Poems poems poems

OTT

I plunged an empty Evian into a swimming pool

Inflated a balloon inside the eye of a needle

Performed Cats inside a cubicle

For all 4000 people

I tipped a full skip into my handbag

I welded an envelope shut like metal

I painted the Sistine chapel on my eyelid

Wanted to feel something

so I groped a nettle

I stuffed a monsterra into a pair of gloves

The attic was dark so I grabbed the sun from the sky

I peckishly drilled into a walnut with an auger

Bought a concord for a bee that couldn’t fly

I folded a dissertation inside a fortune cookie

I hallowed a hot crossed bun

Took a chainsaw to my chin hair

When she took her first steps,

Signed her up for a marathon

You asked how I was so I sent you a doctors report

And I expected you to care

I built whole universes inside my head

Just because of what wasn’t there

I melt myself over social media

Like some slutty cheese fondu

I haul my feelings across state lines

Just to show them to you

I’ll practice the art of modesty

I’ll donate my waffling to JustGiving

I’ll put my sentiment on ozempic

And find a smaller way of living.

Intrusions

8:56

Wrangle eyelids open

You’ve got about 25 seconds

So take liberty’s token

Quick doze

before they swarm

The storm

Quick! Slip into life

Don’t let it inside

Its just a chat, its easy

Focus on the conversation

Keep your hands busy

Did your chest quiver? What’s that feeling?

What does that mean?

Means something

Something

Observe her, still nothing?

Check your heart rate

Is it faster?

Record that, data is smarter

STOP

Bolt upright in the middle of the night

Hobs on?

Doors creaking

panic drowns your foresight

U ok?

Just the loo!

Next time message to say it’s you!!!!

Not a stranger in a puddle of blood

I’m unloved

And they hate me

Send a text that might save me

How honest

Too honest? Isn’t honest best?

That’ll give your mind a moments rest

Confess

Confess to things you didn’t even do

Things you merely assumed

What’s the difference

Is anything true

Be ready for what they’re thinking

Make sure they’re clear

Rephrase; sounds more sincere

Google the symptoms

Find what you need

A medical journal from 2005, article 53

Jot that down, thats the prize

Something to neutralise

That’ll work

You’re not evil

Must stop the free fall

Pick up

Put down

Pick up

Put down

Pick up

Put down

Breathe

Tomorrow just get up

Before the mental spree

Goals and dopamine

Be funny!

Say something smart

Seem normal and part

Of the twentysomething ride

Too carefree to die

Or, then again, just stay inside

Hide

Its their choice to stay

But you’ll apologise anyway

Because hate isn’t grey

Passion is what you understand

Ambivalence is contraband

Smack your scalp

Unclog the thoughts

Let them tip to your feet

Look up, hand on heart

Just for a moments peace.

Antiphony

Forced to trust

Assured needs must

Self aware of too much fuss

Though brooding and less astute

I still give it all to every brute

I spill at work

Catch myself indulging

Sodden with sentiment unfolding

yank a sleeve over the pulsing tumor

A wristwatch heart, all consumer

I turn to council from a boomer

I’ll devour truths

About another world

When people were thicker skinned, your date-night girl

When the reticence was delicious

Be auspicious!

Probing and bootylicious

Strap on your heels

You never know

Try not to fear what men don’t show

Shoulders bowed and brow furrowed

Trust what your legacy endows

Furious at disparity

Surely we see

the sexes constant incompatibility?

Candyfloss women

Smiles balancing on the breeze

The pitter patter of adorations feet

So I curl my toes

Cry at those

My baby-grip is forced to let go

Desperate for it not to mean nothing

Perhaps inevitable when you’re twentysomething

I’ll summon Minerva’s aegis

Protect my puttied centre

Not to cold shoulder, pleading warmth,

Perhaps he hardly remembers

Trust it meant something

I’ll retreat to my den

Dreading

To do it all again.

9/10/25

Porky little pudding

How happily you lie

I’ll wrap you up in latex

To keep you warm inside

Prod it with my finger

OUCH! Stodgier than I thought

Humbling and bumbling Like a little bee

Cotton pants as your fort.

