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the Sandman Jul 2014
My body runs on anger
what shall I do with despair?
I am uncertain of how
to handle gloom and sorrow

my body runs on anger
I’ve no use of thee, despair
so out with you, oh, fowl cow
and return to the dark of below

what did this to you, my strong one?
what reduced you to such a state
so cold and pale and weak and frail
as though someone didst sedate..
wake! wake! I cannot take the wait.

you, never meek, who forbade me to weep
how can you lie so, with no trace of life?
I choked at the sight
but did not shed a single tear
I did not, I promise, not even one

the needles and pipes and tubes and pins
cover every available inch of skin
no stretch of wrinkled flesh remains unprobed
icy skin makes my blood to fire akin

vile, putrid bile rises in my throat_
wretched sorrow, arointh thee!
-I cannot handle woe.
the Sandman Jan 2015
You are
The whispering of the sea
Crashing anger at violent shores-
Lapping lovingly at lonely rocks.

You are
The affectionate bite,
And pressed tooth on lip. A brutish
But gentle expression of passion.

You are
The soft murmur of uncertainty,
Rustling against soft skin-
A (lost) exhale of heaving breath.

*Your skin and flesh and bones
Are I think not made of
All the same stuff as mine.

   You are water; you're iron;
   You are whistling wind.
   You're the purest sin
   In which I've ever sunk.
the Sandman Jun 2016
I don't know if I should be
Ceaselessly hopeful
That I am understood
Or ecstatic
That I can finally understand you.
You, without me, outside me,
Much larger than life, and me,
Before me, far from me, unlike me,
Are magnificent,
Sweaty sweet,
Systematic and
Symptomatic,
Making a difference to the universe.
While I sit here,
Waiting for the world
To make a difference to me,
Making excuses that everything I'm thinking
Has been thought already.
*
This is an account of my reflections on first looking into Mikhail Bakhtin.
the Sandman Aug 2014
This world, of beauty,
lifts myriad vacant skies
for blank world to view.
.
My first attempt at a haiku
.
the Sandman Feb 2016
Our city
of forts and malls and cinema halls
is littered with the filth of our minds
and our mouths.
We are lost; we are broken;
we are muffled and soft-spoken.
Big city dreams
of art and changing the world
slip away every time we wake up
on grimy beds we’ve never seen before
with soot on our feet, and our hands
bound with ***** hair,
backs bent under the weight of all they’ve left us.
The mud in our fingernails leaves us a mess,
in the shapes of the night's sticky, grubbiness:
a twisted Rorscharch inkblot.
We see it all replaying,
—flickering, as we’re swaying—
on grimy ceilings, where the light bulb
seems askew, and dangling
in an effort to hypnotise us,
left, and right, and left.
Every day is a repeat of the same,
chai glasses, and cigarette butts
with redlipstickstains,
rickshaw rides (exactly thirty rupees steeper
than the rate on the meter),
cat calls that slap in one ear and slip spit out the other.
Our roads are lit by TV-light,
a muted glow that follows us everywhere.
Anonymous blankness follows blankness
and the dark dankness
of grocery stores and souls
that can’t recognise each other anymore.
Silly young things dreaming of bliss,
And new couches, and tiny feet
Instead hear only
"Scrub harder," "Needs more salt," and
"Turn over; come closer; be quiet."
Bare feet in splotchy grass
with brown and green ankles
are replaced by sore heels and push-up bras.
Pens scratching on paper
are replaced by knives slashing skin
and flesh and bones
hitting sharply so that the onomatopoeia
of the shlick-crack-crack
draws out delighted laughter
from blackened, smoky mouths
— and peals of screams that no one hears,
the afterthoughts of parking lots.
The fire of fingers leaves marks, scars;
and their tips grow spikes
into the goosebumps on our arms;
knuckles peel away skin,
everywhere they trace;
and fists clench
around our bodies,
that don’t belong to us.

