I love him
I tell myself
I know that
We will be together forever
I don’t believe that
We could be separated
My thoughts tell me that
He’s the love of my life
Sometimes my heart lies and says
I could live an eternity
Without him
Like my friends say
“We’re perfect for each other”
And you can’t tell me
He’s not the one.

Now read from bottom to top.

There is a forest old as hillsides
tall, majestic, dappled shades
fall on ground beneath the silent
gnarled defenders of the glade.

There they stand in ancient splendour
many souls have passed their way
often used as welcome shelter
from the heat of summers day.

Sweet the air they breathe in chorus
our life's breath their lungs provide,
soaking up our daily poison
so that we may live and thrive.

You seas of men intent to clear them
citing progress, peddling greed
tearing roots from precious mooring
laying waste to nature's seed.

**** the beauty of a landscape
displace creatures for your need
rupture fragile ecosystems
scar the earth and watch it bleed.

To you I ask a simple question,
as I see the land bereaved.
What need has man of all this progress
when he can no longer breathe?

If I was a mountain

That soared towards the sky,

With craggy snow caps

And stormy grey eyes-



Then you'd be the clouds

That swaddled my peak,

That silenced my thunder

When I tried to speak.



If I was the earth

The desert, in fact:

With arid dry soil

And mud, baked and cracked-



You'd be the rain

The downpour that soothed;

The balm to my bruises,

Relief to my wounds.



If I was the Moon

In the indigo night,

With stars as my blanket

And silver; my light-



Well you'd be the Sun

Just always behind

That lent me your glow

And caused me to shine.

Call yourself a friend of mine,
Forcing me to “neck” beer and wine?
Lovingly mixed with ***** and gin,
And dash of ketchup added in,
Wasabi for that extra kick -
The whole thing just makes me sick!
It’s not fun or cool or clever,
But a study in peer pressure,
Present in the world we live in,
Where for a guy or girl to “give in”,
Is expected for their reputation.
But what kind of expectation,
Is encouraged sado-masochism?
A concept likely to cause a schism,
For those who didn’t use their head,
And unsurprisingly now are dead.
I am sure as you will surely see,
And the poet Dylan would agree,
That as long as you ignore
The deaths of one, two three and four
How many, many, many more,
Are needed til we scream and cry?
“We caused too many youths to die!”
And for what cause? Acceptance.
Whose loss is needed for our repentance?
It’s all well acting free and wild,
But each of us is someone’s child -
Whose loss would surely cause sadness,
Hurt and pain and grief and madness?
And stomaching death is much harder
Than soap or dirt or grease or lard or
Whatever miscellaneous things
This activity inevitably brings.
Just saying “no” might make you quiver
But trust me; it’s better for your liver -
And living x years sans hurt or maim
Is worth > than 15 minutes of fame.
So do the maths before you do it -
Or else I bet you’ll likely rue it!

If I swore to tell you
          (wild eyed and breathless)
of what lies
inside my pandora's box
    the blue velvet decaying
    under my flesh
          the whispers in my head
          like supple breeze
          through follow oaks
             (eerily adrift)

would you still dare hold me
at the dusty ledge
of this 85-storey high building
(my crumbling paper body)
as the concrete cracks
submissively
and the walls fall apart
instinctively

because
i would give up
the last of my flicker
to light
your final cigarette
and make
your lonely bed warm

If i held your echoing heart
                   in my hands   (with frantic devotion)
as it throbs rhythmically
in these fire brick palms
   propagating at a frequency
   of long found anxiety
a dim soul
trapped
in an antique olive wood clock
(tick tock tick)

would you dare still trust me
to dance
with those charred demons
(your most profound secrets)
the ones sworn to be
memories of disgust
the bad taste
at the back end
of your tongue
buried deeper in the Earth
for Hell to bare and hoard

because
i trust you
to embrace
the flaws we share
and
tears we didnt

(but most of all)

the discovery of our story
rapidly unfolding in this unashamed
polluted atmosphere

The trouble with never sleeping is that you start to develop weird habits and because of my diagnosed anxiety disorder i am constantly paranoid that i will develop ocd and perhaps it will take over my life like mtv true life tells me it will. insomnia is crippling and demeaning because no one understands that i only remember what day it is because i have a ritual every morning at 3:47 am that i cross out yesterdays date and now it officially begins today. the demeaning part begins when someone asks me why im so tired and i have to explain to them that i dont remember what it feels like to sleep for more than 3 hours or i just say its been a long day because who has the time to listen me talk about my sleeping habits or lack there of. in fact, i dont even have the time to listen to myself talk about it even though i’ve had almost 76 hours straight to hear myself talk. i didnt always have insomnia, i think it welcomed itself when you left because i always used to sleep with you, in both meanings of the phrase. i was afraid of the dark so you bought me glow in the dark stars and stuck them onto your ceiling and wrote little love messages on them so when i couldnt sleep at night, i could watch the stars you made for me.

Not laying in your bed anymore caused a **** load of thoughts to come racing back to my head. i thought about the crickets who always stopped chirping at 2:38 am, i thought about how i could hear her mother's coffee maker gurgle from the kitchen even though i was 200 feet away and you always liked to snore in my ear. i thought about the way you painted your room a different color because you thought it made you more grown up. i thought about zipping the back of your dress up before a party almost 10 months ago. i thought about you leaving me to go overseas one day. i thought about the seas. i thought about a boat fighting its way through the ocean and wondering why it wasn't moving anywhere because the captain forgot to pull up the anchor. i thought about not being able to breathe because you're gone. although you're probably home asleep in your bed. you're not over seas. you're not under the seas.

Sometimes you don't need water to drown.

You were as stealthy as a slow gas leak, by the time i knew i was in love with you, i had succumbed to you. You were in the drivers seat of my car lighting a cigarette with the windows up so i could breathe you in. I quit smoking so your secondhand smoke was all you would allow. I watched as you brought the cigarette to your lips and dragged in as if your life depended on it. It was your third one today and i told you that you should stop, maybe breathe me in for a second. Do you know what i would give to become second hand smoke from your lips? All you would have to do is kiss me and i would vanish into thin air, become a noble gas in the periodic table but there is nothing noble about the element of disappearance. I have been shrinking away from you ever since you held my hand in that convenience store a year ago. I'm trying to convince myself to get over you because all i am to you is someone to **** slowly through your second hand smoke. I never knew I could get so addicted to nicotine until it came from under your tongue. When you're gone, it's hard for me to breathe which doesnt make sense because when youre here my lungs are filled with your sweet black tar. But you will be gone for months when you leave in two weeks. You said you'd write to me, but written words can't carry your second hand smoke. You can't build a home out of a human being, but that doesn't mean i cant find a home in your bed.