Every dark thing, a turbulent mass of nothing;
every forgotten hope, a sanctimonious silence;
every lost dream, a memory of ******
meet me by the tree growing in the echoes of violence.
These old woes, heavy in your beaten head;
these philharmonic nightmares, blessed with ultraviolet light;
these sorry worries, pontificating to the ignorant;
meet me by the tree with leaves that shimmer out of sight.
Too many ugly voices, stretched thin in your clothing;
too many stranded friends, veiled in your weathered face;
too many judges, stealing notes from the executioners;
meet me by the tree that holds it all in place.
And you, lonely little girl,
far from the envy of a century,
sing the quiet war songs of your ancestry.
~~
o brokenhearted girl
why do you
cry yourself
to sleep
at night
you're already dead
let go
~~
Oct 5, 2020
Oct 5, 2020 at 4:24 PM UTC
A holy artefact wrapped up in clouds,
ascending heavenward in a thunderstorm
and during a pail of hale I screamed out "Hail!"
but there was no celebration
in the circumcision of my heart.
A roar crescendoed from darker places
and consumed the fading purple sky,
and a lie beheld the firmament,
an orange hope that flickered when it should have flamed.
I wrote my rites of passage on stone for you,
but how quickly erosion wore them away,
until only the softest fingertips could trace the shadows.
There was so much poison in the way you said goodbye,
the silent ringing of the ghost of a bell.
I burned your face into the ceiling
and I wonder, just a little, if you can see
what horrors you caused to creep into my weathered blood.
Sep 16, 2019
Sep 16, 2019 at 2:18 PM UTC
Open the door to where you store the pain,
where you sit on your swing in the driving rain.
Let me in to the coldness of your dark,
that yawning abyss untouched by your heart.
Open the chest that conceals your true identity,
weighing the cons with the wrong quantity.
The power you have in this world is fettered
only by your need to never feel bettered,
to have your own invaluable name unlettered.
Don’t hide your repositories from me,
unlock them all and let me see.
I am your ally in this battle, in this war,
hear me tapping gently on your bolted door.
I see the tearstains rotting the bedroom floor,
be brave and I won’t let your hurt any more.
Open the door to where you store the pain,
where you sit on your swing in the driving rain,
your feet off the ground with nothing to gain
by staying up high swinging in the rain.
Don’t forget what you’ve won and what’s still to gain,
open the door to where you store the pain.
Oct 5, 2018
Oct 5, 2018 at 2:57 PM UTC
At some point, you get used to it all,
the dull buzzing of a heaving sky,
silicon drops falling from dead clouds,
maroon and lavender moons burning up.
Some days, you can taste the desperation,
clinging hard to your mother’s *******
but you can hear them through the metaphors,
some knife slicing dark from the night.
They’re still dragging knuckles in the mud,
dreaming of disembodied constellations
painted onto a tapestry made of nothing
and hung up high by sheer willpower.
Some look, hoping it’s still where it should be,
some ***** heaven made of antimatter,
touch it you’ll annihilate it and yourself,
so you leave it be and chew your tongue.
At some point, it gets too much for you,
all that noise dragonflying on a war,
bombarding the rigor mortis of sleep,
sapphire and grey pools of romance.
They don’t **** like they do in the movies,
rituals of sweat drained completely of blood,
martyrs of love framed on the walls,
cadavers in bedsheets, shrouds of Turin.
Jul 16, 2018
Jul 16, 2018 at 6:49 AM UTC
There’s oil pooling on the streets,
and I’m on my way to some dive bar
surrounded by the glittering lights
only success and fame can afford.
Neon signs threatening epileptic seizures
hang like 21st-Century gargoyles
above the heads of my brothers in harm.
There’s girls in neon everything,
halter top, hot pants, fishnet tights.
They’re calling out for a good time,
but they haven’t been seen here in years,
the nights are too long to appreciate
the memories in the short days.
They never give up hope, though,
that’s why they’re so beautifully broken.
There’s a kid on the street covered up
with an old jacket left behind
by another societal failure who died
last winter in a doorway lined in snow.
Next to him, a musician plays a guitar
that plays no old blues notes,
no idea it’s playing by a grave.
I find a quiet little street, no life,
no blinking lights offering salvation
from a life of complete boredom.
