Where are the veins that
stick out of your neck this time
Furling whirling twirling around the room
It doesn't make you any less terrifying
Where are the soft sacred thoughts that float on the ceiling
I've never lost so much think
Bright red dots falling
into blue blue blue water

Before you lose my mind
Hand it to me
I've never been so lonely
And I'm not even locked away yet
I just see pills in my eye sockets
I could scratch at my lashes for days
There's no water here
Just acid at the back of my throat
All i am is lust and love and longing
Screaming screaming screaming
For
Mercy
Love
Touch
Air
Air
Air

You will never see this but I want it that way because I am in love with you in a way only I can fall in love; a fleeting glimpse of a stranger's face and a gasp of breath before receding into myself,  withdrawing, making myself small enough that someone always notices me.   I'm a master of manipulation and I know how to get people to notice me.   The people I love are always people who like to protect,  people who talk easily and readily and are drawn to their opposites, so I knew I should make myself small to get you to look.  And then we talked and played monopoly and you told me you were in advertising and i pretended to be older and we talked and i fell in love with your laugh and your careful nature and how good your face looked, you looked like a good person.   Someone i could trust.  But now you're leaving and I want to say goodbye but I don't know if that's appropriate.   All I can think is that I was washing the dishes and you leaned over me to put a glass away and I held my breath.   I felt nothing and only saw a strip of black sweater.   But I fell in love and twisted up and you asked me if I was okay.   And I turned around with shy eyes and smiled and said "yeah, are you?"

It is still too raw
waking up every morning and expecting to see you
not making noise because you were the only person still sleeping in on a school morning
it is still raw and bursting
like some awful infected wound
when you were dying i kept praying it wasn't cancer
now i wish it were because i would have had more time with you
it is still raw and flaming
not being able to watch series because you're missing out
how do i tell you i miss you
when you arent a contact on my phone anymore
how do i do this?

Pops, I went to you for everything I couldnt fix myself
how, tell me how?

Yesterday, we played a home video and I heard your laugh

That dying-seal laugh you could hear a mile away
I thought you were there with me
You were there with me

I'm not ready for this
My heart is broken
and raw, still too raw

What was the point of this
Now you're just spine in ground
Vertebrae caked with soil
Rotting dark meat
Holes in skin
What was the point of wearing that seatbelt
Watching your posture
Getting those glasses that made you self-conscious
Because of the future
What about the future
There was no future
Now you're just skull under mound
of topsoil, soul left, mouth open filled with ants
This is like a horror movie

Pull glass out of fresh wound
Blood dripping
Glistening
Like water off a drowned girls hair
Skin bloated
Shining
Like a whipped donkey
Hit with tight rope made of hide like his
Which, raw pink flesh, is not the same
Like lump of meat
On plate, steak you can't eat cooked and
Dead
Like your father
Buried in a small plot
Decaying like rotten fruit
Memories
Raking through your brain
Pain from the good
Like too-sweet pomegranate juice that makes you want to *****

Dear pops
1) You died and will never get to see your grandchildren.  I always used to tell you if you didn't eat better you wouldn't get to see them. I was right
2) I told you if you didn't eat better you would get diabetes. In the end they cut out your pancreas and I became right
3) I always thought hospitals were cool. Thanks to you I can't bear thinking of one
4) Why did you never say you were proud of me?
5)Why did you never say you were proud of me?
6) Why did you never say you were proud of me?
7) Never. Not once
8) Were you proud of me?
9) Why was it always about my looks?
10) Why was I always annoying to you?  *edit - why did you always find me annoying?
11) Did I matter?
12) Did you think I was smart?
13) Did you think I would become something?
14) Did you think I was a stupid girl who would outgrow her rebelliousness
15) It's been 17 years and I haven't
16) Did you think I was smart?
17) You never thought anything I did mattered
18) You always mocked me, made fun of me, never listened to what I had to say
19) You thought I was rude when I wasn't
20) You labelled me all the time
21) There's a small part of me that's glad you died because now I can love a girl more easily. Now I can love a boy of a different race more easily. Now I can speak to my mother more easily
22) Did you love me?  It didn't seem so
23) I always thought my life would change if I lost someone I loved. It didn't ,not much
24) I'm always looking for older men to tell me I'm intelligent. Your best friend. My uncle. My teacher.
25) Guess why
26) I'm damaged. I was damaged before you died and a large part of why is you
27) The boys and I always said you reminded us of Homer Simpson because of your gut and baldness and mild foolishness. In the end you were so ravaged by jaundice you were as yellow as him. I will never watch The Simpsons again

