Butterflies

I want to hold your hand and see

Is it cracked and dry like mine from

Steam

Does it smell of coffee and cream

Sour milk stained cotton

Chocolate worn like a second skin

I want to strip back each layer of sweet mess and

Lunch time stress

I want more than a five minute overlapping shift

I want to wash your hair

And soak your skin

Then drain away the day’s detritus

Dance and spin and laugh and sing

With Aretha there to guide us

I want to break open the cold glass cases

And swallow the butterflies that rest there

Instead of gazing at their sleeping forms

And donating some new ones

I want to know your every nuance

I want you to want me to.

A girl who writes

Ellie Goulding had the right idea but you should be the artist

Even Wonder Woman was made of clay

You shot my heart like Artemis

While you rode away you are a modern Parthian

Aphrodite is your protégé in the Classic Pantheon

Grist got the gist with a girl who reads

But really that’s like saying a girl who breathes

When you can’t be Hermione but you can be J.K

Making hearts go manic with your magic’s the best way

When you open your mouth and your soul goes press play

My heart goes Bill and Ted no to yes way

So whether it’s books, plays, poems, songs, prose or an essay

I will praise you for laying down letters

Cos you’re making me better

At this

And when I tell my kids how I met their mother

I’ll say we were on the same page

As each other 

Shall I compare thee to SDSS J0907?

Shall I compare thee to SDSS J0907?

Since we don’t have summer days

How about an intergalactic hypervelocity star blazing through the heavens

Making gravitational waves

See this star and its mate were doing laps

While Sagittarius was earning A* grades

But its mate got a bit lax, went space Icarus

In this case the event horizon of a black hole stands in place of wax

And the binary system that filled farmer’s heads with Tatooine dreams

Went from spinning around a cosmic cistern

To slingshotting a single star out on a galactic escape mission

The bonds that had begun to chafe were smashed

Safe to say the star was free at last

And with space being so vast

I pray this brush with fate will be the last

The other was not so lucky

As black holes they tend to suck so

In scientific terms: it was completely fucked

But as this is a metaphor don’t feel sorry for that star

Just twinkle on my darling girl

And know which one you are

Train to Page

I flip the page on another half-digested poem

And wish I could join the drunks further down the carriage

Or sleep, twisted and contorted, face pressed against the glass

And make time fly as the blurry world goes past

I do not know if it is yours

In an age of typing I do not recognise your handwriting

A text would explain away the mystery

Take the myth and turn it into history

Sprawling, cramped and crawling sideways up the page

Notes with torn off paper to mark their place

My heavy eyes open and the poem is forgotten

I watch your words race each other

To the bottom