Who is the 'you' that singers sing too?
The 'you' that sends poets diving through vast oceans for poetic pearls?

You're the rain on windows late at night, natures own lullaby.
You're the sun rays in which I bask, you make me feel alive.

You is a collective term.
An indistinguishable figure, a faceless being.
'You' are a silent understanding. Universal.

You hold the promise pleasure and pain of all the bodied 'you's that tarnished your name.
'You' are the silence we scream because the world talks to loud to hear us.

'You' are the nameless, holding up all the 'me's' that aren't strong enough to say this.
'You' are the silence we crave when to speak their names can only pain us.

I listen to my gut instinct, but it tells me a lot.
I need to hear your words, before my insides rot!

My fingers itch, pacing, they dream of controlling the pen.
My tongue flicks impatiently, waiting for the words to roll off.
My heart beats to give my soul music to dance too.

...But somehow, I can't write you...

Your eyes, mirrors that reflect my every flaw in perfect light.
Your hands, a glue to hold me together when my shattered shards shiver
Your arms, a majestic Oak, to hold me close and cover me with a childhood hope and wonderment.

...But somehow, I can't write you...

Your heart, an unattainable magic not to be held by porous people like me.
Your legs, tall towers which block the sun from ever kissing my skin
Your stomach, a graveyard of hope from all the lovers that went before me

...But somehow, I can't write you...

Kissing with your eyes closed is a fine line.
Kissing with your eyes open is creepy.
It's seen as insincere and unnatural.

But you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And if I ever got to kiss you I fear I'd have to sneak peaks so I know I'm not still dreaming.

These wishes and ponderings belong to a broken heart.
My cracked lips and tear reddened eyes know better.
My dear heart and hands, they're begging you to let this go.

Let him go. Release me.

My desperation is not discreet.
It sprays off my tongue every time we meet.
Like the octopus squirts ink to evade capture.
Inky I love you's flood from my mouth, a Tsunami of rapture.

Loving you is the ocean and desperation is decompression sickness.
Whenever I come up to breathe my head spins, nitrogen bubbles explode in place of butterflies.
Isolated on this lonely island, my clouded mind tears me asunder.
If I die a living death  you would be my beautiful, poetic blunder.

A strange sensation crawls beneath my skin, it's not something I've known before.
A claustrophobia that equates to a 1 by 1 concrete box. No windows.
A paranoia as vicious as a horror-movie induced glance around a familiar room.

Fire-breathing dragons soar through my nights, setting ablaze our days.
Our perfect, storybook romance, too perfect.

Flesh wounds that never healed.
Septic bandages tight around my ears.

Imprisoning his poison dripping words inside my head, like the parasitic maggot he was, they bore deeper into my sanity.

His monsters in my head won't let you in. Their screams drown out the reality of your safety.

How I feel is on the tip of my tongue, cowering behind heaving ribs.
Vulnerable.

Let me feel the tremble in your body when you cry.
Ill hold you close like there is no world around us.
No star, no burning sun could dampen your light.
You're a flame that burns too bright for this earth.

Let me break my heart into a thousand pieces so i may love you with each fragment.
I can't continue with you, and i can't continue without you.

My kitchen tiles know the taste if my tears as I lay, pining for you early every morning...

And even when we kiss.
Even when our bodies are entwined.
Even when I'm biting the pillows to refrain from calling his name.

The butterflies won't flutter like they do when I see your face...

... I've been here all along!
My atoms were there for the big bang.
Through black holes and galaxies.
A 7 billion year journey across the universe.

My atoms were made in the belly of a star.
A celestial being imploded so life was free to be.
Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, that star would resurrect.
Like a bad time lapse on the BBC those elements I collect.

I've been here all along, here I'll always be!
But you have made me scared, time ticks to fast to see.
If there's no 4th dimension, I can't come back to you.
And If our last kiss has passed me by, eternity will cease to be.

What if the princess was in love with the beast all along?

You are not the one!
Were you ever the one?
Was I ever in love with you?
Or just in love with your validation?

For we are puzzle prices from different problems.
I can't figure you out.
Our edges touch seamlessly but in your world I'll never fit.

You are not the one, not matter much we push.
I think its best we move on.
You go back to the centre of your universe.
And ill find my place on my own.

I was a prince charming, my armour impenetrable.
A long line of defeated boys lay slain by my side.
I was untouchable, untouched. I was loved but I refused to love.

