We are: children of winter
Arrived into this world as
All else were heaving
Their last breaths-
Though they come back-
Though the birds
Still will sing-

We are: born too late
A dying breed, perhaps-
All the stories already have
Been told-
All the songs already have
Been sung-
Our fates laid bare, yet still
Out of our mortal grasp-

We will: live again
Will feel the sting of life
Three hundred thousand times yet-
Aching sunlight, jukebox songs
Our stories our own-
Our pains ours-
And ours alone.

okay so i hate you but i only hate part of you. and i think you could understand that- i really really do, you know, deep down. milligrams. they come in fragments. like tiny fountain penny wishes, like uneven television screens and starless night skies. (that i always though you would see one day.) but not you. YOU'RE not even apart of me not now. i won't see you. you'll be walking. you'll look like someone else from very far away. someone i read about in a book. and you won't see me either. (you know this is a lie.) you know i lie all the time. to myself, to you, to the world, to my words & to my mouth. how could i exist in a world of truth and reality? after all, after all i've done. for you. for you i would climb the highest mountain. for you i would swim the deepest sea & brave the darkest night & tame the brighest fire. you know that you aren't even real to me anymore

because i used to think you were something else. a world of beauty, right before my eyes. hair the color of ****. eyes with untold stories just screaming to be revealed. (and would i? no no never.) silent. enjoy it. because never again will you feel something like this, never again will you feel the energy that i gave to you. longed to show you. tried to make yours. and all i wanted was you. i was all wrong, you weren't right at all, but there was something. i longed to feel your touch; a touch i envisioned many nights, staring into a broken mirror, wishing for anyone else but myself to be there. longed for a feeling that no one but you could ever give me. not in a million thousand billion years. because you were real. and i knew that.

"i don't believe in monsters." you could have just shot me instead. your ******* revolver. put it to. my ******* temple. longed for you to make me bleed. drag the secrets of the world out of me, dim and ***** with trash and grime and grit, PULL IT from the depths of my veins and repent all that i once said. breathe FIRE into my frozen blue blood that runs like the deepest stream in the loudest forest. i'll surely die instead of live, yet i've always been most afraid of both. you must taste like sugar. i saw it all along. and you. i would wrap you in flower petals, save you for no one but myself. give you the love that you've been starving for for so long, my beautiful angel. your endless paradox train never crossed my tracks before that dy. (you knew that it was true.) was true all along. armless demon, you strangle me. choking choking choking on nothing but words & pills & fragments & drugs & *** & hate & violence & I KNEW THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. BUT god if only you could. if you could see through my eyes, understand why i do this to myself. maybe i wouldn't be so crazy. i know i ask too much. i know i want too much and i know i feel to much. but you don't understand- i want you to. (milligrams. fragments. we snort them side by side.) to tell you my story. to take you inside of me and know why i am what i am and who i am. (I AM NOT A MONSTER.) i want to make you understand why i crave the blood and why i crave the love and why all i really want

is you.

Now outside, on the porch, I am balancing, foot on old boards beneath, leaning on air.
Intoxication, watching the light patterns like a show. Off in the distance, far across the unorganized parking lot, the silhouette of the tree line grows dark & black into the early morning’s night sky.
And yet it was just January, in my memory it seems– the world rich & drenched in winter, each breath drawn out & frozen before us & i remember thinking that instant in time must be the same– the same brief presence, which only quickly disappears, as though it were never there to begin with.

here alone, though the night isn’t cold, & where the tree line is now there used to be the lights of the city twinkling. In January, that new year, the fireworks lit up the winter scape like friendly bombs. i breathed you in, smell touch and all and it was good. the drugs had just kicked in & we drank cheap champagne to celebrate the new year.
well, lover, now i’m the only one here. mascara burns my eyes. tonight, you may as well be a million miles away. six hours at most. still i know i must turn away from you now. how hard it is to do, how hard to change like this. a huge portion of your life removed, all at once though not quite suddenly. perhaps i knew this day would come all along.

