You fall asleep, phone in hand
the light of your game shines over you
in a slumber far-off and away

Tuck you in tonight
and in nights past
the way I wished to be

I am your blindside

I must turn away
or it will be the end of me

I must climb the stairs, go to bed,
I must face away from the door

No longer to lend from my voids;
consuming me inside to out

No lock will stop
what wanders these halls

For tomorrow, we will talk again
scathing speech still to cut
profoundly

still to pull myself apart
to attempt a reach once more.

send me home
send me packing

our strains have never strained so terribly

I am needed in other places
I am happy to go

deep down I know
it’s the best thing and the first thing
I’ve done for me

over our blues

before heading for home
I was finished with you

the strain never drained me so empty.

When will it be enough?

When one’s cheeks can smile no wider?
When one’s heart has burst itself with joy?

Will one climb all the peaks and
on the journey home from the last
say “What else?”

So - what else?
(And will it ever do?)

Why must one aim Everest-high,
when one feels ever so low?

Why must an ant exist for the crawl?

Will one ever rest at all?

I do not go anywhere,
I do not collect anything -
I do so little of everything!

(but string together spider threads
to make up fluttering spider webs
of the temporal doom inside -
then, in these webs I reside.)

words for you
resistant behind these ribs

anything for you
I’d do anything

I would
and I did
and it’s over now

and never again
would I

so, words for you
must be squeezed
from this under-ripe lemon heart

cleanses in small doses
words for you

sour, erosive
words for you

any number of
words for you

anything for you
I would do

and it’s over now
and never again

I would never again.

deep talks
over Whatsapp

each turn of the year
you are brighter, darker

two pleasant surprises
in the form of brothers

I walk myself slowly to the door of myself,

so I can let myself out,
so I can be with you, my friend.

Life is such a joke;
the least meaningful of things
become figurative inside.

My mother never did like me
to have people over, so

I chat to you in the front yard
of my heart,

I pretend to see warmth
in your marble eyes -

please, may I have the eyes
I glimpse between laughs?

I find it hard to face you,
my house front is a backdrop,

it should be more of something -
whatever ‘something’ is...

My silences - inadequacy,
my comments hog the stage,

I know up in my mind
you never see me that way -

this is just something I have to say.

in the edges of my vision,
writhe the snakes of murky dreams
turn my head - vanish
shake me free of leaden sleep
follows me
down lanes and streets
dizzy at the prospect of the journey home;
heavy legs to bring back
and lay along the bed
with pragmatic tenderness
for I am ponderous as a stone
please wrap me warmly in
sunlight and clement winds
to send me off tomorrow
to do it all again

I’m sorry that I
always feel like I’m stepping up a staircase
which is climbing ever higher, yet descending into earth,

sorry that I
think I can tell you how it hurts
to be blood and flesh and bone,

sorry that
the words never reach anybody,

sorry that I
like to pick apart the pain
and show you the results,

sorry that I
sway between “all of this matters”
and “nothing ever does”,

sorry that
the whole of me
does not feel whole,

sorry that I
really am sorry
for the whole of me,

sorry that I
keep saying sorry -

****, I’m sorry.

a magnolia tree
on spring’s eve;
bare branches blooming.

Sunday shut-in

thoughts like moths
in the basement

beating their wings
on the sores in my mouth

I am terrified of moths
I am the dark

I am all the plagued things
that I didn’t think I could be

I used to believe I was made of sunlight,
being born to a summer Sunday’s sunrise

but right now I lay in the dark
to the sounds of everyone else having dinner

thoughts like moths in the basement

I am a low-hanging light bulb,
I am slow-burning toward the inevitable

dust settling

Today the world slows down to me
and I’m still dragging my feet.

I can’t tell you where this all comes from,
because I already feel like a fraud.

These rivers lead back where
I can’t speak -
can’t speak up -
can’t say...