I’ll take the boring and the quiet,
I’ll take screaming into the air,
lost syllables and juxtapositions
flung up into the dead air
of a dark and silent LA night.
We don’t deserve to be lonely,
but being alone all the time is fine,
it’s perfectly healthy to keep
your own company but not healthy
to not enjoy the time to yourself.
Extrapolating meanings from last night’s dreams,
finding comfort in fractured scenes,
looking for answers to our selves
in the morning smog of repression.
But I still beat these same paths,
still see the same sorry faces
illuminated by those awful neon signs,
garish intrusions into the neighbourhood,
fake happiness and promised sorrow.
The homeless kid is gone, stabbed for dimes,
but traffic keeps moving, drinkers keep
gambling away their little pay checks,
and the cold dark of these LA nights
keeps holding on to my echoes.
Apr 14, 2018
Apr 14, 2018 at 3:34 PM UTC
We met up for coffee
as the snow started falling,
warmth in our hearts
and a morning just talking.
I reached for your hand
and you opened it up to mine.
The shivers of outside
found their way to our spines.
We left them behind,
anonymous strangers in shelter,
we found our way home
with our names in red letters.
We kissed so so softly,
kicked off our shoes by the door,
and we found our ecstasy
lying entwined on the floor.
I woke up the next day,
you weren’t there beside me,
and I looked everywhere
but just your shadow I could see.
The snow started falling,
piling up outside my window,
and the coldness came in
when I wondered where did you go?
And I’m still searching for this lost part of me,
this art of me, this masterpiece that was and will always be you.
Come back to me and prove you were not just a vision,
not just a dream one night, a lonely little night I shrunk instead of grew.
My hand’s wide open ready for yours to hold,
come back from the cold, appearing and vanishing in the still of the blue.
Mar 20, 2018
Mar 20, 2018 at 10:18 AM UTC
I came at the world with words
dripping with the poison that coated my tongue,
not giving a **** about feelings or consequences.
Until a great monster appeared,
charging out of the dark.
Coming in over ultraviolet rays,
infrared, even the radiated gamma bursts,
heading straight in my direction.
It left me wordless,
barely stuttering through the simplest sentences,
lost to the dark magic held within its claws.
Some great unholy wind blew in,
raising dust devils and Cain in its wake,
ghosts appearing in the Firmament.
Now it controls my fingers when I type,
takes hold of the pen when my desire wanes,
it lives in the ink and creates horrible shapes
with horrible meanings and I can do nothing
but allow it to weave the fortunes of the dead.
Mar 18, 2018
Mar 18, 2018 at 1:54 PM UTC
I want to take you beneath the tree
and make love with you the way
the earth does with the roots,
nurturing, nourishing, feeding,
helping you grow to be the best
woman the world could ever wish you to be.
I want to see your leaves grow anew each Spring,
little flowers blossoming in dazzling colours,
feeding all around who nest in your branches,
who eat from your fruit, who require your shade.
I want to love you the way only I can,
respectfully, tastefully, eternally.
To be the one who helps you grow
would give me no greater satisfaction,
to see you reach for the skies,
whether blue or black, speckled with starlight,
overcast days with the lightest caressing of rain.
I will be the sunlight you crave,
glowing, warming, comforting.
I want to take you beneath the tree
and make love with you every day.
Mar 10, 2018
Mar 10, 2018 at 5:07 PM UTC
I want to know where you retreat when life gets tough
so I can show you where light lives when all you see is dark.
Dream what you wish to dream, impossible is just a state of mind,
the doubts and fears nothing more than monsters under the bed.
Mar 10, 2018
Mar 10, 2018 at 9:26 AM UTC
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead,
for the people with useless eyes.
If only I could write for you instead.
I let them live inside my head
and somehow they speak of my demise.
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead.
As I lay with the weight of lead,
on stormy waters I don’t capsize.
If only I could write for you instead.
I feel this rising sense of dread,
I fear I know what this implies.
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead.
Do you dream of a warm, safe bed?
Only you with the countless lies,
if only I could write for you instead.
I should have listened to what you said
when your goodbye came as no surprise.
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead;
if only I could write for you instead.
Mar 9, 2018
Mar 9, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC