Not evil, perhaps something lower?
An abyss of a person—a counterfeit soul.

How easy,
To rip the unsewn stitch
Or tear the thread of an untold tale.
Often these tapestries,
Tattered and stained with red,
Have experienced one reign after another.

Boundaries as suggestions
Like lines drawn in the sand
Washed away by the tide
They mean nothing in the end

Art is our savior
Revealing which lessons lie
Where pain resides
Turning salt to sugar.

Some people destroy the things they touch
Just to prove they can break

When you like someone for what they represent perhaps they’re better left as an idea.

A poem of thankfulness
That you are gone
And have stayed gone

You are cigarette butts,
Empty bottles,
And nights spent hunched over the sink.

You are journals bursting at the seams,
Bad poetry,
And long playlists.

You are fingernails bitten down until they bleed,
Smeared eyeliner,
And trauma I never came to understand

You are regrets buried in the closet,
Broken glass,
And I hope you find your peace.

I did not require fixing
Asking only that you do no damage
Here in the rot and rust
I plant my own gardens
And decorate my own soul
Making it my own
Making it my home

The sympathetic villain is passionate; even they feel pain.

Not evil, perhaps something lower?
An abyss of a person—a counterfeit soul.  

Calling to memory the despair of a black hole.

You destroy, you rot, you steal the light.
You feel nothing and let nothing in.

And you infect me, too, when I know I must share my existence with you.

So simple yet unknown
You weave stories
And try them on for size

You’ll seek a new story
Sculpt it with stars
Until you exit this plane
And its careless derision

Breaking all doubt
‘Til it’s born anew
Hooks in my heart
Howling in tune

You will always return
Bigger than before

Freya
Shield-Maiden, Lover
Sister, Mother
Embraces owing
Life unfolding
Blessings upon the fiery hearth
Tears above
Love below: relieve our toil
Darkness ebbing
Rhyme unending
Listen to my bold tale!
Freya
Red hair flowing
Sunlight growing
Rising upon the hill
A song of springtime
Complete this bold rhyme
Hear now my tale!

Set out into the dark forest with newly picked flowers for the hearth, grasped within a meager coat. Clutched in bare hands and protected against her chest from the cold wind which blew so insistent. She was not far from the village when she met a woman on the road.

"A penny for your thought? A purpose for your soul?”

“I do not think so.”  

Mysterious crones on a lonely road.

“Perhaps mittens to keep an old woman’s hands warm?” scratched the voice of the Crone.

The girl who wished to be on her way produced one flower from her coat,  

“May the thorns keep your hands warm as they do mine.”

Fresh blood dripping from the open wound,
the Crone graciously accepted the rose.

“For this trouble” she said “I will return a favor of my choosing...for you did not give me what I asked... I give a warning. You may not know of such things, but on this night, in these hills is a crone not unlike me. When she asks a favor of someone, and they do not give it to her...she takes them, then buries them in her garden to make the spring come faster. She always asks for that which cannot be given. The snow cover and the full moon coming will sneak night upon you. Wherever you are heading you must stay the night. For if you travel back you will surely lose your way and find yourself food for the flowers.”

The girl who had been taught to be polite even to witches nodded and replied,

"Thank you for your gift.”

She headed on her way not believing a word of what the old Crone said.

Still this dread loom is woven with defeat. Even for the gods who would keep us safe from evil,  and guard us from death 'till the end of days was determined.

I say for us all in this song that after light had dropped, the first of the frost did melt.

Is it bitter?
Is it sweet?
Does it taste of holy wine,
or the blood which stains our hands?

I wait for the day when a flinch no longer follows your name. When the memory burned into my being is kinder than you ever were.

To be free of the silence which suffocates and tears shed through clenched teeth.

"Your hair is a glimpse of home
   Yet when it's wet...
     It's heavy..."

He wrapped himself up in deep umber waves

Dug himself into deep, dark loam

Yet still floating away in a sea of strands

Sheets of passion and poison

"It was a secret nesting in summer scorched brush."

Fragrant and Supple.

His ***** cut the Earth. He watered thick peat.