My mother died in front of my eyes, 22 years on she still treats me like a child.
She's still trying to make me into something better than anything I'll ever be.
That way she'd have something else to look at when she looked at me.
No longer would my father ghosts linger upon my features.

I built my self a fortress, a cold heart guarded by a switchblade tounge.
My army of lies made sure nobody got too close.
I used 'casual' to wage war against myself in beds all over town.

Life is like a wave,
.....everything flows and nothing persists!

I will not shrink myself for you.
I will not search for the sun in your shadow.
I will let my anger rage.
I will let it fill me up, every empty space that you created.
It will rush through my veins and into my mouth a metallic taste, words loaded like bullets.  
My rose red lips will not be silenced around your ****.
The gun you placed in my hands to point at myself down your throat, cocked!

My dreams are home to endless sunsets with you, fingers entwined.
We'd watch the Sun step aside so the moon could see the planetary show.
The wind would roll over our skin as if time was our ocean, infinite.
We'd kiss as if our bodies were made of poetry, like fate wrote this one for us!

But in my waking hours I won't tell you that I LOVE YOU.
Instead I'll grow gardens between lines you run your fingers.
Fields of gold will bloom with every "how did you sleep?"
My whispers will nurture my blossoming love, so you'll never eat lonely.

I will look after you always, like the sun chases the moon.
But I wont rain words of nectar on a deaf heart.
Instead I will grow seeds and yield, my body will nurture as you need.
If you cease to be, I'll spend my last days with the moon, waiting for the sun.

I love you is the heaviest and vastest sentence I know.

I spend my days trying to work out if im being crushed under it.

... Or drowning in it.

Why do you want me to want you when you dont want me too?
Why do you need me when you dont want me to need you too?
Why do you make me love you when you know you'll never love me too?

When i feel like im drowning, i feel like im home.
My fragile body, suspended animation, I swim like a stone.
Wobbling bubbles erupt from my mouth, conciousness dissolving in the sun.
Too quickly I'm loosing oxygen, the beauty sedates my urge to run.

A cold caress numbs me as the waves hold on to me tighter.
My thoughts stray from you, you'll drown with me, you blighter!
Fishes swim past, they carry the rainbow under scales that shimmer with stardust!
With an angels voice they sing a lullaby, slip into silent slumber I must!

Here we go again, my ball and chain pulling me away.
The ocean has swallowed the black sky, darkness calls to end my day.
Blurry faces scream above the water, Brushing fingers a grip they cant find.
There is no way back from this maze of mind!




Am i dreaming,  is this fantasy, this peaceful state wont fit my reality!

I have dark secrets stashed in my heart.
Not idle gossip or an unknown fact.
This secret feels more like a ball and chain.
This freedom you have given feels like a prison.

You are the lover that I never loved. A possessive, obsessive, controlling type. Your darkness wraps around my body, clawing at the scraps of hope I hold in clenched fists!
Monochromatic grey, your melancholy walls talk to me in my sleep.
The sand of time is carried on their breath, hourglasses shattered all over my skin!

My freedom cowers in the shadows of this cell, my dignity malnourished under the bed.
This isolation is more than I can stand, whilst the devil and god rage within my mind.
Waterfalls cascade down my face into oceans that lay at my feet.
Water levels rise, still salty tears can’t sterilize my eyes from the sins they’ve seen.

I pulled out my rib and carved a dove; through prison bars she flies…    Upon her return, my leaves of green, a letter in her mouth.
Paper with dotted lines and instructions to ‘fold here’
An origami boat of hope, with ores made from words of a friend.

In bold defiance, on the starboard side, words that shimmer in the sun.
Like a pool of water in the dessert or paracetamol to a headache.
I’ll hide in the decks made of paper and let the waves wash over me. Your walls crumble in a Tsunamis rage and my ‘Avoidance of Doubt’ shimmers on…

Another nail through the palm of my hand, another label for you to wrap your ghastly mouth around
The words ‘beautiful’, ‘****’, ‘love’ burn into my skin like I’m caught in an acidic thunderstorm.
You pin them into my fragile flesh like notes pinned to a corkboard of advertisements.
Butchering my body and sedating my soul, objectifying my existence, object of your desire.

Dear ex, you used to tell me I was a liar.
The truth hit stop signs on the tip of my tounge.

