For just a moment
Would you slip away with me
Into dark corners of anonymity 
Could we lose the fear.
The consequence.
Can you loop your fingers in mine with the simplicity of a lover 
And push aside the flush of watching eyes.
Be the steady tide in my ocean of melancholy 
And wash away these familiar faces 
With their poison darted tongues
Glass hearts overflowing 
With the bitterness of realism and lost ideals 

Can we lose our pretences
Our falsities and masks
And let our minds meet in serenity 
Sheltered from a world of turmoil 
From wars and tears
Outward pressures and inner conflicts.
Lets live instead within honesty and earnest hearts 
In hidden tracks and secret words 
Where we can speak our own truths in roaring solitude 
In silent riots that enflame my heart and remind my soul to sing

In this moment 
Can I be nameless
Faceless 
Can I disappear into the love behind your eyes 
And be remade inside the warmth of your opened arms 
Can I vanish from the humdrum 
From the familiarity of the accepted
And walk with you down foreign streets of passion and vitality 
Hand in hand 
Two beacons alight with fire 
Standing tall against an encroaching dusk of normality and routine 

Just for now
Can we be anonymous
Can we be unknown 
Maybe then we can learn to know ourselves

I saw the other side of you today
The flip side to your coin 
Beneath the sparkle of joviality and passion
When we strip away the gloss of illicit corners and barely touching hands
Rinsing away the heady throws of passion and your alcoholic aftertaste 

I saw your rage
The underbelly
There was no beauty in your hurricane 
Only fear and anger 
The constellations I once saw in your eyes turning to pitch 
Maybe they were just reflections of my own

I saw you change. 
I don't think I know you anymore 
I'm not sure I ever did

We reach a time in our lives
Shuffling along our own dusty highways
In the warmth of a whisky stained dusk
Watching the honeyed heat of our future seep along the horizon
Into bruised sky of overburdened past
We each meet the same crossroad of decision
The two sides of our soul extending welcoming arms
As we stand, a prize in the feud between mind and heart
Practicality and passion
Security and sensuality

Who am I to choose which gravelled path to follow
Whether to take the wrinkled hand of prudence
And crunch the stones of wisdom and logic with each familiar step
Does my future lay ahead
At that point where the sun kneels to kiss the ground
And throws its glowing arms across the earth in a blanket of safety
Not in passion, but affection
In the comfort of routine
The reliability and purity of what is, and what has always been

Or does it sit within the flicker of a fiery heart
In the sigh of breath that creeps along with the breeze
That trickles down my spine
And dares me to turn my head, to look down roads of impenetrable darkness
To embrace the possibility of the unknown
And the leaping tongues of flame that might lie where those paths end
To be engulfed, and to know myself within that destruction.
Is it the voice that whispers inside my veins
"should there be more than this?"

I stay static
Leaderless
A spectator to the conflict of the soul
Stuck fast in a deadlock of inertia and indecision
Awaiting that moment
When the last glimmer of sun has bled through the cracked earth
And I open my blurred eyes to icy silence, shapeless and pure in its clarity
To see, without obstruction
That the decision is clear.
My future transparent.
That there was only ever one road I could take.

I've been here before
Listened to your feet crunch the shards of glass and shattered hearts
Wiping the remnants of liquor and bitterness from liar's lips
As your night of sugarcoated revelry comes to an end 
The facade falls
Cracks
Echoing with the slam of a shotglass that pulses through ears
And thumps through my brain with your sneer of rejection
Your eyes don't shy from mine
But they are discolored with arrogance
Hardened by vanity
As cold and empty as the bottle that sweats against my palm
If I close my own
I could reach for a memory of the past
For a sunbeam's reflection highlighting the contours of your skin
Or the childish purity in unquestioned belief
But tonight, they will stay locked 
I will watch the candied venom drip from your curling lips, drawing me back under a veil of falsity
And see us for what we really are
I am no longer the same.
I won't be your entertainment
Your distraction
Your pastime or plaything
The show is over.
I've been here before 
But this is the last time I'll come back.

I found you 
Found your arms in the secrecy of an encroaching dusk 
In the shade of trees 
The coveted corners of quiet  
I found the hidden pieces of your soul 
As they sat beside mine 
In the comfort of silence 
Whispering through the air promises of belonging  
Of two broken pieces becoming a whole 
Two unknowns becoming the known 
Two wrongs finally becoming one right 

You found me 
As your delicate fingers ran across my skin 
Laced through the curls of my hair 
Carefully stitching the gaping caverns of suspicion in a doubtful heart 
Placing together shattered confidences with a tender touch 
Holding them firmly with the power of your affection. 
We built each other as reflections of ourselves 
As better forms of the shadows we'd learned to become 

We found each other 
With skin upon skin  
Fingers entwined 
A world away from the troubled minds we used to live in  
We found each other 
Together 
We found peace 
We discovered love.

If only he'd called last orders
Even though the sun still threw its summer blanket over my lazy shoulders
And burned my reflection into the black screen of your glasses
A reflection of who I was
No premonition of who I would become
While the last cigarette still lingered on my tongue
Leaving the taste of nostalgia and bitter familiarity in my breath
And daring excitement and rebellion on yours
As your words twinkled and danced around an undeniable truth
And I
In innocence half feigned
Half in hope
Half in dream
Took one step forward
Edging towards your tango of inevitable wounds and tears.
If only they'd rung the bell
And we'd knocked down the last of that lukewarm wine
From watermarked glasses that threw distorted shadows on the table before us
As the dusk swept in like a curtain
Smothering our small talk
Leaving only an enduring flame built of history and kindled with confessions
Around which we huddled, as night fell,
Singing songs no strangers have a place to sing.
If only we'd walked our separate ways
Instead of throwing our liquored words along the train tracks
Loud enough for only us to hear
But a deafening scream in our heads
As they hurtled over an invisible line
And plummeted down a cliff face of caged emotion from which there was no return.
If only I'd never let you into my head
With nothing left to do but flush you out
With the same sickly wine that put you there
To drown the hole i feel growing in my stomach
Gnawing at my inside
Before I lose myself to anger or to pain.
Before I admit I miss you.
Before he calls last orders.

