A manual for being human

Exit womb

enter hospital room

feed of your mums breast

grow big and strong

play and learn

have an active imagination

listen to the voice that guides you

and makes the most sense

write your story present tense

find beauty in what you like to do

it’s that simple

Make your smile into dimples

don’t focus on looks

it’s your soul being tempered

by life’s fires

give it what it wants

you can change the narrative even if it’s the font

remember people love you even if life gets in the way

be a compassionate friend to yourself first

Self isolation sleeping beauty

Sleeping on a bed 
waiting for the world to stop it’s lockdown
you are a vision of beauty
waiting for this pandemic pandemonium to cease 
you didn’t eat a poisoned apple 
you just sleep,
waiting for the apocalypse 
or a prince’s lips to kiss
oxygen is hard to come by
and we can’t let you go 
you sleep, waiting for the virus to stop 
we give you a shot
of antibiotics. 

The nurses and doctors know
that you a few days left to show
whether you’ll recover 
your life and find a lover.

But this life is cruel and unfair
we love you
but you look back at us with a blank stare…

Ancestor’s song

These ashes

this dust,

this earth

from where I emerged

this rain

this pain

the blood surges

in my veins

these hands outstretched towards the sky

could be branches of trees

life is better taught when it dances

to music

through bodies through knees

whether we can hear the music or not

we dance to the tunes of our ancestors

their dreams beat in our chests

and bless our minds and souls

sometimes I think their ghosts watch on

or are reincarnated into our songs.

The ghost child of the man in the asylum

In side the beaten white walls of an mental institution

where people go to be uprooted from their delusions

Sat a man his hand outstretched as if holding hands with the dark

No spark to light his way, only the tragic marks his way

he used to play childish games by himself

look they say where is his mental health?

has it left him altogether why does his play childish games

he would call a name on the wind

for the child he lost unbeknown to them

Tilly or Matilda the ghost of a child of six

who he held in his arms before he was sick

she swallowed her tongue in an epileptic fit

but before then were eye spy and guessing games

before then were pin the tale on the donkey and blind mans buff

I guess we are all in a way sheltering memories like ghosts

In the places in the heart we hide

which we can never move away from no matter how we stride

or how many steps we take

life is sometimes an evil fate.

To die at sixteen

All your dreams never started

dearly departed

That’s how I felt

Kneeling on a hospital floor praying to you

to save my life

you are my goddess of wisdom

my teeth going rotten

like the dreams I had as a child

it’s heart wrenching

my parents said my psychosis

was a bereavement

the life intended, lost

I had to be mended there would be a cost

goddess of the universe, girl with many faces

I have been through a war with myself

but my mental health

is the thing I can never get back

but sometimes their are cracks of light through the wall

I know the goddess understands us all.

Petals

The petals which open

the heart awoken

then begin to decay

the love is the same love

as I had first

leaves me cursed

and yet singularly its all I have

a smash and grab

god singular

going for the jugular

a vampire

who’s name has no meaning

blood wine

and bread flesh

can’t contain

the rain that falls

Or the sun that shines

but from your diamond tears

I form mine.

The villain

The villain

I am so nasty

people stand aghast

I am so bad

you feel a draft

on a summers day

murderous glances pave the way

I am sick, I am ill

babe with every hero it’s a battle of wills

I am so abrasive

I am like invasive surgery

I am so evil I burn bibles and call it purgatory

the devil herself could learn from me

I want pounds of flesh so burn with me

I am deathly shade

stalking the sun

I am the nightmare

in the night you run

I am evil

I told you to die

but chances are you’re petrified

I am so dishevelled

I make Darth Sidious look sprightly

Sith Lords can’t fight me

With just one flick of my fingers

and death lingers

I am psychologically deranged

so psychopathically strange

you wondered if I was ever sane

I just got back from Frankenstein’s lab

I killed the hulk yes I am that strong and bad

I framed Sherlock Holmes

and made him into an heroin addict

cause all my plays our that strategic

I even cheat death

in fact I own Azrael’s blade

I am villain, the one you crave.

Here lies love

The angels cast into the fire

the saviour on a cross his soul hangs by the wire

hung on a tree for them to see

the angels die and so sleep

They creep into children’s daydreams.

Reincarnated as a hawk like man

It’s his fate to seek the goddess before it’s too late

to bring her back to the kaleidoscopic fold

but he will die alone when he gets old

ghosts are the only ones who believe

they will wait for his soul to be made free

the key to the universe is strength through love

but his mortal coil is the oil which ignites

it’s his fate…