This place feels safer
This blanket of night holds me
I thought you would know

But I guess I'm wrong
My eyes cannot see the truth
Because you're long gone

I think I'll miss you
But only when I'm awake
Always preferred sleep

I've had twelve whole hours
I could pen a masterpiece
This haiku will do

Overdesign can **** a dream;
It's tearing my plot straight down the seam.
But it's okay to take a step back.
Maybe it is just focus I lack,
But I have more ideas.

And it's okay to work on something different.

Hope for purest white
Deep crimson scattered atop
Life within the snow

A sheet of tarp hanging down from the sky
Behind which we lift and tug and drop then fly;
If the stage is wrong the director will cry.

But the lead can only ad lib so long
Before we break into the next song,
It's a good thing stagehands are strong.

Open up!
Speak up!
Keep it up!

And the applause comes soon after

A year ago, I'd hate this.
It would be unacceptable to miss
A deadline I created, arbitrary
It may be, I shouldn't tarry.
But mistakes happen and frankly, a few hours late is better than never.

I have the desire to write.
So why must I find it so hard?
I accept that I'm not a talented bard
But I still want my words to delight.

Why must my mind repeat itself so?
Continuing to re-tread paths long walked,
I find new source of inspiration locked;
How can I allow new art to flow?

Can I even create anew?
Perhaps fresh thoughts will long evade me.
I'll walk these paths again, and see;
Perhaps I'm yet to find my way through.

Clear, ever flowing,
The river coursing through me;
Carving it's own path.

Heart beating faster
Only when you say my name
Like the freshest air

I'm fully aware of risk I take;
Gambling again that I'll even wake,
But the rush is addicting.
Clamping a hand down, inflicting
A state upon myself I cannot
Escape from, time and again I allot
More chances for it all to go wrong.
I'll sing my final swansong.

I am an artist, I am in love with love.
These rapturous prisons I can't dispose of
Have captured my heart, my mind, my pen,
For years upon years, but what happens when
I finally find one who feels that for me?
When metaphor comes real and all I see
Is the glint in the eyes of one who matters most?
Will she calm my thoughts, as the ghost
Of all my muses are laid to rest at last?
Or will she push me further, further past
The rhetoric of beauty and joy I've written of oft
as she continuously raises my heart aloft?

I'd like to know
But I never can
Who could capture my heart?
I'm an artist.
I'm in love with love.

Cheers and applause from the darkened room
As a silly villain remarks on doom.
I'm standing by, aside it all,
Allowing the curtain to rise and fall.

Silence reigns as the lights go down,
Awaiting the call, so the quiet can drown.
My eyes again scan the sea of heads;
For a moment, thinking of just regrets.

In a single second my mind is made
To live for others and give them aid.
For even after you bid adieu,
I can still live my life for you.

She always felt too many things,
For anyone else and herself.
A good deed's a reward in of itself,
Yet she drowns in the pain it brings.

How long can this heart keep beating;
It's valves clogged with webbing and dust?
Doses of envy, gluttony, and lust,
They dig deep within; they sting.

A moment's joy is stolen away,
Any hope of love long since forgotten,
Her soul overgrown, gnarled and rotten.
It's within silence she chooses to stay.

Feelings renege by living causality;
A defence against feeling too much.
Those desires for contentedness, joy, and such,
Could only make way for apathy.

Wherefore do you appear afore me?
Do you mean to follow where e'er I go?
My slumbers and dreams are no longer free,
If you aren't here, I fear when you'll show.

I might find it comforting, your constant
Presence keeping me here in reality,
But your mask works hard to hide your intent,
There's no room for emotion buried in your brevity.

Whenceforth do you hail from?
Where this behaviour is encouraged?
'Tis a place of oddity and them some,
I'm sure. Travel there is now discouraged.

By me, specifically.
Stop wearing those creepy hats.

A frayed tendril of pathetic string,
Run taught above my head.
A blade of dismay, terror, fear;
Standing in perfect contrast to everything I want to be.

'Tis nought more than a fickle thing,
Not a feeling to be felt or a word to be said,
Yet it continues to hinder me here.
It's the waiting doom that awaits all goodwill I'd set free.

A twang of snapped twine,
Again and again and again and again,
It all falls down yet remains in place;
Tying up it's own phantom madness to strike deep within me.

Unpredictable, I was feeling fine,
'Till the blade deemed to split me in twain,
And once again tears stream down my face.
Drowning in a selfish torrent of fog through which I cannot see.

