The cold grips our skin. We run
\naround the football pitch in a field
\nat ten pm in the middle of winter-
\nit’s dark, and the dark is playful with us,
\ngiving us shape and silhouette.
\nSome guy parks his car on the driveway
\nand we shout over;
\nhe hurries inside his house and we figure
\nwe’d better put some clothes on.
\nWe could be made of ice. We don’t care-
\nas far as we’re concerned, if aliens land
\nthis is where they will be landing,
\nand in all our glory, we dance.<\/p>\n
She lives above an old launderette.
\nThe gorgeous steam smell of the place gets
\nup our sensitive noses and in our hair.
\nHer mum plays Rush LP’s and wears
\nleather skirts and takes Prozac.
\nIn the evening we can’t go into the living room
\nin case she’s skinning up.
\nOne time her dad came into her room,
\nsat down talking to her guitar like it was a person.
\nWe laugh, though I know her life is tragic.
\nI walk by her in school and my nipples hurt;
\nI just want to touch her all the time.<\/p>\n
We try on sunglasses in a department store
\non a day out by the sea.
\nWe run out of the shop wearing them
\nstreaming with tears of laughter-
\nit gives us a hunger; we buy greasy doughnuts
\nand walk the promenade, hand in hand.
\nNobody stares.
\nWe can do no wrong. We can get stoned
\nin the woods and make out, and no-one
\nstops us. We can sleep together like release doves.
\nAt times we feel insane,<\/p>\n
so we drink our tinnies and smoke our cigarettes,
\ntalk about leaving school and working in telesales.
\nTalk about the flat we’ll have together
\nand the pets, and the music we will listen to all night-
\nwe won’t need to sleep.
\nWe’re of the darkness, our eyes need never shut-
\nand her mum falls asleep in the chair
\nin her dressing gown, or comes in pissed
\nand tripping and she carries her to bed-
\nwe have found ways of hiding from this.
\nVodka does the trick, and sex.
\nBut it’s not the way they do it in the movies.<\/p>\n
We’ve got hard hearts.
\nWe share t-shirts, jeans, spit.
\nAll the lads fancy her but she never even blinks.
\nI have her, like only I can turn her head
\nand I’m mad with it.
\nWe drink wine through straws by the woods
\nin the dark. We are on a higher plane.
\nHer eyes are blue like a husky.
\nHer pupils are always tiny.
\nHer skin is so supple and firm-
\nshe’s a wild creature, and I won’t tame her-
\nher heart beats double time when sleeping;
\nI don’t know what I’m doing with her.<\/p>\n
She writes me letters, I read them in bed.
\nShe says she’s crying, says she’s lonely.
\nSays she had to put her mum to bed again.
\nSays she’s not going to school anymore,
\nthey’ll have to make her, and all that I see
\nare the highlighted words in the last paragraph-
\nplease baby always love me. <\/p>\n
Heart and Soul<\/strong> In your wife’s tired body, strange music accumulates, Play<\/strong><\/p>\n I know the hunger will come In the room next door our children and playing with their food. The hunger will come and it will and my soul is contemplating defeat- There are no stars tonight, only rain. Hunger Pangs<\/strong><\/p>\n The girls try to cut into their arms with blunt knives- ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong> The girls try to cut into their arms with blunt knives- By Melissa Lee-Houghton.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFor Ian Curtis<\/em><\/p>\n
\na clawing of the bed-sheets,
\none foot over the side of the bed and cold;
\nfeeling for monsters while you sleep. You can’t
\nhold her now, the waxwork with too much make-up on-
\na broken heart from waiting in the kitchen too long,
\nsweeping and mopping up. Inside, your blood
\nwas slippery, black, lacking musicality. The thud
\nof your heart rocked your brain in your box room
\nwhere you wrote your best lyrics. In all that dark you wore
\nsunglasses in winter, nobody owned you.
\nYou wanted the growl of cheap guitars
\nand a bassline to hang yourself on. You wanted to screw
\nthe audience, all of them, and so you ripped it up-
\ncarnal hysteria like death-throes
\nguitar strings searing like whips. And then pie and chips for tea
\nat a table with a chequered cloth. And the baby wants affection
\nfor breakfast and you don’t want to wake up again.
\nThe one you love is a thousand miles away
\nputting her earrings in at the mirror and smiling,
\nthe thought of your naked body and sex that almost hurt,
\nholding onto herself. Everyone believes in you.
\nYou’re an essential component. You’re Music.
\nYou eat your wife’s meals and spit out pound coins.
\nPennies slip through your fingers and the baby needs nappies-
\nWhere will it end? You ask yourself that question each night;
\nyou already know. For your true love you turn up your collar
\nand walk in the snow, push the pram to the park
\nwhere you want the world to end. You can’t give her what you promised,
\nyou can’t give any of them what you promised.
