I was never going to be that person,
you know, the one tightly closed like a rosebud
pushing away all signs of blooming
the gloomy defeatist drenched in the blood
of the past like an English economy booming

I was never going to be that person, I decided
at eighteen, black jeans, idealistic and slightly misguided
I never understood the funny commitment-phobe trope on TV
not even when I got into poetry
and saw someone language fantastic weave webs of words about feeling dead
I could never get my head around it

I was going to be passionate and opportunistic forever
feeling everything to the very core of my being
I figured detachment was something that they felt
when they decided somehow to give up believing
and that pushing someone away was a choice
unearthed by some sudden urge to fly
and if you don't give fear a voice
it can't swell and crash and block out your sky

But you don't just stop seeing good in the world
and it starts innocuous, easily dismissed
they don't like me, he didn't call back
okay, move on, you won't be missed
They don't mean to hurt you and you know that
but you become the person who doesn't call back
It happens like that, careless encounters that you couldn't care less about,
in fact you prefer it this way, never stay over,
never let anyone stay over, always play the game
and always win, never care much, never care enough
It's what everyone's doing, it's meant to be fun, and love,
well, what is love anymore?
You don't know. And that's when you lie to yourself at night
because half of your bed is cold and the places you go,
they get old, and people finding excuses to leave
leaves you unable to stay awake or sleep.

So I became that person.
I didn't mean to, it weaves between vague memories not important enough to catch a hold of you for a second,
and apathy is easier than fear and loathing I reckon
and second guessing is second nature
I was a creature of habit who accepted nothing greater
but my walls had blocked out fear and anxiety;
no waves of panic nor joy could break the fortress in me.

I became the tightly closed rosebud,
and when I met you I still was
when your expectations are on the floor, you don't feel worthy of anything more
So it was fun at first,
with no expectations came freedom,
my nerves quelled by a casual reassurance that this would lead to nothing better or worse,
calmed by my own demons.
And then you said that you loved me.

And the walls didn't immediately crumble,
and my eighteen year old self would've grumbled
and not understood me at all
And the fear raged like a tidal wave over my sky and around me
and I boxed myself in and bricked myself up
Immune to the pain and the joy that had found me.

You reached through the sea and you banged on the walls and you screamed and you screamed and you screamed,
and I could only love you from a distance,
or else drown in the storm I'd dreamed into existence.
I placed my hands against the walls and felt you on the other side,
I thought you'd have gone by now,
left on an outgoing tide,
but you still said that you loved me.

I couldn't face the storm alone so I shut it out and shut myself down
but it hadn't swept you away and you clearly weren't afraid to drown.
How anyone could cling to walls like that I never understood,
but I started to build a door from bits of old driftwood,
You told me from the outside that it wasn't as bad as it seemed,
the storm was quieting a little and the horizon gleamed
I built that door with everything that I had, gluing together bruised and barkless branches
working towards a time where we could stand together on the threshold, facing the whirling ocean
a time where I could turn to see that the door was not still broken.

Opening up that driftwood door was like waking up from a dream,
you stood there smiling, relief painted across your weather beaten face, seawater still dripping from your hair,
and the threshold was mine to step across,
that little step toward solace, scary storm be ******;
and we stood together, facing the ocean.
It wasn't whirling but reflecting sunlight for the first time since the walls went up,
and I turned to you and said
I love you.
And then I started blooming.

I am a fortress.
I have withstood wars that should have broken me.

Burned down and decimated by the mindless,
I rise up from the ashes.
I stand with my body, eternally.

I am strong.
My thighs are battle grounds trodden down three times round
and they're blooming new flowers,
mending from those who fought over them far too long,
my thighs have super powers.

I am soft and sultry sweet,
full of vulnerabilities.
Nature proves if anything that this will never make me weak.
My eyes once snuffed out are blazing brilliant brightly now,
rivers of tears have been filled in,
replaced by peaches and cream and skin.

