strictness ruled down,
ruled out, cursive,
signposted in Times New Roman,
the ninth letter of an alphabet
I struggle to breathe within,
the marker for my psyche,
the superlative, objective,
somewhat subjective and lost in ego,
twisted between tibia, fibula,
the pronoun scarred across
the canvas of my skin,
the myriad,
in want of you,
always needing less,
or more, or less,
an apology,
a last kiss
a hesitation;
I.

I whisper poison to myself in ways only poets can,
wondering why you never asked me for the antidote.
Sat in the middle of my warzone, decomposing symphonies
formed in your ears when my poetry held you tighter than I could.
It is better to recognise your blood stains for what they are.
I blame myself. I blame myself. I blame myself.

I blame myself, when you still arrive unannounced at my door
with ****** knees and elbows. Shirt sleeves and split jeans.
Again, I have another hole to make whole again.
To stitch up your stars into rearranged constellations
that match the traced freckles on your back,
that do not form to spell my name,
that aren't metaphors; but the truth.

Dean Eastmond.

walking the indistinguishable
tightroped limitations of you mind,
balancing completeness
and the incompleteness
you told me was ok,
between the cracks in our hearts
until the foot slips,
the dawn breaks
and I
fall.

My insides are empty train stations
Where our kisses go to die.
I have spent months rhyming
Your name with bandages
And bullet torn nightmares,
Still smiling, still growing,
Left still and surrendered
I am the rain that could not fall,
The night that did not turn to day,
The infection, the terminal,
All change, all change,
all change.

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.

your absence
is the hand,
clawed
at the back of my neck,
holding my head under
darkened water,

you really wanted me
to drown for you,
didn't you?

you are so much more than
what your body confines you to be,
break the ribs,
crack, snap, fracture,
the words he formed as bones.
fly.

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.

Oh, I'm a nightmare,
cold, naked, proud,
stripped of all lies
and delusions,
carved by definition,
not devotion;
darkened and devilish.

You won't see my healing,
you'll touch it,
you'll taste it,
you'll love it,
live for it,
sin after sin
after
sin.

when liquid starlight formed
in his eyes
and trickled into
the formed cracks in my palm,
I was no longer sure
if I was his moon
or just a cast reflection.

Let me tell you,
how I have loved and I have loved
and I have been loved
and I have not been loved
and, ****, do I know what heartbreak feels like.

Let me tell you,
how it scares me how my legs
are stronger than my heart.
I am so tired from running from him,
so I stand and take it now.

My blood no longer tastes of him,
but my coffee does,
so I let it go cold. Cold.

I let the ice seep in as a reminder
as to what he used to keep away.

Let me tell you,
how I've learnt to fly with fractured wings.
Fear me.
Run.

Dean Eastmond.