Dear ex, i found someone who took my seeds that you starved.
And within the technicolour blooms that now florish.

I found truth.

The Only lie I ever told, was I love you!

There is a garden in my mind, where nothings' quite dead, nothings' quite alive.
Even on summers days, birds refuse to sing and the melancholy clouds refuse to blow away.
A glorious fountain that once shimmered with liquid gold, is as dry as the desert in August.
A laughter still travels on the wind, a relentless storm of memories still haunts me.

Mother, I know that you’re close to me.

Summer floods my heart and bathes my skin. Glistening, gleaming, glowing. You made me with stardust, elements of a universe I could never comprehend. From beauty so mesmerizing that to sit in silence is impossible. A sea which flows deep within my stomach, swells and with force washes every life-giving cell within my body. So much beauty I can’t sit nor stand as the water  rushes to head my head and trickles out my eyes to produce a single tear.
         Halted.
As if the cold harshness of the world pulled the plug with such force that the water simply fell from me. Hollow, empty, sinking.

Mother, I know that you hear me.
United by a language, only 4 letters long. Hidden, universal, the alphabet connects us all. Like a golden silken rope, a hope, binds us together. From pigs in pens, fruits on the tree, entangles humanity and it connects to me! From the genepool you made us, gave us chance to grow, evolution pulling strings like a puppeteers show. But we spat that back at you, exploited, your body lay cold as your ***** once again for your oil and coal.

Mother, I know you see me.
Dawn brings with it the purest of hours. Time allows us to talk, to stop, like old friends in a coffee shop, letting themselves droop into the dancefloor of the steam, encircling there heads like the ghosts of lost dreams. It’s the calm before the storm, your bitter cold nestles into me to seek the warmth that you had made. If I could Id take you in my arms and protect you from all that I can not fix. I’d aim my words like weapons into the hearts of your tormentors, your children. With my pen id scrape the plaque residing within there souls and we’d stop this, look after you as our own. But as hairs stand on end, my frail frame shivers, our fleeting moment slips away. It is silently understood that I too am broken. Your tears fall, cascading down the tarmac scars etched across your body. With you I cry, my clothes wet through as if to bear your pain is the only hand I can offer you to hold.

Mother, I am sorry.
Sorry for the eyes that stare back at you from behind that bars of their intensive homes. Their bodies a prison, destined to be the marinated centerpiece, a symbol of status for another desperate housewife, barely breathing through the contraption that fits her in loaned clothes.

I’m sorry I can’t finish what I’ve started. The last words should offer you comfort if not solution, but how can the answers slip from the chaotic mind of the broken-hearted. The truth is we all have nails in our hands, and what it means to be human has been lost to the cross that we all bare. Lonely, despair. We fight the tides of society, its judgments, expectations, racial discrimination, oppression, victim blaming. We try to keep sailing. But what we fail to see is that we’re failing and the only hope of this changing lies within the broken fragments of our humanity.

I decided to name my loneliness after you.
Then you'll always be here as if you love me too.

Dear hope,
Sometimes I lay on the bed and I swear you give me the softest pillows, the warmest blankets, the most beautiful sleep.
I wake up some mornings and you’re the only thing that gets me out of bed, and sure I get mad when I burn my toast but, you give me half a loaf and say ‘hey, try again’
Some days I will grip your hand like a vulnerable child clings to his mother while they cross the road.
I will let you mother me when my mother is in hospital, I will let you father me because my father never showed me protection.
Some days I will let you whisper stories of how things will be into my ear like chocolate cascading down a waterfall in a shop I can’t afford to step in.
But lately being with you is like walking through a graveyard after the caretaker has gone home and the last leaf of autumn has fallen to wither and die.
These ghosts are following me, settling in the coffin that is my stomach. They leave their words on my lips for me to lick when I am starving.
I have a new friend now, He’s called lonely, he’s an ******* but he won’t disappoint me and it’s always cold where he takes me.
I need some consistency, with you Hope, you leave me empty, like I’ve already died but there’s a 60 year wait for a spot in the cemetery.

I heard that pain nourishes courage.
And that romanticised love is cancer.

I hope that this suffocating, consuming  love will devour enough of me.

Will make me sick enough to find the courage. The cure I need.

To fall out of love with you...

One day you may love me back,
One day i may walk back into the sunshine...

