Volcanic Veins

Realise the release I crave
alone with a blade.
Words fired at me,
magma travelling
through volcanic veins.

Sat here in the heat of the sun
your eyes glint metallic grey.
Sharp and unnatural.
Learn to look away,
interrogation is ugly.

Your voice, nails on a blackboard.
I watch boiling blood under my skin,
pressure building
from the noise,
of your lecture.

Gaining in momentum
demanding freedom.
Heat,
building up
all over my body,
needs to get out.

Heart pounding,
I panic,
as my jumper slips,
skin exposed.
One day you’ll notice
scars from my
careful carving.

Sometimes I’m scared
that you won’t.

Public Cancer

Her hair
shaved off
her womb
cut out

Smile strapped on
media flashes
bounce off
her naked scalp

Community spirit
shines a blinding
light in her eyes

Camera vultures
hover and swoop
poising to rake over
the pickings
of her bones

Three Time Goddess

Smooth bare back, nipples lie dormant,
rose buds awaiting sunlight.
Tentative clouds float by, cool air circles.

New moon emerges.

You approach me, dressed in white
pure and clean; snowdrop
after the darkness of winter.

Crescent moon sheds light.

Limbs expectant, full with
experience. Breasts bountiful,
providing sustenance.

Full moon smiles down.

You embrace me, moist,
fecund. Lily in summer sun
nourishing nectar, glistening.

Waning moon retreats.

Saggy wrinkled, deflated sacks,
swinging low. Weighed down
with cold wisdom.

Darkened moon.

You hover behind me, awaiting my fall.
Cover me, with your story blanket,
a place to leave my skeleton leaves
dry, dusty, comforting.

Paternity Leave

Hedonistic debauchery created me,
four-limbed dance, as old as time.
Dionysus in the form of my
originator, producer of sperm,
proudly posing his fertile phallus.
Me, swimming safely to the embryonic
embrace my Mother provided.

Her maternal brain laden with
opiates, dressed in poppy red,
playing with Pandora’s padlock:
knowing she shouldn’t open.
Hazily observing her expanding
womb, watching the acid patterns
cast by lava lamp shadows.

Shocked her labour produced me,
snake headed baby medusa:
no tuft of dark hair to stroke;
no way of Daddy escaping
my gaze. His eyes frozen in time.
Stony faced, meaty grin held still
with the echoes of my cries.


Dionysus Greek God of hedonism.

Shedding Skin

Obsessing over the vast continent
of my ever changing skin.
It pins me down like weighted cloth,
the heavy scent of decay takes me
back to places I’ve been before.

My hair primed to promiscuous pink,
I fought for my right to be invincible.
My breasts bathed in gold glitter,
running through town throwing
flippant colours of youth in vacant faces.

As casual commitments were cashed in,
I constructed interchangeable masks.
Heavy black eyeliner streaked across my disguise,
painting false promises in honour
of the transience of time.

Echoes of sinister shadows haunt me,
ghosts caught in strobe light.
Guarding my small bucket of scars I sit
content on the shelf up high where
grasping fingers cannot grab me.

Memories like flash photography force
marks on my skin to spill my story.
Map-readers eyes scan purple valleys,
bruised by birth. Fingers trace indigo brandings,
tattoos declaring tribalism once striven for.



The rise and fall of my womb stretching
left me observing the pummelled pillows
on my chest.
Gold glitter replaced with small pink lines
tracking the ticking clock.

Comfortable under my weighted cloth
absorbing alcoholic medication.
A brazen examination of my exposed flesh
leaves me bathing in
burgundy glasses full of loosened tongues.

Trailing the threads of rebel tales,
foreplay to carry on the oral tradition.
Waiting to unravel into obliging hands,
hopelessly taunting passing scribes
as the seams of my stories unwind.

Monday Morning

Another Monday morning
waiting for the day
to start.
And yet the rain
keeps coming
down.

Staring and thinking
thinking and staring
Chewing. Blankly
appearing as though it all goes by
un-noticed.

She often stared up at the
grey, grey clouds
the rain
dropping and dripping
dripping and dropping
her face does the same
drop, drip, drop, drip.

She gathers the folds in her skin
and smooths them down
calming her tired eyes.
Eyes that track the rain.
Every drop. Every drip.
Every Monday.
The same.