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...

I am the Patron Saint of Lost Causes
Each time I let another set of teeth rip me open
(Again and Again)
****** maws and rotting flesh
Just so I can make poetry of it all.

The people I love are vultures
While I,
Some dead thing in a field—
No one cares what killed me
They are just here to take what is left.

(I don’t recognize love unless it eats me alive)

Isn’t love a kind of violence?
If we choose it, then it’s power.
(Again and Again)
Teeth marks around my neck.
This is power.

A hand in my chest,
Eyes hungry
For those I’ve lost,
I bled myself dry for you.

So many words unsaid
Places never reached
Memories we wish to erase

I can watch you from afar, because it doesn’t burn

You are as foreign to me as the stars

And just like them you have the insolence of setting me on fire when I get too close

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

Little one,

You are resilient, you are compassionate, you are generous, you are brave.

You are so much more than your lovely bright eyes and mischievous smile.

You are hopeful and stubborn. Surprising and curious.

You have too long loved those who thanked you for taking up so little space.

You were made for more.

You are ready for more.

Ask for more.

Sometimes,
I feel like an assortment of people
Who never existed
But wanted to,
All at odds with each-other
Over matters of meaning,
Our purpose in life,
The nature of love.

Each one clamors for my attention

Do the stars weep for me?
Will the stars find me ruthless and calculated,
As so many jilted lovers?

Will they find me insatiable,
Like those I have taken, had, and refused?
Will they call me cruel?
For melodic tunes played on tugged heartstrings?

Will the stars weep for me?
My wretched form and bruised heart,
Beating like so many others
Under an unforgiving spotlight

They loomed as gods when I was young
Tasked with shaping malleable clay
Instead of love, teaching pain
A childhood home never safe
Unhealed wounds festering for years
Distrusting myself and plagued by fear
Replayed scenes inside my mind
Apologizes I’d never receive
Inside my damaged heart
The place they haunt
Broken

You will never be new again

When I can’t find you on the pages I live between, I’ll scrawl you across my own.

You’ll find yourself a decade from now scattered across syllables and syntax you never laid hands on.

I can’t go looking for something to save me,

So instead I spend my time thinking about how the bare branches of trees are the most beautiful and how crooked limbs, asleep, are the same.

I want to be enough
To be bright enough
To burn hot enough

To make only acceptable errors
Nothing more

Would I be enough
Were my wit sharper
And my thoughts less scattered

Would I feel your smile upon me then?

It is the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe.
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, the indifferent judge between the high and low.

How can I fight the tide when the deep water held a curse?

It has drowned my every waking thought; but in dreams I soar, breeze-limbed and light.

When I woke, tasting salt, the waves were all about me and darkest night had melted into water’s grave;

But I could not swim, nor move or call out for help.

So I must die a thousand times until I am borne upon the sea that rages within me.

I am thankful for each goodbye spoken to me

The most painful are never said,

Never explained

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

I live for the pain you bring me. I craved the feeling of being let down by you, because in some way it means we were close enough for you to hurt me.

It is the ancient, absent god, seldom spoken of in hushed whispers among certain literary circles.

Sustained by the fervent prayer of a single solemn supplicant.

Chapped palms raised with the melancholy and mettle of a man who has nothing left to lose.

When the sweet and sublime have passed, I still believe in love as though its existence would cease should I stop.

You try to find beauty in everyone else, but I wonder if you have tried to find it in yourself. 

You are worth more than the tears that fell from your pained eyes at 3 AM

You are better than the nasty people who may have called you tragic and ugly.

You're better than the people who have laughed at you.

You are drastically better than the hate and sadness that eats at you everyday.

I understand how this hurt, this poison in your soul and how each day is a struggle to overcome it.

It may not mean anything to you right now but when you’re sitting at home old and grey I hope you look back at these days.

That's when you will have finally found out who you are and how strong you’ve become. So I know your world may sometimes cave in and you’re suffocating under the sea of hurt you find yourself in... but sometimes you need to create your own boat and find the high ground.

I hope you find it soon.

We tend to ruin things
On purpose or not---
Including each other.

In the end you were only predictable in your unpredictability

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.

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

Possibly the worst feeling
Is to know you did your best
But even then, it was not enough

So I find myself becoming bitter
You might ask why
For if I were merely sweet,
This pain would have eaten me already

I thought I was done with this pain

And yet,

I am burnt to ashes

Only an elegy could illustrate this ache

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

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

“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.

How do you expect me to stand on my feet when you keep striking at my ankles?

Is love quantifiable?
Is it about plunging the world into darkness
Ripping the veil that separates us from heaven
And displaying the entirety of the cosmos
That exists for your express enjoyment?

Is love about grand gestures?
Draining the very seas
And telling you it cannot be measured
Endless like the grains of sand

Is love found in the quiet and still?
In the timid motions of a shy heart
Struggling to beat its pain away?

For love?
For love I would do anything
I love in the same way the oppressed go to war
It is never in half measures