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

It sounds like a lie when you say I love you.

But you’re better than that.

But I can’t believe the you I love could love the me I’m stuck being.

Someone so insightful couldn’t dissect my defects and still have any respect for me.

By now you’d know where this is going to go.

Can reflection of you in my eyes really be enough beauty for you?

I promise if you’ll be with me each morning.

One day I’ll stop waking up.

This is how I prefer to talk,
Out of another neck.
Without the 19 extraneous letters.
With cords that tremble at the whim of my fingers,
Instead of the force of my thoughts

Whose tension is all in the turn of a key,
I can hold.
Not one lodged in my heart.

It used to be,
How I feel would congeal,
Choke me like hands through my throat,
But now the arms wrapped around my voice box are all mine.

Now the weight of my voice is external.
I can put it down,
Lock it away
And know it won’t move
For when I need my voice back.

She doesn’t look like me.
Too pale, too naked,
Too ****** under her own surface.

Well I don’t want to drown.
I won’t get pull down because part of me is too
Pathetic and plucked to fly

She can’t be me,
But she’s the only me that sees,
Herself seized up


By the time I’ve flapped the fervor back into me
Shaken off a soft sagging skin
Taken flight

I’m away, unawake, unaware
Weightless as thoughtless
Till I fall

I only learn about myself when landing
Roused by faded echoes of euphoria
Rippling with the hypnic drop

I won’t say I don’t know
About the bullet or predator
Waiting to slink out of my blind spot

But I need to be a bird again
And there’s always an again
Or an until

Until the bird stops returning to be me
No idea why it does
Until it’s killed,
So I can die,
Without being anyone who’s dying.

Behold brightest black
A void painted every shade
Absent absolutes
Ask it anything
Answers arbitrary anyway
So choose your own truth
With clearest conscious
No point not when guilt grows grey
Rather a rose tint
Think fondly because…
You can, if you can, can’t you?
What is stopping you?
If she can move on
Why can’t you be free too? From
An unsolvable someone
So sure about that
There has to be a bad guy?
Can’t just be by chance?
So is it preferable
To be an **** with agency
Than lost and adrift
Then fine find the fault
But know this is all folly
False cartography
That which we do in
Only the shadows of two
Together is true
But past and apart
Only echoes to argue
While memories dim
No firm land ahoy
Just room for further drifting
Without map of you
How could you harm her?
Surly the perfect scapegoat
A victimless crime
Won’t it be easy?
So shout into her shadow
But you can’t can you.
Then turn from her face
Be light like air and breathe again
Why pick any truth?
They’re all ethereal
As uncertain as each other
And just as valid
And beyond sharing
Too personal or painful
Then shut up and go
Bother us no more
Can’t abandon someone twice
further fear futile
But tongues bitten
Bridge too beautiful to burn
Even as ashes
Good and bad both there
Immiscible memory
Two of her, apart
No resolution
One you hurt one that hurt you
Like different people
You can’t bring yourself
To end your former future
Can’t settle for free
Still hopeful falsely
Must optimise solve yourself
Because you loved her
Because you were good
More than yourself in her glow
Lesser for her loss
The two sides divide
Further apart every day
Dehumanising
And you started this
By insensitivity
or just ignorance
Which would you rather?
Either way overbearing
When she was honest
About her limits
But you could never not try
To optimize her
People aren’t problems
They’re so much more and you
Know that, so show it
Your inability
To hate her, because you still
Think you can win this
Think there’s words or acts
That change the past, for your gain
Ignoring her wish
Maybe brightest black
Isn’t mystery at all
Just you crystal clear.

I want to colour in your shadow
Make art in your absence
Frankenstein from the forms of other’s feelings
For me

But how could I?
Mean as much as you meant effortlessly,
With all my energy.
Write tight as we held on
For as long as we did.
Be as warm in words
As you were in winter.
Illuminate anything as brightly
As you by beaming.
Fake kindness or kinship
Un kindled by you.
Cry for help
when I’ve lost my voice.

I’ve endlessly exhumed the hole I put you in
But you’ve gone
Moved on
So all I can show to others is the empty
Which I guess is me
Without people to plant
What garden would grow here?
Only art of your absence
Not in it

Maybe
Eventually
Improbably
If I’m lucky
Enough people’s opinions of my art
Will mean as much as yours
Of me.

I see you, out of your senses, incensed with a stench of incense,
Pale everywhere but under the eyes you impale me on.
You rip me out of my dwelling within the deep dark
And I’m drawn to the shallow shadows where you wallow.
Does it dawn on you yet?
In the light, at the height of midnight,
That you chose today to die.

But before you’re gored, your reward:
The rot-spotted relic of reason buried beneath this ritual
You invoke me, the muse.
I’m to inspire you,
By the light of the pyre I prepare for you

This next part I’d gladly part with,
Where I wear you like I were you all along,
But I have to bear being you, laid bare
All of you and then the end of you.

But you’ve had a lifetime to live it,
So forgive me if I’m livid
When I’ve only been you for five minutes.
When every old wound must be re-wrought into me,
So you can show me what you think suffering is.

Whether you’re young or well-weathered this time around,
I always wonder,
What could ever be worth it?
How do vanity and naivety keep at bay that siren song inside your head,
That sings you should stay alive?
What could you possibly have to say about living,
That’s worth doing so a second less?
I’d crack your eyeball like an egg for one bit of the beauty it beheld.
You think you can **** out art more lasting or fragrant,
Than a single flower.

How I envy the other gods,
With divinity derived from real things.
The ones not stuck,
In that cave you call a skull.

But that’s not the deal you made,
Because your mind is too thick,
To think out from under its own perfunctoriness.
So you assume,
That the universe cares to trade your heartbeat,
For the flutter of others’.

You pray for gods to be prey to,
So here I am,
****** up by the abhorred vacuum,
To be ****** out.
You’re too pathetic for me not to be your predator.

So what is it you want to make?
Not that I mind,
I’ve been called to every medium from mosaic to mutilation,
Though I await the day one of you wants to paint the world in uranium.
Too often am I called to fools who think they can end the world,
They’re always so disappointed when their day ends,
But nobody else’s does.
To finally see it through would be thrilling,
And a fitting finish.
Not a freedom I could feel,
but a freedom all the same.

Until then,
I’ll see you again,
Too soon,
Because you all look the same.

I don’t think I exist between being beckoned for,
This is all I am, frantic, feeling the civility seep out of me.
A vessel to take depths of others,
To echelon where they will echo eternally,
Or so they think.

I try, at least a little
To catch glimpses of meals past
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen
Anyone I’ve been
Ever again

Or are you artist types all too self-absorbed
to appreciate the sacrifices of others?
Well, then neither of us with ever know if this was worth it.

So know this at least,
When I bite hard down on your heart between beats,
It’s not because I hate you,
It’s because I have to.

And that’s why I hate you.