I read once
That change happens from the edges
And I guess it did.

Things changed.

Like the beckoning ombré of dawn
A crescent of blazing sun leaking fire into a darkened canopy
Melting blackness into softened caramel hues
Oozing warmth into shivering skin

Like the curling edge of paper and tobacco
Kissed with delicate tongues of flame
Creeping towards unsteady fingers
As unspoken words evaporate into the air
In smoke signals made illegible with insecurity

Like the seeping ink across a Polaroid
In transforming colours
Sweeping through the empty blackness in a burst of vitality
Revealing the snapshots of perfection that might lie beneath
If we had the courage to shake up the blank squares of our own lives

Like the stormbound waves on a cliff face
In daily embrace
Bound together by forces of nature
To give and take, reforming each other with each brief contact
As we reshape the world
With unstoppable creation and beautiful destruction.

Things changed.

Until the glimmer from the corner of my eyes
Became the blinding light in the centre of our vision
Until instead of orbiting the periphery of your world
You were the centre of mine
Until our edges blurred
And I realised
I don't remember a time before you
Before us
Before we changed

I stopped writing about you
That's when I knew I wanted it to be over.

My heart is unruly
And the key you keep will break its locks
No matter how they mould and change
But it is locked all the same.
The doors are closed
To impish jealousy and green eyes of mischief
To the stabbing knives of rejection
That fly in like butterflies, waiting for the sink of realisation.
To the pain of unknowing
A perpetual roller coaster without a harness
To the sweet agony of your peaks and lows.

Loving you is too hard.

I try to think of you as poison
To feed on feelings of heartache and injustice
But I know, in truth 
You are a tempest
Fraught with indecision and rage
You run deeper than an ocean
With limitless currents
That chop and change beyond your control 
Too frantic and complex for me to ever comprehend.

I can't put you in a box
Lock you away 
I can't make you the enemy 
I can't regret everything we've had
But I can't go on like this.

I need this to be over.

Sometimes
She felt his skull could crack under the passion in her fingertips 
And wouldn't that be beautiful
To end here, in the immediacy of desire
And wouldn't that be kinder?
Than the drawing out of this pain of inevitability 
The guttural ache
Before the final crack
The splintering, not of bone
But of two hearts 
Prised apart by the fingernails of realisation 
That their shattered fragments can never make each other whole.

What happens then,
When we finally reach that bridge
The unsteady footpath of decision 
That only one of us can cross
When our hands part
And you walk the shaky steps of commitment and truth
With a single glance backward 
Avoiding my eyes 
As I watch you walk away
Only a few steps apart
But with a lifetime of history and emotion stretching it's cavernous yawn beneath us

Do I forget you?
As you stride out, leaving of the mists of my adoration 
Should I cleanse my mind of love
Crush the butterflies that sit in my stomach
Awaiting your every word 
Do I scratch out your face from the photographs of my mind?
Remake memories 
Reforge falsified passion
Ignore the beauty in the delicate brush of wind against a sheltered forest,
The bittersweet sting of cold rain against warm skin
The rush of blood to my cheeks at a black and white image I know only you could love.
Do I embrace my senses
Turn my back
Allow us to be separate entities in a world where we were supposed to be whole

Or do I follow the solitary wake of my heart
Cross legged, silent
Patiently waiting at that edge for the moment you may return 
For the moment you realise
Life cannot go on without us
And you turn back 
To leap the chasm that keeps us apart
Wait for the flames of your outstretched arms to reignite the fire in my broken heart
For us to connect
In the unending circle of emotion and connection 
That makes us whole within ourselves 
That feeds us
Free to blossom into the multitude of colour our wistful lives have always promised 

Can I wait in vain
And let my heart forever overthrow the sensibility of the mind
Expose myself to the elements of rejection and sorrow 
For the promise of something perfect
Sublime and intangible
Can I forsake the solid ground of reality?

I already know how this will end 
When we reach that path.
My body can let you go
But my heart will never forget

We are slaves to time
To the incessant push of the clock
The unstoppable progression of reality
But all I need is the shadow of a second
The fraction of a moment
When I plunge head first
Into the endless wonder behind your eyes 
Those treacherous eddies that pull me closer 
Steal my words and break my calm 
A willing victim to your inescapable currents, 
That sweep me 
In the skip of a heartbeat 
To blankets of stars and open fields 
The kiss of moonlight on wine flushed cheeks 
Bodies warm against the envious frost of the air 
To the salty tang of sea swept lips 
Interlocked fingers and tangled hair 
The surge of the ocean in steady unison
With the beat of two hearts melting into one
To the safety of privacy 
Of black and white idols and flickering screens
Fictional wonders shared under sheets of adoration and mutual understanding 
In comfort and freedom 
To finally be as one

I travel the world with you
In a momentary glance 
In a murmur of breath 
In the single tick of a clock face 
Why be the enemy of time
When in your eyes 
I have forever.