Cold sheets
Restless mind
and a heavy chest
What a painful trio
That sings to a moonless night
What kind of sorrow could be
caught up in a loveless night?

Wet eyes spilling
on pillow billings
Bed swallowing the body whole
What emotion would ever make an adult coo
Like a baby calling from their lonely cot
What glee to make us all fools

No no no no no no no
This can’t be happening again
It’s not allowed to happen
I thought this path was closed, bolted up and had broken away so we couldn’t come back
I don’t want this
I don’t want to cry again
I don’t want to see you in white one more time
I don’t want any more wrinkles on our faces or blood-red, tear-stained eyes
There are no more tears to make
Please don’t let it happen please no
No no no no
I don’t want you sick I don’t want you to go
I want you to watch me grow and maybe one day I’ll be a good mum
But I can’t do any of it if you’re not here
Don’t leave me please
Don’t leave me

A good friend is the priest
The confessional booth
The God that forgives
and the son that heals.

Bones pierce through my toughened but weary flesh
Barbwire nerves tighten them together like twine around a Thanksgiving swine
But this isn’t a celebration or a one-off spectacle
This is what breathing is like
This is living.

Warmth is welts, sweat and tears.
Forbidden sleep, I cry and beg for relief.
I find solace in a cold bath
And pray for cooler weather.
The cold is screaming bones, stiff and keeping me drowned in bed.
Forbidden to move, I cry and beg for mercy.
I find solace in fire
And pray for warmer weather.

In the calm waters that all swim in, I am battling a rip
I wave for help,
Someone?
Anyone?
They wave back, happily, as if saying hello.
Keep treading water
Just keep going and good God, I think he’s still there
Watching me fight the urge to stop and drown, submerge myself and let it be.
All this time, I’ve been trying to get out of a bed, the bath, or my chair.

I have spared loved ones agony, friends have left.
There isn’t any fun watching a carcass decay on the side of the road
Magnesium is there for me now
Codeine and I catch up around once a week
I have dates with my shower
And a blanket that embraces me.

Get up now, enough of that
Put some pants on, it’s time to see Them.
Brush your hair, fight your fingers to tie it up.
Defy the grinding of your bones and walk out that door.

They will ask how you do you feel
What has happened since last week

Did you make it out your front door
Out of bed
How does that make you feel?
Did you go out last Saturday?
Did the torrent of anxiety swell up again
Another face
Same question
My problems are common

People your age don’t do this.

The bone-pierced meat is ripped again
Pulling away from my spine
Becoming tragic wings few can see.

The last coat is the one all see and notice and judge the most
Skin shrink-wrapped around my barbed-wire nerves and meaty flesh
Where touch is soft and electric
And scars are chapters of stories
Mine are charred onto my bones and tattooed onto my skin
It looks like others with soft hair, freckles and spots
Yet it has encased me in a tomb
Being showcased in the museum of life
And as everyone passes by
No one knows what’s going on
But really, no one wants to know.
My mouth is moving yet I am silent
But really, I’m screaming.

In times like these
Words are threaded in a blanket of tension
Syllables counting hate
Out of rhythm with love
in the name of the divine
yet they would be appalled by us, I’m certain
Our land dies
The sky hates us
Get $2 off that burger
Pay your taxes
***** the *****
Cherish the female’s cells
Crucify a mother who can’t nourish her child
Love thy neighbour
Shoot your black brother
**** your Muslim sister
Charge your iPhone
Wonder about the land, gazing at the stars
crush the reef beneath your feet
Download the new update
Love your body
You are a narcissist
Share your body - uploaded
Shamed transferred, virus downloaded
Smile online
Cry offline
Like if you enjoyed this piece
Smiley face.

Don’t take my anger
Let me drink from it
Not burning oil
But fuelling fire
Being rich with passion
Not searing hot in my skin from rage
It is my conductor for injustice
My compass to things that I hold dear
Navigating me through what is always referred to as troubled waters.
To be indifferent is to not feel strongly
like having no affect to gnats biting at your skin
To be numbed to something so imperative
So important
To not be proactive
Not just reactive
What a waste of the human experience
How naive to think of it as loud words and exaggerated arms
It’s just as powerful in a whisper and a leap
As focused as a hawk
And as small but as strong as a singular ant.
The brightness of the stars and the power of the waves are within me
Born, bred and thrumming
This is my anger
And it is my strength.

