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Adam Burke Dec 2013
Rose.
Do you remember the tale?
You think you know how it goes
But what you knew and what I thought never coincided.
We've ran our course and deception should end
So let me tell you how we really began.


Standing silent across the bar I spy a rose.
But by this dark and these glazed eyes all I can tell is that the petals are more red than black.
As pretty as she is,
I am more beguiled by thorns than a rosy red leaf.
Thorns that I will only find if I can caress her neck for a while and trace my fingers down her spine, Slicing my palms and pretending that our hearts are of the same shade.

If I pressed this thorny soul and it's black heart to your window would sanctuary be offered with open arms and pitying eyes?
Is there safety in those walls that I shan't be part of?
I can't miss what I've never had
And I will never have her.

But will she know the difference?
Do I look like the rest?
If I sing the song and dance the dance could I be ignorant and happy like them?

I've seen their kind a million times
I've seen the flowers dance and entwine their stems to grow together and die with each other.
Roots can be poison.
Especially mine.


You see I love me more than you ever could because you never met me.
Bloodshot eyes and a ***** filled disguise are all you've ever known
I am not what you thought me to be.
I'm a rose darker than the lies.
Now I've wiped away the ****** disguise to reveal to you a simple ruse to no end.

This letter meant goodbye.
Goodbye Rose.
Adam Burke Mar 2014
I am a poet for those who make a meal of corpses.
For those who write a sonnet in their blood.
And fill their wretched stomachs with rot.

They dress in black feathers.
With piercing eyes
And ****** talons.

They are the only crowd who will listen to me.
Their focus is on me.
They will be useful.

I can't make a ****** out of sparrows.
They can't stand the taste of me.
I can't teach them anything.

When I rot crows will pick at my bones.
I'll fuel them to **** on humanity.
I'll die and they'll carry me to the cemetery on their wings.

My audience is beautiful.
My audience is dark.
My audience loves death.

I love my audience.
I am food for scavengers.
I am a poet for the crows.
Adam Burke Oct 2014
I'm so tired of being angry.
I want to be melancholic again.
Anything but angry.
I need them to leave me alone.
But they just won't let me be.

They're just a dull knuckle
Pushing down on the crest of my mind.
But nobody notices I'm crying.
I'm just helping to prop them up.
Whispering about the pain.

I could float in sound,
But I drown in the depths of noise.
The crescendos of songs would lift me high
But they clutch at my ankles and scream.
Just let me freeze where I can at least see the stars.

I can't ******* escape them.
They follow me everywhere
Like they're ******* haunting me.
Like they believe I  loved them enough to **** them.
I can't stop begging Acheron to ferry them off already.

I drink and I drink from his stygian lake.
And death's wine never tasted so good;
How I used to love to write of wine.
But alcohol makes them sad.
And their sobs never seem to end.

I'm begging you to stop.
Stop leaning on me,
Stop screaming,
Stop ******* following me,
Stop wasting my wine,

I don't want to be angry.
I want to be forgotten.
I was never good at being alone.
But at least then I was only sad.
Just *******.

Please...
Adam Burke May 2014
Cliché ***** and revolutionary retards.
We cannot use an image of a stone heart in every poem.
Nor compare every woman to a summer's eve.
But neither can I stand an emoticon in place of vocabulary.
A hash tag description should not be the only ******* indication as to what the poet was feeling in the poem's creation.
Poets will not start out strong.
But they should stick to what they've been taught.
Express progress in ideas
Not in virtual images.
Adam Burke Nov 2014
This body is really his body, you know.

I'm just keeping it busy for him until he gets back.

I really ******* hope he comes back.

I miss him.
Adam Burke Dec 2013
I can remember when I left you,
No.
When I saved you,
No.
When I condemned you.
When you offered me your heart and your lust and I took them into my own and cursed myself with the role of a lover.
I accepted the gift but at least I felt conflicted.
Enough so to soon see that giving you joy meant denying what I am.

