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EP Mason Aug 2013
I know I'm your second best.
I know I'm not the first person you will call
in a crisis
but I suppose second best is okay
I don't mind.
In another situation
second place is still acclaimed
like a runner up in a race
sometimes the second place prize is better than the winning.
At least I'm not your third best
fourth, fifth, sixth.
I know I will be there when the first person you would call
has put you to second place.
I will be there to fill their old space
because hey
what are second best friends for?
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Jan 2014
The way to my heart is through my heart, *******.
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jul 2014
Intimacy
makes me feel sick

knotting your hand in mine
adds more tangles to my self-loathing
and we speak only in tongues
we ***** the language of love

Intimacy
it's a pathetic thing
stripped bare are our bodies
beyond our control
it gets hot under these covers
though your eyes, and mine, remain cold

Intimacy
makes me feel sick
I'll repeat that still
let it smother my heartbeat
until I believe it
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jun 2013
'You can't be in love, you're only Sixteen'*
Well then please, define 'love'
tell me, what does it mean?

I see the smile on your face as he walks through the door
but the pain in your eyes makes me wonder what for
And the silence and solitude pierces the air
The broken home whispers with tears of despair

You're trapped in a cycle of macabre lust
The unavoidable truth is the lack of real trust
So it pains me to watch you
And your words of fake ''love''
More Black like the Raven than White like the Dove

And you sit there
you ask me
how can I feel love?
how can my heart beat when it is so young?

My response then, is simple
I feel love like you do
Only your love is false
and my love is true
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Dec 2013
Stop smiling
you smug *******
I think you know how much I love that smile

Next time you do that
I'll dismantle your ivory jaw
I'll kiss it
and break it apart
so it fits
inside my heart
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Jun 2013
A scientist scopes the cosmos
dreaming of the voyage to Mars
But he who waits for the sun to rise
will never know the beauty of the stars
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Dec 2013
You smell like burnt clementines
and flow like strawberry wine

Pick at my icy veins with your icepick heart
your hands filled with light, and my veins spilling dark

Lay with me in a white lace bed
close your eyes and rest your head

Let me smell your burnt clementine skin
and wash my hands in your strawberry wine again
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Dec 2013
I need you
to calm me down
and just so you know
I have asked my teacher for two essay extensions
and it has taken me three days to write 1000 words
simply because
you are the only thing I can think about right now
and I keep wondering what you're doing
© Erin Mason 2013
(not quite a poem but I needed an outlet)
EP Mason Nov 2014
Carnal instinct, mixed with leather bound
books and leather on belts
you tie me up, and smack me
your kisses taste like blood

Your tongue is filthy, your mind is wicked
I'm full of tears, I'm wet
you snarl
you just want to see the bruises on my neck
you just want to hear me beg

You pick me up, and carry me to bed
now, I'm royal
now I'm sweet and raw and red
now we'll rest
head on head
now I've done just as you said
The first poem written about you. Honest.
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Nov 2013
I wish you loved me
the way you love her.
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason May 2014
Everybody's running
running
jumping to their deaths
I can't stop peering into lakes
and being haunted by the depth
the sea wants to take me
the sun wants to set
but I'm so torn between
drowning
and not leaving
just
yet
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jan 2014
If it makes you less sad, I will die by your hand
Hope you find out what you are; already know what I am
And if it makes you less sad, we'll start talking again
You can tell me how vile I already know that I am
I'll grow old, start acting my age
It'll be a brand new day in a life that you hate
A crown of gold, a heart that's harder than stone
And it hurts to hold on, but it's missed when it's gone

Call me a safe bet, I'm betting I'm not
I'm glad that you can forgive, only hoping as time goes, you can forget

If it makes you less sad, I'll move out of this state
You can keep to yourself, I'll keep out of your way
And if it makes you less sad, I'll take your pictures all down
Every picture you paint, I will paint myself out
It's cold as a tomb, and it's dark in your room
When I sneak to your bed to pour salt in your wounds
So call it quits, or get a grip
You say you wanted a solution; you just wanted to be missed