Or maybe a child

Desperate to prove his might

Who holds his breath in protest

Bursting at the seams

Oops! Missed your cue

A sticky little mess x

                                         -silly little semen

Poor Jackson Pollock

I had lunch with da Vinci

He was incredibly disparaging

Just as you might imagine

He sent the soup back twice

And complained the lighting was “crude”

He chewed my ear off

About how revered artists know of moderation

There are parameters

In which we get to dash pink, or gold or green

We get to spread ourselves over our homes

Our pets

Our crockery

But the pavement must remain grey

The buses red

And only ambulances are allowed to shriek across the city

Yes you may think outside the box, as it were

And children may colour outside the lines

Sometimes it makes them prodigal

“But Pollock is hardly an artist”

He scoffed

Not self respecting adults

No no no no no,

You must apologize for the spill

For the recklessness

Adding too much water

Soaking a part of the canvas that was never really yours

He asked me

Who the hell I thought I was

To take yours from you

As if it were mine

As if the world were my chaise long

That I’ve strewn my billowing self over

Like some drunk Oscar Wilde type

Or a half-unpegged marquee in the wind

I made a resolution

To build a dam around my innards

I’ll treat my heart to a new corset

And wrap my brush-wielding hand in a cast

Da vinci nearly smiles

I imagine him telling Mona to do less and it all makes sense

He returns to his lamb chop

And I try to stuff my hands back into my tiny leather gloves

After I swallow down the feeling

And delete all my drafted texts

Gaia

Im in awe of her

How she stands

Spitting down on the scalps of balding monarchs

Secretes her juices over the vicinity

Coming all over whomever and whatever she likes

We could never tell her to plug herself up

Never tell her to shut her gob

As she cracks her ravenous smile across the whole of Nevada

Manila

La Paz

Swallowing palaces

Belching up Hyundai carcasses

They journeyed to the centre of her

Well, they tried

Boys to buoys

As their bodies rolled to cloudspot the ceiling of her stomach

Wontons in her turmeric and temerity soup

If she knew what I was up to there would be hell to pay

A wanna-beast looking her thunderclouds in the eye and roaring back

The audacious little slut letting Hephaestus in through an open window

Then gathering her rainwater

to cool the blisters his hotrod grip leaves across my chest and neck

I want to be cut open.

Spread my skin apart and lay my innards on the Norwegian glaciers

I want Inuits to build their igloos around my heart and huddle at it for warmth

I want to join the dumbstruck crowd staring up at her

bystanders full of duckling feelings that they know to hold close

Comforted by our insipid hearts

And what I know I can never be.

Angry Woman Poem

Somewhere miles away

A woman wishes a charger-head dead

She clutches her perforated foot

As it looks up at her, its three hard-ons to the sky

And smirks

her man stands in the doorway

Two choices

To scoop up her pleonastic slurs and cradle the rage away

The disoriented fury meant for all the men who’s ears picked themselves up

And scuttled down a torso to hide in their boxer shorts

Safely between a rock and a hard place

Or, he could surrender himself to helplessness

Twist the stitch in his lip and add a tally to the chart

Watch while she limps and rips the kitchen apart for an empty jar

Somewhere to put the feeling

Before it falls out, straight to the floor

The home birth gone wrong

Unsterilized, bare to insignificance

She opens the fridge stacked sky high with little lidded glows

The one for the postman who told her to cover up

The one for the stone faced date too insecure to admit she was funnier than him

The ones for his paralyzed tongue

The woman tenses her grip and sighs

She walks back into the hall

She take the charger by its throat and cuts the cord with a pair of scissors

Then she strings its lifeless tail up on a coat hook. An example to the others

Its all she knows to do

He watches her, lets his lip twitch itself still

Then goes into the bedroom

and dreams of a beakless finch.

Bloom

Im tasked with a choice now

Im at the crossroads

May I sever the septum

Of two galaxies I drift between

one that lives

that throbs and bursts

at the precipice of another big bang

and the one that shrugs

tempted by indifference

this is it

The choice

welcome the winter's frostbite

undo the sanctity of who we were

And instead succumb to months of empty embraces

stale breadcrumbs leading to wear and tear kisses

because I forgot

the seeds sewn between hands squeezed in desperation

Staring at the beast ahead

the richness of your brown curls blowing in its hot breath

your elfin smirks corralling a world of possibility

and my joy-squinted eyes waiting for it to spill

I suppose I hadn’t realised how far we’d wandered.

