I feel like you want to bleed on me.
Bind my frame to a ball and chain.
Handcuff me to the bed and break my legs.
I’m convinced you’re going to ****** me.
With bone and body alone, you will be my killer and I will be your meal.
I feel like I want you to bleed on me.
I want to take every flood of serotonin you’ve ever felt and stretch it. Seep inside and make bedfellows with everything. I want to rewind your head-space, explore your dark-place.
I want to clean your clock. Study your tick and your tock, watch your gears shift and synapses shock.
I want to know exactly how to take you apart and adore you enough to never try.
Let me rest between your eyes. I will give you my body if you give me your mind.
This is how I will love you
Mar 1, 2019
Mar 1, 2019 at 8:13 AM UTC
I watched you fall in love with the blue bird.
When the weight of whatever you shouldered left you feeling like a cracked sidewalk. When the contents of your head look like a dirt patch with no Flora.
I watched you sink your hope in its wings. I watched you open your beak and tweet out a plea that someone would make sense of your puzzle pieces
Do you know that feeling, when you love someone who hates themselves. Like trying to paint a picture in the rain. Watching whatever you have to give dilute in the depreciation, your affection can't **** depression. But you had to try.
To me being absolutely powerless wasn't enough to stop trying so I tried.
I fashioned cannonballs out of phone calls Fired at any wall that seem to cage your smile.
I'm more difficult Days you’d dance between dejection and distress. I'd watch you waltz between the lines of every conversation you had that day and you overthink entities into the world around you. Demons that would pull at your eyelids as you tried to rest. Clawing abysses that sat in your stomach. You thought if you consumed nothing you could starve them before yourself. You built an army of opponents all born from the belief that your calm sat beyond your own two hands. That the long drawn and difficult sighs you choked through was just how breathing worked.
You believed it was meant to hurt this much...and it did, and it does, but it's not supposed to.
Your graces hung in my sky like a star, and what would dim your shine would in turn dim mine
So I tried..
I’d say… talk to me.
A quiet plea, hoping you'd articulate the things I hadn’t seen.
But you existed behind a phone screen
You were swept away by the blue birds.
You slept in its nest hoping it would always return your quick fix.
You were one with the roost and your song was only audible through an application.
I lost a piece of you to twitter.
You slept in my bed.. we’d skip between oxytocin dreams of lustful energy or blissful lethargy and if the slumber was harmed we’d make enemies of snooze alarms. I knew frequency of your finger tips. I was in tune with the cacophony of your head space I curated the museum your beauty sat it. But you didn’t care. The bars between us looked more and more like hastags every day. Slowly I became just another follower... In 140 characters or less.. “My concern was the only thing you didn’t think was worth retweeting”
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 10, 2018 at 5:55 AM UTC
It was funny that she would be born in January.
When the Frostbitten fingers of British Winters outstretched themselves hoping to grasp a springtime that we won't whine about. It's funny that our sunshine was born in winter.
It's funny that I once slept inside her.
How at one point, everything that was me was just as much you.
It's funny how even today that still holds true.
It's funny that I can't love someone without thinking about what you do.
I've opened my arms to labours and abuses because in love you have to try. Or at least that's what she did.
It's funny that someone who's been through three marriages is still my best image of what love looks like.
Cracked skin, tired eyes, minced words with hope and struggle more times than I know. But no regrets.
It's funny that she acts like we were all meant to be, like the breaths we've breathed we're always an eventuality, like we weren't all the longest labour in her entire history. Like the whole universe crashing down on one woman didn't stop her raising a family.
It's funny that we act as though we have one day a year to celebrate her.
As if not a day goes by that our still beating hearts don't sing the song of an angel with no feathers.
Jan 27, 2018
Jan 27, 2018 at 3:59 PM UTC
When I’m struggling to write…
I like to think about what I’d say to a crush.
I only recently caught a disease called a break up, and there’s no cure for a love cut short.
Only Pain killers, symptom minimizers, synthesizers for all the oxytocin you’ve been short on…
And the still sodden service receipts for all the shoulders you’ve had to lean on.
But crushes don’t wanna hear that, so let me try something a little sweeter.
So… I think you’re so pretty, like really, really pretty. Like so pretty I would never say it to your face!
Like I imagine your line is long and your time is short, I imagine you’re busy being pretty and stuff…
I imagine... sunshine compliments your character…
I imagine watching you listen to music. Seeing the corners of your mouth dimple and dance and the sound of passion striking the vocal chords of the lyrical legends we dreamt of one day overtaking.
