Have you touched someone lately?
Have you really touched someone?
Remember their skin?
How did it feel?
The texture, the imperfections, the scars?
Have you ever touched someone with the purpose of remembering how they felt like?
Have you ever touched someone just to feel how sunlight felt like on their skin?
Have you ever placed your hand on someone pulse just to feel its rhythm?
Have you ever traced your finger along their veins?
Have you ever imagined the blood running through them volcanoes erupting red lava?
Have you counted someone’s freckles and kissed every single one of them?
Have you memorised every single contour?
Have you ever touched someone because you knew someday you would not be able to again?
I have.

This emotional crutch
needs an emotional crutch
someone is always waiting
hopelessly
I am always waiting
crying out
take me with you when you go
as you disappear into the tide
that pulls you under.

I’ve tried
but I’ve taken all I can
when my tongue tries to fight
a piece of me dies trying to conceal it
there is nothing left of this heart
but a lump of meat turned to coal.

So when I’m gone
(please) don’t preserve my memory
I’m not your insect immortalised in amber
or your corpse waiting frozen in ice
don’t romanticise what this is
it was what it was till it was no more
just scatter what remains
and forget me.

I bared for you my all
and you took me to the oceans edge
washed me clean of my sins
you scrubbed the scars, dug out the hurt
till I was raw
and then you set me free, again
but were I to do anything else but return
chained
and bound to you.

A bruise is nothing. They hurt for the most part but then they heal. They’re like coffee rings that stain tabletops. Easily removed with a damp dish rag. A scar is something else. More like a true friend, always there, even if you don’t remember quite how you got it. Most people are like bruises or fleeting moments, here today and gone tomorrow. They’re like invisible ink. But a true friend, that’s a scar. A permanent imprint that’s left on the soul which marks you forever.

This is a heart
It buckles and comes unfastened

By trembling hands that search and *****
For words escaped through languid lips

Whispered promises left scattered in tussled sheets
Turn to pearls and diamonds under the weight of worn heartbeats

Like a single raindrop in a sea of emotion
Bury our sin in the slum of a broken heart

Seduction is love
And love becomes lust.

It starts as a pounding heat in the depths of your tummy which radiates out to the palms of your hands. The type of heat that develops into a flame, one that burns and marks your soul with the perfect scent of another person. There it stays and lingers. And that’s when you know you’re ruined for life. Noone else will ever come close to being as perfect.

You fill the stories I keep repeating to myself in those quiet moments as I fall asleep at night. But no matter how many times I do, the imaginings pale in comparison to the blinding, vivid truth of you set in broad daylight.

Perfect is a seven letter word that should not exist because how could you be real?

A love letter written
with every step
in this dying city
over sidewalks
and broken pavements
I was searching
but did you even see me standing there?

Don’t be so harsh on them. We are all secondhand treasures. Each of us bruised and battered in some way or form. We’ve just gotten really clever about hiding our dings and chips. In the end, we’re just looking for somewhere soft to land. And you know what…living in reserve can be so exhausting. So go on and smile. Who knows, you may just brighten up someone’s day.

Those memories
burn it to the ground
and sear your name
across my heart
ne m’oubliez pas.

What the body has remembered
words cannot form into language
muscle memory is touching your side of the bed
heartache is finding it cold and empty.

What if there wasn’t a word for everything? And no matter how hard you scraped against the insides of your brain, all you are left with is a handful of bloodied pink flesh. Some feelings are better off left as they are; hidden away from prying eyes. To expose them is to reveal the root of the word. It is to stand naked in front of a crowd as your imperfections and perceived blemishes are slowly and deliberately picked to pieces by scrutinising eyes.

So please
no matter what
do not love me for my skin
it’s just a soft shell
easily shed,
cut,
and burnt
love me for how I make you feel.

Without my glasses I feel like I am running on a beach of diamonds.

In the absence of the night
Everything wrong seems right
We need more dark
To cover up the crimes of your heart.

The silence that vibrates in the soul
touches all those brave enough to feel.
Like the writhing body of a restless dancer
forced to move to an unheard rhythm.

As the sun dips
behind the hills
open your windows
open your heart
and listen to the breeze
as it kisses the pines
because here in the night
in the comfort of the dark
under a blanket of stars
I’ll sing to you
a lullaby.

Is it love or madness
when a desert rose blooms
where no one can see
twining a maze of desire
towards a scorching lover.

Stuff my hands deep into my pockets. I’ll cut my fingers as I fish for a quick and caustic wit. The reality of life is disinteresting. But I’ll hold onto a host of memories painted with the scent of you.

