when i'm with you,
my heart does not beat.
it drums and thuds and thumps
until i can feel it in my feet.
i walk with you everywhere
and hope you can feel every ache,
that you feel my blisters
bubble under your skin.
not so long ago,
my heart was just a pump,
functional, rational, steady.
now, it encompasses every thought.
i would like you to stay a while,
the longer you are here
i can be sure yours is drumming too.
although,
i doubt as much.
while i'm drowning in the blood
my heart has forgotten
how to control,
you are lost in your wit.
i am afraid that
you enjoy the idea that
you have ruined the
notions of my purely pumping heart
instead of the
idea of me.
and i'm alone,
i'm alone,
i'm alone,
i'm alone.

i wish i could swim the pacific ocean and back.

and when i came back to sit in front of a burning burning fire

until it dried me to the bone.

and for my skeleton to be hung above your bed

to act as a catcher of your night terrors

and it would work

because you would know that i was magical.

because i swam the whole pacific ocean and back.

for you.

i have been told one million times that
love conquers all but it seems the coordinates
of my existence have never been found or
voyaged too. i thought i had found my destination
in you, i guess the atlas i used was obsolete and rotten.
i tried to sail away from you but i arrived
at stormy seas, the north star i followed burned
like your kisses, which scorched my mouth like
my first menthol cigarette. when i tried to
soar, you crashed into me like a wrecking ball.
and we came down, blaring, burning as you
touched my skin turning it to ash

i have relied on circumstance and fate all of my life.
god has never shone down on me and occupied
my life with luck.

i have lived with compromise and attainment without the need for belief
i have never had a calling or had the
ghost pierce through my organs and save me.

today i watched you make your first communion and
you have never been so bright. your innocence,
highlighted in your glow. faith enveloped you
and you enveloped me.

loneliness crept on every breath

I felt every cell of each of your knuckles
As it collided with my cheekbone
And as my face was ripped from its symmetry
I felt my heart crash into my stomach
And regurgitate out of my lips.

inhaling the ocean breeze and feeling it empty my lungs makes me feel completely intact

i can taste the salt in its entirety on my tongue and i try to scrape it all off with my front teeth

i feel the waves roaring over my heart, liberating it from veins and its arteries, the sea filling the orifices of my organs

the shores stones crowd at my toes and break my skin, but i am cleansed

i stride into the water and it seeps into my nostrils and my intellect becomes infiltrated by the sea, my lungs are suffocated by the wet

and i am completely intact

i feel choked by my words,
they are swelling inside my skull
and they are lathering me in sentiment and folly.

my pen has become my enemy
and a regret that i cannot conquer.
they join inside of me

and plait themselves together in sentences
weaving into my brain and stifling their
surge to my fingers and suffocate my wit.

if i could i would wrap my mouth
around my head and heave the knitted words
from my brain and lay them
onto my white blank page, but,

my words, they imprison me, they grip
me behind steel bars of language
and i anguish, i anguish.

like sitting beside the window feeling tortured by the torrential rain, wishing that it was pounding at my surface, scratching away at my pores.

having bluegrass melodies sweeping up my ears, filling them with banjos and voices as cavernous as the grand canyon

and watching you laying on the carpet, your legs crossed, rolling a cigarette as if you were caressing skin,
being careful as if you were rolling my veins, controlling the blood flow to my heart,

making it swell to burst.

grief struck me like a lightning bolt
the anguish thundered in my gut, tasting the
sting of it's acid decimating my throat

you were never a nice man, your habits
ate away at my bones. my skin has been desolate
of adoration, my heart barren of beating

but when you allowed the sickness to overcome
your wit, i became your carer again, i was able
to caress your skin and wash your pores of bad

i was necessary for you, you howled for me.
my palm engulfed your fingertips while
you were lowered to rot in the ground.

i wake up every morning with a kick in the teeth, blood
swelling in my temples. remembering your last words to me,
‘words mean nothing when i can feel your heart in mine'

i tried to stop your calcium intake so that you would never grow
i wanted you to shrink so that i could keep you in my pocket
and you could gnaw through the fabric and plunge onto my toes.

i would walk you everywhere that i go. you would see all that i see
eventually, you would be so small, you would crawl into my ear
and scratch through my skull.

you could infiltrate my thoughts and penetrate my nervous system.
and then maybe you could feel all that i feel and realise that’s it's you

when i was drunk i rang you and you didn't pick up your phone.
i came to your house and bashed the door until
my knuckle bones ripped in two. my fingers were
ripped from my palm from trying to reach you.

i left my pinkie finger in your post box.
when you found it in the morning you
rang me up and told me that you had it for breakfast
along with my dignity and left me alone
with my infidelity.

i wake up and i think of you
and i look out of my window
it is grey and the lights stopped
glittering a long time ago
and i smoke and i smoke and i smoke

i pour my coffee and i think of you
my mugs are stained, the blemishes plaster the
cups and never come off. they have left
their mark, exactly they way you stamped yours
and i smoke and i smoke and i smoke

the shower beats my skin and i think of you
i scrub; i scratch my pores with soap
but the filth resides, it clings and
fills my orifices. i am choked by dirt
and i smoke and i smoke and i smoke

i exist through my days and i think of you
everything is dampened by desolation and every
one has your eyes. this city repulses me, it sneers
at me and growls ‘there is nothing to keep you here’
and i smoke and i smoke and i smoke.

If i could have your arms as a pillow, i would bring it everywhere, even on the bus. I would wrap it around me if i was cold. I would put half of it on my shoulders if i was at the cinema. I would put them behind me if i was looking at the sea, and make it squeeze around my
stomach until i felt you in my bellybutton.

I want to be a fish gliding through your veins, come out of your mouth and kiss every millimetre of your lips.

I would make your hair a hat and in the morning i would run it through my fingers, i would drag it up my stomach and around my chest and have it entwine with mine, resting near my nose and stay like that until your smell was gone.

I want to sit under a blossom tree with the sun coming through in little streams.
Only with you.

I want to sit infront of the painting 'scream' for five hundred hours, so when i look at you, you would be even more beautiful.

I want to watch every breathtaking sunrise come up from behind your face. See your eyes glisen, with morning moisture and yellow light.

I want you to always be happy. Your heart shimmers in your eyes. When it is not there,
neither am i.

i can see the muscles strain on your
back when you lay alongside me, they
look like rib cages and i lay there too
and envisage that when you sleep i could
reach in as a spirit and seize your heart
and feel it pulsing in my palm.
it would tickle my fingertips and
send waves up my arms to my brain and
my backbone would quiver, overpowered
with ache. i would inhale deeply making
your heart in sync with my notions
i would be able to control the flow of
your blood, i could smother it and
clutch it so tight that it swells. i would imagine
that it inflated so because you were dreaming
of me clutching your heart.