Maybe I am disaster
Loss seems to fill me up and
doesn't it, to everyone though?
Aren't we all just floating?
Everyone tells me that I don’t need another person because I am complete
I fill myself
So why the **** do I feel so empty?
Why am I lonely?
Maybe I am disaster
But am I that beautiful kind of disaster
That wanted kind of disaster
How do I open the skies
And hug the ones I've lost?
Maybe regret is the worst kind of poison
Maybe it kills
How do I live the way I want to without other people?
I have spent 17 years not hugging other people
And I think I know why
I am so frightened of intimacy
So scared
Why would any reasonable person give others bits of their souls?
Can you trust?
Can you trust?
What is trust?
How do I grow?
How do I empty my cocoon?
I know who I am because I say what I am
But how do I convince others
I am wanted?
Am I wanted?
I don’t know any more

Sometimes we don't know if we're going to be okay
and even that is okay
One day at a time while the grief subsides
if it ever does

Maybe there is love here for me
Maybe there is love
Not in the way I want to be loved
But the past 2 months have taught me a lot.
That maybe I shouldn't expect too much
Maybe I don't need to have perfection
Books as gifts and always being there
Maybe just the occasional laugh and being comfortable is enough
Maybe I'm not settling for second best
Maybe I'm being okay with being okay.
Maybe my mother and father had a love story
The kind of one you read about in novels
Maybe they were more than soulmates
I don't know why I'm using the past tense
Maybe my dad always tucking my mother in at night was enough
Maybe he didn't have to buy her flowers
Maybe him just talking to her was enough
Maybe she loving him was more than he ever wanted
Maybe bare-bones love doesn't always mean lacking
Maybe I needed to learn this
Maybe we're all enough for each other

People always say there are some things too terrible to build beauty out of
I am lying down on a couch in the prayer room of a hospital
Facing the huge cross I don't pray to staple-gunned onto the wall
Waiting, while my battery dies, to hear if my father will live or not
I'm not trying to make this sound poetic or romantic or even bearable
Let's just agree I've never felt so lost in my life, not even when I had no friends and I fought daily with my mother
If my father dies, so does she, and I never pictured myself as the protagonist of an Orphans Plight story
Certainly not with two younger brothers to care for
I feel guilty, because I've imagined him dying sometimes, I always imagine it as a relief but I feel nothing now, not even numbness
I wonder if God is punishing me for those thoughts and wishes
I'm trying to out-pray those thoughts, counting the blessings on the lines of my fingers
Hoping to heaven someone up there will take pity on me and save his life
This evening I told my aunt I wouldn't care if he came back whole or not, I just want his dying-seal laugh back on the dinner-table

It is a windy night and the hospital beds are all filled in my mind
with loved ones
lonely and aching in the dark
I've never seen my father cry and I never want to
My brother has regressed for the night back into childhood and is sleeping in my mother's room because she has two double beds unfilled
An empty home
An empty tower
There is so much silence I never realised was there
Usually covered up with yelling
Fighting
Usually me
Usually my father
But one of us is missing and this home has dissolved into a graveyard
I never realised I cared this much
You Know
Just the other day I stared at myself in the mirror after a crying jag and saw a red face, ugly and disappointing
I always wanted to be someone who cried delicately
Well, today I was on the phone and somehow started crying without realising it, my face did not redden and the tears looked elegant
I never want to cry like this again
If God is out there He knows I've been angry and hateful
Hating this family like a curse
Wanting out
But right now, ******* hell, right now
I just want my father home

The world has dropped to its knees begging our white male dominator's to let us be
Guns swinging from your belts as money stuffs the lining of your clothing
Do not **** us, we begged you
Your power is a travesty, unfair
You would be better off sharing,I promise you
You are not worth more than I am you monster

We will not beg anymore
Because you are inhuman
un-hearted, unable to reason
More animal than animal
Demons with hell-fire in your eyes
The word loss has been shaking in my mouth for years
But the worlds collective stance means they taste it too
When genocide is permissible

Because the people you **** are not wealthy
Brown-skinned
Veiled and not passive
Because you own us, the media
our collected information
Our collective memories are worth nothing
Genocide is permissible
But ******* if you think we think so too

