Venus’ poisonous breath -
invisible –
catches itself on the ice
of purged rain
and falls.

Crystallising venom;
no arrow-hearts,
just the invisible ****** weapon
of a sacrificial lamb’s leg
to beat love into submission.

Scorned lovers’ scorned love
aches in the twilight
of the in-between radio stations
where Venus spits songs
about eternal rainfall
and dying in a bathtub of blood
for non-poetic non-love.

Gods laugh
at self-help books
and the implication
that anything at all
is the same
as the last
time the world ended.

Beautiful Venus,
with smoke in her eyes
and golden skin,
waits for men to burn
under her;
laughing and lying
in one breath,
catching and falling again.

Ship’s tipping,
children crying,
water lapping
against my feet -
summer-side beach shores
flashing Polaroids
through clasped hands
in false prayer.

You,
atop the bank
rough hands; calloused
grabbing the rail
as you hang onto the upper hand.

No longer horizontal,
ripped apart from the domestic bed,
your chants to God
beg Him to take my life,
and spare yours –

It’s easier to be the underdog
when everyone else is falling, too;
I am the water,
I wait to lap you up;
please, I ask,
fall onto me
and let me love you to death.

In short, sink.
In shorter, drown.

Do we want to make it out of this alive?
Was that ever the plan? –
When we called each other beautiful,
and our friends laughed
because we were perfect for each other
but I wasn’t made for you.

Do you want me to live through this?
Even after all of this,
being read, being spoken,
I do not understand the role I seem to play.

Can you shed some light on my purpose?
Right now, it seems,
I’m only good to tell you stories
from another girl
who doesn’t hold a knife to her hair
in the drunken night-time.

Is there still something to cut off?
Look at me, asking you,
shouting up to the pedestal
I built, myself.
What would you like for breakfast?
What sacrifice would you like today?
Don’t say ‘nothing’;
it seems I am only good
to cook you blood-pudding
and pretend that I am talking
to someone singular.

Will you take another hit? –
Or is this one all mine?
It’s another Tuesday afternoon,
again, and we’re in the
limelight milk-light
and you’re somehow every girl
I’ve ever loved
but I don’t want to kiss you
because you, and she, and I
are not as real as the stories
I tell.

One:

This is
the white-night
burst
of seven billion
voices singing
requiem dies irae
as mountains fall -
desperately breaking
independently
from the shards.

This is
the collective collapse
of a season of stars -
of Van Goghs and Mozarts,
and all those dug up
graves; bodies
loose in the wind.

This is
lovers’ last request;
worldwide relief
underneath burning wood,
silk moon,
translucent veil.

This is
the eulogy
of the earth.

This;
unwritten.

——————————————————————————————

Two:

H­ere,
the silent universe.

Here,
intergalactic war
halted, planets
bowed with rings
draped in black.

Here,
mourning the loss
of a child
who had merely
taken one shaky
footstep
into the dark.

Here,
solemn species
contemplate
the finality of this;
somewhere
an old-earth radio
creaks its way
into playing
Electric Light Orchestra
and the older ones sigh
remembering the
burned out
blue sky.

Here,
entire constellations
flick themselves
out of place;
an infinitesimal
blip
marked down
in universal history -
and songs echo
in a vacuum
for a brief eternity;
the collective memory
that once
just once
the earth had existed.

With every resistance,
remember –
how everything was choked
back into your mouth
when you were a baby bird
and the barricades
were not yet burned.

When you,
with aching gaze
watch the Joan of Arc torches
purge their way
up the winding acres
of stolen wood;
call yourself to Dunsinane
and wait there.

***** up your own feathers
and try to fly –
strip yourself of ash;
pretend that your fragility
is a stepping stone
to becoming a phoenix.

Inhale smoke
and watch the revolution
burn beneath your broken body,
your flightless bones
crushed to mothers’ milk,
countless choking coughs
coming up; down again.

Sing;
drown out the inevitable,
and choke;
with beautiful sounds
of death drawing acid
up your cartilage;
revolutionaries flee
the barricades, the fire,
whilst you beg
for what you have lost
to be choked back into you again.

I didn’t get the memo
to evolve -
stop sticking my hands
into the fresh-fire,
as if some part
of my visceral mania
wants to ****** my knuckles
with the ashes of Prometheus.

Every day that I don’t crash my car
is a white-hot remnant
of the suffocation of boredom,
like my life is on pause
until I’m nose down in a gutter
or in a line that I keep trying to cross.

There’s evaporated acid rain
condensing within every hangover,
each time the sun
rises; I rip down my fingernails
climbing to reach it,
gasping down
at the pulsating impulse
to make something terrifying
out of paper maché
and broken bottles
and bruised ego.

In every grave, there’s an I,
subtly watching
for the apotheosis;
a moment of sickly-yellow violence
igniting once more
any excuse for a fight
for fame,
for a feeling.

First-class lipstick,
like satin,
gently marking into history
sign-offs and signatures,
transcending boundaries
between land and ocean.

Nothing unwritten;
everything perfected
in the sweet subtlety
of marking names
and millions of ways
to say the same sentiment,
sealed up below the deck.

Traversing the sea,
unread letters wait
in the salt and the sediment,
that will soon wash over them;
the timelessness of tragedy –
of waters that lap
over delicate bodies on beachline shores.

These same elements,
clinging to life
within seawater-stained envelopes
find themselves
just a little too much,
almost a second out of time
with the world outside the ocean.

Now, timelessness has moved on,
and many ships have fallen since,
but there remains
a pocket of air,
huddled in the North Atlantic,
where love letters still muse
with writers’ delicate bones
and the sweet serenade of saltwater.

My words stick to the
Roof of my mouth like peanut butter,
Like white bread,
And no matter how hard they try,
They can’t escape.
Lucky to make it past my brain’s thick fortress,
Now they sit useless at the tip of my tongue,
Wishing to come forth but my mouth
Not forming the words.
My vowels languish in my throat and
My consonants sit listless,
All my verb phrases and direct objects
Lie in a jumbled mess,
Too disheartened to make a move.
They know that if they leave my lips,
Others will take them and cut them up,
Mince them like onions,
But the only person who will cry over them is
Me.
Eventually, too many letters will clamor at my
Lips for attention, and my throat will
Close entirely,
Never fessing,
Admitting,
Confessing,
The things I feel.