as the night sky begins to fall
and the dawn never breaks
listen for the silent call

take shelter in the empty halls
run further still, no time to take
as the night sky begins to fall

shut your eyes, dear, shut the door,
pray to God, for God's sake
listen for the silent call

walk on, walk forward in the drawl
of the thunder and lightning in your wake
as the night sky begins to fall

when hope seems lost as shadows stand tall,
when silence truly starts to ache,
listen for the silent call

as the moon waves goodnight to all
and now you feel so, so small
as the night sky begins to fall
listen for our silent call

in a cosmically laughable accident,
he is born in disorder, created in discord
sent off in a journey he does not understand
but he is already on his way

he can’t stop spinning, unbalanced, unsteady
but there is a path they tell him to take, and
there is a destination he has to reach, and so
he must join the race

and when he tries to breathe like they ask him to,
he suffocates in his own atmosphere,
and everything that once lived within the wells
and dwelled within the rafters,
they had to leave.

but he knows he will never be as beautiful
as the ones who mark the darkness in their
unending pursuit, he will never be as swift,
he will never be angled right, he is too slow
and too small and too weak and

as he misses his entry into orbit,
he realises he never knew why he was born,
nor why he lived, nor why he was dying, but he
hopes that if they couldn’t notice a dying star,
perhaps they might at least remember its absence

and maybe, just maybe, they’d give him a name.

in those fiery eyes,
lies a spark of calm beauty,
like colourful death

final breath in silence,
a rushed collision of fate
for eternity

hollow and thawing
your embrace leaves shadows
in the snow of my heart
melted days and melting nights
a snuffed out flame, shallow
breath, through cracks of
lifeless vein and pointed,
deathly, killer
stalagmites

fragility, and
pain, peace, borne in unison
how it breaks me so

what will you do
when the water runs out
and your mouth is drier
than the dirt

drier than the words that slithered
and spat themselves out of your mouth

what will you do
when the food runs out
and your stomach begins to
digest itself

but i can't digest your words
and they stick to the dry walls
of my insides
but if i *****
i will have no food left

what will you do
when the air runs out
and your lungs are squeezing
the oxygen out of your
own cells

your words have squeezed
the life out of mine
even though
there was plenty of air
to share

what will i do?
i hope they run out,
and **** your words,
and-

unfortunately you can't
**** something that was dead to me
the night you said those words.

and like death,
sweep upon your victims
like a cold wind on
a frozen night

bring sweat to palms
on rocky mountains,
bring fire to dying forests,
pluck your flowers,
graceful as you go,
and decorate your gardens

oh, sweet sadness,
how beautiful, how deadly.

wake someone up,
and bring someone down
day and day again,
you never fail to bring the night.

she covers my eyes, and not even light
dares to slip through her fingers.
she tells me to look harder, deeper
and she whispers sweet everythings
and suddenly the void she has gifted me
seeps through my eyelids and
leaks into my sockets, and I see
everything I have ever wanted.

she holds my hand like no one else has,
palm to palm, and she whispers empty rhythms,
psalm to psalm, the ghost of a dream resting
its head against my chest, bated breath,
vapours of impossibility, tickling, fooling me.
her fingertips bite into the soft flesh, but
the only pain I feel is her/my hand around my/her neck.

when illusions collide, do they fall further into delusion?
or are they decapitated by reality?

they call her helplessness,
I call her finality,
and she tells me she is mine,
but I know I am hers.

