my secrets sharpen their teeth as i'm sound asleep

and i still wonder why i wake with sapling scars

i find myself
     fly-bi-nightly
dancing a razor thin line
between hating myself
     and giving you the blame

it's been so long since i last slept

so here
     this time i brought something for you

          take it


i made it for you
from scratch
     and i wrapped it in the flesh of that lone oak
     that you'd thoughtlessly carved our names in
          outlined in a school-boy heart
     coupled with the word "forever"

silly little man-cub

     always raising your voice over terms you can't define

i still leave you love poems on crumbling walls
     like rust-stains on canvas yet to be stretched

there isn't a message yet

but in my dreams
you somehow see it all for what it means
following the commas and line-breaks
right back to where you left me
     and we finally allow ourselves
     to share the light necessary for life to grow



i awake in the morning with whiskey breath
and aerosol stained fingertips

     *can't you hear me slinging siren songs
     across the distances we keep
          while fast asleep?

"just think of  all the things
that the whales and dolphins could teach us"
     she says
ashing her cigarette
with a cheeky grin

happy mother's day

pizza and beer and tequilla
and all that i can think
     is how proud it makes me
to know that she's the home i came from

i watched raven pull the skirts from the rose's hips
and smear lady bug guts across her grin
     like garden-grade lipstick

i asked her what it means
when she hovers in my dreams
but she just laughed

and on her way back to that highway in the sky
she craned her neck just enough to throw me a whisper

"your wings won't mean a thing
     if you're too afraid to fly"

if simplicity was what you'd wanted
     i'd have adorned myself in complexities
and have finally learned to dance