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Gabriel Aug 2020
Let’s talk about my knuckles,
and how scarred they are;
how the callouses seep
into flesh, become part of me,
rubbing circles underneath the hood
of my uvula.

So let’s talk about my knuckles,
and how they’re only the starting point
for throwing up apples,
golden, red, green,
bitter and sweet,
all of them mine, to be choked
back into me.

So let’s talk about Mary-birds,
and the sacrifices they make
for their children,
and in doing that, let’s talk about *****
and how beautiful the sheen
of afterbirth looks in the toilet bowl,
and how often self-destruction
tastes like sacrifice on the way back up.

So let’s talk about my knuckles,
again, and the visceral scraping
against teeth,
and how much it feels like giving up
to not sit by the toilet
waiting for a sign
that this is somehow enough.

So let’s talk about being good enough,
and how I’ll never feel that way
until my knuckles mingle
with milk-white bone,
and how the rows of pews
are pearlescent,
tainted yellow,
with smoke and bile.

So let’s talk about talons,
and vultures, and everything that happens
after death, and let’s talk about
how one day the sea will swallow us whole,
and let’s talk about the belly of the beast,
and let’s talk about Jonah,
and oh - sorry - the sermon is over,
and the priest is taking confessions,
so let’s not talk
anymore.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.
Gabriel Aug 2020
I’ll lie to you tomorrow,
but tell you today
that the next 24 hours
will be the start
of something beautiful;

a lie only becomes so
when the truth is impossible –
for all the times I say tomorrow
will be wonderful
there’s a possibility

unfulfilled.

So get a load of this,
me, again,
smiling to show my gums,
me, again,
writing down plans
and burning them,
me, again,
hoping that the ash
will be taken by the wind.

Unfulfilled.

Sunrises are the start and the finish line;
it’s so easy to run,
but it’s harder to stop
before I’m not
unfulfilled.

Here we are again,
the peak of the trough,
and I’m telling everyone
once more
that tomorrow
I will be (un-)

fulfilled.
Something I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in first year of university.
Gabriel Aug 2020
The only difference between God and Frankenstein
is the success of what they deemed their magnum opus,
and when it comes down to the end of days,
the Great Judge must turn his gavel inward,
lest he condemn his doppelgänger to an opposite fate.

It is a universal human experience to fail,
even more so to fail at the apex of triumph.
When God made the world, did he imagine
that it would go to waste?
Would it ever have crossed his mind that love is conditional,
at least for the flawed creatures he expected perfection from?

Does this, then, make God human?
Or just a Heavenly Lady of Shalott,
weaving a tapestry of emulation, of the very same
thing he cannot be.
It is considered blasphemous
to entertain the notion that God is inferior,
but is this born of punishment,
or of shame, of trying to save face?

It is stated so many times that the student will surpass the master,
and isn’t that what is happening here?
Perhaps God created trees, but humanity cut them down.
Destruction is just as artful as creation,
if not more so - there’s more finality in it.
It’s possible that God is too scared to ever end a story.

But we - our nation of Frankensteins -
will end everything.
Given the right tools, we’ll end the universe,
far beyond the reaches of this insignificant planet.
We’ll lay waste to God’s pride
and replace it with our own hubris.

We go down on our own sinking ship with smiles;
even if we can escape, we won’t.
We are cruel that way.
We will never accept fatherhood or responsibility,
but spite and death work hand in hand
at the fall of any empire -
what can be done to stop us?
We are fluent in the only language God speaks.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.
Gabriel Jul 2021
this place is my bedroom, but different.
it’s like everything has been shifted
an inch to the left, so practically, everything
is the same, but it’s unsettling. it’s off.
there’s a space where my coat
should hang from a rope
but it’s more like a prison cell
than an ending. it’s more like i have
to exist here, rather than wanting to.
i don’t actively want anything.