(that my fear
of being obliterated
is very real -
that sometimes I
would like to be the one
to decide)

And death is many things in us -
it is many things, many ways

And in many ways,
by slowing my spirit,
I have already died -
just to stay alongside
this slow corpse

Now I am seeing everything
for the first time,
for the first time,
for the first time

As though I have seen everything
for thousands of years,
for the first time.

up in flames,
the racing thoughts
feed this fire;
so hungry
for fruition,
for extinction

put me out -
how can I put me out?

They all look so **** healthy -
standing over me, staring at me,
speaking so loudly -
as though the illness is in my ears.

And I don’t appreciate being
stood over or stared at,
or having somebody raise their voice at me
yet barely hear a human word of what I say.

They just look so ******* healthy -
I think I’ve been abducted by aliens.
They want to search every part of my body
to find out what is wrong with me,

as if their perfectly supple skin
and their bagless eyes
and their stupidly crisp clothes
aren’t totally wrong to me.

They say “know when to quit”
but I haven’t yet

Moving forward into days ahead,
the flesh melts off me
with a velocity I don’t have
but expel anyway

Little rock in space,
you float and you yearn and you spend

Hitched your wagon to the wrong star,
burning out before your journey’s end

The embers catch you, wasting -
you’re not enough for yourself

But you’re not home yet
and it’s all you can do

to ration the last of you
to the seemingly endless length of life ahead

Maybe you will never see another soul again.

I’ve got sugar and oranges
on the grill -
What can I do to bring you home?
To me?
Candied ginger,
strawberries and havarti -
each year it’s something else,
I try something else
Won’t you just come home to me?
For me?
I don’t remember when you left,
I only know it’s been a long time
Faintly remembered -
memories maybe just a fever dream,
to patch this gape in my chest.
I’m old enough now not to need,
still I ask into the fog of this family,
What can I do to bring you home?
To me?

I see the way you seethe sometimes -
would you ever hurt me?

There is nothing to see in a mirror like me -
I soothe as you seethe.

In these words
do the valleys
open into plains -

in these words
are the sounds
made silently,

as these words
are not easy
to speak in earnest.

So here I am
putting thoughts to paper,
to the sounds of my bleeding heart

And it’s so silly in its drama
but I can’t do it any other way
without shrivelling these petals;

it's all so delicate.

Here am I
settling in for the night -
lay myself down in bed,
to bathe in the clarity of moonlight

and I find the spring breeze
dancing shy on my face -
but I lay overwhelmed
in the trace of its embrace

for I needed this
gentle touch today;
having barely a hold
on the words I can’t say,

in these long weeks
of wrestling myself again -
and yet I find the night’s breeze
meeting me as a friend.

Then - along my spine,
the blanket agrees
with the lovingly
overwhelming spring breeze,

and suddenly so
does the brilliant moonlight -
and so do the pages
of the book on my bedside,

and they all move to agree with
my nothing inside.

And with that -
I drift into the night.

I can still see us there in the distance,
us in my eyes as though it were yesterday -
the icy wind and my clammy hands,
trying somehow to reach your heart -
or at least your hands.

You ask me for the only money I have left -
you know I don’t have anything but you.
You don’t see it, I buy the guitar for you
hoping this instrument will bring us together,
the way music usually would.

i

Could I just take a peek inside?
What’s the colour of your blood? Could I take its temperature?
Could I examine you inside and out, head to toe, just take my time to figure it all out?

A human, healthy and vital in all physical regards. Radiating with what I could only call temporary immortality. I know I’ll never see it fade in my lifetime…

So won’t you stick around?



I don’t mean to be cruel, it’s just...

How I envy your physical freedom - your need for so little sleep, the way you bounce back after a night out, accidentally missed the bus so you just walk home. What I could do with that kind of power… my body feels so much older than you.



ii

Humiliated and betrayed by this heavy casing I carry, have carried and cared for, and defended from hands with no self control.

