-No Surprises-
The breath of the morning I keep forgetting
The smell of the warm summer air
Alone on an airplane falling asleep beside the windowpane
My blood will thicken

I need to wash myself again to hide all the dirt and pain
But I can't help feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run and it wears me out

Floor collapses bouncing back and one day I am going to grow wings
This is my final fit my final bellyache
Such a pretty home and such a pretty garden
No alarms and no surprises please

Breathe keep breathing don't lose your nerve
Breathe keep breathing I can't do this alone


-untitled-
In a fragile state violence left me weak
Emotionally I'm wrapped in shame
I don't know what I'm scared of
Or what I even enjoy
I eat and I dress and I wash and I still can say thank you

Purgatory's circle, drowning here
Somehow I always say yes
Power produces desire, the weak have none
The only certain thing
There's no part of me that hasn't been used

Don't hurt, just obey
Lie down, do as you say
May as well be heaven this hell, smells the same
I never felt more alone
So easy to dehumanize, chained at the neck

I dreamt about you last night
I fell out of bed twice
Shove me on the patio
I need advice
Because no-one else ever looked at me twice


-North London 1993-
A mile and a half on a bus takes a long time
The odor of all prison food takes a long time
To pass you by when you've been inside

Day upon day of this wandering gets you down
Nobody gives you a chance
Or a dollar in this old town

Hovering silence from you is a giveaway
Squalor and smoke's your my style
I don't like this place..

Then I compare notes with your older sister
I am a lazy gett, she is as pure as the cold driven snow
She accepts my confession

What did I learn from your time in the solitary cell of my mind?
There was noise, distractions from anything good
And the old prison food

Colour my life with the chaos of trouble
Anything's better than posh isolation, I missed the bus
And laid on my back with the boy from the Arab Strap

It's something to speak of the way we were feeling
The crowds there assembled
Do you ever feel you have gone too far?

Everyone suffers in silence a burden
The man who drives minicabs down in Old Compton
The Asian man with his love-hate affair with his racist clientele

A central location for you is a must
You stagger about making free
With your lewd and lascivious boasts

We all know you're soft cos we've all seen you dancing
We all know you're hard cos we've all seen you drinking
From noon until noon again

Strapped to the table with suits from the shelter shop
Comic celebrity takes a back seat as
The cigarette catches and sets off the smoke alarm

What did you make in the cool set of London?
You're constantly updating your hit parade of your ten biggest wanks
She's a waitress and she's got style, Sunday bath time could take a while


-In the Air-
You wanted a challenge that's calling you higher
I landed on my feet by crawling
I remember standing alone trying to forget you
Idling

I hate to admit that that's my reference point
But there it is, you say you want me
I'm what you found I'm upside down
You're in the air and I am breathing

Brighten the stars the weather is lifting
The heavens love a love like this
It's pulling us higher twist it and turn this around
It lights from within

Now brings a smile I'm lost again
You're in the air
I want the stars to know they've won
If only to beguile the sky

It's opened up again
In heavens reconciled
You say you want me naked
You want me wild

I want the stars to know they win
Give me your smile just give it me
Just turn it on I'm lost again
You're everywhere and I am breathing you


-Removables-
Conscience binds fast in chains
Trial by stone hammer and nails
No-one made the holes but me
Misery mourns to be devoured

Killed-god blood-soiled
Unclean again
Killed-god blood-soiled skin
Dead again

Never grown, preserved gently
A bronzed moth dies easily
Unknown to others, weak to me
Broken hands never ending

Endless rut of my own perception
Numbly waiting for voices to tell me

All removables, all transitory
All removables, passing always


-A Summer Wasting-
I spent the summer wasting
The time was passed so easily
But if the summer's wasted
How come I could feel so free?

