Retracted are these tendons -
Resolved on remaining in their calcified cages;
When breath arrives, it is blown back
And when warmth envelopes, it is posted away promptly.
Seeking only that which is ineffectual -
Side-tracking all traumatic pain
For the comfort of the constant daily struggle.
Speaking only to the bleak and familiar
In colours reddish and blue to the coloured lens above its eyes;
A body of uncomfortable comfort and avoidant pleasure
Sits upon its earthly thrown and ponders -
Ponders all that it will reject today and the day after.

Dear Oliver,
         It’s been a while since I’ve written to you, but not so long since we’ve spoken. I know you’re always patiently watching; eyes lowered but mind forever intertwined with mine. You sit and wait for the right time to chime into the rhythms that skim the slippery slide to the restless places of my mind’s eye.
         The world still doesn’t know how you manage to exist in one place and then the next; never resting, always humming to my thoughts “today will be okay”. Some people know about you. And I’m not sure if they think it’s a joke because they haven’t really laughed. I see the worry in the twitch of their eyes, the open lines that come to their mind; like is she crazy or maybe this is a lie? But how can intangible innocence of my conscience be a flaw in my logic. Your light blue eyes are too real to be made up by a tragic cataclysm of chemistry’s flawed magic. They’re engrained in my brain, and I don’t know why. They’re the features that stand out to me the most. I think, that maybe, in my head, I’m trying too hard to give you a soul. But it’s okay, and I know you’ll say it’s fine, because you’re the kind to help grown-ups like me climb the things we’ve clung onto too tightly. Childhood’s grip never did loosen its hold around me. I still feel like I’m stuck in purgatory. But your smile; I can see it, and I can feel it, and worst of all I recognise it.
          Sometimes in the darkness of the reaper’s shadows, when I wonder why I feel so suffocated even when I’m breathing, you sit there in our hideaway, calling out to sway the deafening silence that begs to stay, beckoning me to crawl your way. Because, you know I have this tiny light I keep hidden away in my mind, and even when I think I’m about to die out in existential cinders of the world’s abandoned fire… I’ll follow it. You have my hope under lock and key, guarded only by your trust in my will to live and forgive, not only others but myself. You float around my sickness with it, see right through the thick fog of misty tears that forever stream across my face. You grin at me and say, “It’s alright, you’re alive.”
         To tell you the truth, that line hurts as much as it helps, because you’re not; I reach out into our void and touch your nothingness with my aching fingers, try to hold your hand, to feel the touch of something uncorrupted and sinless… only to end up curling myself around the air where your comfort still softly lingers. Maybe it’s a small curse wrapped in the purest blessing but you’re something I can’t extinguish. People think you grow out of these things, but imagination only grows with you.
         I’ll finish this pointless letter with the words that truly shape you. You are the countless moments people wish they would never forget. You are the thump of a child’s wild heart. You are the light that first hits our blind eyes. You are not alive, but you are living in us all. And the purest thing I can say today is, there’s nothing more I could wish for.                      
                                                                                                     Yours sincerely,
                                                                                                                          Me.

I heard his calling from the den;
White noise in a black world
Heavy on the light wind of night-time shivers,
A piercing noise that ruptured drums
And moved through mountains of cymbals
To reach this dead-end
In which I reside and hide my pride
Away from the looming sights
Of mothers, father, brothers, sisters.

I heard his calling from the den;
I rose to greet the disturbance
With an air of impertinence
Whispering to the vibrating atoms,
‘Who dares disturb my sentient silence?’
He replied with a deep sigh
Hung aloft the moon’s shine
I caught it as it floated by,
Tucked it into my own mouth
And breathed in all he had amounted to
Feeling the perpetual presence
Of sensations unaccountable
As it fell through a tunnel to my lungs
Where it stung
It hung on to branches of breath
Loitering in a sweet unrest
Speaking to me for once
In a language I could comprehend.

I heard his calling from the den;
But now he speaks from within
Swinging across arteries and veins
Reminding me of feelings gone to waste
Where melodies had been discarded in a haste
Before their songs burned notes into my chest,
He digs through the garbage of memories
To find his true place
And there he paces within my breast
His heaviness begging to be held
Each footprint an echoing vibration
Of a heart aching for reconciliation
An orchestra blazing in a cold auditorium
The audience captivated
Not by the music but by his crying.

