my big feelings for you I have left all over town
hidden in the books
of famous public libraries

Remember the first time you fell in love? Imagine the first person who fell in love. They must have thought they were dying or their body was breaking in two. Thankfully enough poets since then have given us the heads up over centuries that love never ends well. We can all enter that domain with acute awareness that at some point there will be a curled up in foetal position moment in the shower, sobbing over some new schmuk we’ve become entangled with.
But that first moment of falling in love with ANOTHER HUMAN BEING, nothing matches it. I just want to bottle that moment and make a Prepper’s dug out to store boxes of it for the post-apocalyptic days when the romantic bubble pops. And that bubble will pop.
The tipping point is frequently the moment you say “I love you too” and after that it’s just a gradual descent into slow endings as you decide who will keep the vinyl records you bought in the summer of New York together.

Falling in love is a lot like being on acid and mistaking a burning fire for a blanket to warm yourself. The love bubble pretty much wipes clean any clarity or logic while you set up camp on Fantasy Island. The problem with falling in love is that when it goes horribly wrong and breaks apart, which clearly it is designed to do, you have to find a new person to help fill that Grand Canyon left by The One. No one prepares you for this. Parents stand by nervously the moment you discover the wonder of having your hand held by a boy, knowing full well that in time he will hold the hands of others too and forget about yours completely. They smile and watch you make plans for your future with him, keeping the secret of outcomes to themselves, only coming through with words of wisdom once your heart has been thrown off a bridge in a foreign city when he’s left you for another.

COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT: THE TWO LEADING CAUSES OF BEING DEEPLY UNHAPPY ARE BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP AND BEING ALONE. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE

i’m lost without you, did i mention that?


i scrape my brain cells that hold the memory of you
the way you remove dead flesh from a heel
and i keep the skin cells in tiny glass jars like portable museums.


i carry them everywhere for emergencies
opening them up at dinner parties
while the normals are concentrating on the cooking method of a spatchcock.



i pull you out from my secret purse
hidden under socially self conscious tables
and i roll your flesh in my hands until you’re real again

while nodding in agreement that thyme and lemon jus is always a wise choice for a side.


it’s a stupid ritual really
one that serves only to widen the divide between me
and that big chance Buddha moment:

‘being ******* present’


such a noble pursuit
but always dull and motionless in your absence
all i notice is the loudness of our silence

like a train station in those quiet despair hours
between 11pm and tomorrow.



Btw, if you see a girl running that’s me
and i can assure you
it will be from this chance for godhood
and what all those new agers chant about.

* the now *

god i hate that cruel catch phrase
that ******* of platitudes

forcing its sobering focus
on the inescapable fact that all your critical choices

made on a whim
appearing now as regrettably dumb.


Like that flippant goodbye i threw around at you
as if i would ever feel that way again
about anyone

and no
I never did.


you see, my heart’s a cowboy
too foolhardy with the lasso
that hip gun too
always going off

especially each time you’re not in view.


Did i tell you you i’m lost without you?

Can I be forgiven for my impulsive need
to present my love to you
as a viking would after a day hard at work

I’m physical about it
and chaos theory is the dress
I choose to wear to ****** you
not those flimsy night-sky black things
or a cliché of words tucked up behind your ear


I'm dressed up in an imaginary beard
with a palm full of unpredictability
that makes you buckle
underneath forgotten desires
and we destroy ourselves this way for hours
only to wake up and repeat.

I absorb you alpha and you become invisible
like a woman over 50
I'm a force to be frightened of
and you are an empty shell.


Never love someone
who isn’t stronger than your darkness.
You will **** them every time
and spend the rest of your days
explaining the head on a stick
at the end of your bed
to your next lover
it can become tiresome.


But you never asked questions.
You accepted my grit
my madness
and lust for emotional bloodshed
so i kept going.


You just waited patiently
to see if the sword in my hand
would fall away in the face of your delicate beauty
unnatural for a man admittedly
more suited for a goddess
speaking ancient Greek from magic lips.

You could have spoken
incoherent babble for all i cared
as i marvelled at your fingers
just trophies on hands not from this world.


Again, I’m physical about it
and i saw myself arrange quickly
your internal magnificence
to match the outer shell, so perfect
whether real or imagined
I indulged my vanity
that you were mine
washed with your sunshine
every time we moved
into each other’s view.

Addiction to beauty
it’s akin to a serial art buyer
I’d bid my blood to have that prize
next to me each night
and that’s all you were to me
it must have seemed.


Your love was more than mine i thought
so i could afford to be careless
I was a swashbuckling hero to myself
because i never believed you knew how to be
so just lie there and look the part
and be there when I come home
from severing heads of out-dated ideas
about how to move through life.


Quietly though, you were writing secret sonnets to yourself
about the possibility of our “maybe” love
I rode right over that
like a warlord blinded by personal victories
making my way to a new precipice
another conquest
forgetting with eyes wide open
how to encase another in perfect intimacy.


You just waited patiently
to  see if the sword in my hand would fall
until one night, alone again
you saw the space at the end of the bed
where your own head would stand
and you ran into the night
dancing over misplaced dreams
now scattered all around like forgotten tombstones
as I returned home to my future of regret.


Now this weighty silence between us
has me filling the empty space with love songs
to myself
just to hear us again.