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.

I heard the flutter of a thousand feathers above me,


black birds convened at tomorrow’s end


I saw a ****** of crows encircling the sky


rushing downward into a vortex


Clattering straight for my skull


aiming for divvy morsels that fell off my body.


There’s not much left of me,


their blunt bills perforated most of my skin


Unveiling the skeleton inside this closet,
Unraveling the secrets this mouth can’t


In hoping to shut my heavy eyes to rest


and dig me a bed six feet under


so I can tumble to eternal slumber.


The tears running down my eyes diluted


the colors of my blood stained hands


as I wipe them away


Raindrops, tears,  and blood


doesn’t differ much from each other


For they’re all just liquid substances that symbolizes pain.


I sight these black birds


sitting by the branches of a dead oak tree,


their claws clenched against the aged wood


Bathing in the ashes that fell like snow.


But I’m just lying perfectly still,


my back flat on solid ground


Facing the bleak sun


remaining numb and frozen


This is how I picture death


like sketching a mausoleum.

I.
There will be a day, you say,
where the world stops and all that ever was
and all there ever will be would cease.

                                                                     Trust.

There will be a time, he says,
when I will no longer love like how
you built the moon for me, balancing
upon a staircase of wooden boxes.

                                                                    Trust.

You don’t care. You let him weave
with string, then with your soul,
your heart the ball of yarn at the end.

                                                                   Trust in him.

You are a lover. You are a fool.

II.
Light. Soft light and harsh light and lantern lights
and fairy lights and neon lights and flashlights.

Light, like that which comes on in his eyes
when you tell him you want Honey Stars, and
you two spend the night picking at those overhead.
He tells you that when you drop stars into the
Pacific, they become sweet, like honey.

All you wanted was cereal, but you are a fool
one that picks at stars that have long since died,
one that can’t tell a corpse from a sparkle.

You don’t get any stars in the end, except for the
ones in his eyes.

A fool.

III.
This is where you grew poppies,
expecting to harvest the seeds and
crush,
thinking that maybe,
just maybe,
the dust will help you sleep, like the
sand of the Golden man.
You teeter on the edge that separates
wanting and needing,
You walk on a slowly fraying tightrope.

Tight,
        like your heart.
Rope,
          like how you rope
souls into believing you,
how you rope in friends
and demand their faith.

This is where you rearranged
his little soldier boys, where the
ceramic crashed against the wood
and refused to break.

Not like you, then.

This is where you kissed him,
over
       and
             over, because
air is useless without oxygen
and oxygen is useless to a pair of collapsed lungs.

IV.
You hate him. You hate his strength,
how he bangs the table and it snaps in two.

You hate his laughter, scratching against the walls
in tune with your sobbing.

You hate how you have to scan his eyes before you sit,
have to look before you make the metaphorical leap.

You hate how you let him force open your legs,
hate his pride at being in control, and his guilt
for the purple and blue spots on your skin,
like garish children’s make-up,
a clown at the party of life.

You hate how he holds onto your sides till
you hear the crack, and how you tell the doctors
you fell, because you did.

You are still falling, every time he looks at you,
Honey Stars in his eyes.

You don’t hate him. You love him,
that’s why you come back to be destroyed.

You hate yourself.
That’s also why you come back, to be destroyed.

You can’t repair hurt like that
but you try anyway, because the best part of building
is when you knock down.

V.
It is painful, but pain is a symptom of life.
You let him hurt you, let him crush your
bones and self-esteem, because no one
taught you how to love and if it means giving,

then you must be doing it right.

VI.
Wake, from the best sleep you’ve had,
wake from a nightmare, to a nightmare.
He is gazing out of the window, with
suspenders to hold up his pants
and his courage.
Your canines sink into your thumb, as
he turns to you and he says, “Hera,
I love you, but–”

The memory ends there.

Hera was the wife of Zeus,
goddess of women and marriage.
Your parents made a mistake,
more than once.

VII.
You are alone.
Quiet was never your thing, silence the most
deafening noise in the world.

This is your hand, a hand that once
rested against his neck, a hand that
felt his blood pulsing in his veins.

This is your hand and it is green
not from gardening but with envy.

These are your shoulders, shoulders that once
carried backpacks stuffed with Honey Stars
and sour things like love.

These are your shoulders, and even Atlas
cannot carry the weight on them.

This is your heart, and it is red.
This is your soul, and it is aluminium,
his words like sandpaper, polishing
until your soul tears and can be collected,
filtered and cross-examined under a microscope.
It will be reactive with the acid of his absence,
but only for a while.

This is your neck, and the rope feels rough
compared to your memories of his hands.

As swarm of aggressive multi-coloured ants,
Evening traffic charms the highway,
Eerie tree shadows haunt the carriageway at three o'clock,
Shadows will reconfigure and extend as time passes through the sundial of my trip,
This burning night, on the way to smoky city,
Inflames the melting tyres, smoking as if sticky molten caramel,
Bathes highway with red hot haze,
I jump as air conditioning, kicks in,
Conning me my journey's nearly done,
In the heat of the evening sun,
Wakes me from my slumbers doze,
Traffic slows through rush hour jams,
Dances,weaving lane to lane,
Through rush hour congestion's indigestion!
By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

You stir, sheets stick to your skin,
drawn curtains; shake off the spins.
A summit of buttermilk thunderheads
snap the silk threaded ilk from your covered bed;
a flurry of cats and dogs in Elysium,
but you’d even prefer the Devil beat his wife instead.
There’s no clarity in a mare’s tail;
can’t bear to see the day in shades of gray-scale;
exhale the sale from off the same scale.
You’d rather play jail than pay bail so you can pray tell.

And now I’m in the dark with a snare drum background;
hounds drowned barks turn heads, twiddle thumbs, and lack sound.
And a drenched cat just wants the home with the furnace:
the blankets, the treats, the tone; only earnest.
I’m learning.

Eggs are good with toast and butter, but the
beep of your microwave might take you out of your
serious, tedious, “over-coffee” thoughts.

Democracy, decisions, discretion and depression,
eerie thoughts scramble your tiny little head,
effortlessly. Banish them. Don’t worry you, you, you…

Jeez, what would I even call you, myself. It’s like I need
a change to figure out something so set in stone.
i need to be somewhere else, this house is to

Jagged and rough for me to pretend to like anymore.
cayman islands sounds good but—
elegance should come easy in my own home.

Emily.
ended bad, remember?
oh, wow, real bad. Don’t think about her,

Peaceful as she was, there are probably
cuter out there.
are you sure?

Establish some confidence in your
tea. She said she didn’t like my taste in tea. What did
you do for me, Emily?! Nothing!

*V. Emily V…. what was her last name?
double-yous, two of you… would be unbearable. You were
excellent at everything terrible, you know that.

Why oh why, coffee and eggs? You always make me think. Get married in a ga-
zeebo? No chance in hell.