I am nothing but contradictions.
A hypocrite with a most debauched nature.
While I wished for nothing more than the red of your petals,
So too did I wish to lay with the weeds.
Much closer to my own kind,
like me they choke the beauty from flowers.
Only with a little less love in their grasp.
So I shifted from you and in poetic spirals of ink I set you free.
At least that's how I saw it.

But now I realise just how much damage a week with me is worth.
Your eyes look dimmer.
A layer of spite and tears stop me seeing any further than that.
Your petals didn't fall but they certainly faded.
What was red became black,
A hell I never wished for you,
And I can only pray that your shade is much more superficial than mines.
I hope it will wash clean and reveal a purer white than a spotless bride.
But that's just a dream.

Hearts are easy to see when they're worn on ones sleeve,
And I've changed hers for the worse.
A fate I had not foreseen and now she can't even see me.
Everything I once admired has drifted from her face.
But it's been replaced by perfection of a different sort.
Had this been clear to me I could have hid who I was.
It would have been worth it.
Just to leave her as she was.

If I confront her will she pour this new life into me and be as she should be?
Or will I leave her in the same void of pain and passion I found myself in?
I swore to watch over those left behind on the path to bliss,
But not those I dragged back myself.
If only I could send her back on the path.

Another letter perhaps.

Dear Rose.
I love you.
I'm so, so sorry...
Adam Burke Mar 2014
**** it.
It doesn't matter.
Never mind.
Who gives a ****?
Go **** yourself.

You can't ******* write.
You've never been able to dance.
They don't ******* love you.
Paint well for a change.
Why do you care?

Gays are unnatural.
Your clothes ******* ****.
Conforming is for fuckwits.
So conform as non-fuckwits.
Which ******* way is up again?

I wish I was never born!
I hate people!
Existence ******* *****!
You're ******* wrong!
These aren't your ******* statements.

Minority rules.
Majority rules.
I rule.
God rules.
Nobody ******* rules, okay!?

He's singing what I feel.
Sing it yourself.
Only the artist knows it's real meaning.
So it has no ******* meaning.
Art has no ******* meaning.

Explicit ******* content.
Expression of opinions.
Hide from the young.
Hide from the old.
Just ******* hide.

Ignorant ******* people.
Complacent ******* saints.
Annoying ******* generations.
Inanimate ******* rejects.
All better off without this ****.

**** it.
It doesn't matter.
Never mind.
Who gives a ****?
Go **** yourself.
Adam Burke Jan 2014
Just 3 nights later
And I'm with somebody else.
Somebody fantastic and beautiful and ****.
I read her some lines from a piece I'd penned and made a move.
She bit my bottom lip in that first kiss and I knew I actually had a bed for the night.
For just that night.

Black hair, green eyes, soft red lips.
Pale skin and piercings with a skirt far up her thigh.
Gazes entwined with everything to hide.
Silent discussions of lust and loose morals.
A stiletto caressed my inner leg and we knew she was mine,
Is it any wonder why I returned to this?

I topped up our wine and kept her talking.
Watched her lips move and words fly without actually listening.
Perfection is easy to find if you just don't look.
Just ignore her and she can't be less than myself.

We called a cab back to her place.
Somewhere far from the bar that much I know.
Stumbled into the back seat and laid lips upon lips.
Crawled up the stairs on all fours.
Slammed closed the door and dragged me to the bed.
And we ****** under darkness in a frenzy of steaming breath.

Only 3 nights later
And I'm back to this.
To pain, confliction and perfection.
I clumsily left ignoring her questions and focused on dressing.
Caught a glance of a mirror and new I'd have no-one else's bed that night.
It was just that night.
Adam Burke Dec 2013
How about her?
Is she the one or do we differ in that she will die alone?
It may be she will find a man
She may marry him and bare six kids but when she dies she leaves them all behind
I plan to leave with my arms firm around what is mine.

She mightn't seem the kind
But we never know until we try
So let's finish up the wine and read her some poetic lines.
And just for her I'd write something ****.
Tales of how we'd toss and tumble
Drunkenly around corset laces and belt buckles fumble.
Tell her as I wipe the hair from her eyes,
lean in real close and whisper of a passion to envelope a night.
Watch her lips tremble and muscles quell at the thought of just me and her and sweat and love.

