set wilting flowers with a bright smile
sketch hearts on curling paper scraps for him and
steal carved needles by dark.

“Stay away from him –
He pulls strings with no puppets at the end.”

the other nurses wore white on white
like the ceilings and floors,
screams and sharp chokes.
hard cuts on soft hands,
straight lines piercing bones.

the sky is a violet
whispering,
red and aching
scattered leaves and broken twigs
bruises upon lip-stained skin.

trace braille for the songs in his mind
rub charcoal on your cheeks
the hollows of your eyes –

he trips on wires,
a dead noise.
a rope sunk with the ghost of his last voice. ©

The red lines on his wrists don’t belong to him.
Gun fires! Grenades!
They drink coffee from a cup
between glass doors.

he rubs the red patches away,
             they still leave a slight stain.

“Mothers’! Come out into the streets!”
The little children hold tiny daggers up to heaven
blind, to the stars and oceans.
Lost screams under rail tracks,
their eyes twitch.
“Mothers’! Come out into the streets!”
See the blood of your children run down in streams.

the red patches on his hands fall in love;
                                                  they became contagious.

Standing under a grey sky,
on a ground marked with an X.
He prays.
Comrades become detonators,
when the living start to die off.
He prays.
There are more bullets in the bodies
than in guns.
He still prays.
(Orange is his favourite colour.)
He sees a sunset before the dark invades.

shattered glass in midnight bonfires
I see strips of flames dissipate into the night
and it never burned my
eyes.
I held blue flames in my hands and burned
my fingerprints to form
jagged lines that melted ice like a
scorching pair of lips.
with a sigh, they turned to walk away
setting fire to the roadside.
The flames morphed into scattered coins
incinerated by the sorrow they carried like an anchor
that sunk,
pulling them down to the sea bed to
sleep with the ocean at midnight
where the flames drowned,
drowned,
drowned…

and the smoke turned into words without a sound.

“Do you think we can count stars tonight?”

“Why not?” I replied.
I sensed the smirk playing upon his lips.
Smiling, I continued tracing my fingertips over the braille upon the music sheets.

Leaves whispered the sounds of our past
In desolate silence we watched,
The grounds slick with dew
A broken hourglass concealing candle fumes.

The grey skies loomed overhead
The wind crooned echoes of our songs
Yellow meadows bleeding out their life
Whimpered to the stars in the sky all night long.

Dry, withered leaves with veins threaded to it,
Fell from the branches
Like tears down our cheeks.

Spring bloomed but sunk like our hearts
Our sight becomes a misty grey
Lost in the mist we started to fade
Among the darkness that concealed the truth
And bolted it shut, in a bird cage.
  
Our eyes were dull like a calm ocean’s tides
Never thinking about the time passing by
Weeds prickling our skin as we walked through grass
Looking at old addresses we burned through glass.

Forgetting about the days that passed so fast
Such that the paper is crumpled and torn
Like the words hanging from our lips until
They are scattered on the murky pavements we came upon.

Illuminated by the dim lampposts on the road
They read the broken promises we once told
Lies and truth connecting with each other in years to come
They were lost once spiders spun them into moonlight
And threaded leaves into the branches burned in a ghost town.

I promise I'll try to stop strumming nightmares to hearts.

The space between my fingers to my heart is greater than
the distance between the cliff and the waves.
I feel so d i s j o i n t e d.
Is there a word for this? I guess I could consider it a curse.
When I tell myself not to write.
                                              -coldness
Wh­en I look at the sky and back at equations.
                                              -coldness
When I'm running out of time.
                                              -coldness

**­Soon, I'll get hypothermia from sadness.

“Wishes are made to be broken,” he says,
stacking up rotten dust-filled letters beside the trash can.
no matter what he says,
he was never able to throw them away. just a couple of years’ ago
his words would climb up tree trunks and lamp posts instead of
tripping and falling like a drunken figure on the rooftop the night before
Surely the candles that he keeps lighted up around the house at night
have more meaning than this words.
but the fact that they still don’t help him see in the dark
frightens me; to see him stumbling into a building, to the rooftop.

maybe the city lights from the roof would show him the missing step.

**I really don’t want him to fall.

Frozen roses lined her arms,
white frost tainting her heart,
red blood spilled on pavements
with snow to cover her cuts.

Rain splintering her skin
like broken wood in a haunted house,
her mind screams, throat closes shut,
the beating of an empty heart.

A thief under the moonlight
couldn't scream to save a life,
she dreams of smudged paintings and rusting knives;
fell prisoner to a world of lies.

A falling figure couldn't change his mind,
hearts kidnapped and nowhere in sight,
she was racing past the wooden doors,
to save an angel from taking flight.**©

Sometimes it hurts to watch sunsets.

they remind me of old addresses and lost graves
scribbled pages of notebooks talking about dark nights.
    a
        n
            x
                 i
                     e
                         t
                             y
I pressed a knife to lips and shattered cries
does it hurt to push past your sadness or will it feel like
clawing your eyes out?
there wouldn't be a pinprick of light on the highways except for a figure
on the roads
crying out to the oceans underneath, tearing apart smudged letters
like the ones I filled in my books.

now back to sunsets, will you watch them with me?©

I.
Sometimes drunken flowers are placed between books and
his lips are clamped shut
while i walk past trashcans and find letters
buried,
like his bones
with forced smiles carved upon each and every one
hands reaching out, grabbing
i could feel its yearning
from a mile away
and i shut my ears and clench my eyes
i can't stand the feeling twice.