well, i want my coat. it’s your coat,
really, but you left it in my apartment
for two weeks and i think that makes it mine.
like how i stayed in your bed for three days
without eating or moving or showering
and you told me that it put me in your debt,
that i had to do something spectacular
like jump off a building or get clean
in order to belong to myself again.

perhaps if i wear enough coats, i’ll cover
the flesh that you exposed. maybe it’s easier
to say that you did this to me, that everything i
did was just a response. a backlash. a quick whip
into another lifetime to see if you were right,
i'm *****, i need to sit in the shower
until the water runs rose-clear.

remember when we sat on your sofa
eating popcorn? skirting between jobs;
you worked for that skeevy *** line
and i tried to sell my art. nobody wanted
your body or my sadness, so we took
them in and adopted them and gave them
to each other. i have all the fleshy parts
of your skin, and you have the burden
of knowing that you knew me.
From a portfolio I wrote in third year of university, titled 'asmr: i’m crying in the bathroom and you’re into emotional voyeurism'.
Gabriel May 2022
I rest, as once more
my legs are crossed upon the floor;
the old armchair not looms but graces
the room, and our two listening faces.

Conversation leads the wane,
the world waxes, yet I remain,
the armchair not yet old but so;
solemn comes and solemn goes.

But long since years have passed me by,
nineteen there, twenty nigh,
and still the armchair's yet to fade;
in grace and hope, and heart pervade.

And silent sit I lend my ear
to stories told first time this year,
of decades past and my existence
just a spark, universal resistance.

Generations part the seas
like Moses, only I believe
in stories told from familiar tongues,
not sung, and yet exist in song.

The armchair rests in praise and strength,
the day shall pass, familiar length;
and that familiar person there
much to rely, and all to share.

In trust, in grace, in hearted love,
and stories from which I will carve
a narrative in which I fit;
one day this armchair, I shall sit.
I wrote this for my grandad when I was around 19. He has since passed, and in the latter months of his life I was his carer. I miss him every day, and that old armchair in which he sat and talked to me about life.
Gabriel Jul 2021
i am numb.
this is the one place
i cannot bear to take you,
even though i am prepared
to go to hell with you,
i will not bring you here.

it is a bathroom.
any bathroom, really,
as long as there’s something
to lean over,
something to flush,
something to destroy
the moment the room is occupied.

it’s alright, though,
because there’s a whole world
out there for us,
with gorgeous architecture
and natural allure,
so let’s go there, instead.

yes, i’ll be out soon.
if you have the tickets,
we can go anywhere.
just give me twenty minutes
to make everything okay again,
and i’ll take you
to see the taj mahal,
the colosseum,
the broken ruins of rome.

but i can never take you here.
i’m sorry;
whatever metaphorical journey
you may have thought you were on
ends here.
it’s just not something i can bring you into.

this is mine.
and i’m calling this the end.
From a poetry portfolio I wrote in second year of university, titled 'Lonely Placements in a Loveless Universe'.
Gabriel Aug 2020
Clenching my lies within my fists
I stand prominent,
forcing the pressure of weightlessness
onto them until they crack;
opening up like wounds,
drenching the tips of my fingers
in venom and lava.

Their acid burn
seeps into the cuts in my skin
from times I have fought this before;
an unyielding inevitability
soaks the marrow of my bones
as I stand – defender and defenceless,
my fists still closed, un-bloomed.

Primed to punch, my stance is unyielding,
as if my body and throat are at war
between the truth and the other;
head lolling in despair
at who I have become
and what I am holding.

The way out is the way in
and I’m looping,
rolling down a hill in a memorial summer,
catching myself at the bottom
and finding it to be the ash-sky;
continually Catherine-wheeling
through remnants of other iterations
of this inevitability.
We always end up here.
We always end up
here.
Something I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in first year of university.
Gabriel Aug 2020
Here, at the crossroads,
faced with the Seraphim,
I cannot make out
what it is supposed to be.
There’s a muted song
speaking of angels,
but I am versed in simple words
and know that the root
is of a snake, of the very same
entity that led Eden to ruin.