You hem the edges of your new personality
Before flipping the skin inside out
And admiring the neat tuck of frayed edges
Away from the laser point eyes
Of moving mannequins.
The day has just begun
And your life is sewed into place
A thickly weaved texture to match
The brains you’ve crafted out of
Foam ripped from the innards of discarded
Dolls now rolling in other worldly clouds.
A familiar face floats by
And you rip a stitch on the old wall
Watching rice fall from the hole
Wondering what your insides have become
After discarding the old stuffing
Forgetting worn clothes
And loved patterns for new seasons.

Yesterday’s integrity is lost
To the shrewd entry of today,
With all its hopeful blandness
Sinking into my skin as the sun rises
Ever so gently along the broken horizon
Where vultures escape the peril
Of the murderous day and hide in caves-
Away from the hungry pecking of
So many people in too many places,
As the sky seeks to triangulate
The presence of time within the confined space
Of the undynamic maze of man
As he moves gallingly through the elements
Past my drowsy numbness in the early hours
Magnetized into the dull thumping
Rhythms of action we all anticipate;
Estimating concepts I could never
For the life of me, regurgitate.

I found a crack in the sidewalk
That I didn't have the urge to step on
And I passed this crack every day
On my 4.40pm walk
For what seemed like a lifetime
And I glared daggers
At the thing that made my skin crawl
And my neck ache
And my fingers twitch by my side
Because cracks in sidewalks
Were meant to be tread upon
Every single one of them
Even partially
Not to break a mother's back
But to cover the imperfections
And to fill the void
That made me uneasy
And to fill it
Even for a millisecond
Before I moved on
As if the sole of my shoe
Could somehow heal the
Sadness that the ground must be feeling
But there was a crack in the side walk
That I didn't have the urge to step on
No matter how many times
I passed within stepping distance
And no matter how many times
It caused me pain
And maybe that was the period of my life
When the obsessive compulsive part of me
Decided to take a break
Because maybe
Maybe some part of me
Saw that the grass that grew
In the messy line that pointed east
Was something more beautiful
And more honest
Than any hidden disfigurement
Could ever be

Curtain covered views
In neon lighted enclosures;
I hide in the openings of walls
And catch glimpses of passing shoes
Taking kilometres like a flower
Takes water from the sky
Tasting the light hearted lies
Spat into the air by too many
Heated lips wasting movement,
Not kissing the coolness outside.
The open doors avoided-
Let me walk in the shadows
Where rodents feel safe…
I wonder if their houses are as cosy
As the light that never reaches
Protected places of the underworld.
Sitting saddened by the demons imagined
Forgetting to listen to the echoes below
The low music of the ages
Resting on mounds of life’s
Discarded dreams left to us gremlins.

Dearly departed,
Pray for me
In life I still need to excrete
Not only faeces but thoughts
Just like food in my mouth
I chew possible sounds
Until they are… reproduced
I think
What I thought was art
Is now a bit bitter on my tongue
The saliva must be tainted
With odours I’ve inhaled
Because this ******* I taste
Is too flavoursome
I know this isn’t appealing
But neither is the finished product
Unwrap what you can
Of what we toss down to you
And swallow what you think is sweetest
You know it will all be… sour
I think
What I thought was lasting flavour
Turned out to be flesh
And even as I write this
I feel the unpicked hair in my teeth
So that when I create
I am secretly painting in words
From the inside out
I am closer to you in this way
But in that way-
Not so much.

Dearly departed,
Pray for us
In life we must run to you
But in living we must wait
Amongst the rotting peels
We left in our backpacks
For too long
We’ve learned to speak
About the smell
But in doing so our breaths
Stink up the air
And our legs are getting stiff
Sitting cross legged and festering thoughts
Bubbling images we wanted
To forget
God, this is a witch’s ***
But she forgets to stir it on hot days
And we decay
Faster than you do, I swear
The curses don’t become me
I know, the curses
Must be me and them.

Dearly, Departed,
Pray, and still listening
I’m sorry about the foulness of everything.

The light bulbs burst when you walked in,

And the sparks ignited my skin.

