No sleep till Moulescoomb..

It's late, and I really, really, should be in bed. I'm sat up in the dark in my pink hooded top, my comfy jeans, and the room is chilly. I'm wondering again, wondering, wondering where it all will end - this mind of mine and this beating chest, these legs of mine that just want to run. Running away from; running towards. My legs go, fast as summer, like a young girl racing to catch the ball that spins through the air in a perfect arch between her parents' fingers.

I run from, I run towards. Across the beach. Through backstreets. Beside car parks. Past bushes and streams. Up mountains. In the rain. Down the front steps. And it's the shadow of the sun on my face that tells me how alive I really am.

I don't feel eloquent. Or articulate. I am back in the world trying to carve out some bread and butter and a way to hold my head up, but... I'd always rather be at home, under the cover of night, communing with the angels and demons that fly around my head. Inside my flat can be a bit of a raucous party, with all the interesting beings that gather there to cause pandemonium and guffawing, who light candles and sing and bring stars out from under their pleated skirts as gifts for me, and occasionally, throw up on my carpet. Evenings here are never dull, that's for sure. We sit together and eat and tell each other our stories. We dance and make love. We fight. We pore over ancient manuscripts. We invent new languages. Especially when I am disciplined enough to turn off Eastenders.

And of course, they all go back to from where they came, whenever guests pop by, or when I am forced out from behind my safe walls into the real world where people stare if you bring out strange creatures, and buses crash if the haloes around you suddenly start singing. No, I go with notepad and pen, a look of efficiency on my face. But tonight I got lost around Moulescoomb in the dark, and, as I wandered around searching for a house number 113 that didn't seem to exist, and waiting to get my head kicked in, I did wonder what the fuck I was doing there. Trying to earn my crust. And that's what it is. 89p, Co-op own-brand white crust. Without butter on. The dryest thing in the Western Hemisphere.

So I come to you, my keyboard and my letters, to cheer me up, and to keep me from falling on the concrete, and the narrow, narrow roads. I pray to you, poetry, like a guardian angel, to keep me always, always, safe at the hearth, in the homes where I belong. Let the creatures guide me across the sea and ice, let the holy ones light up my face when all has gone dark, and let the ones who will never see me, keep warm in their jumpers at night, when the moon has turned her whitest cycle in the reddest sky, for the very last time.

Make Me an Acorn Bed

and I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
the dreams in which I'm dying
are the best I've ever had...

It has just rained, spray over pavements and flowers and on the beach. I am hiding behind my spotted curtains, peeping out into this blustery evening, enclosing myself in their shadow. It's only seven o' clock. But tonight I want to shut out the street and the damp air, and the wind blowing over the sea that churns at the foot of my road.
     I'm dissatisfied with the evening, and myself in it. I'm an unmoored boat, adrift in its tides. I've been looking up writing courses today; I've had more ideas for a book, the music making is still in process, tomorrow I sculpt - in short, I am not bereft of creative juice. But tonight I am scrabbling for an excuse just to turn off my light and obliterate the day. How lovely that would be, in one sense. And how tragic, in another, to ever want a day to end, to ever want to dull the senses to it so that one cannot feel so much. I can understand that desire, need even, when life bites hard on your shoulders, but today it's almost the mildness of it that's doing me in. Mildness can be deadly.
     I wish to be an animal in the woods tonight; I don't want to be human. I want to be feral, sniffing out hedgerows and following tracks to my burrow. I want the moon to guide my whiskers; I want undergrowth to be my bed sheets, my paws to do the talking. I want my nose to be my ally, and my belly to rub on the fur of another, roll amongst the fir cones. I will jump away from strangers and shun all that's human in this kingdom. Only a catkin and the most tender of branches will do. Only the soil will keep me happy.
     Else let me be a penguin, high on the ridge of the whitest world.