When you can't look strangers in the eye
because lies they've sold you keep you high
and paranoid that we're all just the monsters that we try to hide.

They set the bait but you won't bite
you've long had your jaw stitched tight
terrified you'd open it and say something less than polite.

an insistence;
an automatic pouring.
a stream through a vessel.
I am so drawn to my own waterfall
I will throw myself off that edge
to taste its bittersweetness.

Each heavy breath

falling in and out of time

with the hollow stroking of the clock

ticking endlessly into the dark distant unknown.

Your limbs

carelessly strewn amongst the ever­building clutter

provides a careful serenity;

A calm that dangles precariously,

waiting to fall into the surrounding chaos.

Tense and untouched,

my eyes will keep you safe.

top-o-themarnintoyee
bowts&bo;
    wts&bow;
       ts&bowt;
        s&bowts;
                            -dot.
th’orizon

like-

(c             S

      C    o             A n
f             T

    T              e        E

          t       R
  R

                  t     E      i)

            D.
                   -o’er te blew
th’salty err shmellshlike.

             home.

My heavy eyelids flutter
and the yellow light reveals the furrow in your brow.
You frown at me

But I don't know what to say.

I try and dip
my oar into

the glassy water.



my subconscious shatters.

and I warn you to watch out for the pieces.

through a bruised eye
there’s little to see
but the scratches on my arms
and the rows of teeth
in your jagged grin.
i can’t move
from one side of the room
to the other
without your needle.
you nurse me back to health
in your ****** arms
and tear me down again,
stitch me up like a doll
and drag me home.
what can I say?
i guess I'm a sucker
for all that romantic crap.

Reefs forming in the grain

chewed up by these hungry years.

Her heels crushing;

little petals into a brown bough,

Speckled like a tumbled shell,

From the handprints of many generations.

-    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -

Glossy lacquer,

smeared on dark lips in steady

paintbrush strokes

Cold moulded clean-cut strips

clacking unerringly as her heels

skip across the artificial wood.