The fire was still burning long after you were gone,

Until I was charred to the bone.

I recall how you clawed at the meat,

Right above where my heart beat.

Your red eyes glowed in glee,

Until I could no longer see,

Blinded by the one thing

That I thought only you could bring.

Then I heard the snipping,

As you cut the strings

And began humming to my screams.

A harmony of two extremes.

When the flood lights shone through,

There was no more you;

Only a permanent deformity

And ripped arteries.

Fragility is an electric blue
Shock in your system
From which you twist resistance
Gifted to hands open and begging
Consoling the green murkiness
Of people’s forced emptiness
Filling their scaffolding with
Temporary steadiness
Your abandonment shatters
Into heart shaped glass shards
He picks up even though they cut
And his blood brings no fear
Because your reality is malleable
And wounds are fixable
With scars becoming loopholes
Into worlds of distorted art
Branching out of lines protruding
Introducing your skin before your scars
I see the clearing of newly planted
Seeds of future possibility
In the words you gather
Passing by flowers scented with
All the aromas that haunt you
From your youth
Just to string a sentence
For one surrounded by the obtuse
Entirety of reigning bleakness
You are a beacon of what we
Dream to grow up to be
A star in the morning sky
You shine you shine you shine.

I’ve seen too many empty words
On papers covered with text
Like rows of parallel lines and
I’m painfully waiting for them to converge.
And I wonder how you can speak with all your might
And still not be heard,
Am I simply not choosing the right words?
Maybe this rhyme wasn’t timed
Just right
For your head to ignite
With all the fury that spins inside of me
Like tornadoes of dirt in an open space
Where there is so much potential
But no one is there to observe
How I can sometimes form images
Out of reckless stanzas of
Sounds that bounce just right
In the pits of my mind.
I still twirl around in circles sometimes
Collecting debris of those
Who have been misheard and
Misinterpreted as
Deadly villains in stereotypical stories
Where their side of the story
Is simplified into scenes of disturbance.
I’ve seen too many bland sentences
In essays that we’re told to embrace,
When these chunks of information cannot hold themselves up
Without a spine of meaning and supporting points
Of relevance
And you always sit there wondering
What the hell counts as relevant?
When there are thousands of combinations
Making up thousands of words that have yet
To grace our impatience.
I am still waiting,
Knees bouncing and hands drumming
In silent lectures about everything
And sometimes I think it might amount to nothing
If I can’t make it interesting
Interesting enough for me to want to weave it into
My natural disaster of a technique
And call it a piece of myself;
A work of poetry.

I’ve seen too many empty words
On papers covered with text
Like rows of parallel lines and
I’m painfully waiting for them to converge;
Feeling like a hopeless dreamer in a reality
Where intelligence is measured by the
Amount of white space you can cover
With a brush, but no paint.

And I wonder how you can speak with all your might
And still not be heard,
Am I simply not choosing the right words?

Maybe this rhyme wasn’t timed
Just right
For your head to ignite
With all the fury that spins inside of me
Like tornados of dirt in an open space
Where there is so much potential
But no one is there to observe,

How I can sometimes form images
Out of reckless stanzas of
Sounds that bounce just right
In the pits of my mind.

But these metaphors and similes
Don’t seem to put smiles on the faces
Of academics sitting up high,
On chairs of published journals
And research that stomps on your behind,
Until you realise you can never measure up
To their size.

But, I still twirl around in circles sometimes,
Collecting debris of those
Who have been misheard and
Misinterpreted as
Deadly villains in stereotypical stories,
Where their side of the story
Is simplified into scenes of disturbance.

I dance around manipulation
Ushering words I’ve gathered along the way
Until it amounts to a mangled creation
One that would make Frankenstein
Smile in admiration;
Until the story is turned upside down
And then all the way around.

I’ve seen too many bland sentences
In essays that we’re told to embrace,
When these chunks of information cannot hold themselves up
Without a thick spine of paragraphed meaning
And meticulously referenced supporting points-
Of relevance.
And you always sit there wondering
What the hell counts as relevant?
When there are thousands of combinations
Making up thousands of words that have yet
To grace our impatience.

