I'd wish my life away if I knew how,
just click,
hands poised,
world already spun,
all the hard bits over with.

The story,
imprinted like carved stone.

I've seen this in eyes at school,
in reflected minds,
the symptoms,
the wrongness,
the drowning deaths,
so delicate like bird-bones.

I know all the phrases off by heart,
all the warning signs,
the hair that grows like fields of grass,
the concave skull, the carved out eyes,
the numbers, ticking on and on.

Just because I've read the book doesn't mean I can't stop myself.

I still want to be the protagonist,
and it hurts,
it will hurt more,
but I'm a ****** for making problems
to solve
and I can't quite swallow
how long it'll take to bounce
when I hit the ground
running.

The years we've known together,
they linger on, like words we've held in.

Reality lived up to standards I'd set only in dreams,
That conversation,
So long that we were scared to sleep,
and wake,
and never speak again.

In the hidden cracks that night-time holds,
we held the same secret
in entwined hands
and I knew you too had seen
my own enemy

A startled sensation
that travels,
skates and skimps and scampers
all the way from my bones,
to muscles,
to the freckles of my goosebumps.

What misery it is to be understood,
to finally speak aloud your darkest calling,
to be in that finest, closest embrace,

and then reflect,
a month later,
in the chill of night,

It didn't make a difference, after all.

A lie,
I say,
unwonted.

Iconoclast to
my own
stability.

I wish
I knew
when the
fire
reached my
own
fingers.

I wish
I knew
the smell
of
burnt
flesh.

I am
watching myself
tied to this
vengeful stake
and clapping,
slowly,
almost realising,
that I am
the
match.

It is a sad realisation
when you remember
that you are perfectly capable
of extraordinary talents

I ring this bell
today, and forever
and I come to the door
but I do not let myself in

It is a sharp pain
stab-like
intense and
unaccountable

The boiling bubbles over
A crow taunts from silken skies
I SCREAM outwards
shockwaves trembling at their own forces

But it is a pithy pain
an instant retreat
the anger fizzles like steam smothered by rain
I smell the indolent petrichor
this after-taste of after-rain
and the doleful waking death returns
a smooth decent to sleep beneath the flames
the choked-throat ash

I am the biblioklept of my own diary
and as I scour the stolen words,
I cry,
because I do not recognise their meanings
the one limpid fury has dimmed
to such dolour and that all colour is sapped
and the world, painted in shades of grey
in its own dilatory helpfulness
does not bother to weep for me, either

I reify this idea of living
as if life is actually a moving form
but in these bewitched static seconds
of frightened rage to doused sorrow
I see the blackness between the stars
and the finite that lingers in the infiinite's wings
like a shard between ribs of steel

and I recall
in my words of fulsome wisdom
that even steel one day melts
and only but rubble can remain

Stoke the fire,
Fan the flames,
Our burning souls,
Should never dim,
If those who heard,
Did see their Grim.