Soon I find that her eyes shine too bright and full of her ignorant life to be what I'm looking for tonight.
The lust we share is just a body talking
But I won't deny it it's thrills,
after all it's barely mines.
I'll just use it to say 'St. Adam was here',
Like the marks on my back say that you were there.

If she would arise to watch me leave I can honestly say she was worth my time.
I could have been out searching for love and all the finest crap,
But sonnets are written for more than one great theme
and I'll find mine in debauchery and a most sensual kind of treachery.

Love for me will never be easy to find
For I have created a foul depiction of Aphrodite.
Should I propose she wouldn't hesitate to find her prettiest ****** robes.
We will race through forty floors laughing and crying till the summit
Where she will whisper, 'I love you'.
We will walk.
Each step another vow,
Closer and closer,
Hand in hand,
Eye to eye
And lips to lips.
She is everything I desire.
She is a bride to hug as I watched skyscrapers rise
And they watch me fall.

Love and immortality run parallel for me.
So I'll stick to wine and pretty girls
Who under my words take the place of ******
And I'll never die.
For they'll applaud me for years.
Adam Burke Jan 2014
"Write a poem about right now. The **** that we're all in."

I now sit entirely alone.
Surrounded by the sad and the depressed and the lonely.
With love and hate mingling,
His paws scratching at the window with her face on the other side.
He doesn't seem to notice the others.
Tears soaked my blazer more than rain tonight
But at least they weren't quite as cold.
As if it mattered with warm *** in my blood.
"I loved her. This is the first time I've physically hated her."

So he bursts through the door with a ******* look that won't accept a no.
So lets drink!
Then we watch him emerge,
Maybe notice me leave.
"If you want to be alone I'll leave."
And notice my swift return,
With her fresh tears still burning on my mind.

I've been watching the foreground for what feels like days so let's go inside.
Time to spend with the rest of the party.
Just ignoring what's happening.
"Lets get ******!"
Turn the music up loud and maybe you can drown it in sound.
Light the incense and maybe the atmosphere will smell a little sweeter.
Bring that guy!
He'll take them off your mind
And help create a spite fueled night.
...or just run.
"This! Is none of my ****!"
Then lets go.
You don't have to watch.

But I've adopted my own space.
Dressed in black and red,
Dancing in the front and the back.
Standing in the rain, under stars
Just watching the last cigarettes burn.
******* happy I've got my little red book.
Time to intervene and offer what I can
Although it's mostly for the story progression.


6 am and I'm still ******* smiling.
I made this night to its bitter end.
Seeing true emotion fly was just divine.
Maybe not for those involved
But emotion is life so accept it all.

"Now let me sleep and I'll write your ******* poem later..."
Adam Burke Jan 2015
A poet told me to hurt myself.
So I told a woman I love her.
My sense of justice overthrown by my desire to live forever.
It was terrifying.

She told me that she loved me too.
So I kissed her without hesitation.
That kiss held my passion and lust, but not true love.
It wasn't right.

I told myself that it was worth it.
I cried briefly into her neck.
Don't make me talk about it, just bite me.
It was ******* fulfilling.

He told me that I need to bleed.
That this is how to be creative.
That everybody will kiss my scars.
And I'll finally be unhappy.
Adam Burke Jul 2014
My hands are numb to all they touch
But I feel their inner workings better than ever.
I notice the strain while I'm writing,
The cramp when I'm wanking,
And the lack of a third line in my triplet.
Their blood runs cool like ethanol.
My eyes sting but they had the whole day,
Let my lungs have their moment.
Smoke soothes only second to air
But my carnal desires placed it higher in demand.

Warn all your kids
And take coughing fits.
The danger is real
That's just how I feel.
Adam Burke Jan 2015
I like the kind of girl that I'll never be with.
That I don't want to be with.
Because it'd never work.
And that's too bad I guess.

I like the kind of girl who just knows.
Who knows that whoever we're with,
And whoever we say we love,
We still know each other.