I can't understand
how some people can stand
other people, till the end,
that really don't understand.

like the snow before spring,
i am the last breath of frost in the air,
a bitter goodbye to frozen mornings,
mornings now filled with sunshine and despair

like the flowers in summer,
i am the reflection of aging beauty,
crinkled wrinkles are my cover,
a dried up bloom fulfilling my duty

like the warmth in autumn,
i fall with the leaves, orange,
and blood red, i slumber at the bottom
a fatal rest in a hidden grange

like the tress in winter,
i wilt my wings, nosedive
from the rain, pitter patter,
awaiting the silence to arrive

like the snow before spring,
i collapse once again into the ground,
tired, restless, unable to sing,
the seasons just keep spinning me round

like verbal diarrhea,
a poem is belched out from
deep within my inner workings
of the factory, ink-stained and
torn

sometimes i wonder if the title
is just a bright pink bow,
resting atop a pile of
trash.

the flowers fall,
every year.
lilac raindrops
on sodden ground
turned to dust and
roadkill

the flowers fall,
every year.
beautiful death,
they called it,
as they trampled
on the outstretched fingers,
blue and purple

the flowers fall,
every year.
paint the outside
lavender and violet
crinkle to nothing.

the flowers fall.
see them, and catch them.
remember them.

they tell me to put a band-aid over it
but I've long been accustomed to *******
the blood from its source, pain into stomach,
I stomach the pain

byproducts of observation, disgust and fear
meted out like a rush of an open wound
but I pay no mind, I have my own tears to deal with
and I patch it up and sew my hairs into knots
braided into false closure, just to stop the loss

but nothing I do can stop the surge,
in every breath I lose the will
with no knot nor braid, I've neither fought nor prayed,
still the blood keeps flowing, and I just keep swallowing

skin like plaster like plaster to skin,
a growing clot can only be a dam so strong
the iron lungs heave, and I exhale a gale of rust
but I shall not cease moving, no matter how much blood I've lost

when you're up there
standing, proud
they'll be there too

oh, they'll hear you alright
they'll see you
they'll know you

but in the glare of the spotlight,
remember this:

Make sure they listen.
Make sure they look.
Make them understand.

like the scar after a rose

has taken you into its arms

like the glimmer after a star

has shone for you as it dives from the skies

like the echoes after a melody

has wrapped its slender fingers around your mind

like the breeze after a butterfly

dances for you, lives for you


the stains of beauty are but

strokes of the brush on long finished

canvases that breathe and sing,

not along hallways,

but immortalised in the scars

after a rose has taken you into its arms

stopped my heart
but you didn't stop walking

stopped your heart
then you stopped talking

i wake up with Stagnancy in my bed
another morning, yet the same day
the rays of sun tear into the room,
ripping open pools of white on his face

he pays it no mind, his hands
clutch my Adam's apple like plucking
fruit in an evergreen garden,
where nothing grows so nothing dies

Constancy begs me to stay, pleads me
to never leave, shuts the blinds
so the hordes of bright people and
brighter voices stay outside our
unchanging paradise

they call him bullish names, they
say he's complacency, laziness
say he's "wasting my potential"

but I've found greater peace in him
than I ever have in the multitudes
of mornings and infinite days
that I never want to experience

so I'll wake up with Immutability
and go to bed with Invariableness
I'll give myself to him, let him take
everything, let him be everything

another morning, yet the same day.
I wake up alone again.

the trees cast their gaze away
from the rot of a ******,
the inexplicable slaughter of a sapling,
its singular leaf blackened and
fetally curled.

they cry, "we could not move,
we could do nothing," and nothing
they did worked because they did
nothing.

innocence now only remembered
in the pungent stench of death,
an infant body but charcoal in the ground.

they wail, "for there was no rain,
for there was no sun, we have yet again been forsaken!", trembling in harsh winds
that carry the ashes of their children.

they strip themselves, for it seemed wiser
to clothe the dead than the living, and so
a singular broken stem lay beneath a swathe of fading foliage, brown and red
enveloping an all too conspicuous black.

even as the fire ravages their naked bark,
even if the forest goes up in flames,
even though they have been forsaken,
they will at least die in the embrace
of a world that once loved them.

i have nothing to say.

no, it isn’t a mental block.

it is emptiness that fills me up
right to the brim.

the silence that rings in my ears,
the cold within the casket

the tips of my heart
iced over by time
and frosted by voices
in my head

an unheard echo in the void

the winds blowing in gusts
into eye sockets
of glass eyes and glassy eyes

this desolation
of isolation
and devastation
is the spark
burning out in the snow

a snowflake into insignificance

i have nothing left to say.

there’s no one to hear me anyway.

you wipe your tears
and tell me you're sorry
and that you're the one at fault,
that they were your mistakes,
and that you're sorry again and again
and you should've known better.

you don't see that your mistake is "you".

