-

I have always loved rocking
rocking chairs, a boat, a swing:
shift your weight and you’re floating
feeling that you could take wing.

Fire sweetens air
salt admonishes water:
purification.

-

What’s at the centre?

The cherry on the top bang in the middle;
wicks running central to the candle’s core;
the in-breath, the out-breath, noticed as it flows;
heartwood which rots yet leaves a living tree;
the single leg of a tapping table;
a paperback’s glossy picture pages;
clusters of stamens awaiting the bees;
a farm near Fox’s Drayton-in-the-Clay;
the magnetic coils of earth’s molten rock;
and in silence, the small still voice of God.

-

Gynaecologist

Heels up and knees out
let those folks with microscopes
probe your sexual sins.

-

Park

Your flowers are
breaking out:
I cannot name
the blue one
or this tiny
white one but
no matter; you
don’t know mine.
Welcome or not
I visit
in all weathers
and love you
when your flowers
are just out.

Sitting with the snake
coils wringing out my heart
choking up my throat
venom in my eyes
I breathe compassion for snakes
and try not to fight.

Trigger warning.

-

Into the blackness:
a poor end but it’s better
than staying, worthless.

-

The thing about being the only one
is that it’s actually very common.
I’m the only one writing this poem;
even if you are reading it aloud
or with friends or in a classroom, you are
the only person reading it just so.
Your eyeball, for example, is unique
ditto your optic nerve and synapses.
This is what each atom has in common:
it is the only one just there, just now.

Warning: the themes of this poem may be distressing or triggering to some.

-

A Hundred Syllables About Self-Harm

Tender spots along my limbs speak of knocks
obtained when the externalisation
of my demons breaks through to physical
effects; sleeves do not save me, nor do socks,
nor does a depersonalisation.
Bruises come and go as if whimsical
and skin heals, or sometimes it doesn’t,
so I resist the normalisation
telling myself I shouldn’t, I mustn’t
but I need the demons back in their box.