I like the kind of girl who's reluctant to kiss me.
I don't need her to kiss me.
I've experienced her lips before.
I just need her stares now.

She is ambiguous and undefined.
But so are my desires.
So is love.
If that's what you want to call it.
Adam Burke Mar 2014
Do it!
Don't ******* ***** to me about doing it.
Just ******* do it!
Regret comes later.
We'll have time to deal with that when you're bleeding out because her boyfriend didn't appreciate the sentiment in you pleasing pretty girls with full foreknowledge and a divine purpose.

She hurt you?!
Well lets ruin that ******* life.
Where does she live?
I can take us there right now.
Now don't ******* tweet without dropping a name, just go light her ******* lawn and we'll laugh while we ***** up blood from that disgusting ******* ***.

I'm so alone.
Man *******!
You had three girlfriends by the time you were sixteen
I had you.
So when I slept early it's because I was busy crying because the other kids got ahead of me and I had to replace handjobs with poetry a fact I fail to regret to this day.

They rock!
Imagine how cool a stage dive would be.
Get up here.
I'll fall first and you just follow me.
Metalhead ******* cheering for me when I can't even distinguish the words that are written to make me feel angry, someone ******* drop me just so I can hit somebody.

**** the system.
Or just don't be a ******* tool.
You're all generic as ****
Why argue the fact?
There are so many reasons to own a ******* pocket watch and because society wears one on it's fat, ******* wrist isn't one I'll accept as perfectly valid.

Life's hard.
You don't want to do it any more?
You've been telling me for weeks
But that's what knives were made for.
You have to puncture just a little hole and get a feel for life dripping away and then we move to the big leagues of ****** and suicide and feel entirely free of your immense emotional torture.

But who cares?
The future will still be there.
Just you won't be.
Nobody'll give a ****.
I can twist your thoughts and let you see that you'll live on in the grass that grows from that hole we dug for you not that long ago, but just **** that.
You're ******* dead.
Deal with it.
Adam Burke Feb 2014
I have a watch.
This watch keeps me sane,
Keeps my steady pace
And keeps me safe.
It keeps track of time with a consistent and persistent

Tick Tick Tick  


Rose.
Do you remember the tale?
You think you know how it goes
But what you knew and what I thought never coincided.
We've ran our course and deception should end
So let me tell you how we really began.


Standing silent across the bar I spy a rose.
But by this dark and these glazed eyes all I can tell is that the petals are more red than black.
As pretty as she is,
I am more beguiled by thorns than a rosy red leaf.
Thorns that I will only find if I can caress her neck for a while and trace my fingers down her spine, Slicing my palms and pretending that our hearts are of the same shade.

If I pressed this thorny soul and it's black heart to your window would sanctuary be offered with open arms and pitying eyes?
Is there safety in those walls that I shan't be part of?
I can't miss what I've never had
And I will never have her.

But will she know the difference?
Do I look like the rest?
If I sing the song and dance the dance could I be ignorant and happy like them?

I've seen their kind a million times
I've seen the flowers dance and entwine their stems to grow together and die with each other.
Roots can be poison.
Especially mine.


You see I love me more than you ever could because you never met me.
Bloodshot eyes and a ***** filled disguise are all you've ever known
I am not what you thought me to be.
I'm a rose darker than the lies.
Now I've wiped away the ****** disguise to reveal to you a simple ruse to no end.

This letter meant goodbye.
Goodbye Rose.  


I too have a heart.
This heart offers life,
Offers up my love
And offers to spill my blood.
It offers nothing but pains and joy and love and sometimes it skips a beat.

Thump -  Thump  


Just 3 nights later
And I'm with somebody else.
Somebody fantastic and beautiful and ****.
I read her some lines from a piece I'd penned and made a move.
She bit my bottom lip in that first kiss and I knew I actually had a bed for the night.
For just that night.

Black hair, green eyes, soft red lips.
Pale skin and piercings with a skirt far up her thigh.
Gazes entwined with everything to hide.
Silent discussions of lust and loose morals.
A stiletto caressed my inner leg and we knew she was mine,
Is it any wonder why I returned to this?