So much you, it's sickening.

I'm leaving before I become
your mistake.

anticipation shakes me
as my fingers tremble
in the looming darkness
of tomorrow

the shadows grow longer,
and i grow tired. the day
stretches on, and doesn't end
but then it does.

and as night falls, so does
silence, and so does the moonlight
over the shadows, over the
mountains that are ever so tall

my dreams are dark,
near nightmares, no where near
reality, where all the shadows fall
and all the moonlight glimmers

bring to light this fear
make this all now clear

it is free within the confines of my mind
i have long forgotten its song, yet somehow
I can still drum the rhythm as it
echoes against the cell bars of my skull

its throat groans - yet still no sound escapes
neither joy nor pain is exempted from
the blockage of stale unmoving air
and lukewarm blood

songs rot in its belly, dead music adorned
rot bellows its song, rough and uncouth
and most of all,

it climbs up the nightingale's mouth,
an air of forced silence
the death of inspiration

you ask me why I’m leaving
but I have no sob story
no apologies
none at all

i carry with me only
the scars you left
when sensitive you
said insensitive things

“I got your back,” you said.
but you held me back
you turned on all the lights
but you blinded me

you opened all the windows
asked me to stare
but I am suffocated
by your glare

tear-stained mascara days
dot my calendar like
the painting you gave me
spattered with the scratch marks
and paint under nails

finger on your lip
tells me there's more than just one
ring on your fingers

how vast the ocean
how miniscule a drop
in the endless, rocking
throes of dawns and dusks

how wide the skies
how tiny a bird
wings grabbing nothing
going nowhere

how immense the earth
how silent a tree
swaying, yet rooted
cry their teardrop leaves

how tiny we are,
in the infinite universe

yet how unfathomable
how unending
how beautiful
the depths of our hearts,
limitless as the skies, seas and earth.

it's the shiver down your back.
the background screaming, muted,
but shrill in your shivering heart.

the shouting across corridors,
echoes along corridors,
silence aside corridors.

not creaking doors, no
but ones that shut and never open again,
and the others that stay open forever.

not vengeful spirits,
but broken ones, beyond the point
of saving, broken ones that can't save themselves

broken glass may line the red carpet,
fire may eat at the walls,
frost may gnaw at your digits

but never waver.

Don't be scared of being scared.

and like chipped teacups;
bedazzling in the own right,
my butterfly garden sparkles
in reflections and broken glass

gemstones impressed
upon their heads, forceful
light bled into reality
diamond studded wings
carrying the weight of themselves

a silent beating, whirring;
mechanical clicks signal life
in metal cages

and then; nothing

but the creeping warmth
of dead butterflies in my stomach

How odd is it that we draw hope
from celestial creations falling to their death?
As we wish upon the shooting star,
it breathes its last breath and shines its last light,
and collapses into extinction, save the fading trail
etched into the night sky.

Yet as we too fall further from the orbit of life
into the space of death, will we too burn.
Then at least we will have drawn another line
in a constellation far too grand for us to see.

And when I have finally returned to cosmic dust,
and begun my journey of falling once again,
then I pray that even in death, I may be
a sliver of descending hope, illuminating
the unknowable skies.

it was called
the Showstopper
and we went and it came
and we left and it went
every year

fairy lights like
fireflies frozen in cages
with your roar you stole
the souls of the young
your unspoken words
and (un)spilled blood

the rings of fire(flies)
bright in our eyes
blinding in yours
applause raining pitter patter
wind screaming quicker faster

and the smell of fire(flies)
and burning gold
is not new, not unfamiliar
not unfamiliar to the tattoos
you're so proud of

fairy lights like
you frozen in cages
and it came and went
and went and came
every
year

and you were the Stopper of the Shows.