Its face is confused,
muddled like it’s being viewed
through a foggy mirror,
wisps of steam and uncertainty
cloud any discernible features
until one of us has to speak.

It has no voice, nor a need
for a voice, so I lend it mine.
I suppose it will answer in riddles,
or smite me on the spot,
but it stares, like nobody
has questioned its existence before.

And the road is still forked,
with no direction upon which
to question the existence
of a Celestial City.
Still, the Seraphim bores
into the marrow of my bones;
I feel it rooting around in there
for anything to judge me by.

It’s uncomfortable, but I am alive.
There are a lot of things in this world
that must have been created
to **** me, like God himself
decided that his finest work
should be one of destruction.

For an infinitesimal moment,
I am illuminated by everything,
and I understand that things only have power
if they believe that they do,
so I press on,
taking the path of the left hand.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.
Gabriel Jul 2021
I wear a mask in bed
to shield my eyes from the dark.
The separation of dark, really;
the two darks — the within and the without;
me, my eyes, locked into a body,
and even if I open them, I will be blind.

Outside the thin film of cotton,
the second darkness ticks onwards.
There is movement in this dark,
there is dancing,
there is a moon tracking snail-slick
across the sky, stars in its wake.
I could not sleep in this darkness
if I wanted to. I would feel motion sick
and my heavy legs would carry me
from sight to sight, dark to dark
until I became part of it.
It’s something I want to be part of, one day,
whether I’m six feet under or scattered
along the Earth, I want to no longer be scared
of the darkness that moves.
From a portfolio I wrote in third year of university, titled 'Insomnia'.
Gabriel Aug 2020
Havisham’s hands are ******
with the half-squeezed heart
blackened by falsity,
like thick red paint,
her crackling fingertips
keep moulding something invincible;
the permanence of lying.

Altars still stand
after the apocalypse,
registry books torn
to become cigarette papers;
the ash of everything
and a child,
painting the phoenix
onto the acid soil,
until the core coils into chainmail.

The echoes of the innocent
make pews into death row,
where the absence of a void
ruminates, glitching, triumphant;
wedding dresses at funerals
brush away the humid dew
of unmown grass,
as the softness of forgetfulness
crowns each grave eternal.

Havisham’s hands are made of soot,
the woman as the pyre,
long-since engulfed
in bitterness;
one lie creating a fragile universe.
Greek chorus repeating
minor rites
until the dead phoenix
dies again,
and only the smoke
of lie-infested letters
rises.
Something I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in first year of university.
Gabriel Jul 2021
Eventually,
you have to wake up.
You’re going to have to sit
back in your chair and drink whatever
stale coffee you’ve been nursing for an hour.

Perhaps all of this has been a dream, but not a good
enough one to read back and check whether it’s worth actualising
into something other than an insomniac cry for help. I would dial it back
if I could, make it easier to digest behind the eyes, but then I’d be
running the risk of saying things that I don’t mean. Maybe
there’s a little bit of truth to that. Maybe we’re all unable
to sleep in past noon. If you want to call me a liar,
I’ll take it. I’ll take anything at this point.

Especially if it’s over the counter.
You ever try that? For
insomnia, I mean.

They give you pills now, when you tell them you can’t sleep.
They knock you out real good and you wake up foggy,
the throes of a dream already slipping away like crushed glass.
You know, I heard of a guy once who got knocked out
and lived a whole other life, with a made up house and a made up
wife and a made up storyline, and then he woke up on the ground
and he was somebody else. I mean, he was himself, of course,
but he’d dreamed himself into another life, so the real one was more unreal
than the thing in his brain. Interesting, isn’t it? How time is fragile enough
that you can live fifty years in the second it takes to recover from a hard punch.
Do you see what I’m getting at, now? Pinch me. I need to know if I’m real.
From a portfolio I wrote in third year of university, titled 'Insomnia'.
Gabriel Aug 2020
Darling, please tell me which head you want on a platter,
and I’ll bring it to you. Don’t love him, please,
don’t love him, love me instead,
yes, I’ll decapitate myself if it means you’ll kiss my dead lips,
and please, love me until I die,
it’ll be an honour for a mouth like yours to mourn for me,
but please, don’t mourn for me.

