art ain't about first tries
life's a slip but no slide
tears make for poor eyes
takes more than two hands to chin up
and you ain't a **** snake
no slide, just grind
no standing around
loitering not allowed

manus tuas scriptam sunt,
moles in your skin sunburnt,
lines of every schematic in an unknown line,
belied by the touch of time.

I'm hoping to burn in the heat of your flame,
when the heretics try to utter your name,
the manual to your every outline and flaw
will be lost to the masses and die by my law;
love.

it's easy to say time heals all wounds,
when every barren branch blooms again in spring,
when every new chick is taken under a safe wing.

but time is yet to wake me from my eternal winter sleep.

i still lay, unmoving, in my barren keep.

even bears leave me behind,
a permanent fixture in their den,
"maybe time will wake him next spring,"
they say, now and then.

the forest whispers above my head,
calling to the last absentee,
but i am no tree,
and spring does not speak to me.

thank god for the dead memory.
thank god, that it died while it was still good.
thank god, that it still resembles something i might’ve prayed for.

thank god, that i prayed for the death i didn’t know.
thank god, that my tears couldn’t well up
for the spring on the other side of your death’s door.
thank god, yours was the first rain that taught me
what umbrellas were for.

thank god, that thanking god is such an empty phrase.
thank god, that it won’t grant you afterlife praise.
thank god, you’re now only a picture on a wall.
thank god, the effigies i bear in mind cannot be canonized,
for the things they’ve never done,
and the people they never were.

everyone in the world loses their childhood like a misplaced toy,
swallowed by the gaps in the couch.
putting your hand in, reaching back for it, only gets you *****.
and the lost toy appears in your dream,
like a flaming hero, a powerful swan, a gallant steed.
and you dream of the foe slain by your favourite effigy.
when you wake up, the dream lingers in the morning.
memory of a feeling, a place you could step back into,
if only you found the right path back.
but the dawn never feels the same anymore.
the sun still rises, the fog is still pink,
but you are older now.
and some worlds only exist once.

each night a game of cat and mouse,
the sun rises as i creep into my bed like a louse.

the moon is my lover, i am its knight,
in the suns absence, i am loyal to the night.

the sun flirts with me on the edges of dawn,
but i am not of yesterday, i am no fawn.

and now, the crack of dawn puts me to sleep,
beloved moon, until sundown i leave my heart in your keep.

i don't know how to process grief,
so i pick the memories,
put them in a basket,
like apples plucked from a tree.

there they'll rot, pungent and sweet,
until it ferments,
and then i'll get drunk on the memory.

the rancid cider hardly sates the thirst,
but going down it feels like pins and needles,
and my throat swells with a memory reversed.