i go into the spacious as everywhere else anywhere in the small in the concepts in the i will and the he didn’t hurts

this freak-the-fuck agony ! what of it ? it’s just the Beloved calling you home

yesterday Hanuman’s day i gave up following the mind its insistancies its inconsistencies its endless measurings it has been talking shit the same old shit for eons it still rumbles on like a brook miles below me in the valley but i soar above it without limit free

i am training to see all things equal nothing either a blessing or a curse apparently that’s how the Victorious Ones did it

the sky was alive with insects which kept the swallows busy for days i know it’s not very Dharmic but i saw the gnats as concepts and the swallows as the piercing kila of of awareness returning the mind over and over to its natural state untarnished, clear the dazzle of the All Good

i keep forgettin why i’m here i ask my mama she don know i ask my papa an he don know i ask the teacher the one who says You Are Enough i ask the other one the one who talk on laziness an life bein short i ask my heart an why is it [...]

so i said to this tree i want to be invisible and the tree said be like me so utterly and completely yourself that no one sees you

everything is always pointing at something i can't fucking see it reminds me of when i was young and everyone else could read

there is no life and no death no me and no you there is just us meeting each other over and over until the dry husk of everything that is not Love is worn away

allow the heart for she is the way the sweet soft arrow pointing home pointing to the only sweetness available round here: the whole of the world as good. allow the heart

and i am reaching with my two arms (as though it lives outside of me!) for the place for the thing for the only thing that matters

i’ve been trying to fit words to you for fucking ever like trying to put a cardigan on the Queen of the Wolves: a joke

and everything became heavy with human: we didn’t half drag our heels and turned Christ into Christianity (forgive me for I have sinned) and Buddha into Buddhism (everything is going to take a kalpa of lifetimes) we didn’t half love the cul de sac the endless and the exhausting journey going from nowhere into nowhere [...]

the higher up the mountain the cleaner the air i am hungry for the high up places the place there isn’t even air just us empty bliss remember ?

i pulled myself from the river all mud and silted up and came up through the mist new and sinuous rising light as air as mountains but my feet stayed clay stuck legs all caught up in stories of the past the he said she said and all those faces but i saw the part [...]

so there am I all up in my mind busy in the what ifs the what thes along with all the other holy fucks when out of nowhere comes a breeze a song in at the window cool, lovely it moves across my skin wants to play cries: this and i remember (thank god) this [...]

the forget me not did not name itself it has other things to do: like be be the ridiculous blue cloud of foamy buttons upon which that ancient beech tree floats No. the forget me not did not name itself it was named for a human by a human who had forgotten that no one [...]

my mother says: you have pretended to be a person for too long now it is time to come home. i turn to her (my inside outside and silver as the moon) and I say: how ? and she says this: Follow my Finger

it comes at me sometimes in snatches a song drifting in the air the air across my skin – exquisite a scent so fine it makes me stop when i’m on my bicycle say wending through the belchblack traffic and life drapes loose about my shoulders loose enough, slight enough that i forget it’s there [...]

when my pen gets close to the point which i admit is rarely my heart races i am drawn helpless water down the plug into the centre of things desperate oblivion home

inside John Steineck nearly 100 years ago the sun sets somewhere in Wales cuts itself on the sharp of a mountain sinks bleeding here though over Delhi the sun sets smiling sinks happy job done beneath the whole of life puts to bed sighing the fat man beside the road choking on the traffic both [...]

so i stand here still and i say: write me home moving across landscape moving in lightness in direction none-in-particular and i am laughing

swallow tastes swimming pool blue as nearly as the sky pool bird its heart skip beats a bloody red and the parts i have been missing lie scattered loose on loungers brown as nuts beneath the tree warm as wishes from the sun butterflies fighting or loving same same today it might be that I [...]

sometimes when i’ve forgotten how and what it is I’m meant to and panic in me rises when everyone around me seems to know even the great Romanian painter joyful - sad at his table planet head in his painterly hands over and over saying what i am doing ? when even he has recognised [...]

i am in love with it with all of it with all these shapes sighings hopings wantings all this hair flicking turning on its heel the bread is burnt the cake is sweet the rain is coming i'm in love with it all for it is her dancing inside of him for he is the [...]

what is my name ? you will find it under your pillow whom do i love ? you will find him in the next room and the next and the next where do i love ? you will not find any in which you do not what stops me from the still divine, all of [...]

