The beast within me is hungry
and thirsty for my joy

he feeds off my sadness,
it multiplies inside him

and spreads into my bloodstream

until even the water I drink
is tainted with bitter tears

sadness
sadness
multiplying

there is nothing I can eat or drink
that does not feed the beast

I have tried to drown it
and poison it

but still it survive
indestructible

the beast is feeding off me
until I am skin and bones

and I see no choice but to
learn to love this beast

and make peace with
this ravenous part of me

In summer,
we wait for the green leaves
to turn brown

the rolling motion
of our lives, trapped
in the changing of
the seasons

we wait, we wait

for the crisp mornings to dawn,
and afternoons with hands
wrapped around steaming
mugs of tea

deep conversations
across kitchen tables
at 3am - waiting for the
world to wake

be certain what you
wish for, is not just the end
of that terrible sensation
of prickling heat
on flesh

London glows with pre-dawn light,

I roll my cigarettes next to the river
and stretch my limbs out towards the sun,

I cannot get warm,
my bones ache with longing,
and there is a hunger in my stomach
that no amount of pills or food can fill,

the dull ache of depression is a familiar friend,
yet it is really the relationship of a parasite and its host,

and I am so tired of being bled dry,
of having the life ****** out of me by
the angry mouth of this monster,

whilst time keeps slipping away,
as I smoke and watch the water
ripple, moving further and further away
from me

It’s dangerous to love you,

a fire burning without end,
a sea rising, threatening to
engulf everything I ever
stood for

I am prey to to the voices
in my head, that whisper
in their dizzy innocence
of “love”

but to find it in you
will cause chaos in my heart,
my soul torn in two
as I choose between
the path of devotion
in the face of overwhelming
odds

or the path of
loneliness

like a depraved, wild thing
I ripped my heart from my chest
and slammed it on the floor

“there!”
I said!

do your ******* worst

for I am no longer tied
to all that once kept me alive

I will rise from the dirt
like a sunflower

growing, growing, reaching
for the light

I have walked these shores,
until sand buried itself into the soles of my feet

like a parasite,

and you -
the reason for my nightly barefoot wanderings,

nested in my ear, too,
with all your whispers of “I love you”

a leech, ******* out my impurities,
but at the same time, the very blood and soul

of me

they say the things you lose
come back to you, one day

but I lost them for a reason,
shed my skin like a snake

and if those things find me, again

I’ll ******* burn those bridges
remorselessly, again

I am counting down the days
until I can see you again

each square on the calendar
a gift to open, springing
longing from the present
into the future  

as we draw nearer to a time
where we can hold hands
and gaze out across the river

its shimmering blue surface
as perfect as if it were painted
and us, painted too

lovers entwined
in a sweet embrace
hands and lips
and eyes locking
tight

a blissful reunion
of the heart

my skin singes
with the love you
left

a bitter burning
that will leave me
forever branded

I don’t know how it happened

I’m just so glad that

it did

You are
the ****
on my
shoe

that doesn’t
even deserve
the respect

of being picked
up off the ground

You can pass my heart through
the eye of a needle

it has shrunk so much since you left

I am amazed that it still beats

still pumps blood through
my thankless body

the nightmare of waking back up
to this loneliness, each day

is killing me

and I pray for my heart to shrivel away to

nothing

and cease feeding me

life

I will **** you if I have to

to bury any evidence that I
once loved you

and God, I think it would be easy

to take a knife into your heart,
and twist it

as you twisted one into mine

I was fooled by your lies,
gentle tricks of the tongue
that came so easily to you

how I hate to be associated
with your wicked words

and to see the mouth
that uttered them, alive

Lord knows it would be easy

to drive a stake into your heart
and **** the vampire that ****** me dry

My eyes grow heavy as Osmium

as I carry the weight of your words

behind them

I walk amongst the forget-me-nots
pale blue memories strike my core
as I take each step without you
kicking the dead soil of love
off the soles of my shoes

You pour boiling water over
my words and try to wash them away

but, my love, I can’t be erased

I’m in your blood, your bones, your skin

your hair will smell of me

I am a permanent marker
stamped on your heart

claiming you with an
acid burn

(my words were merely pilot fish)

Like a blade of steel
is my shame

for those words said
throat wet with whiskey

tongue dancing out
a pattern of pain

to rip into your chest

at the end of the day
it was my fault

I live with the regret
of losing you

over a careless,
drunken slip

and sometimes I feel like
that blade of shame

will pierce my heart
and **** me

and I’d deserve it

It's that time of year again,

The air is warm,
breathing delicate
wisps of breeze
across my skin

I was cold
inside my heart,
shrank and barely
beating

My head is my own
theatre, frames flashed
and frozen, projecting
every still

I try to put the ghosts
to rest, bury them like
bones in a garden

But they wake up,
like vampires,
when the sun sets

Words catch in
my throat, lungs
take in their fill
of air, but there's
not enough oxygen

To feed my brain.