\nThe red brick house on the red brick road
\nwith the draught under the back door that used to get into your bed at night,
\nstop your heart. She would wake next to you, or dream of waking next to you,
\nput a hand on your chest, (she’s smiling
\nand you’re repulsed by the smell of her breath, the curve of her hip)-
\nyou want long black hair, not dirty blonde- you want guilt and envy,
\nsurrender, and the pure psychology of being
\nin her supple skin. What will they do with your music?
\nWhat will they do with your songs? Eat you alive, they’ll
\neat you alive. You’ll never have grey hair or loose teeth;
\nyour dead skin and dust will stay in that house for a decade.
\nShe’ll breathe you in and you’ll make her sneeze.
\nThe new guy will choke on you and you will haunt him.
\nHe has heard all your albums. He dreamed of you of late, he dreamt that you put your fist
\nthrough the bedroom window and he had to dress the lacerations,
\nyour eyes rolling, singing from the grave holy and old-
\none will burn…
\nGravity is a son-of-a-bitch. I know manic depressives
\nthat have suffered more and survived. I’ve known schizophrenics
\nand I have come back from the dead with a handful of your hair.
\nDown there, you’re a number. You’re still epileptic, that’s your punishment
\nthat’s what they dished out for your abandoning them,
\na mouth full of chewed glass and your hands bunched in fists
\nand your body hanging like a block of wood being beaten
\nand your soul still spilling out of the front door
\nand rolling down the street in a panic of her screams;
\nlucid, ugly, piercing screams until there’s no sound,
\njust mouthing help me-
\nLove dug your grave.
\nLove churned the soil, loosened the worms.
\nLove fed your baby.
\nLove sold your records.
\nYou didn’t have enough love.
\nYou didn’t have enough.<\/p>\n
\nand it will break you. You have wet dreams
\nbecause I won’t play.
\nThis is the fourth poem I have ever written in which I will
\nuse the word sterile. We don’t need protection.
\nWe just need faith,
\nsome kind of angel.<\/p>\n
\nThey are waiting for me to snap.
\nThey don’t know that the real politics in this house
\nare going on right now
\nin an empty, dark room with a cold, empty bed
\nwhere poltergeists are howling noiselessly
\nswinging from the lampshades,
\nmad for us.<\/p>\n
\ndefine you. It was there before, when we met,
\nwhen even forests weren’t too big for us.
\nI tell you I don’t care if they eat they won’t starve.
\nYou, on the other hand, are dying in a way nobody can see,
\nforever. You’re losing all your best years.
\nIt’s hard to bear witness to that, when in fact
\nI can’t, can’t be without you<\/p>\n
\nI’m not worldly- I have been down on my knees for you,
\nI have begged.<\/p>\n
\nI can’t tune into the way you make me feel.
\nI have no clue when you will tire of me holding your head at night
\nstill as salt and mortar,
\nno clue when you will tire of me and
\ntwist my arm-
\nand break.<\/p>\n
\nSunita is eating out of the food disposal.
\nThey get up and run to the bathroom, scrambling
\npast each other to be the first.
\nI look at my plate and I feel guilty for my hunger pangs and
\nSunita has clods of food in her soft, dumpy hands-
\nwhen they realise they have to drag her
\non her behind, down the corridor, her big mammal laugh
\nbooming. This madness in me, it is of a timbre
\nand a texture that leaves my emotions emaciated.
\nI can’t cry; these girls are beautiful and dying-
\nI can’t cry; nobody is going to save me. Not here.
\nThe sunsets are like nothing else, they move me to tears-
\nthough I watch from my reinforced window; no-one cares
\nabout the fucking sun.
\nWhen it’s dark, no-one’s sorry-
\ntrees lash the windows like we’re Wuthering Heights
\nand the gale force winds don’t mean nothing at all;
\nthey’re no match for thirteen girls
\nwho can handle the sight of blood
\nand can and will fly out into the night.<\/p>\n![\"melissaleehoughton\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/melissaleehoughton.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nMelissa Lee-Houghton<\/strong>‘s first collection A Body Made of You<\/em> was released in April 2011 by Penned in the Margins<\/em>. Her work has been published in many literary magazines, including Tears in the Fence, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review<\/em> and Succour<\/em>, and has work upcoming in La Reata and The Reader<\/em>. She writes regularly for The Short Review<\/em> and has contributed to a number of anthologies, most recently Starry Rhymes by Read This Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/melissaleehoughton-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nSunita is eating out of the food disposal.
\nThey get up and run to the bathroom, scrambling
\npast each other to be the first.
\nI look at my plate and I feel guilty for my hunger pangs and
\nSunita has clods of food in her soft, dumpy hands-
\nwhen they realise they have to drag her
\non her behind, down the corridor, her big mammal laugh
\nbooming. <\/p>\n