Most mornings,
I can still feel your memories crawling,
like ants,
up and over the creases in my skin,
collecting my scars like leaves.
Sometimes I can feel the strongest burrowing,
until I can feel them gnawing on the surface
of that soft grey thing we call a brain.
until I can't remember the order
of those strange sounds we call our names.

So you see,
it wan't my fault—
when you asked me the time I told you I loved you.
I was never any good at writing love poems, darling—
in the same way I was never any good at loving the right things.
Like a kid with 26 cavities loves candy,
each time you bit my neck I fell in love with the bruises.
Sometimes I still press my fingers against my collarbones
trying to re-create  your violet imprints.

Say my name one more time.
It always sounded scarlet on your tongue.
Cast your fishhook words at my shins—
until I  can feel the syllables sinking through my skin—
until I can feel myself limping forward again.

These days—
they call me unstable,
like a half-brokes table.
And I keep trying to slip things
under the too-short leg
but nothing seems to hold me up anymore.
It's been 7 months and I still shake each times someone tries to lean on me—
I used to be someone people could lean on.

Summer is coming fast and i'm still to faded from the winter to greet it with open arms.
I've fallen in love with the cold and I'm not ready for the too-bright sun
to kiss burns on my pale shoulders.
I miss the overcast days too,
like us,
uncomfortably blue.
I used to believe you loved me too—
It's 6:26 am and I'm still thinking of you.

Where the streets are dangerous
Even for the nations courageous
Crimes brutal cold heinous

All under the watching afternoon sun
They don't even try to flee and run
Calls to the media world come

Is the world now a better safer place
Is killing and blood spilling what it takes
No! God’s heart and the free it only breaks

Yet let all know that liberty will win
Let all cry we will never give in
Let all live lives of love in memory of him

I: Hypocritical Accusations of a Jealous Knave
I could have sworn the Queen winked at me as
I laid my Royal Flush on the table
Clubs
She was always the prettiest
Hers is my suit:
I imagine myself as the Jack
Who turns her from Monarchess to
Adulteress in the Royal Garden
Maybe slip her a stolen tart or two
To spite the King for he always
Outranked me
The chances of being dealt it are
Sixty four thousand, nine hundred and seventy (ish) to
One,
If my luck is running out,
Why must it be wasted
In the gaining of ethereal money?
Why not conserved for the selling of my soul to
A queen who is not ink on laminate
Card?
Or at least not here in an
Imagined Vegas or Montecarlo where
Neon, though colourless in nature,
Forms a blinding parody of a hell, hooded
In green and pink and orange and yellow or more
To pass as a heaven for
The wannabe vagrants of brat nations
Who may weep pennies for a disaster,
Remove the split onion, retake the shining knife
And bleed brass, nickel, copper and
Slaughtered tree (more ink) into
An impossible lottery
Hoping for a transfusion with
Monetary hepatitis and all from
The blind benefactors
Apply a plaster and
Reabsorb oneself into the mirror
I too am guilty of all this

II: Inside the Dreams of a Madman to Be
Checkmate.
Oh how the intellectuals do duel
Yet spill not one drop of blood;
Like the bishops of old before they were
Confined to diagonals
Who would carry clubs instead
Of blades to preserve their
Sanctity:
Keep it white, not stain it red
Or brown, dotted with congealed black;
It is a wonder to paint
But not to see or to feel
This was before the days when
Bleach could hide one’s
Breaking of the LORD’s commandments
And before the harnessed
Lightning strike
Killed the LORD himself in his creation’s (Midnight)
Eyes
And so the bleach was not needed
Yet still it sold because
Grass stained trousers:
The fruits of a hard summer afternoon’s
Labour in the sun
An atom of wasted
Childhood well spent
Could not be called a sin

III: Nonsensical Ramblings of the Recently Awakened
The eyes of an ivory cubic
Snake in two parts leer up at me
Does this mean defeat at the hands of fate?
Nonsense! I am the hand of fate
The left, disused one to be exact;
It is not chivalrous to use me
Yet I am the hand of many things
I know nothing of hands or of dice
I tell lies instead

My feet sank into the warm sand,
my skin, barley even tanned.
Catching a whiff of the salty breeze,
which bring back memories that send me to my knees.

Finally I am here,
the warm golden sand changed with the tide coming near.

The sun was laying down to rest,
proving tomorrow would be at its best.
The warm colors of summer rose once more,
baby blue, light pink, mellow yellow and cool orange lit up the shore.

The golden sand was no more,
and the dark sky came, oh what a bore.
But tomorrow I will return,
for the colors of summer is what I yearn.

Where echos bound off cavern walls
Thundering, spacious water falls
Giving power to the ember furnace
Crafters work with full earnest

Our clang of metal forming metal
Our  laughter around the stew-filled kettle
Lacboring long into the night
Carrying laterns for our light

A golden tint in the arenose air
A rich man's delight, deep in this lair
A cornucopia of jewels and stone
Picks and axes spark on the hone

Melted metals with tools of the trade
Upon the anvil are ceremoniously laid
To be shaped and formed into desires
By light of the blazing, crimson fires

Where we find sweat and danger as one
And rarely journey out into the sun
Have amity with our fellow men
And all write to loved ones with one pen

The cavern echos, the rays of gold
This ancient house of tales untold
To find this place, a costly fee
A way of  escape will never be

Struggling in the coldest of rooms. Feeling blue, saddened smiles. Empty. Bloodshot eyes and fractured bones.This is all that's left. Vacant eyes. Black eyes reddened. Everything I touch turns into stone. The whispers in my mind fade away. I kind of feel like, I am meant to be this way. That this loneliness is destiny. This sinking feeling which rushes through my veins , then leaves and trickles down like autumn has met winter and the sun has failed to shine. That the motion of nothing has given more purpose. Fading shadows and life which is breezing through my mind, through dark shadows. How do I cope? When everything goes wrong. Who do I trust? When people do wrong. Longing for purpose but closure is so far away, the hearts of those that are beating are disconnected from the smell of ignorance floating through the air, and consequences of my mind will destruct. I can't focus solely on anything anymore, and I wish I could end everything, every spec of dust which falls over the mountains and rushes down the hills, trickling through the paths of despair. I would end it all. This world has lost all meaning. I have lost track of everything.