If you were thunder
I’d listen at my windows
as they shake

and deep down inside
I’d feel that roar
and something
would stir to its call

If you were lightning
I’d stick my chest out to the sky
hoping for you to strike my heart

that bolt reviving an *****
long dead to the world
creating live in me again

when you are a storm
my body rides it out
powerfully in tune
with its eye

Your eyes are soft in the morning
Like dew

Wet with the sorrow of the goodbyes
Of the night before

Your smile echoes in the faces of everyone around me
I can’t look at anyone anymore

Without thinking of you

A memory stirred like sugar lumps
Sweet and sickly

In the bottom of the cup of my heart

My senses remember it
better than my
memory

and maybe it's the memory
of you that's lead me back
to this place. Where my skin
shakes like small coils of wire
shot with electricity

but it's a nervous,
nerve reflex and not proof
that I'm alive

my limbs hanging like
the branches of a
tree

a cool breeze
shuddering the
roots

I always felt new with
winter. Ice beneath
my feet. Itchy woollen
jumpers and the smell
of cinnamon

but you stole my seasons
the way you stole my
heart and now a cold
breeze sends me into
darkness

***** footprints on
dead ground. Black
coats and boots

and the smell of your
body, missing, and
the sound of my neck,
caressed by a white scarf,

breaking

I leave the lights on,
it's better that way

I tear my heart in two,
hoping it will make you stay

your fingerprints singe my skin,
evidence that we once were

together

I wrap my arms around myself.
pretending they're yours

and

f a d e a w a y

without you

**** fireworks

when I flinch at every

explosion

of my mind

scattering across the midnight

sky

my body trembling at every

blast

echoing back to the touch of

you

words are power

like “goodbye”

they whisper to me at night,
the voiceless, Godless ones

electricity shoots through me,
the current ricochets between my spine

dead winter flowers waiting for the Spring,
growing again in the April rain

and when the water hits
this compressed bolt of lightning,

these voices too, shall sing again

an incomplete life
can be made whole
by love

but a fractured love
can never be made whole
by a full life

work, drugs, money
are pale substitutes
for a welcoming
heart

bitter medicine
for the feel of another’s arms

I am incomplete
and searching for a love

unlike any I have ever known

a love to make me
whole

There is not beauty in everything,
a sunset can be spoiled by snow,

yet there is wonder in the
insignificant raindrop,

that hits my window at 4am,
stirring me from a nightmare

into a reckless daydream

after the storm,
the sky grows clearer

and

the ocean waves roll over
to a new beginning

perhaps the poem was deleted

in a frenzy of regret and rage

but words, once written

can never be truly

erased

I taste love
in the whiskey
that we share
to warm our blood
on this freezing
December night

my throat burning
with lust and
longing, our hands
touching, flickering
in the embers of a
dying fire

the stars a mirror
of our kisses,
echoing back
to us the passion
that we feel
rising in our
souls

You are a lighthouse
leading me to shore

when the ocean tries
to consume me

you reach out your hand
and pull me up above

the waves

we will sit in the sand
building castles like children

a thousand pieces of glass
shattered but rebuilt

into palaces that we
can one day call home

The moonlight pours down on us
like silver nectar

encasing us in a glowing
white hum of magic and mystery

the stars shine like precious gems
each one worth more
than their Earthly wealth

we are the silent lovers,
the keepers of night

and all its secrets buried
in our lips

shared only between ourselves
in a midnight kiss

bright lights and city streets
where we mapped out our love

I was always too timid to tell you

that I found the streets *****
and the neon lights nauseating

but still, we survived

(somehow)

and now we live
in a quiet little village

far away from the
pushing and shoving

the stench of hot food stands
on a street corner

we have two dogs,
and walk them across the fields

and I have always been too timid
to tell you

that I have found
my heart,
my home,
my life

in your arms

The inside of my mind
is like nails on a chalkboard

a hideous screeching sound
that I try to drown out
with whatever I can touch

my heart skips beats so frantically
it amazes me that it does not stop completely

the razor, the liquor, the pill
sing to me seductively in my sleep

there is an echo of a memory stirring
about it being time to make a choice

and this is the choice I must makelive in Hell or die in Heaven

it’s not much of a choice,
until another memory stirs

telling me I am worthy of being
on this Earth, and it is more beautiful because of my tenacity