If you think we will go down without a fight
The history books will have your names remembered as villains
And the devil will have a special seat for you
You monsters

When genocide is permissible
I see not the end of hope
But the fury than keeps us going
You are evil
We are purity
We are loss and loss makes strength
We are dignity
Beauty
More than genocide

I don't know where to begin with this

All I can say is that I am tired

I was given dreams
dreams like fresh fruit
Ripening in my palms
My world was blue skies and
orange slices
litchi juice on hands
climbing the jungle gym

My youth was flora
sprouting out the earth
branches picked clean

we were absolutions

I don't know when that all disappeared

Grown-ups are supposed to know everything
When did I start seeing adults crying more often than I did

We are grey specks in the sea
tumultuous
overwhelming
absolute

We are droplets
whirled into the horror of bloodstains on the road

I am lonely
Endless
Mattress on the sea
Floating
Sinking
Drowning

This is carnage
terror
silent genocide running through our veins

The hours are passing

The air is smog

the trees are dying

the fruit is gone

I was born in a hospital bed in a pretty city fresh out of Apartheid where my skin colour wouldn't matter any more

And my mother saw me a few minutes after the sweat had spilt out of her eyes and said
"Thank God
She looks like you"
looking up at my father

With his skin like cream and roses
And his hazel eyes without a bit of green
My mothers eyes are chocolate and just as warm

I opened mine
And my mother and father wondered where they had come from
Inky black like a void
I have always been proud of their darkness

My eyes are the one part of my face that is truly mine
Not a gift from my parents
I was born with light skin and dark eyes
And I prefer the one I shouldn't

I grew up in a town that told me to stay out of the sun
Don't look like a tambi
Old auntie's I meet and forget have snarled at me
Their wasted faces and bodies are a source of pride and shame
They gave it all for their sons and husbands
But it shows
and it shouldn't show

I was not a packaged child in ribbons and pink
I was not cute
And I think my mother hates me for that
She shows it sometimes
She's made it so clear that if a bomb fell through the kitchen roof it would be okay because only I would be in there

I grew up in a town that told me I wasn't worth the carefree love my brothers were
I had to be careful
Count up the brownie points like air pockets in a submerged car
Don't breathe too fast or it'll disappear
Walking on eggshells in my own house

My mother told my aunt who wanted to know why I was going to a university in a different province
That I wasn't a guest in my home
"We don't have girls to marry them off"
Those were words stolen from my tongue
when I had had enough as a child and told her I didn't want to get married, I was enough for myself

I don't think I've ever seen her so shocked, not at the wisdom in those words but the fact that I even thought that

I was born and raised in a place that painted me on a wall
And told me I had to stay there
I'm now old enough to know I deserve more

I don't think I've ever witnessed horror to this extent
Body parts are flying like shooting stars and it looks like people are wishing on them
Relaxing with family members watching the bombs rain down
as screams perforate the sky like the rip of paper

My dreams of a beautiful future have been ruined, not beautifully, not like some artefact I will later go photograph
This is horror
This is hope, hope in the leaders of the world, hope in the humanity of humanity,
destroyed
I will never look at myself the same
Or my friends
or my family
As we sit back watching human beings having their skin peeled off of them
There's nothing we can do
No petition will strike the hearts of the US Senate
Our ancestors made a mistake giving them so much power

Forcing people to change their loyalties in front of the world
As a child I read 1984 and laughed at what Orwell thought the world would become
I have since realised that reality is worse

This is not a downward spiral
No one has become nauseous enough to realise what is going on
This is a voluntary jump, a suicide mission we have set out for ourselves without knowing it

There are people in Palestine who have nowhere to run
I don't even know what that feels like
To have nowhere to go for shelter

To look death in the face and scream
or sigh

I've never seen anything more worthy of God's grace than the way your tears cling to your lashes when you cry with your eyes closed like you're having a bad dream.
You think, and most do, that the ugliest face is the one filled with emotion, when your face goes red and soft-spoken words become yells in the ocean waves, and spittle flies out your mouth like the salt water of the sea.
I love your passion. I love your screams and tears and the way  your veins throb in your forehead and throat when you get worked up, when you feel indignant and injustice.
Most will say to you,
"Hush little girl, keep your legs closed, keep your mouth closed,
Keeps your mind closed.
Don't ever be more than what we expect and definitely not more than what we want,
Little Girl, keep your mouth closed tight and coloured pink, and your cheeks held round with a wide smile ,coloured blushing-bride red, and your eyes wide-innocent and ignorant too."
I'm telling you little girl, you're a big woman now, and you never look more beautiful than in a fit of emotion and passion, when instead of makeup clouding your face I see your spirit being bared with the cleansing wash of your tears.
When instead of hearing your small talk about shoes I hear your soul flying out of your mouth, bright wings billowing beyond the length of your body, flapping too loud to ignore  
Your voice may be small, but so are these words, yet both can change the world.

