I fell in love with fire at the
ripe age of seventeen years old.
I dared to flick on that lighter and
watch the sparks fly, intrigued by
how fiery the air felt.

Fancies turn to habits
Habits turn to addictions
Addictions turn to years
Years cut through naivety and
solidify into adulthood.

I flailed, I flopped,
I even stopped, dropped, and rolled
in filth, in mud, in murky waters
that rippled into a crystal ball of
an unfortunate future, indeed.

No prescription or over-the-counter reception
could soothe the burning you created.
I never realized how flammable my mind,
my heart, or my in-between places were…

As my soul smoldered
my throat choked on the smoke.
I asked for it to stop but all you heard was
“Keep going…”

You prodded, you poked, you stoked
the flames that licked from the freckle
on my foot to the freckle on my ear.
You poured out
the gasoline of selfless love and
smiled at your victory.
You crept into my life
You caught glimpses of the parts
of me hidden in secret places
You conquered my reason

Worst of all I was folded
in the hollow of your hand,
Beating around a bush
with a dead Trojan horse.

I didn’t see it coming, but I should have
known—I trusted you with my crowning jewel…
I let my guard down. Hell, I even
sharpened the knife you used to carve out my spine.
You entered my safe haven
in disguise, leaving  
a trail of matches behind and
scorching everything on your way out.

I wrote your name on a cigarette.
And smoked it on my balcony.
Each lungful, thus ingested,
lets you reside in me.

Across the water
Allhallows gleams, unknowing.
Where, at some previous point
we were separated by simple geography.

If cigarettes were wishes
I'd have died soon death,
in rattling, emphysemic pursuit
of long-lost love.

Simple geography
can never trump
the complicated, honest reality
of time and place.

The cigarette glows in my hand
reminding me that, as love,
time veils promises
however potent.

There are only eight cigarettes left
in the whole world.
Perhaps I'll leave them, growing stale
in their hidden box.

Or, maybe, I'll smoke them all
today.
Then forget
what I ought to have forgot.

For sake of placid honesty
and goodwill, told in truth.
Time is a lying healer
and I'm on a liar's oath.

We're all writers that don't know where our pen will take us,
Artists who's thoughts and emotions flow through our paintbrush,
A wall painted black, then white, then green, then multi-coloured,
It's changing,
Everything's changing,
Who are we fooling? Why pretend?
None of us are the same as we once were,
It's the demons inside of us that grow and mutate,
They puncture holes in our hearts and rip out our souls,
The deeper we sink, the more broken we see ourselves,
And the hate that we feel for our imperfections run harsh cuts into our skin,
Shivers across the lines of fields shaded red,
It's hard to keep the screams inside,
The rain behind our eyes remind me of shadows,
Pumping blood like butterflies in tunnels of glass,
The railroads to our hearts are barred with electrified wire,
Spinning webs of glutinous barriers,
Fleeting highs when fingertips touch love and trust,
Cut loose, like the strings of a puppet,
Trying to crawl back up the ladder of shattered china,
Back to that splintered paradise.