With a tracing of my dreams
I’ll draw for you
In the shapes of streams
And the sounds of seas
A lucid doodle
The colour of waterdrops
To show you where my world stops
And my bones begin.

I’ll take you to the place
Where my poems sing.

I am not depressed
I’m just deflated
Out of style and over-dressed
At second-best, I’m overrated

An old birthday balloon
(Out of breath, somewhat bated)
I hum my jingles out of tune
One-hit-wonders soon outdated

Like a song without sound
Mourning a muted meltdown
I’m at the point of no concern
For my inability to yearn

I am -
Whatever comes after
The past, the future
The cries, and the laughter

I remain –
Whatever came before
The purple rain, the midnight train
The ****** and the *****

I am a pixelated painting
Understood by few
Inexplicably containing
Little drops of you

You’re my middle C
A sepia photograph
Of my mundane eulogy
And my previous epitaph

You are my bitter half
The gall in my bladder
My nervous laugh
My endless chatter

You’re my history rewritten
My once shy, twice-bitten
My state-of-the-art
You’re the bottom of my heart

The top of my lungs
You’re my talking in tongues
The motivational quote
In my suicide note

And although I’ll never be free
From this heart on my sleeve
I’ll always wish you to be
The Adam to my Eve.

I wanted you to sit
On a park bench
In the middle of the city

And watch me sail away in the sky
Like a kite of many colours
Wondering what happened to your band of brothers

I first saw you in a cloud shaped like a man
And in the wingspan of an eagle

Feeling the grass moving between my toes
I flowered and froze
To become the shape you chose

I wanted you to grow me
Like a tiger lily
I wanted your hand to fit
In the small of my back

But instead my bones turned black
And I blossomed and burned
When your back was turned

I should’ve flown
Before your eyes caught me
And turned me into stone

In your shadow, I am never alone
In your echo, I’m a semi-tone

The history of our love
Like a mystery, like a dove
Is written in graffiti
Where our harboured street
And the moon’s reflection meet

And I’ll always wonder how
You manage to make me feel so tall
And at the same time
So incredibly small.

There is another woman living
In the friction
Between your hips and my thighs

Do you think I haven’t seen
The memory of her
Swimming in the moisture of your eyes?

Do you think I haven’t noticed
The sadness
In the lines around your smile?

Do you think I haven’t realised
You’re somewhere else all the while?

Do you think I haven’t measured
The distance between
What you say and what you mean?

You’re not the first to show up here
With a broken dream
Slung over your shoulder
Heavy with things you never told her

How you’re wishing you could hold her
As we’re lying on my bed
I can hear her broken promises
Resounding in your head

I’m tired of being a consolation prize
I’m tired of soothing away silent cries
I’m tired of picking up the pieces
And wasting all my kisses
Wondering why no one misses
….me.

Should I just accept the fact
That she’ll probably want you back
Once she remembers all the things
That are making me fall in love with you?

You were beautiful in Borneo
Like a song I’d been expecting
To start playing on the stereo

I was fragile when you found me
A lifetime’s worth of sorrow
And disappointment built around me

But you gave me a standing ovation
A merry-go-round of applause
And cut through my curt conversation
With your musical mixed metaphors

You asked me why I was waiting
For something already long gone
And suddenly all of that aching
Disappeared in the song of a swan

You and me
We should be poetry
We should be prose
The way our breathing slows
And our hearts beat
Like wings on Bourbon Street.

You and I
We should be together
Birds of a feather
Flying like time.
We always had rhythm, you know
We just never had rhyme.
We committed a crime together
And should've served time
Been brought to justice...
But it was just us
Perfect in our alibi.

We may not've had rhyme
But at least we had reason
We committed treason together
And should've been tried
We should've been been true
Me and you
On the corner of Bourbon Street
And Fifth Avenue.

I pull the land on which you live
Closer to where I stand.

In one smooth motion
I narrow the ocean
Uniting our shores
Until yours is mine
And mine is yours.

There are no more miles
Between our smiles
And just a sliver of the sea
Like a scar in the sands
Keeps you and me
From holding hands.