My arms are solid protective forces,
my hands, tangible whispering caresses.
I wear my broken bits on my *******,
puffed out chest with pride,
for I have nothing to hide.

My feet take me to and from all the places I've ever gone,
and my mind,
my mind, it tries. It tries so ******* hard,
and my heart cares so much that it shows
in every scar and battle wound,
in every mark that was ever taken as a flaw by boys who never saw
that without the storms I wouldn't glow the way that I glow,
every boy who told me to 'go with the flow'
like I couldn't learn a **** thing for myself.

Still, the lessons people preached did teach me a thing or two,
just not what they usually intended,
my face doesn't face up to face value,
belief is most beautiful when suspended.
My eyes see lies better than my thighs do,
yet resilience sees to it that both are mended,
but if there's anything I've ever learned that's true,
you should never leave anything open-ended

Your eyes once light and holy galaxies to me
look at me now like voids upon which I endlessly
search for stars,

Like the nights we spent smoking our last cigarettes
stars, like the moles on your skin that I traced in every last breath before we slept
stars, as vast and expansive as all the secrets we shared with our mouths and then kept
stars, that dot the sky which I lie underneath
when I had you, and then when you left.

I didn't mean to beam up at you like sunlight without remembering to filter through the clouds first
too overwhelming for those eyes that used to shine back unafraid and clear like glass
I didn't mean to make those eyes hurt

And I knew before that sunny days don't last forever
and I knew before that though you were lost in me, you'd find your way out someday,
that I was your city and you'd wander my streets without any guarantee that you'd stay,
but all the while I hoped that us being together
meant something greater than metaphors about cities and weather.

You don't understand how important it was just to be held by you,
how just your heartbeat could make me feel like one of the lucky few
who managed to really love someone
and be loved by them too.
And as I wrap myself in the photo-negatives of our memories I wonder why it is that
you no longer see these things like I do.

I never meant to create friction, but I set myself on fire anyway
just to give you warmth when you weren't cold,
just in the hope that when we were old and twofold
we'd be timeless.
I never understood that sewing our hearts together would make such a mess when you tore yours away,
but you took the stitching with you, and when I tried to make you stay
you ripped my heart in half too,
and you didn't even mean to.

So now I'm better suited to darkness
but all I can think about are those eyes, those eyes I'm so accustomed to
void of light that once gleamed through
every time you smiled that smile, meant only for me
eyes now dark, unlike mine that shine with tears clear like glass
with the salty residue of fear you leave every time you say goodbye to me
I never really knew it would feel so empty.

Maybe that's why I can't stand daylight, now
when it burns through my windows and doors.
I can't bear to be reminded of your smile
when it's not for me anymore.

Winter came early last year, cleansing people
of people
as soon as she could.
She was late this year, finally
icy winds have settled in
but she spent so long sitting and clinging
to summer's warm hands.
The waiting made my head spin, summer's other
crooning lovers stayed standing
far too long, as I prayed for sterile snows to snap
the swooning songs in half
and hollow them out for spring
so that I, perhaps, could join in.

Sleepy sickly summer thronged thickly around me
dragging hazily onwards
setting nothing forwards but my
happy heart rate,
full to bloating with hapless hope
— infatuated and ill with hope —
that I too would ripen on orchard walks
into a round and inviting apple tree
instead of oozing sap sickly, overzealously setting
roots in the wrong soil,
while winter, she let me toil on, clutching at s'mores with clammy summer hands, sick with excitement and marshmallows,
sick with the image of his face
when, like a grave,
he lay under me
and she refused to freeze the ground beneath
as though I actually I stood a chance.

But nothing grew and nothing changed
except my un-
happy heart rate.
The drought left me
without a hope in the world that I too, could learn how to play,
because he hid the rules from me
and like a schoolboy singing nursery rhymes relentlessly
he teased me senseless, then seized my heart for all to see
he adored me, then ignored me
and I clawed for disease, no matter the reach
I saw myself as he saw me

My rosy ballooning cheeks
were on the verge
of prematurely bursting and fading away to the apathy
of oxygen-starved grey skin;
rebirth still impossible with every sweltering day
that I got locked in.

