I'll let the fires scorch my very soul.

No more succor, no more vice.


If only to keep myself humble.

One day I'll find new skin to begin with,
One day I'll find new eyes to yearn with.

I just have to keep working at my heart.

Selfish til the end, I never thought I'd be like that.

The persistence of loss insinuates that we once had something, only to lose it.


My blood rushed throughout my body, as I felt countless lips pass mine.

My blood rushed throughout my body, as I recalled endless hurt trickling down my eyes.


The persistence of loss states we were once more, then we understood that we lost things we never knew we had.

Our soft pleading drowns out even the shrillest of screams.


So why does loss play on our tongues,

More than ever, moving on?

In this darkest dungeon
Men with scars march to uncertainty
In promise of wealth and glory
Or perhaps for some penance

Silently they ensure grotesque sights
Macabre beings by its end
Blight corrupting life's blood
Time at its cruelest and most ironic
But the ticking matches with every heartbeat
Their saving grace, the dying torch
And their tears, all dried up and wizened

Composure collapses as comrades fall
Mind's grip loosening and squealing
Insignificance breaking them
The thoughts and regrets
A spot of hope in the darkness snuffed
Just as quick as it came

A thudding heart in the void
A thudding madness
Where do they tread on now?
The chanting grows louder
Dry lips, bloodshot eyes.
Finally, their tormentor in sight
Gnarled fingers tremble in sword grips
Bowstrings fiddled with, dirks clanging

Vapors give rise to rage
A vile disgust and unfathomable sorrow
A dread affirmation of nihilistic proportions
But nothing mattered, except the moment.
And the screaming of the void halted
The beating of the heart stopped
They fell to their knees, never the same again.

And finally, it is rain in the forest.

The months have come and passed
The seasons changed for time withers away the mightiest amongst us

So why do I feel so alone?
Time heals all wounds
But I think Father Time forgot about me.

Arm in arm with someone that's not yours : - Intoxicating.

Palms on someone you shouldn't touch : - Exhilarating.

Fingers caressing someone with sensuality thought lost : - Euphorical.

Amidst the temperature dropping

The words and actions blended together

Then symphonies became orchestral

And I knew then, they were instrumental

Caressing my soulless vacant husk

Kneading feelings back into me.

take me with you

whisper gently

as I lay still

burning up & away

as the pills consume warmth

and your cold arms, outstretched

hold me again.

You fed me something real

fed me something true


Now I'm down with the chills

withdrawing from the terrible lie

of warmth eternal

I've got a bone to pick with ya.

Yeah, you heard me right.

Your prenuptial presence ebbs away my will far quicker,

Than any toxin or evil might.


You feel so right, when the peace enroaches my soul.

Auld lang syne, my dear treasure in the rough.

My darling sapphire, the maiden of roses.

Til kingdom cometh.

I'll rather get lost in Hell attempting to find you
I gather that being last in Heaven but walking through those gates with you is fate

Feed the insatiable hunger so that I'm victorious
Lead the sashaying young ones

We're covered by the names of lovers from pages past.

Tattered rags, and rusted chrome chains bond us, bind us.

You're my happiness in slavery.

As cold fire wrapped around sight / (the blood to my veins)

Purpose-emblazoned beauty cascaded / (beauties that will never be yours)

Dropping the hatchets armed to teeth/ (his walls came down for lack of restraint)

Looks that swept base instincts


I understand now

if love was meant to stay

love wouldn't end up



this cold.

Like a ******'s mess of a mind in a rut to get his fix, I ran from distraction to distraction.
The original sin of knowledge, and innocence lost.
They cascaded like raindrops on my face, and became **** on my windshield.
Slowly, becoming perhaps more bitter and jaded, a basic ***** to life and her schadenfreude.
A single desecration of desexualized thought, and that was it.
I wanted more.

I'm forever missing you.
I'm always chasing ghosts, even if I put them to sleep.
The thoughts hovering like hummingbirds.. for once the sun belonged to us.
Our nuclear sun.
The ray of light that once belonged to me. And me alone.


I miss you.
I'm forever nuclear whenever I think of you, for your voice echoing in my skull is the only thing I hear these days.

The tunes swept over me

the shudder down my spine


Have you finally returned?


