In the end, I think we’re all just myths;
Tales our descendants cannot fathom into truths.

This tea tastes sweet on my tongue,
And in this particular moment,
My back aches from writing in a bad position.

But my now is now my past,
And your past is someone’s future,
And I am sure that if you turned
And looked back on yourself
You would see the future me
Staring up at you.

Die quietly, darling.
Die silently and gracefully;
Die like you lived.
Those flowers they put on your grave are blue,
Those flowers are beautiful like the sea.

But then I remembered
(how could I have forgotten)
Your dislike of that same blue sea.
Perhaps the spray and the wind
And the azure waves
Dampened down your fire.
And now that fire is out and now there’s
Nothing.

Die blazing, friend.
Die blazing hot with fire and passion,
Burn through your coffin,
Burn through the hollow earth and through the ground,
Burn back to me and live quietly.
Live quietly and gracefully.
But do not die.

I hold your hand
In some ancient place,
In some ancient time
Of exaltation.
We are whole,
Together,
Together we are madness,
We are death,
We are the orange light in the flames
And the reddened heat in hell,
We are sin and corruption and intangible fire.
We stand triumphant and giddy and
With stomachs twisting with a newfound light.
We stand over everything,
Over this splendid city,
Knowing that life is transient
And eternity not forever.

We run,
Run euphoric through streets
Of stone and smoke and dying light,
Tasting the air with our sharpened tongues,
Smelling sin,
Lying dizzy on cobblestones
In the summer rain,
Stretching our hands
Into the storm-scarred skies of death
To grasp the greying clouds,
And laughing about blood
And the metallic taste in our mouths.

We are fires,
We are flames,
We are the dust after death,
We are the ash after refinement,
We consume this city,
We consume our own ignited souls,
We consume everything
In our flames of madness.

And at dusk we sit in cafes,
At dusk we sit in cafes,
Alone in the lamplight
With your face bathed in amber.
You compare me to the moon,
And I tell you I am the sun.
For nothing but the hottest, brightest death
Is worthy of our
Burning celestial momentum.

I tried in the murky twilight of Wednesday to face it.
In the inky dusk of that far-flung moor,
I tried and failed to face it.
That next dawn sang of ochre and orange dewdrops
And promises that were never kept,
And I bit my tongue and promised myself
That by the sunrisen noon
This would all be gone.

Night fell down
Over the blackened hillside,
And all was clearer.
Those stolen cigarettes
We held between our teeth
Shone new from out of our minds
As if those embers knew all of our secrets.

And on that gold-drenched dawn,
We lay dizzy on railroad tracks
Triumphant in our drunken wanderings
And exalting clean syringes up to heaven.
And in the evening of yesterday,
We burned our throats raw
With the amber mornings of today.

Wake, adolescent angels.
Your eyes are ice storms,
Your irises are tidal like the cold North Sea,
Your pupils are moonwashed and mad
Like howling western winds.

You look at your horizon,
You inhale stardust and nebulas like cigarette smoke,
Snort powdered mountain snows
Like ******* in the idle breezes of April or May.

Weep, shriek, sob yourselves hysterical
In the darkness of subways,
Beneath underpasses of ***** and spray paint
And endless neon lights.
Jump, leap, drop like stones from melancholy rooftops
Clutching burning cigarettes and *****.
Spin, dance, laugh drunkenly in stairwells,
Assault your forearms with syringes and needles and broken glass.

Cry melancholy saltwater in public toilets,
Kiss the mirrors with fight-split lips
And pick at the broken wall tiles with chipped fingernails.
Tear at the moss on empty high-rise balconies,
Stand high on the railings without hands
And contemplate life and death and redemption and eternity.

Stab, slice, tenderise your thighs with pencil sharpeners,
Fall, graze your backs ****** on concrete,
On gravel, on rough tarmac and asphalt,
Trip, split open your knees in parking lots at 2:45 in the morning
When you’re high and drunk and giddy,
And dreaming of poetry and existentialism and cities.

Sleep, juvenile metaphysicists;
Your mouths are dimming campfire flames,
Your minds are like caves of amethyst and quartz,
But time will go on,
Much as it has since the morning of everything.
Earth will spin;
Faster than your head when you’re high
And your brain is addled by infinity.
Space and time and God
Will remain eternal.
But you
(But we)
Will not.

One may wonder;
What is it like to die?
To crumble like Pompeii,
Fall like a dynasty,
Recede
Into the frost-windowed annuls of time,
Like some forgotten journal
With words written in blood
And bound with human skin.

I can feel my heart
Beating in my chest,
Beating in my breast.
Too many nights have drowned me in insomnia,
In waking dreams,
In visions of mountains
And rainswept forests,
In my memory of the curve
Of your chin
Or the subtle tint of rose in your lips.

I sleep now;
Sleep properly.
(most of the time).
When I am not plagued by my injuries
Or by the nebula,
Oh, by that nebula of stars
And words
And thoughts
That I have fallen victim to
Oh so many times.

You spilled your coffee
Down the stairwell once.
Don’t you remember?
I remember;
It seemed strangely golden,
And when the sunlight hit it
At just the right angle
It looked like molten bronze.
Molten, gleaming, and ironically beautiful.

They came to clear it away.
They cleared it away with water.
They scrubbed it clean with water,
And then with bleach
When the stain refused to leave.

In a strange, moronic kind of way,
It reminded me of you.
Not by its golden-brown gleam
In the morning March sun,
Not by its smell;
Like calm and cocoa and the inside of a café,
But because it’s still there.
It’s still there,
Go and look if you don’t believe me.
We thought that it was transient, didn't we?
Temporary.
We thought that the water and bleach
Would cleanse it and make it gone.
But it is stubborn, and fixed, and permanent.
It ruptured the pattern when it fell, and it ruptures it still.
Feet walk over it every day;
People
Pass it every day,
And they catch sight of it in the same beam of sunlight
That made it gleam and shine.

Do not get lost in this moment.
You know
(We know)
How comfortable this darkness can be.
But darling, believe me.
Nothing is better
Than leaving a mark on this world
And leaving the pattern perpetually ruptured.