How could you do this to me? I thought I loved you well, I thought this transaction was forever. A permanent wrench in the system, what can I do but accept it all and push on?

The alternative...well, it’s not something I can accept.

I didn’t carry you all this way, all the way through childhood recklessness, years of kicks and stances on hardwood floors, basketball games, over oceans, and through forests of trees, all the way to shifts at the diner, at the cafe, or the book factory, and on bicycles through streets (almost ending it), through crowded cities and up countless flights of stairs, all the way, for this.

A physical self-gaslighter, fixing problems which aren’t even there. Talk about the placebo effect - a self-doubting, gaslighting mind, and a body with an attitude to match.

I’m sorry I doubted myself so much - criticised and never gave slack to my mind or my body - convinced there was always something I was doing wrong, never trusting the idea that my instincts could actually be right.

And this all leads me to ask… did I do this to myself?

Here I go again.

skin and words - two such different things
both at once so immediate
hiding all that simmers underneath

holding on another week
the smell of jasmine in your sheets
four pillows, two minds, and the light from the street

each alone in our heads,
do tomorrow again
till we’re back here, lying together in bed.

There is such a pleasant sweetness,
like melting honey and citrus juices,
in the balm of early summer’s midday.

Freshly cut lawns -
fragrant green, green, green -
and to sit on the back porch

in my socks, singlet, and jeans,
just scuffing my shoes
for the season

like countless others before me
in this timeless tradition.
I am alone - yet

none of this feels like
alone -
glimpse the shadows

of the people before me,
doing just this,
feeling just this

exact,
particular,
state of strange bliss.

And you say you love me
in the hiss of coffee’s steam,

but you clang the spoon into the cup and -

splash!

coffee on my skin
and the cold shock of heat,

what a joke of sensations -
what a joke made of me.

our singular imaginations
share one shy dream;
to breathe again, and be again,
in the thrill of possibility

some of us timid, mouths tight,
holding the hope in our throats
some wild-eyed and fanfaring,
indulging the smoke

we all felt it coming;
the wind and the rain
bring visions, and lift resignations
away

A wildflower

Is a thing of contradictions,
Flourish in the sun and in sadness,
Asks for nothing in return
But to keep making sweet of the rancid.

Pushes through the dry earth,
Holding frost drops in the winter morn.
Asks not for admiration,
Stands quiet and soft and strong.

Ever-growing everywhere,
And through its generous sprawl,
Turns a place into a paradise,
Dotting hills like stars at nightfall.

He’s been stuck at 25
since I’ve been around 6 -
planning to go through life
top of class, breezing by

And I come down the stairs
just to tell them I’m alright

He waves off my little heart -
rinses and wrings it -
as he leaves behind
some things for she and I to do;

Writing me into history books.

in my eyes, an ever morning fog
since I were a child

I stopped breathing then
hitch in my throat when I must inhale

I hate to

and I see myself living
so far removed

arms, legs, mouth
going through the motions

reading myself the actions
rehearsing this play

all the world’s a stage

The boat unmoored -
My unpainted soul
The weather whittles my wooden bones

Drift into the distance,
Always moving there

The slowness of it happening
Sends me into
The image of an iceberg -

Sun beating down,
Beating me under.

How do I put it lightly?
How could I, anything?

I see now why some words are printed after death.
Can I bring myself to wait?

In the shame of omission, a truth becomes futile -
Too late are the words which will never bring change,
which will never tell you how you changed me.

I thought I saw you,
in the corner of my eye,
or maybe it was the corner of my mind?

In passing moments,
as I flit along,
I feel a familiar tether -

Somewhere,
out in the vastness of this city…
the feeling of having you.



Having you…

Sometimes,
occasionally,
or were you ever?



I think of you in your apartment alone,
I think of the state of your room,

Somehow,
I feel that you are gone from the world,
and I am fearful of the feeling manifesting as truth

Yet through your local haunts I pass by,
quickly -

As quick as I can -

God forbid having to face you again.