Dressed in black, dark eyes amused
She strolls into a room
With the specialised tread
Of a femme fatale,
Tossing her streaming hair in arrogant joy.
Her perfect body
Contains the calm and unexpected force
Of the sea, shifting in a moment between

Reason and fury.
She graces the men with sure-footed Arabic,
Stark, sibilant, passionate words
Laughing like a poem.
A Moroccan beauty,
Guedra dancing in the sun,
From the desert coloured mosque of Casablanca
Punctured by the worship Of 70,000 songs,
To the unremitting souks of Marrakesh,
Her complexity
Emboldened by the courage
Of poets.

She has a silence in her intellect
Such as few have,
Unusual evidence of a soul
In a world of franchises,
Her past imaginings deeper and wider
Than that of her peers,
Dancing to fast Gharnati rhythms,
Beneath imagined Andulusian sunsets
And glowing skies.
An effervescent scintillating gasp of fervent
Desert air, beating across her limbs
Moving gently towards silence.

I used to read your poems
but lately you don't write
you're silent and aloof
you know that isn't right.
You can't close a door once opened
you can't abolish all your dreams
you're a poet of the heart
mustn't fall apart at the seams.
Say what you can in words
they speak the message true
spoken from the heart
the poems will see you through.
A hermit's not your style
a recluse, you are not
never give up writing
of things that you've been taught.
I used to read your poems
I'd read them once again
if you would send them out
(this one's from a poet friend)

Drain me with your presence
And make my adrenaline spike up
You're still nothing at all
But a disappointment
So keep dawdling
Until you go brain dead
While you cut your purple skin
And cry

the first cut is the deepest,
I’ve made two rotations around the sun,
since I buried your bones in the graveyard
next to the tree,
where the name of every person I have lost is carved,
except that tree is my heart,
and there are so many slits,
I’m surprised it’s rhythm still echoes across this earth,
I wish I knew a love that did not involve
my body throwing itself off the deep end,
in the presence of souls who do not know how to swim,
hoping love would be enough to magnetize their soul to follow mine,
maybe he just didn’t want to drown,
my love has that effect on people,
it is suffocating,
It is a strain of oxygen that will intoxicate your lungs,
It will get you so high,
you’ll start to see the future,
it’ll start to look more and more like my bones,
until my palms tell you my life line is fading faster
than the moon blurring into the horizon line come morning.
The future is someone I put to rest years ago,
only to realize that it’s ghost has been coming back to haunt me for years,
In search of the person who could finally resurrect her,
and I think she thought he was the one,
he made me forget her initials were even carved into that tree,
that she wasn’t still breathing,
he made me feel like she was within my reach,
that I could pull her by threads from the earth and bring her back to life,
but depression infected my body,
and I have been changing in shape every day,
like clay in the hands of a sculptor,
my silhouette has been transformed into so many alternate forms,
that over time,
he forgot who he fell in love with,
convinced himself that person was never coming back.
he reached that point in his intoxication where he craved sobriety,
like he was seconds away from being pulled by his veins to the depths of hell,
could feel the flames against his skin.
he got too high and maybe I did too,
but the difference is my instinct is always to jump from mountains,
and to sink in oceans,
I do not know how to consistently stay in one place,
my pain is like gravity,
it always pulls me back down,
his love was like watching the sun reflect on it’s light,
after days of rain,
except I was the sun,
hidden behind the rain which my clouded head brought upon his earth,
when all the serotonin evaporated into the sky,
i stared at the mess I made after the storm,
I felt guilty about my light,
didn’t feel worthy of it,
I saw my reflection,
In puddles,
riverbanks,
I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me,
he told me that he didn’t either,
I don’t blame him for jumping,
to escape the storm,
but the difference between him and I,
is if I jump,
I only become more deeply immersed in myself,
I jump into oceans of my own depression’s precipitation,
baptize myself in the backsplash.
my best skill has always been breaking my own heart,
taking an axe to it’s trunk,
every time I feel the ground shake,
everything always has to be on my own terms,
I won’t let the storm rip it’s roots from the earth,
I’ll do it myself,
I am an artist,
an artist in sculpting my own demise,
I can’t differentiate my palms from the storm anymore,
can’t separate the clouds from the sun,
the past from the present,
love from the sensation of dying,
with every name comes more blood,
I fall but don’t know it until my bones have already hit the pavement,
maybe I never really stood up after the first time,
I put you to rest,
and your ghost still haunts me from afar,
as I watch someone else inject you with helium,
pull you back up,
from where I left you to die.

dear aries,
had i known what love was back then,
we might have made it last.

dear taurus,
you were always everything
i wished i could have been.

dear gemini,
you are a fiesty, wonderful soul,
i love you dearly, my surrogate brother.

dear cancer,
i still remember the first day we met,
but i cannot remember the sound of your voice.

dear leo,
you are worth more
than your protruding collarbones.

dear virgo,
our horoscopes say we are the perfect friends,
but you are a heartless creature and i am afraid of you.

dear libra,
you are vicious,
picking petty fights over nothing,
yet you are still my best friend.

dear scorpio,
god, what a beautiful, fascinating being you are.
how i always wished to be yours.

dear sagittarius,
i gave you my heart,
and now it has two years
and eight batterings worth of scars.

dear capricorn,
i miss our late night storytelling,
i am waiting on an apology that will never come.

dear aquarius,
we are so different now,
i cannot bear to speak to you.
you are afraid of me.

dear pisces,
whenever i see you,
you take my breath away.

I have the tenacity of Aries, and always live in my head
with the insatiable appetites of Taurus; **** do I love bread
I behold the powers of Gemini to be another person instead
and I’m such a Cancer on those days I’d just rather stay at home in bed
I have the heart of the lion like a proud Leo; mess with my loved ones and you’ll surely be dead!
I can be anxious like a Virgo; disarray is something I quite dread
and like a Libra I’m a romantic; though from many a lover I have fled
I’m intense like a Scorpio, **** me off and lightly you must tread…
like a fiery Sagittarius, my passion for life, it burns red!
The sun was in Capricorn when I was born; the sign of a lone wolf, no more about that need be said
Progressive and free spirited like Aquarius, for this I refuse to ever wed
and I've been known to be sensitive like a Pisces; oh the tears I have shed…
Together these archetypes make up who I am, thread by thread…
I am the Zodiac, right down to every drop of blood bled.

“and I still hadn’t changed my
opinion,” she said. “I still
believe that
a double suicide is the absolute
highest
display of love there is. Think about it,
two lovers dying in each
other’s arms. What in hell
can be more romantic?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “staying alive
for each other’s sake, maybe?”

“What? That’s, like, not
romantic at all. The longer you stay alive,
the higher your chances to fall
out of love. Nothing
chews at love like life does. That’s
why death is the answer.
It’s the only way
to immortalize love. It’s the way towards
that plane of existence where all
you feel is love and nothing else.
I wanna go there!” She squeezed her fists
and eyes, braced herself as
she said it.

“Well,” he said, “We’re both out of a job,
unwanted by family, no home,
no cash, no future…”

“All we really need
is love!” she screamed, jumping into his arms

“Yeah,” he said, “and an overdose.”

“I’m with you, dearest cousin!”

If a man needs you to believe a lie,
He will often say, "trust me."

If a man needs you to believe the truth,
He will speak it.

your name is
forbidden in
my mouth
or in my heart
because when
i think about
you;

i'll cry a little more,
hurt a little stronger
love a little softer
because you no longer
make me feel sober

i'm drunk on the
memory of you