I was taught that being stubborn
is a virtue that every young boy should have,
that to decide how you govern
your life and your path.

I was taught that being stubborn
is simply a way to be,
that wanting and yearning
provided my journey's fee.

I was taught that being stubborn
was a sign of respect, of pride.
Unlearn all that'd been thought
and learn all from inside.

I was taught that being stubborn
would create a wall around me,
a nocturne of darkness
for which only i could see.

Now i am alone, all stubborn and virtuous
wishing for a chance.
but this disease is cure-less
Through no other circumstance.

what was once Ivory
has now returned to granite
BOTH WE LIE, IN THE EARTH,
yet i.. i am still tortured with breath, with sight.

there is no need of voice.
i will hang on the farewell as it is a rope from Troy around my neck.
lull me down with you please, please, please. i am nothing but that.
there is nothing more to be said.

HOW DO YOU LIVE WHEN WHAT MADE YOU YOU IS DEAD?
(sleep in the wheat, i will be there soon.)
you find the quickest way to them instead.
                                                        ­          
                                 i am not sorry.

"You could be a doctor!"
Yeah I could- Neurosurgery still allows
LOBOTOMIES
right?
(Tell me something I don't know)

"Why is it so slanted?"
Its trying to dodge your
OBVIOUS
conclusions.
(Show me better)

"How can you even read it?"
Maybe
just
maybe
because
ITS MINE??
(Someone get me away from this guy)

After a star
grants us it's brief blinding love-light.
They must burn to dust
somewhere out of sight.

For no heart can bear the weight
of seeing ones' love
in its true transient state.
But that only means
that your soul should change fate!

Nothing, no nothing remains as ash
No our hearts will not explode and crash!

We will find shelter
away from the falling stars, the blue-lighted Storm!
As I have sworn....

That we will live.           We will live.

I.
The Sun.
and you the
Moon. Yes. We tend
the rabbits true, but they
die in obliviousness too.

Getting lost
in the Coffeeshop Quartet.
Birring grinders and steamy explosions
chattering friends- coffee tinged emotions.
Everyone's exploring with their faces upbeat,
a little bubble of warmth against the cold harsh street.

We were twin-tailed stars,
bursting forth from the night.
Radiating our warmth,
revelling in delight.

We were gemstones- Geodes;
raw, intwined.
Silver faceted rings,
wrapped tightly in twine.

But as all atoms decay,
light dulls and fades.
Pulls that were closer now drift away,
Oh how I wish.

I wish you would stay.

Gripping. Your hands,
slicked with sweat. But I had
to hold it (hold it) tighter.
Heights aren't scary.
but
I've dropped your
porcelain
skin one time too many.
Left me wary.
No more scars for us.

You require at least three similes.
A metaphor or two.
This section needs more sibilance,
and another allegory on alliteration too.

Creative writing
now a standardized test
where a poet seems
to do slightly poorer than the rest.

You receive a checklist, told
bye and buy the book.
Drain away the colours upon your pencil
or face the examiners sickle and hook.

Creative writing
now a slog a convoluted use and reuse
of that which
"improves"
your descriptions and inscriptions.

You need a conclusion.


something befitting a happy end.
Try anything smart
and a bad grade i'll be "sure to send."

SOH: (Sins over Humanity)
CAH: (Chaos averts Hope)
TOA: (Truth obliging Ambition)

Find the triangles within our hearts.

With an Earthquake,
the deadliest moment is not during.
It's the aftershocks.
Rocking those weakened foundations
to rubble.

The same is said of Love.
No matter how shaky
or rough.
When the motion stops moving
that's when truly life is tough.

do not hold
hands that do not fear
losing yours.

heard the mountaintop
be scraped clear of snow this morning.
some angry man
shouting up the cliffsides
he said:
"take it all and quickly.
before my hands find the strength to close.
take me into the calm
this thin air carries my tears too easily."
he said:
"you were right about my legs
standing for the sake of looking down at you
scared of laying things bare"
he cried
"i was wrong about you
that the words meant something more
and that things get better in the end"-------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------------------------

"that things get better in the end"

smothered in something icywarm

There's no relationship Richter scale.
No level
One _
      Two ------
             Three ^^^^^
Catastrophe.

There's no stopping these reverberations.
so seek shelter
until love can restart;        
                                    till you can find home

                              in a~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~still vibrating      
                                                                       heart.