I’m nothing in terms of you,
but I want you to remember me,
if only through the candles in the church,
from which my face burns in selfish wonder,
asking you if you’ve read my autobiography yet, and what you
thought of what I had to say,
don’t mourn for me.

Silver feels so sweet against my flesh,
so cool, like the pools of water
in which I sink myself,
waiting to drown like it’s the only thing that matters,
like all I can do is **** saltwater violently,
and I love you violently,
please, I love you,
but don’t mourn for me.

I wonder how you’ll cut my head off,
whether you’ll use a knife or a sword,
or the switchblade with dried blood that I showed you;
yes, I’m laying claim to this,
and yes, I’m begging you to use my own weapons against me,
but I’ll die anyway.
Let me have this,
but please,
don’t mourn for me.

Can I beg?
Can I ask you to **** me,
so that I can pretend it was my choice
to be lying here,
pale and emaciated,
kissing the knife against my neck,
calling you vampire,
calling you mine,
calling myself baptist, but lover,
don’t mourn for me.

I’ll call cool waters home,
I’ll think of the ocean,
and I’ll think of you,
and I’ll craft a manger from all of this dust,
because that’s all I’ll ever become
as long as you, Salome,
never mourn for me.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.
Gabriel Aug 2020
I remember dying, Father.
I remember it like it was yesterday,
because it was,
when you told me to save them,
and I saved them,
and then they told me I was you,
and I’m confused.

I remember it well,
the pounding of nails into flesh,
tingling in my heart;
I love another,
who is not you,
but could be
given the right light,
and opportunity.

I remember the pain,
sinking across palms,
and I beg for you
not to create any more stigmata
for the fallen;
I thought you loved them.
They do not deserve this.

I remember believing in you,
unwavering faith,
and I remember having all of that
choked into my neck muscles,
spasming to gasp for air
like crucifixion, again,
and I remember you.

Father, I remember you.
Do not think for a Heavenly moment
that I can ever forget
the role you pushed me into.
I remember your burning angel-eyes
and I breathe silently at Passover
so that my presence is unknown.

I remember what I am supposed to do.
I am supposed to save them,
to save them,
isn’t that what you sent me here for?
Just another errand
on your long list of people to sacrifice,
but I am here to save them.
even if that means
using your blood for my resurrection.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.
Gabriel Jul 2021
this room is full of clocks,
and i’m learning how to be lonely
against your body.
even if you aren’t here now,
i can imagine that one day,
you were.

how beautiful it would have been
to see you silhouetted against time itself,
the ticking of the universe
in time with your heartbeat
laying waste to cliché
and just loving each other.

i still have not learned how to be lonely,
only how to write about it,
scratching the ink-crust
before it dries.
the walls here are pinned
down in eternity
with drawings and sketches
of how the world looks without me.

but the clocks still carry on,
or most of them, at least.
the grandest of them,
ornate and finite,
have stopped, displaying
meaningless times that i pretend
have significance,
like the most beautiful doomsday
showing when i die.

and when it does happen,
perhaps you will be in this room.
perhaps the ghosts
i am imagining
are merely remnants of a parallel world,
in which you are here,
and in which i do not have to confront
a possibility that loneliness will be forever.
From a poetry portfolio I wrote in second year of university, titled 'Lonely Placements in a Loveless Universe'.
Gabriel Jul 2021
i’m going to have to dress you up for this one, i hope you don’t mind,
it’s just that we’re flitting between identities and trying to change the past.

by change, i mean we’re keeping everything the same,
but switching out her for me,
in the white-washed hallways with that imagery you fear;
a pregnant factory belt birthing electric dreams.

it’s all about what they do to women
and our brains and our autonomy,
it’s selfish, really,
to make this about me sitting alone in my room
but we’re still choking out the space we claim.

if there’s a film camera, there’s a film,
and if there’s an eye, there’s an i.
get those cinematic shots of long hallways where nobody knows what’s next,
and play the nurse, play the exorcist, thrice.

you’ll never know how many years you have after leaving western state,
but i’m hoping for less;
life afterwards is the transitional period between salt and freshwater,
and i need to distance myself.