I fell into a grave
sleep, and heard him say,
in a dream, in all his gleam,
'We were too sick for love, either way'
But now, I am awake,
Winter woke me, came to her senses and washed summer away
she said, ‘you can make this your day,
the air is cold and you are golden,
don’t be satisfied with all this grey’,
and I knew then,
that he had nothing to do with summer,
some are just too sick to stay.

It's been light years since my heart strings
were touched, gently plucked
in artfully arranged cacophonies of
'I love you' and
'Come closer' and, whispering,
'baby'
sweetly, in his waning symphony.

The fade-out drags at my feet,
while I move through moments now, slowed down,
talking loud,
as though words are my only means to stretch moments out.
These are the 4am secrets I cling to most,
sunlit smokescreen memories of a spaceman still haunting me, you see
no matter how loudly I speak
smaller volumes are still volumes
and his whispers were still words
like 'baby', hurtling through moment after moment
and I wonder why it still hurts.

An asteroid of his voice ricochets through endless stretches of space
and solar flares only spit flashes of his face until even supermassive black holes seem comforting,
perhaps they would transport me to a different dimension of blanket fort dreams
where I am held again, amongst whispers wistfully meant
and this time I don't forget to contain all the stars in my eyes,
cocooned in second chances on Solaris,
the planet where lost loves come to life,
where droves of the lovesick go to die.

I couldn't escape past the moon forever
but ****, I could still crash land whenever
These unearthly dreams created space for me
and in that space, I found my sanctuary
realising that with all the space that I need
the spaceman no longer had a hold on my dreams.

See, love was soaring music, elevation, no metre,
just levitation, almost timeless, but it teetered
on the finish line
to be stopped too soon by a volume dial and a frown,
I bottled up from bottle to cup and kept my voice down
but time has a way of showing you
that shutting people out isn’t profound,
but the absence of sound.

Endings quietened my universe, but
I stopped believing in the relief of silence
and since,
I have become a crushing crescendo,
I think even the cosmos could hear me screaming.
The volume turns up and I burn and I glow
feasting on feelings, wasted on whispers
I'll break waves against wistfulness,
Fling fists against fitfulness,
the spaceman can fight me for all he's worth,
I will not fade out.

contemplations of an angsty agnostic
otherwise known as the subtitle to my lengthy biopic
or the fumbling intellectual journey
the endless search to find
the divine reality behind,
to trace, pinpoint exactly what lies
at the center of the cosmos
at the crucified heart of all humankind
some days i feel there is no God
no chance of a higher power
i'm resigned to spewing cliched aphorisms as nihilistic as Schopenhauer
fragmented theories and meditations on life
consuming my thoughts and flooding my mind
ideas tessellate and twist as i'm crumbling, stumbling to try and make sense of all this
i find
the existential condition that burdens the shoulders of the wonder filled kids
from the blinkered blues of the beats
to the hopeful hedonism of the hippies
and the time tick ticks
regardless of the passing ecstasy of our dream-filled kicks
i feel there must be something more than this.
absurdity has the tendency to consume the very core of me
ultimately, does that not make me more free?
like Sisyphus, i stagnate
repetitive routines threaten to enchain me
but i believe i know the path i'm on
and i have to know it will save me
we live in times
of overwhelming, reeling uncertainty
is it true that one day the gleaming, spinning light will find me?

I've been putting up walls but they're made of glass
and loading up on wooden guns
sprinting away from the prospect of living in the past
but armouring myself with nothing at all

I decided the best thing that I could do
is walk around like I'm bulletproof

but my biggest fear, while I stand tall
is that you never loved me at all

this town is filled with our old ghosts
so hit me with another dose

of haunted places with somebody new
nostalgia in my eyes like morning dew

because I hate myself for missing you,
but I really do.