so on monday i decided to Be-that-Longing with every fibre of my being (as though i had a choice) i'll let you know in a week or so how it's working out

no one dancing anything no one being anything all of us being danced all of us being nothing and inside any of that everything

today i'm her coming in my thick boots fearless not cold coming over mountains one way: this to him him with eyes which cut all the way through ripping up the weeds persistent as the mind blind me free me make me fucking nothing they say it wasn't easy that time around the rocks have [...]

the other side of thinking i stumbled into something blinding i wanted to take a pen to paper but couldn't lift my arm i sat there basked in stark stapled like a beetle to a board

in india heading north up into the high up hills this comes through the radio: Silence is the Language of God All Else is Poor Translation. it's true but I am in love with words black marks carving up white him moving inside her love-cries echoing in empty human screaming inside god

i am the bread and i am the baker the one who takes it from the oven, priceless in the morning i am the air through which the flour fresh ground float flees i am white dust dreaming i am she who stands in line head bursting with lists and songs and fragments the one [...]

every thing i do every mark this hand makes every shape line dot it’s for her i have one eye on the page the other it’s on her: she’s barefoot in the puddles splashylaughing kicking up the emptiness

there’s this goddess i know goes about all bra hanging out hooks and eyes wild her face the face of everyone i have ever known she is so close Mother i call her Sister i call her i call her Kali Ma her eyes look love and her eyes look love and then they don’t [...]

Stop Trying To Fit In

i am flung into the sky life burns body gets breathed mind rampages over mountain tops tearing down trees overturning cars beating its bloody breast blackblue in the dream i am wild savage beautiful i crush the turning world beneath my heel

puppet dancing in the empty every tiny shift of mind creates movement in the field an instrument so finely tuned nothing bouncing back on nothing exquisite faithful beautiful and exact puppet dancing in the empty

and the fruit ripens and the fruit ripens and when the time comes will it fall ? or will the tree just let it go ? i am scared because some – from fear or love - rot clinging to the tree

you are the doorway i step through you frightened into light. Poised Exquisite Turning Useful

Burn. In every moment burn. Don’t cling. Die. Dance and Die. Die in this moment. Die to yourself.

so i got all these birds crows i’m thinking (rooks my dad says) beady black careless in the dusk shrieking out their this and that like it’s fact they’re circling the airspace above my head looking for a place to roost they’re nice enough and black but i am done with story with birds with [...]

your face this poem marks on a map a finger pointing to the other side past all these tears joys loves to the place we live really

and i went with my sisters into the cathedral of trees the one which has known us - each - since we could walk and there we lay down millennia of autumns library of light made from loving and shoulder touching shoulder we looked up through the vaulting ceiling and the trees rang their tiny [...]

after something of a hiatus (Jesus Christ!) i am training in falling back in love with humans the small the mean the angry the ugly the stupid the growing older by the nano i’m training in falling back in love deeply profoundly ecstatic (amen) with myself

over on the west of ireland where the air is soft and the rank vanilla-shame brand of catholicism saturates in amongst the stay awhiles and all the loving memories i met the Buddha in a graveyard He was different than i thought less gold, more grey and loose across dishevelled bones His face glittered silver [...]

why does the flower why do birds and why do i ? even do i ?

there rests in me a vast space: i can’t see in here and keep bumping into things

she tried and she failed she tried and she failed until one day she realised it didn’t matter it had never mattered she fell into the heart of love.

Got a message for me ? Yes. You are unbearably sweet.

even hate and lies are love they just got twisted a little in translation

there are times i've been so lonely i’ve walked under the low trees just to get touched that was back when i was changing so fast and so much nothing stayed long enough for me to take its face in both my hands saying: you

having been through all the wild tomorrows having done with time (time done with us) we came out the other side and put everything back where we'd found it forks bags settees every table made from every tree every bucket kfc battered deep fry ripped from bird we put it all back pristine and came [...]

sometimes when i get up early before the final pieces of the day have firmed up i get to have my say with how and when flowers things human hearts the sky just a little emptier and yes please a small dash of horse i can even follow the string of beads back into the [...]

one day last week monday i think i balanced the books and paid back time all of the time i have ever borrowed and fell upwards through a hole in the sky into a pocket in the apron of nowhere and there in the dark pieces came at me piecemeal debris turning dizzy through the [...]