I am still waiting,
Knees bouncing and hands drumming
Trying to piece together symphonies
In silent lectures about everything

And sometimes I think it might amount to nothing;
If I can’t make it interesting,
Interesting enough for me to want to weave it into
My natural disaster of a technique,
And call it a piece of myself;
A work of poetry.

Living the fantasy and
Breathing colours
As they fade out of rainbows
And into your blood;
Dreaming of being
One with the air
You cannot hold
As you do a friend’s arm
Whilst traversing through
The reality we’ve formed.
Waking up on clouds
Filled with possible storms
Climbing above the havoc
And seeing the sun,
But the moon still cries out
Lonely and high-strung.
Stretching arms into outer space
Skimming over the edge
Of planets deserted
Yet full of their own life,
Spinning with a different crowd
Of rocks for a year or two
Until someone wakes you up again.
Yawning out the tension
Of muscles returning
From sleep and into a state of relief
Withstanding the uniform
Creeping of shaking fear
With images of beauty uncharted.

Feline in the way her irises
Deftly align with the vertical signs
That hang from our rigid bodies-
She spies on our silence
Creeping by our sentience
With a stride that knows nothing of sound
As if her paws always tread on clouds
Made of our oblivious designs
Of creatures that refuse to follow
A human’s living lies.
Eyes wide and blinding in the night
Reminding you that the moon
Is not the only thing that can shine
With the help of a little light
Before she turns to carry on
A life of peaceful pleasure
In her corner of the house
Where she hides all the dead things
She wanted to show you
Before thinking twice.

We've got highways of heartache beneath our skin
Because our heart is always everywhere all at once
And the steady beat is not culture bound
Unless you relate it to the way it jumps in all of us
To match the music that pumps through our arteries
At any given place or time.
And I will inject only love and confidence into my bloodstream
To defeat the fear that has threatened to halt my living,
And to travel along the endless stretches of roads within my body
Solely in search of the Self but also accepting
All the revelations that flow in steady waves around it.
The fingerprints that have dirtied the exterior
Of the ***** that brings equal bouts of joy and pain
Will be left to mark their place in its past,
For the memories of cruel lovers can only serve as reminders;
Suffering is only temporary
And even though lost heartbeats cannot be regained
New ones can be cherished.

A moment’s pleasure is worth
A year’s pain
For the happiness of a moment
Is completely immeasurable

However the pain of a century
Doth bare its mark
On the backs of many
The ones that have been weighed down
Not only by the misery of themselves
And the tragedy of life
But by the shame of the gratitude
That they have failed to bestow

Just as the happiness of a moment
Does not bring eternal joy
Similarly, a life without suffering
Surely does not guarantee eternal freedom of the heart
And so it comes about
That one cannot truly appreciate life
Without having first suffered

The beatings of the winds of darkness
Always meet an end where they rest
Offering an escape to the hopefuls
And thus calamity only befalls
Those who lay in wait
For them to begin again.

we rise from the nests of our joined ashes
again and again - lovers and friends
wondering if change is possible
when change is all that we are -
bodies of re-creation
built to be rebuilt
in dusty increments

On a hill untrodden
Lay hooves of animals forgotten
Hovering inches above
The tall blades of grass
That guard the crimson soil
From the deadly spoil
Of creatures with a heartbeat.

Neither human nor animal
Is allowed to trample
On the swaying current
Of carbon breathing forests
That sing in unchecked choruses
About a mythical life
That forever strives
For their listless existence
But always fails in the face
Of pure logic.

On the edge we stand
And there we will remain
If not forced to refrain
From ever being in unison
With life that knows no burden
Of the constant need for self-satisfaction
But somehow manages
To breathe without stealing air
From one less sanctioned
In a state unbalanced
Despite existing on a sustainable planet.

Even fairies stir in their leaves
When news arrives
That the hill still survives
Without their manufactured dust
And fake-winged lust
For something more mythical
Than themselves
In a world that revolves
Around their heads
And death is made of flower-covered beds
Of false remembrance.

Still you wonder
Why such splendour
Sits only in our worship and prayers
When it has no power
Over anything that enters its perimeters
Knowing however
That the thought it has inscribed
Into our minds
Will live forever
Even if it does not do so itself.

