He was a civil war
and I died trying to be a soldier

I'm just waiting for the world to fall
off its axis,
so I can sleep with the stars.

I keep having this recurring dream
where you're there
and I'm there
and we're hiding beneath the sheets
because that's the only place
the light can't find us.
You're brushing up against my face
and I can feel your chest contract
with mine.
I look at you
and I know it will be the last
but I just hold you
And your heart beats against my throat
and your breath expels along my skin
You're alive
and I can feel you
and you can feel me too.
I look into your eyes
and I see the ocean

I'm on the beach
and she's walking behind me
humming sweet songs of adolescent love
she's happy.
I dive into the waves
but this time it's different
this time I'm drowning.
I'm drowning and she's not there
I clench my fists and count to ten
but I'm still drowning.
I call for you but you never come

I'm in church
nine years old
and the pastor swears I am pure
he swears we will be forgiven
and I turn to mommy
ask if Jesus will forgive daddy
for the lipstick on his collar
but she doesn't reply.
She's in the bath late at night
she's crying softly
dropping her cigarette in the tub
I try to make her smile
but she's still crying
Daddy left her for a *****
and she's still crying.

It's you again
This time you're holding my hand
and we're walking, just walking
you plant a kiss upon my forehead
and we keep walking.
But somewhere in this version of my terror
I'm still drowning
and you're screaming from the surface
that I deserve it
That I finally know
what it feels like to die
and you're not going to save me.

I wake up
in a place that my body knows as hell
and your gazing at my corpse
I'm chained against a wall.
You're crying
you're begging for my help
but I can't
I tug against the steal
hanging like anchors
from my wrists
but I can't move
You're bleeding out
across the floor again
calling my name
but I can't save you

I awoke to a symphony
that reminds me
in every filthy way
that I have killed you
I am reminded of my brother
trapped in an unforgiving youth
playing spin the bottle
but here
he is alone
kissing the wounded parts of himself
in hopes that they will heal
I am reminded of my mother
and how she still thinks
I don't notice the empty pill bottles
in the bathroom
and she still can't seem to stand straight
without daddy by her side
I am reminded of my friend
and how she gave the broken parts
of herself
to a boy who didn't give
a ****
a boy who kissed all the girls
that tasted of *****
and had no scars along their writs
I am reminded that people leave
in every conscious minute
of every hour
ever lived
people leave
people leave
*p e o p l e   l e a v e.

Once I loved a man
who crushed my words between his
fingers.
I never told him that I cried for three weeks straight,
and that to this day
I still can't say his name.
It was the first time I truly felt the pain of empty sentences.
It was the first time I ever wanted to see my pulse from the inside.

Once I loved a man
that chose his ****** over reason.
Said the world was too bitter
and he was always afraid.
I dropped a dime inside his mind,
but it only sank the boat.
He still sleeps inside my walls.
Today I thought I saw his corpse sitting in my bath tub,
but I think this time it's just the oxy kicking in.
I keep a blood stained shirt inside my pillow case,
and I don't know if it's good or bad
that the blood isn't mine,
or if it's just embarrassing to say
I will never stop loving him.

I loved a man that never hurt me,
but still I ended up in shards beneath the ocean.
He doesn't know about the mess I made upon my sheets,
because I couldn't shake the feeling
of his footsteps on my veins,
and I couldn't bare
to lift my head above the water.

The world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.

He speaks in  splatters  of speech
In a voice that resembles a man
I once loved before
His words dissolve into the walls
Crack his jaw and shatter his teeth
All while trying to hold his bones in place
And stop the wounds from leaking out

His hands are getting weaker by the drink
And the violence is only getting worse

But beneath his twisted tongue
And inside his clenching fists
Weeps a man
that cradles
in his fear
A man that cowers in the dark
Stretching desperate arms across my sheets

I took hold of his limber spine
And shifted his nerves back into place
I took his face into my palms
And planted a kiss upon each cheek

Held him close up to my chest
Until the mere feel of my skin
Became the scent of his

I sleep beside a broken man
The kind that shivers in the silence
And I stitch him back up
every day at midnight
Hoping I will awaken to a body
bound together by my touch

a relit cigarette never taste the same
and that's all I'll preach
on rekindling old flames.

