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.

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

but
     I
      want
               to
                 sin
                     on
                         every
                                  inch
                                        of
                                           your
                                                 body.

He's not a man of many graces,
fewer teeth than tongues
but he won't say much with his lips.

He's at his strongest when you push,
but never from a kiss.
See,
he's stubborn in every way that doesn't matter,
in every principle that has no lesson.

I've bent the spines of fragile men
to see how far they'll go
before they break,
before they'll form into a crest
of his back that I can't dig from my head.
I've watched them fall in love with me
because I thought that maybe
one of them would empty me,
but they didn't.

He is an ill-mannered world,
the kind that breads creation.
A manifestation of passion and fear.
With eyes that dug twelve foot tunnels in my veins
and went there to die.

A man of simple needs,
plesantaries and shaky knees.
But he doesn't want to see you quiver,
*he only wants to know it.

I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to feel the impact of your absence
To see that you were taken by a substance
I'm sorry I was never there
Not once to wash away your fears
Nor tuck you in at night
Take away the fright
But the death I found lying sweetly in your eyes
Dug craters in my skin cells
Soft and precious little dents

I had to clean the blood away
Couldn't stand to see you there
So I scrapped and scrubbed
Until the thought of you had passed
But in this role, I was sickeningly miscast
And nothing could have stopped you
Not a single plead nor shriek
You left as fast as you had come
Without a cry nor squeak
And I could swear I saw you in the mirror
Walking hand in hand with death
But you did not look behind you
Not even at your ****

I'm sorry I didn't make it to the funeral
And I'm sorry I barely cried
I'm sorry that I let your sister see you while you died
I'm sorry that I blame you for my suffering
And that I'm still recovering

But most importantly
I'm sorry that I didn't save you
I'm sorry that it was too late
And I'm sorry I couldn't save you from the pain that drove you to your fate
That I couldn't take away your misery
Couldn't take away the evil
That you had to look for happiness inside a little needle

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Where the daisies grow tall
And the birds sing in perfect harmony
That's where you'll find us
Tucked in sweetly beneath the silver skies
Hands entwined
And bodies holding tight
We'll stay there forever
He'll stroke my hair
And I'll trace his scars
Tranquil and content
I'll love him always

They will write entire novels based solely on your eyes, create depths of intangible intimacy that can only result in displacement.

You will come to know of death before death.

They will dip their fingers in your blood and paint diagrams of love across your chest. You will transform into artwork, a selfish inspiration.

On nights that end in benevolence, they will be too frightened to speak; and you will never understand.

You will learn how to break, but more like waves and less like porcelain.

They can feel agony far beyond your compression. Your silence will be substance for extinction, *and a poet never forgets.

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

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

I was lost so innocently in your eyes
Completely
Fooled
By love itself

So,
I guess that explains why your words
Pierced
My
Gut
And left a suffering so deep
That no drunken novelist can explain it

Like you set fire to my kidneys

Bathed my lungs in citric acid

You know
I loved you more than I had thought possible
And my fingers will
Never
Feel
So at home
Again

But it's been a pleasure to have your hands be the ones to
Rip
Apart
My chest
And break the bones that make up my rib cage

It was an honour to love you

But

This is my final tribute to you
My final goodbye
The last time I put your inflections to paper
The
Last
Time
I
Ever
Miss you

but isn't the real tragedy that I found myself within you
as you briefly gazed into the mirror that is me and walked away
isn't the real tragedy that I have become a vise of borrowed space
a gap to be filled by hands I have reached for in the dark
that I have misplaced my emptiness for loneliness
and in return
lost count of the bodies I have slipped into like old coats
trying to find the one that shapes me into the woman I was before you left
my bones may be empty but my fists are full of the laughter of native ghosts
mocking me for holding onto a love less real than they are
isn't the real tragedy that I can't place the nights I have attempted to answer my question of grief with ***
a wreckage of ash perading as anguish
but isn't that love
not seeing the explosion when you are the bomb
isn't the real tragedy that I am alive purely by luck at this point
that I am nothing more than a decorated shipwreck
*an obituary
my very own ceremony

Someone once told me that life is just a series of moments,
that the past is merely a story we tell ourselves before we fall asleep.
And so I look at him and I am reminded that I am not who I was a moment ago,
and that I shouldn't try to be.
I fear a reality of fiction and distortion,
where my life is a blurry foreign film and he is the fourth wall,
always broken.
I have written of lovers and their seemingly intangible hands for so long that my concept of time is impressionable,
one might even call it sacrilegious.
I have bled dry every metaphor capable of embodiment that I wonder if it ever meant anything,
I wonder if anything ever will.

I want to write him into a scripture of meaning, of something other than illustrated angish.
I want to write about something that isn't love,
that isn't a thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.
I want to write about the way he leads me into rock pools,
like a child being baptized.

I look at him and I am reminded of the ocean,
as if his blood can only move in waves without devotion,
more like instinct.
I want to write about something that isn't love,
because this is more like inspiration.
This is not knowing what could possibly come after his tide falls back.

I am aware that literature always ruins the ending,
that finishing a book mid sentence is the only way to avoid the loss of its final words.
I am aware that beautiful things can never stay,
but maybe that's what makes them beautiful.
He is a picture of my perfect faith,
but he doesn't make me want to believe in religion,
because I know god hates the competition.

For so long I had thought that I was never going to feel anything new,
that I had exceeded the depth of emotions,
like anything that follows can only be a lesser version of something previously felt,
but here I gawk with a mouthful of blasphemous teeth.

I couldn't tell you about the snowstorm he evokes within my chest,
nor the locust plague that raid in his name.
Because this is not a love story,
at least not just yet.
This is a man that has grown roots where I have only planted seeds,
a man that scripts his stories on the soles of his feet.
*And so I look at him,
and I am reminded that I am not who I was a moment ago,
and that I shouldn't try to be.

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.

I feel the weight of my words
crumble more with every day
that passes by,
like Autumn leaves beneath
my feet.
And I wonder if they ever
meant anything,
or if they ever will again.
Someone once told me that
life is merely a series of moments,
like blury foreign films
watched in a ***** haze.
Our lives are but a silver platter
of stories that can hardly be proven,
only eaten by those who listen.
There will never be certainty
that "then" ever really happened,
that words were ever said,
or even felt.
We are insignificant figures
of organic matter
and restless molecules
that spit out words,
to form phrases,
to form moments,
that never truly occur.
And again,
I wonder if I ever meant anything,
or if I ever will again.