the one you used to
say, the one that you
have started to
hear yourself now
say. The one you
hoped and prayed
would come and
wipe away the
rot you had become,
you know it’s
fading from view,
that day you knew
is hazy now, more
dream than real,
more someone
else eating a
delicious meal
while you
stand in the rain
watching through
the pain, a life
you’ll never claim.

There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.

It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.

our
hearts in boxes
sealed shut to
keep out the
cold and dust,
to keep the stars at
bay we bolstered the
ports, pinned
ourselves in,
in the low valleys
of the hills, shielded
ourselves from the
glint of seeing
for miles, the universe &
the skies, everything we
are so clear & wise,
we fed ourselves lies
with newspapers,
our skin turned
wrinkled,
crinkled, the
ink stained our
teeth when we began
to speak.

we think we love,
think we
stand upon
sturdy stuff,
think the rolling
seas don't come
for us,
we're young,
we're never
gonna grow
up, the tombstones
roll in hills the
world over,
but we kid ourselves
in our beds,
in our heads,
we curl back the
skies,
shift the covers,
shut our eyes,
ignore the cries.

there was a
dream here
once,
it came in
        via the
rain,
fed crops,
     livestock, us,
but at dawn it
had gone,
    taken the
bus to
somewhere
it could belong,
somewhere
         made of
sturdier stuff.
I imagine
     it rolling itself
up into
             the dust,
         coating the
backs of tongues,
speaking a
        language so
different to my
own, I imagine
it finally feels
like home.

we didn't
know we wrote
          our names
   into snow,
scrolled
our
         soul into
soil,
our toil invisible
on
         maps but
held
as heavy as
breath
         in cold air,
our love, death
birth, despair
        who we
were written
indelibly
into this
               earth