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L Curley Jan 2013
I fall in love with impressions,
Fingertips on fickle flesh
In a shroud I sit
As these wisps rise
In a tantalising spiral

Smoke encircles the crevices
In my palms and in my fingers,
Then dances into my nostrils
And I am choking
Retching up blood

I cannot keep breathing much longer,
Coating my heart in tar
L Curley Jul 2013
Biting your flesh in the darkness
How it yields

I am primal
Downwind from you
I am longing

'Us' is just a whisper, thick with liquor

But I have heard the note in your laugh,
That comes too easy

Clinging, lingering like lucid cigarette smoke
My dilemma

- For I cannot discern,
Who the fool is
You or I?
L Curley Mar 2013
I asked you to bite me, and you did
Long and hard, leaving tiny little
Purple teeth marks

Warm bodies and hot blood tide us over
I'm beginning to realise, this state's permanence
And how we can still go on

I asked you to bite me,
Sink your teeth, drink up.

I want you to hurt me,
Now. Rip me apart,
So that there's no chance.

But, I'm afraid,
Even pain subsides
Into numbness these days
L Curley Feb 2013
I may have a heart that is broken in places
But at least I have a heart at all


Sometimes
I wince with pain when the past plays,
Like a film across my eyelids
Vision not without defect
But unblemished by regret

Now
I feel empty and hollow
Waking in the darkness

I've lost count of how many times
I've posed the question
‘Why did I not deserve the affection?’


I gave you passes as I gave you my heart,
In the kisses I returned
I thought you kept your heart
Closed away behind your ribs -

Perhaps you do.


Today
I will wash your sweat from my skin
And your kisses from my neck

Tonight
I will press down buttons in my alarm
For daylight hours

Tomorrow
I will smile and ask you how you are
I will sing songs walking alone
Down main roads


Is it
Freedom
or
Is it
Emptiness?
Who is who?
You and I*


I know,
The numb in my fingers and in my thoughts
Will pass

I would always chose
My hopeful broken heart
Over vacant space
A De-void
[I'd hoped to fill]


I should stop trying
To provoke
Barren hearts' growth

Turn away,
Mend myself

For I may have a heart,
That is broken in places
But at least I have a heart at all
L Curley Sep 2013
I have eyes of glass, you say,
Like a Victorian stuffed animal.

Your eyes betray your anguish
Strained or swimming.

Carnal snarl
Canines for ripping

Curiosity killed the cat,
How evading and paradoxical
When it is plain we are animal,
Grappling bodies.

When your eyes swim with pain and confusion
Regularly and sporadically
I am left at sea, afraid of water
Seaweed choking despair,
You are too busy drowning
To hold my hand

I am but fingertips
Sliding under

Drowned
L Curley Jan 2013
Fingertips overflow with possibility
I stand poised on the edge of what could be
After helpless months, I can jump and plummet,
Or if I wanted, I could let you pass me by
A brushing breeze against my cheek
Whispering Freedom to me

I close my eyes and inhale, static release
High on the ecstasy of a second thought
The winds answer, stirring eyelashes like reeds
I've known only one feeling better than this
Your fingers running through my hair
Murmuring, moments fled

Let me sit, for now and drink in this ambience
Close my eyes and inhale this sweet breeze
L Curley Jan 2013
I am not well suited
To existing in silence
White sheets in plastic bags
Absently turning printed pages
Scrolling through screens
I find nothing

No, I am not well suited
To these silent hours
That I fill restlessly
With hopeful solitude
And shivering despair
All to find nothing
But old flaking paint
And old mistakes
L Curley Jun 2013
stop
searching
for salvation in another
'human compassion'
we don't talk about that here

your face is a stamp
I will lick and arrange

then

with blank eyes,
I'll evaluate and
compress you
into a fraction
naturally,
an assessment of
your worth as a person

I'll  close these eyes
[in physical pleasure]
and with no further hesitation
sink pointed teeth
into your bared neck

gentle lamb, good
you are a lamb succumbing
nature has undone the dreamers [with physical sensation]

your fleece crusted with filth
and Oroonoko burns

'corruption is a concept
foreign to good peoples'


rubbing mud into your eyes
won't purify your sight
indoctrination into idealism
leads the lambs to fall
L Curley Dec 2012
Fickle, fuckable
All ***-hair and come to bed eyes
She stole away for solitary moments
Just to watch cigarette smoke rise
Feel the cold breeze bite
Unsatisfied
L Curley Dec 2012
I wish we lived in the city,
So your voice could answer, ‘I’ll be there soon,’
Struggling with the other sleeve
Coming home to me

You can end my painful introspection,  no prescriptions –
You give me a look, that lets me know  
How it’s okay
To laugh
At it all

If we weren't miles apart, I wouldn't be putting up walls,
I wouldn't find myself running in and out
Of stronger arms and weaker hearts,
Clinging on, trying to feel like I belong.
**The same city.**
L Curley Dec 2012
Turn a corner from every moment of despair and you will find hope.  
Revisit every detail, relive every unrelinquishable moment or simply come to accept,
That everywhere there is a barrier that bridges a gap far greater than any language.

Accept that you will never truly know anyone, and no being will ever know yours.
Experience is the greatest barrier, and we each view the world through differing cages.
There is no organised chaos, not everyone acts with a reason that justifies or forgives, and you will never find someone as brave and good as your father.
Not in all the discarded t-shirts or misleading strokes of your hair or moments of security that slip through your hands like sand.