But we know, one day,
our spring will come
and we will leave the heat on our backs
in dust.
We will go down with Persephone
and take our flowers with us.
We will swim upside down
so we feel like we can fly.
Every rock laying unturned, we know,
has a cosmic universe throbbing
patiently under it.
We will lie, resilient, awake at night,
dreaming cautiously, softly,
so no one hears,
but dreaming nonetheless.
Dreaming of our wings melting
over and over again,
when we get too close to the denied,
day after day, until
we can build wings strong enough
to hold the heat of the sun
inside them, and then propel further.
We’ll show them
— tell your sisters and daughters and friends!—
we’ll show them,
Because your sticks and stones
Can break only our bones
And not our minds. We are
Goddesses, even in a dimly lit bar
Or the back of a fast car,
Just as in temples. We are
Goddesses, whether we whisper in soft tones
Or shout it in the streets,
Whether we lie in strangers' sheets
Or break our backs bending
to ***** feet.
When we're beaten by a spouse,
Or changing tactic,
We'll be both your angels in the house,
And your madwomen in the attic.
the Sandman Jul 2014
I sit on a droopy windowsill and gaze out
at the stars above me in the stately sky of coal.
I let the smoke fill me, pollute my corrupted lungs,
‘til it plugs me, completely consumes my sticky soul,
and midnight sorrow blanket hugs the heart in my hole.

I sit and I consider the sky
with its million-and-one jewels
that adorn the vast carpet of night
and its one, lone cloud that slowly drools
fat, drippy drops of deep fed'ral blues.

The ashy, burnt taste is still in my throat;
it lingers- a dull, cloying candy cane.
The muted flavour chokes and jabs and pecks
persistently, in the back of my brain
and leaves a steel blue/gray trailing stain.

Vague memories of fourth-grade English lessons
take me with a deep sigh to forgotten thoughts
of Roger McGough and unrequited love-
dazed recollections of school poetry taught
in obscure slate-blue classrooms, littered with blots.

It seems feeling unreturned affection
isn't quite as great as I’d thought after all.
I must've been wrong, all those hazed years ago,
when I yearned to feel unrequited love’s fall,
convinced it would be a wondrous, dazzling ball

Instead, I'm just ******* in the pale-ing sky
that seems to be growing into lighter hues-
the navy’s turned to electric, to powder,
matching the sapphire in my soul of glue.
I'm suppose I'm feeling somewhat, slightly blue.

.
Romanticised notions of unrequited love are rarely ever as much fun as the ideas make them seem.

.
the Sandman Jan 2015
I want to grow a pair of wings
-Sharp, beautiful, majestic ones-
To hold you in and press you tight
inside them, Like the tender silken
roses you sent, That dozed deep in
the pages Of our favourite book,
So I can keep you
For ever.
~
the Sandman Jun 2016
I have had ideas, many times;
I have had anger at all the world
And its plates and cups and knives and forks
And pots and pans.

I have used coffee scrub, up
To my elbows
And sugar scrub on my face.

I have stood over rose beds
With my legs far apart
And bled colour to the world below,
Trailing my hell along behind me.

I have had bitter blandness
Blanch the back
Of my throat and the roof of my mouth
Until all that was left was bleach.

I have held glass bottles to the sky
Waiting for thunderstorms.

I have whispered my love to the palm of your hand,
Then watched it drain out through the cracks into sand.

But still I will eat
All my meals out of teacups/
I will let my blemished body be/
I will smell every flower
Growing along the side of a drain/
I will gargle before bed
With pinecone and cherry grain/
I will watch
Outside my window for hail/
I will whisper other things to you
Until the end
Of time
Or tomorrow --
Whichever comes first
-- and hope that inspiration strikes.
the Sandman Mar 2016
The girl you see on the train
With a piercing to commemorate each heartbreak
Has a few in places you can't see
— Because you can't know her relationships;
You don't know her heartbreak, or pain.
Instead, you count the suitcases and handbags she is lugging.

The girl who got a new piercing each time her heart broke
Has more smile lines on her face than studs,
So you can see she has had a fair measure
Of good moments:
She is not all rough edges and elbows.

But what you don't know,
And can't tell
From looking at her alone,
Is that she got a tattoo
Each time that she moved on.

The girl with as many piercings as heartbreaks
-And as many tattoos as movings on-
Has eight pieces of jewellery
Strung through her skin,
But only seven markings
Inked into it,
Because she knows she'll never quite get over
The one she can't quite forget.