I have a migraine.
So i won't feel shame,
if my tongue doesn't d-a-n-c-e
for you.

I have a migraine.
So don't you dare think
i won't help sink
your pathetic pity ship.
                                      I have a migraine.
                                      your touch is only keeping me sane.
                                      but soon you'll be gone
                                                                      a n d  it's pounding pounding.
I have a migraine
so throw the 'killers
cause it'll start again.
                                               No waking from this one.

and who's to stop me?
management
have managed
their time productively.
                                       shudder to think
                                       they'd begrudge a
                                       subordinate the time
                                       to blast their feelings
                                       off the clock.
leaning over window panes
that lack
balconies to catch
their workers.
                                     my 1-1s have started and ended
                                     with a heart in my mouth
                                     making it harder for the words
                                     'i quit' to get out.

can i just pivot off of can i just piggyback can we just swivel can i put a pin in you and sew up the wounded look that face carries to the coffee machine every lunch Oskar take some sick leave or just leave at this point we haven't identified your fit and our culture of inclusion excludes delays in action i just don't understand how personal problems seep into the workplace what its been five months which is half the time you were with him can't it
just be let go?
just let me go
you're being let go
i want to let go.
                                                    ~ HR will be in touch. ~

remembering
the day after
a date in the grasslands
where our necks
ached on earthy blankets
and legs mottled by sweet kisses
delivered from flies.

my god the
jealousy
that they had known intimacy
of the softness in the calves i took to
sleep that afternoon we met
filled the short
but beautiful
sunset
with melancholy.

maybe here you found
i held codependency quite closely.

so
you took me to one of those superstores
that sell
beds.

                                   "i have a friend who's closing he always makes and double folds the quilt because it makes him feel like someone's mum."

you half shouted over
the motorway behind us- the demanding
yet
secondary conversation.

how
i wondered, did i end up here
                   - the boy i liked 6 months in -
laughing between
his downy hair and tap touchy fingers
now
so proudly leading the way
as his
friend, tired & mischievous
ushered us into the theatre
of infinite fractal bedspreads.

                                                 "hurry up so i can close to give you your privacy i'm going for a smoke."

spoken like any true
east London mum-
all ciggie ash
and true love.

i got to watch you work

which was flattering to say the least.
to stand beside
kings and queens
doubles and singles
being bent
dragged and persuaded
to your whimsy.
watching the curve of a bicep
seized up in delirious rearranging
                         - the muscles of the neck betray the youth of love-
until a masterpiece emerging
before us both
was realised.

                      "at least now we can cuddle without the bugs...or at the least these are bed ones?"

i remember
unwrapping the currently occupied smokers
carefully settled blankets like a first birthday
gift.
sliding under them,
with my shoes kicked away in eagerness.
your arms
not yet scarred with indecision
pull me closer till i forget to breathe....

this is it.
the mattresses connected sheets and sheets and sheets of feeling and this is it at once to cover and unravel against the texture of the cushions the springs the feathers locked away this is it like the words i whispered through the skin of the pillow your arm not so much pinned as smothered below the crook of my neck and this is it all there is is the smell of us in this beautiful moment that latches me to the frame in my mind against my back with the weight of the future this is it the pressing pressing pressing at the touch of our palms the touch of our lips the distances we'll learn to walk alone or together or side by side but not able to look at the path we tread perpendicular to our hearts this is it this is it this is it it it

....then i breathe.

body like a Hoplite,
raised from the dust to lay the land-
sent armed
ashen spear and heart,
trunks of armour clad legs
growing into the clay coloured Earth
rooted.

these lyre-heartstrings taut with longing.
to see
a browbeaten Myrmidon,
in daylight.

watch, as the breath of Zeus escapes
Grecian chests,
concave with muscle
Olympus itself exists within those crevices.

i lay offerings,
ambrosia soaked spoken word
at the under-flesh of your calf
laying beside myself
in hope the whispers bestowed to you from the Fates
on the eve of Troy
mean less with your lips, pressed to wine, against mine.

Solicited smiles
Send shivers.
Somewhat surprising!
Shouldn't snakes
Send slithers?

Echo illicit idioms,
into my ear.
Speaking ***** always was
your favourite pitfall.

But maybe getting trapped
would be best for us
both.

