i watch you
fall at the feet
of those
who will never
know your name

im here
im real
i love you
and you
are distracted

Come home,
my mother's voice suggests along 2,581 kilometres of phone cabling.

Come home to the hazy heat
that beats off melting pavement and wilting plants,
to the smell of exhaust
squeezing between buildings
and suburbs and rush hour and neon lights,

Come home to the aggravated traffic
wending its way through concrete landscapes
eight lane snakes placating
the clack and hum of underground trains
packed with people and briefcases and beers and graffiti
spilling out onto the streets like cough syrup glugging out of the bottle.

You sound like you need to come home.

Nah, I'm good Ma,
because I don't know how to tell you
the city makes me feel trapped

a little creature with an anxious heart
boxed in by the tarseal and the fumes and the noise.

I like knowing the borders of a town
that doesn't stretch to the horizon
driving quietly on sleeping streets in the night time
and tracing the coastline with my feet in the water

I need the sky to touch the ground, not the ragged edges of a skyline
to walk until there's nothing
but me and the bush and the birds,
and the smell of mud and dirt and rain.

I like it here, I suggest along 2,581 kilometres of phone cabling,
but I do miss you.

hey,
i dreamt about you last night,
i woke up feeling lost and empty;
why is it that after so long,
my subconscious still thinks about you?

what a coincidence it was,
when i saw a glimpse of you in the mall,
was it even you?
or simply a fragment of my imagination?
i turned around to dodge your line of sight;
i wanted to pretend i was never there.

seeing you again,
made me drown in emotions,
i thought i got rid of.
i remember the late nights,
the thoughts of you,
me trying to let you go,
and i really thought i already have.

i'm sorry,
it seems as though,
you're still engraved in my heart,
i can't seem to push away the thought of you,
or the loneliness your memory brings me.

but here i am,
writing,
hugging the stuffed toy you once gave me,
at 11:11,
hoping that someday and somehow,
you,
my wish,
would come true.

Behold
As a fly does
She swiftly escapes
The fingertips
Of her old friend
Death
Over and over again
All he wants
Is a handshake
A “fair game”, a gentle goodbye
But she is quick
To run
Door closed behind
Tightly
Thoughts shut within
Softly
Exotically neurotic
Behold!
They say
She is the fox
Too sly
To be caught
Too cunning
To be trusted
And she has lusted
She has lusted
She has lusted
They say
Like an alchemist
She eats tar
And regurgitates
Sweet glittering gold
To the people
Laying roads
Behold!
They say
She is the silent, stalking menace
The shadow in the corner
Of your childhood bedroom
She lurks and lingers
She fastens her fingers
Into unsuspecting hearts
She is no darkness, no
She is the holder of light
In the mouths of drunks
They praise her
For all that she has overcome
All that she has undone
From what they have done
And what she has become
A fang toothed light switch
They praise her
Behold!
They say
A prodigy of protest
She builds her bones
In restless legs
In limp, loose arms
In a hoarder managed head
And a stale, vacant heart
Behold!
They say
She forges on
Though it never leaves her
If just a quick blip in time
In the corner of her eye
A hole burned by
A hot cigarette
A small portal
The other world
Like a maddening hangnail
She is afraid
She may unzip the very fabric
If she holds on too tightly
Behold!
She says
I am no rainy day blues
I am a symphony forged in
A natural disaster
Behold.

I've felt the gloom
got a little extra room
for yours
don't hold back, let me in
let my shaky voice
guide us to the unknown
who knows
maybe it'll be fun
finding our way home
after never truly having one
promise me you'll stay
I need to keep close
I cant get lost, without you
knowing you're not in sight, I will be blind
to the love, to the world
life will fade into gray
I'll lose my breath
fall into death, whatever that is
just stay here,
we can be lost
together

I don't need any friends
I got them all in my head

I don't need a lover
She's six feet under

Tomorrow night
I'll visit a meteor shower

We have celestial dust
In our bones and flesh

Made from Earth and outer space

I don't need any friends
If the stars
Are willing to listen

i want my poems to have teeth.  
i want my words to cut,
to maim, to bleed.
with verses, i will raze
empires. with stanzas,
i will turn thrones to dust.
with nothing but a bit
of silver on my tongue,
i will take the life of god.

i’ll ply that same *****
like honey, taste the sweet
nothings dripping
between knocking knees.
quake and quiver for me,
let me slip, furtive
as nightshade
to sate your curiosity.

feel the weight of veracity
in these fingers patiently
transcribing forgotten melodies,
compressing ivory keys
to sing of all that was lost
and what was gained
from the process.

He cut his hair, 21,
because at 13, he thought
it would be the end of the world to
don a skinhead. In the end, though,
his scalp looked okay.
It tickled his palm, touching it.
It felt like a baptism
to have been wrong.

/

Books with no pictures started
appealing to him, 14, when he read
about a highschooler who played tennis,
and a fellow highschooler who attempted suicide
because they got to him, stunned him.
This book was lost one day,
and it felt like the world ended.
A language was embedded there that
seemed to belong to him exclusively.
But it was time for it to be somebody else’s.
Someone needed to own it. Then lose it, too.
It needed passing-around, so that it could evolve.
It might return someday, all tattered and shopworn.
Will it feel the same?
Maybe. But perhaps it would be him who isn’t.

/

He imagines, 25, a life somewhere else.
He’s tired of punctuality and order.
The older he gets, the more
it seems control is mere illusion.
It terrifies him to accept that
at some point, he would have to jump.
He would have leave behind everything,
everyone. A major overhaul of the self
is bound to hurt orbiting objects, but it takes
an explosion, maybe, to begin like
It was the first time.

/

The pain of self-hatred
will never leave. It has distorted
the way he perceives, the way he accepts,
the way he welcomes. Hugs
will feel like something he has to do.
Tears won’t come at command.
Excess will seem ordinary.
Horrors will be regular intervals of stimulation.
That is the burden of not knowing
How to save yourself.

/

He will wrestle with time one day,
argue, bargain with it.
But it’s not something
that gives, only occurs.
Maybe he has to stop thinking
he needs to give.
Like time, maybe he has to
let himself occur.