I imagine getting to sing with you… I imagine disturbing the floor boards. Heart beats like hi-hats, the ground beneath a dance mat, we’d toe the gap between us. Every inebriated motion, a mishap waiting to be laughed at. I wanna laugh with you.
I wanna watch elation escape your frame. An exaltation so insane you feel it kicking at your walls. Laughter like squalls, like wind, like fire, like… all the **** I wanna say.
It’s all just hot air, it floats away… and the problem still remains, I’d never say all this to your face.
The problem still remains that every sweet nothing is a paper crane hung from ceilings hoping one day to soar in your skies…
So, I’ll sit here… and polish your shine from a distance far enough to sustain a steady heart.
This is not a hope… or a plea, more just catharsis for those tired from shouldering the apprehensive affections that the best years of your life will present to you.
It’s okay not be flower picking. There will be times better spent watching them bloom.
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 12:25 PM UTC
If you could do anything.
I'd catch you plucking at the twilight.
Dipping you contour brush in nebulae, you'd paint your eyeline with a skyline... You'd bejewel your accessories with quasars spinning in quartz's and supernova sapphires and... your eyes would shine with star light...
If you could do anything, You'd sequin your extremities with snowflakes. Pattern your skin with the shine from the sunrise and you'd refract yourself into the world around you. You'd dye you hair like the northern lights... Stand still in squalls just so you could emulate its animated shimmer. Against the back drop of the night you'd glimmer. But that wouldn't be enough... You'd go to any length drown your frame in beauty.
If you could do anything, You'd steal the sensation of rain drops disturbing roof tops and overdose on an feeling of shelter from the storm. All attempts to subdue your high would met with scorn. You'd break off the part of you that caused concern. You'd burn the
service receipts of ever shoulder you'd had to cry on. You'd outsource your own insecurity. Any obscurity to your character would be shot dead on discovery. You'd invade your own humanity and pillage it of difficulty.
If you could do anything you'd bargain with calendar just for a couple more days to avoid doing something. You'd fashion your words into hurdles and litter the ground with more and more reasons to fall. You'd talk yourself out breathing because the threat of suffocation is less intimidating than the thought of persisting.
You are swallowed by your own ideals. You're drowning in the hope that you can live like a statue, staying ever beautiful as time crumbles away at your stone. You're begging for someone to save you from yourself.
If I could do anything. I'd pay you a token of gratitude for every imperfection you're still convinced I don't treasure. I'd write sick notes to your anxieties to inform them that you need time to get better, and in that time we'd strategize. Make a battle plans for a better life and show you how to fight.
This is your battle, Not mine. But it hurts to see you struggle, hurts to watch heartache eat away at your smile. Hurts to watch demons blow raspberries in the reflection of every tear drop.
It hurts to ask if you're okay...
Aug 4, 2017
Aug 4, 2017 at 6:38 AM UTC
Gamble -a risky action undertaken with the hope of success.
Derived from the 18th century English word gamel, meaning to pay games.
Remember the players we left behind…
The strangers who you held one night friendships with on evenings where the sun refused to shine.
Remember the fairy lights. Remember the benches outside of Bodega and the smuggled bottles of wine. People seem so much more friendly when they drink.
But hey, if it takes a glass of poison to make us all less toxic then we can pass out happy…
We’ll creep out of sobrieties bed knowing it’ll be the angriest alarm we wake to as the sun tries to steal 5 of our 40 winks the next morning.
But you know.. Gotta risk it for a chocolate biscuit.
I’ll trade in sleep at the chance I’ll be dealt a more interesting night. Break ice with strangers at hope we both share a bit of over lives.
Trying to to create a story worth telling is a gamble.
And I feel sorry for people who fall asleep at half 11. Seems like such a wasted day.
Like if life composed of options and outcomes there must be a better way. I slay the idea that each night we have 8 hours of sleep debt to pay. Because in those wee hours of the morning, those are when demons make music videos, those are when normally vacant balconies play host to the half drunk couples finding comfort in each others bodies. That’s when the parties get quiet. When the humans have intoxicated themselves into lullabys and start softly singing their lives into the ears of a friend willing to listen and I will bet you have something I wanna hear, and I bet I'll have soemthing to give back, and while you and I are here we'll keep betting. Each syllable is a chip on the table. Each sentace is an opportunity to double down. The bar will not close, the roullette will keep spinning and we'll grow a little ritcher with every new story we share.
