Living here is like being raised by wolves;
You **** the ones you love to build cities.
Swallow enough tar and your insides forget what its like
To not be ready for a funeral.
And every blink's an inch more time
You haven't got the hands for
And you yearn for the years that aren't this one.
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 3:32 PM UTC
The thing that hurts most about growing up
Is losing table settings.
First we were six,
Then five,
Now four.
I dread the next place-mat leaving.
Fat lumps of butter drip from my mothers fingers
As she realizes she's once more forgotten to account for our losses.
Sugar sweet, my sister, cracks eggs for the mixture
Her smile splits her face like the line down a peach.
My brother fetches glasses and de-clutters the table,
Like a general wiping clean his strategic map.
The thing that hurts most about growing up
Is losing table settings.
First we were six,
Then five,
Now four.
And I'll be the next place-mat leaving.
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 2:09 PM UTC
sometimes i can't trust myself not
to buckle under the weight of
your near enough's and almost
words you can't quite force out from
between my teeth. like the accusatory
cutlery your eyes never fail to
reflect this would look better with
the lights off and between sheets but
then again i always have had trouble
with the twin tormentors dark
and sleeping. sometimes i feel as
though red is the only colour i know
and you insist on inhabiting it you have
ruined sunsets and arsenal and jelly
for me. like i was not made to walk
through fire just as well as ocean i have
merely forgotten the way spoon fed
on ashes and bad pennies glinting
off the electrics i refuse to give you
my spectrum. sometimes my
ribcage admirably lives up to its
name and i find myself choking
on thoughts i'd sworn not to
inhale. like non newtonian fluid
i have inherited your sudden cusps
and contradictions lit up momentarily
only to be put out when i am around you
i find myself craving cigarettes.
Feb 4, 2014
Feb 4, 2014 at 4:41 PM UTC
The four wheels that carry my family
Into the path of the moon.
We're away on a hairline breeze, he says
Dashboard shoulders jumping
With every bump on the road.
The earth is never far enough for him
Sea shoes well worn from perpetual wading
Sand in the sun lines of his eyes.
I hurtle Father.
Fists, teeth; I have forgotten the art of talking
Too wrapped up in the headlights growling,
Swearing apart confidently.
All my smiles like a train waiting.
Never fear Daughter.
Those are fireflies that wind their way
above the speedometer
And we'll make a space prophet of you yet.
Nov 23, 2013
Nov 23, 2013 at 7:52 AM UTC
All that I am
Is minutes and hours
Stacked on top of one another,
And you know this.
Know that although the little hand
Of my life
Is holding onto yours,
There will still come a time
When I must let go.
You can see,
That every jolt of my pulse
Is the sound of a clock ticking,
And every swoop of my eyelashes
A second closer
To a lifetime.
A lifetime you will have to live
By yourself.
You know that.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 3:50 PM UTC
You wear your eyes
Like a woman wears diamonds
And the pearls of your teeth like a veil.
Every two months careful hands
Strapped onto scissors
Trim moonlight to crown you anew.
I drape myself across your mouth
Held up by the bower of your lips.
Laughter lines like
Trails of a knife.
Take this, and this, and this…
You use your hands
Like the whole world is made of paper
And your arms are the trees it was stripped from.
Every week a little more snow
Falls onto the hills of your shoulders
And slips to the ground as ashes.
I tumble into your embrace
Held in the ring of your limbs.
Veins like ink
Etched into your skin.
Remember this, and this, and this…
You hold your heart
Like it’s the tide coming in
And you’d like nothing better than for it to sink.
Every day is a monsoon
And love plummets in drops
Matching the beat of your pulse.
I plunge into the depths
Drawn like the moon by the ocean.
Bodies both rivers
Destined to clash.
Have this, and this, and this…
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 5:20 PM UTC
Somewhere in this town there is man with his feet bare.
He has spent the last hour staring at his toothbrush and trying to remember how to leave this room.
His fists hold fingers that are twisted into paleness:
Like jaws too small for adult teeth.
The bathtub gapes up at him, yawning in his peripheral vision,
He remembers that two feet are just as good as six when it comes to sinking.
He never did learn how to swim, but
Like a fish out of water knows
The sea can make short work of accidental sailors
And the gurgle of a tap can sound like the tide coming in.
The bathroom mirror is not kind to him:
His imperfections make apologies he simply won’t accept.
Ribs forming corrugations on his t-shirt, as though his bones are trying to escape from the confines of his skin.
The porcelain lip of the sink continues to pout, its expression a perfect ‘O’.
