Go ahead, saunter up and down the aisles
Run your finger down the shelves where I carefully placed all the fears I hold
But nowhere will you find that I fear walking this world in solitude
For I am a King inside the mansion of all my 206 bones

I am a shelter for myself
I seek only myself
I harbor love so passionate for myself, that I may burst like the death of a Star
I sometimes gift wrap the World and place it on a silver platter, just for me

But sometimes,
when the Universe trembles and the angels cry
I put my hands over my ears
because the quiet gets a little too loud
And when I sit on my throne and glance over my shoulder

Your absence,
I feel it a little too much

Your eyes are illuminated
With the red visage
Of flowers
And thus such waiting is not
Without benefit

On my selling on a day in the blazing May
I was looking for a small place for a light bite
when I noticed through my heat dazed eyes
the signboard "Snack Bite".

Inside was the peaceful coolness of a suburb bylane
and I would have pretty soon dozed off
but for the strong smoke of spice, garlic and onion
that shut out every senses except hunger.

No menu card, sir, the waiter cut the silence,
on our menu at this hour is only fish fingers,
all else sold out.

No problem I said, I have been here for a light bite.
How many pieces come with a plate?

Ten, sir, superbly fried.

By ten minutes the steaming thing was before me
ten red crispy slices of fish fingers
and I immediately got into business
remembering what my ma used to say,
To a hungry mouth every food tastes fine
and so neat and fine the pieces looked
so artfully arranged on the plate like human fingers
I reflected on the pause having finished the fifth.

Human fingers? I froze in terror,
why didn't I notice
leftovers of crunched bones and nails
on my plate?

The only other man at the table, I heard
was ordering for another plate.

for a man who doesn’t believe in god
I’ve been spoken to by the devil more than once,
he sent bullets of whiskey cutting through my throat,
he made me realize that it’s a problem
and then dug me a mote,
and he knows I can’t swim,
he put pins in my skin
and glued me to a bed,
he put demons in my mind
and put happiness at the
end of a frayed thread,
he stands beside me at funerals,
and behind me in line at
forced confessions
in catholic high schools,
he washed my hands clean
of blood after breaking a heart,
he’s points south of finish lines
at the north of where to start,
he puts me in the shoes
of the man in the mirror,
he makes money in my
wallet disappear,
he tells me to control my anger,
then lays hands on my little sister
and puts blinds over my eyes,
he tells me tomorrow will be different,
and laughs when I call him out on lies,
he takes vacations from my brain
and brings rain
when I’m parched,
then sticks his skin peeled
fingers down my throat
and makes me *****
out on to paper, to regret
what I wrote,
I will never prey
because to my self i won’t lie,
after years of mirrors I realize
that in fact the devil is I

Polished and refined,
With death I have found
A life below ground
A place I can call mine
Destruction and evil deeds
A breeding of pure hate
Is all that I can create
Out of all these heartless seeds

I punch them in
To the deep sullen dirt
Water them with vengeance
And a sprinkling of hurt
Tonight is the night
I find what dwells below
I don't have a key
But I can bargain with my soul
As I place it into these seeds
I am but reeds in the grass
I'm letting go
Only Heaven knows
The blackness of Hell's wrath

I plant my lifeless soul in this plot
To groom it as it grows
So slowly that nobody knows
It's the place the devil goes to rot
Watered with tears, warmed with fire
And as time stands still, never changing
This fruition of evil continues growing
Until the depths of hell can go no higher

Then it will bloom
A flowering gloom
Growing out of control
The ground will harden
In this here garden
Fertilized by my soul

bottle caps bouncing on cement floors
played in a constant loop,
cigarette ash fraying the
consistency of the tapping,
tapping and tapping on a window pane  
with only rain reciprocating,
if only any of this was real,
real,
real life is but only a manifestation
of manipulation of the things,
or by the things that make it easier,
a broken clock synchronized
with progression
of this silent
lunged apparition and
mobility has never been
defined by an antonym
until now,
now,
now formalized mistakes
carve themselves
inside the walls
of a crimson tower and shine out
as the falsities of my “finest hour”,
hour,
our lives are controlled by vices,
vice grips and patterned slices
solidify consistency in off-timed
8th notes that tick
tick,
tick like the broken clock.