fell through living one day into dead dead walked round in there – and round - hitting head against wall nothing hitting nothing nothing to hear it neither black couldn’t find my way backintolife (i didn’t want it it didn’t want me) so i set up home here ate ashes made ashes out of ashes [...]

there's this thing in me that needs to be free

the world lives inside me (ask any Buddhist worth her salt) because I am unhappy the world is unhappy the trees, made sick by june offer up a department store xmas cheap with gaudy cherries they deck their grief in a hysteria of blossom they've closed their hearts to the man walking hand in hand [...]

we went to see him in hospital they lost his teeth (he’s dying) so we couldn’t make out his final words his mouth sucked in and blew out: the sound came singing, close then far off he cried when we said: ‘the room is full of angels’ (it was) he cried again with: ‘your mother’s [...]

owl flat face pale ghost, silent owl in the nighttime she moves above the houses amongst the nodding trees it is i who calls your name soft, persistent so the others won’t hear owl moves amongst the secrets of the forming berries what tells them how to burgeon and when? you stir but do not [...]

and everyone would become someone in order to become nothing and then everything but noone could understand why it was taking so long i mean when the frequencies rose like that there wasn’t really much choice: relax and check in or go stiff and check out both worked in the long run but the ones [...]

you live inside me like a maggot in an apple eating away at all that isn’t real

Today I’m up against it Nose to grindstone Plucking out from air so thin You can see right the fuck way through it The strands I will be needing to make this miracle Today I will be making Save that wood for badgers and Save the humans for each other

in the middle of april that year spring never came when the crows had to put back all the sticks where they’d found them and the trees never bothered unpacking that year she was minding her own up by superdrug you know where they drink diamond ice and scatter their needles all over like christmas [...]

the days turned to Days and the old stuff fell away don’t know why got burned off in the eye somehow the film that draped everything dreary as Sunday lunch inside the grandfather clock which would not shut the fuck up all that yes got ripped away and there She stood naked, blinding utterly herself [...]

the shape got made from thought and the bones of animals which had roamed the earth hungry gathering food, seeking comfort and growth came new again and again it came violent alive thrusting up through the old shouting out its new shape the new became old and thoughts rotted and the jaws of animals and [...]

you me a house the sea* *and of course my dog but that’s a given as she goes everywhere with me anyway, like a shadow. Or sound.

when same old same old came flouncing down the street hair all nice and perfume dragging in the past i said 'today will be the day' and took a knife to the sky: i would live on the other side

i threw the dakinis a banana they laughed and threw it back i gave them my heart on a doilie one I’d spent an hour cutting the hell they asked is that ? i called after to offer them the best of me they laughed and said: if only you knew i didn’t though and [...]

way out on the cold face of thinking going at it with a little silver axe chipping at the he said i said the bitch did what ? dancing on a fragment dancing on the middle point of instant here am i i’m blinded breaking into all these shards every single thought i’ve made myself [...]

i like it when it's hot and the road melts and the mind noses into the five: sexual misconduct and icecream and the boys sit high up on walls silent for a change squinting in the blinding pulling at their teeshirts baby fat melting into a future bright with everything and love love comes pounding [...]

white cow bollocks pink as powder nodding comes across the road and the great wheel turns night swings her lantern as if to chide it’s late and come to bed but Oh i've clothed myself in story he said she said i want and all those past lives night snuffs the lamp and confusion draws [...]

from the deepest place inside the one humans call love i brought five fingers slick and black with blood a piece of flesh the size of a rock the kind of rock – perfect- which fills a hand i put it on the table and with my own fingers tore at it sinew, white veins, [...]

she was a sunflower her pretty face followed the sun when the sun went down she didn’t know who she was she wept. he was a shepherd his mind caught in other things she things me things one day things when he lost his flock he wept. i came from and next and The Way [...]

i received darshan from a great saint and all the time it was happening tears came down my face and the fragrance of her purity lifted the air she pinned me with the blade of her stare and i pressed my head into the red carpet at her pale feet and all the time it [...]

couldn’t find anywhere to be long so stayed short making pigs' ears and sows' purses shrugging off people and occasions with my hands i made shapes: dog, days, house, truth, love. one day i made something called This Human Life stuck it on the sill between the wedding present and the wooden horse an uncle [...]

making just a small incision each day in the sky with a scalpel they say pays dividends though how much and when if ever they also say is none of my damned

today you look tired i like it when you’re like that soft and i can find my way in

in the fifth season the one called harvest when the trees hung heavy with every promise ever whispered mouth ear mouth i you forever, yes! in the fifth season i washed my hands of shapes horse house dog love and lined them on the mantel and turning too quickly fell from an upstairs window i [...]