Call me a safe bet, I'm betting I'm not
I'm glad that you can forgive, only hoping as time goes, you can forget
So you can forget, you can forget

You are calm and reposed
Let your beauty unfold
Pale white, like the skin stretched over your bones
Spring keeps you ever close
You are second-hand smoke
You are so fragile and thin, standing trial for your sins
Holding on to yourself the best you can
You are the smell before rain
You are the blood in my veins

Call me a safe bet, I'm betting I'm not
I'm glad that you can forgive, only hoping as time goes, you can forget
occasionally I will post the lyrics to songs which convey my thoughts better than I can.
EP Mason Jan 2014
Breezes no longer blow
through my country palace
or in the eyes which I love

But great turbulent winds
cascade through my soul
and suffocate me with their smoke
and choke me with their words
with their hands which I love

And now
now that the cyclones of you
have broken every piece of me
all I can do is whisper my words so solemnly

I am now but a wisp of smoke because of you.
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Nov 2013
I've wasted my time on you
it was never meant to be
for I am your puddle
and you are my sea
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Jan 2014
I feel like a ghost
I'm sure I am
I float through wall to wall
and no one ever sees me
I paint myself bright
and no one ever sees me
I look into their eyes
and they look right through me
maybe I should stay black and white
so they don't feel haunted by me
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jan 2014
The smile in her voice
to ask me if I was okay
is the nicest thing
to happen to me today

Because my face was lined with creases
and my cheeks were soaked with tears
but I will remember her and her light-brimming eyes
for a multitude of years
The pure unjudged kindness of strangers is something that needs to be addressed. These people do not know my past, but they will not hesitate to improve my future ever so slightly.

© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jan 2014
I hope that when I die
the insides of me
are placed into
the insides of the needy
so that they can bloom like flowers

And the rest of me
is buried with the Earth
so the prettiest flowers can grow from my bones
and bloom in my soul
knowing I gave my life to nature
and all her children
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jun 2013
I write you a poem
I know it's not much
it isn't a flower
you can reach out and touch

Not the grandest of gestures
it's a singular rhyme
there's no red wicker basket
of Rosemary and Thyme

My words are not objects
not plated in Gold
but my ballad is heartfelt
where metal is cold

So, don't you agree
that a poem is better?
For my heart is not in materialism
but a sincere love letter.
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Dec 2013
Bright Eyes: Lua
Loudon Wainwright: Motel Blues
Radiohead: No Surprises
Keaton Henson: You don't know how luck you are
Tigers Jaw: Never saw it coming
Fleetwood Mac: Songbird
Paolo Nutini: Candy
... and your laugh
the clearing of your throat
your sharp intakes of breath
the chattering of your teeth in the cold
and the movement of cloth against your skin
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Jan 2014
In this century, specifically, I spend an awful lot of time staring at a computer screen. The harsh artificial light casts a bright blanket across my eyes, so that when I go outside to look at the stars in the sky, it takes time for me to see them in their true beauty as I must allow my eyes to adjust to them.

In a similar way, the computer screen will cast a bright artificial light on me, so that I have to strain to see true beauty. Natural beauty, real beauty.
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Nov 2013
How love is difficult
Only part of me functions at a time
When you’re with me
I can speak with my mouth
But I cannot use my brain
And when you’re away
My brain ticks into overdrive
Thinking of your hand grasping mine
But although everything I wish to say to you overwhelms me inside
My mouth can never seem to tell you
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Jan 2014
Time has harmed me
but the leaves stood by me
and the wind will never cut my skin

Time has harmed me
but they didn't stand by me
and I will never fall in love again
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jul 2014
Dear nobody in particular;

Summer is rolling in, slowly. Ever so slowly. And I think I've watched the sky long enough now to see each black cell in the night be burnt away by the furnacing light of the sun. It's funny how all around me there's such bright, Earthly promise and bloom, but inside of me, there's nothing remotely reflective of that. I don't choose to feel this way, I suppose it's something in my brain.

