the taste of gunpowder on his tongue as the night tangled around us like sheets: & so we hung, from the stars, as diamonds. His touch was new & like nothing i had known. (it made me feel alive again.) He is fragile flower petals, the burning soul of a constellation.

we will wait for snow, he says, & i know somewhere inside. For i remember the winter night; some three hundred days ago. i wore mittens - hand stitched blue- everyday that frozen month.
They said he wasn't there. he had gone home, 'for the holidays.' & so i left. tiny steps down the sidewalk, frosted like a brilliant glowing cake.

Alone that night i drove the long way there- that cemetery where you sleep now. (He misses you so much.) And you waited, said hello, & i wanted to cry. A blanket of snow, we talked of stories and i know. You miss him too. We were together, then. That candy cane night.

the night is worn thin from this viewpoint.

the river dances still; down the hill, under the rumbling bridge cluttered with people separate in their own circular worlds & the city glimmers with two thousand diamond fake stars just beyond the dark tree line.
we are watching this world happen from far away.
we are spectators in a world who has long since forgotten us.

i say i want to change the world & you say it’s something good in me. you don’t know what i’m thinking & i can see it in your eyes when you turn away. words aren’t as strong with you.

you want something more from me, something i have never been able to fully give before. in particular dreams i see myself exposed. you are the surgeon & i am your patient. your scalpel cuts through thin skin, inch by inch, careful & precise. blank sterile walls. the smell of death & life as well; it’s contradictory. my blood too is thin & you wipe it away with your sleeve. searching for my heart. peeling back flesh. broken bones & absent heart; i’ve pushed it deep inside.

you say you want more but i wasn’t prepared for this.

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

i keep my soul hidden now beneath scattered tattered notebook paper pieces in outdated shoe boxes & deep between the covers of books, crisply underlined & strong- strong there, only there, with those words. most days i wake praying for rain; that tender soft world which it provides me with, drowns out the ever constant hum of traffic, arguing, the war on television, the growing sigh of humanity.

here i am.

I’m driving down some typical road all the roads look exactly the same here the streetlights passing by one by one by one. counting patterns in the road & I’m watching the swarm of black birds hanging over the highway; they’re swimming in their own way; kissing the sky & diving back down. that comfortable feeling of breaking skin
my blood may be the most priceless thing i own & maybe it’s for that reason i want to ruin it.

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.

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.

you are all that matters.
i dream of dark roads, leaving here- this place.
though i've grown accustomed.
in
another world
we are
the heroes.


**brixtonbell.com

Peculiar seagulls soar in the skies of my mind, wondering where you are now. i run forever on this internal ocean's shore, your love the cruel lunar tide. i try but i am not fast enough; your undertow pulls me down, spiraling forever toward the black hole bottom of your heart.

i need you now,
deep into this madness,
no life preserver in sight.
my lungs scream
for resistance--
your love choking me,
c h o k i n g.
we need no white picket fence,
no charming stallion
to sweep us from
this black death.

Sugarcoma lovers with nothing left to hold back & subzero heartbreaks stinging worse than the sun.
You loved me once upon a time
& it was absolutely perfect.
I need you now but i promise it won't scar.
(My darling how beautiful you are.)

I crave warmth in all forms. The longer moments when I can’t think or sleep or feel anything but sorrow, really. A burning inside which craves the most pungent of drinks- gin, *****,  whiskey, it wouldn’t matter right now- what I would do to have one shot. How the feeling would rush over me, the calmness which would wash all the rest away- any bad feeling. Even if for just awhile.

I try to imagine that you were a figment of my imagination; maybe an imaginary friend. Well, lover. An imaginary fiance- would I erase you, if I could? Still I’m not sure. It’s nights like this, so many later and after everything, the good and bad, when thoughts like this cross my mind. Something, some moment we’d shared will come back to me out of nowhere- like being blindsided. I’m  happy for a moment, remembering the good times. But then the heavy sadness swells up in my heart again as it must, in my ******* soul. My eyes well up. Because I am picturing you in your life right now- somewhere far away but still too close- always too close- killing yourself slowly. Remembering how it was all a lie. All a lie. And I am overcame. I am sure that wherever you are now, you don’t think of me anymore.
It's for the best.

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.

the heart butcher has found me once again tonight,
found that hidden passage so hollow now
into the torn void of my soul--
the net set still, my cave fell in & compromised once more.
you could not fail. i am defeated.
left questioning the marble days, bourbon drenched nights
heavy like the stone which sinks
in the wretched river of my veins,
the distant lost time thereafter.
thanatos comes to say hello & i shut my window instead.
tired of the game. no more nights
wasted trying to forget.
life is a ball of yarn
& i am unraveled
like a streamer.
tomorrow ends today

Finishing off the last swig of the last beer, I sit back.
All I can hear is the slow heavy, drowsy soul slipping off the notes the trumpet is playing from the small stereo – the perfect notes, hit in just such a way. The surely dark rooms where these notes were recorded. Once upon a time, somewhere somehow so far away now. A different, better world.
The view of the romantic.

“Hold me close in old – this is la vie en rose” Louis Armstrong sings. I want to be the lover of Louis. I want to be the girl who’s eyes he is looking into so deeply it almost hurts- almost tangible; “Give your heart and soul to me, and life will always be la vie en rose-” he sways again.

