Blonde, but my roots still show,
backcombed, teased and split
like my growth, scissored and undercut.

A mascara underscore,
with mirror shades above
to shield a poker face, or

my lone-wolf grin;
jagged canines flashing —
tearing, talking, as I would be heard,

head cocked, gum-chewing;
a killer waif, unable to sleep.

Post-punk, post-drunk,
post-something,
with a little bit of personality
to hide the ruin.

#poetry #TashPoetry

The salt of my hourglass drains
in crystalline time...
Poured in finite aridness,
bleached with the paleness
of a ravenous nothingness.

My history shrinks,
parched of identity.

Can you taste my urge,
my needs, the preserve
of my lost loves?

The hourglass is a capsule.

I will never change,
and my upended being
will never grow.

#poetry #TashPoetry

''A' Is Not For Alice'

Good words, bad verse, worse —
an unrelenting stream keeps me
not quite here, not there

like Alice, she the
unknowing, sad good-time girl,
pained by every growth.

Smile, even while lost.
Hand-on-heart, then head in hands,
wander on and on.

Consume, purge something.
Write about my fate one day
then choose the unrequited ending.

#poetry #TashPoetry

At four degrees,
submerged cups are
the warmest parts of the home.

Soap removes the traces
of another good hour;
dissolves
the residue of sweetness

Underneath the bubbles,
the lipstick relinquishes
its hold on the vanilla;
surrendering to heat

like my breath
before your kiss.

Like my mind,
before your wish.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'Blackout'

A blind, where my eyes had been.
Headlights, intermittent, off and dim.

Did I mean to say goodbye?

The road had forked, can’t remember
which way I went, which lane I tried.

I could not be caught, no, no.
Bleak thoughts, a black eye,
a black ice moment.

The road glimmers, like my mind,
even as it obscures.

#poetry #TashPoetry

Please do not disturb
the winding weeping willows
across my lawn

if you have seen
the layers of my dreams.

Pluck neither the flowers
nor the thorns
but softly carry on

if you have seen
the layers of my dreams.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'Carving The Flesh'

Inertia hovers, rectangular
over my bed and yet

the grave is not deep enough
to crush the fat from my head

Punch me, pierce, pinch my skin,
to test the rippling surface
of an unyielding dream.

I weigh my wanton wants,
hoping for less,
dreading the more.

Measure by defining measure;
nauseous at the bounty of God.
Crushed, not by earth,
but by a gnawing void.

#poetry #TashPoetry

The days for dancing
are slipping by, dissolving
with the lights of fame
and the mundane:
the artifacts of time...

Peeling posters.
Hardwood floors.

The tiered bandstand calls
from the undiluted shadows...

Come, come again to
warmer, dulcet tones
and men bent in confession,
to look up at a lady just so.

Come again, the dabbing 'kerchiefs
on pouting lips,
the fine women waiting to have
their way:

"Your last chance to remember us, sonny,
'till the end of your days".

#poetry #TashPoetry

'Tribute To Joy'

Bend this body in an arch
and for once, we too
can sparkle and twirl
as crystals
in a lover's cocktail.

Kept in time
by a black satin circumstance -
my hands were retired
upon your hips
as you leant in close
and whispered:

"Love, love will tear us apart
again."

#poetry #TashPoetry

The city was never this heartless.

The unencumbered mist swirls
without song-bound dreams...
For the love of fighters,
the heart of fighters.

Perhaps it was us that had left
with what we once thought
was ordinary...

The freedom of lithe limbs,
soft lips for speech.

Touch for joy.
Eyes for dreams.

#poetry #TashPoetry

My language is in the soma,
spoken in lines and colours.

The piebald hue of bruises;
some from her claws of frustration.

The line across a belly,
muscle cleaved and dug under;
now lesser, hollow.

The whip scars upon my back
shiny, untanned.

The lines on my thumb,
cancer, maybe.

Smile lines, occasional.
Palms open, to lend a hand.

#poetry #TashPoetry

Ambiguity can be a truth reframed -
recast and ambivalent;

like a voiceless phrase, devolved,
lip-read differently:

Like Eve undressing,
far from Eden.

I almost said it,
the tether you requested,
but your gaze had already shifted
to some other vagueness.

We lost the moment,
unclear in our love's extinction.

#poetry #TashPoetry

If I would have love
then I would have this—

a fevered fervour
of attraction;
tongue clicking with the need
to roll over and confess

and not shrink instead,
become less
than my shadow's weight
hovering over a bottle.

Pour me into another mould
so I can reform,
into something beautiful
unmarred by abuse
at least, to someone else.

I would have this,
if I would have love.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'Fed'

Tumble on, with providence
and attach, as a ribbon -
a typewriter design

onto my half-tone skin;
a curved parlance,
read aloud, cheerful

with a hitchhiking rancour, a buzz
that burrows into a dirtied ear.

l have
a repetitious thought,
force-fed six degrees of happiness.

I've been force-fed six feet of earth.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'This Atomic Rage'

This is the pantomime of a day.

The horizon splits into fractions
above the din of sound and blight
that dances above ourselves—

the dazzled and the dead, we
were sewn into the noon light;
like cobwebs around
and through a cracked china doll.

A woman of shame.
A child of pain.

One and the same.

Atoms of rage whisper from
a shared mouth,
from our childhood into our grave.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'Pyrrhic Drive'

Grainy sun with hand-caught hail
litter our familiar roads;
our backtracks of idyllic gravel.

The dusty, lipstick-ridden mirror
hides my token memories,
disguises your totem figures in black.
Yet, the disfigured reflection reminds,
no, binds our eyes to see
the burning bridges on our backs.

We follow the roads we cannot see,
to anywhere,
but where we’ve been.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'Dry'

Your bottle and I,
we shared the same fate.

Devoured we were,
then flung into space.

We fell so far
from you.

#poetry #TashPoetry

Part 2/2

I thought that I was rid of
my contrite genuflections;
starved the air from my blue reflections...
Stopped my frantic, mid-slumber defensive motions.

But the mirror lingered
outside its frame just the same.
It hung askew - all I saw
was an unbalanced head
clutched on a scarecrow's imperfect frame.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'Bird Nest'

There is elegance in my anathema—
my hand-to-mouth errand;
your paint-by-numbers wish.

The villa is quiet and shuttered.
My shoes and dress, neatly laid.

We fill our voids as the sun
dove into the Icarian Sea.

Sometimes you stay,
but more often you’d leave.

#poetry #TashPoetry

Part 2/2

Gods, I could use a cigarette!
What the fuck do you want?
Stop looking at me like that.

I had already compromised it all.

I don't have to like this,
how we just fade:
Middle-class,
dream-less assholes,
waiting to grow old,

if we get to grow together, at all.

#poetry #TashPoetry