They inject it into your brain
Directly through the skin and through the skull
Don’t even ask about the pain
Anyway, it seeps into the cortex
Lighting up the neurons with memories
What memories?
First piggy back, first pulled tooth, first death wish
Soft stuff springing into sparks
And then oh, the flames
Don’t even ask about the pain
The straining emotion remains, of course
And new connections are made
Stemming phylum connections between
One ethereal feeling to the overwhelming onslaught of
You know, things
Then the frontal lobe takes a break
It sips that stuff and stops
And thinks- we all know where that leads
Detachment and dissociation start dancing
They tango to the dull beat of your heart
It thump thumps and there’s nothing else really
Your brain wakes up every few minutes
The background music playing
And it makes you **** in this weird cold air
Stuff happens, things stay alive
And the injection well
It’s faded the minute it was dispensed
You were never more or less awake
But it’s all still moving slow-quick
Slow down, you say quickly
It speeds up
You’re feeling everything that’s ever been felt
What a rush what an end

Now it ends.
You slouch
You see there isn’t a needle or a pen
Nor a blade of any kind
And the thumps are replaced by heavy thuds
The sound rattling in your ear canal
You inject it into your brain again
Nothing
You get up to brush your teeth and wash your face.

Life is a sapling
Planted in the serenity
Of a moment unrecognised
Left to grow in the tender light
That feeds our sinking hearts
Evaporating liquid lies
That ascend like nostalgia
On the leaf-like wings of angels.

And in the dark
Life rests her passion
Under gleaming skies
In the belief and trust
That the animals of the night
Will not trample on its own budding star
Burning bright in the confines
Of slowing reactions that never die
She whispers to her neighbours
‘I am here, and I am alive’
They arch away in search of silence.

Life grows in the shade
Of mimicking greenery
That overshadow the youth
With pride that holds stems high
For a few moons before
They fall, exhausted on the floor
As enemies rejoice at their failure
But life is always quiet
She has learnt to remain silent
So as not to disturb her forced companions
She crafts stories into her waterways
As she photosynthesises
Shy glances from the sky.

Life becomes beautiful
She turns into a sight unseen
A vision of heaven in a world
Ravaged by hungry weeds
That ***** her fragility with fear
As vulnerable petals open and close
Adding colour to the bleakness
That seeps from the green envy
That spreads and then leaches.

Life is too beautiful
She is ripped away from her roots
Cherished only for moments
That fall through open fingers
Before death enters the womb
And life is something
That could have been
Almost anything.

Now: in World News
Syria
has been hit with
Chemical
bombs by Russian aircrafts
no consequence
violation of human
and of human
and of rights
and wrongs?

Next: in World News
Palestine
received some 10
Bombings
on civilian areas
no consequence
violation of human
and of human
and of rights
and wrongs?

Shells
           Dropped
on children on children on children
play in the rubble
as they bleed
what an image of
Innocence!
and of human
and of rights
and of wrongs
of human
human
huma
hum
hu
h

Hatred is a
Natural
emotion experienced
by the rich and powerful

Scientists
Psychologists
Doctors
Academics
confirm this

Again: in World War News
no comment
no consequence
violation
human
rights -

Take a left
And our reporter tells us
you'll see safety
in the west wings
taking flight over dead bodies
truly this is the world of -

Those days were priceless
When we sat in the back seats
Of a packed bus
Talked until our mouths ran dry
In days of warmth and ice
I remember your smile
How it stretched over your face
When I needed it to
When my anxiety was deadly
But back then no one knew;
You saw it and you hushed it
And how do you repay a child
For love beyond their age
When all they knew
Was that gifts meant good things
And poems were nothing to be
Embarrassed about?
I recall the flaming courage that possessed you
That day you gave me your heart
Right in front of my friends
And they laughed
And yes I laughed with them
Because they didn’t understand
I bent forward with tears in my eyes
Because I did-
Your skin was so clear I could’ve sworn
I saw right through your chest
The moment you stepped back
And my eyes watched your bleeding arteries before you turned to run
That last day of school
Before we went away
Left you behind with no goodbye
And ten years later you say
Those days were priceless
As I find a way to accept
Happiness in the glory
Of the joy and ailment that come
With the glowing realisation
That every single day until now
Has been so ******* priceless
And living through all the pain
Was so ******* worth it.