You'll have to speak to her to know her—
A stranger on the train—
And let her tell you about her life;
And one day you'll hold her hand
As she gets her eighth tattoo done.
Break out of your bubble, if only because
One day, eight heartbreaks in, you'll help her break even.
the Sandman Feb 2015
I want to write you a poem.
I want to carve it into
Your skin and your flesh
With my pen knife.
-I knew the word pen
Was not in there for nothing.-
I want you to feel the sting of my words
As I drive and drag them
Into your split skin.
I want you to feel the burn of my body,
carving calligraphy
into yours.
I want you to feel my emotions
Running out in blood,
Leaking out of you
In dark, watery cascades.
I want the poison of your kisses
That has spread through my body
To find you again.
I want to write your promises
On the stones I will press
Onto you. So you too
Can feel their o'erburdening weight
The way I did
-and carried, all this time.
CC:
the Sandman Nov 2015
CC:
My cup creaks of ceramic
And you walk up smelling like cigarettes
While I'm smelling of coffee
That someone else spilled on me
And that's all I can think of-
Of how well we go together;
And how I want to go with you to
Your next haircut
So I can scoop up
All the fallen flecks
To remember by them the days
When They'd curl into your eyes
And you'd lift toned arms to brush them back

You are so different
From what Desnos and I imagined
But you're better still
Than that that You could be,
For you exist
                       -in my reality.
Each cup of coffee
Reveals more distinctions
And with each cup
I love you better.
the Sandman Mar 2016
Lost soul visits the store across the road
To pick up some rope and a stool;
He looks both ways before crossing the street.
the Sandman Jul 2014
My lids peel back slow to let another
weary day tackle me to the floor.
I push aside overbearing blankets
and shuffle down an empty hallway
into another more bare than afore.
Dragging my feet seems to require
more power than I had thought before.

Nothing but dark rooms ahead await
dully lit by open ‘fridgerators
that make monster shadows of purple,
frightening paintings that taunt Fate.
The shifting faces mock chance of late.

My reveries halt to disturbance that
a noise from somewhere below brings out.
I breathe deeply in as hope fills me-
a hope of the promise of a frozen mouth.

I think in that breath it is you I hear
rumbling and padding ‘round down the stairs
and I tell myself I am right, for it has to be you;
if it is not, no one else seemingly cares.
Morning breaks open the torment of day
like a ripped wound exposed to salty air.

I swallow back like every day the tears;
wrap myself up in old, cold sit-coms
and warm blankets to banish my fears.
Force myself to endure the hefty bombs
showered at my skull like a falsified norm.

The house lies vacant, in wait of you,
haunted by memories etched on paling skin.
Pacing remains the only thing I can do
to strain against the barrage of pins.

As always, I grin and I jump and I wave
so everyone can see just how brave
I am.
         I am.

But I can’t be anymore
and the salt-water behind my eyes
screams to exit the pores.
I can’t hold them in much longer
and I’m all out of supplies
that keep me stronger
                                      than I am.

I’ve run out of the fog
that my brain runs on, and
my heart condones.

       I have painted on a clown-smile
       and I'm quelled inside, flat.
All that is left in me now
is a crushed can of cola
shoving hard at my ribcage.