I spent the summer wasting
The sky was blue beyond compare
A photograph of myself
Is all I have to show

Seven weeks of river walkways
Seven weeks of staying up all night

I spent the summer wasting
The time was passed so pleasantly
The lake was crystal
I just read books and faces

Under a canopy of seven weeks
Of reading papers
Seven weeks of feeling guilty
Seven weeks of staying up all night


-4st. 7lbs-
So goregous sunk to six-stone
Cheeks sunken and despaired
Lose my only remaining home

See my third rib appear a week later all my flesh disappears
Stretching taut, cling-film on bone
I'm getting better

Karen says I've reached my target weight
Kate and Emma and Christie know it's fake
Problem is diet's not a big enough word

I want to be so skinny that I rot from view
I want to walk in the snow and not leave a footprint
And not soil its purity

Stomach collapsed at five
Lift up my skirt my sex is gone
Naked and lovely at five-stone-two may I bud and never flower

My vision's getting blurred
But I can see my ribs and I feel fine
My hands are trembling stalks and I can feel my chest is sinking

Mother tries to choke me with roast beef
And sits savoring her sole ryvitta
'That's the way you're built' my father says

But I can change, my cocoon shedding
I want to walk in the snow and not leave a footprint
And not soil its purity

Kate and Kristen and Kit Kat, all things I like looking at
Too weak to fuss to weak to die
Choice is skeletal in everybody's life

I choose my choice, I starve to frenzy
Hunger soon passes
And sickness soon tires

Legs bent, stuck in
I am Twiggy
And I don't mind the horror that surrounds me

Self-worth scattered, self-esteem's a bore
I've long since moved to a higher plateau
This discipline's so rare so please applaud

Four-stone-seven, an epilogue of youth
Such beautiful dignity in self-abuse
I've finally come to understand life through staring blankly at my navel


-Mountain Walls-
The voice of the hills
Whispers on the wind
The barren trees
Howl for their loss of leaves

The gurgling river rolls happily
Always moving forward
Rain splashes downward
Falling on dead leaves

-Seaside-
The pier juts out from a darkened shore
A storm is coming, I can feel it hiding in the night
Waves breaking on the sand and dead wood

A clarion bell of warning

No signs of human life, the beach is silent
As snowy clouds roll down the blushing sky
Trailing footprints shatter the silence of the sand

Depths beneath freezing and night
Stirring beneath, jewel-colored fish
Rotting corpses of vessels long laid to rest

-Southwest-
Rolling hills of desert sand
A never ending shore
Tiny clouds dot a spotless sky
Where nothing ever reaches

Desolate land, not a soul lives
Peaceful, not a word spoken
Those that exist do so in silence
A sleeping spell yet to be broken

-Wind-
It howls a rage centuries old
Taking revenge on an innocent world
Punishes for atrocities of ancient days

Constant as time itself,
Both ancient and newborn
Revels in destruction like a hellish angel


-Johnny-Come-Lately-
I'm sorry you couldn't make it
You could have seen him, so weathered and dated
He was a Johnny come lately

And I know you would've hated
If you'd seen his botanical marvels
First prize exhibits, and all down to good spirits

And I know that you would hate me
If I envied the things that he spoke of
If I envied the things that he thought of

If I told you that I made some time
To stay behind to find out
How to make a garden grow where the sun no longer shines

If I asked too many questions
But he never gave away the secret to his god-forsaken soil
He didn't need us, just tempted and teased us

He showed me that the seeds to sow were sound
But I must have cast them all on stony ground
You could have been here, wishing you weren't here


-Roses in the Hospital-
I want to cling to something soft
Progressing like a constant war
Like a leaf in the autumn breeze
Stub cigarettes out on my arm, I want to feel something of value

All of my sins are attempts to fill the void
Words that once stroked, now bruising tired lips
This is the howl, this, the sigh of the lonely
One day I realize oil on canvas
Can never paint a petal so delicate

Morning always seems too late to justify
Lament blossoms, hours, minutes of lives
Fragments crawling like cobwebs on stone
Blow away the safety only a sleeping pill knows
At least a beaten dog knows how to lie

I try to walk in a straight line
An imitation of dignity
Down pale corridors of routine
Where life falls un-atoned, the weak kick like straw
Words are never enough, flowers cannot express the loss

Nailed down, my silence, I retreat into self-pity
It's so easy when they patronize my misery
My idea of love comes
From a childhood glimpse of pornography
I just opened my eyes


-Winter/Summer-
Indigo swallows blue
Yellow lures oncoming night

She rises white on black
Like a half-open eye, she watches
Disinterested, quiet and cold

Crimson and rose writhe in the sky
Crowds black, it shies away

He charges, whirling yellow
Blazing across his path, he dances
Eager, loud, self absorbed

Two lovers pursuing each other
One loves too much, the other, too little.