*oh, how the rooms look so inviting, you’ll be cured here,
how wonderful,
that we have groundbreaking technology to fix your brain
when we tell you it’s broken.
how amazing it must be to be you,
this opportunity
to be chained down by something other than fame,
you look so beautiful!
i have to have you, you look so beautiful!
we’ll keep you here because you look so, so beautiful
when drool leaks from a mute mouth.
From a poetry portfolio I wrote in second year of university, titled 'Lonely Placements in a Loveless Universe'.
Gabriel Apr 2021
You wanna talk balance, huh?
You got a lecture to give,
and I’m not allowed to pour a drink
to get me through? Well ****,
if this ain’t ridiculous,
but I’ll listen. Nothing else to do
up here in the snow and the solitude and the shining.

You say things started alright,
and I nod, sip something unreal,
and say yes, my dear,
yes, perhaps I broke his arm
but I’ve vented the pressure
out of the boiler now.

And ain’t it a **** shame
that I don’t talk to Al any more?
‘Cept to sneer about the history
of a place that’s too far away to push
him back to drink.

So sure, tell me I’m unravelling,
and I’ll call you a *****
and you’ll lock yourself up in the room.
Give him the key, I’ll show him
that the **** in 217 is far worse
than a broken arm and a ruined career,
because this will take me away.

Who’s the other one inside me,
worming into a space
that I thought was mine?
Two in one body, a ******’ perfect
discount deal on everything
that can destroy a family;
check one, a son with a broken
arm and a fractured mind,
check two, a ***** for a wife,
and check three, me
the head of it all,
proclamation, divination, damnation
of the foundation of this stutter
looking over, overlooking,
a broken record skipping to the part
where I **** the pressure,
**** the boiler.

I’ll see you in the next one.
Fin.
.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'Spiral'.
Gabriel Jun 2020
my fingers stutter shattered sentences
when i'm like this. when i'm like this,
i'm shrink plastic and the world is an oven; or –
when i'm like this, i'm every unsatisfying
leaf that never crunched underfoot. i'm the spitting
shivering underdog who never made it out of the gate.
i'm pluto between the years 2006 and the end of the world.
when i'm like this, the world is like that,
meaning that the world is my childhood. the world
is the bloated feeling of a stomach full of lukewarm tap water.
the world is a surprise party wrapped up straitjacket-tight
and just a day too early.

when i'm like this, i'm always stepping on the cracks
in the pavement. the cracks, the world says, will open up
and swallow me into the belly of the beast.
Gabriel Apr 2021
You’re reading this poem
and I’m picking at the hem of my dress
until the circle of fabric
that graced my feet
now sits uncertainly
at my ankles.

You’re not passive,
no longer can you claim actionless;
for every line you read
I’m pulling more
and now my knees are exposed
to the cold scrutiny.

Which line, I wonder,
will you like enough to remember,
and will it be worth anything
when you’re done?
I’m asking you this
not quite rhetorically,
but I don’t think you can see past
the thighs shaking in the winter.

It’s not your fault, of course,
not you, or you,
but you’re still reading,
and I’m still unwinding
the thread,
so let’s make the claim,
you and I,
that we’re both at fault here.

It’ll be too late by the time these words reach you.

There’ll come a point,
where you look away,
and I wonder which part of myself
was too much;
which part of myself
made you turn away,
and which part of myself
needs further work to be presentable
in anything other than excess.

I apologise. I’m rambling, and still pulling at the thread. The idea here is to make this harder to read, because ******* it, I won’t stoop so low as to beg you to stop, but it’s getting colder the more I pull. Soon enough, I’ll be bare in front of you, and what are we to do, then?