Today I walked about 70 metres and
saw two couples fighting in their vehicles,
the first couple stopped at a red light
and I could still hear the bickering,
the child in the backseat was yanking on
the straps of the car seat like
a regretful rollercoaster, and
the only thing I saw in the reflection of
the glass was a teen drinking away
the memories
...or lack there of,
the second couple looked well off
they were driving a jet black Jeep Cherokee
and it looked well maintained, the type
to wash his car in the rain,
and his face was full of blood,
no kids, maybe they were older
and off to college but the steering wheel
took beatings and the gas pedal
cut the floor carpet into regretful pieces,
the cause is unknown, the affect is unknown,
I sat staring into an hourglass wondering how
beautiful their first months or
maybe their first few years were,
did he sit in the bathroom
while she did her make up?
did she put on layers of interest
when he told tales of how
****** his day was?
did he accept the concept that
girls do in fact **** a lot?
did 25 years go by quick?
or 5 for the first?
they were younger,
are they ******* right now?
or is she on the ground
or is he on the couch?
this glass of wine
will continue to tattoo
foreshadowings of minuscule information
on my fingertips, and I’ll sit in wonder
all night if they’re going to make it through this,
cause for now, I have no hope.

we built a house with our bare hands
and you moved out,
then back in and it’s haunted now,
I know you have a hard time sleeping
but I’ve memorized every floorboard
that creaks and it sings me to sleep
every time you try and leave,
I get confused whether it’s the lullaby
of coming or leaving that knocks me out,
this house began to burn and I sat for months
putting it out while you stood
there with cold feet,
and now you’re warm and I’m
stuck peeling the ash off of my skin,
the grass is still green and the
picket fence is freshly painted
but I used the wrong colour,
the door bell is a muttering of
apologies and the doormat is a mirror,
the bed we slept in
hasn’t been made since you left,
I’m stuck sleeping with ghosts
and brushing my teeth beside
no one to tell me that I haven’t
been brushing for long enough,
I’m showering in hot water in the middle
of summer because the steam
pulls the mirror off the wall,
and all I want is for you to come back,
our house is ***** and the callouses on
my hands are starting to become smooth,
my skin is almost clear again,
please come back.

anxiety is wet sand seeping
through a growing hole
in a sieve of positivity,
lasting like migrating birds
arriving to find snowfall,
a **** victim of hands bound
by unmet expectations
and spines realigning
to throats and throats
plugged with damp cement
and every time I speak
it dries a little bit more,
the english language is
written by children
and broken branches
carving into the back
of my throat with
no way out,
I’ve never viewed my
ribcage as prison bars
until now,
I’ve never been
locked out by my own walls
until now
and this sickness is breeding
vines all over any guard
I try to knock down, it’s not
contagious but it will wrap around
your heart like a drunk tattoo.

I’m starting to come to terms
with hate and insanity,
I drove to her house at 4am
because she wasn’t answering her texts,
and I called her 30 times cause I thought
she got into a car accident,
I hit a skunk just
after leaving my house at 4am
and I never smelt anything,
I’ve been sitting on her shoulders for
as long as we’ve known each other,
and all I’ve become is heavy dust,
I have good intentions,
but they’re transparent,
my heart is consistent
but translucent,
a transient feeling of
reciprocated compassion
sparks immeasurable
inconsistencies in
sane behaviour,
but I have good intentions,
and every day we sit in a vessel
with no holes and I try to patch
them because I feel like I’m drowning,
and eventually she’ll want to swim,
she turns turns amnesia into a theory,
she’s a mirror and I’m seeing
an evolutionary reverse,
before I see clearly
I'll have to wipe the fingerprints.