black sheep green field cow parsley already blown i’m standing there saying i choose the fucking moksha the trees are like and ? they talk amongst themselves sap rises they sing their song of summer and I’m like you. listen. do I need to break my face ? everything's like yeah yeah and next it [...]

i belong to myself in that belonging i soar eagle - sky - nothing if you put your ear to stone this stone you will hear me laughing i belong to you

i love you and i don't i love you and i don’t i love you and i don't any longer have the space for it which is why it keeps spilling out like this all over the place

  in the south where the days hang back to back and come at a person too many and too thick and the women slump dead at their station down there between Colón and Rayón where the flies hold dominion the witch goes after her business her fat dog strung into silence by the neck patient [...]

  it’s Lola with her hoop she’s dancing on the edge of time twirling on a straw wearing that same old dirty bikini the one she’s worn all week she’s whirling in her stratosphere fast enough to bring her heart in pieces back together you know what she says (her laughter’s in a bubble) reaches [...]

  pink sky yellow field moon sails pale as paper over trees which haven’t heard its spring yet (the bite would take your nose) it stirs something in me something ancient which tugs at my throat at my belly says Come It’s This Way

  New Review of Black Milk (pub. Albion Beatnik) Nicola G: f**king genius. It’s brilliant, beautiful, heart breaking, illuminating, inventive. My breath was taken so many times. GENIUS! buy it: http://www.albionbeatnik.co.uk/product/black-milk-olivia-stewart-liberty/  

  it might look like this when you piss off god: pinned to the dust by her boot toe heel black and business either side of your pretty throat flaxen locks gone haywire mala all om namah and counting it might look like that who knows ?

  it looks like this : a row of dots which shout out joining it looks like my grandmother still tall at 90 still beautiful the one I haven’t seen in years standing in the cold on her balcony facing south to where the old grey river leans bent to feed a bird the fat [...]

  sometimes out there on the ring road when it’s spring but not yet warm and the day is done but it’s not yet night sometimes out there when the trees are blind and i’ve got myself untethered from time and from the phone from thinking even and i’m there driving with all the others and we’re [...]

  i will fritter my life on tutus on glitter on pets and on picnics on round the world tickets on flat soya whites and organic cigarettes and circles of thought around cows coming home on tantrums and true love on dreams of a house and i’ll fritter my life – all of it – here [...]

  leaves lie in the road flat as tears you are still leaping in my heart how do i reconcile the two ?

  so I’m sat there like i don't know how a piece of what must sit amongst gram for gram the world’s most expensive fish hanging off my chopsticks when god walks in he’s filthy skinny and his hair is wild he's up on crutches his trousers torn his shoes all gaping in the front and those toes have not seen soap in [...]

  one time when I died they asked me : and what do you regret ? so I told them yeah and maybe sometimes not allowing all of me to show and they said go back then and do it so i did

  someone taught you once when you was just a babe it isnt safe to shine cos when you shine you stepdaddy can’t keep his cunting fingers to himself o is for oceans x is for x-ray and m is for mammy turn-her-back but I tell you girl you shining face the only one we got [...]

  someone ripped the soul from this country ripped it out rolled it up scarfed it down for lunch hooters, denny’s, the world famous cinnamon bun company but iguana won’t be blunted he spins his eye on the roulette of account blacker than the burned out suns black for balance we crowd about him snapping [...]

  in the dark days you slept like a fox inside my heart your red body curled around the seed when the light came you opened up one eye sly and counting and slid out i didn’t see you for 1000 years and when I did your coat was torn burned with every fuck and fight [...]

Black Milk Five interlinking short stories about a troubled 12 year old and her attempts to navigate the overwhelming landscape of puberty, her mother and the Smokey Haze disco, Black Milk a is published by Albion Beatnik Press and available from albionbeatnik.co.uk for £4 plus p&p.

  and the cook came out finished for the night in his buttoned over black dusted with tortilla flour came right to where I sat and took his cigarette from his mouth and put it in the hand that held his beer and like a randy dog and rude pulled me fingers hard from the oven into him and [...]

