Glass Flesh

Depression's not a five letter word,

does being a 'freak' mean being unheard?

No one left to hear you speak.

Cause you're the black sheep,

but the beetles will creep, yes, seep an oozing oil to your breast

or to your cheek.

Does seeing a ghost mean you're merely a host

for 2^nd class citizen, weak adjective's criticsm?

Cause It makes you mad,

that being a 'little sad'

is what they call it when you drink your feelings

right

down,

you're no more than a frown

when you unzip your veins

and the budget for your pains

trickles down the Tory's drains.

Depression's not a five letter word,

you're not a 'schizo' or a 'loone'

just cause you've gone out of tune;

you need someone to pick you up.

Not pluck at your strings,

you're so used to abuse being everything.

So swallow your pills like a good little boy,

turn into their toy,

become part of their ploy.

Cause their solution to your mental revolution is to be in an institution.

You're a stain on their surveys,

a wine drop on their cliches.

But white spirit won't clean you,

til' they've ink-blot tested and brayed you.

Then you're out.

Depression's not a five letter word,

do they think we're the terrorists?

Polluting their air with scars, shooting-needles and “therapists”.

We're the end of 2-poles, 'nut-jobs',

'Why won't you eat hot-dogs?',

unemployed little bastards who are purely disasters,

living off vodka and plasters.

But would they understand if we got up and run?

Carving into our arms 3 new ladder-rungs.

You think this is fun?

Do we choose to see figments

or separate food into calorie segments,

does this look like a fucking contract agreement?

Stop using us as an excuse cause we're

use-less.

Depression's not a five letter word,

let us free our own thoughts,

don't set fly-traps and fish-hook consonants.

We don't want to be caught.

And if the talking cure is your minute mission,

then

L-I-S-T-E-N

Turning Over A New Leaf (Unusual short story beginning stimulus)

What if her blood had been this shade? These thoughts are filthy, coating my tongue in a thick film of dirt. Focus!

Moss green paint, a spring green; a serene pot of glossy hope. It glazes the tip of the brush despite the sporadic trembling of my hands and drips down onto the first leaf of the day. The leaf's firm stature with its jaundiced hue of an old bruise, even its veins, all churn my stomach into a vat of discontent. Veins, just as hers would have screamed as they were being unzipped. The leaves can stop it though, the shrapnel of Autumn can be stopped. Leaf after leaf: rotten, chapped, dead and blazing red; disgusting. I'll stop the dates! Shove the anniversary into a catacomb of ice and trickle my memories in along with them. Her hair was the same blazing red as the leaves. Irony, what a bitch.

One branch complete, shades of enraptured greens grinning up at me.

“You're idiotic you know...”

Her scent is as thick as the humidity encapsulating me, the manifest idly skulks around the trees; her lunar face shining, but her pupils are frozen. Lost, minute pinpricks behind the foliage of her fringe.

“Rain's due tomorrow, it'll all wash off babe! Then I suppose the grass'll die from the chemicals. I don't know why you're bothering”. Her voice is like thunder bouncing off of the sound behind our house... my house now.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up! You're not real...” My mumbles catch in my throat, fish hook letters snagging on my ventricles before faltering out of my mouth. Through the corners of my hazy vision, Mr. Harris' perplexed face is staring through the thickets entangled in the fence; secateurs in hand. I nod blindly to him, his glasses becoming foggy.

“How was the wake?” He musters, still gawking.

“What a creep, you know he tried it on with me at the Christmas party?” I shut my eyes to rid her siren-like form from throttling my senses.

“It was – okay”.

I turn from his airborne judgement, my mouth running dry as I glimpse the first of the leaves beginning to fall; cracked paint flecks around their stems. Now what?

“Autumn's always going to catch up with you Hamish”

Scampering across the unkempt grass; I fumble through the drawers of the kitchen, nipping my fingers on stray pins and Christmas cracker scissors; eventually finding a doll's size tube of glue. I can hear echoes of scoffs behind me, disdain which used to amuse me but now sends molten guilt through my bloodstream.

Five leaves permanently attached, five steps closer to preventing it. Five stages mocking. No glue left, a drop of dried paint remaining.

Autumn's coming.

