Poverty and destitution,
through these doors
a Dickens institution

you can
stay at home
where your life's your own
or come inside and
take a ride
down unlit streets
on unmade beds
between
***** sheets.

he who meets himself
beware.

I too have had a share
have been there
empty
stomach
empty mind
empty
everything I find was empty
is empty,
excuse me
I'm hungry
can't separate the present from
a former state
but
at any rate
this is the institution.

Its the worst feeling in the world; knowing that you loved someone who drove you to near madness.
Someone who chipped away at your sanity; bruised you, twisted you mentally, damaged you in irreparable ways.
Every day you try to heal, forget, but there is a hollow part inside of you that will never be the same again.
It's the worst feeling in the world to be crushed by someone you love, even when you knew that loving them wasn't in your own best interest.
You knew that something was off.
You knew you should have run; gone far away from the toxic vapor released by the relationship.
It was a chain reaction; each product driving you even further into madness.
They manipulated you.
Lied to you.
Faked their affections.
Tried to use you.
You let them. Just a little.
But you caught yourself just in time.
You saved yourself.
You escaped.
Even when they played you right until the very end.
You like who you are in the aftermath.
You relish the strength you feel being free from his clutches.
You adore knowing that you outsmarted even the worst of the narcissists.
But the paranoia remains.
It finds you.
In the night; in the day.
Around every corner.
But you will be free.
You will be okay.
It was the worst feeling in the world.
But it's over.
You survived.
They may have tried to crush you, but you remain whole even still.
In the end, they did not win.
They never will.
Perhaps you may feel damaged, but you will rebuild.
And you will learn.

Pink pill turns black
on its tin-foil hammock,
putrid cremation
beneath a butane lighter.
A choir of bullfrogs
sing the advent of a wet summer,
whilst trembling hands gather
to capture the fumes
through the paper vessel
of a makeshift straw.

She gathers spring flowers.
Places them in a jewellery box
alongside the ring he has never worn.
Wide-eyed, she speaks in Thai
on their sweet scent,
amongst the burnt incense
and his vacant, impatient stare.
Tarried for the next hit of nicotine,
for the self-immolation
when he is left to sleep alone.

Lungs tarred with amphetamine,
she will return to her infant son
as if nothing has happened
whilst he wakes
to a morning bed of ash.
Mosquitoes fog the windowsill
as they languish
in off-hand, stubborn ***.
She falters to a ******-
he keeps his cards to his chest.

Dawn croaks its miserable head
as he suffers a silence of symphonies
with no words.
No common tongue;
heart brays over
a pillowcase of pebbles
and a mouth of sand.
She paints her nails,
smiles with professional assurance.
She lives in a comfort

he cannot understand.