Who needs sunlight anyway?

I have neither:
The Time- to talk trash-

or

The Tolerance- to tell tales-

I don't mean to be spiteful,
but if you really want to bother me.                   Just read the title.

I am the remains of you.
a crater in human form
from my limbs smoke erupts, snaking through pores
filling the air with the scent of shame and
discontent.
I am the impact point.
of a thousand glass shards spiralling
through air, sea and raining down into
our eyes
I am ground zero.
cracked and flaked islands of forgetful comments
compliments within razor wire conversations.
I am your living breathing monument.
painfully decorated and sculpted
to remind you
we imprint what makes us, us
and the worst is sometimes

What we see clearest.

You are poetry spoken in tongues.**
I do not know how to understand you
I do not know if I'd like too
I'd love the sounds all the same;
regardless if
the meaning escapes me.

Slip out into verse
with or without curse
let the rhymes run round you
getting wrapped up in words so true
grunting away your anger serves naught
so shout the lines and cries you been taught
sing your frustrations out, out, out!
Let them ring!

Even when!

**When you don't know how to begin!

Bitterness is an acquired taste.
but perhaps.
If we believe it to be sweet,
Our tongues'll taste each other too.

am I more than a drink
taken per food group
swallowed by instinct.
you’re more to me than thirst.
sliced by feeling,
unpeeled heart wrenching
take from all and, Nothing.
I wait for you here,
so perhaps the taste of you
lights back stars, and starlight.
perhaps the taste of you
finds pathways in the back of legs, of knee.
you are permenent in the heat of love
but sliced in essence.
**** ME
and ask very little in return, ask of holding.
your **** as it grows limp in the moonlight,
all I miss is the taste of your absence
all I taste is the feeling of you
finished inside of me which laid the foundations of something larger than what this body can contain,
I love it, the hurt of your breaking into me.
and hurt of the love that remains.

i understand the Greeks
When they wrote of boys
turning to men as
“in the flush of their strength”.
as if the tides of youth,
had burst it’s banks
flooding childhood, like the Mycenae
against Troy.

you have outgrown
the roots within me.
and as branches spiral upwards
searching for another place to lay,
your oaken memory will

Slowly.       Wither.        Away...

I carry a notepad:  
                                    Not to
                                    Bullet point
                                    Out
                                                            My existence.

But to document;     Resilience.

As I walked down, on my way
back from Camden Town- some sights I saw.
The squabbles on the streets,
the dancers with two left feet-
I saw the smokers blow rings,
upon cobbled stones surrounded by courts-
like kings.

Then the rain came pelting,
yet the old lady kept belting.
Out her soft tune.
The cats came to listen,
but the rain kept on glistening
till shelter was found.
What a day to go missing-
even if the downpour's *******
on my way home from Camden Town.

They're a little itchy.
But i think they're off-puttingly
pretty.

Little raised bumps, reversed scars.
oscillating lines
skin stars.

Leave a couple more before we flutter away towards another canvas storing whatever we stole to give and give and give again.
To Another. (I think they're off-puttingly pretty- little love stain.)

It's okay. These words'll fall
on deaf ears, but act like you're listening,
anyway.

It's not okay. Carrot and stick.
Couldn't i have been your,
first pick.

WE'RE OKAY. BECAUSE THE FLINCHES
THAT RUN THROUGH YOU
WHENEVER MY HAND MOVES.
tell me a thousand words more
than anything you could say.

we're not okay. i pushed my love off
onto the canvas called the sky
to paint you a clearer picture.

I'm fine.
You're fine.
This has happened BEFORE.
but don't worry

Soon we'll be....

“have you ever felt love?” he asked

drinking
down
my
last one for the night
i replied,

like an atmosphere.

i think the worst thing
is never knowing how
many photos of us
you had on your phone;
while im sitting here
ruminating how
after
        657
             moments
i ended up alone.

the most painless way to leave is
non-arrival.
self sabotage as absentia.
the only loss
lacking malice.

i did not want you to get close because
i did not want you to get too close.

i did not want you to take up space for me as i did not
want you to want the same from me.

im not sorry i didn’t want you
im sorry you did want me

self-sabotage as non-arrival.
self-sabotage as a convincing half-truth.
self-sabotage as a refuge.
self-sabotage as the lesson.