Star- bred stallions
We are made of star stuff and it's fading away dear humanity
Look at yourselves.
See the waste you are pouring back and forth from your bodies to the sea
Regurgitate
It is not boring to be alive
To see our reflections in a puddle on a rainy day, walking to school
Our lives are strings criss-crossing and attached to others oh so delicately, tangled in hard knots that sway in the wind
We are made of moonlight and sprinkles of sea-water
We are Gods with shining eyes that refuse to look down from the sun
Open your mouths and say what you mean
And mean what you say
Don't forget to look at the forests crying at how wonderful it is to be alive
It is not boring to be alive
We don't know why we're here but not everything needs a reason
The most beautiful things have no cause at all
We are the dead, our past lives have fertilised the soil that grew the plants our mothers ate
We are the lives before us
It doesn't end but it's always different
Look up
Smile

Do you know the difference between loneliness and being alone?
Because whether I'm alone or not I still feel like I'm in the sea, no lifeboats around me, just my blood rushing, beating in my ears and sharks swimming beneath me
They want to eat me
And I'm scared
Because at this rate I don't think I'll ever leave this watery grave.
I can't speak to people anymore
I don't remember how
No one cares about me anymore
And I feel worse because I don't think anyone ever did, or that anyone cares about anybody, and I just never realised it till now.
I'm very sad.

Sometimes I see my world burn, fire licking at the borders of my countries, threatening to taste the people I love, threatening to grip me and drag me down
I can't tell if the world burns or if my glasses are painted with flames
I'm too confused
My mind runs too quickly like water out a tap, thoughts disappearing into the pipes before I can grab them
I'm not sure if I'm altogether sane, altogether ******* on straight
I see red spots in the sea water but no sharks have been reported
I picture the earth like a burnt wedding cake covered nicely with beautiful frosting
We are the little bride and groom figurines at the top, unaware our world has been charred
People jump off buildings everyday, not knowing why they're doing that
It's a lump in your stomach you aren't sure is real
It's disassociation
Refusal to understand
We are Obsequious to our own insubordination
We are pretending

This world is getting a bit too much for me
there are only so many times i can cry over my laptop keyboard
then worry my tears will damage it

I am so sad
I don't deserve to be sad
I sat watching a soccer match while people were massacred last night

There are elephants crying after being freed from 50 years of torturous captivity
Elephants only live for 70 years

Why was I born into this
not everyone was meant to live here
not everyone is hard enough

I am a good person, I know this
I can help people
but I will **** myself in the process
am I a coward or brave?
Do I want to be either?

My best friend is leaving me and I have cried every night while listening to Coldplay since she told me

There is a chance I am autistic, obvious enough to someone who has met me once, while my mother never picked this up
my whole life has been spent thinking I am slow, stupid, socially inept
she could have picked this up

she could have raised me whole

I am too wind, salt water not from the sea
Wild intense uncontained
A lover says to me' we could never date, I would always be second best to your fantasies"
He expects this to bruise but I hold this to my heart like the sweetest compliment
I have always wanted to be too much for someone
My mother says her premature grey hair is because of me, I look down thoughtfully but I rejoice inside
She did not want fire from her womb
A tan porcelain doll with long hair to comb filled her dreams during pregnancy
Did her heart burn and my violent kicks not give me away?
I am not broken, I am not a fledgling thrown from the nest
I have not given up on myself
I will not be fixed, held taunt by ropes I do not hold myself
I am special
Clouds that cover the sun
I will move so much water
Drink the seas
Scale the sky
Just watch
Watch me fly

My children will be free like stones over calm lakes
They will drown under the weight of their own burdens
Home will be the hands of the person paying the rent of whatever we live in
Food will be the cans they manage to steal from the grocery store
Hearts beating like butterflies
They will grin at themselves when they make it out unscathed, proud and boastful,
grown-ups before puberty
They will take care of each other
It will always be them
They will learn that family means never giving up, never letting go, always supporting with whatever we have left to give
They will have a poet for a mother
This means that words will be the wombs from which they were born
Sadness will run through their veins
Their eyes will be lined paper, their smiles pens, their bodies a culmination of grief and love
They will be neglected, second best, always clamouring after filled notebooks
They will be stones
Thrown over lakes in a game
Sinking
Drowning