Or are you just



Visiting?

The fluttering of eyelids breathed new life into the moments caught like fresh Polaroid snaps, the afterburn of the camera flash persisting, like a memory that fought its way to remain, resisting time and wear til the end.

The flesh knows the aching, burning want. The mind knows the still, cold pools of fools, the soul rolling with the blows of said fools, who thought time as it was would never be everlasting : A shrieking defiance, with the Chariot being pulled along by hanged men ; an everlasting idiocy.

But dreams & memories do just that. Syphilis-like consistency, marauding us all with persistent innocent tendencies to drown us in nostalgia, regret and fury. Yet we still have them on repeat. To not have known, is far more terrifying than not knowing. After all, we fear what we don't know. What we don't understand.

There have been a dozen homes

a thousand kisses

but only seven wild flowers litter the porch of memories

baring their beauty in stark consistent contrast of concrete

year after year

as if their presence

unyielding

unwelcome

showed that love

would always


stay.

Tried to say something but all I have are maggots falling from the rotten gums
Felt cold and it was the knife twisting and turning rusty in my gut
How did it vanish like houses of cards
A clinking of glass the swirling of colors
Electric scraping on tangible tastes
The moans on loan from cascading faith
Oh Lord Almighty, feel me now as I sin
Wrong you
Lie to myself
Cheat on you
Let go of you
This perfect drug

Blue was the sky

On that beach

Blue were your eyes

As I kissed you

Now red is what I see

And we fell apart

Taking each apart

I still recall the tears that opened after the years fell from your face.

I ask none, but to be strong.

I am and will be walking after you.

Closer and closer I inch, til I one day will be beside you again.

What started off with me, will end with us.

You're my light.

The dark will swallow me, with only your light to dispel it.

From a lord of the moor, to the King In Black.

From a lady in red, to the Red Queen.

Our language, the only one we need.
Our cascade, remorse, repense.
Our beginning, restart, end.

Back to the shadows on my moor.
The Grey Lord into ash..
And the King In Black with a crownless throne.

Theatres of sounds grating on my nerves

These tunes scrambling all thought

I hope my senses cover themselves tonight.

assurance in love is key to skinship
but skinship alone is never enough
for the hole left behind
is always
has always
taken more than what reprieve
it brings.

As formless as we become
However we dress ourselves emotionally

What we seek lies between two doors
The black-draped curtains of yesterday


Or the dusty windows, coated with the frigid air of tomorrow.

Shuffling all the cards I've played back into my deck,
Closing up all the stitches I've got over it all.

Kicking down the throttle of this machine once more,
It roars to fire and smoke, bringing my focus stage right.

I'm searing into the sunset without you.

A different motif
Belying the similar nuances
Catheterization with anguished looks

Delving searching for reprieve
Eversong and evertone
Finding the beat that doesn't exist

Going, going gone
Help me understand what you left me
Internally bleeding your words kept me

Just what did you mean
Kind of you to keep yourself chained up
Lose or win we'll pass out

Maybe you'll break out
No more chrysalis
Omnidirectional truth

Please rise up with the other foot
Quietly without nailing it too
Rest later, figure what and who you are

So again like the year ago
Time has been kind to you
Unclear your intent was

Vouching for perhaps a perfect moment
Waiting for the definition of insanity
Xanthic your bones become

You are so much more than this.
Zymotic you cannot continue to be.

Let endless neon wash over pale powdered skin

Gyrating all over the hips go

Synchronized beating of the incessant drumming

It's her scent I know

Along with countless swaying bodies.

A few more words squeezed out for the year

Become the candle which I kneel to
Endure the flames which kiss you
Orate your tears in my arms
Wince as our wuthering tempest jolts us
Unyielding our souls shall be
Ligaments tear apart with blighted tone
Forsaking atonement for damnation

This I swear to you
Yours will be the name I cry at night


A few more tears freshly picked from the oven

Elsewhere in a surrogate legacy
I was walking down the corridors
Our effigies, dead ringers and tableau
Unruly, unnecessary, and everywhere
An afterlife I didn't want to exist in

But you told me something I can't recall Scattered like leaves in the wind
The soundtrack of nails
On a chalkboard
An onslaught of recollection

A pitch perfect rendition of my deeds
A choice between myself and you

Bitter, battered I fell
Bloodied, bruised knees clotting

Your illustration, your illusion slid to me
Your plunging neckline, of plumed faith.

