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eyes
    and through the gaps
    I’d sought your silhouette.
    I’d given up my mind for you.
    We did what all our kind would do.
     
    You sat beside me, finding new
    ways to look away.
    You kissed me. It was lighter fuel.
    It burnt the night away.
    And when I took my eyes off you
    I saw that it was day.  

India
    It was quite funny really.
    We sat round the kitchen table,
    a sisterhood,
    drinking vermouth.
     
    I opened the window,
    blew my smoke into the night,
    passionately drunk.
    In love with two women and playing charming as hard as I could.
     
    At some point
    I asked you to carve your name into the flesh of my arm
    with the blade of a Stanley knife.
     
    You asked was I sure.
    I said yes I was.
    Looked at you and nodded deeply.
    You were excited
    in the way that you get
    when things are unusual.
    And so you pressed the blade in and you drew blood
    and it hurt like everything hurt with you.
     
    I smiled winningly
    and bled everywhere.
     
    The other woman I was in love with
    filled my open wound with ink
    and together
    you rubbed fag ash into the bleeding letters.
    Smiling at each other.
    And at me.
     
    I didn’t realise it would last forever.
     
    Now I wear your name in capitals across my right arm
    and people think I found myself in Goa.

Remembering the way you kissed me once
    You were driving, my legs were across your lap.
    I rolled your cigarettes while you rubbed your hand over my ankles,
    and picked my foot up by the sole
    to kiss in between my toes with your tongue
    and I giggled as if I was a beautiful girl.
     
    And as you sucked my toes and drove the car,
    I dared myself to focus on the side of your face.
     
    In other cars, on other roads, in other towns,
    I’m sure other lovers were glancing sideways,
    smiling like morons, pushing their thighs down into their seats,
    but none had the stop of blood,
    the fall and crush and emptying that I had, right then.

Some couple
    There’s always some couple
    in ravenous stages of loving
    just when we’ve argued ourselves into cunts.
     
    We’ll be fuming,
    walking along, saying nothing,
    when suddenly,
    here they come, skipping in front–
     
    whispering,
    smiling,
    tickling,
    cooing,
     
    it makes me feel
    empty
    and angry
    and dead.
     
    But when I look at you
    silently screwing
     
    I know
    I’d much rather
    have this love instead.

The old dogs who fought so well
    It struck me that morning. I was in Ireland, terrified in a tiny tent.
    Outside, a storm was gathering gale force and I was going out of my mind with the guilt.
    The drugs had made a monster out of my face.
    In my head I was listening to Chopin and I was reading Joyce and I was in love with them for being so human and for saying it all so well.
    I felt myself shrinking and desperate and worthless and I wondered if they ever felt like the most alone and despicable people in all of Poland, or Paris, or Dublin, or the World.
    I could see him, Chopin – thin and pale at his piano stool, sicker every day, watching his hands getting older.
    I could see Joyce, tearful behind his eyepatch – throwing himself into it in a room as dark as wet earth and I smiled to myself, and stopped trying to sleep.
    The wind was still making an orchestra out of the tent. But it wasn’t a requiem anymore.
    Three mornings later, I woke up and reached for one of the books by the bed.
    It was Bukowski. I opened him at random and read a poem I’d not read before – it was called How To Be A Great Writer and in it he said:
     
    remember the old dogs
    who fought so well:
    Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
     
    if you think they didn’t go crazy
    in tiny rooms
    just like you’re doing now
     
    without women
    without food
    without hope
    then you’re not ready
     
     
     
    And I laughed out loud. Because it’s always the way – when you’re alone and feeling like you could jump off the edge of the world,
    that’s when they find you and tell you they all went through the same thing.
    And it makes you feel special