I wrote poetry in the pages of my book
and my son scribbled over it
         I wondered who really made
                  more sense.

They call me fickle.
But what can you change if you
can't change your own mind?

Don't fall in love with an artist.
You'll come to love the way
the beauty of the world
reflects through their eyes
in an awestruck childish glimmer
and you won't remember how to see
when they're gone.

No one will love you like an artist can.
They'll memorise all the tones
of your skin
and perfect the shades
in every mound and valley
and they'll only paint
with black and white
when you're gone.

With a little bit of bleach and a rounded xss
they think they can be Marilyn Monroe
but never strive high enough to **** a JFK,
instead they're down on their knees for a Trump
refreshing their Instagram.

I glanced at you -
an expression of calmness.
You hold your alcohol well.
You hold yourself better.
Art holds me together,
but it's all a waste.
Paint left to crack,
sxx, expended energy,
words that will fade,
alcohol pxssxd away.
It's all a fxckxng waste.
A taste of escape short-lived.
Some hands were made for rings,
others to wave goodbye.
Love is art of a devilish kind.
Survival of the fittest became
a game of Russian roulette
in the players hands.
And we play forgetting that the bureaucrats
are masters of counting cards.
The barrels will fire either way.
Sobriety will not save you
and wine will deceive you.
It's best to leave them for the masters
and play your hand anyway.

Twice did our love see the roses of
St. Valentine's rising sun.
That which follows,
worse than the one foregone.
For we were never
the type
to
obey.

The fourteenth day
of that second month,
he came to me
and I heard him say,
"My darling, for you I bestow a gift!
The gift of irony -
no gift at all."
He knew me
and he knew
me
well.

Then the second Valentines
saw that this year
I'd have a gift for him.
A gift he'd rather not hear.
A gift I'd rather not bear.
The gift to end
all
gifts.

He's happy now.
He has another now.
And I'll be okay so long
as the sky remains blue,
and the setting sun leaves
the clouds
a rosy
hue.

Remove these photographs
from inside my skull.
Can't you see
they're making my heart too sore?
Take these rose-tinted glasses
from upon my face -
for I cannot
bear them
anymore.

They say our eyes are biggest in our childhood
and cease to grow thereafter.
I speculate it's because the older we get,
the less we see.

The bombs already drop
in rhythmic succession,
brewing but little
condemnation.
Millions bleed the colour of soil -
impoverished by
rich mans toil.
But not a tear,
not a song is shed - unless,
they bleed the colour of
the dollar bill.

Today we had sxx.
One minute, two minutes, three...
A round of applauds.

How do you shake that
which thrives on being crumbled?
It's simple - you don't.

She was but a sonnet like no other,
With a tongue of rose and hands cold as snow.
And happy were we, I and my lover,
Wandering land our souls could only know.
For flowers so picturesque there did grow.
O' but one morning the weatherman said -
"Halt! Winter is coming, beware of snow."
Listen we didn't but read books instead -
Ignoring the voices inside our heads.
The lands deceased as the Winter drew nigh,
Now brown and withered are the roses red.
Alas came sorrow and the Heavens cry.
Nightingales rise from within her heart -
Sing to the moon "thou shall not fall apart."

Touch me,
like the quiver of my body
is a lyre that you must strum.
Speak to me,
like my voice is a psalm
you've never heard.
Kiss me,
like you're a desert wanderer
and my lips an oasis.
Love me,
like your heart is a wardrum
that will thunder
        without
                me.

4
10:30
"Knock knock"
Still in my pyjamas.
We drank coffee and smoked cigarettes.
He went to a rap gig the night before.
Fifteen dollars wasted.

3
13:00
An old school friend.
More coffee.
We spoke of art, travel and vegetable gardens.
In Japan they don't eat or show affection in public she told me.
Aokigahara finally makes sense.

2
22:00
Lucky Coq.
Girls would ****** for his hair.
He told me of his grandfathers poetry recitals every Christmas.
Idiosyncrasies are the ventriloquists of my heart.

1
23:00
We smoked under vine-entwined lanterns.
He fell in love with a French girl once and lived with her in Versailles.
He was young and went back home.
Regret at the fork in the road.

0
23:30
Left to find a 24/7 bottle shop and go home.
Crossed paths with old friends.
"Come have a drink with us"
-1
-2
-3

I've been lost in time
these last few months -
with clocks that won't tock
and days that won't stop.
And I was happy.
Or maybe a little too comfortable.
It's all the same -
because the sun won't always shine
and you can't stop the rain.
But time will always find you
and I'm here now.
So where are you?
Are you hiding too?
Running from the monotonous chime -
the one that dictates your waking
and your slumber -
your not so silent slumber.
Trapped within the walls of time,
is this living?
Or is this death?
It doesn't matter,
the trees will still grow
either way.
And I'm here now -
I wear bells now -
to throw that monotonous chime
out of time.
So where are you?
Do you wear bells too?
I don't weep -
no, I don't cry.
Because tears don't harmonise
with the monotonous chime.

Tonight I will sleep on my fragmented thoughts
that my anxieties found too delicate to embrace.

Crushed by nature and neglected from nurture -
I'm not one to hoard but my head must rest.

Is it so wrong for a woman to caress her melancholy
as tenderly as she does her lover?

These pieces of madness once smelled so sweet
like the roses I've kept from years foregone.

I crowd my mind with scraps of death
to remind myself that what is dead, is never gone.

"Cheers!" and we drink to
this totalitarian,
patriarchal ****.

A Sunday morning
was never made for seeing
the morning at all.

How peculiar it is,
all that we keep alive with our thoughts.
I wonder,
whether it is as photosynthesis is to the plant
and a flower is yet to bloom,
or whether our faces will become blue
in the name of fallacy.

Think wisely.

I've seen you there
amongst the lavender fields
when you thought no one was watching.
Memories that dance
a longing daydream,
weaving strings of lilac through my veins.
I knew you would plague me,
but my eyes supped upon you.
Supped and supped again
until lavished by an allure
a thousand French patisseries
could never usurp.
Your taste inspired madness -
a craze you too endured.
We turned over pages
and bewildered them with Eden's of ivy
that flourished within our skulls.
If Van Gogh were a writer
he'd write like us.
A fable of seraphic beauty
and lucid insanity,
knotted together
with existential philosophy.
"Being and Nothingness"
(Sartre understood)
but we were 50 years too late
to the Café de Flore.
Those were memories of yesteryear,
sealed with the rosy hue of antiquity
I was always fond of.
I can almost lick that scent of lavender
that clings to the photographs,
but I fear my tongue may bleed.
So I admire them on a mantelpiece
in a dust-soaked room
where all that I love
(and have loved)
may live.
I know that room not by daylight,
for I dare not be seen to enter.
Only the high rise moon knows
that those footprints
belong to me.