-Faster-
Life is for the cold made warm and they are just lizards
I am the virgin, the tattered and the torn
Self-disgust is self-obsession and I do as I please
I am stronger than Mensa, Miller, and Mailer, I spat out Plath and Pinter

The first time you see yourself naked you cry
Soft skin, no acne, foul breath, so broken
He loves me truely, this mute solitude I'm draining
I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing

Shadows aren't clean, false mirrors, too many people awake
I've been to honest with myself
I should have lied like everybody else
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything


-At My Most Beautiful-
If I let you in, underneath my skin
I can close my eyes and really sleep
Ten good reasons to stay alive
Ten good reasons that I can't find

Give me a reason to be beautiful
So sick in body, so sick in my soul
A reason to look good for you tonight
And everything I am

I've loved the freedom of being inside
Miles and miles of perfect skin
I swear I do, I fit right in
?There's no place in this world for a girl like me?

Baby take it all the way down
Taste me anyway
You were born so pretty, summer babe
And fading like a rose

For one night I was innocent again
I'll give you my body just promise your soul
My love burns through everything
I weep at your feet and it rains


-This is Yesterday-
No thoughts to forget when we were children
A vine that can strangle life from a tree
Houses as ruins, gardens as weeds

The only way to gain approval
Is exploiting the very thing that cheapens me
I want to die in the summertime

I can't seem to stay a fixed ideal
I have crawled so far sideways
I recognize dim traces of creation

Recognized truth aecidia?s blackest hole
I am of walking abortion, a tiny animal drawn into a quarter-circle
I hurt myself to get the pain out

I stare at the sky and it leaves me blind
I close my eyes and this is yesterday
Do not listen to a word I say, listen to what I can't keep silent


-Mausoleum-
Humanity recovers glittering etiquette
Answers her crimes with mausoleum rent
Regained your self control
Never knowing what you hoped for

And safe and warm but life is so silent
For victims who have no speech
In their shapeless, guilty remorse
They obliterate your meaning

Come and walk down memory lane
Life eternal scorched the grass and the trees
For your love nature has hemorrhaged
You lance youth's lamb like a winter

-a poem which rhymes in six parts-
I.
It's the night before christmas upstairs in my bed
not a creature is sleeping solemn winks in my head

My dog sits awake with her eyes of black dead
as if all my years will end in vague dread

Angels and demons are tossing their dice
on the stone slabs of imminent sacrifice

Families of secrets pull back all the years,
photoalbums creeping and crawling with fears

Never dry alcohol, monsters, my past
threaten tonight that it could be its last

II.
Woeful, depressed, sorrowful spell
tomorrow my heaven, yesterday hell

I don't know what I'm getting into so soon
I feel like a caveman staring at the moon

All I can think of, quite honestly, is sex
who will be my first and will he be my next

We must watch out for the curse of the beast
my boxer preparing my childhood deceased

To enter the next life, leave the sad me alone
and find out the streets are as sick as my home.

III.
The wood is pine, the red is wine
and childhood has been so sweet
winter beats on stained glass stories
Marc Chagall in mental glories

I finger painting growing up scenes
and now it seems my better dreams
Will come again soon, squeeze
one more love from my palm

It's clean of disease, let it stay that way
embalm this depressing psalm
Dramatically tiring I must say
Tomorrow I actually meet other guys my age...

IV.
This Holy Night the frankincense burns
My new friend's breath of life yearns
for him in me, the old me dying--Careful
warns the angel, he's also still crying

I can't hear any voices, silence and choices
This is what I sound like, this is me
For the moment I can't hear anyone else to be

V.
My head was a chapel where pine needles dried
and the oldest men in the choir never died

They still sing unto them a savior is born
that was long ago and I don't believe in old men anymore.