But accept this, know it, wear it across your forehead as a proud and cautious warning and you can begin it all again, looking through a different set of bars:
Listen to the blue-*** sing in the bleak metropolis and then go on home with the wind reminding your skin that it is alive and dance on your own in your room, never forgetting that you are the eternal opportunist and whilst you remain open to the hurting, you have hope.

Know this, and you remain more human than any of any of them put together;
Because through all the pain, you refuse to give up the hope that one day, someone might come close to understanding.
L Curley Dec 2012
How can I recall the past? when I can’t even remember your face, I can’t even remember your voice.
All I've got is your jewellery box and your writing in chalk, probably not worth a lot.
I save the box for the moments of loss that feel like I’m scraping nails down a wall with no foothold.
Within the lining I can, if I concentrate, recall your scent. Sometimes I open up your old lip-balm and wear it sparingly. Loose as it may be, it’s as though you’re reality and touching me.
Emersed in these moments, I forget, you’ll always be someone I never knew.
L Curley Mar 2014
Like cats
we move as shadows,

rubbing past ankles
down sandstone walkways with yellow windows
spilling out into the night like running yolks

sand on your tongue and in my eyes
where you kissed them pink and sore

shadows
              brushing my sides
hissing in the human ants' nest.

If we make it,
through the dark
we'll retreat into sheets
they'll curl around our bones
like milk
L Curley Jan 2013
I often wonder if
in headaches you fear
you are living for
those silent touches
in the darkness
[I do]
L Curley Feb 2013
I wish that pain dried up
Like puddles left by summer showers
L Curley Feb 2013
Laughing,
Slow dancing
In bedrooms*

Problems drain away
Like kettle- water down the sink
From our last cups of tea

The smell on your neck
Our jokes and gestures
Like rituals

Teases of where, one day
We might end up.

We could be, on the sea
With the breeze buffeting our faces,
Making violent sails on blue-grey skies

There, you'd stand -
A silhouette on the deck
[Salt-wood & peeling paint]
- Absent minded.
Not understanding
How much
These moments

mean

to me.

Out on the sea
There's nothing but us
Laughing,
Slow dancing
L Curley Dec 2012
I used to say ‘don’t you dare.’
Now I say ‘please, please,
Don’t leave.
Just hold me, let’s pretend.’

But I could not,
The illusion's end.

You could not,
Give up your little attempt,
Your pathetic pretense
To be the man
You think you want to be.
I was not,
Weak-willed enough
To fit in with your little game
A pretty play-thing
The role I'd played.

Unexplained
It grew like a parasite.
Til one day I paralysed it
But it remains
Lodged in tunnels,
Inside my brain
When my guard is down
It eats away

You presented a mixed array
Of sincerity, lies and games,
'You're the one leaving,
I won't change.'

Lying in those sheets,
Where others lay.

It tore me apart,
That night,
That by nature
I was helplessly strong,
I was driven away
When my protector
Punctured my inflated heart.

I did not arm myself
With reasons, dignity.
Regretfully I let it
Eat away,
Always wishing,
I could lower myself,
To play that stage.
L Curley Jan 2013
A wound on her left breast
Reminded her where he’d been
Of the damage his lips had wrought
With violent kisses and honeyed words

This gift he’d imparted
Subsequent lovers caressed, unaware
The dark circle above her heart
Festered, and would not heal
L Curley Dec 2012
Freckles make your back a map
Seabirds circle but they lack
Grasp of what youth endures
Vacating summer shores
Carrying their lives to sea.

Mechanically they return
For bright months they did not yearn-
Only their homecoming retells
Of warmth and hope in summer spells
Of ploughed soil, banked country roads
And feathers bent not under loads;
Put-to-side partners reconcile,
Their lives measured in sea miles
Time comfortably slipping away,
Together living easy days
Until they fly on.
L Curley Dec 2012
Tumble into dream, you’ll sleep easier now,
You bid the empty room.
Slipping away, if I ever grasped you,
Except in my shame and your appetites.
Tumbling in circles as you ease to sleep
But still my trick begs your deliverance
Twisting my ear

Your breathing levels and my trick grapples,
For a detail missed, an overlooked sign
Sweating, shivering in my own contrivance
Lost to me and nothing to you
We do not touch

My trick does not leave me as I open the door,
The grating of your laugh and the dancing in your eyes
It narrows the darkness into the thinnest strip,
I am once more in the light,
The synthetic stripes
L Curley Dec 2012
Give me anybody
Oh give me anybody*

Give me a forest stretching over lakes
Over hilltops unto the land’s end meet
I’ll walk for leagues until my knees buckle
Till I find a sturdy oak to be mine
It shall not be a noble tree, nor grand
But it will stand the weight of my embrace

Branches stretching into cerulean skies
My favourite sight
Sunlight through whispering slices of green
Enclose me in your tendrils
Take me within, my humble oak
I’ll carve out a home for myself
I’ll dust it with hot breath and cleanse with it tears
Live out my days in stoic peace
For wise minds know retreat triumphs
Over the tributary of great feats
Crawling up bodies of bark,
Binding bodies of blood
Tainted blue moss

Let me withdraw into you, I, an oak wife
I’ll weave your ghost-roots into my veins
If my oak should die, let me die too
These badlands are barren and unkind
My legs are made to wrap around your body
They will not bear the stony, unrelenting road
You
L Curley Feb 2013
You
You're the only one,
who tells me
I am not the problem

There is nothing wrong,
with me, you say.

We've got a plan,
one day.

One day.

— The End —