i imagine all of us
like little fairy lights
strung up inside our own
shells

when the night is nigh
we shine the brightest,
but sometimes other shine
brighter, and we are blown out
short circuited

we all race for the top,
a winding christmas tree,
breaking your bulbs across
walls and beyond corners,
and the twinkle pop and shatter
becomes louder and louder,
until we rest our heads atop
the shooting star of fame (shame)

the silver blade hangs above my neck,
tip to apple, edge to skin.
as another assault accosts me -
I savour the bleed, for one rarely
tastes life itself.

and yet even as I hang
in the balance, my lungs refuse to give,
I groan bubbles and moan smoke,
a sputtering engine doused in oil.
I drown in soap, a futile attempt
to finally be clean.

but even bleach blunders a bloodstain,
and one cannot erase what never was, nor
what always was. I drain myself into the gulley,
if I cannot leave, I shall at least escape.

yet I am stuck in the pipes, tidal motion
flushes me with poison, a final notion.
as death courses through my veins,
and I can no longer rhyme
as I run out of time,
it seems that one
cannot simply
choose to
die.

life is a terminal illness.

but will you choose to stay bedridden?

espy the boundless skies
through shards of glass and windows,
and pupil lenses, tinted red green blue,
chromatic panic, a manic display of light

beauty incarnate, as you spectate
through your spectacles the spectacle of
man and fake suns, stars of your own making,
see-through masks and one-way rainbows

as you press closer, sparks turn to flames
and flames turn to fires, burn your skin
with tattoos of smoke and pain,
but your grin only grows wider in the open air

and with a crash, it was a mirror all along,
you realise, laughing on your way down

Only when the sun puts its head to rest,
do I truly wake. As the last gaze of eyes
that aren't mine shift their focus, my lungs
inflate with relief.

I am released from the tethers of perception,
and I am allowed to be alone with myself. Only
the night knows who I am, and only then
am I who I am.

To be free is to not be seen,
to own is to not be known,
to be is to simply, not be.

As the sun aches awake,
I retreat into the prison of my mind
and I will be who I need to be.

a reverb in the
back of my mind

rhythmic breathing,
beating hearts till they break

echoes haunt me,
ricochet in the night lights

dissonance like rain on sunny mornings,
glassy eyes till night, till broken dusk

the chorus, the ******
has arrived and I will ride until
the day ends.

it's the quiet of dawn
and the silence of dusk
that makes the day.

it's the unheard whispers
of the moon to the sun
that makes the night.

it's the unsung valor
of the invisible heroes,
the flicker of fire in
cold eyes and colder rooms.

and it's the unspoken words,
like whispers from the moon to the sun,
like the muted winds in the morning skies,
like tiny sparks, so alive, so bright,

that give life.

crying is weakness
so they say

so now they stain my pillows
instead
sink into paper so fragile
so thin

but I’ve realised something.

tears are pearls
of our very own making
from box hearts boxed up
from the friction of existence
a beauty no poem can ever convey

tears are the answers
we’ve been searching for
the light in the darkness
the hope in the fear
the hope by fear

tears are the essence
of your very soul
whispering, always
the proof of your humanity
the true incarnation of an emotion

remember this.

apathy is true weakness.

the drop rolling down your cheek
holds more strength
than that smile plastered onto your face

and I thought you were
my shooting star,
bathed in light as your
hands reached for the door
to my heart

and I didn't see how you
would come to set my heart on fire,
with you burning wings of starlight
and hellfire,

and I didn't see how you
would come to set me on fire.

how can a minute feel
so, so long?

and how do lifetimes
disappear in front,
right
in
front

of my eyes?

just like the sun mourns
its dying child,
caressing its dry lakes and flaming forests,
unknowingly only starting a larger spark
of death

so I mourn myself,
my youth,
burning off whatever ashes
of memories are left in the rubble
of tears and pain.