I topped up our wine and kept her talking.
Watched her lips move and words fly without actually listening.
Perfection is easy to find if you just don't look.
Just ignore her and she can't be less than myself.

We called a cab back to her place.
Somewhere far from the bar that much I know.
Stumbled into the back seat and laid lips upon lips.
Crawled up the stairs on all fours.
Slammed closed the door and dragged me to the bed.
And we ****** under darkness in a frenzy of steaming breath.

Only 3 nights later
And I'm back to this.
To pain, confliction and perfection.
I clumsily left ignoring her questions and focused on dressing.
Caught a glance of a mirror and new I'd have no-one else's bed that night.
It was just that night.  


I listen to rain on my windows.
With each drop I lose focus,
Lose my wits
And lose my senses.
I lose my coherence as it falls in beats too fast to keep track of with their non-rhythmic

Tap Tap Tap Tap.


"Write a poem about right now. The **** that we're all in."

I now sit entirely alone.
Surrounded by the sad and the depressed and the lonely.
With love and hate mingling,
His paws scratching at the window with her face on the other side.
He doesn't seem to notice the others.
Tears soaked my blazer more than rain tonight
But at least they weren't quite as cold.
As if it mattered with warm *** in my blood.
"I loved her. This is the first time I've physically hated her."

So he bursts through the door with a ******* look that won't accept a no.
So lets drink!
Then we watch him emerge,
Maybe notice me leave.
"If you want to be alone I'll leave."
And notice my swift return,
With her fresh tears still burning on my mind.

I've been watching the foreground for what feels like days so let's go inside.
Time to spend with the rest of the party.
Just ignoring what's happening.
"Lets get ******!"
Turn the music up loud and maybe you can drown it in sound.
Light the incense and maybe the atmosphere will smell a little sweeter.
Bring that guy!
He'll take them off your mind
And help create a spite fuelled night.
...or just run.
"This! Is none of my ****!"
Then lets go.
You don't have to watch.

But I've adopted my own space.
Dressed in black and red,
Dancing in the front and the back.
Standing in the rain, under stars
Just watching the last cigarettes burn.
******* happy I've got my little red book.
Time to intervene and offer what I can
Although it's mostly for the story progression.


6 am and I'm still ******* smiling.
I made this night to its bitter end.
Seeing true emotion fly was just divine.
Maybe not for those involved
But emotion is life so accept it all.

"Now let me sleep and I'll write your ******* poem later..."  


Sometimes I dance.
It feels like pure joy,
Feels less alone
And feels wrong to me.
I feel out of place, I don't know the steps, the songs keep changing and none feel sad.

One, two, three
One, tw- ****!



I can remember when I left you,
No.
When I saved you,
No.
When I condemned you.
When you offered me your heart and your lust and I took them into my own and cursed myself with the role of a lover.
I accepted the gift but at least I felt conflicted.
Enough so to soon see that giving you joy meant denying what I am.

I am nothing but contradictions.
A hypocrite with a most debauched nature.
While I wished for nothing more than the red of your petals,
So too did I wish to lay with the weeds.
Much closer to my own kind,
like me they choke the beauty from flowers.
Only with a little less love in their grasp.
So I shifted from you and in poetic spirals of ink I set you free.
At least that's how I saw it.

But now I realise just how much damage a week with me is worth.
Your eyes look dimmer.
A layer of spite and tears stop me seeing any further than that.
Your petals didn't fall but they certainly faded.
What was red became black,
A hell I never wished for you,
And I can only pray that your shade is much more superficial than mines.
I hope it will wash clean and reveal a purer white than a spotless bride.
But that's just a dream.

Hearts are easy to see when they're worn on ones sleeve,
And I've changed hers for the worse.
A fate I had not foreseen and now she can't even see me.
Everything I once admired has drifted from her face.
But it's been replaced by perfection of a different sort.
Had this been clear to me I could have hid who I was.
It would have been worth it.
Just to leave her as she was.

