fourteen off one hundred
yet sick as wee girl
on the couch
silhouetted by television,
enveloped in your mothers wings.

dear gran,



I'm sat here on my couch watching the late film on bbc1 and thinking about all the Saturday nights i used to come and stay at your house and watch the late film on bbc 1. We never liked comedies, and you would absolutely bloody hate the one I'm watching right now.



Thank you for constantly berating me for giving up on school - i think you were proud that i stuck in at uni this time. I had this fantasy that you would be there at my graduation, but as you lie right now in obscenity, on a dull white hospital bed, i know that this will never be. I thought i had enough time, that tomorrow was always an option, i wish i hadn't been so naïve.


I can't imagine how scared and alone you feel right now, knowing that in the next few days you are going to die - I just wish i could do something, i wish i had done more before now.


I love you Gran, I'm so, so sorry i took you for granted these last few years. I wish to God you didn't have to go.


All  my love
Stewarty xxx

singer man
do your worst
sing a song
make it hurt.

Half asleep
on a train quarter full,
i remember how you cried on my shoulder
from Queen St. Station
all the way to Alloa.
Clasped my hand deep into yours,
tilted head on my chest,
tears dissolving my shirt;
my armour,
fattening my regular heart.

A mid-day garden nap
Invites near-forgotten sunlit dreams.
Lonely communion of nostalgia
before dark, afternoon still
triumphant in fond memory.
Past fear of loss -
Outgrown.
Too lush and tall
         (the grass of our refrain)
to let the darkness in.

All the very best of us
             String ourselves up for love.

Times decrepit old legs,
stalking a mind
uneasy and frought with regret.
It can not overtake
with thighs bloody and sinews stretched:
a race that never starts
or ends.
it stands still,
glaring anxiously
at my darkest mistake.

I remember the time you saw me in bootcut jeans and laughed your fucking head off :)

in this slow-quick turn
of fireworks, whiskey and coal
i am born once more
i can shine in towers of light
and crush the confines of love
that hold me here
rage beyond the mightiest guns
that kill my bedtime
fuck you and every sensible, modest thought
this year i wish not to be caught
in a net of regret.