She lays in the burning lake
Of trepidation
Luxuriating in its purity
Inhaling the smoke
Of ageless memories
As her flesh begins to sink
Down into the liquid
Losing its consistency
To the easy fluidity
Of endless regret
Hoping for the end
To taste as fiery
As the first glimpse
Of registered consciousness

Dreams of mathematical theorems
In the moon of your mind
As the circumference of the sun
Trickles into the periphery
Of the sunrise that colours your drifting thoughts
Caught in the virtual pieces of my presence
Before your revived spirit
Returns to its animate enclosure
Sitting up to open oval eyes
Finding the light on your bedside
Before you open the blinds
Blinded by the words that cross
Across the radius of your blurry vision
Stuck in the haze of sleep
And a seemingly unending dream
That has found its way back
Into your sunset thoughts
After years of lost travel in a foreign land
On which you have yet to stand
Where childhood has grown
Into burning orange reflected across shared oceans
Of distance and suffering
That resonates in both languages
Complete in their broken grammar
As they seal wounds left to fester
At last, ending the earthquakes
That used to pain your chest
When the separated plates of your heart
Moved against each other in remembrance
Now crafted into reality
You see as you awake
And think about until you send yourself
Back into your temporary death
Hoping the face on the other end
Doesn't decide to disappear again.

She walks away with flare
Leaving the scent of jasmine in the air
And I sink in the remnants
Of her vocal impressions
As I drop back into the arms of silence
Heavy with recollection
As real as the floor I lay against
Seeing her figure disappear
Into the darkness of a hallway
Too many times
Over and over again
I reach out a hand to call her back
But only the disturbance of air
Replies back in sad despair
Her presence is now only a remembrance
Of molecules scattered
Touching the receptors in my brain
Touching battered tatters
Forming abstract images of infatuation
Where her face melts and withers
Into the vague imprint of frustration
Losing its individuality to sillage

Taken from his tender lips;
A sonnet from his ancestor-
Clouding up the dim air,
With warm wisps of internal fire.
And he bequeath his last breath,
To the death inside the pyre-
That warm stew that brews within myself;
A testimony of joined desire.
Unravelling his soul from skin-
Heart hung on fleshy strings;
He beams with last repose,
And passes away beside his black rose.

the sun rises east of my heart,
shocking the cold with rays of tenderness that spread.
at noon it is eclipsed by my soul,
still ablaze,
brightness pooling around the edges of the bubbling mass of myself.
it journeys west in a trail blazed of longing
until it leaves the caverns of my ribs
cold once more.
yet there is no longer a bite to the chill,
for the promise of warmth thumps in my arteries.
my new reality is bright -
for she will rise again
and in that i must trust.

Maybe, fold those fingers
into the openings of mine
because i am obsessed with
the unnecessary filling of all open spaces

And hopefully sing all the lyrics wrong
in case i mess up like i always do
fumbling synonyms out through
the air that rushes from my bitter tongue to my teeth

Please press those palms against my flaming ears
to boom the sounds inside me
so that my mind can listen
to its own screaming

i will need - to
i will require - to
i will ask - to

Help me out of bed each morning
because with each sleep
i gain another universal weight
in each of my limbs

Always, Always, Always
answer to the suffering
with the full knowledge
of my next reaction

Never question the ache
for the sake of the peace
i bring in the silencing of answers

Forever
i will repeat forever until
you
are caught in the permanency of
Forever


in the end,
I

being suicidal is like having a few hundred soul eaters compacted into the small space between your brain and your skull, and having them try to **** the life out of you, and for some reason you resist. it's like a game of push and pull, but it's one of you against a whole group of them. and you continue to resist, each day for three hundred and sixty five days over and over again until the years can no longer be counted on one hand and you come to the point where you just realise that there really isnt anymore soul left to defend and then you have to decide whether to continue to resist just for the sake of living, even if it's as an empty shell, or if you should finally give in for a taste of unpromised freedom.

to be born out of the sky
or bled out of a rock
still we desire to love
that from which we came,
and even in adoption
we reduce the power of conscious ties
burying them under nature -