Why is everybody naked?
Not out of self-love, alone and in awe.
Not with a partner wit whom you entrust your life.
Not to make a midnight snack in a heatwave.

But. For entertainment.

A science show with naked hosts, not very educational?
To advertise clothing or cars, as if we're still neanderthals.
Our nakedness is owned by everybody else.
So many hands in the ***, we don't know 'how' to be naked.

Writers are the most beautiful of artists.
Complex and unique.
They make the most exquisite, beautiful jewelry.
Every word sends out ripples like water,
sometimes you can see yourself staring back.

Some turn their words into pendants shaped like hearts, and teardrops and all manner of things.
And you can hang them on your heart, or in your head and you'll never take them off.

A writer writes about their monsters, crushes them to coal and uses them to make a forge.

But I, no, a writer I am not.
My words bleed from me, half congealed from the half-dead body they spilt from.
The other half already dust because you must live before you die.
But some people die before they live.

My words, lonely, lingering, they long for more to write about than emptiness.

Apathy grows on me, insidious vines wrap around my limbs and cover my mouth till I can't breathe.
You're here with me, in this bleak, meloncholic abyss.
The ghost of you wrapping weak arms around my waist, sends dusty butterflies fluttering.
Promises that slipped from your mouth still dangle all over my room and I'm hanging off your every word.

I know you're gone, you're a million miles from here.
But in my dreams you still sleep safely by my side...
...and I still wake up at 3am to whisper I Love you to the ghost on your side of the bed...

Would I feel like this if we could reverse time and remember our future?
Would I still carry around my braking, aching heart waiting for you to leave?
Would I stop replaying scenes in my head like the first time we kissed and laying awake all night to hear you breathe?
Or would I instead think of how you set my heart on fire and left me to watch it burn?
Would I read about it on the news?
Watch as media frenzied scavengers lapped up the blood, selfies with the body of a girl who loved to much!
Even in this warped world, where my rose thorn tongue grows around the 4th dimension.
I'd hold on to my last memory, of meeting you for the first time.
My swollen heart and pregnant mind would long for you, a longing that started on that first kiss.

You already know im in love with you.
But did you know that loving you, like i do,
has showed me how to love me too?

I can throw make up like confetti at my own funeral, a coffin with mirrored walls.
Teeth stand in my mouth like headstones in a grave yard,
a bouquet of rose red lips withered under the storm clouds in my eyes.

My body is here in front of you and yet, I am 6 feet under.
Secrets bore into my rotting mind like maggots gouging on the putrid remains.

There will be no hymns at the funeral, no prayers on the tips of tongues.
Just fish hooks caught in throats, of women you have baited, trophies cast aside.
You’ll learn that silence portrays hidden wars of the mind.

My body is here in front of you and yet, we are 6 feet under.
Your fingernails ***** from pulling the soil over our final resting place.

You.
You were an echo that shock my world.
I, an explorer gasping in awe of your beauty.
You, an avalanche to trap me here forever.
Your roaring resounds in my ears, words cascading down my self confidence.
You’re rocks, tumbling away from me.
A Hollywood classic, a thriller, a thrill seeking adventure, a true story…
Me, a disaster, a ‘warning: cliff edge’ sign, a fatality waiting to happen.
For I am incomplete without you, and erosion got to ‘us’ first..

I can't have you by my own admission.
You're bad for me.

Like a ****** addict, I'm desperate.

Every poem a frenzied attempt to restrain my tounge.

Because my words are associated now.

I like you = warning. I love you = run!

But I'm addicted to you. I'd give anything just to smell you on my skin.
To wait in your bed for you to come home.

A mood can change in the blink of an eye.
Your texts stir up like dissolving lies.
My hands shake to the beat of my thundering heart.
My blood runs cold enough to freeze the pendulum swinging in my head.
My stomach wants to be sick, its letting me know my world is upside down.
The cold sweat consumes me.
Locks me in my head with my whirling thoughts.

When i claw myself out of this madness, i ask who am i?
Who am i to be jealous over an unrequited love?
They could make you happy, surely, i just want you to be happy?

I do want you to be happy.

This love. This hurt. This friendship. This obsession.

This nothingness is leaving no space left for sanity.

Out of my feet i made anchors, I sunk them into the depths of me.
Carved my name into the side of my weathered and bloodied flank.
Changed the bulb in my lighthouse mind, to guide my lost soul home.