#rtpoetry
remember when our feet skidded over
the dips in a moon-slick pavement?
you, with a bottle of disaronno,
frets of fingers outstretched,
the left fourth one looking like my tomorrow;
me, with an amazon smile,
running - running, until our ribcages
feel tight. I took your hand.
we were building this home
under the stars of canary wharf city lights.
thoughts at limehouse station //r.t.
the world ends at noon. I zip shut the curtains, cut the lights, and entomb inside a duvet’s womb.
I joke that it is my coven of despair, as if masking pathos with comedy relieves the pain.
when you feel claustrophobic, don’t solve it by enclosing yourself more.
when your limbs ring numb, lay and count each passing cloud like sheep.
when threatened enough, a human will regress to a small child in a hiding place.
this is mine.
claustrophobia//r.t.
(prompt:@poetryriot ‘blend into summer’)
she crept up on us so tentatively
I hadn’t realised she’d came:
the river swan taught swimming to its baby
as we gave farewells to the rain.
we threw a party for her arrival,
swills of grenadine and marzipan kiss.
so do we, across the sticky drinks table.
all the lillies in your garden have been picked.
may//r.t.
things are getting bad again when I can’t close the curtains.
day and night converge until the sun jump-ropes the horizon into day and night and day and night, day and night, day, night.
until my brain chatters like a beehive and a lone magpie makes its nest on my window and flies net the dream catcher hanged from the ceiling.
when people see me their mouths pull taut like violin strings. they ask are you okay, as if they could fix it,
as if I could tell them that, like a thief in the Middle East, every analogue clock in this house has had its hands mutilated
as if I could tell them that without lukewarm coffee I’d be comatose
as if I could tell them that I’m a lit candle in an ashtray and I see the world through eyelids closed.
and the end is in sight if I could - just - close - those fucking curtains.
how I know things are getting bad again//r.t.
according to the japanese art of kintsugi,
nothing is unfixable.
statues that have withered may be
repaired with seams of gold.
I wondered if that principle applies to people,
and if God would let me in after fixing his creation,
then I tried it anyway.
kintsugi is the wheel indents in her driveway
thirteen miles east,
the passenger seat ejecting, flipping,
shards of me flinging into
a tangle of hair and shoulder blades.
her torso is a long drag of tobacco and
I run my hands along the equator of her back
feeling the facets like braille,
body foetused into body, until I realise.
I’m an unmade mosaic masquerading
as an art piece, with a stranger
behind my face and on my lap.
I thought if we pretended long enough
we might fill each other’s cracks.
kintsugi kokaï //r.t.
some nights I feel like
the architect of my own sadness.
it’s my own fault for being this broken robot
where the cogs are rust-tainted
where the parts are disorientated
like a mirror with a dislocated face
like a surrealist painting
out of place, disconnected, waste of space
the joints spurt gasoline
the alarms shout burnout.
once I was told that
I could hold the world in my hands
and I did. until it overflowed.
burnout//r.t.
the bridge over the train tracks was walled with graffiti.
lookup, it scrawled to loiterers,
lookup, like your mother’s voice screaming to not jump.
I liked to imagine some roguish skater boy spritzing the words on,
a boy with paint-chipped fingertips; a bouquet
of aerosol cans hanging from his back pocket,
just so a stranger would feel less alone.
lookup, he pleaded. ironically, really,
as I was already
skybound.
graffiti//r.t.