- so ***** is her underside that
We become cleansed when in contact
with the discarded   affection
brewed   and not based in inheritance
composed   and   created  in nurture
hardly automated in the infant

w h o s e  v i s i o n  is  c l e a n s e d  i n  b i r t h

t o  t h e  p o i n t  o f  p a r t i a l  b l i n d n e s s



in the light of future flooding

To all my demons:
Hello and welcome – back.
My chest is open for your return,
Pining for the familiar pressure
Of your phantom limbs pressed against my ribs
And slowing the blood flow to my heart.
I wonder, has your presence really lessened me?
Has your presence really ruined me?
Because the lower the blood pressure,
The harder it is to gather up
The courage, the steadiness, the willingness
To act on your orders.

To all my demons:
Hello and how are you – today?
I can’t say I don’t think about your well-being
The moment I wake from the loneliness,
Thinking maybe I’ll never get an answer
If you ever stay away.
They say you’re never really fulfilled,
Until you wish upon your enemies
The same happiness you want for yourself;
And here I am in this pit you’ve dug for me,
Floating on my tears,
Hoping in silence for your own freedom - from me.
My own pruning hands will hold the door shut
As I say this,
Hoping you continue to suffocate us both,
Gracing me with your reliable company – daily.

Today is a poetry day,
She told herself.

People were dying,
Hopeless babies were being born,
And she was bleeding.
Yet there was a
Momentary
Calm
Inside the ever-raging storm.

Eyes gazing lovingly at
A wall,
She smiled and bowed her thanks
To quiet voices that
Sounded like
They had dimpled cheeks
And glory-glazed eyes
As they approved her thoughts.

She liked to think of
Synaesthesia as she typed
Away the
Colours
Of the words
That swam around in their
Polluted glass tank.

Today felt like a poetry day,
She said out loud.

Everything was uneven,
Someone somewhere was drowning to sleep,
And she was oh so mentally ill.
Yet there was
A tinge of
Comfort
In the darkness.

Her body was glowing
With toxicity,
And she was
Shaking from the
Cold
She couldn’t feel,
As soundless lullabies
Played in her mind and
Notes
She couldn’t read
Danced before her eyes.

She was crazy,
Everything was always a maybe,
Tomorrow was nowhere,
But, Ah…
Today
Today was poetry.

In animal death, a breath of relief
Tunnelling through the airways for one last
Sigh of non-defeat, of exaltation and release
Not to be, or better, to be free of mortality
Made immortal with passing life
Taking strife by the neck and repeating

I am no longer your victim

In animal death, a universal strength
Where no obstacles lay before happiness
And instincts are not policed
Your fanciful dreams of green treats, fulfilled
And failing kidneys can rot as they please
Please, shed only a handful of tears
On the graves of decomposing beasts
Released from the shackle of domestication,
For the ones that suffer are surely the living.

Dare I disturb the image of your beauty?
Though I fear such torment, I strike at memory
Shattering beliefs and scattering them haphazardly
Across a pool of my own lucidity.
You are now only a product of past tragedy
Never in the foreground to hurt me
Always sinking deeper into the water we’ve wasted
Nourishing black roses hardly blooming.

Nay, still you smile in amusement
Knowing you have evaded deployment
Shielding yourself with a layer of plasticity
That returns to haunt the subtle elasticity
Of minds superficially moulded into belief
Now brandishing nothing against an enemy
Elated in the minute lapse of reality
They’ve made ripple in your vanity.

Dare I shelter a deadly renegade?
With arms shaking, I open doors to your shadows
Watching them slither back into their corners
Forming warm cloaks of comfort
In the crevices of a vessel unrecovered
Safe in its weak kindness and susceptibility.

I close my eyes to the feeling
Of your presence within my soul
Roping in the acceptance I had always evaded
Locking it into the vacant basement
Of self-acceptance, as you sigh out resentment
Removing it from the dying voices in my lungs
Tasting copper dissipating on my tongue.

Dare I accept my demons?
You are already a part of me.