If I confront her will she pour this new life into me and be as she should be?
Or will I leave her in the same void of pain and passion I found myself in?
I swore to watch over those left behind on the path to bliss,
But not those I dragged back myself.
If only I could send her back on her way.

Another letter perhaps.

Dear Rose.
I love you.
I'm so, so sorry...  


Ignore the heart the rain and the dance.
Stick to the watch.
Tick Tick Tick.
There's no pain or joy or lies.
Just stability and the consistent and persistent
Tick Tick Tick.
You're just a body who's mind cannot afford to be lost.
Look at the watch.
Tick Tick Tick.
I'm safe.
And at rest...

Thump, Tap, ****...
This is very long I understand. But I just wanted there to be a record of the story of Rose on here where it can be read in the way I find most fitting.
Adam Burke Jun 2014
A girl has bright eyes, smooth thighs and a perky disguise.
She's been shy and never made much of a try but no word of a lie she loved a man long before she was of age to die.

A girl had long hair with tints of blue.
She wore a dress a man couldn't nearly see through but a man needed no clue as to what lay under the zip he desired so badly to undo.

A man was nothing special.
He in no way had it all.
Dark hair and he stood six feet tall but when it came to a girl he would repeatedly stall.
Never sure what to say should he pluck up the courage and call.

A girl knew she was under the view of a man.
It wasn't entirely new but this strange sensation grew as if she just now felt it too.
Not sure what to do when a man leaned in she withdrew.

A girl began to cry upon the sight of his failed try.
In the midst of confusion a solution arrived when she spied the edge of a knife and a vein which so diligently pumped her life.

A man kissed a girl in a Christmas ball, drunk as high hell and stumbling though he didn't fall.
She whispered "I love you too" only half way through removing her shoe when a man lifted her against the wall, too eager to merely watch the remainder of the clothing removal.

A girl was surprised by a man's advance.
She often scried a  future in which a knot had been tied.
A man treated her as a precious doll, protecting her from the demon's who'd call.
A girl enjoyed this time and began to find she could unwind, however, the knife and a vision of a man's advance kept clinging to her mind.

Only a few weeks later a man lies with a girl.
A girl begins to cry.
A man apologises.
A man and a girl remain together.
A man loves a girl.
A girl loves a man.
And a girl is suicidally sad.
Adam Burke Jul 2014
Two hours wasn't enough to write "Twigs".

I'm not even close enough to the fire to feel it's dying heat.
When the party moves away I'll dance around and through and behind the flames so I can really feel it.
Unfortunately it would appear, dancing through a twig fire isn't nearly enough for one's life to disappear.

The twigs burn for only minutes and I'll dance as long as I can for it's the only time that I have.
While I'm still alone just enjoy silence and that the cold stares of stars are being hidden by my fiery pollutants.
Judge people and opinions and facts, decide what is right then call it wrong because everything is neither.

When the party returns I'll slink off to find the kindling and ponder upon the fires inklings.
Gathering the twigs for poems and flames is better than watching my fire die surely?
Shame it's such a monotonous ******* trek, but monotony is the core of life, don't treat it too harshly.

And it's not like these twigs are ever entirely useless if one has but the curiosity to think about it.
Flames glimmer on beer bottles and the embered ends can light cigarettes.
If these pathetic flames won't burn me alive at least they'll help **** me slowly.

Would you believe this is where I came to write about love, lust and loneliness?
The greater themes of the past won't light my fire now unless one believes time is simultaneous.
Though that belief seems to offer no help whatsoever in the fight against freezing.

All good things must die as the wise men would tell me when I asked them for further closure.
But words don't burn unless you've written them on your forearm far too close to the light of open flames.
I began to write "Twigs" that night.

Two crates of beer, One pen found in the side of my car, Forty-three smokes, One pile of logs, Two significantly larger piles of twigs, Seven people, One left arm, Five stubborn bumps below the wheels of my barrow, A hat on a mannequin, Three bottles of wine, A sometimes blazing sometimes failing inferno and Fourteen long ******* hours...

Was not enough to write "Twigs"

Why did I think 2 hours would do it now?

— The End —