Labium laboured
Labrum lolled

As you held my dying gasp
As you gazed into infinity in my eyes

You breathed the last loving words.
Hark, my king.
Kiss me, kiss me goodnight.
Surrender to me,
One more song for the end.

We're ghosts
In the candlelight

We're guests
Of the starless night


Who would have guessed
We'll haunt these homes forever?

Thus loneliness encumbers my shoulders and heart again.
It feels like a singular kiss, amongst a hail storm of hellstricken bullets.
Snowflakes in a garden of rust.
An amoeba separated from its kin, unable to split.
21 decided to be divided to 4.
Perhaps my worth as a wordsmith wasn't as great as I thought.
Thus the feeling draws on itself, in a constant art and motion, an Ouroboros Serpent.
Like how I used to stammer and stutter badly as a child, ironing myself out but falling and scraping yet never bruising my eagerness.
Nostalgia and adventure are just means for one to hide in security.
Perhaps one day, one day I'll fall in love again.
Baggy pants, oversized shirts and a lioness, wispy and delicate. But alight with fire, with life all the same.
And the rain fell on me, eliciting no tears, but ripped my pores apart, and whiffs of an old perfume, of ghosts. Playing to the tune of yesterday, I swept across with her. And I let her go, as the dust settled on my tongue and ash filled it, and was gone.
The lady who ran this place, bowed and closed the mausoleum, and I asked, "How much for your services?" And then she said, "You couldn't afford it."
I walked away into a wasteland blooming again. There's no sweet taste of victory here.
Only death's touch remains, all-cleansing and all-equalising.
I pick her up, and she said, "What took you so long?"
I sigh.
"It's nothing."

With the turning of the clock,

And the grooves on your hip,

I'll just toss your stature over my shoulder,


Just to prove a point.

I am the slow crawl between madness and insanity.

I'm the soft tune that whistled past your ear, too soft to recall, yet sharp enough to catch your attention.


I am regret.

They said, write well.

They said, write less.


I wrote, breaking as every word I poured had a piece of me.

I wrote, letting my soul enunciate every word, proofreading their symphonies.

I have simply, hungered for more than just your touch.

What other way to combine two desires into one?

What could be more natural than to consume each other?

Maybe it'll start with little kisses,

Then caressing necks.

Then giving each other lovebites.

Wearing these ****** gorgeous purple bruises as badges of honour.

Draw a tiny bit of blood, and we take one tiny step into vampirism.

But we don't lap at each other's open wounds, do we?

It's the worst kind of hypocrisy.

And passively we lay down, bleeding out.

Perhaps at the end of my ink, the end of graphite.

This is the way I bleed best, into paper.

I can't be quiet. I need to be constantly moving. I'm worried if the onyx eyes I have stop blinking, if I stop and fall silent, like the clockwork flesh golem I am, I'll fall over and never wake again.

What can you do when you realize you're the reason things end?

My fingers curl around your face.


I'm afraid this would've been all a waking dream.

Her blur crashes into my windshield
But I don't raise my arms to my face
Neither do I remember how to tuck into a ball

The glazed eyes meet mine
Honey gum spills from her lips

Her revenant consumes me whole
Twitching, catatonic I become.

The loudest of the bunch
With sleeves wrapped down

With multiple layers on
Twinkle in his eye


The meekest of the few
With shoulders hunched and huddled

With nary a word to describe her
Too much of a wallflower


By chance, or by fate.
Just the two of them,

Bound by a moment in time forever.

The boy with his scars,
And the girl with her demons.

The bones ache, down to the marrow.

Creaking and sighing til you come back.

It's gonna take a while to get the skin used to your absence.

It's gonna be a while before the poison wears off.

Yours is the language of the body which I have to stop speaking.

My flesh is crawling
Coated with the sensations
That were left from yesterday

My heart is cracking
Bound together by hope
That I chose to hold close/dear

My soul is fading
Touched by the end of all things
Where even death may die.

A queen most fair, with blade poised to serve,

A queen just, years linear on her face.