Every face is a story
Etched into the air we breathe /
          And these journeys
Lead us to paper lives of survival’s manifest,
Where solid colours refuse to exist
- And black and white enmesh
To cloud the streams of speech
We use to guide us to
The non-existent chapter
Of complete understanding /
          Leaving fingerprints
That overlap over others
Until an artwork is forced
/out/ of our ghostly presence,
Always to be remembered
By all we’ve touched -
Long after memory has lost itself...
In the streets of brains
Trying their best to rest after they have successfully
/etched/ themselves into the fabric
Of spinning time and a gravitational pull
          -Irresistible-
Breathing out one last patch
To add to humanity’s short stretch,
To feel the very essence
Of reality within them
Before returning to the beginning /
Every face is a story

Water colour marks
On pearly skin
And that internal scream
Stuck in the protruding veins
Of necks in distress
And hands rendered useless
Towels of dirt dropped at dirtied knees
Dry as the desert in his eyes
Yet still dripping insincerity
Which she swipes across her
Barcode forearms
Where rings of price tags
Are branded on bodies unwillingly
And features are obscured
In a fluster of pity
For a being worthy of more
Than just shrieks and beatings

Four hours of sleep,
Laughter and tears,
Philosophy with hidden fears,
And shaky hands
From too many coffee sips;
How else do I describe your
Invincible aura?

Are there really any words
To explain the floral imprint
That springs to life
With every thought of you
In my muddied mind?

Am I worthy of that otherworldly smile;
The one that lingers on your full lips
For longer than it takes to glimpse possibility,
Just so you can see its results
In the eyes of both friends and enemies?

I swear there is mercury
In your glossy eyes-
And I think I’ve reworded it a thousand times,
But they will always be
A poisonous brilliance of dual deadliness
That my demons cannot help but admire.

And amidst all the beauty,
There is glorious ugliness
Which I cherish in these deteriorating hemispheres of mine-
I always did envy the soft pillows beneath your eyes,
And how even your blemishes looked to me like patches of light.

Every fleeting thought of you
Is a glowing orb of searing vitality-
Like lightning flashes of opportunity
And sometimes
The only sparks that keeps me crawling
Through this never-ending tunnel of suffering.
But most of all, it is more, much more
Than anyone could ever deserve.

To simply call you Human would be an understatement;
In your case, I believe,
Masterpiece is a fitting supplement.

Distant cries on cheery nights;
That ever-growing sense of creeping destruction
When all is well
When all is too pleasant.

It rises from the hearth on chilly days
Like fiery remembrances of past decays
As pain found its way
From comforting warmth
To a slowly sizzling burn,
And the heat of water turned to rot
On ceilings lost to decades of neglect.

It is fleeting eyes and unsteady hands
During summer weeks
Of seemingly nonchalant song and dance
Where the next step
The next breath
The next laugh
May be the last.

And no hand upon the skin
Can calm the quaking of the heart
Inside it’s cage of tectonic plates
As it sings loudly to drown out
The reverberations of fate.

It is the vicious fear.

And it makes every hour of open eyes
And every dream under the dark sky
Another deadly parade of
Who, what, when and where
As the living pretend
To be alive.

when do you think of me?
because i am haunted by you;
every time i step into the shower,
soaked in reminders to scrub behind my ears.
'dont forget to', you used to say.
no, even now i never forget to-
i scrub in remorse,
burdened by anger,
plagued by betrayal,
unclean even after my skin
is rubbed raw,
clung onto by your sins;
somehow, i am not allowed to forget you.

drenched, i can only ask your memory:
'when do you think of me?'
because i hope it is never,
just as much as i hope it is
a very hellish, 'always'.

when your views on life clash
like lightening to mighty tree trunks
breaking open decades of days you've prayed
your hardest to forget
they are now burning cinders of lined bark
turned to ash
now to be stored in yet another urn
marking the tragic death of yet another
forsaken part of your wilting life
and what else can you do but cry
little puddles of light
to extinguish the heat of the dying fire
trying to distinguish between
the smell of burning wood
and your fruitless anguish

It’s easiest to write about the rain
As it rains
And it was easier to write about the pain
When there was pain
But now I don’t write much
Because there’s
Nothing
And
Everything
To talk about
More than enough to doubt
Very little to figure out
Sometimes a personal critic to fight
Before any work is even done
Let alone done right
Levying with the fatigue to propel
To propel forward
For ****’s sake, not back
And it’s not so easy to write
When you just write
And it was not so easy to write
This right