  listen the world has something for you everything she is wet with wild and waiting i know you are thirsty drink don’t go back to sleep

  like a jackal he comes across the street diagonal relentless nosing into half light direction food and fucking and somewhere soft to rest his head the sun's already half way up and the night was long a paper cup rolls to give him way: here he’s king

  i am sick there is so much I want love a horse the moon you to keep wanting me like that and more. always more the doctor prescribes taking off my shoes at least three times a day it’s how he says the women in Guatemala won their battle against monsanto against the genetically modified [...]

  lamp of your great moose heart searches riding over tree and shadow nosing blunt into the forest i skip among trees quick as spit leaping fences stubbing out my laughter in my own hand ducking into where you aren’t you raise your face blowing on the sharp air one two three look i’m high [...]

  today on a spreading plain high up in the high sierra i saw god in his garden straw hat dust and ancient legs as though he’d spent his life on a horse i didn’t say anything i couldn't i was on a bus just passing through but today I saw god in his garden and the marigolds [...]

  i poured a drink and named it thirst it hit the table problem solved i opened up longing and called it love and saw that lack can be the answer and it’s language that has caused the problem so i made a new world with half the words problem solution same same and sure enough life [...]

there is something holding up all of this holding it lightly in the palm of her hand the clouds that roll across the mountains the bright birds the 43 sick to the stomach – I cannot imagine when they knew what was happening the men with guns lost enough to do it the mayor and his wife dead enough [...]

  my father was away a lot try always and my mother was the Truman Show she stuck a dome over us and everything as far as the eye including thinking belonged to her i was old enough when i ran out of air and took a pair of scissors to the sky it wasn’t easy and [...]

  the soft of his mouth the hard of his cock the soft of his voice sometimes when he speaks to me the hard of his hand just below each finger where earlier in the sun he held a spade thrusting deep over and over into the rough earth bringing up root and potato and [...]

  they say you meet him three times the second was in mexico right across from ricos raspas and I said no until he came on over bold as church in front of san domingo the dust rallied to his clatty hooves and all the women selling blouses you want two fingers or three ? [...]

sometimes when I go see god an i am smilin smilin pretty pretty on my toes an she aint please to see me giving me the old flat eye an i start thinkin same old same old i am bad an piss off god get me all crunch up like that send me back into alone [...]

she said : open wide your arms like this (showing how) in a gesture of receiving and I will give you the World * * she did

this town is working roundtheclock to keep out living and something here is dying – me the black and grey the neat lace shoes the walking fast the always somewhere going thinking mending future fighting so hard to keep it out the foreign undesirable detained indefinite at the lip i’ve started going round the back [...]

yours is every mouth and mine is every flesh and ours is every bad love ever manmade and ground into every bobbled fibre that does the good work and keeps this earth from spinning wild free off its fucking axis into any single howling night

a friend's been reading my poems i like then he said some he went on look like they only took one second to write they did i said he laughed and said i still like them as in despite and as though somehow he'd stuck out his pale neck. i looked at him until i had remembered the rules: a week should take seven [...]

before language before all this got shore up bird tree mine his hope before any that got put on out where sky an water same same out here kneeling in the dark blaze earth gonna pluck out new sounds cut new runnels same blood thirsty now quick for new veins boiling to bust open old words get down [...]

used to say make me whole now i say who goes back ? so finish this job take me direct to what will shatter me completely so the night sky stops looking like that: chipped and explodes into nothing into all star

i don’t remember too much about getting raped i guess he drugged me pretty good i don’t remember too much: try nothing and woke up strange to piece together clothes I couldn’t remember and didn't understand why are they scattered like this and isn’t it funny ? i didn’t even notice a part of me had died it took me [...]

there’s a place at the crossroads where everyone's welcome the jihadis come pulling at their trousers and restless of foot ilhamdulillah fistbump and never give up and the school children's ties hang thirsty as the Baobab clustered round chocolate and it’s here that love lands cooling its ardor and bickering like doves over kitchen appliances in [...]

these hills are dark and this river dropping down through the ages of rock and iron carving out her quiet bowl has earned her place you can smell her secrets fierce, still and much gets done over time and everything earns her place

why, in the name of everything that is sweet that is ripe that is living would you dream a thigh gap when you have the other twin peaches meeting wherever you go kissing over and over whispering one against the other remembering always and everywhere you will ever walk what is love

it isn’t in black and it isn’t in any tree even on that day the first bud cracks i’m not it and nor is he and the space between us isn’t even when it’s festooned in words like bunting it’s not in butter or inside any tear even if it’s on the rapist’s own cheek [...]