A day upon a day, with a thousand days more;
Stretching out afore me, too far to be sure,
Can I even make it? The end seems too far,
But I will take that first step.

A step upon a step, with a thousand steps more;
Passing each moment, more confident than before.
I have decided to make it, I don't care how far.
I'll keep on walking.

A puncture
Leaking life through suture
Surrounding existence
Dying without a chance
For worthwhile meaning
Or rebellious screaming
Against the institution
That perverted your prostitution
For it's own benefit
Uncaring if a flame goes unlit

And so you're gone
How brightly you could have shone
A mind so effervescent
And a life so incandescent

Waxwork drips down
A colourful wick burned brown

And a single plate
That can carry no more hate

Twice in one week,
Then never before;
Have I stayed hidden that long?
I think no o'er has seen me more;
I've made myself too meek.

Yet here I am again,
Making it all about the bad.
She accepted me for who I was;
She did not grow fearful, disquieted, mad,
To her I was a person, not a sinful stain.

In at least one place,
That store on the high-street,
I can be what I am, who I want to be.
She was someone I was happy to meet
For she wasn't disgusted to see my face.

I'm different so you treat me like a child,
As if a single misplaced word will drive me wild,
Don't you see how that's seen?

One word and suddenly you're a world-class painter
But artists aren't limited to a solitary brush.
I'm not some unhinged animal waiting to see a trainer,
I still have a heart, and feelings I feel you crush.
Am I even here to you?

Or am I just a title?
A condition?
Something to murmur in hushed whispers
About why I act the way I do
Why I say the things I do
But I'm more than that.

I'm not expecting you to be perfect.
People speak in weird ways,
Act in a manner I can't affect
The stress within me stays.

I'm not expecting you to be perfect.
I just want you to treat me as a person.

What can our next step be?
This valley is becoming so deep.
Sheer cliffs either side of me,
Pressing in ever further to keep
Me restricted in this place.
Does the sight of myself harm me so?
I'm the first to admit I'd do anything to erase
This body that keeps my spirits so low,
But this catch 22 I find myself in
Is a low even I do not wish to partake.
****** if I do, if I don't, I can't win,
And even still I'm worrying these feelings are fake.
I've sunk too far to hope to surface.
I'm drowning in depths of my own despair.
I tried to find my life at my own pace,
But I guess I forgot to come up for air.

The mirror reflects a life eternal,
A thousand scars entirely internal,
Mortal instants of existence persist
In entrapping souls that cannot resist
The pull of the desecrated altar
Upon which the faithful can only falter
And fail to live a life that has an end.
And so they pretend.
They pretend and play at mortality
As if they were more than an abnormality
Of an unending perception of time,
Trapped in a moment, or a rhyme,
They continue to temper their voice,
As if speaking it was ever their choice.

'they're both so manly'
I thought you would know better
Maybe you do know
Maybe you speak truth
But you're trampling my heart
And it hurts too much

Oh, tim'rous beastie
This wind is too much for me
Do not fly away

How many years since
Since I saw your eyes gleam
You spoke clear, to mince
your words to cheerful themes.

A thousand generations
Brought your light to bear,
But going beyond it's station;
Age causes the mind to wear.

You wanted to stop.
I know you did.
I didn't want you to drop
Into the night so placid.

But now you're gone,
For a decade at last,
I hear your funeral was 'tres bon'
But I just wanted the past.

My father got mad
That my eyes were so dry,
My heart seeming glad,
But God I wish I could cry.

My heart was emptied
And my soul torn asunder,
And so my grief was muted;
One last final blunder.

It's been years upon years,
Since I grinded under your pestle.
To remember grief, I was told by my peers,
So now I'll remember you, my great grandma Ethel.

A toxic miasma
An infection in my blood's plasma
It obscures my mind from view
Impossible to push thoughts through
But my poetry will persevere
I don't care for caution against severe
Repercussions for forcing myself to think.
I will not allow my art to sink.

Fog rolls thick through pervading waves,
Obscuring the stars the heart of man craves,
My ship, lost in mist, must fade away,
Never again to see a new way
To escape from the sadness we all feel deep,
And to lose ourselves in the beauty of sleep,
But maybe that's not so bad.

We write our best art when we're sad.

Even amongst friends
I just cannot stop shaking;
The sky, it is dark.

To me, a weakness,
But time continues forward.
Fear, forevermore.

