Ambien Angel,
Hallucinate
a halo

to replace
the self-doubt
that you’ve got
wrapped around
your mind

We only talk
at times
of
Swirling
self-destructive
forces

I felt your
distress call
through the ether

Spiraling
down
down
wrapped
in a cloud
of smoke, whiskey
and Bukowski

There you were,
The American Spirit
staring back
from the
Apothic abyss
of red wine
and controlled
prescriptions.

We all
get so alone sometimes
in Tales of Ordinary Madness

It just makes sense
to let another
Siren sing our ships
towards crimson catastrophe

But you handle
the collisions
so gracefully

Looking so
God-**** divine
like your name

This time
Go lightly
and let’s float
away

if you are expecting a poem
after a night like that
then you will be disappointed.
there are not enough words.
there is not enough time.

I have constantly rearranged myself,
eaten away at my own stomach
and then come to wonder
why it is I cannot eat.

I have always found a reason
to smoke instead of drawing a breath;
as if breathing cannot save me,
as if breathing has not been the only thing
that has always been there, since birth;
in spite of myself in grey days-
in spite of genocide
and weeks spent inside,
emptied bottles of wine
and tracks that disappear
before the end of the line.

I have constantly been reappearing
in social circles,
long enough to hold a thought
across the beer garden table,
long enough to make promises
that I could never hope to keep.
I have been haunted
in places filled with light,
I have plundered all my longings
at the mercy of the night.

The library is more like a hospital.
Bleached lights cause migraines,
the words too clinical and exposed
like eczema scars on my wrists.
It is too bright to fall in a thicket
of cognitive thought  and blind imagery.

The secret of beauty is good lighting.
I could never fall in love with a word
under such a surgical glow,
all intimacy on show in a place meant for
German Dictionaries and free wi-fi.
A place for the missing to sleep,
and not a place to daydream.

There is no smell of coffee,
only the occasional whiff and crackle
of a surreptitious sandwich interrupting
the stale breath of printer ink and ointment.
I am all for public places
until I find myself within one.

Exposed under these artificial stars,
I come here for a chance of no distraction.
Each time, however, I find myself languid.
Eyes set to some indefatigable point
whilst I catch the taste of shared air,
the sirens in the distance,
the location of nowhere.

I want the love
familiar chords promise
as I smoke by the windowsill
and think about quitting.

Hair doused in seawater
and drying out in the sun,

a conjured reality suffices
to salt my food, to revive my senses.

I want the love
of an angry mob,
revolution on every tongue

and violence never far from the centre.
The removal of myself

from society coincided with my brief insanity
and I should say that I am never coming back.

I want the love
that remains after that.
In the absence of Jesus,
in the absence of Fact.

The neighbours are making their rounds.
They tend to their allotments under the allowance
of nature, a certainty in the seasons
as they compensate for the disorder
in their lives: the mislaid decisions
that gave comfort
at the expense of vitality.

James watches them from the bedroom window,
the way everyone walks with a proud hunch.
How the stem of a flower grows into the wind.
Flakes of white paint fall off the windowsill
like sugared almonds: the sweetness
of his anxiety,
the agitation of tobacco.

It is the only patch of green in a mile,
a cell of vegetation behind a locked gate.
A frost threatens and calloused hands
turn to pink cushion, blue extremities
folding tarp: a devoted shelter for
next season's radishes,
whilst the homeless die in the streets.

I used to be your morning.

Back stretched,
arms reaching,
asking the day its first question.

You always slept on the left side of the bed.
Our left.
My right, now.
But then.
And now,
My right has never felt more wrong.

Your eyes were always soft at sunrise.
Lids lifting like lungs and falling
like feathers.

You loved the smell of coffee
and the taste of special k.
Though I never understood why.

You never watched the news
because it was always
heart breaking
breaking news
news worthy
never worthy of your worry
so early in the morning.

I used to be your afternoons.

Your smile always felt like the summer,
when I met you.

You wore a white dress
and a warning label.
I wore heart stained sleeves
and a nervous smile.

I'm glad I didn't listen.
Most of the time.
You lived like flowers.

Toes planted in the grass,
always greener.

catching rain like a break,
light like your breath.
Impossible to keep
but never the less,
you were beautiful.  

Beautiful in the way you took naps,
in the way you brushed your hair
while complaining it was too straight.
Beautiful in the way you would sway
To any music that I'd play,
I couldn't say it then but it's too late now
so,
stay.

Beautiful.
Always.
And in the way you'd get excited
when I would pick you up
but somehow, I let you down.
And I'm sorry.

Your eyes rivaled every sunset,
But the light always leaves with a promise,
you left with a suitcase.  

I used to be your nighttime.

I sleep in the same spot that you left me in.
But wake up in the middle.
one arm outstretched,
hand hiding beneath your pillow.
our.
My. pillow.

My fingers are foolish,
still thinking they'll find you.

Like myself when in sleep.

How do you tell your memories to close their eyes
when you dream?
when the only world I am aware of
is the one that I've been keeping,
saving, holding, tending to
my mind is a garden,
growing dreams, still, for you.

I suppose one day,
I'll run out of seeds.
The soil will spoil,
I'll be knee deep in weeds.

But until then
every bud in my brain blooms in bed,
vines and fields of flowers
fill every inch of my head.
So long as I keep my eyes closed,
shades drawn,
room too dark to invite the dawn
that hits the fields like winter.

I used to be yours.

I don't know what you dream of now,
who slows you down when the world spins
faster than your stillness can stand,
how many times a day you find your hand
wandering to where I've been.

Though I tried hard not to say it,
I know that you knew.
I didn't mind how you felt,
but I always
loved
you.

All I have now are used to be's
to keep these,
my own hands,
hopeful.
Hoping.
That happiness finds you happy
and freedom finds me free.

But until they arrive
Every morning,
noon,
and night
I'll know nothing of you
And one thing of me,
we used to be,
I used to be.

Her first words were poetry,
Painting passion into people
like every soul was a self-portrait titled
"Kindness".

As a child she gave each color words that they
could only ever scream,
She gave a voice that flowed like water,
A symphony of dreams.

She grew like fondness,
Towering above us at five foot everything
but forever looking up
like we were the night sky holding starlight in our eyelids
like secrets.

She waits.
Soaking in silence, still
Waiting.
Like the world is whispering
and she's trying to hear it.

Her own whisper floats like falling snow
that melts on your eyelashes
so that it might retrace the steps
of the last tear you cried
just in case,
It's not too late to catch it.

She is a million moments of lightness,
A thousand "I'm sorry's" for the wrongdoings of others.
She is one hundred sleepless nights
of someone else's nightmares,
Kept up with gallons of fresh-ground giving
wanting nothing in return but to know
She means it.

She's got big in her fingertips
like the sun setting and rising into itself,
Until it burns the whole sky down.

She is a quiet presence with an absence
that deafens.
Planting patience into moments
like flowers.
So that you can watch them grow
into a billion brilliant bulbs
of every miss you've ever made,
But were too scared to hope for.

She paints life onto the ordinary
until it knows that it was never anything
but beautiful.

Forever expanding the vocabulary
of the colors she breathed words into
in a children's coloring book
whose lines could Never keep her in.

While the whole world waits,
Just hoping to hear them.