Friday night

My street's ablaze with colour at the moment. The hydrangeas two doors up have sat, crisp and mottled for months, like old maids perched by the side of the road. Now, suddenly they've erupted into pink, purple and blue life, turning into something resembling a mild acid trip.

Seeing hydrangeas seems to short circuit something in my brain, sending me into a peculiar kind of rapture. They remind me of my Grandma more than any other flower. One glimpse of them takes me back to her garden again, and to her, brown skirt to her knees, hair firmly in place, picking a handful of peas or mint. There she appears, sturdy and loving, in her small, perfectly kept patch of green at Southview.

I'm not great at understanding the anatomy of things, at labels and the naming of parts, at decipherable wholes and the bits that make them up. I generally have a much more impressionistic experience of life. So it took me almost 34 years to learn that the flower I felt so ardently about was even called a hydrangea.

But I knew how those flowers made me feel; I knew the quality of the air in those summer days when I played on the wall. Every single day for the last two years I've touched the hydrangeas growing on my street, lightly, with my fingertips, as I've passed. And been immediately back there again.

Tonight, I walked home on the other side of the street, feeling like the wind was blowing me down towards the sea, pushing me out into a night where seagulls gather in a sky lit by boats and stars. And I wondered about all the flowers on my street; I wondered how come they are not made of blood, as we are, but of something different. Because our lives are not so dissimilar, and our beginning and our end all converge at the same place.

A rose feels the force of nature in its petals, trembles with the weight of the rain. It stretches its stalk away from the muddy earth, towards the sunlight. Tonight, I imagined every flower, every leaf trickling sap. I imagined salt water falling down from each one, red blood spotting the pavement, and a curious wet emerging from in between each petal. I imagined mucus-streaked stalks. The liquid of life washing across flowerbeds, over walls, out onto the empty grey pavement.

On a night like tonight, how I wished they would, how I wished the flowers would do their blood-letting and their weeping, their loving and mating, and I could walk through their rivers of their living and growth and disintegration.

Perhaps then I could finally see manifested the desire that's pumping through the veins of this world, through me, seeping out through my pores, winding through the channels of my mind, enveloping my tendons.

Otherwise, that which fuels everything that we do, the very axis on which this planet turns, remains as invisible as the air we suck on. We can almost pretend it doesn't exist, and that the world can be containable, reasonable somehow.

But I can feel it in the wind that's rattling my windows, in the heat of this evening, in the hum of night-time. It's everywhere I look. And it's in my heart, tinkling like that empty beer can rolling past my window. I am trembling with the force of what makes me, and will break me every time.

New petals generate, old ones die, and I proliferate. And if you think I'm being over the top, if you doubt it, look out of the corner of your eye and you'll spot it, always, sitting there in your living-room, drinking your coffee, planning your next move.

I don't know what to do with all this desire inside. It's as strong as that sea out there and as fragile as those petals. Me. Silly me. Messy, bloody, somehow growing. The world never did come to terms with itself, did it? And nor, yet, have I.

honey off the razor's edge

It's hard to accept that what moves me in life isn't always what I like to think it is. Yes, the birds and the starlight and the stretches of riverbeds in Summer, the moon and the edges of hats worn by old ladies on the number 49 bus - these joys are all very acceptable to me.

     But what of all the things that go bump in the night, that step into my doorway with a stranger light? What of the things that aren't supposed to stir up joy in my soul, like the sight of blood, the edge of terror, the unfolding of betrayal, the foulest weather? I thought those days were done, but when I look in the mirror I see a desire which knows no bounds, and is uncomplicated by morals or reason or sense. Desire finds me at every turn, under every shade and nook it hides, waiting for its days to come. And so what move me are the strangest things, sometimes the very things which destroy me, that will cause me pain. And self-control will have the upper hand in practice, and kindness will play its part too. But I cannot forget the never-ending seeking of endless pleasure and torment that governs my heart, and not look all surprised when the great axe falls, not look shocked when the next bloody bull that they drag out of the ring has my name on it.

     I said I'd left Lorca behind, that I wasn't interested in duende anymore. I wasn't fussed about watching Pete Doherty on TV or reading about the lives of doomed poets. Instead, I open up to wilderness skylines and tall buildings. I walk the line. I tread in honest communication and self-respect. I behave like an adult. Most of the time. But appearances can be deceptive, and I was never a simple girl, life never was built upon solid ground but on rocks and water and broken glass and fire. I remember to howl. There is nothing else for it, if this world isn't to be one of endless adultery and murder. But I will not squash the devil in me. She's way too pretty. Lick the honey off the razor's edge (but there's no running home to Mummy). Taste the sweetness; wreck the car (it fell down the hillside before I could reach it). Worship those demons in my head. So tell me a story I've never heard before. Go on; tell it me. I know I'd die for a poetic sensibility, whether it's foolish or not, I know I'd spread my legs for the devil himself if he were to show me a glimpse of reality. Maybe I'm just some kind of cosmic slut, whoring myself out to the wind and the rain. Maybe I just never learnt any manners (though I was a well brought up girl). Maybe I was only meant to live in graveyards, or to sleep with the dead. Show me a knife mark, a naked ambition, tinkle cups at dawn, reveal a little perversion, wipe across continents with your muddy fingers. I'm so sweet inside I'm choking up on it, I'm so sweet inside, it's pure depravity.