What are we ever to do?
It’s alright to stop reading, now,
because there’s no thread left to unravel,
just a pile of loose fabric at my feet, and
you can close the book, now. You can close
it, and I’ll pick up the needle.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'Spiral'.
Gabriel Jul 2021
Sometimes I feel like there’s a worm inside my mind,
I hear it, when it’s nighttime, it has a voice
and that voice tells me to turn my body four times
so that everyone I love doesn’t leave me.

More than that, though, I feel it
right at the back of my skull. It nestles
deep inside and chokes the blood flow away
from rationality, and I clench my fist two times two.

And then it uncurls. I think it is wounded
but it is really just gorging on the compulsion
I have fed it. Again. But the reprieve is glorious
for a moment, until its maw opens back up for more.

Its body is a spiral, contorting thoughts
until I am at its mercy; although it is part of me,
I feel as though I am part of it.
It’s impossible to run away from an attached body.

One day, everyone you love will die and it will be your fault,
ballet turn, pivot, dance en pointe my darling, again,
walk, walk, walk, walk, there we go, now people are alive.
Now you’re a hero, for a second, for two.

Here we are in the thick of it.

Oh, you didn’t like that, did you?
From a portfolio I wrote in third year of university, titled 'Infestation'.
Gabriel Jul 2021
I waterfall my fingers down my throat
and wriggle them like they’re alive,
like I’m nineteen years old again,
trying to prove that I’m the cool girl
with no gag reflex.

The shower runs on boiling hot
and if I stand, I might fall,
so I’m taking the hair-infested plughole
as my date to the dance,
once I’m done with the black hole left in its absence.

My fingers are uncomfortably water-warm
and if I close my eyes, it feels so good,
like the first time I realised there was a clenched fist
inside my stomach that I could begin
to uncurl.

When I think about it, it’s like *******.
It’s something I wouldn’t talk about in Church
and it’s something I should only do behind closed doors.
A lot of things are like *******, in that way,
like being gay, and cutting my own hair, and whatever this is.

It’s a distraction.
It’s something to do when the list of things to be done
is the same every day, when the doors are perpetually
shut and the clenched fist will always be clenched
once rigor mortis has set in.
From a portfolio I wrote in third year of university, titled 'Infestation'.
Gabriel Aug 2020
They said it was only prisoners’ flesh
that lions want to eat,
and I’m remembering that, when you,
named as Mary,
bear down upon me and I gasp,
pleasure-filled and psalm-sick.

Who is Daniel?
And moreover - do we care?
You tell me to stop thinking so much,
and that’s alright,
I’ll stop thinking at all
if it pleases you.

It pleases me.

Your soft lips, arching,
pounding stones for those who have never sinned,
I beg you to embalm me this way forever,
and you laugh -
you tell me that nothing is permanent.

I am crying.

The den is filled with misty tomorrows,
and yesterdays that I will have to confess,
but I cannot bring myself
to bring testament to you,
and make real the blood from your Eve-flesh,
because if it is not real,
it is not mine.

Can I deal with that?

Oh, Daniel is knocking at my door, now.
I will let him in,
and this is goodbye
to the giant of my love
that cannot swell further in my heart
for fear of aneurysm
or breaking.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.
Gabriel Jul 2021
my god i need to hear voices somewhere else
than these little apartment walls (i keep
something inside) have you ever seen a film
on tv late at night (like a prison) where there’s
a room and the walls are closing in (locked)
but they always manage to get out (let me in) well
babe that’s me except i don’t get out i just get
s m a l l e r
would you rather i was enough for you or
enough for myself or
enough to fill a line with anything other than
a straight-up-on-the-rocks-panic-attack
with two straws and a little paper umbrella
and a tap tap tap on the bar waiting for the walls
to o p e n up again?
From a portfolio I wrote in third year of university, titled 'asmr: i’m crying in the bathroom and you’re into emotional voyeurism'.

— The End —