Fourteen years ago, I planted a rose in my garden.
It grows twisted, against the fence, and bursts into bloom come June -
From my window I feel it glowing
soft pink in the light of the waxing and waning moon
It is my August nymph. And stuns me in brimming scarlet.
But the moon rises like the tide in wet ochre
And my body reeks of iron and emptiness -
The end of the lunar cycle draws closer
And petals fall apart, loose from the bud -
I must learn to accept that my body yearns to spit back blood.
Like crimson. Velvet crimson roses.

I've come to recognize the scent of dying flowers
almost to the hours - Sweet honeyed rotting from within
The decay of rosy innards and floral resin
God punishes all things beautiful with transience.
What a thing to leave a rose to chance...
But all flowers must die in order to grow again!

You would not think that porcelain could rot
But girls and roses share a lot;
And for summer flowers to be sweet and fresh
Blossoms bleed more than you thought.

I came home - alone - because I finally realized your soul is stone.
Thing is, it's kinda hard to get rid of that rigid smell of cologne -
It's easier to get you off my phone.
I think I had the chance to leave, and I didn't
I stayed and now I wish I hadn't
Because now I'm at a party, waiting for you to talk to me, and you haven't -
Nights are cold, and boring, and I tried to call you, but I couldn't -
I keep applying and reapplying lipstick like you care but you do not.
You don't.
I implore you, to bore me more - Id've come round that night I knew it was so important...but I didn't
And now every boy and girl looks through me.
I saw someone Wednesday.... and I thought it was you ...but it wasn't.
I mightn't of met you in the first place if the universe would give me a chance but it won't
And now I'm stuck in this poetic trance
Your face no longer traces inspiration and I've lost the information that lead me to believe in you.
I used to believe in us, but now I don't.
And now I can't write poetry, mostly .
If you look at me closely, my muse is almost ghostly
That's what you've done to me.
I'm sickly, grossly.
Evidently ghostly, if I stay a few more months maybe you can have my bones as a trophy.
I'm not in love.
I'm just... hesitating  
And while your descent into frustrating is captivating
This month has been devastating.

Warm evenings bring a slow haze of conversation.
The moon, rolling on the waves,
has pulled the tide right back to the horizon
Exposing wet flatlands of sand and a rocky skeleton
That crawls in the darkness, like figures on the beach below.
Rosé wine and boredom
Keeps me checking my phone for you to tell me you've arrived.

I can smell it now. The smell of thick dripping sap -
bitter ****** dirt that rots at the corners of humanity
at our fingertips,
in our news headlines...
The smell of **** stifling the air, like the stench of death -
like burning pine needles -
It pervades, and never moves with the wind,
Heavy in the clouds, soot on our faces and inside our lungs
Don't inhale.
A piece of paper is nothing when it rots away in the dirt in an alley
It's words crumble and disappear in days
A letter does nothing when thrown at the wind
A letter does not begin to explain the complete destruction of a somebody,
The evisceration of a person.
The silent decay of someone's body -
Words can't explain the slow, bleeding out of America.
Hemorrhage is swept away from the streets but if you look in the gutters
In the corners, behind the bins you'll find gore,
guts, viscera that rots away and feeds the dirt.
It will only end when we hunt it down,
dig it out, scrape it out from underneath our skin like cancer -
Burn out anguish and pestilence and scorch the earth
these men walk on
Is that the cure?

I stand, cold.
ice white, lit bright by
delicate light
High above casting
block shadows basking
art in light.
I step front faced with
Monet ahead, to right, gaugin
I stare, Rembrant, clad in
thick frames reflecting
scant expression on the face
of art on art, tête-à-tête
I am wisps of turner set
in stone and city galleries
staring back into the old disease
of oil eyes meeting mine
receding grid tiles on floor, axis legs
axis, human waxes indifferable
from porcelain busts in clear boxes -
bowels of heart and lungs
quivering on canvas, draped
hastily on white walls
Cold light, turned down, reflecting
frame, but not the painting.

28.1.2016
The sun sets with me every night.
And yet, each of these nights I find a cannot quite
Translate that fade from day to grey;
in oils or ink I can never paint her -
She's gone too soon and the nights resume
and I'm left in darkness with empty paper.
Tomorrow afternoon will be strewn with half-lines -
poetry dripping drowsily from my tired mind
sketches on my sheets and sun-faded carpet
God help that empty-headed artist!
And I wonder if I'll ever draw again...
There can be no art compared to my bedroom window when
My own small framed sun sets again.
Forever watching the sun. Watching it watch me
pages sliding off my windowsill, in dreary ennui
Navy draws my curtains closed on time
But she lingers still, in watercolour lines
And people wonder why I paint the sun
As small as I have done;
I wish I could find apt words to say -
I am getting further from my sun each day.

Fragility can hardly explain you.
Breaking apart in my eyesight
Locking eyes then peeling away like rot fruit
You speak so fast.
I can barely tell whether you speak at all or flurry your words out like poker cards
Dealing me fours and sixes
I can't make aces out of the air you breathe
Yet I knit poetry out of your lingering fingertips.