A man sat on the bench next to me
We wedge ourselves in the armrest
with empty seats to our rights
A bottle of ***** in his hand,
A juicebox in mine
Our eyes tunnel onto the empty space
that envelopes this busy street
in possessed silence as though
we were sat in church pews,
facing the altar,
affixed in prayer.
Jul 7, 2024
Jul 7, 2024 at 4:48 PM UTC
as if a breathe of fresh air
I saw you on the olive stream
a haze of bendy trunks and quiet
not knowing where the roots will cling,
but it travels the soil nonetheless
now, to hold you at dusk and dawn,
in the gaps between the tree crowns,
a robust engine in a tender, muted forest
I hum to the echo of a whispering twitch
and as you run from edge to edge
I wait for you at the center
Oct 15, 2023
Oct 15, 2023 at 12:23 AM UTC
i said you think you're invincible,
mind is a machine you said, it does
not need rest yet with all
this labour you still
reside in feeble fissured skin
features lacking in outline the
eyes that soak pleading excuses
for delirium to do more labour
of correcting what is
faulty the machine does not
function when it is faulty
but you believe, you said,
if it runs for long enough
it will fix the bugs somewhere between
the night and the morning
then i see it and i see you
fretting down the wires
gusting the leaking chip, i know
you will scope the circuit again
so i leave a trail for you to follow
but when you picked them back up,
you said you are tired
of cleaning up after me,
i said i think you are tired
Mar 8, 2022
Mar 8, 2022 at 3:18 AM UTC
you're in the final rest
before the ground swallows you back
whole, in pieces
stacked on top of yourself,
you,
a huddle as dense as your bones are hollow
a refuge for bugs that fear the light
a lesson for curious hands
weeds inter-stitch between the tiny gaps that you allow
they may be the last life you care to pierce your skin
and the next life that proudly takes over
you,
you cannot give without also being taken
your final rest, so sure and surely uncertain
it is yours, before the bugs come to feast for the last time
yours, before the curious hands set you ablaze
to help them see better at night
it is yours,
as it is a space that you occupy
May 16, 2021
May 16, 2021 at 6:49 PM UTC
coddled in this blanket fort, for now
to be contained is to feel bigger than space
fragile fabric slowly fraying at the seams-
meant to protect me, for now
the sun makes it hard sometimes—suddenly,
it's a hug that feels too tight, too warm
nauseous of the collective breathe
that fools itself to being one
a.r.
Apr 2, 2021
Apr 2, 2021 at 6:42 PM UTC
Keys misplaced from billions of pockets—
open the rusty lockets
piling under bridges;
rockets,
for the palm wide enough to hold them
Bulging eyes are folded
in a chamber slowly dimming like bruises;
black and white,
backs against the walls,
coating palates in dry, brackish tones,
a charcoaled conversation.
The same echoes whipping against skin,
ripping the same warm bodies thin,
the same red-brick teeth
raking the cold, bleached soil
As the ice melts into water,
it is no longer the miner,
who smelts for power;
it's powdered noses that never sweat—
from pounding, bronzed pulses
too big to leave the net
and as if it’s not enough,
it's stretching out a golden hand,
pelting doubt unto cardboard ceilings,
sealing silky mouths
and plaiting amber limbs,
felted so tightly to cushion Your seat
a.r.
Oct 9, 2020
Oct 9, 2020 at 10:40 PM UTC
Paint me in hues
of red, paisley clouds
over the ragged linen
wrapped around my
small, limbless body
Tell me I'm an older man,
enough to grow my spine,
tire my eyes,
break my skull
and still make it home in time
Touch the leather, know it's real
feel the bumps, fill the cracks,
reminding you and I are the only colours
when the lights switch off
and the universe turns blind
For now everything is matter,
for now, nothing even matters
so feed me what I can't ever say
and show me the parts of you
that would never rot in clay
a.r.
May 20, 2020
May 20, 2020 at 11:55 PM UTC
We stood on the flowerbeds
rooted in my ripe, velvet spine
We danced in waves of milky lilac,
the world was yours and mine.
For once, my mind was serene
although I heard a tiny whisper.
A whistle-blower distorted and mild;
I think you drowned her in the river,
Striking tapestries unscroll from your lips,
blindly shedding colours as the leaves fall
Lies were tucked snug under your tongue
and so was I, (it gets chilly after all),
You liked to pace ahead,
in a rush to build a promised fort.
I trudge behind you, stitching our skin-
a needle too dull, a thread too short
Thumbs hooked in my sunken stomach;
a snack for every time I strolled astray
but you were laced around my throat,
and so my hunger seemed to stay,
I drank from your stretched-out palms;
I waited for the day that it quenches me.
But a blade of grass in that barren patch,
is all that I will ever be
We went for these walks so often,
(I might as well have walked in all fours)
we danced in waves of milky lilac,
the world is only ever yours
a.r.
May 3, 2020
May 3, 2020 at 1:56 PM UTC
stuck in an hourglass of identity,
muffled hustling around my eyelids
head buried deep in the shifting sand,
my body wrestles with the happening
stiff legs pulled by horizontal gravity,
brain soaking, turning into electric mush
my eyes bleeding in black as it is
only in my dreams, that I can feel alive
lied naked on the slippery floor of reality,
dipped in and out of the pool of mind
fractals slowly falling off from my vision,
then swaying freely in the air
freed by a different form of mortality,
face sinking, melting into familiar figures
what's hidden below and behind evaporates
to every corner of my shut, rapid eyes
I feel every fibre of peace,
every time the world disentangles from its name
knowing they are all but shapes projected
for the hazy buzzing screen,
that is my present
Dec 17, 2019
Dec 17, 2019 at 4:36 PM UTC
There is freedom in isolation,
in being idle and invisible,
where one could sit in muteness,
swim widely in dusk and ask,
"Am I really here,
if no one is around to see?"
A different kind of suicide
There is pleasure in being a shadow,
in pretending you don't exist,
to avoid acting like you do
Solitude isn't a time for me
to let myself free
but rather a time to free myself
from who I am
Outside the confinement of company,
I am anyone and anything,
I am someone else, somewhere else
I am alive,
but I am no one
I am alone
a.r.
Dec 14, 2019
Dec 14, 2019 at 3:01 PM UTC