to endure
to overcome
to survive

and that to live, is the bravest choice of all

like a starved dog
I will devour you
in an instant

without thought
or feeling

and in that instant
I will consume you
as the air consumes
everything around it

I will dissolve into
that air and become
edge -
less

so that where I end
and you begin
is merely a concept
long buried in
the murky swamp

where creation began

there is something sinful
in the way I look at you
a temptation to devour
that is basic need
basic greed
I do not wish to look at you like that
but I can’t help myself
your hair that catches sunlight
in the same way a city catches the light
on a sleepy, spring morning
your eyes that to look in,
is too look into the ocean
as dark and infinite and wild
I may be sinful with
my cornered eyed glances
but I think my intentions are pure
in that I only wish to hold you
and call you home

the electricity of your touch

reverberates
through my spine

shocking my heart into
beating again

a frozen pulse, thawed

you breathed live into
me

when it seemed
an impossible feat

I see my past spread out like a map;

each arrow leading me back to a home
that has turned to ashes

back to my body, which disgusts me
each bone, each hair, each inch of skin

I want to tear the ******* route apart,
in the hopes that I may plot a new one

one where I may be free
from the histories that stick

like gum, to the soles of my shoes,
with each step I take

freedom is a fraught war
that I am too tired to win

and once again, I find my feet
leading me back to the ash house,
back to the broken bones
of loathing

by the skill
of your hand
(a gentle stitch)
my heart wrapped
itself around
you,
we became
entwined entities
of flesh and thread,

I soaked my feet
in the waters
that your eyes
bled,
become one
with your sorrow,
turning it into
art,

we healed by the drugless needle,
we healed by the broken thread,
we healed upon the canvas
of the love

My heart beats, still
although you're gone
life goes on

so they say...

but they never held
your hand in theirs

stroked your hair at 3am
when they couldn't sleep

I run screaming from this darkness
into the wild night

offering myself to the stars

"TAKE ME!"

I yell,

take me and put me amongst your heavenly light
I have no place on Earth anymore

now that the one thing grounding me to it
has gone

its teeth have sunk into my neck
like vampire fangs

bloodthirsty- draining the life out of me

unwashed hair, cold coffee,
wild, impenetrable dreams

I am at its mercy, once again

I cannot claim the he is unfamiliar,
every few weeks, he visits
through my carelessly left open window

and feasts,

he is the familiar beast
of darkness,

I do not know how to shake him off,

the pills don’t work
the ******* skills don’t work
(like the doctor’s say the should)

I’m just left with my familiar foe,
drinking my blood until I’m

.....empty

People will gasp
when you show them
your heart

shocked that it still beats
beneath all of its bruises

let them wonder

let them stare

forever be a mystery

to unblemished mortals

as you fly, my darling
as you soar

We watched the dead roses
wither with the winter

our hearts turning cold and pale

our fingers locked together

frozen in time

when they find us

they will think we clung on to
each other till the bitter end

not knowing that the end was just

bitter

even a dying rose
has the lingering sense
of being something beautiful

does a broken heart
have the lingering sense
of being whole?

the ocean will always answer you, they say;
so I carve a spot on the beach to lie on and

                            listen                          ­    

the red wine is flowing between my lips
dutch courage for the things I'm frightened I'll

                             hear

the water is waking up, gentle and soft
it wraps itself a noose that nobody can see

                          except me

the rope belongs to an anchor. I am anchored to my
grief, for sure, and soon I shall be anchored to the

                         ocean floor

forever. A burial at sea, with no witnesses or mourners.
It's not lonely, for the ocean spoke to me.

                         It spoke to me.

A morning scene dissolves around me;
blue skies pierced with delicate sun rays
The taste of coffee and cigarettes
rich on my tongue
I have been up all night again drinking
and smoking until the packet is empty
I promised myself I would not
grow bitter in my sadness
But once a seed has been planted
you are not in control of how it grows

my cold heart
keeps on beating

my dark eyes
keep on seeing

my wrecked soul
keeps on growing

like a sunflower
turning like a head

towards the sun

I am
a seed

planted in rotten soil
blooming despite

the poison

I am forever

searching

for the things I’ve lost

whilst looking in the wrong

places

sins cast
like shadows
skulking in
corners
waiting to
pounce on
unsuspecting souls
we are the
undergrowth
of a forest
earth deep
with secrets
and the sound
of the voiceless
ones

Forever

I never said it, but I felt it,
with every fibre of my being,
every hair on my arm
and cell of my skin

I know you didn’t,
and that’s okay, too

we are not equals in love
nor are we meant to be