I am waiting still and know for sure
all will be as it was in times of yore.
the Sandman Sep 2015
I bleed outside the lines
from the insides of my knees.
The thousand-at-once ******
of your mild affection
that paint my sore, chafed skin
take my breath away- Like
you've never done before.
Your hurt hurts me more Than
your loving ever could.
You're the corner of the table
that I keep bruising my thighs on,
but it's a round table conference
&nd; they're telling me that love
is just around the corner.
I have to climb over the corner
of bruising, vicious love!
But my table is round;
how do I get over you?
~when love is "around the corner," and you're trapped in a round room
the Sandman Nov 2015
You promise me your Watchlist
on IMDb
Will tell me more about you
Than dessert and another round of coffee
Ever could,
But I know a Shazam history
Will reveal nothing at all,
So I then order
—for I must—
That coffee and dessert
And stay until
They tell us they're shutting down.
the Sandman Nov 2015
You reach for your fifth sugar cube
To drop into your third cup of liquid gold
That holds more sugar and ice cubes
Than actual tea.
Tumbling cube after cube
-of sugar or ice I've lost track,-
You pause mid-tumble in contemplation
Then start to fidget with one,
Turning it over
In dry palms.
Neither hear the cacophony
Below our bubbled balcony.
My bluewhite, brown-streaked saucer
Is hopeful, and holds your gaze,
Its dripping brownstains braver than I in that.
My every clink-a-clink-a-clink
Of spoon on cupedge
breaks your concentration
And you have to start over
(With what, I'm not certain)
And we both know I'm clinking on purpose,
Counting beats with the cuckoo clock,
With a heart as full of hope
As your cup is with hexagonal once-cubes.
When you look up again,
I can feel inside me
The number of universes in the world
Double instantly,
     and I wonder
          Which one we're in--
Will you say what you want
Or what (you think) you should?
the Sandman Sep 2015
I like the way your name
Fits inside my mouth
When it rolls around,
Swishing gainst my
teeth, like a forbidden
candy kept, in younger
days, tightly pressed in
under my tongue, melting
there- into caramelised bliss.
It fits so perfectly behind my
Curtain lips that screen it off-
for one Clumsy moment only
-and then it is unleashed,
Lost, released. like you
and me, as teenagers,
Looking awkwardly
at each other- For
One uneasy beat,
frozen- and then
Leaping,
A pair
of
giddy frogs.
the Sandman May 2016
I wait with you at bus stops
And down lonely roads that
Lie vacant, with watchful shops,
And one lone star follows the cars
Until they meet at the moon.
Flashes of light and laces of dark
Ribbon my face
Alternately
And the split ends of your hair
Leaning down from the sky
Kick it every time I gaze
Upwards.
Orange spotlight dims from tall lamps
That stutter my dream sequence
Filled to the (brim) with
Sprouting teeth and gaps
Gaping at us.
Our friends follow us
In slow-mo
And I only miss you when
The road is running straight up
To the moon;
I'm afraid of the climb, but
Can't wait for the drop.
It follows.
My fillings have come out.
the Sandman Aug 2015
you are running water
Spreading, seeping slowly down the holes
Of a drain, and
You are holding a slim pencil
Between two long elegant fingers
And ******* its tip into your mouth
So that its pink rubber end
Disappears behind your pink pliant lips.
Your every sleek movement is sensual
And I am ignited by
Every turn and tilt of your head
And the drawl of every unwakeful stretch
That pulls the skin over your forearms tight
And makes the sweat on the back of your neck
Glisten like imperfect rhinestones
Sliding into
                      forbidden,
                           ­               inaccessible
territory.
-How I wish that territory
were accessible-
You lackadaisical beast of the mornings,
With sandy eyes and ambling legs,
Wrap. Wrap!
the Sandman Aug 2016
They show me vast expanse of virginal lands.
They tell me words like breathtaking and lush.
They gaze at dusty trees and sprawling sands.
They point and gasp and they hum and they hush.
They show me all of Uganda at once,
Holding the globe in their palm and their whim;
They capture it with their drones, blazing guns,
Riding jeeps that cut jungles to a trim.
Their mirrors shine brighter than all the suns
They show me with praise and awe to the brim.
They rant about how clean, and how unbound,
How pure, as they yell and laugh and drop their
Trash, but not their attitudes, to the ground.
They cut through grass and leave cracks in their wake.
They screen their footage and their findings on
Flat-screens and talk of wonder and splendour,
Five-stars in forests and lights blinding on,
Massacring on hot days in December.
People who don their hypocritical explorers' hats, and gush about new places while destroying them.
the Sandman Nov 2015
I will tell you
                        inane fun facts
That I'm over-brimmed with
About what you didn't notice in the film
The first time you saw it,
Because you suspended your disbelief;
But *what I want to tell you

Is that when you're entirely suspended
Is when you look most beautiful
Because you are entirely you then,
Unconscious of what you want to be.
I contemplate telling you when
You tell me
                      this is your new favourite film
And I'm crushed
Because if we don't have the same favourite films,
We have nothing,
And so I keep silent.

