I remember you when you were fifteen.
Holding your first cigarette between your manicured nails and smiling at the moon.
And through the years
I've seen you spend most of your time trying to escape your thoughts until six in the morning
With a book and a cat
The two things you called the greatest loves of your life.
I've seen you walk down flowery paths with the sun in your eyes
And through darkened forests, wondering desperately where the sun had gone.
I've heard you talk about death and God, your favourite whiskey and your dog. About the most shallow and mundane of events, and the deepest of philosophies.
And I see you now
In your plaid shirts and lace-up boots,
Trying to hide your face in your hair
Calmly turning away every chance at love you find
Searching desperately for distraction
In a gram of ******* and the pen and paper sitting by your bedside.

Everything is asleep
and in pain, in love
and dreaming
about another life
I say to myself,
it is time I take my own
lookout, unfaithful
sailors know they can't
see a thing but they keep
their place on the prow
out there in the darkness
where boats are colliding,
oh yes, they are blind
or awake feeling the dark
like light, like those levels
of cold and heat underwater,
you know what I mean,
when you are dreaming
or in danger, that place
where fish live and sleep,
sometimes I think I understand
everything,  but I know that
I am wrong, and incredible
as it seems, the shadow I see
when I'm hung, I want to think
of hideouts in the mountains
where a man can go to die there.

I refuse to give negativity
and hate any more of my time
Once given the power
it can take over your life and your mind
I start my day with thanks
and end my day with gratitude
My days are a struggle no more
because I changed my attitude
The world is scary right now
that is one thing we can all admit
So I focus on me and my little bit
and simply change the way I see it

:: a book of pins ::              handwritten, copied in a day.



the drawing, the written page.

i am paint and cotton

i am pins and details

codes and reasons

calm and seasons.



i am boxes, charcoal,

fires and birds.



i am hand writing.



i am the old house,

all things considered.



i am the joker, the radio,

the music.





i am four dots.



i am the folded page,

the falling face.



i am the picture, the painting,



i am the mouse, the little bird,

a monstrous woman.



i  am a word document, a picture file.



i am the pin.



sbm.

~ For Molly ~

There cannot ever be, for me
an emotional peak so high
and beyond all other experience
so much my own, entirely.
A speechless secret, my unsaid words
preserving its wonderful wholeness
the not-telling, keeping it so precious
too precious for me, I fear, to shatter
the silence of its perfection.

The blood bond between us
holds no hidden barriers
in this amniotic floating universe
shock-absorbing all the outer world
nutrient rich, nourishing your growth.
My voice vibrating, rippling
in your sonic breathless bubble.
My body, in all its actions
and motions, marking your time
rolling and turning your shaping.

Your rhythm pressing my organs
punching and kicking, demanding space
Immersed in my body’s womb-core
snuggling safe and deeply nestled
in our sheer and utter intimacy.
I give you all I’ll ever have
my blood, my breath, my everything
beyond all my knowing and imagining
this is a devotion most terrible and sublime.


© M.L.Emmett 2016

Night,
I love you
like a bride
loving her body,
the madman
the desert,
like the horse
loves its shadow,
the sad the lighthearted,
I love you like
a wanderer his ballad,
a poet his dark room,
like the moon.