And then again with the trumpet- there’s nothing like it. Nothing in this world.
Not to a lonely girl like me on a Friday night.

http://brixtonbell.com

The night is worn thin from this viewpoint. the river
dances still; down the hill, under the rumbling bridge
cluttered with people separate in their own cyclical worlds &
the city glimmers with two thousand diamond fake stars just
beyond the dark tree line. we are watching this world happen
from far away.
We are spectators in a world who has long since
forgotten us.

i say i want to change the world & you say it’s
something good in me. You don’t know what i’m thinking & i
can see it in your eyes when you turn away. Words aren’t as
strong with you.
you want something more from me, something i have never
been able to fully give before. in particular dreams i see
myself exposed. you are the surgeon & i am your patient. your
scalpel cuts through thin skin, inch by inch, careful &
precise. blank sterile walls.
the smell of death & life as
well; it’s contradictory.
my blood too is thin & you wipe it
away with your sleeve. searching for my heart. peeling back
flesh. broken bones & absent heart; i’ve pushed it deep inside.

you say you want more but i wasn’t prepared for this.

**brixtonbell.com

i looked for you on the cold downtown sidewalks, believed you might appear like some mirage tangled in the constellation of city lights.

Knowing that I would not find you my heart began to play tricks on my mind. I tried to find your eyes in all the window reflections lining the deserted city roads- heavy breath frozen before me breaking the black night. Your image imprinted in my mind as though i had seen you three thousand times before- as if this mirage were truly concrete- as if these silly kind of dreams could ever really come true.

My mind knows the truth, though- while swayed by my deceptive heart still… it knows.
Either way i will continue to believe in such dreams.

i caught the sun today.
the sputtering car,
as it bumped along
a road long since worn out,
shook me like some
pirate ship ready to desert us.
unfazed, we drove.
the cold month dangled on the
landscape that watched us
from behind glittering car windows,
as they withheld frostbitten gasps
that beat our broken ships
tattered sails.
i remembered loving you. i saw
your eyes the way
you used to look at me.
energy. there is so much here inside of me.
waiting to be discovered, i cried.
my emotions, liquified,
spilled from my eyes and in fear
of you seeing i looked
to the familiar windows cold glass,
and out. to somewhere far away,
where no one but me could touch.
a place of hidden light
and forgotten heartbreak
and the most beautiful words
in the world.
i saw wonderful things in my world-
and for a moment,
i failed to see how things
truly were.
from a distance,
this cloud of darkness
surrounds my reality world.
the sun, a gleaming bright ball of fire,
caught my eye from above.
the window was silent against my fingertips,
and it felt as cold as the snow
that took rest upon it during the
night before.
the sun’s beauty, captured in
my palm, could’ve lived
for years only for me.
instead, i let it go,
and continued to wait for
the amber of my life to surface again
when i could return to my past innocence.

A sleepless night
  and i thought i dreamed of you
dark eyes; deep heart,
  have i found you?
or are these petty games
equivalent to love
  and is this life
  really
  mine.

Still i cradle you to sleep.
lost hours, clock forgotten-
  dreams won’t find me tonight
  and it may be for the better.
But then again
one can never really tell.
The words flow like blood again;
i tell myself it’s easier
this way.
My heart, my mind, always
       at war
we are all soldiers in this game,
maybe the whole of mankind
is just
as lost
as i am.

Reckless love, how i find both
  comfort & tragedy
   in your arms.
As indicated the night rolls on,
   flowing in tune with the lunar tide.
We are strangers.
Fight for the common good...
or maybe not.
Maybe the dreams
really are lies
maybe the light
won’t ever find me;

Still i fight on.
Lost in myself, in you, in humanity-
still the charge is there.
Embers growing then fading
& i wake
   in the cold sweat
you always seem to leave me with.
Day will be heavier.
it always is.

i dance with the ghosts,
   those others forgotten-
     locked in time and in
    my perception of mortality.
We are the dead, history repeating herself,
that silly cosmic dance.

Half chance.
i’ll pray for solace.
i’ll pray for peace.
i’ll pray for anything
for anything at all.

Jamais.

oh how i love to drink and to cry.
i have a weakness
it’s called
my heart
but there is always time
for classical music.

and so night falls
i have missed appointments
i have a mortgage waiting for payment
i have toothpaste and i have
so much i am now thankful for.

i fall weak to my vices again tonight
but tonight
it’s different
at last, at last.
there is a balance.

a new year hovers on the horizon.
i have well wishes to give,
i have people who think of me
and maybe smile
when i am not there.
it could be worse.

The idea is that my life is beginning to feel like one big joke & i’m god’s punchline.

my stomach churns. i can’t eat. Nothing equals out. The stupid world keeps turning & i’m not going anywhere but down. it hurts– nothing specific. it’s all lies on top of lies on top of half-truths on top of lies. Unraveling. Detachment. i can’t go anywhere or do anything. Everyone is out to get me. My existence is nonexistent. i’m stuck in a really horrible drawn out chess game & i’m always the losing piece. i’m selfish. you are like a weapon & an addiction all in one.
By YOU i mean EVERYTHING. whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same end result.
odd-man out, downfall.

i’m hurting all the ******* time & it makes no sense.

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.

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

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.

how are you
i’d say if i could
reach you by phone but
well it’s been a long time
and most people fade away
after awhile
anyway.

no longer do i know who i am. sitting in class, dreaming of bourbon & johnny depp & violins. the day hangs in the air like a broken record. i walk, in funny lines, with people who seldom touch. though-
"touch is all." (ANNE SEXTON)

"If you would've left," they say. but they don't know. i couldn't leave. i was locked up inside of him; a prisoner of the lie. night by night, he would crawl into my window, and haunt me in my dreams, as my eyes fluttered like the butterflies he gave to me. because he was there, he said. always there to occupy the loneliness of my soul. and so i trusted. i knew no other way.

in many ways, he made me a child again. innocent and vulnerable in a rotten world. the ugliness became beautiful as it had been before; i had something to trust. and it was bliss- i swear it, it was. it was the color that glowed in my eyes, it was eternal purgatory. it was something i couldn't ever understand- though i tried many times. it was the feeling of a healed broken heart, a never-ending rainbow.