Again you offer
To bring me into your world
I deserve it not

Words clumping deep in my throat
The words we promised to write together
Lost out at sea among driftwood afloat
Upon the regrets of our severed tether
A single sentence or perhaps just a word
Makes that invisible line betwixt life
And the violent death delivered on a sword
That I delivered your heart on a bleeding knife
But to dwell on that need for forgiveness
Has silenced my voice and left me falling
Deep into the black that remains of our kiss
That held the severed ropes once mooring
The fleet of our souls aloft in a sky
Littered with lanterns and stars
And I can't help but let out a cry
To reach Venus, Mercury and Mars
That I live afloat our shining allegory
Everything I do

For our Winter Story

A solipsistic onlooker
Viewing an isolated world.

It creeped through the darkness to me,
Only just perceptible to mine eye,
Yet present all the same.

As I looked closer, I could see it clear,
Clearer perhaps than I should,
I could see right on through it;
To another just behind.

There were two here all along,
Yet at first believed myself alone.
It wasn't a change in perspective,
I haven't moved an inch,
But focusing revealed more...

And more... and more... and more
Three, five, nine, eleven...
It's difficult to keep track;
Every open space occupied,
Every pocket suffocated,
Yet I somehow refused to see them.

Perhaps
These Ghosts
Are more real,
Than I gave them
The due credit;
They're everywhere
Everything.

Letters and emails
Emerge like hideous weeds
They serve one purpose

They all remind me
Of all my failings in life
I am stranded here

I know not how to justify
Any concern my own life brings me.
Nothing I'm living through
Can top the horror that awaits.
I wished we were better than this

Here's to the ******* who'd ruin my life
Who's filled every moment of existence with strife
I'm sorry I'm not the child you wanted me to be
Sorry I couldn't live the way you wanted to see
Though that wouldn't be enough, would it?
If I was straight, cis, sporty and ****?
You wouldn't give a **** about me
Cause I still couldn't make your life so easy and free
You never wanted a child, just an excuse
To abandon the family that'd worn out it's use
They hate me too, but I can't really blame them
Their hate stems from this monster of men
As we celebrate I bolster the thought
Of when I can drop you in a hole and leave you to rot
Because maybe then I can be who I am
Without your input that my life is a sham
And maybe then, when you can't speak a word
Maybe then I can finally be assured
That my life really matters
Because you won't be there to tear every aspect of my being and every hope that I've had for life and love and family to tatters

It is maddening
To see you suffer so much
Your fields dry, barren.

I wish I could help
But my desert is arid
I've no rains to share

Instead I must watch
See as your life empties out
History repeats

You tried to scam me
With fake certification,
But I saw through you

Your desperate threats,
Spiralling legality,
All clearly nonsense

I'm a bad target,
Never that easy to fool;
Too big brain for you.

Perhaps I could solve all this,
These problems we're drowning under.
People around me are faking bliss,
As if their worries don't tear them asunder.
But it has to weigh on them too.
I'm not the only one gasping for air.
They've strength to put on a brave face, and do
Everything they can to survive a life unfair,
Maybe I could too, had I that drive,
The flame within to see my hopes flowered
Into something that makes me proud to be alive,
Or maybe, I could finally be a coward.

If only I could comfort you,
And be a shoulder to cry on.
If only I could be there for you,
And be a warmth you can rely on.
If only I could brighten the sky for you,
And become something you can depend on.

Alas, I cannot,
Seems I only know how to make it worse;
I simply cannot
Understand why you choose to keep this curse.

I can see through time

It's such a strange word.

I can make it happen,

That belief isn't so absurd;

Yet I still find it so hard to be open.

I don't particularly care though,

Yeah, I'm miserable. So?

Changing my future is within my ability.

The rain soaks through my skin to bone,
Holding me here as I push forth alone;
To forgive of sins I've refused to atone.
But as my feet bare cold against hardened stone
The voices return to me, a ceaseless drone
Of hatred and misgivings too oft overblown,
And I lose myself again, refusing to condone
Every action I've taken, creating a throne

Of self-important misery.

But then I see your eyes afore me,
And I find my place again.

And Lost Nothing For It

I Have To Say

I Feel a Bit ****.

I just wish I looked different
Maybe then I wouldn't be treated the villain

Music of the soul
Carried aloft amidst winds
Leaves me feeling blue

A smile can never survive
It's own self-awareness.

Bright colours fade over time.

Time is long behind me.

I can see the villain I'm becoming

Why do you deny this truth?

Another source of pain is forthcoming

Another reason to hate your youth.

So cast me out

You can do without.