half asleep i carefully place
lemon slices on top of all the walls and sprinkle
tea tree oil around the door
i read it wards off
sadness
or cockroaches
my roommate complains of a familiar smell
and we discuss the insurgence of nostalgia
against the monarchy of the endless march of time
the way the what could have been gilts
the grass we walk through with guilt
towards happiness
i’m singing “off with the heads
of the things i can’t forget”
tiny feet in the passage whisper
“no one has crossed a meadow
& emerged with clean feet”
i remember cursing dew as a child
for dirtying my shoes as i walked to the car
and slowing me at the start
of races i was never going to win
out in the corridor i encounter the king who
doesn’t move as i raise my foot
only laughs and says
“a cockroach can survive a week
without its head
and a memory much longer”
Mar 20, 2020
Mar 20, 2020 at 7:10 AM UTC
for all the turbulence i sought
and sought
i was pretty good
i was so good
i battled through all the chaos
my kite was finally flying
but i snorted so much ritalin
my pupils are tar pits
and she calls me a hedonist but
i don't know what that means
i do know that
i fear neither death
nor consequence
you can treat me like your last meal
always at my most decadent
i remember i need to eat
then delete the thought
the only thing that sustains me is the rushing
by now
you should know that
it's all about me
we did the maths remember?
Oct 27, 2018
Oct 27, 2018 at 11:13 PM UTC
on those days we spent weaving
into each other on my mattress
perhaps we were writhing we just didn't know
we didn't have to care
if we let the summer fall into
the blue someone else would
haul it out
and resuscitate
the days we just let our phones ring
and wore the song to bed
beneath nothing
but our laughter thicker than my duvet
i guess i'm lucky i can be heartbroken
for a reason
i was heartbroken for so many reasons none
of which i can place or replace
on the wall where the sun tore our photos
into ribbons of shadow
we made the mistake of holding each other
too close
to the light
was i always warm or just aware that you were near me
i'm a rusted furnace with nothing but bones to burn
apparently
there's always a better fire burning in another town
Jul 29, 2018
Jul 29, 2018 at 2:12 PM UTC
i went to pour hot
water into my
mug but i was looking for something else
and i missed you
but i could have sworn you were right
here a second
ago i guess it’s one
of those
you had to be there moments
you should have been there moments
i thought you would be there moments
why weren’t you there?
moments haha like
going to a party to see a single
person who turns out
not to be single at all or
that time i reached for your
love and there was a hole
in my pocket
i can’t even remember where we fell
out in the first place
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 5:03 AM UTC
i dreamed about falling
off a chair in the church where
i heard you sing for
the first time and
it was the first time
i made you laugh
after a million years
i woke up
with a plum tree in my chest
with the touch of a finger you plucked a purple
planet off a branch
a world where we end up together
and bit out the part where we met
along with some other things
it hurt so much
i could have sworn
i heard you singing
Mar 3, 2018
Mar 3, 2018 at 1:47 PM UTC
me
there are things
i should burn for
but i won't
there are things
i should burn
but i don't
burn for you
i still burn for you
when i drink i still drink
but only in fiction
i try my best
to avoid looking at
pianists guitarists and singers they don't upset me
but i guess their art is too honest
for who i am
as it should be
i will never
understood anything done
for me out of love
me i
shouldn't be alive
last november i kicked
my friend in the face while
he tried to save my life
i'd forgotten about it and so
when he visited me
in hospital the next day
i asked about the bruise
above his eye
he looked at me real
funny and told
me he ran into a tree
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 4:06 AM UTC
i was nine and small
mouthed when i found
what would be my suicide note
in a bottle by the boulders
at kleinmond
at the time i believed
i was too smart for this world and so
paradoxically
i could not understand
how love could ****
children are foolish in some ways\and in some ways fortunate
sometimes what is not meant
to be will be
and what is meant
to be will not
but if everyone had just one
person i don’t think it could
be called love
although i don’t know what else
it could be
when i think about how
many people drown in my town
every summer
i wonder if maybe it was never intended
for us to learn to swim
i could make a similar
argument about love
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 12:03 PM UTC