He looked at me and asked, “Are you alone?”
I turned to him. “Only when I’m in a crowd”
“Are you lonely?”
“Only when I’m alone.”

Light eyes
Dangerous eyes
In small moments I realise
The passion they cry

Oh, torturous gaze
Entrap me in your flames
Bright crystal eyes
You **** me slow
Undo me so.

I don’t blame you for the feeling of my heart disintegrating in my gut
Nor for the absence of my warmth
I don’t even blame you for my cynical nature
I just wish you gave me a door
so I could escape such an empty room you left me in

Blue eyes blue
Black on blonde
Kiss it better

We’ve come so far and I plan on going that a’ way
I got scars on my knees
So, please
Kiss ‘em better for me

Let the night run wild
The vertical lights on the road be our only navigation and when my hands get weary and cracked
Won’t you kiss them better

I am a demon
I am my wicked thoughts

An anarchist to everything
Pure, simple and true.

I clean my teeth with your despair
destroy your dreams with one simple laugh
I can twist your words like curls around a finger

and yet
I am my own demon picking at my own voices
hoping they would crack and bleed
just another ant on the surface or a zero in binary code
craving to be something honest
maybe even simple
up high on the mountains with delicate, glass bones
I want to cause celebration from my own destruction.

This show ain't my own anymore,
I've got to pack up and peel myself
Away from the light,
Burn into the darkness,
Become a cinder in the night.

I want to kiss you
Soft and open, hungry for your mouth
I want to feel the sensitive flesh pressed to mine
Before the tips of our tongues touch
Oh, this embrace can last forever
You can hold onto my face forever
Let soft face scruff brush against smooth skin
Then let those lips of ours break free from each other
And become travellers, like us.

Bored, bored, bored.
Talking is an automatic loop,
two records play succinctly.

She will ask you how do you feel,
what has happened since last week.
Did you go out Saturday?
Did the torrent of anxiety swell up again?
Another face
Same question
My problems are common
And yes, there lies the rub.

I don't like people
I won't **** you, you just confuse me.
Conversations have a formula and I've learnt it well.
One person says something and you respond,
A nod okay
A verbal response, great
More than one sentence, ah yes, a true natural flow.
Easy,
No, no
It's not, it involves effort
A calmed mind
And a skip of the heart.

Every night
Every smile you inflict me with
Takes another part of my heart
And everyday
Starts the same
I wake up dazed and aching
A numbed hurt and a little insane
Feeling a burn in my feet and a hole where my heart was
I stumble out and find myself following you
To the edges of the earth
Running to you
While you barely recognise
That I'm someone
Just in your rear view

I told the first one I loved him
It was the lie of the year
Though I thought I meant it
In a great twist
With a cracked mirrored view at my face
I was left abandoned and I found my own pride
I wrecked havoc and went on a battle
Wounding myself with my own words
Left on the empty battlefield
Wrapped in white straps
Running away from the wardens


The second one
Cherished him for days
He pulled the shards from my own heart
Only for me to push them into his
My heart hates me for it
And so does he
The day he forgives me might be the day I feel free

The third, and last
Wasn't supposed to happen
My emotions rebelled against the rest of me
Deciding to take charge
But like all great escapades
It turned into an epic battle
With me fighting me, and me fighting his heart
No one won
No great parties were had
No applauding from the crowd
He drowned
I was sleepwalking
And held him underwater

There is no fourth, who knows if there will ever be
I pity him already for wanting to be near me
Something inside of me wants him to stay away
In the shadows
Away in a distant land
Though I want to see his face
Know if he can handle the demons latched to my skin
And the darkness in my head
I want to feel warmth under my skin
And peace in my heart

What can you make from a broken heart?
Does it mend together with invisible stitches, going back together perfectly
Seamless like silk
Does it come back with thicker skin that needs a bit more of time's love to come good once more
Does it break like glass, loud and sharp, every piece ready to rip the rest of you up, never to be in its pristine condition again?

Can it go back into the rhythm it had, or is the beat out of sync, never hearing the song it used to sing, lost forever in time and space?
Can a broken heart be nurtured back to something perfect? Is it lost?
Or, can the broken heart be cradled, cocooned with new hands, giving it rebirth? How much time would that need? How much love, care?

Perhaps nothing can be done of the broken heart
So it must be discarded.
Maybe it cannot be so easily left in the dust, so new hands hold it, treasure it like its own,
Maybe
Just maybe
It will beat again.

Being an adult is realising the monsters under your bed are nothing compared to the ones in your head.

