your words form universes of northern lights,
diluted by stars and the constellations
of your cold lips against mine.
whole mountain ranges sigh and creak,
standing on their tiptoes,
reaching for the moon, for your rhymes,
for you,
to be dissolved into snowcapped hours,
where broken typewriter keys align
with earthquakes and forgotten mistakes.
you are a waterfall, an unexplored ocean,
the yellow of maps from other people's adventures.
you are every undressed superlative
that creaks my floorboards
and casts across my walls
as starlight.

cheap makeup covered
the purple marks of his "masculinity"
forced upon her in the hours of
coal, coldness and blame.

before it got too much,
I saw her stand on her tiptoes
and dissolve into the night sky,
into the night gutters,
into the night cries,
of pills, diets and mutters.

and right as the moon
swallowed her whole,
only to spit her out onto
guilt soaked mornings;
she survived.

she liked her liquor darker
than the backstreet beat poetry
she read in the cracks
of so few hearts.
she kissed storms and they hit
her back. she called it love.
she collected tears in bottles
and whispered that it was wine,
while the world ignored her,
breathed her in
and spat her out into ***** motels,
with broken mirrors
for broken hearts.

Hide underneath the stars with me
and peel back my skin layer by layer,
starting at the cold fingertips
missing the tenderness his touch caused,
twisting up damaged limbs and wounds of my woe,
past scars from childhood stories
- the ones not meant for campfires -
and around hairs that used to stand
when your breath danced like two ghosts
- you and I -
down my neck and into my bloodstream.

Peel me back until I am nothing,
but that little boy cowering on the bathroom floor,
with flickering lights, bruised elbows,
a lump in his throat and pain in his chest,
crying for something that no longer
existed.

A slight breeze of wind carries
Off your voice, the butterfly
Of your words drifting to a far away never,
Pinned down with a solitary needle,
Through the heart,
Love’s true dart.

Some said you were inhaled with ferocious delicacy, only to be
Exhaled into back street pubs and rented motel rooms with broken curtains for broken hearts - societies stinking breath in your eyes.

Others feared that you were the wave’s rhythm, each lap taking you to somewhere warmer,
you are the wind chill,
you are the sonnets lapping on the shore,
I hope you’re sure.

I am here
And you are further forever than I.

i) my father never taught me how to shave, so I guess
that’s why a razor to him and I are two separate entities;
a symbol of his pride yet a symbol of my sorrow.

ii) and it’s not my mother’s fault that I am the way I am,
neither is it my own. but when my wrists twitch at the hour
when I miss the way she used to smile; I blame myself.

iii) they say family is in your blood and that will never change.

iv) if so, I am related to healing wounds and the wisdom-less
circles of the trunk of a mind not made for the kind of tired
sleep can never cure. I am the father of my own mistakes
and forever the child of a forever without a beginning.

v) not even the poetry in my arteries can save me now.

There are poems lingering
in the pit of my stomach,
syllables hidden in the
depths of the bags under
my eyes,
sonnets cowering in dried out
veins
and haikus dissolving, drowning
in my arteries
at the pale midnight hours
that no paper
could ever materialise.

I still find myself
feeling your skin
in the spaces between
bed-sheet creases

and if
missing you is like
swerving into
oncoming traffic,
then tonight
I’m sleeping
in the road.

I’ve drank ***** that tasted
better
than your biter heart
and smoked cigarettes that
smelled sweeter
than your gut wrenching pride,
glided razors across my body
that are softer than your
words
and swallowed pills that numb
me
more than this heartbreak.

I have witnessed poets clinging
onto life by the skin of their own words
and the finest novelists terrified
by the bullet tick of their typewriters,
in knowledge that each click is part of
a continuous countdown to “The End”.
The late night sound of their pens scratching
upon paper not made for emotions so raw
drives them insane, urges a hunt for something
that will hurt them more than who they write for did.
I have read poems that scream “save me”
when the voices of the composers silently echo
off cold walls from therapy offices and cracked paint
in chapels that forget each of their
empty confessions.