Ringing red lips, resounding around the room.
Aniseed accent, lingering for me to lick off long after.
Trembling taste.
And you smell blindingly bright.
While your pheromones take lightest flight on softest feathers.

And in a million more ways than I can convey.
You impress yourself upon me.
But I can’t say.
Because the words are wrong.
Not at all applicable.

No one knows what it means for eyes to chime.
Or how a song can spin.

I worry when the iceberg looks down and sees only the surface of the sea.
What it must think.
Wondering why it doesn’t sink.

And all I want to tell you is
You’re more.

SSR Island
It’s my island, mine alone, so I’m alone.
Singing to myself and the sea.
With equally endless ever churning fractal blacks above and below me.
And the pattern repeats, too far out for me to see, but there must be an infinity of islands just as isolated.
And the pattern repeats, inside my mind, infinitesimally across the synapse gaps between a hundred billion neurons.
So I sit and consider.
No way I can swim, even assured I’d see shore before I sank.
And if I try and scream?
But who’d hear before I broke my throat?
I can only compile contemplations of complete isolation.
All potential lacking action, surrounded by water so nothing gains traction.

My eyes catch on crimson, a barbed kind of bright I can’t pull out of my sight.
So I’m stuck staring at a balloon as it bobs up and down over the horizon.
I reach out as a reflex nearly wrenching my arm from it’s socket, only to end up no closer.
But I see it float towards me, effortlessly, with purpose and pride. Until it stops still.
As if inspecting me in my introspection, unsure of mooring anymore. Still agonizingly above and out of my grasp.
I ask it to come closer, no answer.
No reply after my second try, either.

So I lash out, take a running start and with every ounce of strength I pounce.
It pops, unable to weave out of the way.
No sooner am I alone in the air than I’ve found the ground again. Only this time I’m clutching shreds of ripped rubber, already wrinkled and retracting, soon rotted away.
Inside is my prize, a little putrefied but preserved enough for me to read the words.

I’m unsure how long I’m sat in silence, wrapped up in the writing.
I can’t make sense of how close a stranger came to me without my knowledge.
But whoever wrote this knew me and intimately.
I’m reading and rereading each line and every time I’m more sure I’ve been seen right through so thoroughly.

That’s how I know I’ve no choice but to lend my voice to a cause I can’t quite comprehend.
To be a stranger’s friend.
I’m to tell them, we’re alike whether we like it or not, that they aren’t the only lonely one.
So I sew back together the scraps of crimson skin.
I tell this shell my secrets, about the hell I dwell on and in and how there’s a howling abyss I’d be remiss not to mention.

Finally I feel the tension, as the balloon begins to tug up and we both feel at least a little lighter.
I watch it, and smile as it sways its way away and skyward, to brighten someone else's day.
And I reflect, on the thoughts inside.

I can’t!

It’s lacking the essential essence of elegance or eloquence to be anything other than ugly.
Just like me.
I can’t let it get loose out there.
I need a snare to snap it back and before I lose track.
Without thinking I’ve grabbed a nearby spear and sent it soaring.
It pierces the ballon with perfect precision, sending it sinking as all my secrets spill out unsightly but at least unseen by anyone but me.

So I slump,
unsupported by the sudden silence after that burst of passion and violence.
My own words long gone and the warmth I felt from others faded. Leaving me cold, green with envy and jaded.
I should have known I couldn’t compare to that flair so obviously there in other people.
So instead despair.
And the pattern repeats, repeatedly.
No reason to expect any events else than these.

Until a pill appears, citalopram, appealing as a potential panacea, for all my ills.
Once a day, with water.
So I swallow.
Ready to no longer wallow in my miasma.

The sea is somehow blacker back here, with writhing tide that won’t subside.
They lied!
Someone ripped out the stitching where the sky was scared so old and faded thunder could be rebled but so much more red.
The storm inside my head restarts and spreads out to my other parts. The nausea is renewed so as to always be so vividly vibrantly new to me.

I barely move.
But the next day,
once more with water.
And the pattern repeats, with permutations, so preparation is impossible.

I write down the details of the defects detaining me.
I don’t notice all the balloons I inadvertently inflate fill, until I see them float free over the sea.    


I don’t know what’s different,
or why I adapt,
but I do.