The world is littered with words unspoken; missed opportunities and and wasted chances. And in those rare and quiet moments, if you still your racing heart and really listen, you can sometimes hear what should have been spoken.

Hungry lips
Wandering hands
Crashing desires
You kept your eyes closed
And forgot to breathe
When we pulled apart
I felt you exhale
Upon my soul.

How strange
the world changes
from night to day
and back again
without slowing even to acknowledge
that my life will forever be night
because you
are no longer here.

Maybe really all we are
is con artists,
magicians good with words
lucky enough to find some fool
who thinks what we say
is worth something.

I wanna be
your enraged sense of rejection
the one to lick the flames
of your hot Southern mess.

My thoughts tread barefoot
across the terrain of words
that spill nonchalant from your lips.

So am I wrong to believe
that in between each breath you take
is a heaven made just for me?

Sunrise,
steady me
so I can move through this world.
Sunrise,
inspire me
******* away
by what you unfurl.

How does a child of the night
embrace a child of the day
except when meeting at twilight
standing face to face
they know not what to say.

But knowing me, I’ll be the one standing on the other side of that burning bridge with a can of gasoline in one hand and matches in the other. And should they ask why I did it I’ll just light a cigarette and say, “it’s times like these you know the true nature of the beast”.

There’s silence tonight
except for the music
carried off on the wind
the shadows in my room
are bellowing duets with the moon.

I cried for you
on the kitchen floor
and then decided
I wanted some coffee.

Wishing against wishes
that I was the one
holding onto the smoking gun
instead of the one
with the gaping hole
where a beating heart
used to be.

The beginning was benign
as most beginnings usually are
but how was I to know it would turn out the way it did
dangerous and unpredictable
hurtful and sad.

Angry
tormented
but more than
half in love
I’m so sorry
I turned away.

When you grow up
you never know
what you’ll remember
of a lost love.
But now
I remember everything
about you.

Every kind of language is pleasure hidden in a paradise of seduction. Words ghost over iridescent moments as the poet becomes the object. And as the willing soul turns pleasure into a poetry to be hungrily consumed, seduction becomes the very heart of language.

In the fleeting moments of pleasure
we find happiness.
For we can’t have everything we want
without effort and suffering and problems and tears.

The ghosting of fingertips on bare skin. And closer than the vein that throbs in your neck. Close your eyes and imagine me there. In an embrace that chills you right to the core. Holding on like a memory that won’t fade.

He granted her one more day of life prepared and served with anticipation of phantom caresses amidst the tickle of spices that teased the senses.

Walking alone along the salt-soaked boards of my haunted memories. It’s a trip down one of those smoked filled open-mic nights where the air is heavy with stale perfume, heavy eyelids and painted on smiles. I find myself meandering the city streets and cobbled sidewalks searching for a ghost. In hopes that I’ll round the corner and collide with my own version of magik and inspiration. I’m intoxicated by a sweet anticipation like a flint flirting with a spark on the soul. A hope for some glimmer of warmth or recognition from the empty stares of a stranger’s eyes.

Sunday morning
last night on my breath
your scent lingers
and your ghost still fresh on my mind.

I’m a pyromaniac
so what did you expect I would do
when you come in here
looking
so
****
hot.

Come the weekend,
I’ll tell you goodbye again
and settle into unrequited love
because you linger in every moment
in the mornings you flood the room with light
and in the nights you soak every corner of my dreams.

As dew drops sparkle like diamonds on the grass, the morning mist descends blanketing the ground and making me dream. I see the sky burn the the colour of a subtropical twilight and beyond the horizon are mountains devastated by harsh winds which work on the nerves and leave you a trembling wreck.

Digging through the rubble
searching for hope
even though hope
seems like a blurred emotion
better left off
to the somnambulists
who often live their lives
in a haze of damp regrets.

Stand under the red neon of that dingy bar. Use it’s flicker to still your heartbeat and tell me the things you can’t as you peel the label off your empty Copenhagen bottle.

Bill and his girl; is it weird they’re so much like you and I? But instead of traveling some foreign country, ours is a world of distant suns, constellations and galaxies. So much more than Paris, New York or Japan. Dream your wildest dream and I’ll paint it in words on our canvas made of sparkling diamonds. And when we need to rest we’ll lay down on a shooting star and you can tell me where you learnt to smile as bright as the moon on a cloudless night.

There’s a silence.
Eager eyes look to me for wisdom, a sound bite, something to keep in their file of ‘things to never forget’.
Don’t you know I’m clueless too?

Don’t offer me the world
You can’t afford it,
and I have my own.

I like it best
when we are sharing
quiet wordless
conversations.