It's hard to teach myself things sometimes
I repeat the lessons as if I were in primary school again, memorising times-tables without success, willing the numbers to form in my mind
I know I should love myself enough to get away from you,
In simplest terms, talking to you makes me hungry for more
I don't want casual banter, I want your palms to my lips and your legs wrapped around me
I want intimacy like the kind I've always been scared of, to look into your eyes without shame or fear
But I do fear
Because you don't want the same
You don't want me the way I want you, you want to unhinge my mind and let loose the secrets, to eat them like snacks
There is something wrong with you and I could help diagnose it
god knows I do it for all my friends
But you call me crazy and you make me feel hard to love and that bruises me from the inside out. I am a walking wound
I have loved others like you
People who have whittled me down into toothpicks to use once and throw away
I have let go of a lot of people like you, who make feel like I'm always dressed inappropriately even when I'm naked
But I can't learn from my mistakes
My love for you is a monster inside my chest
shrieking and clawing at you
Desperate and delusional
I know this is all going to blow up in my face but I'm going to enjoy this moment right now
when you told me you loved me for the first time

I am fragile
a glass bead on your necklace
you promised me you would never grow bored of me
could never grow bored of me
I was fascinating, a glint of light on a raindrop trailing down your window

you treated me like a goldfish,
beautiful, delicate,
watched me swim through water
But you stuffed me with broken promises, you gave me hope like a light in my heart and stole it away and now I'm blind

I'm blind to all but your face
My heart skips along to yours
You know that emptiness attracts me like a disease
you groomed me like a vaccine
You left me
You grew bored, and there's a part of me that's happy because I knew you would
I wanted to prove you wrong

If you just gave me the chance
I would turn you into poetry,
make literature out of you,
you would not be
a chapter in my life
You would be the whole book
Consumed in passion
Read like a tear-jerker in bed
with the rain
Tapping on the window outside
We would love like pages of a story
Flowing into each other

I can't trace my ancestors
Find my blood back to where it came from
Fires stole the documents, ate the house, burnt the mother, took a child
I would have a bigger family probably
The boats took a man
Lost a wife
mixed the blood into something unwanted by the country I was born into
Impure they declared
I am impure they declared
My father and mother, degenerates, traitors to their blood
I can't name my family
My surname isn't real
Made up to avoid persecution by a government who saw us as animals
I am not real
There is silence in my blood
Shame in my veins
We need new names but we can't seem to find them
There is no history in our books
No stories of our pasts
We have no roots
Plants waving in the wind
No home to call our own

As a child I learnt that there is an international signal for
help me
save me
get me out of here
And I played my hands waving and high like a broken robot asking the sun and moon to save my soul
They didn't listen
And I have since spent the years inventing new signals to get your attention
Broken twisted gestures intended for shock and abhorrence
delicate hands, crouched fingers, a thumb in a field of wheat
honest
honest
why don't you see me
Why can't you save me
There is supposed to be an internationally recognised signal for
"Help"
So why is the world blind to my troubles
when I throw myself into water and wave at the sky

intense
intense
be intense
start fires
be waves and drown us all
be fiery and consume
intensify
don't pacify
yourself or others
be passion
be flames and the sun
be the moon
cause shifts of blood with gravity's rule
rule the sea and capsize
hearts and ships and stereotypes
be a queen and chop off their heads
dragon tongues and fluttering wings
ruin the ruins and break the buildings
cut the earth in half
roar

Am I just salt for you to rub into your wounds?
You flake me off like dandruff bits on your blazer collar,
Sadism is an art when you use me for it
We are whips, ripping into each others flesh
Taking bites and swallowing
Blood down cheeks
Vampire treats
We are invincible to all but each other
I want you to run your fingernails down my back, swirly skin under nails, red like fine felt-tip streaks
Paint me like one of your damaged girls
This is revolting, but this is home
Bruises are kisses as far as we're concerned
Lovebites
Love bites
Obsession is a small word for the hurt we do to each other
I love you
slap
I love you
Smack
I love you
Crunch
Bones on bones at the bottom of the stairs
We finished each other
We're done

I fall in love with people who have your name.

