pixel woman
draped in scarlet
strum for the heavens
hang my troubles
from every silver note

hypnotise,
my sins lay bare
each stroke
painted fingers
through peroxide hair

false alarms
ring rusted red
she sings my skin
pearlescent

when doubts conceal
the chosen path
her sapphire
ripples settle

melt my adolescence
I am new-born
swaddled
in bitter
sweet ballad

her song,
my future
peeled and played
by warm-chord haze
of long-gone days

this year I grew three trees
from the dust to the blue
with the assumption each
would teach

elm was the first,
a fleeting fumble
dripping in butterflies
yet gone before
the season was

next came the oak,
a sturdy promise
it was he who taught me
we rot from within

the weeping came third,
don’t all goods come in threes?
if only the sweetest blush
could float unwithered

blinded by branches
at nature’s cruel whim
my trees did not fall
but I did

love did not touch me
another buzz
another breath
it lingered
lingered
and left.

I breathe dust and think fire
my mind sizzles with spirit
I write with my left hand and see with both eyes
but that doesn’t matter.

thoughts without thought
diffuse like poisonous gas
from the mouth of the man
his audience inhale malefic fumes

“Homosexuality is against the will of mother nature” he hisses
yet she is nowhere to be seen.
when rain falls to the concrete
I know
she cries like the rest of us

I am trapped in his freedom
his right to speak as he likes
takes away my right
to exist.
Only silence remains.

I will not be reduced
to a title
a statistic
a fixture of mindless rhetoric

yet his words continue
screeching darkness in my ears
he doesn’t know love
but he’ll do all that he can
to strip it from others

when his daughter sobs into her pillow
and drips her scarlet shame on the white bathroom tiles -
He’ll learn.
until then his forked tongue will flick venom in the air
the narrow tunnel of his mind unmined

I long for the day
people think before they say:
I am not
homophobic
but