I make bets with time and breath.
And if you spend time with me then you will to. You the few who have paid you admission fee into my conciousness. You who throw dice with me on the empty streets where street lamps themselves begin to sleep. You who I will one day come to love.
It's risky. Risky like petting stray dogs. Risky like telling your loved ones that you've been seeing demons in the mirror. Risky like getting one knee and offering your life to someone. It is risky.... but that's fine.
I will teach you how to gamble.
Nov 21, 2016
Nov 21, 2016 at 8:54 AM UTC
I told her, "I wanna write a song with you."
Her immediate reaction didn't seem very musical. But she managed to wash down her reluctance with a glass of my enthusiasm. It looked a little too hard to swallow though.
Between you and me... I think she just didn't want to hurt my feelings...
Knew that anything musical we might share in this space would come at a price. Having played piano in the past, she knows…. that every… key... requires effort. Every chord requires contact, every verse must be attacked every note ... needs impact.
Channeling all that we are and hearing the universe equally and oppositely react. Like science ... She knows there's chemistry in this musical contract.
And between you and me... I think she's scared to do that.
She houses pipes that were silenced a while back. Now all noise is mute, all lyrics refute, and the tones are all flat.
She is a little mermaid.
A villain stole her voice at the promise of companionship… and nower days what a bargain that is. String up your vocal chords and I'll meet each pained utterance with a kiss. Make a hostage of your own tongue and I will grant you bliss. I'll be the hiccup in your throat, the stutter in your sentence my sweet nothings will be the only sound you hear. The only tune you’ll dance to. The only lyrics you know.
She ... was choked, by an individual who was more shark than he was man, more predator that he was person, and after all that submersion she can’t look at love without feeling like she’s downing.
Between you and me, I think when her fin was torn into a pair of feet she found it difficult to find any other fish in the sea. Violence is nobodies natural habitat. But like I said was silenced a while back. She made to believe that like every note, each future affection would require impact. And between you and me… I really wanna change that.
I told her “I wanna write a song with you”. Not to test whether she is musically faceted but rather to see if she is still passionate. I wanted to see if my prayers had reached you yet… I wanted you to be okay. Little mermaid who was washed away. I wanted to is you fire stayed, to see you recuperate. In your time at sea you overcome bigger waves. So… sing.
Understand that are the most wonderful lyricist and your pitch and tone are not a akin heartache and woe, you can be loud. Be proud in knowledge that any music you make is only the overture, only the beginning to a symphony called “done with this **** I will hear no requiem, you’ll play no finale. The stage is not a battleground. Let there be no more tears in which to drown, sing! Sing and make sea sirens jealous of how mermaids sound
Jun 29, 2016
Jun 29, 2016 at 4:39 AM UTC
To the boys who like girls with eating disorders.
1. Be unafraid to call her beautiful. Feel no hesitation when articulating the grace in her intricacies. The delicacy she wields when flicking back her hair. The shape her semblance set in as she sleeps. The way… she holds a fork.
Even as you call her beautiful you may experience pangs of guilt. Acknowledge that despite your appreciation for her formation you do not want her to be like this forever. Watch as polite small talk and casual compliments get swallowed up by half full plates and half empty stomachs. Watch her try to chew and words you feed.
2. If you make if to boyfriend status. Her disease may begin to look like the ex partner she’s still hung up over. Watch as she quotes all his favorite things he use to tell her. Do not tell me, I look like I’m getting better I can’t look like getting better. She may look like the embodiment of the phrase “old habits die hard”. But remember… Mother taught you patience and forgiveness. When someone abuses you, you may be vocal about it or you may repress it but you do not forget, and boy... she has some scars. Across every angular bone protruding where a body use to be. In every atrophied muscle where disease did once grip and seek to claim something as it’s own. In every mirror. In darker shop windows where that display mannequins sport the latest illness and in every look you give her. There is no vaccination for this victimization. It will take time.
3... If her condition has left her anxious...
Left her white in the face like porcelain plates serving a future that tastes like insecurity.
If her condition has left her hopeless. Left her thinking that a full stomach means an empty future.
If her condition has left her broken, in any sense of the word, he is not without fixture.
She was a woman before she was a victim. She was a person before she was a patient. She is still a woman, she is still a person. She has a destination outside of disorder. She has dreams that could be bigger than these demons.