Depression is sometimes genetic. Sometimes, and more commonly, it's caused by some kind of trauma, bereavement or follow-up effects from a different illness. Sometimes it numbs you, sometimes it stabs every nerve in your whole body, and sometimes it strangles you to the point that you turn a loathsome fusion of purple and blue. I can't tell if I've felt any of these emotions or none at all. I'd quite like to feel something though, it would make a nice change from whatever in-between state I'm usually voyaging in.

I'm not quite sure how to describe it to you, except comparing it to when I'm peering into the myriad of darkness I feel a great deal of frustration that I can't see all of the stars all at once. One of the things keeping me here is the stars. It's curious how to me they are united in loneliness, at least it seems that way. I mostly see singularity in everything, and it keeps things pure and important. But as I said, the stars are keeping me here. I'd miss them fondly, like a friend of some kind. But I can't help but feel the infinite voyage of death would bring me closer to whatever cosmic genealogy I feel up there. Before Carl Sagan died, he told his daughter ''we are star stuff.'' We are, we really are. All elements are derived from stars, our bodies possess the astral ashes of those stars, crushed from their bones and placed into ours.

'So when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the Universe is in us.'

And I suppose that is why I feel such a strong association with the sky, or indeed the world as a whole. I love it too much. I feel too much empathy for everyone inside it, for everything inside it. And I don't think I was ever supposed to be walking amongst it, rather existing within it. I'm probably failing to convey how I feel through this piece as most people don't understand the depersonalization involved with a need for death.

I don't really think this a need for an end, particularly. It's not a desperate want for a termination of emotion, as I never really felt any emotion to begin with. Nor is it a hopeless goodbye, a shrill-laced cry or the voice in my head telling me to 'just ******* die.'

It's peaceful.

Nothing ever really comes to an end. Even if someone is buried, something buds from the ground in which they lie. And the ashes of a person go on to exist elsewhere. Lives go on living with the Earth, I suppose I just want to go on living in that sense. And so the bright, Earthly promises and bloom that I see but don't really feel can go on without me too, everything can. The world keeps spinning around. The stars won't collapse all at once. Everything just keeps on existing. And *'La tristesse durera toujours.'
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Oct 2014
I just wanted to turn you over. To sink my teeth into your back and watch the blood flow out, sticky and sweet. To pierce myself on your spine and stain it red. To mould myself into the cracks of your skin, and dream there. To clutch you, and drag my lips across your body. To be with you, being to being; waxing and waning; tender semblances, engulfing.
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Feb 2014
My veins have cracked like fine china
on a cold stone floor
now, I write this, to whom I adore

I swim in a cesspool of love, alone
and these lovely, lovely waters do chill my milky bones
my bones all ripped are gently sewn
by the one I adore

There is a resting place, in the forest of dreams
whereby dreams are only choked by the rivers reeds
and after sewing bones, he is sewing seeds
the hands of he whom I adore

There is a pearlescent white sky, yet I lay on the floor
stabbed by the pins of the one I adore
my body will rot into the flowers that once grew
and they will bloom, and say
''I love no one
no one like you.''
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Nov 2013
It was the murky stench of forgotten water
hidden somewhere
in the depths of an ivy-winding garden
and the autumn leaves which crunch into the mixing bowl

The rotting flesh of their midrib and veins
binding themselves a new life with the arms
of trees
which had fallen into the reapers puddle
- this is where they come to die.