An echo called to me last night
At first I thought it was the cat but he was curled up and sound asleep
So I went to the window that held the moon full and bright
And waited.
And waited a bit more,
But nothing, not even a peep.
I went to sit back down at my desk to attempt a poem
But this time I heard a moan
Was it a moan? Maybe something more like a groan,
So I padded back over to the window with the moon high and bright.
That’s where I saw him.
He had dragged himself from the park
Limping with his broken arm draped over his chest, covering his heart.
I walked over to the cat, stroked his long, warm fur.
Then grabbed my shovel and went downstairs
To finish what I started.

Everyone loves you when you're dead
they send you love and hold your loved ones
the men pretend they have no feelings
children are the confused ones
while women spit fire at each other
but it's their way of dealing.

Everyone loves you when you're dying
their words are poetic
eggshell floors and open doors
non-believers become prophetic.

Everyone loves you when you're dead
no matter if you were a ghost to your children
a monster to your wife
or slayed ten thousand men,
no matter if you lied for a living
or sheltered the grieving
if you instigated heartache
or didn't even know their last name.

Everyone loves you when you're dead
you were never a thought in their own little head
yet they will weep at your grave
where everyone sings glory to your name because they knew you so well.
Was she a teacher?
perhaps she worked at the corner store
oh he loved a man-
and they hated it
"but now I feel bad for his partner"
"she was bullied by my child"
"by unknown faces,
the poor thing"
"he destroyed our lives,
oh, the poor thing".

You will return to the earth
you will be dirt, maggot or ash
you will disappear
be whispers in the breeze
or nourish the ground you trod over
yet they will sing your name with memorable glee
because everyone loves you when you're dead.

It can be silent
Then suddenly break free
with the intensity of fireworks flooding a dark, thick sky.

It slinks in the dark
Terrifying you to your core
Making you vulnerable to the only truth amongst lies.

We will **** for it
Consume it's flesh and moan with it's blood trickling down our throats
But it does the same to us
It devours all but leaves only a few sane enough to see its destruction
It laughs at the damaged and wrecked while humbling us in our sleep.

It kills you
Gently
Quietly
While caressing your eyes with tears
It knows nothing of mercy
Yet makes us cry with pleasure
Because though we are scared of it
God, how we crave it.

It’s in their DNA
Hidden between crisp suits
Paying the mortgage
And battling their impulses

Beneath their coat beats a heart bursting to screech
To break out and run towards the moon
One finds their perfect sync
Their wavelength lover
Perfect partner

The female can hunt just as much as her different half
She plays a cool, flippant character
But don’t underestimate her lust
She can hunt with the best of them
She can scream with the best of them

The male is the awkward but seductive hero in this story
His name brings women whimpering
I think the men do too
He can slink with the best of them
He can claim a lover like the best of them

Years later
Moons renewed
The female finds the male
Their coats carrying the same hue
And as she salivates over every breath he takes
She prays he wants him just as much as she does him
Maybe it was in the stars
Or perhaps the other creatures were sleeping
The hounds shed their fur and moaned at the warmth

Skin uncovered
Legs parted
Lips sore and cracked
With backs glistening
Tonight they love each other so much
He loves how she feels
She loves what he does to her
In the morning they’ll hate each other for just that

This is their wavelength
Between frequencies humans cannot hear
How intertwined their bodies and heartbeats really are

White wall of flame
Do you see it?
***** fingernails and coal eyes
Do you see it?
Gluttural groans and mouthes fixated in 'Oh'
Skin that lies while butterflies dance on their skin
Do you see it?
Dollies in a line with the red kisses upon their heads
Their wings opening around them and hanging
Displaying the glory
The power
While weak eyes tremble with awe
Do you see it?
While the King and Queen argue
The rook slithers
Taking pawns and two Knights
Scaled to something magnificent
Alluring and burning alive
Do you see it?
The weasel has no Will
The weasel will not be reborn
No
He will be ash under my feet
While I pick my teeth of his flesh
And when you see me disappear
My failed consummation a dying echo
I will come
You will hear me roar
And you will know I breathe again
Do you see
me

Loving you is like
Staring at the stars
Appreciating in awe
While the flames lick at my feet
With sandpaper tongues

Empty street walks
Empty driveways
The streets are missing
The soul that walks

The lights are melting
The streets are stained
It's like they miss you
so they cry out in pain

It's like I'm missing you or something
It's like I'm missing you