And 4… and this is not is not for the boys who like girls with eating disorders, this is for the boys who love!
4. Do you think she is worth it? What can you outweigh?.. Can you make her smile, can you... fill her?
Apr 7, 2016
Apr 7, 2016 at 4:32 AM UTC
There will be poetry in my place.
On evenings where we wrote stories to be told to future friends.
In every den we built when we were 8 and every drink we spilt when were 18. In all the questionable bottles we looted and and the high 5’s we so poorly executed. There’s as much poetry in our lips as we chug as there is in our fingertips as we hug.
It’s in my mother's muscles. How, to the naked eye it’s invisible to see what weight she’s carried. The friends she’s buried and the men she’s married.
It’s In silence as much in sound. It’s found in the desperate and passionate. As much as the meek and the modest. It’s in the the sound your feet make when running from something… or to someone. It’s in the silence my friends pill bottle makes when depression is over and done.
It’s in every fight lost but every war won. It’s in your glee after tragedy. In recovery after injury.
and I like to hope you see in me. See it in my eyes at the same moment you leave. See it in our sheets as it gets harder to breathe. But we don’t care because there’s poetry in there!
There’s poetry in the time people share.
Poetry in the way fingers interlock and voices grow soft.
Poetry... between us.
But it isn’t always that easy to discuss. Easy to pull from pages into air. Because there’s poetry in that which is unfair. Poetry in the fact that death can bring people together despite the heartbreak. Poetry in the realization that some people will abuse the only partners they have in this world. Poetry in the girls who refuse to eat because society told them that hungry is synonymous with weak. Poetry in the boys trade kindness for cruelty because they were convinced it would give their likeness a better quality. There’s poetry in there and there’s poetry in the warfare.
And yeah… you might not see it but it’s you too. In the way that you grew and memories you’ve accrued in all the things you wish you could do… and it may sound crude but it’s in the statistical probability that you were the ***** that actually got through and this was the poetry event that you chose to go to.
This is why I seek art in words, *** there’s as much poetry around us as there is blood in the world. It’s beauty in the overlooked and understanding in the mistook. If you feel anything that’s poetry!
If you love or fear something, the ecstasy or anxiety is poetry! Even if you feel nothing. Even if you wish to leave this life. There’s poetry in your strife.
I am no superhuman. No prophet, no hero. Just a man with words on a page. But with all this poetry in my head, I no longer fear death. Because if where I rest is in the deep space, if somewhere across this earth I find myself misplaced, if today is truly that final time you see my face,
there will be poetry in my place.
Feb 5, 2016
Feb 5, 2016 at 7:15 AM UTC
I wanna express my gratitude... to the few of you who didn't think I was too young or naieve to give advice. As a person with my analytical mindset, I love problem solving. I told my uncle that I have a weird affinity for broken women. I love people with stories to tell. Love the way legs can still stand despite the struggle. Love watching people break away from their own tragerdies. I love the thought you can dilute a great concentration of pain with just a little bit of kindness. Like liting candles in pitch black spaces, it only takes something small. My uncle says it's because people like me are wired to seek out things that need solutions. That's not to say they can't find their own solutions. I just like to see if I can play a part. So like tatoo artists on surgey wards. We sketch our art over people scars. Inject colour into their dark sides. Extend ourselves into their life lines.
We wanna fill what feels hollow.
Inscribe instrustions on how to smile and see if you'll follow.
And to anyone who thought what I said was good enough to act upon... thank you... and sorry.
Because hypocracy is a crime I practice all too often. Putting my own advice into application is extceedingly uncommon.
I would never take my own advice.
Because honesty with my loved ones would cause too much heart ache, I can not simply "just be open and real with her"
I cannot wear this skin with genuine pride because I would never "just be yourself man".
And despite the words falling falling out my mouth as we speak, why the **** would I understand "you are your own worst enemy. If you'd just believe in yourself you'd be surprised with what you can achieve".
To the many or the few who took my advice.
Who rolled the dice, who paid the price.
A penny for my thoughts and whether every thing changed or if all was for naught.
Maybe we just need to hear someone else say it. We so often are expected too try and stand tall in a world with ceilings that are too small. All some of us need, is to know that we're saying the right things.
So for everytime I was never told, I'm telling you. Let our voices be glitter and our ears be glue. Let people sparkle! Entice their shine so brlightly that they startle. Tell people all things you wanted to hear.
Jan 20, 2016
Jan 20, 2016 at 1:04 PM UTC