And
         I will never tell you
What I want to tell you
Because you told me then, that your favourite films
Are always the ones you watch
On your favourite days,
And made me decide that the film
Wasn't so bad after all.
the Sandman Jul 2014
Your heart is ice,
but my hands can be fire,
I promise.
                just stay.
I can melt through you-
let me hold you,
and take the pain
                              away.
But I can't help but leave
destruction in my wake.
I'm burning up
                          our days.
An apology for my selfish ways


.
the Sandman Jul 2014
We’re standing here, again- again
where we were all those months ago
I stand and I wait for you say something
I need you to tell me you miss me and want me

I don't know what I'm doing, I'm
unclear and I'm hesitating-
going straight and calculating.

turn away, turn around
look back / walk straight

you duck your head and trudge past me,
make me want to strangle you with dental floss
or a rope of some kind would do
I’m not that picky when it comes down to means

wheels rolling past crunch down on
assorted, random chunks of tar and asphalt

I drift away to happier thoughts- unable
as I am to control myself
around you, in particular

turn away
then turn around
glance back
walk straight


but you don’t have anything new to tell me

so I just turn up my music
let some obscure bands, with less recognition
than they deserve, sing to me
of far off lands I've never seen
and you've never heard of; and I turn away
turn around
look back, but
walk straight

I don't choke you with dental floss after all
but I'm so consumed in anger,
stuttering and stumbling over syllables,
I cannot get my meter right.

I measure out our short-lived run in eights and elevens.
the Sandman Apr 2015
I don't have a distinct poetic agenda
And I can never recollect accurately in tranquility.
All I am is a voice, but
I want to be a loud one
-Not seeking inspiration
Under every rock laying unturned
With a cosmic universe throbbing
Patiently under it.
I want to lie awake at night,
Vowing not to sleep until I reach my next goal-
I want to have goals
And not be a dreamless drunk;
I want to fly
And not flutter;
I want my wings to melt,
Over and over again,
Day after day,
Until I can build wings strong enough
To hold the heat of the sun
Inside them, and then propel further.
I am not Icarus. I am not
An aimless butterfly.
I am with direction.
the Sandman May 2015
The cradle that joins
your rough throat of stubbled skin
to the flesh of your clavicle
holds in it the earth's ends,
                                            (and the universe is contained
in the lengths of your arms).

It was dry and barren
when first we met, but
I have watered it
                            gently, c a r e f u l l y
every day, with my eyes,
and buried my nose in your chest.

It has grown, a lush
garden. Now, fuller than ever before.
             But it is my garden,
             do not forget-
I will twist its vines 'round your
                                             heart.
the Sandman May 2015
When I was younger I thought
These bars, they keep out something fearful.
What lurks out there?

Now I'm older and I know
They're to keep the monsters inside, this side.
I'm trapped, held in.

I was born and I will die
In this red bricked prison.
Dungeon/Playground
the Sandman Feb 2016
Hallowe'en night's here!
The kids go out in costume,
Dressed up as Muslims.
the Sandman Jan 2016
I'm a
Puddle of emotion
Trickling through your palms
As you clutch me upright.
The fire of your fingers leaves marks:
Scars; tattoos,
And their tips plant flowers
Into the goosebumps on my arm,
everywhere they touch.
Your knuckles peel away my skin,
Everywhere they trace.
When your fist clenches
Around my heart,

I come undone
In your hands.
the Sandman Feb 2015
Burn me still, when you do,
With ink on the pads of my fingers
And with my meter scrawled hastily
On the centre of my ticklish palm,
And let me find my sour/sweet chaos
In the order you placed me into,
For I know now and will ever know;
In the madness, there is love.
the Sandman Feb 2016
The US will drive like the rest of the world,
And declare peace on the Middle East for all times ahead;
Good films and books will be successful;
And punk’s not dead.

Justin Bieber will bottom all the charts; Pink Floyd'll be back together;
Bond will like his martinis stirred, not shaken;
Race, gender, class and orientation will be nonsense words;
And there’ll be no sequels to Taken.

Teenagers will fawn reading Tolstoy and not Meyer;
Old, black men will order the "extra whip, non-fat, caramel latte, venti;"
Art galleries will be closed to people over 21;
And poets will feature in the Top 20.