And so here I am

Furious at my 'fine-ness'

Wise enough to restore color to our story

Ready to look foolish

I will put myself on the line

push my memories out to orbit like bait

Though you may not deserve it

I will choose the gifts.

I will never choose pallor

so if you have anything left

find your way to them

soften your hands and let them land gently in your palm

let them nuzzle their cheek amongst the lines and the grooves

indent themselves with your print one last time

before nudging them onward

with a packed lunch and a clean towel

fresh and rested for another round

chasing the satellite of the lost lovers lap.

my last promise to myself,

that when my legs are tired

and my heart has folded itself up

I will always choose to remember.

Oak tree  

Im rather sick 

Of being a looking glass

Into the world of the mad-hatter

Of being an out-of-pocket rocket 

An acid-tongued bush tucker trial 

Really I’d rather be someone’s TV dinner

Someones fall asleep under a blanket on the sofa 

Someone’s ‘emergency contact here’

Someone’s lame little coaster 

I want my nest

To be heralded among the birds

As the sturdiest in all the trees 

The one that withstood storm Elijah 

Or whatever name it may be

I want to cut open my chest

And stuff it with cotton wool 

Hang scented candles from my shoulders

Potpourri under my armpits 

Neck stocked in a silver shackle

scrawled with Home Is Where The Heart Is 

I want the men who doubted the depth of my roots 

Thought I’d be easily plucked 

By a changing breeze 

Who sweetly built me pergolas 

Because they mistook wanting for need 

To nod in humility 

When they see my airborne little feet 

Spring daintily off rooftops 

To kiss the moon 

Tasting stardust in the raindrops 

I’ll admit  

A Ballyhoo bird by day 

Among the Nickle Nackle tree

Squarking and squeaking at the splinters

Learning to reason with intimacy 

But by night a groundling hostess 

Of a sturdy oak evergreen 

The Mainframe

The Mothership 

Offered by wanton 

Never dependent

And never by need. 

27/03/2025

This one’s for the girlies

Deploying parachutes inside toilet cubicles

Sticking rhinestones over their face pimples

My harem of brimming beauties with flatulent tongues

This ones for the little leapers stymied by the ceilidh

Rehearsing anecdotes to the hay bale

For when I phone you to quell the deficit

The bottomless empty well

That emerged in the 300 seconds between then and now

Go on

tell me I’m cheeky or plain fucking rude

While I spin soliloquies from your sleep-talk murmurs

constellations out of those 3 little disappearing dots

Just to make the night sky brighter for you

While I stick around just in case I must throw out the mat

to catch your wavering will to go on

while I stroke your hair

And wrap everything I know about life

Around your gently juddering chest laid bare

I admire a fellow crafter

how you could mould my swollen rebuttals into noble truths

Hollow cries that landed in weavers hands

gifted more melody than they ever asked for

yet impostered by the chorus.

Pity their eyes darting sideways

and their reddening face at bum notes

squarks among harmonies of gods

perhaps they felt better held by the inane

mock me, next time

sew my mouth shut and swaddle me still

or drop me off at the nearest precipice and drive away

let me bark at the clouds til the feeling is gone

just bring me a blanket

and drop me home when i'm done.

Bilingual 

We birthed a new language 

With our foreign tongues 

One fast twitch like a lizard’s

Lurching to snatch dangling words of passion

The other’s gently rolled out 

Like a runner rug passed down through generations

I had heirlooms too 

I discover with the woman behind the screen 

who teaches me all the shapes that healthy can be 

The language of the unbound 

Spoken by many like me

gold-standard

VAT’d 

Still valid currency 

You learnt my tongue better 

And I struggled with yours 

Sometimes it was whispered 

Written in invisible ink 

Beautifully considered

Infuriatingly paused 

I grapple with her advice

To redefine the norm 

To remember the joy of my people

Building cities among hot springs

Who’s roars only wish to say

Come!

join in our sport!