There is poison running through my veins
hereditary
passed on from both sets of grandparents. my parents never had a chance
neither do I
There is a silence between our conversations
unspoken words drawing us away from each other
Our kindness to each other is generosity
The days are spent waking from nightmares I’d rather be living in to grunts of good mornings
Waving goodbyes at school
Grunts of greeting at the car and afternoons spent in dreams once again
Till I finally wake up, late evening, switch on my online world and speak to the family I wish I lived with
There is sadness running down these walls
Emptiness between occasional hugs
Hatred slowly growing in hearts
We will probably never speak again once I move out
This normal for me, for the many millions living the way I do
Why
I want to love them the way normal people do
My family are strangers under the same roof
I don't even know what they dream about

How could anything so pure feel so bad?
When did we decide that loving each other was a risk, and evil, something we had to hide deep inside ourselves, not even telling each other
True love is supposed to be a once in a lifetime chance and I'm terrified that we’re letting this go because we’re too afraid
Soul mates are supposed to be rare, and we’re letting ourselves become extinct
Why does this feel *****?
I have dreams about you where we sit in public and talk and clasp hands on top of the table
No shame, no blushed-downwards gazes
I like you so much
Looking at your face makes me shy
It’s like a rainbow, seeing it too often makes you unappreciative so I try to avoid temptation
I wish I could die
I would rather die than be told that this is evil
That when my heart grows bigger and I feel like I've swallowed jumping beans when I see you, it’s a bad thing
Wrong wrong wrong rong rog rig righ right
Right
No
Stop
I love you
Enough
**** them
Come here
Listen
Please be with me
No shame
No hurt
Safe
Sweet
Good
Right

A shell in a thunderstorm covers me
And I am warm
Protected
Listening to raindrops shatter roof tiles
Like the tapping feet of a chimney sweep
In the past
Unfurnished, bare
These cavernous rooms echo with memory
I think about the children who've grown up here and left
The hands touching these walls before mine were fully formed
My brother lies on the carpet and I see this moment as a memory in the future
Looking at his small form coloring a book that will be thrown away
I think about the future
About the children who will inherit this house and touch the walls I've touched
Smile in the rooms I've smiled in
Cry on the floors I've dropped tears on
All sensation is already memory
I'm afraid of forgetting

I have been told for millenia that i need to stop being so sensitive
feel less
care less
but don't be careless
school doesn't matter but get good marks
contradictions lying in the recesses of my brain
what my mother doesn't seem to understand
is that i am forged from fire
i am not a water baby whose occasional destruction can be understood
i am not calm
i was not made to be bathed in
i am a fire you see
i burn and destroy
my giving light is a coincidence
my giving warmth is a bonus
i set the world up in flames and people covet me
i was meant for heat and light and to tarnish the gold of the oppressors
do not limit me mother
i am not the fruit of your *****
i have sprung ready made from the branches of a higher purpose
do not diminish me
i can't be made small
let me be or i will **** you
slowly
and burn your flesh with my tongue

My state of mind is abysmal
A void in my skull
Throbbing and robbing,gravity *******, people *******
A blackness darker than pitch, you stupid ***** get out of my head, scorpions crawling along my cranium, **** them with radium, poison the skeletons tapping on skin.
Hit me with hammers, don't sit there and stammer, get me out of this hole
Help me feel whole
Help me save my soul
Tablets and pills don't stop the ****, slicing and dicing, man-made gills
Cover my eyes, I am so shy,
Just lay me to sleep, don't weep
don't weep

There's this girl I love
Whose pores I could sink into when we kiss
Because she melts me from the heart out
I wish I could disappear into every crevice of her body and sink beneath her skin
Fold myself into her heartbeat
Rock to sleep with the melody of her lungs
I wish I could be her clothes and touch her every moment of the day
But at some point she'd have to wash me of her scent
So I must remain content to be a seperate organism, only passing smiles and kisses
And touches at certain moments
At least in my mind she's always there

Our teenagerdom is a disease and the grown-ups are trying to flush us out with their own brand of youth

The brand of responsible and modest and                                                                          “When I was your age I never did that”

Their wisdom trying desperately to unhinge our craniums and kick out the ******* pop culture infecting our brain

Song lyrics and Hookah pipes                                                                                         Smokey eyes and baggy jeans                                                                                                  LGBT rights and the fourth wave of feminism