Their graves, painting the garden Fallow and Umber
lay buried underneath a distant grey sky
the gloom of an English October is at their wake
and the feet of people
trample on their caskets
no remorse
no pause for thought
for nature's feeble skeleton
slipping out of breath
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Feb 2014
I will stumble foolish into the valley of dust
where all my skin and bones will rust
I will meet a fortune teller there
with her own violet eyes
entangled in her hair
Speak to me, o wise one
tell me what it is I have done
abandon your Ouija, o cosmic peasant
where you see into the souls of demons future-
past and present
and scream through your teeth
scratch my red right hand
let your words roll out
like the exorcism of a marching band
tell me my life, o darling boho *****
satisfy my callous and infinite itch
Something I found in my journal that I wrote after consuming too many pills. I forgot about it for a while.
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Feb 2014
At the lecture
of Philosophical means
I saw you again
it's been two years, hasn't it?
Yes, it has.

You look very different now
you wear glasses
and you're skinny
and your cheekbones are refined
but it's been two years, hasn't it?
Of course, of course you have changed

I glanced
I didn't smile
I glanced the whole day through
the same smile
the same eyes
the same arched eyebrow
I couldn't help but miss you

I think from time to time
how things would be
if I hadn't ruined things
it wasn't you, I know it was me
two years ago I hurt people
two years ago I loved you
two years
and I still miss you

Now we live different lives
and there we met again
I with my peers and you and your friends
subtle glances
silent thoughts
of how things would have been
after two years
of singular
once one year of one entity

At the end of the day
the rain began to fall
and I walked past you
trying not to notice at all
and you walked away in a distant haze
and I watched you
in the February rain
two years of unanswered questions
now still do remain
two years
and counting
two years
stays the same
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Nov 2013
Every time I think we're done
you smile at me
lips like the sun
and mother of pearl teeth
and once again
I'm in love

*Why do you do this to me
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Aug 2015
Like the dregs of January snow
under February rain
or fruitless trees
I have come to die

I was not meant to go beyond
the end of Spring
for that was when love all withered
and life became long

I'd like to say I could survive
a summer's day alone
but it is more like being lost
somewhere cold

And the sun does not warm me
the sea does not calm me
I only dream of spring
and until all is ended
to that blossom stem I cling
EP Mason Jan 2014
This world is big
and I am small
yet my troubles still stand ten feet tall
here I lie in a broken jungle
lay down those leaves like you laid down me
and all I want is these trees to be broken down
it's the only natural destruction I'd be happy to advocate
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Dec 2013
You're sat right beside me
and I'm writing a poem about you
and you haven't even noticed

*******
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Nov 2013
Every time I think we're done
you smile at me
lips like the sun
and mother of pearl teeth
and once again
I'm in love

*Why do you do this to me
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason May 2014
''I dream of talking to him again, under apple trees at night in the hills of orchards; talking; quoting poetry; and making a good life.''
- Sylvia Plath
EP Mason Jul 2014
My waist
my grace
my shadowy pale face
cupped
in your hands

And I felt myself shiver
with want
from that touch

Your eyes
teetered on the edge of me
and teeth
ground against my anatomy

The deepest swallow
the harshest sigh
my carnal moans
scratched
against a ferocious high

And ***
that delicious greed
is just another
gross
beautiful
*need
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jul 2014
I once knew someone
who'd sew thorns into their sleeve
and shake everybody's hand
leaving them with blood
seeping through their skin
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Mar 2014
Why do I keep on
                          making mixtapes, and writing verses
                                                          ­          and detailing 10 page letters
                                                         ­                                      you will never receive?
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Jul 2014
You are not a person,
******* it,
you are a nebula.
You don't have skin
you have island universes of stars
and your hands aren't hands
they're the whole ******* solar system branched out through your fingertips.