I think I'm older, warmer, and colder
I breathe winter air in June

When the snow falls too soon
and leaves fall to ashes

VI.
I'm talking to myself about what I really want with John
It's his straw-haired beautiful blue-eyed face

I want his armpits and lips, my hole and his hips
as badly as I lust while my right hand grips

And loves for the fifth time tonight
my image, my hope, my beacon of light

I'll toss him off some Turkish delight
I hope he'll love me so much he'll even like me.

And if not him, maybe one of his brothers
will stick me like the thorn of a rose

I do not remember ever being this excited about the next day

-weather-
The wet spot on cotton teal soaked by a cry
mistook for a raincloud.
The beating sun sweat the humid atmosphere,
my eyes' haze. Air conditioning cooled
my inebriation, his legs straddling the pony.
"Of course you like this." Of course I do.

A rainbow tiedye, green and dark blue flannel
shorts, a pump bottle of cocoa cream
on the floor beside a sheet kicked off the bed.
Brown shag earth and a pond of blue underwear.
Late June already, my boy wonder still lurks
out of reach. I'd almost felt his alligator
hands and large knucklebones play me
like a soft piano, delicate in his dream.

-crow street-
Beautiful black road of global warming tar
stretched house behind lawn
next to lawn and more house
and a kid on a bike wiped head over bars,
scuffing rubbery asphalt burns
on his red hot palms, crying and shrieking.
Only crows heard, black as his hands' stains,
calling for Mother or Father or Dog,
or Sitter, the kid hollering, too,
louder when nobody hears.
Crows shut their beaks and listen to his cry
echo theirs.
Birds cackle again over mulberries
when the bike's pedals, crank, chain, and
sprockets
spin around the earth in its orbit,
child riding wiser down the baking new street.

-black garden-
Swing, swing
Those skies must drive you wild
The earth around you, the silence around you
Remember the feeling of a frozen embryo

Nature will take care of itself
Know what you mean - but not what you do
I used to throw stones, but now I have none


Waiting to be bred in the black garden
Waiting to be muted and then chosen
It's full of life but it's still too frightening

And this little masochist is ready to confess
Sometimes I breathe you in
All the dolls I had took my leather off the shelf

-father-
Go now out of the nest
It's time go now boy
Sandy sandy feet - ice cream to sleep
Here now be a man, don't cry

You raised your hand for the assignment
Tuck those tears under your helmet
Be a good soldier
First my left foot then my right behind

Daddy the car is here, somebody leave the light on
Green limousine for the little dancing boy
And when I dance for him, somebody leave the light on
Just in just in case I like the dancing

I can remember where I come from
I walked into your dream and now I've forgotten
How to dream my own dream
Close enough to fill those holes

The car is here, somebody leave the light on
Black chariot for the little dancing boy
He's going to change my name
Maybe you'll leave the light on just in case

I like the dancing so I can remember where I come from
I escape into your escape into our very favorite hiding place
It's across the sky and across my heart
And I crossed my legs
And don't you even try oh my god...
First my left foot then my right

Behind the other breadcrumbs lost under the snow
This tenderness slipping through my fingers

-precious things-
So I ran faster but it caught me here
My loyalties turned like my ankle
In the eleventh grade running after happiness
Running after the rain

These precious things
Let them bleed
Let them wash me away
Let them break their hold over me

He said "you're really an ugly thing And I died but I thanked them
So I sat so numb so crushed and so dirty

Holding onto his picture
Dressing up every day
For the first time I want to smash the faces
Of those beautiful boys
Those Christian boys

So you can make me come
That doesn't make you Jesus
No one dared or cared to pull me up

-Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky-
You have your very own number
They dress your cage in its nature
Once you roared now you just grunt lame
Pace around pathetic pound games

Wanna get out won't miss you sensaround
To carry your own dead to swing your tyre tricks
Wanna get out here you're bred dead quick
For the outside
The small black flowers that grow in the sky

They drag sticks along your walls
Harvest your ovaries dead mothers crawl
Here comes warden, Christ, temple, elder
Environment not yours you see through it all

Wanna get out won't miss you sensaround
To carry your own dead to swing your tyre tricks
Wanna get out here you're bred dead quick
For the outside
The small black flowers that grow in the sky

Here chewing your tail is joy