What they don’t realise is that our world is speedy and they are old

Their wisdom was born of their own mistakes                                                                     And we need to create our own                                                                                              Death is the only door for them whereas adolescence is a rebirth

We are the youth

And while our parents are trying to change the world

We will be living in it

Blueberries and creams
cascading onto the floor as screams surround the wedding party
the cake is ruined

I think of the time
the clocks don't tick
How much longer do I have to be here
I walk outside and it's lighter than I thought
Like when  you leave a movie house and walk outside

the sun smiles at me
it knows I don't want it
I have a migraine
******

Let me in
Shut the door and let the sheets cover us both
and let's breathe oxygen into each others mouths
until we both pass out and die together
intertwine our fingers and criss cross our arms
melt my chest into yours
hairs bonding
tears dripping
belly buttons closing on each others abdomens
fusing and refusing
to let go

Don't turn me into honey for pouring down your throat
I am not sugar-sweet treats for  your comfort eating
My home is a wasteland far away from your arms
I don't need you
I am an ocean
The bucket of water has been overturned and
watch the water flow
Captivity is not my natural environment
I was meant to burn in flames
my smoke reaching heights no one has ever travelled to
entering the lungs of lesser creatures and making them great
I am a loner

Born into this
From this
These winding roads, effervescent in their murky tar,
seen through the haze of thirst
This nation of despair
Born into this
The acid sea, humans gasping through the foam,
clawing at the air like Venus trying desperately to reach the shore
We will not be reborn from the messes of our parents
We are born into this;
Chaos and flaming planets
Screens with blinking images straight of of sci-fi movies
burned into our bones through experience
We are the children of grey skies, always-wars,
broken buildings, burnt books
Born into this
From this
Hopeless

Come on
Don't forget the times that we saw stars on our bedroom ceilings
stayed up past the witching hour to watch the sun rise
you once whispered
"welcome home, sun"
as if it knew it had travelled across the world in a day

Don't act like the books have forgotten you
they have kept their letters at attention for you to scan your eyes at
Who else would stand all day for you

The seasons have changed and we've gotten older,
but once when you were younger you were afraid that you would never see winter or spring again when it left
Have the seasons ever disappointed you

Your blood runs at 50 miles per hour
you are a race track
you draw spectators to you
why would you ever want to die

We are the stars that you ignore in search for brighter lights to guide you home
Safe and warm and ignorant you stay
We were the children born from orchids, into a meadow
and our lives have dried up, weeds thriving on our desperate longing for home
The only music we hear are the sounds of death: gunshots and screams
the genre that only people who have a warm smile to come home to can listen to at a music store
We are the people of Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, The Congo, Haiti, India, Bangladesh, North Korea
The diaspora who no longer have roots anywhere on earth
we have been dug up and shat out by the soil that we sprung from
Our kin have scratched blood from our skin
We are the forgotten, the avoidees, the people who make you uncomfortable
who force you to leave your little world so painstakingly built for you to live in and die as a result of
Go, live the lives you were destined for while we dream of them
Go, have the freedom you think you have and we think we will get
We are goldfish in a bowl that has never been cleaned
We will never escape

Let the birds chirp
and echo away the cries of a dawning sun
Soaking the cotton-wool clouds in orange juice and smearing them across the sky
Let my veins throb with all the blood running marathons
Sweat pooling from the pores in my skin
Everything has become an effort
even staying alive
Inhaling, not allowing myself to turn blue and asphyxiate
I thought breathing was an unconscious instinct, but lately I've had to count them to make sure I didn't miss any
Bath water has never looked more inviting
When all I want is to sink under it
(Ariel is drowning, and her voice is gone too)
Hair floating in mermaid curls
I ought to be a submarine and search for the City of Atlantis to find a place to call home
It might be rusty and decrepit but so am I
My blood is running a marathon through my arteries,
but it doesn't look like it's going to finish this time

Pour water over the shades and tones on your body and let it cleanse you off the guilt you have accumulated
shove off the virtuous, burn the pure and tear out the hearts of the innocent
we are sinners and shall always remain so,
proud with the blinking lights above our heads leading down to our hearts
a black and white sign stating
'hey, my name is ..."
Sorry
Okay
Stupid
Forgive me
I love you
We should all wear signs on our ******* stating what we think we are
My sign would say
"Trying"
because that's all we ever do
try our best to be whole persons
but we were cut in half at birth, placenta buried without us, thrown into rivers, cremated without our bones
we are guilty for the sins we have not the guts to commit yet
we are afraid of our virtues as much as our vices
we are taught to be careful before we are taught to dream
so pour water over yourself
cleanse yourself of the assimilation you have unwillingly swallowed and let spread like lotion over your heart
Be
before it's too late

