PleaseDreamHoney

ASongBook

FlorenceOulds

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 The hair on my belly

looks like

a Christmas tree:

Somebody must be proud.

She said:

I cant look at my body

without thinking of you.

So I made myself look

like her

as self defence.

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 You are still here.

You seem like you should be

ending, run over smooth

by time.

Its said a lot

its said a lot

maybe because it must

always

be dealt with.

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This is not a poetic clich,

but why does smoke

stick in the nose

and throat!

It stinks

it stinks

I dont like it

it stinks.

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 Her body glowed

her body glowed

into

hers, and

they were so busy

neither of them wondered

if the word was

glew.

Im talking about

gay sex

here, if that wasnt clear.

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 I can smell something

that smells like

burnt caramel or

burning honey,

something sweet

being destroyed

whatever it is,

but whatever it is

you have to trust me

because Im writing this and youre

reading it

so you have to think what I tell you.

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Song about a small drawing of a frog:

Ooooh

little green friend

look at those cool legs,

she grew those herself

in a nearby swamp.

Ooooh yeah

she is not familiar

with the concept

of national debt, &

will die soon from

contaminated water.

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 I love you

to pieces

is

a holy phrase

I love you

to the moon

and back

is good,

but pieces is nicer

because I can lose little

bits of you

and we can talk about that

and it can still be OK.

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How are stones made?

Dead things and rain,

sediment, dirt, time.

How are stones made?

Throw one through my

window,

Ill bite it in two

and we can see inside

tell it like tree rings.

How are stones made?

Stone.

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 Twitter

didnt load

just now

when I clicked on an image

to expand it,

and so I just had a big

white square in the middle of a

grey background, and it was

pretty good honestly,

like not as good as normal

Twitter I dont think

but it would be nice if they could

patch it so that that happens more,

maybe.

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 I always remember to clean my glasses

lenses

(because I like to see properly,)

but I rarely

if ever

remember to clean the dust off the frames

because I cant see without them

to see they need cleaning!

Some of that dirt & grime

must be older

than some of my

very bad decisions.

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 The jumper

you made me

sits at my feet:

Is it

the shroud of Turin

or the golden fleece?

Either way,

its soft

on my toes.

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Theres a surprisingly

short list of things

you can do with bodies!

One

Two

Three

Four, Five

Enough to fill

a couple of books

AT MOST.

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Excuse me miss,

where I do

file

the female form

once Ive

filled it

out?

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 Im excited for

2038 Deliveroo chic

where we use those ungainly

backpacks to ferry

the ashes of our loved ones

about,

cycling

in teal-grey reflective

jackets

between burned out

nuclear bunkers,

desperately searching

for food.

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u!

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 The Grey King

thinks he will say his prayers after

lunch, but trips and falls

down the winding staircase, the one thats easier

for right-handers to strike down

than up.

As he falls, he thinks: I

have no heir, but at least I was very nice

to that stable boy yesterday.

The stable boy hears the news the next morning

and thinks: I

frankly couldnt give

less of a fuck.

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 I love you more

than English Literature students

love the word

eponymous.

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 The body

is looked on, felt, and

classified by inches:

Is the red mark on my neck

getting shorter

in the summer sun?

I wish I could

get away with wearing a skirt,

but maybe Ill wear culottes

and when they wonder whats wrong Ill spread

my legs

and theyll see its all fine.

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When I had a phone with less memory

by necessity I had fewer pictures,

but looked at them more than

I do now on my bigger phone.

However, when I look at them

now on this phone

I get more joy because I

remember more good things

that I had forgotten.

Which is better, really?

Jeremy Bentham,

suck a dick.

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 Murder at Black Mountain College

I was fucking sick of him,

and his art, and how he always got bigger portions

of broad beans than me, so I tried

to kill him with piano wire.

As he lay in the grass,

bleeding out his blood

in the Blue Ridge Mountains,

he said:

If I survive this,

you can expect a very damning kinetic sculpture

about this whole ordeal.

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 At this point

I wouldnt be surprised

if I really am

skipping time, sleeping through

parts and waking up elsewhere

in my life.

They say time passes quicker with age

due to units of time seeming like less

compared to the brick of time of the rest of you lived life,

and if thats true

it may bundle up and weigh hard on the fabric

of space-time,

which is what scientists

warn us about writing about.

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 Maybe

when they get me

to a coroner

I will finally

suit

makeup.

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 Something bad and wrong grew inside of me

but the doctors and GPs didnt believe me,

so I asked a surgeon friend to try cut it out but

I dont think he is a very good surgeon

as he could not find it to cut it out and

left a scalpel in me

on accident,

so now the bastard bad wrong thing

has grown conscious and is threatening and

ransoming me with the abandoned scalpel

and my insurance will not

pay his demands as they do not

believe me, so I suspect I will die when he kills me and

without a host to feed on I suspect he will die too.

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 Part I:

Last nights pretzel dust

please get off of my phone;

I need it

to call up my friends

and ask them

for drugs.