my things are packed and bookshelves bare, lining the interior of the apartment like i’m living in a crime scene of our passed relationship. you are free, now– escaped for awhile at least. but i’m a guest here in this home that was ours before, our ghosts dancing around me playing out all the downfalls, but the good memories too. all the mean words said keep bouncing off the walls, but my mean mouth is only silent now.
as expected i self medicate; treat myself to drink after drink. friends help to stop this sad thinking but eventually i am alone again, back in this place. i had to turn away from you. and we were both crazy of course but still something inside me wishes i could’ve been enough to fix you.
you say you think of me but i don’t believe this.
it never made sense to me to begin with anyway.

i am every girl tonight,
lost amongst ***** bed sheets
& the like. we grow
in seasons, hoping
that the world hasn’t left us behind
just yet.

i am every woman tonight.
trembling alone in an empty room,
the sullen lamp
with it’s uneven lamp shade
declaring the secrets of
my empty being. i see us
faraway now, maybe next
to an ocean,
this crippled earth balancing
on her stone axis,
always in motion.
to dream of you here
is better than death.

i am every lover tonight,
the simple confessions of love
not enough anymore.
& always you, your pick in hand,
chipping away more by day
at such an enamel heart
as mine. Even the words
aren’t enough anymore,
& maybe they never will be.

i am every dreamer tonight.
the clock moves us forward
without our say at all.
i might be someone
you knew once before,
hanging bravely from a museum wall,
light years from where we
are now. My skin composed
of the richest oils,
you reached out, fingertips
to thick smudges & precise curves,
a believer in who i was.
an onlooker, just passing by
on his way
some where better.

i am every girl tonight.
calling for you to come back
to my arms, only knowing
i’ll find sleep alone again.
& can you feel me? i say
when i really do wonder sometimes.
such fair skin, ******* exposed
for no one but this ashtray
with too many secrets to tell.
each sentence forever unfinished.
exposed for no one
but my own reflection.

*All Rights Reserved © Brixton Bell
brixtonbell.com

my flowers are about to die
now the sun is falling later
& i’m getting
everybody high
because
everybody wants
to get high.

april comes fast, every single year.
there are always distractions.
i need a certain kind of fuel to start
the flame inside my being.

my words are a sort of music
which hold their own without
a melody or tune to hum:

exhale & your world is enveloped in color. our scars match up like we’re in unison together. my refrain is tired. chorus outstretched. she’s waiting for something worth waiting for ;

tie my bones together with piano wire.

*brixtonbell.com

the clouds just hung there like traitors. No movement. The numbers won’t add up. We’re divided. No release. Lights ricochet against the water like wounds. Cut my heart out & paste it to the cardboard cutout i’ve been reduced to. No movement. Decorate it with glitter- the expensive kind like you like. i have no eyes. The clouds just hang there but still they seem to manage change. Am i just the same? is that a question or a creative form of denial? Can you deal with this?
Plot your next move. You are the chess player & i’m the queen.
But you’ll never really get me.

There is no real ending. Time has lost her breath. Maybe i don’t know me. Running in place but i’m on empty. No rules to our love. No designated direction. No reasons. i’m the champion of failure, pushing my own face down in the mud. I’m the maker of destruction enjoying every last bit. Wishing lives came equipped with erasers. Happy being sad. (i will not call you. i will not give in.) Wishing on half-broken street lamps. i always knew you could never mend a broken heart so why do i keep trying. That’s not a question. it’s emptiness, everything.

i am my own prisoner. i know i know IKNOW.

*Taken from "I Killed Alice in Wonderland" by Brixton Bell. © All Rights Reserved.

and tonight i am here again, my love, my louse, my vice in need-
tonight i am here, on the edge of baring my soul-
clinging to the idea of release,
of letting go.

i am one million unpublished poems. i am five hundred hearts broken, three thousand daring plunges into the dark.

oh love, please- i am scared of your love, though it may be the only real thing i’ve ever known.