There will be equal jobs and opportunities for everyone;
Humans will give up on colonising mars and the moon;
We will bring down the imperialistic, capitalist, racist, misogynistic hetero-patriarchy;
And you will love me, tonight at noon.
the Sandman Jun 2016
Everything looks whitewashed
----Against the rain on panes---
---Of glass. Every smile looks--
----Painted on, and stuck in-----
-----Place, fitting in perfect------
----Squares of frozen 4 by 4.-----
------------------------------------------
the Sandman Jul 2014
The Sun, red as night’s carnage
crashes down
As colours bleed deep blues
and mix into the wave’s crown.

Sky’s witch in raging fury
fingers down
Bright bolts of light that crash
And melt into grey; they drown.

Grey shards, pelting like bombs
Forks falling ‘to an abyss
Flailing, floundering they drop into blue
But the hue seems to drown them in bliss.

The sky’s beams breathe bright beads
Yellowing the neon string
sinking with the thundering rain that feeds
A large and hungry monstrous thing.

Sky runs down to see the sea
sisters bound and still so free
while the roaring thunder laughed
dark closed its jaws ‘round the sun.
the Sandman Apr 2015
There's an alternate dimension beneath my left eye lid
And a parallel universe under the right.
They stick and cling as they swing
From lash to lash like twisted vines.
I see them behind my lids each time I blink
And enter their world for a moment
the Sandman Apr 2015
Would you love me with blue-stained hands,
in the bleary hours of sand-crusted haste?
Would you love me in oversized sweatshirts and sweaty hairbands,
when I have ink on my fingers and creams on my face?

Would you love me barefoot in splotchy grass,
after my ankles have turned brown and green?
Would you love me when I'm crass and when I'm slacking off in class,
or doodling in the corner of a notebook in a dream?

Would you love me anyway
and, if it's not too much trouble,
would you love me every way?

Would you love me as much in a push-up bra
with red-stained lips and curled (combed) hair,
when I love with all the love I have
in the hope of getting some loving back?

Love me fierce and love me gentle;
Love me till all my love is gone.
hold me close till I am warm.

To trying and failing and trying again
because hope springs eternal
in our foolish hearts.
the Sandman Apr 2015
I see the sun drip from the ends of your hair.
I leap to catch it but your towel soaks it first,
beating me to it.
~
the Sandman Apr 2015
The crystals and diamonds
Drop and dangle, delicately
From the ends of your disheveled hair.
They Carry the sun inside them,
Holding the fragile star
close
In the split-ended hands of
The tangles in your locks.

My rain before leaf in the sunshine
•weeps, my
Love. Fierce love.
~
the Sandman Apr 2015
Every one of your droplets
Plopping onto the ground
Carries in itself a different world
Of untold delights and fancies
And horrors. And I choose
Which one I will sink in,
Which one I will unfold,
                                            today.
~
the Sandman Jul 2014
I'm only lukewarm, marginally mediocre.
Not quite laid-back enough to be considered cool
Nor adequately exciting for red hot.
Just going by, average, as a rule.
I'm much too old to be reckless and immature,
Yet not as old as wisdom and a good war story.
Not so rich to live out luxurious abandon
but far too rich to be tragically sorry.
I'm unremarkable, uneventful, uninteresting,
Uncool and unattractive, unfit and unaware.
I assume I'm just not- I'm everything 'un' already,
A stale glass of water, gone oddly warm in stagnant air
I am lukewarm, at best.
Perhaps some day I'll be blast frozen
Or I had once been boiled hot.
For now though, there are no cubes of ice
That I can swallow and be more than not.
I am the everyday masses, lost in the throng,
The not-particularly-bright, non-slacker, no-name brands
That believe they're not good enough- or quite the sharpest prong.
We, the herd lost in the middle bench lands-
We're wild and we're sober,
Frightened and unafraid.
We're nothing like you, but we're just the same.
But we, the ones who spend our lives
In the middle bench,
                                                          ­ will be alright.
           We can persevere, *we can.
.

Representation to the majority,
the unnoticed masses.
To all the forgotten faces of the herd.

.
the Sandman Apr 2016
You told me
(As I laughed at you for
Your draining phone memory)
That you have 7,936 images
Because you photograph everything
You fear losing.
                            I can't help but notice
                            In all our 2,190 days
                            You never took a photo of me,
                            Once;
                           ­ I suppose there isn't room
                            In your memory
                            For me.
March 31, 2016.
the Sandman Jul 2014
Words belong to everyone
but you could put some together
in the order that you wish
like no one else could
and they become yours

Words belong to everyone
these mystical, magical things
they can be twisted and turned
to the way your tongue talks
and they are your own

Words belong to everyone
*but some of them are mine
I've always found it amusing how a group of words can be put together by a person the way that nobody else would be able to and that just becomes *their* way- and then those words in that sequence become theirs.