He died on the bathroom floor
The tiles cracked beneath him
Split the earth right down to the core
Poison slipped from under his skin
And drained his body of blood
He lay there like a bag of blistered bones
Smothered by a world I knew as mine
With my name scarred to his hips
I tore the flesh from my spine
Warmed him with breath
Wrapped him up in suppression and regret
Clawed through my veins and held him down to rest
But his blood still leaks from purple lips
Dissolving through my chest like arsenic kisses and acid trips
He has a tongue made of razors and it's lapping up my sweat
Sometimes I think it's just my guilt tugging at my throat
Other days I know it's him -
Spitting out the currents in an ocean for the blind
An eye for an eye, and he'll finally have me confined

You can tell a lot about a person from the way they leave.

I am not everything you said I was.

Winter hit
The window panes turned cold
Bricks around the drains began to mold
Frost stuck to sidewalks
And the tip of your nose
Protected by gloves and cotton clothes
I watched your skin fade to grey
Like the trees outside my house
But not as beautiful
The church bells rang every Sunday
And the old man down the block sat in dismay

The veins in your neck turned blue every time it rained
I loved it till the veins in your arms did it too
I could see your heart pulsing through
But those were only the sirens for the tornadoes in your chest

Winter never felt as cold as it did that year
When you started praying to a needle and broken skin
And it tore you apart limb from limb

Crystals of white for a childs first kiss
***** is temporary bliss
Eyes like lace and teeth like coals
Coughing up bruises and spitting out souls
Breaking waves that bury the sea
Swallowing down all its debris
Fingertips shivering up your spine
Caskets of pills and velvet devine
A mother with shaking hands
Only a whispering brutality understands
Seven for the morning
All to make life slightly more adorning
Pale skin and sleepless nights
Veins covered in cloth while the frost bites
Hollow bones and painless cries
Blood vessels knawing at her thighs
Embroidered pleas
A religion to throw you to your knees
*Black lace and the codeine scene

Notice she's kneeling to the cliffs of a river.
The cracks of her jaw give a quiver.
The sky collapses behind her.
Through these eyes tainted in blur,
I see the sand man is singing.
These delusions he's brining.
Polystyrene flowers,
With sights that devour,
Of purple and gold,
Beauty spoken yet untold.
Entwined through her thigh,
There's always a death to deny.
"Could you lead me to the stars?"

Cotton wool sown clouds,
Hovering above crowds,
Towering over his head.
His lungs fell dead.
Leaving a voided space,
For a lit bomb to interlace,
With his soul.
He's a self-awarded black hole.
"Second to the right,
And straight on till morning ends the night."

You sat beside me and spoke so sweetly
Let your hands run up my back ever so discreetly
I felt you dancing along my vertebrae
To the tunes of your own words that mould like clay
It took all of me to lift my sleeves
And show you my scars, the reason why everyone leaves
You titled your head to get a better view
Pointed out every dark depressant hue
Then you let your tongue slip
To tell me they're not the wreckage of skin, shadow and ship
That they're not remotely close to how bad they could be
Little did you know how much those scratches mean to me
You spoke of a girl you once knew
Like a Broadway play acting on cue
Mine were nothing compared to hers
In your words, mine are like nicks from spurs
You left me blowing in an empty breeze
While I whirl around like branches falling from trees
Nicks and cuts becoming apparent
My chest transforming transparent
Now I sit curled in a blood soaked bed sheet
Unwillingly trying to compete
Keeping my bones warm
While emulating thoughts swarm
To think you were going to be the one to make my bed
To think you were going to be the place to rest my head
As if I don't hate my inflections enough
You turned into a wolf and puffed and huffed
Blowing me down like a house made of straw
Then you sat back and laughed as I crawled
Letting the stones cut my upper thigh
You asked me what it feels like to die
I told you that it feels a lot like this
And those tiny little nicks shouldn't be dismissed
Because every wound bleeds
It's a part of sufferings deed
And soon enough they'll bleed you dry
By then it sure won't help to cry
You will be the death of me
And only then will you see
That those nicks and cuts mean so much to me
And that they are as bad as they could be