We are failing
we are failing
we are failing
we are failing
we are failing
and not in the way you think
but in the way that silently creeps up on us on nights when we can't sleep for unknown reasons and stare at the light swimming past the cut in our curtains as if it would give us answers
if only we asked nicely
these decrepit halls are taking their toll on me, the walls are not supposed to be crushing me
Teen angst is not teen angst but rather the angst of being born that only catches up on us when we truly become aware of it, and is soon repressed when we realise nobody cares
four legs, two legs, two legs with a cane, or maybe just wheels
wheels turning oh so slowly, uphill, fighting against gravity,
one step forward two steps back
this is the fight of life
baby girls ******* **** for alms
baby boys with bleeding noses, blood running into the gaps between their teeth for the rush, oh the rush
This is the fight of life
and we are failing

I have let the honey flow through me in golden waves , like a thick ocean
Nobody tells you that sweetness can also be brutal
There is no healing in the sort of kindness you are forced to give
It is pouring salt on a wound and calling it a bandage
I have shown the sugar the pores of my skin and allowed each grain to rain out of me
I looked like the eye of a snow storm for weeks
The blue-black throb of my unappreciated heart has stopped, but I still feel pinches as I wake up
That's when a person knows that time does not heal all maladies nor fix all calamities
We are not meant to be honey, all-natural and forever sweet
Not stevia, unhealthy and artificial
Our hearts shouldn't beat for the entire world
Just our own selves
We must rid ourselves of those who don't see our goodness and those who don't see our badness
Because we are a melting *** of humanness
and a missing ingredient is fatal

If I could step into the shoes of the women on this earth whose hearts are being thrown against walls by men, I would
I would shake the roots of their houses and cave them in, crushing the trauma where it happened
I would screech till my abusers ears bled from the sounds he forced out of me
Take tape and wind it round your body, over thigh, across breast, leaving holes for your mouth, ears and eyes
They can't stop you
They can't shut you down
Beautiful women who are being forced to regress from diamonds back to coal
I am with you
I am your heart and your voice
I will not leave you
We will sharpen knives together and slit the throats of the people who dare glance down our bodies,
Taking in everything but our eyes
Like a shark sniffs for blood
No predator can look it's victim in the eye as it kills it
So stare into your attackers face so he will see his emptiness reflected in your gaze
Hear his soul leave with your death rattle
Do not die in vain
Beautiful women around the world
Fight with the goddess-strength within you
Never back down
We are the portals that transport mortals into this dimension
We are the creators
We give life and we can take it away
With this kind of power who are you to give in, to submit
You are a wildfire, a storm, a tsunami
Show your true colours

The sun will rise tomorrow with that pure orange that fills the sky at dawn and awakens the birds who chirp us into semi-consciousness
And I will turn in my bed to face the darkness and whisper that life is magnificent
I won't remember that when I wake up

But it’s the subconscious thoughts that really count when the world is falling apart
We might lose ourselves and succumb to animalism but deep down we will always be there,
and what is more perfect than an object constantly at risk for breaking
We are these objects

Look in the mirror and witness your perfection
See the hands of god that once shaped your face embracing you still
Realise that you are bruised flesh and broken bone always healing and always being hurt
When aliens invade they will watch old movies and witness the archetype of humanity in each of us
They will wonder why we label each other when we all breath the same air and therefore contain bits of each other

Look in the mirror and realize you have done bad things but the beauty of life is that change is inevitable
For the good or the better
And that God probably wonders sometimes why he bothered making us

I cry very intensely
It's a red-faced
open-mouthed but no sound
tears falling straight down instead of curving down my nasolabial creases
kind of weeping
that can start and end as astonishingly quickly as someone turning over in bed
I cry very intensely
At everything
I don't discriminate at how sad and pathetic something needs to be for me to start
A sentence in a book ( or the entire book)
A scene on TV ( "I am Lisa Simpson")
or something in reality, like a starving cat
can all make me weep as if mourning the death of my shadow
I sometimes wish I could cry appropriately
But in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sorrow makes us all children again
and I don't care who I make uncomfortable