.
the Sandman Nov 2015
I pepper
Your face
With soft flecks
Of kisses
In search
Of the spots
Free
Of acne cream
(Rarer than the spots
Free of acne),

Like it's a game.
My freckled,
Toothy queen
Is still behind,

four years,
and love swells
From out
                  Bellies
we have in common.
the Sandman Aug 2014
Often people,
mesmerised by
the depth of others,
comment that they had
no idea they had so many layers,
that such profundity existed. I have myself
been likened to a coconut with a hard shell,
with undiscovered realms within. Hah.
I think perhaps though, that I
am more of an onion.
You can peel all
that you
want
but
-I'm just the same inside.
Maybe I could even
make you cry.
the Sandman Feb 2016
never am i a pessimist
but you could never be
quite as dear and lovely
as you are to me,
and have been for each year
i have dreamed in wake of you,
without certain conviction or
form, for i never saw or knew.

Desnos and i have dreamed,
and spoiled you.
early 2015
the Sandman Apr 2016
Lack-luster, in dull
Clusters, tall pylons reign with
Gods that look like you.
the Sandman Apr 2015
And we left faery rings where we danced
And giggled, in old classrooms.
And what we spoke, in soft murmurs,
Was poetry. More than the ramblings
Of our teacher could be called.
Every word we whispered
In uncertainty, up on tree branches,
Was poetry.
Poetry was the words we mumbled into each other's mouths
On balmy, rooftop evenings
Following our days in labyrinth-like malls
And each time he caresses my face
And tangles his skinny fingers in my hair
All I can think about is you
All I hear is whisperings of your name
Even when i sit with pen and paper
And write with conviction and structure about his dusky caramelness
Your eyes break through in my words
And your face seems plainly written,
Hidden between lines,
Mocking me till I spot it.
The rustly pages whisper your name to me.
And the words about him
Change slowly their meaning
And evolve into adjectives
Singing about the sugar in your voice
And the warm love of your arms.
It is a slow transfiguration/ a transformation
Like a children's flip book
With the torso of a ***-bellied clown
And bottom half of Adonis
In the way that, slowly,
The lines become about you.
Giggling secretly to each other
In disjointed horizontals.
the Sandman Jul 2014
I punctuate with close precision,
aware of where
I'm placing my semi-colons and
dashes,
using Oxford commas
like a grammar geek.

Your punctuation always bothers me
but you, with your misplaced apostrophes
and oddly abbreviated words
that you cradle in speech marks,
never care.

You were constantly callous in your conduct,
your handling of punctuation marks.
I assumed you never understood
the significance I attached to your words.

I could feel the excitement
and anxiety and apprehension
build in my belly every time
with your exclamation points!

I could feel my brows furrow together
deep in confusion,
every time you sent me just
one little question mark?

I suppose I never did tell you this
but when last month you ended your sentence
(accidentally, of course) with a dash,
well, I knew then that we’d be for ever.

and when last week you sent me
a comma to end your speech
I knew for certain that
more was to come.

but I see now it was silly
to attach such hope to a hyphen
because yesterday you concluded
with the biggest full stop I've ever seen
and let me know that that was all.

I felt that period’s punch
deep inside my gut
like you were trying to make me
throw up my jam and toast.

I had never before known
one small,
simple
dot
to be so powerful
and hurt so much.

It did though,
and you couldn't even tell-
the Sandman May 2016
It is 1:20 am
And I am at 7%
And I have only one bar of signal
And my screen tells me
"Reconnecting..."
                                
                              I'm 93% done with 'us;'
                              You have drained each per cent of my patience.
                              I'm getting mixed signals
                              From the language of your body,
                              And very few at that.
                              But I take a chance on us,
                              Another chance,
                              At this hour of lateness,
                              Maybe we can rebound and re-bond
                              And not just reminisce.
                              I reckon we could
                              Reconnect.
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