When did the stars lose their magic?

I wish I could still see the beauty of the night,

Instead of the emptiness of house windows and the desolation of pavements.

I wish I could find the halogen streetlights enchanting,

Instead of seeing the loneliness of their orange hearts and forlorn glow.

I wish I could wish upon the stars in the velvet darkness,

Instead of knowing with cold clarity that they are dead and billions of miles from me.

When, I wonder, did the night become sad? When did the streetlights become cold?

When did the stars lose their magic?

The West Wind

I feel so angry that this blond buffoon  and his blatant racism appeals to so many. The world feels like it is shifting irrecoverably towards hatred and intolerance. The climate of fear is like a room full of gas and I can’t help feeling like Trump may not even be the spark to ignite it. I feel like something even more terrible is coming. Something so terrible that it will turn the political spectrum and public opinion on its head. Whether if it’s a race riot that ends in deaths or a terrorist attack on a scale greater than 9/11 or a world leader setting up an internment camp or a ban on public worship. Something is going to happen and I hope I can keep a clear, logical and ,above all, kind head when it does.

Why I shouldn’t make Friends

I don’t think I can talk about it, all I know is that I am in pain.

The kind of pain I haven’t felt since the time when lockers slamming,

maths lessons and lonely lunch times were my daily

routine.

I feel Surreal

I feel adrift, cut off from reality and my heart and soul,

Just the night before last I was convinced I could feel everything,

I could feel your breath like it was a hurricane, feel my heart beating in my throat,

I could feel the burn of vodka sear my throat, the rip of tobacco smoke into my lungs.

But, now, everything feels surreal, exterior to me, as if a dream has crawled into daylight.

I know I love her and fear her hurting, I know I will protect her, I know my parents love me,

I know that I find joy in charcoal smudging my fingers, I know that I love music and have things to do,

But I really can’t feel it, and that’s so scary, or it should be, I’m a deep feeling person, that’s what I do.

I’m not that cold person anymore, why am I regressing? I feel lonely when I’m around people and lost when I’m alone.

But, I plant my feet and breath the crystalline air and ice/grass smell and look upward to the beautiful of the sky and the infinite sensuality of the night.

I ground myself, expel the air from my lungs like dragon’s breath, proof I have warmth, that I’m alive and I whisper;

“This too will pass.”

 

 

Why Three is not a Crowd

 

Because, your nails have left delicious marks on my thighs and your fingertips left bruise marks upon the snow white skin of my throat, just over my pulse.

Because, your teeth have left a bloody cut upon my lips, violent and crimson against a soft rose mouth, which smiles constantly around you, though with a tender lump since your teeth are sharp.

Because, your skin is soft and smells like me, you and him, our scents intertwine like our fingers, your legs with hers and mine, our breath. You both bite hard and don’t mind that I do too. I can drag my nails down your skin, press my palm into your throat.

Because, your lips were dry and cheekbones sharp when I ran my fingers over your face, memorising you by touch, how your spine was curved and bony, how your long hair smelt like smoke, how the cold of your piercing clicked against my nails.

Because, you whimper and gasp in a way that is divine, we share breath, lips close. You give off heat and my gasps ribbon up into the air but you swallow my sound, you don’t mind that I shiver and my back arches.

Because, after, we stand half naked smoking out of a window, shaking in cold air but nestled into each other’s warmth, we sleep like a pack in a huddle under blankets that smell of us and when we walk past each other we press a hand to one another’s shoulders or hair or face or we rub our heads or drop a kiss, feather light and gentle.

Because, you’re my friends and I love you (but not like that), Three can be a crowd for some, but if a lesbian and her straight best friends can do it,there’s not a lot we can’t achieve really.

Faery Tree

Where I live, next to the forests that the Celts  before us said were invested with magic, there stands a tree that has no right to be there. An oak tree, sprawling and wild with corkscrew branches in a forest of slender, uniform pines. I call it my Faery Tree and I whisper my secrets to her, when I fear the uncaring faces of humans. I can spill my blood upon her roots, and she will sit and listen and soak in my pain.  

Notes on Witchlight

Back in 2013 I read a book called Witchlight by Susan Fletcher.

It’s based on a true story set in 1692 of a “witch” called Corrag retelling her life and gives her account of the bloody Glencoe massacre to a Jacobite clergyman. It’s a beautiful book full of gorgeous natural imagery and it has influenced a lot of my writing. Below are some notes and poems I’d written in the book when I first read it.

“I understand the whisper of leaves, the embrace of tree shade and sunlight fingers in my hair and the smell of lavender and pine and wet soil far better than the false faces, strange movements and lying smiles of my fellow man.”

“How does she find words for movements and sights in the natural world that I love with all my heart but cannot describe with something as clumsy as human words?”

“It’s like blood, heart blood, how honest and raw this is.”

“The effect of horror described by one so gentle is more horrifying than the deed itself”

“Run!

The witch-called ones know this word.

know how it rolls like thunder, dips like a ravine then ends like the thud of a rock.

We are small and strong with no friends, no soldiers to protect us.

Who would want to protect a strange creature who sees beauty in the dark side of the moon?

A creature who finds comfort in the cool embrace of loch water,

who finds happiness with leaf shade and grass fingers in her hair.

So, run; the soft voice of love, the kindness of us, for others and the earth on which we stand is lost in the yelling clamour of those blind to the compassion of the ground.

We run, in time, from love, for it is dangerous for us,

us who love too deep.

But still, we love, that is what our Sight is for,

to see the beauty in our fellow man and love them the way we love the blue sky, the way we love the solar patterns on our closed eyelids. We love the echo of the earth in people.

I shall love like this one day, perhaps,

and I shall try not to run from it.”

“Can it be real?

When I am chained and unable to run he tells me ,gently,

“Come with me”

I try to love and believe in men but they make it so hard, yet I trust him.

Trust his gentle voice, his kind, tired sky eyes.

I see the Earth in him.

My heart’s voice trusts and our hearts speak to each other, our souls are bound.

He saves me and we are one,

our hearts beat in time.

He gives me my legs and tells me,

with his pale hands and sky eyes,

“Run, witch-called, run.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luke

He is depression and cynicism wrapped in charisma and a killer smile,

but he’s good really, in his blue and grey soul.

I’m not really afraid of him, not anymore.

I love him and he said I was like the sun once.

There’s an edge to him, to his knife-like smile,

a strange violence in flinty, beautiful eyes,

as sharp as his intelligence are his features.

His name means Light Giving, and there is a light in him,

No matter how buried in charcoal dust it may be,

and there is a saint with his name,

the saint of doctors and artists, isn’t that funny?

I live in hope that he will love without reserve,

Himself and others,

I am trying to explain why I shattered my ice,

Why I let emotion and feeling flood my heart,

I don’t know if he understands yet,

But I know he will.

 

Night Terrors

Once I switch the light off it begins,

The darkness breaths like a beast,

about to devour me whole.

The dark is deeper by the corner,

is that a person or a shadow standing there?

There is someone climbing up the walls!

Shifting and cracking like a spider.

A face at the window, yellow eyes and

milk skin with a gun to kill me.

A creak, just below my floor,

an old house settling to sleep?

Or murders creeping through my home?

I love the night, the smiling moon, the velvet dark of the sky,

diamond chips of the stars.

But sleep is my enemy, where my monsters rive.

Someone, tell me how to make it stop?

At my back

You hiss and snarl with your teeth on

the back of my neck, I can feel your breath,

I know you are there and you think I cannot.

I could whip around, pin you to the ground,

with my jaws and we would rip you open.

But, I do not, you need something to cling to,

It might as well be the flesh you have bloodied.