Together they would slink down dark alleys, cowered in grease covered corners.

He hit her...

She snapped at him...

He chased her salivating strands, rich auburn coat glistening.

In the late afternoon heat she submitted her secret.

He howled his hurt...
An animal infected with rage and confusion.

*

He said, "I have a 5 o'clock flight to help fight the cause." She said nothing. He swept back her tide of soft auburn...wet her with salty fear.

She stepped away slightly...
   He shuddered...
      He disappeared...

Let their words break upon you
as waves assault the cliffs
a foundation of bedrock
unbothered by the affairs below
iron-clad in will

I bury you in the marrow of my bones

Forever to be carried in this wreckage

A derelict heart full of curses and portents

Salted wounds and blood in the water

Ships arriving on strange shores

Satellites in eternal free fall

Orbiting stars named for blasphemed gods

Their supplicants and shrines

Long since consumed by fire

Or in moorland, drowned and exhumed

A place once called home, become a tomb

Once upon a time she said,

“That’s why I didn’t want to get close, I knew I’d be messy for you.”
…

I met someone,
And you’re so different.
She’s so different,
From you I mean.

In that I don’t have to ask,
I don’t have to beg.
Not a secret shame,
Not something on the side.

It wasn’t until it came so easily that I realized how poorly you treated,
Me.

How do I tell her that I’m terrified she’ll treat me like you did?

How do I explain that when I seem distant,
Detached,
A thousand miles away,
It’s because your barbed wire words strangle my heart?

Eh oui, c’est la dure réalité …

(The oceans are full of plastic)

Pouvez-vous m’aider?

(I could write about wars but which one?)

Ça te dit ?

(I use my passions as a form of escapism)

Faut pas casser du sucre sur le dos de quelqu'un!

(Is the sun exploding? Are workers being paid?)

Il faut croquer la vie à pleines dents.

(Am I ungrateful to want more?)

Maybe it’s your self aggrandizing behavior,
Or the downward spiral into an elegy
Which I cannot stop myself from revisiting.
They say,

“He speaks of you as though you were dead”

In this lies a modicum of truth
Silent witching hours where my dreams are haunted.

The still, dead of night gripping me in terror
As I am unable to determine where the chains that bind me end, and the ones you carry begin.
Skulking through the corridor of my mind like Marley’s specter.

How has it come to pass that the line between elegy and ghost story is blurred in such a manner?

Don’t you hear it?

The sound like a hush running through the dim sky.

Like a whisper echoing across a grassy field.

I hear it.

It calls to me with these words:



"I am here."



Then the rain comes...

My heart has become timid
So quiet,
You might mistake its hush for a silent pool
Whose water lies still
And depth deceives those who stare too long
Into believing it shallow
Shunning the height of emotion
Lest it drown in the undertow
I struggle to stay afloat,
Forgive me

I am thankful for each goodbye spoken to me

The most painful are never said,

Never explained

We are not one breed – but we are all reaching; all trying to dash out our insides in an effort to find something we never knew was there.

I find I’m tired of life and I’m tired of not living, but I can’t stop breathing any more than I can stop writing.

Never love a writer, because though most of us will not be remembered centuries from now, all of us leave something.

They say that the world was built for lovers but we’re the ones cast to keep note.

Some day we’ll all be a little older
A little more weathered and restored
We’ll wake up and all this poetry will finally make sense.
Like a locked drawer underneath our ribs,
Fortuitously pried open by storm.

Each person I have ever met
Has added to the tapestry of my soul
Some adding a single string
To the complexity of the whole

Sometimes strings lie in disarray
Their edges frayed at threads end,
The ghosts of my memories left behind
Woven into the fabric of my being  

To move forward
I face the torn edges of the past
And make peace with the imperfections
Added from each thread,
By integrating them into myself

I think the most insidious thing you could do
Is stab someone close to you
Then tell them their pain and anguish
Is the reason you weep

Like Icarus
Too close
Too much

I’ve been told each bad poem
Lays the foundation for the next
Each satisfactory one
Tracing its genealogy
Through myriad failures

Am I better today than I was yesterday?
Have I learned to be humble?
Do I take care of my thoughts when I am alone?
Do I mind my words when I am with others?