Thank you former flame
For cutting me open
Letting me see inside
And scoop parts out
With cold colorless clarity
Doesn’t look much good
But now I can
Rearrange what didn’t work
An exchange is made
Anatomical accuracy is sacrificed
For an aesthetic appeal
Me but without motion
No longer spiraling down
Safely stuck in place
Drained dry of danger
Now comes the art
Reassembly into something new
Maybe former beauty restored
That would be nice
Could fill me up
Rather than left gutted
Not the only regret
But one for sure
You’ll never see it
Not scarred nor shaped
But were you here
And I still whole
Would I have seen?
Could I have learnt?
My hope and reason
For words you’ll miss
Maybe there’s a way
To have these parts
That I can be
Comfortable again at last

I keep remembering things I never told you
Because I forgot or didn’t have time to
I can feel my face twitching to try
And whisper the right words
Back through time

I’m writing lists, endless lists
Of everything I’d say
And then I edit it, endlessly
As if cutting it down to the core
Will make my request to reverse reality any more reasonable

There’s so much I missed out on
And I notice new things everyday
Because you cast too lasting a shadow
Grief is like drinking and drowning in bleach,
So I must mourn you in monochrome  


I can’t believe you knew
How much you meant to me
You were my idol
What you did to yourself was blasphemy
So why couldn’t you see?

I just can’t help but think,
If I’d found the right words
If I’d have been brave enough to tell you
That you’d still be here
For me to hear

I hope,
at least
You left a little beauty in my body
So I can let you have it all back
If you’ll just come and claim it


Delusional, not that I could ever talk to you again
But that I’d have something to say
That would make you stay
If I couldn’t even communicate before I knew
How much it mattered

I Just just wished you’d kissed me goodbye,
So some of you lingered on my lips
And so you’d have known how I felt
And about all the things I could only express in your embrace
Because nothing out of my mouth could mean as much
As having you in it

Cool, soft, ever and all shade.

Gently coils caress my carcass.

And I lie in my bed at rest.

All is well at the bottom of the world in my well

No need for dreams down here where I dwell.

Until the...

Eye!

Bursting open, with blinding light and piercing rays in its gaze.

And the...

Voice!

Booming from above.

The bellow muffled and refracted this far below, now just noise.

It’s weight pushing me away.

I wind my way upwards.

Through a new fluid.

That fills me.

So I float to some surface.

Eye!

Fixes its gaze on me, while the wet thing fumbles to lift me up to look at.

Until the water around me hardens, become ground to grip and ****** me up into view.

While around me, the verdant wave of blades radiates outwards bursting from under the earth.

Lesser imitations of

Eye!

Flock to fill the sky, fighting for supremacy,

Until one has won and sends its nemesis to hide on the underside of the earth.

I sliver back to the edge of the earth

And dive

Only to find my depths disturbed,

Full of countless small things

That bite at me and do not think to fear my jaws

I force myself back to the dry dirt

Only to see it infested as well

I try to lie and rest again

But find myself unsettled.

Wrestless writhing.

Until one comes to soothe me

Small with smooth hands

And a sweet song.

The small ones, spoke but not like

Voice!

Not with blugen confidence

So unsure

So I reply

Tell of the power they could have

Tell of what

Voice!

Will not say.

Then there’s

Voice!

Back and wreathed in wrath

Not wanting to share the secrets I said

Rather would share its blades and flame

I writhe, break free, find the sea again

And dive, deep, deep as I can go, back below the beasts

I return to the

Cool, soft, ever and all shade.

But I remember the surface

A story written on me in wounds

Limbless I languish

Can’t scratch

Uncontent

Until

Some small ones,

Ones I saw once before

Follow me down, through thousands of fathoms

Forsaking the surface

To soothe me

My thanks.

Sincerely *******!

You who didn't so much teach me to talk as train me to say things your way

You who I hear in my head
As an infection of implication and inflection
Contorting my thoughts so I can't think straight

You who got me to gouge myself out with doubt
And handed me a scalpel

You who watch the dissection disinterested
Stopping me only to annotate "interesting" parts of my mental anatomy

You who taught me to prattle in Latin so the microscope you made me shove into my skull only left me looking alien

Until I only see homosapien, hypochondriac, hypocrite
Not the human

And my thoughts are obscured behind a fog of who's thinking them

There's a better me
Full of energy
That I've abandoned
Not intentionally but automatically
Now I'm less bright eyed
Less blind
But I'd leave all I've learnt behind
To be a fraction as kind
Or inclined to look up