II.
My soul was shot;
i later burned it with matchsticks and clouds
sand pricked my feet
as i sit for hours on end at gas stations and sidewalks
lamps were never lit in my house and
i was left
among the darkness.
i never saw you behind the trigger.

III.
I don't trust the black and blue hue
growing on my chest;
they say its from my heart.
I laugh them away and
tune out the rest.
"I have no heart, you made sure of that."
emotions i used to scorn and
cringe at
appear on paper and skin as words
that looked like my
splintered bones and
broken footsteps.

can i talk about the time when scarecrows were making torches and chairs
or will someone realise that i'm talking to thin air?©

I feel forgotten.

My eyes skimmed through a dozen forget-me-nots,
and forgot them,
their blueness, their scent,
and how they looked under the night sky,
upon looking into your eyes.

I was a lost sail in the stormy grey seas
and had an unfortunate case of water phobia
I knew I was still,
but the waves rocked me back and forth.
What I would give to hear my name fall from
your lips once more...

But it was forgotten.

Now I know how the dozen forget-me-nots felt
when the candles burned out and
they screamed for a sound.
I never heard.
Now, you've neglected the strangled screams from
my throat, and the crimson words
hanging from my lips.

I am forgotten.©

Mosaic pieces that fit like fingers to palms,
a patchwork of checkered lines,
criss-crossing strings upon wood screamed in agony
when absorbing moonlight
as I sat under a hanging tree
and strummed the strings of my guitar
the moonlight was burned by candle strips
and bare words spoken that night.©

soft, whispering red rose from his bed
his eyes shot open, clearly filled with dread,
he caught up those autumn breezes in his hair
and green fields in his eyes
my hands spun strings of nightmares straight through the sky
harsh sunlight.
they made him stand at the top off a cliff
forgetting his fear of heights
you can't expect him to awake from a nightmare
when it is just reality taking another life.©

Her lips were bolted shut
the rusting lock, black and brown
broken with cracks lining up the front.

Words strewn across the page
from her fingertips
as she filled her pen with blood
from the sink.

Her calloused hands rubbing against
one another, hoping to receive warmth
instead of the coldness that surrounded her.

Unlike the rest, she had none to say
and plenty to write
with a voice that hopes for a smile in the day
and a red knife at night.

Taking a needle and thread,
she sow her lips in colours of blue, black
and red
and watched the way the coloured lines
intertwined with each other
unlike the vintage lock before them
while her gaze fell upon the eyes watching her,
situated in a grey land.©

the blue lines never seemed
to fade
from my wrists
like strands of ice from the
Atlantic ocean's
tides
I can't seem to rub them away.©

bruises on the snow
pink, blue, purple, black
wouldn't it be more beautiful if paint was
splattered on white glass?
torn pieces of paper
that fell
on shards of ice,
glistening pink under the
red moon tonight
my limbs creaked, sighed
like rusting gates up on a steep hill
as the trees shed their leaves
and purple bruises take their place
with sharp knives and a glint in their eyes.

the ceiling's low
the air is still
you can never make a mistake like this.

the ceiling's low
the walls scream out
and the sound was never heard by anyone.

the ceiling's low
mind your head now
there isn't a door in sight.
nothing to do except to curl up
in a ball too tight.
the ceiling's too low
voices scream in my mind
i have to lie on the floor
with a smile.
am i insane?
or am i alright?
'Cause the ceiling's moving down
tonight. **(c)

his fear
of the rules has left him torn between
freedom,

and a life of sorrow's song. **(c)

I can't bear to explain the
words that might be better left unsaid
trapped in my throat, with a few
letters hanging from my lips like the dark blue
clouds in my mind burning my fingertips
whenever they graze your skin.

Can we just watch the
light from the sun disappear?
can we lie on the roof and gaze at the stars?
can we not leave out anything unsaid
for one night?
Hopefully, these thoughts will
echo past your eyes, dripping with dreadful
shards of my mind. **(c)

you strummed the strings of my heart
like a guitar
but I sang along nonetheless
while you enjoyed my beautiful
cries of pain, emitting from the strings
able to cut through glass,
but not your fingers
that held my heart. **(c)

The wind howled dirges around the cemetery
spreading the sorrow of my heart
until I'm empty inside
except for the numbness in my veins
in my chest
in my fingertips
without your hand to wrap around mine
to warm the icy patches and lines
I only felt the gaze of a wilting daisy
in the bare patches of dead grass
swaying in the wind
with a fallen daisy at its side
an illusion of a cracked smile;
not showing the lost, young girl any pity
for it needs to feel sorry for its
own dead flower
whose petals were scattered in the wind
across the grey graves
in this evening light. **(c)

The patches of autumn colors
engraved on the land
outweighing the brown soil like
an anchor sinking deep
every soul losing its will to survive
as it dries up into the color of the earth
the smell of the apricots and dried leaves, old vintage keys
rises up like grey smoke from the chimney
in a futile attempt to grab safety and
hold it in its sinewy hands
hoping that it would save them
from the beginning of the end. **(c)

I follow the ghosts
misled, an heir to their throne
but don't worry, my love,
I'll return as soon as possible
but we will all learn to make mistakes
so I speak from a broken heart
and twisted mind
that I am just misguided;
I do not wish to rewind time
don't worry, I am just crumpled and lost
and still wearing my smile
I am just trying to find a place
to spend the night
but it might not be where I'm safe
since I'm just one of those ghosts
traveling endlessly
until I reach the end.
a grave. (c)