i just want
to put the
whole world
on pause
and play
you on
r e p e a t.

i’ll never get
tired of the way
the strings
around my neck
tighten as you play
them and sing;
though i’m unable
to sing along
for your spell is
choking my windpipe
and binding tight
my tongue

and yet i could
never ask you to
remove your hands
and the strings
all wrapped around
my bruised neck,
shut up, and just call it
quits, despite the
unfortunate fact
that the copper and
metal wires are lacerating
my bleeding throat.

i have not dwelt
simply to haunt the stubborn
nor to be wasted away
by tides of hubris.
i may be a mere spectre
but i am nary a ghost
nor another figment of your
mischievous imagination.
you may think me but
another flickering shadow
lingering past peripheral visions,
in the darker corners of your
tired, bleary, hallucinating eyes,
but i am not transient
and quiet mantras and disheartened
prayers will not be enough to
make me go away, vanish.
and my silhouette shall eclipse
your sunrise mind, until
persistence turns to paranoia
and mysticism turns to madness,
morphing your shallow dreams
into abyssmal nightmares...
you deserve it,
for you are a murderer—
you have not killed my body,
but you have mercilessly mutilated
my spirit, leaving my heart
beating steady yet badly hollow,
making me vainly ache
for the former tragedy instead.
with what you have done,
it is only fair and just for me
to be the deathless past
billowing rather furiously
behind your closed curtains,
trapping you in my perpetual gale
as you have done to me.
for i have not dwelt simply
to be another superstitious legend
passed around in whispers,
nor will i stay in insignificant limbo
just to be entirely washed away
by the arrogant tides of
the fear you once called love.

but darling, just
what is love
but another word
for the feeling
i could never have?

mind your head
can’t concentrate
i want you to go
don’t stay away
i’m being feisty
my smile is numb
you got me walking
saying “*******”
you’re in my line
of sight and range
but duck your head
before it’s too late
my voices are all out
i won’t say a thing
but i’ll hang around
till i get what you mean
pardon, i lost my mind
when you came around
you’re far too high for me
so let me go, let me go down.

i counted seventeen vultures
circling above to rend my spoiled flesh apart
and feed me to their starving children

i thought i saw a raven
mocking my unfortunate fate
perched solemnly on a chiseled granite bust
weeping with plutonian ponderings

as the foolish crows
sang me a heartless elegy
the epistles crumbled to ashes in my palms
and my fountain pen dried out
into blotted shadows

if only heaven were to open up
and save me from the ominous darkness
but there's no room for another soul
to save; no vacancy to give

so i huddle beneath the branches
of the dying willow tree
and waited for them to take me alive.

i am you
i’ll play a tune
to sing of sunny haze
and cloudy gloom

you are me
you’ll write a sonnet
to speak of fireflies
and underground moments

i am me
i’ll paint a picasso
depicting stained hearts
and abstracted souls

you are you
you’ll orate a speech
declaiming of eloquence
and casual vernacular street

we are we
and we will forever be
immoralised from art to poetry
faded all the way to infinity.