My body was art --- not to your taste,
you covered me in criticism.
Your words molding me like clay
until the mirror reflected a shell.

The child inside,
forever lost.

You cannot frame the oceans waves.
Forever changing,
vibrant blue -- ever-changing into deeper shades of understanding.
A never changing struggle between the sand and the water.
I am the ocean -- blue.

You tell me I'm one thing,
But really you're just afraid that I'm something
Undefinable.
You believe everyone is one or the other,
But whats the beauty in that?
Maybe one day I'm
'They'
The next I'm
'She'
Then the day after I'm
'He'
Don't suppress me for being
Everything.
Nothing.
And
Me.

The devil is knockin'
cracking up whilst you're talking
all your words are gettin' slurred
too bad your pleas of mercy shall not be heard

You'll pay for all the hurt
you'll sink down in the dirt

"Curse you devil!"

down with you
down to the herd
of all the other evils hell bears

Its beams pull at the heart strings, each a different noise.
No ray on a futile descent.
All with purpose and poise.
Each stream of light reinvents,
the palette of colors our earth bares.
Truly nothing compares.

She longed for his lips
instead the only thing she kissed
was her seventh cigarette

the whole valley
blended into a sea of black
stark to the starry blue sky
the mountains are the waves
I am only a water bug

she filled my thoughts
hazing my brain like cigarette smoke
her beauty beaten and bruised
her eyes still rang true
shes the kind of woman
you can't ever forget

blue bells for eyes
her name was a song
that made the graveyard hum
for the dead became flushed
her beauty reminding them of life

Relieve me from this label,
I cannot belong in this cramped space
That you decide I fit in
I don't understand why anyone would want to be confined
To just one thing.
You tell me I'm this,
Not that.
But why can't I be both?
Or neither?
Why conform?
Why conform when I feel so free just being
Me.

Mellifluous red noises
flow out from a violin like arm
with a bow of steel
and a song of death

Mirrors like to lie.
Reflecting a 'girl'.
An image of an old self,
a mannequin.

Hands travelling over me,
I'm scared, holding back tears.
My heart pounds trying to fight back, but I'm paralyzed unable to protect myself.
And he holds me as if I were his to adore.

Now I wonder if I can ever be held again.

To Yemaya,

Am I enough?
I've given you everything
I've hollowed myself out I have nothing left to give
my new shell is delicate and fragile
yet you do not handle it with care
Do you not have love for me at all?

From Yemaya,
February 2021

No matter what anyone says i know i'm pretty ugly
The kind of ugly that's pretty
The kind that's so different its hard to call ugly
Because it's just not comparable to pretty

The cry of morning
Rays of red sun
Marking the death of the moon

the way they loom over
watching from cracks in doors
listening from windows ajar

they fear me

trying to discover secrets
about the enemy that resides within
this humble frame

for only I can be my saviour
but only I,
am proposed a foe

two lovers in the rain
see each other
through a thousand new shades
each rain drop reflecting and refracting their love
into new beautiful hues
and shapes.

you looked at me
as if I wore a ravens coat

Make a wish
What if I don't want to blow out these candles
I never want to leave this moment
And I know that once these flames turn to smoke my life will change
Because this means I’ve survived
past the age
I treated like a deadline
dead
line.

All the beauty in the world envies you.
Yet you offer out a hand to any who may need it.
Holy beings dance to your melodies,
songs so soothing they cure a broken heart.
The ground around you sparkles with a myriad of blossoms.
Words so sweet satan himself shows you compassion.
Your silky golden hair eclpises the shine of all precious treasures.
I never knew love could be filled with such certainty.

Dear stranger,

when I was crying on a park bench in the rain, why did you offer out an umbrella? Every other stranger had rushed away as if tears were contagious, but you welcomed mine. Why did you go a step further to ask what's wrong? When not even those I know care to ask. We sat there in the rain until my words stopped and the clouds cleared. Why did you reach for my hand when I left? Are you too in need of a listening ear? I have known you for hours yet I feel with you I am safe, you have a stability about you, like a strong shape. Yet a roundness as well, a softness. If I believed in instant love, you would be mine.

With love,
the person crying on the park bench,
Yemaya

A pearl encased in a grotesque shell.
An unknown beauty.

men down the alley
don't care for the person
that they hunt
they care for
the prey like manner
of the scared

The pleasant chatter of the birds,
the mellifluous cries of the herds.

my life has started whirling
down a sink of self doubt
I question everything I love
because my perfect life
has started to crack
revealing all the aches
I had tried to cover

I could never love myself through the male gaze,
every part of me dissected into something that is nothing
objectified and dismembered into significantly insignificant categories
criticized, and ostracized from humanly functions
only to be put on display
as a mannequin.

I briefly reminisce
of that moment of bliss
when she touched my lips
and we were tied at the hip

then torn apart
my poor heart
was vandalized
like despised art

Poppies grown rosy,
from my comrades souls.
Stained red with their own murderous goals.

Their life force ****** dry, and now it flows,
Into the soil through the meadows.

Crowns of lead bullets adorn many a 'hero's' head.
Many a crying widow and widower longing for the dead.

Young daughters and sons who stand on their fallen's bed.
This is where the everlasting hate is spread.

a myriad of moths drawn to her hair
glowing as if godly somethings, it should bear.

Drown out the laughs with your own internal screams.
Now you wish for that undervalued state of oblivion.

They ran,
like they had never escaped
from anything before

I was their prison
and it hurts to know
that I was what
kept them up at night

pacing
scared
alone

Might your eyes see me,
they will not shout,
"BEAUTY!"

I loved her.
Treating her criticism like law,
fixing every 'flaw'.
I grew in captivity --- fast.
Now all I can remember is the scars I've amassed.

my sister was like a music box,
gentle and pristine
I made her rugged
her walk and her talks

I opened my skin
exposing my mind
and I fear her gears cannot be rewind

her perfect clockwork now intertwined
with coils of my past

I have failed as eldest
it should not be her burden
to carry trauma I've amassed

Her perfect smile,
Shines brighter than his.
But he is what everyone expects I want.
He is what everyone expects I need.
But she is so beautiful,
She's everything I desire.
I wonder if she ever sees me
and
Thinks the same.