I must destroy the idea,
That I am better than anyone else

I am well practiced in the art of heartache
Fluent in the language of grief
Versed in the routine of melancholy

I walk through this life marred by loss

Each day representing my triumphant victory over every obstacle existence has thrown at me

To love me is to accept sleepless nights; to accept immortality; to accept that you love what you cannot mend. In other words (which are not my own):

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn’t happiness.”

When we first met how did you describe me?
What did you say?

I could not stop talking about you.
I went on about you like you were the very stars.

Or at the very least,
How they were placed in the heavens for your express enjoyment.

I went on for hours,
about how when you touched me,
I could have melted in your hands.

You had me under a spell,
I would have done anything for you.

Endings in real life come suddenly,
Often without warning or making sense

I’ve never liked this

One day you wake up only to realize,
It was all a very long time ago
And we are different people

There is no closure
No neat narrative,
To wrap it all up

I revel in the ways it haunts me,
revere the phantoms and fables
burned into my soul.

I make love to memory, in starless witching hours, when I am too cold, too quiet, too empty

Likewise, weeds splitting once-opulent walls, the dullness of rusted jewels— the primal truth in the certainty of loss.

Not a burden
Not undeserving
Not broken,
A mess to be cleaned up.

So endlessly enough

Even apart,
I have not felt disconnected from you

My single greatest fear,

Is that this has all been a series of mistakes,

I will never be able to unmake.

For every great artist with a closet full of bad paintings,

There is one with only skeletons.

I look forward to a time when cracks in the brittle bones of old age will hurt more than the fissures of a broken heart ever did. Only then will I know I’ve lived.

You have been a teacher
Of passion and guilt
Quiet Rebellion
That resounds now still
And I,
Disobedient,
Followed and learned,
From you,
And of you

I bring you the burden of my longing
I am the wanderer without drink
And you are the pool of water
In my desert of desire.

I bring you the burden of my love
It has waited for so long-
(And there is no crucifixion like waiting)
It shall cover you-
It shall be the girdle of flame around you
It shall be the pyre
Whereon we shall perish

Is sadness just another precious thing you have given to me?

I don’t write for you
I don’t even write for me
It’s to make sense of the chaos
To greet each terror by name

I want to paint a neat narrative
Give it substance and form
Curse it with the burden of a name
Maybe then, it will make sense

It’s easy to convey pain
Difficult to transform it into art—

Here is how I hold the pen
Here is how the pen holds me
Here are my thoughts,
Over-steeped in empty fervor  
Here is everything and nothing

“Some day I will write poems about this but first I must survive it.”

Give yourself permission to survive.

This is how art is made.

In the same way Van Gogh painted his Starry Night from the window of an asylum—

It was the safety of the cell,
And not his insanity,
That lifted the brush.

Never apologize for your art.

Frustrated
Confused
Everything comes to an end?
Too quick
Not enough time

I’ve often been told I’m too uptight

Little do they know,

Each day I make a cup of coffee

A display of quiet anarchy,

For it too is an act of entropy

I wish the world were made differently

I wish growth didn’t have to hurt

I wish feeling happiness didn’t rely on knowing sadness

I wish pain were not necessary to know pleasure

I wish I could have learned through love

I assumed there is poetry
In death and the wilting of flowers
In the setting of the sun
In a life with or without words to describe

I assume there is art
Not just in the portraits we burn
But in the dark and hollow nights
Determined to find beauty in the black and grey and white.

I assume there too is music
In the pouring of clouds
In footsteps
In the abandoned and lost

Once upon a time
I made myself small
So they could feel big
Told them they deserved
To take up more space
Mistakes were made
Hearts were broken
And being so small,
I was crushed underfoot

Your anger is valid. Your intensity is welcome.

Feel that fire for as long as it wants to be there.

Anger is a great teacher.

Stay there and only when it feels right to you,

Set it free.

I will listen to you in your anger and marvel at the brilliance of your heat.