i’m dreaming of a little brown horse I love which died i’m dreaming of a bright day in which he strolls back into my life cracks me on the skull with the lethal underside of his jaw worries with his rubber lips the front of my shirt and comes down systematic snapping off the buttons spitting each one out back then [...]

it looked a day like any other: the plane trees whispered same old same old and july came hot off the fat arch road i went to the co-op to buy food for my dog and it looked a day like any other until the cashier plucked the box from my basket and looking every word into [...]

rain takes my face in both her hands says see ? i do almost and then i don't see what ? playing here for time rain laughs way the hush comes way the leaves come the way when you come writing this down words aren't and this isn't can you see it ? i'm trying i tell her [...]

look at the cows my soul said someone's got to do the fat work of sitting in clover

day is dark and wind blows greasy low across apples slumped in rotted grass the sun isn’t bothered by last night’s bottles sentinel row of sour mistakes i’m sat here at the table nosing into soul this is not the worst i’ll feel today it doesn’t matter though and none of it matters as somewhere on the other [...]

making something always making sense stitching the woman who served my lunch rice or potatoes ? onto my dog's face the second time i left sewing that onto tomorrow and again onto my dog's soft eyes that onto next year and a man i once loved onto all of these feelings coming and going and some staying longer sometimes [...]

i went to the matisse cut-outs saw plain my soul need : explode colour with colour shunt word against word make bombs there's something in me which says fuck peace : let's make fireworks

i've changed my mind decided after all i don't want to sit peaceful for a thousand years stories life all passing through so many clouds on empty air i want to get my hands dirty all the way up my arms and then i want to flounder day and all the night in thick mud of my own creation i [...]

marquee of stone squats vast as pyramids each granite arch yawns wider no sun no warmth may enter who owns this space ? not god not me not the priest here not the devoted who file through each day ants moving over granite to kiss a picture a pair of pigeons made black by the stone flaps [...]

past sits heavy on these shoulders leeches from the fabric of the coats makes heavy weather on the pedestrian precinct yet in amongst the old burns the new: it's in the surge of the puppy on its lead in the flurries of the seed head swirling up as though earth isn’t the only place it’s in the child who offers [...]

the girl said where you live you not have ownerless-dog ? no I said expecting congratulation on the super-efficient ownerless-dog-free land from which I come her face turned fretful to the open window which gaped on the street sad she said, so sad we loves the dogs and the dogs loves us i turned to where she looked [...]

i went to church today and i asked jesus if i could be like him show me i said the way he laughed and said sweet thing i showed you that already i said (aware of the iron hot in which i was) is there any way you could could be minded to put me in the way of it ? he said [...]

come to the edge of the map take the boulevard pocked by the past drop off the page into uncharted where faces read cyrillic and sense makes other and fear pries its fingers 
into what happened and those lighting candles and
 signing the cross and coming out backwards still wear their anoraks: they might not get home meanwhile [...]

thirteen years and tasting freedom roll out dark across the tongue blow that smoke into forever through the open bedroom window through the branches of the tree through this small town getting smaller french inhale and taste the freedom time is mine and on we ride towards horizon and a happy ever after not yet thought [...]

grey sky won’t crack: can't risk blue dirty traffic rumbles on people move about their days along the pavement across the road off the bus alone and all together galaxies of dreams and plans and sadnesses spiral out through every head: a universe within a universe moving towards a better one some day always today [...]

words make boxes fit things inside nice-neat manageable like: how are you like: i am fine good small bite size put on lid shut up tight and stack file under things i like or things i don't like soul not happy soul need wings say: if you don't got nothing made of this: (snorts, stamps hoof, [...]

The girl who’s making my coffee tells the other girl The French one with the same earrings as me (£5.99 from the shop on the high street) ‘George met a girl’ ‘Oh no’ (the French one, laughing as in: we all know what that means) ‘Yeah’ (my one) ‘and then she died’. The French girl’s [...]

I am seared with a longing so burnt in So hardwired I’m afraid one day I’ll suck the whole world down And when that's not enough I’ll scream tears until all of life drowns Then I’ll come roaring through the four corners sat astride a grief to finish what's left. This thirst is desert: I'll [...]

Beautiful old willow Last week curled and draped upon our river Nodding sagely to the passing ducks Today stands devastated Split in two
 by last night’s storm Interior milk white grinning Gaped entirely to the world Tragic end to noble tree? Or just the answer to the question it was asking its entire life?