Zugzwang (Performance poem)

He lays his queen down,
unaware - a feared or scared - that he just lost his
crown.
Tea-tree wafts from shingles quaffed
as he lays his queen down.
The queen I took, yet I feel like a rook
being pulled and picked, a frown; stay down.
Cause I can only go forward.

My sweet Lord sings in hoards of 70's mists and
sociological twists when I took his queen up.
Fucked up.
The 5 stages skip, denial no - a drip in my arm; the human in harm,
try to be calm as the papers get scribbled signatures. Alarm!
He lays his queen down.
Kind is surrounded, drowning, confounded. But mum she went
bounding,
a needle in hand with one-man brass band.

I don't blame you

You laid it down because you had no choice
but I had no voice! No shoulder to scream to, no advice or mere coos.
Just a frozen waffle. The ice wasn't there, it was trapped in mum's hair. The both left me bare.
   So you go to her and she'll go to him,
no birds broken wings cause I fell from the nest with no pudgy-faced protest.

I'll pack the board away.

Unchanged Host (Rondeau) (Place stimulus)

Hues waltz in Buttercup Meadow,
both paws and boots alike leave sultry shadows
upon carved, oak benches which 'belong to
Edith'. Sweet repose of laburnum's coos,
pods struck through with gold, with cricket's bellows.

Jason, all taut skin and jutting elbows;
small sweet clutched in pudgy grasp, rough lego
brick cascades curdled with buttercup dew.
Hues waltz in Buttercup Meadow.

I see Jason no longer, no echoes
of his laugh, the drip leached to his arm. Ahead,
puppies sprint in blind bliss, a bomber crew.
But now grey speckles temples, last walk through.
The meadow sees all change of breath; lost/mellow.
Hues waltz in Buttercup Meadow.

New Hues (Sonnet)

Okay so the homework for my creative writing AS level was to write a sonnet. Hmm. Easy? No. Google the details of a sonnet if you don't believe me. But just to warn you, I do know that this doesn't exactly work as a sonnet; I am aware that some of the stresses are muddled. But it was my first attempt at a sonnet so here it goes...



We're lost in no identity parades,
deep wounds of little consequence, pistols
slumber under billows, day no erodes.
Clean and sew your wounds out - clear flesh crystals.
Yet she has broiling, coiling thought of who
she is, minute beetles under her moans
to knit each word, caress the dark: sooth, help,
sleep, no. Blue fists upon her brittle bones.
Fists, MINE, did burrow at the cheeks, her whites
blood-shot and leaking where the sun should rest.

At six we flew kites, dancing as fresh sprites;
the breeze stole gust, myriad dust abreast.
But at eight I saw the need in me to
sock these sprites out from her eyes, no clue!

Mushrooms (Object Stimulus)

Louche pearls beading above the
blades, clinging to the
tiny
minarets above the grass.
Such myriads of bejeweled ghosts
reflected in their curving caps,
do beetles rest their weary shells upon these
turrets? Or metallic moths mope below the shade?

Twilight trickles in

and their trunks recede,
dissolving into umbrous
pools; disease running rife.
       His fingers upon my cheek,
pressure marks.
Grass tangled masses in my hair.
A disheveled foliage upon my scalp:
"You asked me to"
bitter pellets of malice on the tongue
as he leaves me in the undergrowth
with the despondent

corpses beside me.

Drink Me In, Sweeter Than Breaths... (Childhood stimulus)

Waves sleep in tepid murmurs,

planting a kiss of inconsequence on the shore.

With meek, spindly limbs I hobble

to the vast pool; ebb-tides gracefully claw,

idly gurgling their call to me. The sand straps

jesses onto my chubby calves

but still I go

tepid water grins, I grin back with innocent whims

through brumous skies.

See me bumble further into the spume; into

sultry,

serpentine

treacle.

But

the waves grow taller

behemoth

beasts squawking, intertwining with

the oozing sun -

Oxygen forgotten and salted reminders,

liquid as thin as air

yet no air is there.

My breaths dance into new, accipitrine

forms; shrieking and screaming in their

mini-revolution.

When my thoughts drip into nothing but

puddles

                     - arms find me -

Tug.

Iron-weights around my chest. Air scampers

down

my

scarred

throat.

Breath again

and life remains, with

my pudgy moon-pie cheeks

and half-lunar grin. Give

me reasons, please – So sad to say that the breadth of one day

saw my innards dissolve.

When I realised

the water

was sweeter than the shore