Dare she speak? Will it bring cause, for the effect?


The matriarch, by wolves, admonished.

When will her sparrow ever come,

Tasting the tears that will never end.

We're fiction as long we're not within grasp
My diction requires your palm on my crown
Your friction may just feed me benediction.


The heart's jurisdiction is a fickle contraption
A not so subtle crucifixion nor constriction
Ensued when I fought against interdiction

You've become my addiction, my mental preoccupied obsession.
A depiction of dereliction's eviction.
Never again will there be remission's nonfiction.

A day with you
Let's see what it has
The anxious waiting for you to come in sight
Silhouette coming into view
And my smile, a welcome reflex
The sun comes out to greet us both
I'm happy in the sun (you)
Snakes slither across my spine
In your embrace
Cold pit, warm furnace.
Signs of hazard stop

Like coming under fire
The rain pours (shelter)
Blazing defiantly like the sun
Your touch like sugar in jam
Viscosity of this vice you hold me in
This sensation you hold me in
Entropic

Her absence made the heart grow fonder
  But the abated breath
   And silent waiting
      Makes me feel like we're forever
Dancing
To the end of love.

I've been depreciating myself, as time went on
Faster & faster with the dexterity of a rogue
Ever so slightly like the courtesans of old

Til the day I find myself, and love myself for what I am.

Sometimes always monsters.

Dance with me till the suffering ends
Kiss me, tell me everything will be alright.

It's time for my soul to be disarmed.

Hello there.

It has been five years now to the day I met you in person again.

After like, years of not meeting.

Five years plus a few days.

Ah.

If someone told me five years ago I'd be what I am now, I'd probably laugh my *** all the way to the Singapore River and threw myself into it.
(you know I can't swim.)

I wasn't always like this, you know that don't you?

Bitter, bitter heart of mine.

Though it is precisely why bitterness enjoys misery's company : bitterness provides the bleak landscape which misery just sits and broods for days on end.


But then again, I wonder.

Did your coming into my life herald my restart?

Was it the end of my reign of dysphoria, the king in black with eyes that mirror nothing but echoes of yesteryear?

Perhaps, just perhaps.


That one day I made my decision to honour both of us.

To fully enclose myself, wrap my soul around yours.

The warmth of acceptance and eternal patience for one such as I.


I remember how much you hated me writing.

I remember how much you hated me recalling about moments past.

I remember most bitter moments, and wash them with water when you leave me all alone.


But I keep your smiles close to my heart.

Remember how we first went out?


Through the glass, right?



Ah.

So much transpired since then.


Funny how I've become synonymous with you and antagonistic to others.




Perhaps they were the kindling so I could step upon the grey expanse of ash.



I don't regret the choices I made.


Choices imply responsibility.

And all this time I thought I had responsibility over myself.

But I didn't.


She once told me to love myself.
She once told me to be good
She once told me many things, but I never once was any of them.



Funny.

I'm supposed to say something melodic or dissonant here.


Isn't that what I do best, poetry?


But no.


This is no poem.


This is no love letter.


This is no song.


This is someone who has been beaten black and blue.


This is someone who is numb.


Someone who would laugh as the whole world quite literally burns around him and perish screaming, fingers raised in a one gun salute.


This is a confession.


This is me no longer in doubt.


It's a rocky road ahead.


Surprisingly, we taught each other how to love.


I, with my scars.


You, with your demons.


Your feet and mine in a shy embrace.


The difference between us like how one would view the moon and the stars from down below.


Yet fail to notice, the moon and the stars will forever be closer than those down below will ever be.


With a simple task and clear intent, but a blatant disregard for preservation, a malevolent will.

Even though this is all happening, this immolated man spent moments frozen in eternity with your eyes open wide, a circle immaculate, the simplest bewitching of a non-physical drug candy.



With calculated movements befitting the only dance we'll forever do with each other.


For every second crawling by, feeding the smouldering flames between us, harkening to the start of it all.


Happy birthday my love.


Here's to us again.

Here's to you.


Love, ZHB.

Fire, fire everywhere again.

You haunt me, but I ignore it.


Your succulent chest, with the sultry kiss of hellbound pain.

We're moths. And some of us run in and die.


But, a beautiful end, to the dismal lives we have.