Perpetual sadness
That's all this is
Just a melancholy mind
And a black soul
Twisting together  
To create a darkness
That envelops every
Happy emotion I have
Until they become
Nothing more than
Neutral, dull, nothingness
I can't feel exitement
My laughter is always forced
My smile never stays
My heart always breaks
Perpetual sadness
That's all my life has become
A rerun
Of nothingness

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water,
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind.  The wind.
I alone can contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here.  Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Curl round me as though you were frightened.
Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your ******* smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
Until I even believe that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

225 days under grass
and you know more than i.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows,

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

sway with me, everything sad --
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things --
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.
from ONTHEBUS - 1992

it
takes
a lot of
desperation
dissatisfaction
and
disillusion
to
write
a
few
good
poems.
it's not
for
everybody
either to
write
it
or even to
read
it.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

I am the one people talk about in songs and poems written at 2am
Through the blind stupor of heartbreak and rage.

I am the villain that heroes love to defeat
And spectators love to see defeated.

I am the ‘benign’ tumor that will eat its way through your body
Then run away and never look back.

I am the broken promises of forever and always.

It is scary how easily I can let go of things I once thought I treasured.
And it is absolutely terrifying how easily I can destroy people I once thought I loved.

I am the lone defendant in the courtroom
With nobody to speak up on my behalf
Not even myself.

I didn’t notice it at first
Because after you walked out of my life
It took me a few moments
To discover the new ache in my heart and the incurable weariness in my bones
Remnants of the bruising love we shared

I think it was supposed to be a reassurance that you left a piece of yourself behind
But really it was just a reminder that you left.

sometimes it feels as if
I have too many milk teeth,
too many parts of me that belong
to a time when I climbed trees to touch the sky
and I swam in sunflowers
and fireflies -
to a time I have long since
painted in sepia tones,
long since pushed
to the back of my mind
with hands so tired
of being filled with splinters
- too many seeds
and not enough light.

there are too many parts of me
that I have placed underneath pillows,
that I have kept behind closed lashes,
that I have slept upon, waiting
for the morning to arrive and them
to be g o n e ,
replaced with coins that I could place
underneath the tongues of the dreams
that I could not ferry to my
frail realities.
but in the morning, they return -
one by one into my mouth,
daring me to speak them,
daring me to sing,
daring me to find someone who will listen.
         listen.

it feels as if
I have too many stories,
too many secrets,
too many sins and not enough space
for the words to fly out of my mouth
and into the world -
I have too many milk teeth
that I cannot remove.

and sometimes I think maybe that's why
I don't understand
    permanence.
I don't understand
    change.
I don't understand
    growing up,
    growing out,
    growing apart -
I don't know what it means
to stare at the sun
while your feet are moving forward,
only forward, never back.
because I have spent all my life
climbing on the shoulders
of mountaintops and moonstones,
and standing tall
was never an option.

sometimes climbing is tough
when my mouth gets too heavy
with overgrown memories
and I can almost feel myself cry out
"save me," can hear myself whisper
    "listen."
but pride and false bravery sew me shut
and I'm left to watch my bones
taken over by page-pressed petals
and old phosphorescence -
and it's in moments like these
that I stop climbing and think
maybe it's time for me to grow now,
on my own:
hands and legs
and lungs and heart,
spine and ribs and
collarbones, cranium,
and with baby teeth bared I am
blooming fire and gold and
facing the sun -

    smiling.