My love-gashed hands 

Who only hoped to embrace 

the boy who teetered shyly by the wavering gates 

And calmly picked us flowers from his plot 

Rang false alarms of scruple

Startled his peeping heart 

with false tales of buckshot

My pleonasmic tongue 

Couldn’t hold in a thought 

Or a mood 

Without telling you

Turned texts into calls 

Buds to gardens 

Lioness tears spun droplets

to waterfalls 

Excitedly dancing around seemingly willing ears

Tasting another tongue 

Too tied to pronounce words of tire 

And prologued, drunk off after-taste

here I sit garrulous 

when sodden and mournful 

I beg someone 

teach me the delicate language 

Of the thoughtful. 

I’m a bad feminist 

I’m a bad feminist

I think I’ve come to realise

I want a wedding for gods sake

I want to look angelic

And take pictures holding pansies

And smugly cut a tiered cake

I post selfies for nourishment

I flirtatiously drop my lids

And part my lips in seduction

I feel whole around boys

And three-quartered whenever

I can’t see one at a function

I’d put my friendship with him

Above questions that impatiently

Erode the inside of my chest

castrate my tongue at the things

I brood and ponder

Instead shackle and kraal my unrest

I flirt when I’m nervous

To win some approval

when jolted by a stony-faced brute

I disregard the words

Of wiser women than I

Who herald self-love as the only prized loot

I’m not saying I’m propped up

By beams shaped like men

Though their arms are the place I feel held

I just wish I was the victor

Who’d dare torch the sky

Whether he choose to flee or to dwell.

what i picture

Do I fancy hanging out with your ex

Hmm

As much as Id enjoy the fear-mongered telesales grins

Two sandy haired girlies

At the bookends of you

One drinking a hostile sauvignon 

The other a cool-girl Camden hells because she’s above it

She’d probably swear nonchalantly in spanish 

When she spills some beer on her vintage trousers 

Ay puta madre 

and id die

She’d say something about her art gallery

And id remember Im not allowed to take the piss 

So I’ll say I love Marlene Dumas 

As I usually do when talking to someone who knows art things

Because she’s just niche enough to be valid currency

Id reluctantly mention my acting

And she’d be really supportive 

So id say I’d love to come to an exhibition

And she’d say oh, great! 

But the whole time I’d be stressed 

About who’s more tanned 

Id keep looking down at our forearms to check and then

You’d turn and ask me if I’m alright

Which would obviously be awful 

And I’d go yeah??????

Like you’re stupid 

You’d probably laugh together in a way I cant join in with

And id ask you about it later

And you’d say its just because you haven’t seen each other 

In ages

And Id remember she isn’t funny 

But still feel too stressed to make a joke in front of her

In case I wasn’t either 

Id remember that you guys never did anal

And suddenly become really aware of my arsehole

And hers

And yours 

Then google butt plugs when I got home 

She’d invite me to her birthday 

And id feel too bad to not go 

And then I’d feel bad that she isn’t at mine 

And she’d feel too bad to not show up so she does with a bottle of wine 

And this would go on for years 

Until I ask her to be godmother to our kid 

All in the name of pretending to be the most decent of the two us

Eulogy

It’s the scent of petroleum

Benzene boys

with their diesel-dipped dicks

I watch it rise in their irises

Until the brain falls sedate

You almost want to say its not their fault

A thread weaves through her lid and snatches her side eye into a scalpel

A hook trails

And catches on the cuff of an unlucky spectator or two

Lets hope it is only flailing fabric that is taken

She likes outlines of men, after all

They’ll use her delicate pillow talk as a defence

Sweetheart, everyone seems gentle when they’re nestled up on their side

As the world lowers itself into silence

And she draws hypnotic circles on your cheek

and lays invertebrate kisses on the tip of your nose

kidnapping you into sleep

If you look closely

you can see embedded amongst her lashes all the tiny, once-lovers

Who’s asphyxiated bodies make up those livor mortis eyes

That some might call ‘ocean-like’

oh bless the dupes

Who’s souls scream as they are bleached colourless

And their extremities are pulled and squashed into daggers

Who’s ends curl towards her like flowers towards the sun

A moments tribute to the poor hostages

stuffed with tube-fed mirages of their own bicep muscles

That tumble for miles like sand dunes

And silverstream language that licks at the eardrum

And bandages all the lesions that the bad thing left

Shame

On those who see us as too childlike for turpitude

Who nervously shake their arm trying to laugh off her deepening chemical burn

as it erodes at that holy spot once claimed as Mecca by a lover before

My heart goes out to them

To the mothers

The cousins

The booze buddies

and the friends

Who are forced to mourn the living.

