You have a spark that blazes past my ice cold eyes,
you're the six on a weathered pair of bad decision dice.
You're the smoke in my lungs; my hip's friction's delight,
and you're where I want to be at the end of the night.

So pull me by my the clasps of my black leather coat,
past the bar, to the back, to the room that Aidan keeps aside.
Whisper in my ears, past the roar of alcohol and smoke,
these words that I've longed to hear for some time.

Say:
"You are the cherry on a cigarette; the blade of a knife.
You burn me and turn me to melting when you enter my sight";
I'll say:
"Your lips are my addiction, your *** is my television,
and your eyes are where I want to be at the end of the night."

Then we'll explore love and bad decisions on the table and the floor.
You'll pull me closer, bite my ear, and whisper. "Shut the door."

i believe your heart is just overgrowth sworn to a secret oath of her bleach stained teeth, what was and what never will be. i sleep with buckets beside my bed and tear stained pillow cases and a knife under one of my mattresses. i wake up with a head heavy with dread and most early mornings i feel like i could be dead, but i know that i'm not because the knife is still under my bed.
and she kissed my forehead in my sleep and i held his hand under the tree where in real time people never meet, junkies just take turns staying there and sleep. i held a heart there. i held it in my hands and it was beating until there was something like a scream, i still think it was the wind.



the way the sunset skips some houses is really prophetic for the way some families in those houses become too broken to be noticed. the way the tops of the mountains can be seen on the darkest nights at times helps me understand the sounds the strings make and the sounds small creatures make when they awake. this chest is full of unmeasurable emotion that gave so many the notion that i don't know how to love, only curse the things that can't curse me back. i am skillful at allowing you to know my eyes and know my lies and the truth is i will never love anyone like i love the way i can make them love me late at night. i will never love. love never. never enough.

months ago on a friday night the bouquet of different memories we passed around was haunted by this idea that we could extract all of the hard parts from ourselves, all of the sad parts, and create god with it. everyone fell asleep that night and i went outside and buried this bouquet because i know that if there is such a god, he is sadder than all of us. we could never recreate something that's already been made with such disgrace to be full of anymore distaste, so we won't. we never will. our voices stay shrill now and some nights our ghosts steal our voices and run away to be near this tree, and they scream and scream and scream.

With a broken Hallelujah,
I sang you to sleep;
And at your wake,
Eulogized the many marathons
That you ran to find yourself,
Or scurried haphazardly,
After the self that you struggled to keep.

You know I waited for you,
Up on that mountain top?
While you searched tirelessly,
Almost desperately,
For that pin drop silence,
In the midst of all the cacophony.

By: Lulwama K. Mulalu

She was only a child, 

Tranquil in the distance,

Didn’t know a thing about love.

You came, and with just a subtle effort,

She let you in.

Innocence became thinner,

Established a lot of 
firsts.
Every action led to a downward *****.

“At last! Someone loves me,” she thought.
You made her want to see every light of dawn.

She thought wrong.

She was just a child,

Tranquil in the distance,

Didn’t know a thing about love.

That’s why she never got the chance,
To differentiate receiving someone’s love,
From feeding on broken trust.

Blinded by her feelings,

Fooled by your words,

Suppressed her senses to the inevitable,

Confined herself in the “us” world.

She was still a child,

Yet, you ruined her tranquility.

She didn’t know a thing about love,

So you gave her falsity.

You came and made an elusive effort,

For her to let you in, 

Then left her to wonder,

“Did I love you wrongly?”

We came together,
To rebuild from the pieces,
Left after the storm.

Emergent through emotion
In a sychophantic way,
Thrilling through my system
In recall of teaching’s fray.
Those years of inspiration
As an aspirant of they…
That concrete mass of youthfulness
Wherein I spent my day.

Each hour of nervous questing,
Each confrontation stored,
Each shred of indignation
When the master plan proved flawed.
Through gyroscopic reason,
Through footless halls of pain,
An exultation’s bright explosion
When that child said... “Please explain?’

And the myriad of starburst
When the sky came crashing down
When, as if, by touch of magic….
Realisation there…profound!
From within that mass of granite-ness
Poured enlightenment as gold
And hot jewels of satisfaction
Flowed within this soul… untold.

M.