I can't look at you
without feeling like I'm spiralling through your galaxy
without losing breath
because after all
there's no oxygen in space

But the worst part is your eyes
those great opal voids
your infinite ******* chasms
that engulf me every time

And I always thought I'd be scared in space
like it's too big, too empty, too unexplored
but here I am
floating
not scared at all
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason May 2015
I have this fantasy for prom night
that you'll maybe want to dance with me
but I'll probably leave within the hour
and you won't even see me arrive
EP Mason May 2015
they'll fall asleep without me
they'll still dream without me
they'll be fine without me
the world will turn
without me
EP Mason Jan 2014
You are not a person,
******* it,
you are a nebula.
You don't have skin
you have island universes of stars
and your hands aren't hands
they're the whole ******* solar system branched out through your fingertips.

I can't look at you
without feeling like I'm spiralling through your galaxy
without losing breath
because after all
there's no oxygen in space

But the worst part is your eyes
those great opal voids
your infinite ******* chasms
that engulf me every time

And I always thought I'd be scared in space
like it's too big, too empty, too unexplored
but here I am
floating
not scared at all
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason May 2014
If I could only
                       write about
                                         someone
                ­                                       else
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Aug 2015
Breath hitched
neck kissed
mind switched
off

Body cold
legs fold
this feels
wrong

Clothes torn
mouths yawn
day dawns
you warn

Don't tell anyone

And  I feel small
EP Mason Feb 2014
Hereby, the night is my Valentine
and what I lack in love song
I hear in the harsh wind's lullaby.
I see the moon letch out the ivory tusk of night
and the ashen clouds will cradle the stars
and lay upon the words I write.
Then the welkin whisked the blackened embers
thus the moon became my spirit guide
creating spring from bleak December's
my night proposal, then my morning bride
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Dec 2013
Whispering night fades to sable dull morning
Verda in black whilst her mother is mourning
cabaret clown-show dances in deep
Verda is down in the valleys of sleep

Verda takes pills in a sinister tomb
smiles wicked smiles and her eyes turn to moons
mummy is rocking away by her side
and pulls out her teeth to a sweet lullaby

Girl-child Verda, who loves cuts and bruises
with a stitched-up mind which she frequently loses
and a mother who stops her from having her play
other children are pink but her Verda is grey

Delicate lace is lined in her coffin
Verda in black whilst her body is rotting
chemical residue flows in her veins
Verda's no child and her mother's insane
© Erin Mason 2013
EP Mason Jan 2014
He refutes sobriety
like he is scared of the night
and he's scared of my eyes
and my arms

But I too am scared of my eyes and my arms
such that I cannot comprehend
how anyone on this Earth could stare into them
without burning with bile

I am so very vile
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Mar 2014
Tonight I watched the sky for longer than I'd ever done before
The white afternoon deepened to crystal and
I saw each star gently fade into view
until darkness covered me
like the clouds covered the waxing, weeping moon
and astral tears melted from its craters
and on nights like this I usually
think of Van Gogh
or McNeill Whistler's
Nocturne in black and Gold
but tonight I thought of
how there are more stars in the sky
than
drops of water on Earth
sorry
© Erin Mason 2014
EP Mason Aug 2015
Waxing, waning
bodies convulsing
humming and breathing
tracing, feeling

Tell me I'm beautiful
one more time
my face in your hands
let me breathe in the moonlight

Lay me beside you
tell me what's not true
lie to me
lie to me
love me like I love you

I can taste the guilt
that's hanging from your lips
I know the night-time love
in the morning won't exist
I know it's just frustration
I know that I'm not his
I was waxing in the moment
now I'm waning
unwanted
EP Mason Aug 2014
Seventeen
what a terrible age to be
when you were skipping in between nineteen and twen-ty

Soul mate status
you became,
tattered charm
barely onto second names

But you spoke and it grasped me
something strong
too lovelorn and lame
we went on-

Romanticising the grainy photographs
the first date talk
the promise of touch
from a distant walk

Compliments thrown around like
greetings
and it terrified me
all those would-be meetings

That rush that turned out
too intense
and the explosive goodbyes
to false pretence

But there were no real goodbyes
you just left my town
so that was the high
and this,
the comedown
A bit rushed

© Erin Mason 2014
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