Huckster

Lost in lousy, hubristic karaoke

I didnt see him roll his eyes

As you belted your lovely little heart out

The bastard.

He waits in patronising silence

For us to be done

Busy in the place where normal people go

When at least for a couple of hours

All the world seems to be tipped in our favour.

I called her Neolithic

Still reasoning with a long-winter gone by

(Some people call it the 1980s)

Because men have smartphones now!

And hot yoga and headspace and bon iver!

So I’ll tell it to my daughter

As you told it to me

In hugs and cut-out articles and cups of tea,

Trust me, love, he is not your gospel.

An incredibly modern poem

Sunday

You came on my back

Told me not to move then wiped me down like I was a countertop

I had half a coffee

Your mum came in and told us her pronouns

And then I cried because you were really funny

One of the days after I finished uni I can’t remember which

4 hours watching Gilmore girls, Doritos dipped in Hinge stints

Wondering why small hoop earrings make boys twice as attractive

And whether not liking mayo means I am inherently classy, you know, like in my DNA

Who wouldn’t want to date this!

Is it because I find handjobs really tiring?

And I have an overly expressive face?

Which can be a tricky combo

I find it surprising that everyone at uni is

entitled to a double bed

But no one at uni is entitled

to affording food

It’s like they want us to fuck but not eat

I just attention-grabbingly cleared my throat

Before I pulled my pants down to wee

when im home alone

Buy Sell You’re fired

I love cumming

With my shiny little bullet

In under a minute

I feel like a go go go power woman

With no time to spare

Who feels the whole world shatter and dawn again

In a convenient, pocked-sized moment

Ready to be packaged up

and placed back in her briefcase

In the compartment marked

‘Timely orgasms’.

My oxytocin is flooding in a Lezziz Express

No lover will ever make me feel

As good as that drunk woman at 1am

Buying a “brown stuff” kebab

Because she couldn’t remember the word for beef

“You know the one, what’s the opposite of chicken?”

Before she turned to me and told me

I was a somebody

Before she yelled at the man

For buying fish

Because apparently it’s “harsh on the fishermen”

To have to ship it all the way from Iceland to London

“At an hour like this”

NO ONE HAS SHORT HAIR ANYMORE

YOURE GONNA BE HUGE GIRL

She bellowed at me through garlic mayo lipstick

And I believed her

I love you, lady

Lezzers express x

Mumma

To follow behind

Is to trip on a sweet pea

Or a dahlia

Or a rose

That scuttle on their roots

To chase her through the day

To sip her

is to wrinkle at the sharpness

Of a sweet cherry jam

That finds its way to

Where the childhood is stored

To pamper her

Is to be terrified

At the fear of adding to the list

Of haircuts previously banned

Shirley Carter

Ruth Langsford

Patricia Hodge

Lulu Cairns

Boris Johnson

Prue Leith

Emma Thompson

Noel Edmonds

to name a few

But to cuddle her

is to bathe

in a glow of turmeric

Where rows of marigolds sway

Let her walk the Earth

Touch the trees as she goes

And wherever she treads

flowers will grow 💐🌺

Vogued

Well done for the glow up sir

If I squeeze myself into your new hoop earring

will it work like my gastric band

And quell the butterflies in my tummy for you

I was thinking about when I made a good and bad

list of people in my class in year 2

And the teacher saw and asked if she was on

the good or bad column

Instead of telling me off

Imagine your self esteem lying in the hands

Of someone who can’t yet spell fridge

Miss Strawberry Swirl

Days in the here-after

Are pointlessly spent;

The wall that you stare up

Goes for miles with no end,

Searching for that glass ceiling

That respite in sky light

Won’t help you in the black of the night

So, instead,

Be your best self

Find the weapon in your smile

Where canines dance for a golden mile,

Flaunting their pearly winter bums

In the face of his sorrow

Suit up, arse in gear

I’ve some brave you can borrow

Tell me,

How could a girl

All peaches and lemon

Trade in her juiciest secret

For his overdue confession?

Instead,

Make them furl

Beds rock while toes curl

Give us a spin, go on girl

Miss strawberry swirl