It's been raining for over an hour now. The lightening is so potent and bright that I cringe in fear of it cracking my skull when it strikes.
Drops are hitting the top of this tin roof, and the sound breaks through my room with such a gust that it drowns out the music of it's thunder.
I'm caught up thinking about you again, like that's any surprise to me or my wretched head.
I paint sweet moments in my mind of how we could have been.
I imagine the day you'd meet my father, shake hands with my uncle, compliment my grandmother on the Sunday roast.
It frightens me that I can see you in my future; buying our groceries, washing our clothes, changing our lightbulb.
The heart grows fonder when in a state of longing, that much I know is true, and there isn't a doubt in my mind that my every bone longs for you.

Single
Moms
Raise
Soldiers.

if ever you
need a place
to rest, there is a four
chamber apartment inside
my chest.* if ever the molecules
that make up your head convince you
that you're better off dead, let
my bruised and broken back
bone be your solemn
deathly home.
embody me
completely.
and do
not do
it
discreetly.

"Can I offer you a drink sir?"
He didn't flinch,
Reacting with such demur.
He resembled grief to the last inch.
Maybe he didn't hear me.
"Sir? In need of a whiskey perhaps?"
Maybe it needn't be,
But it seemed as if he was ought to collapse.
Cigarette slipped between his teeth.
Leaking wounds along his hands.
I soon noticed the blade beneath.
I knew then that he is one who understands.
His head stayed down,
Hidden behind a defence of stubble.
Long last, he came around.
"Make it a double."

Your arteries are like correlations
Possessing fragments of my brightest moments
Protruding right against your skin
And an abundance of my darkest thoughts
Crawling viciously through your lungs
Infecting your every breath
Just to fill the empty spaces
Between the blood that pulses through your veins
And the twisted bones that keep you straight

The craters in your wrists
Hold masquerades of celebratory pain
Where crisp and lifeless voices
Hum out screams of your trauma
Like meaningless smalltalk
As if you were a resemblance of the weather
Just another galactic disaster
While their idle hands of Devils play
Scrape knives along your spine
And feast formally from your flesh

Where the sunset stains the ocean,
And the mountains meet the sky.
That's where I wish to be,
While he sits beside me.

Hidden deep within the woods,
Formidable and hushed.
The smell of our blazing fire
Spreading ominously throughout,
While we make love against the flames.
That's where I wish to be,
While he sits beside me.

Between our barricade of covers,
And his sharp, shy eyes.
Lustful skin on lustful skin,
And still urging closer.
That's where I wish to be,
While he sits beside me.

If I could, I would gather the fragments of your void. I would posses the demons crawling across your skin. I would extract the fowl voices from your head. I would engulf all your pain. I would bury your suffering in my chest,

But I am too weak to be your cure.

She is as beautiful as the sin you never had enough nerve to commit.

Some of you may know me,
              Some of you may not.

You may have seen me across the street,
Sensual
And
Sleet.
Maybe you caught me in your mothers bedside draw,
Or in the pockets of a local *****.
We might already be acquainted,
                           We might be best friends,
I might be your
Means
To
An
End.

            Give me a taste,
            Be mine forever.
            But don't try play it clever,
            Don't be a predictable fool.

Maybe you think you're stronger.
If that be the case,
                            Then come a little closer,
           Get a clearer view.
      Those to make it out alive are few.

Let the paranoia manifest in your cells,

Let the shivers be like earthquakes in
your bones.

Let your agony pour out in moans.

Come on dear,
Let me
             Take away your pain.
Let me
             Be the blood in that vein.

                  Can't you tell?
                    I'm here to stay.
                      Come along,
                        Let us play.

But let it be known,
I am no one trick pony,
And this is no childs game.
This will end in shame.

Do you see the visions?
The never ending car collisions.
Do you feel the sweats?

Can't you see?
They're
All
Gifts
From
Me.