.

Be quiet, sticky fish with your slimy pupils.
Reseed your own love, Ringmaster.
Breathe on those candles, for hours, and forget.
Don't make the wish, even though your day of birth beckons.
I beg of you.

The snow and I

It has snowed again.

I have now walked upon the new snow.

It was white, and bright and light
and from what I can remember was drumming against the window, lightly,
but warmed me and replaced my ego.

Please keep snowing.
If the snow stops i shall become spiritless and then
the next time it snows,
I'll be unknowing.

Since meeting the snow,
that cold night
buttered with ice
the sprinkles of grit,

I await its reply to me.

It will, stop.
it will stop snowing soon.
Low battery.

The Wishing Well

the wishing well is empty.
well, the well is not quite empty,
there are several dry leaves dancing in the bottom.

I have tried to climb the bricks many a time,
and quite often I have come halfway,
I have been at the top with the bright light,
eyes alight and mind on fire,
but always, always,
I find myself back in the dark.

Well, the well is not always empty,
it can be the skeletons of blackbirds,
their corpses rotted away.

The feathers take the longest to rot
you see a feather is almost like bone
and bones never rot. Unfortunately.

I always think about the bones,
I forget they're there and then I remember and then
well,
and then I'm at the bottom of the well again.

I think that one day, i'll have to go and see them
so that they can throw the rope down to the bottom of the wishing well and i'll be able to climb out and just have to think and be more careful of them in the future.

Black dust and Black air.

She stands there breathing her beauty
he inhales, softly, cancerous.

six foot
her face is covered in blue
gold
red
green
orange pink
silver
white purple

black

glitter.

In the black stone arched emporium,
black dust and black air,
the glitter mirrors on his face.
Her gown flutters and billows, waving like the water.

He kisses her lip, gently.
The glitter begins to blur, smudge,
It blurs and smudges, the horror ensues.

He kisses her cheek, her eyelid, the side of her neck,
but it all blurs.
Her face is now a blur, apart from her shocked eyes, staring, still.

A single tear rolls down his face as he backs away,
the black is coming now,
the black is suffocating
the black is, impalpable.

He tears the glitter off his skin in reams
whilst he stands naked in the canal covered by more stone.
Goosebumps line his thighs.
There are two old women, one shrouded in blackness, knitting, holding a ball of black wool with her feet in the water,
it soaks through and feels like a wet head of dead hair.
The other woman also dressed in black gently peels his sunburnt glitter skin.

The darkness yet again sets in,
the black out.

"He doesn't say much any more." She says, lighting another cigarette.
"He's dropped. His laughter is a wimper and his smile is no longer part of the moon but rigged with dental floss." He says, clearing the way for his just dessert.

Thank you for the present.
I come outside,
called by you.

You're so proud of the present.
A huge, rusted engine of a boat.
"Quickly, quickly," you say,
"Before you miss it all"

The 'sea foam' begins to disappear,
the starfish drop off and curl like burning dry leaves,
screeching, screaming in excruciation
before the ash flies upwards.

The puddles rings shake inwards.
In the puddle are potted plants in plastic bags,
waiting to go home with me.

"How am I going to take this home?" I say with a slight, hesitant laugh.
Secretly I don't want to take it home.
I have to.

I sit on the train with this engine,
taking up half a carriage like a white elephant.
People don't notice it.

"What a nice engine," says an old woman with wise eyes and a red, leather suitcase.
"Thank you," I reply.

I wish she would take it.