The plughole is wearing lipstick today; blood red,
As it has been every day of this week.
Thoughts are like spiders webs, he thinks, constructed by moonlight then torn down in the morning
Occasionally he’ll still catch the dew.
In the sterile light of an eco friendly bulb, he holds the mirror back with both hands, one hinge broken.
He wears his heart on his sleeve, cufflinks cutting off his circulation.
In the shadow of the cabinet, are kept row after row of soldiers he uses to fight off his demons
And below that another regiment to handle the effects of the others.
He says, “All I am now is a synonym; and alternative to what I used to be.”
As alive is in likeness to living.
As the sun is, to the infertile glow of his grandfathers TV.
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 1:40 PM UTC
"I drew you a picture."
She said.
Palms open.
It was an outline of her hands in rosepetal pink.
Valiantly spread out on the page.
"Do you like it?"
She said.
Eyes open.
The outline of my face in the seafoam blue shades of them.
Hopefully spread out on her face.
"How could I not."
Oct 10, 2013
Oct 10, 2013 at 1:58 PM UTC
I was raised in a house that seemed big on the inside
With a garden that was larger than the rest of the earth.
My bedroom was shared. But there was more than enough room.
So proportionally, I always felt small.
The curtains were vines in a furniture jungle
The bookcase a tower of riddles.
I used to spend my days inside the wardrobe
Because I heard there were whole worlds inside of them.
The sofa was a cloud, I liked to sink into it.
The bathtub an ocean, that I was constantly floating adrift in.
The TV screen might as well have been
A stage compared to me when I was younger.
Even the cupboard was a cavernous place, my sparrowbone limbs
Would fold up only slightly, but still there would always be too much space.
Space blank as a bullet hole
Like the gaps between stars.
An absence you're constantly falling through. When you're so tiny,
And surrounded by nothingness, its easy to forget that you're not nothing too.
I was compressed in the classroom behind a scrawl splattered desk
The lines of graffiti looked mammoth.
The teachers were giants
And I was just jack
They ground up my brains to make alphabet stew
And gave me only a handful of A, B's and C's back.
The playground was Olympus, I was acting atlas
I felt as though the whole world was on my shoulders.
See I was a really loud kid, always shouting out
Because I thought that was the only way to get anyone to hear me.
Lungs like an opera singer by the age of just nine
And in the habit of using embellishment.
I've been where you've been kid,
I've seen it all.
I know exactly how the sight of a bullies hand-down button-up
Can be enough to make you choke...
Sometimes it still is enough.
And I know I don't look so tiny now
I expanded as I grew more constricted.
Trying to compensate for the empty place,
I had made a habit of occupying.
See I understand, I know
But I promise you, one day you'll stop standing under things
Find your feet and grow.
The leaves of your family tree do not define
Who you'll be
You do not have to hold up those branches all alone.
And I know I look so small right now
But in here, in here
I'm mammoth.
And I promise the world is not so nothing filled
When everyone is giant.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 3:18 PM UTC
If this is all there is
If everything I've seen so far in life
Is all there is to live,
And you are never ever coming back
Then let me be happy with it.
Because I so desperately want to be happy.
Let me see every new new day like
A mother sees her child, eyes open wide
Staring at something I had a hand in making
That could just as easily go wrong as it could right.
Let me hear every seven AM wake up call as
The bells of St Peters to the ear of a choir boy
Calling me to worship with unquestionable faith.
Let me eat every burnt slice of toast like
A convicted criminal ensconced in solitary
Devours his last meal on death row.
Let me feel laughter as something other,
Than just the vibration of vocal chords.
Let me always speak with the conviction
Of a dreamer, a believer, an activist
Shouting every syllable
From the pinnacle of an overturned soapbox
And treating every street corner like a stage.
Let me stop trying to predict rain
And accept that if there are going to be downpours
There are certain seeds I need to sow.
Let me stop watching the television screen
As though all of life's mysteries
Can be answered by documentaries.
And that I can finally tune in, by connecting with fictional shows.
Let me see wonder
Because for a long time now I've been dreaming in colour
Its real life that seems trapped in monochrome.
If this is all there is
If everything I've lived in life has taken all I have to give
And you are never ever coming back.
Then lets get it over with.
Because I so desperately want this to be over.
Let me breathe in smoke for the rest of my days
Until tar spills from my lungs, to my heart
And burns my capillaries with that nicotine flame
Let me make heartbreak an art.
Because it reminds me of you
And I don't deserve any better.
Let me walk like I'm walking on eggshells
How I always used to do for you.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 3:11 PM UTC