Part II:

Thought I had a headache from withdrawal

turned out it was dehydration

from eating too many

salty pretzels.

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 The grass outside my room

hasnt been cut in weeks when usually

it is trim & short and orderly, where usually I see

the sunglasses groundskeeper guy zipping past

on a ride-on, or someone with a wheelbarrow

and a sense of purpose.

Its nice tho!

I see & hear lots of different birds & the grass is

mostly daisies. Its really nice

I hope they never cut it

again!

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 Hey guys, umm

just went and got

my fortune told by this

old lady who was passing thru town,

and she told me

You will be beheaded

by famous actress, model, and singer

Emily Browning

with a sword you forged her for her birthday

the jewels on the scabbard

were a nice touch,

btw

So umm,

theres that?

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 You leave the house, die in a car crash

and arrive in the afterlife.

Your grandma is there, and she has started

making wine in the afterlife.

Every day she wears a pristine t-shirt that says

Do It For the Vine! with a small graphic

of some grapes underneath, and

every day the shirt is a different colour.

You have not

talked to her about this place yet, or how bad her wine

tastes, or the fact that Vine is over

back on Earth because you dont

think she would take the news

very well at all.

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 My body has gotten

uglier

since you last

touched it.

Theres quite a lot of yous

that could be for

but its true

for all of

you.

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 It takes talk

about a bomb threat

in the group chat

to notice the rain outside, steady

like its been threatening, to hear

sirens just before they stop,

the hospital nearby always in use

but maybe it will be especially so

tonight, the length of which is marked

by always people seesawing between

asleep and awake, working and resting, always one

in each state at least and always one in the middle,

the distance between two hands closing although I

have stopped clapping now.

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 My body is like a small

cheap family car:

nobody is happy about it

and it has seen better days

but it is all we have so now

if youll please stop shouting

at me and just get inside yes

I will take you to football

practice but I do wish youd

have some consideration

for the feelings of others

like we talked about

with Doctor Hall.

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With one bar of soap I clean you

for a year.

A keening spell.

Time runs under

the high parts of our feet

and with that moving

your hips grind us down into

dust.

A wishing you well:

All journeys must be prayed for,

no matter how routine.

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 For a long time

weve had to consider the trade-off

of where did you intend to

walk to versus where did you end

up,

and listening to

those effected we know path-straying

doesnt matter as destinations have

body counts, but still:

Is there anything more plain annoying,

in this life,

than a martyr?

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 When women sing

sweetly and kindly about

men it always confuses me,

not just because I think theyre Filth

but because its these moments of beauty,

these dangling threads these gorgeous weavings,

narratives on the common trend of fascination being the driver

not time,

but then these swellings and wanderings

and art pieces

lock with a pronoun, brush with an imagined

shoulder and it feels like the fabric is

frayed and the mirror is

broken.

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 A SMALL

PROCESSION OF

FIRE,

LIKE DUCKLINGS

IN A LINE;

YOU SUGGEST THIS IMAGE

TO ME IN BOTH WAYS.

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 Its useful to

know and have

friends and family

who are you

a year in

the future just

be careful not

to get ahead

of them.

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I know we are planning

to spend more time

in Ireland

than in Wales,

but wherever we

will be wherever

I am under rooves

with you

we will be

The New

Ladies of

Llangollen.

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 Girl in the gallery

has a cardboard box in her arms

which everyone seems weary of

but she got it checked

at the door.

Girl at the gallery

with the cardboard box

with the red and white tape

drops it

whoops!

She accidentally made

a performance instillation

and feels very embarrassed about it.

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 Dysphoric in the sun,

a knife in the sun.

I rot round a sweet thing

I nestle with sweet things

I made

this word for you

this morning

do you like it?

I rot running round

clothe shops I find

something sweet to fit

I find something nourishing

and bury it for winter, out of

a rott-ed sun.

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In spiders the female is typically larger

just take it like this I took

a potion off a shelf and

got bigger but

dont read too much into it

or even read the book at all;

watch the adaptation

I got this one down there must

be another to make me the other way,

and if there is,

how long will it take me

to get it

on the NHS?

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 A Beautiful Love Story

I say something to you which

makes me feel stupid and awful

and so I sit in the bathtub

with the door locked and the windows closed

for seven hours.

When I emerge the light is nice

and you responded to my apology in a way that

makes me feel okay so I step outside to see

that kinder evening light

and your uncle hits me

with his huge car, speeding home

to dinner after an affair.

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 Nice big yellow shirt;

you part a curtain for me.

Nice big yellow skirt;

Ill teach you a plant

name, you

make me breakfast.

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Im eating chocolate raisins in bed and you know what Im a big fucking

homosexual.

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I smashed my own neck in with a hammer

but the baby strapped to my back

didnt notice, and just kept

giggling her feet like

nothing had

happened.

After the blow my Adams apple

was peeking out of the skin

of the back of my neck,

and what that shard of cartilage

or bone

saw was that the people behind me

never believed me anyway.

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