You cannot see how much you judge others
When you direct that judgement most harshly
Into yourself

you unwittingly hold others to the same standard
you abuse yourself with
External reflections of your most internal loathings

Nor do you see that the criticism which you raze against your self
You raze against those who admire you


The daughters' mother cannot bear
Her own visage

Sleep, sweet memories,
Let all your fears be rest.
Engage your dreams with frivolries,
For all your heart knows best

In the future
When I hold love around me like a cocoon
And it unbecomes my being -
I hope I remember you
Even as my wings unfurl from under my skin,
As I take my first breaths
And fly

All water flows
towards the sea, they say
I think what happens when I cry
Is that I would like to be washed away
.
Ice melts beneath the heat of my flesh
Life giving water drips
From my eyes to my hands
To my finger tips
And to the sea
.
Snow melts
To soften and nourish the earth
And leave tender spaces
For the young things to bloom
...
The heat of my passions cool
Like mist in the trees, it settles
On my skin
Mischievous and solemn -
spirits beckon me, they tug on my clothes
To dance, or die..

I've been washed away

Oh take me where the people are
And let me run and play
I won't be here for long, I think
But maybe for a day

But the quiet coverage of night takes her prize
Torn from your childlike heart are the comfortable distractions that kept you from being
Alone
The velvet cover muffles your cries to silence
Without even the satisfaction of an echo, or soothing drone
To fill your frame, instead,
your mind within your corpse lay prone

The night sky moans your name-
She echoes across the mountains
Her tongue on the snow
Her teeth in my bones

His arms
Wrap around my naked corpse
Is he holding me (is he giving up?)
Or am I letting go

A Copse of trees stand tight
Huddled like frightened beasts against the cold of night,
Wild wolves in the wind snapping at their
bonelike limbs
The hunger of cold, biting and old
Thrum out like the very first hymns

Too many tortured souls,
But here they found
A place to be set free.
Hello, poetry.

The kitchen table is an altar
To the only god I've ever known
When I fail and when I falter
She makes my weariness feel like home

What a blessing it would be to have eyes
That open before the wake of my own destruction
And not be widened by suprise
At my reduction

I can see the end beginning
When the beginnings begin to end
This wild winter wind is softly winning,
My blood, tears, and snow will blend

Blinded once again,
I succumb easily
To good men with bad intentions.
X
We all have our weaknesses.

Though we now lay miles apart
With every thought you fill my heart,
With every smile you steal my breath
I will love you until  death

And yet
Amidst the torments
And torrents of tragedies
I've had your arms to fall into
Each night, when I fall
Down

The line of confused winter birds
Wash across the crisp blue sky
As the breaking line of a wave against the shore,
Pushing on, morning song
Flying as high as the day is long

Bite my tongue to pieces,
I smile behind bloodred lips ,
Does the sweet scarlet curve entice you, my love?
My gold light under your cold sight eclipsed,
.
Have I made myself palatable enough
To be consumed?
Or does my bleeding flesh pollute, too pungent and sour
For the likes of your gluttonous love to devour

I don't know how to end it but I love a new start,
Devoted and lost, homelessness of the heart

Rest my dear
Allow your body to fade into the night.
The cruel light of day demands sacrifice
And offers no respite
Until the dusk places her softest kisses
As she takes you in her arms
And allows your burden to rest
She knows you did your best
And sends you into a land where
darkness will unbecome your being
for a while,
As a gift

Free from the pain of production,
From the pain of being perceived
For the stains of your actions muddy and meld
Into the darkness's deepening kiss
.

I suffered a quiet death
And in its quietness I was left
Filled with the sensations of
Displacement and non-existence

I graduated alone in a small room
From where I have now been evicted
All my cumulations of efforts
Have crumbled, unremarked, into dust

My sandcastles have been swallowed quietly by the ocean
And I, their queen, drown with them

Night falls into my embrace
My bed softens the fall to sleep
Moonlight washes across my face
And lessens the darkness of the deep

The morning unfolds itself like a poem
First, a softening,
- realisation of cold -
And then,
        the promise of gold

The words escape me,
Pushed as breath forced from beaten lungs
****** past my lips into vacuum
Trying to convey what left me breathless
Breathlessly

You went away, and I followed behind,
On mountains you shone like a star.
I couldn't lose you; you were stuck in my mind 

You were always too close and too far

It kept building, in the way all things do
Like a rising crescendo.
It took one and half years to break me:
The distance, the disease,
The divorce
The accumulation of pennies in my jar,
One for each heartbreak
I am become afraid of my own kitchen,
Of too many noises
Of trusting things I thought were mine,
My stability crumbles on sandy foundations
The tighter I hold, the greater the cold.
Its not within me yet,
but the many lashed open wounds
Might yet grant entry
To fill the warm spaces that were emptied
A bloodless, blood loss eviction
I write this to stand guard
Against new tennants

And I am afraid
They may have already arrived
Or perhaps
They never left

And now when I scream
I no longer have the satisfaction of an echo,
Nor of any sound at all

We choose
Until our choices
Make us

Sunlight wrapped in chains of gold
The days are short, the nights are cold
Amid dark spots, dark thoughts, light rain
You use your sweetness to sour my name

The impressions of people who have touched my heart
Dimpling the glassy surface with fingerprints
Residue meets remnant meets reflection
I meet my own eyes through the coloured film
My face distorted, rippling from what I can see
Uncertain if touched on the mirror or me

Let the darkness lay her softest kisses
Upon your brow, my love
Many things your soft heart misses
Be eased by dawn above

Love in a mist
Tiptoe through shadow
Unuseful mystery-
Useful mystery;
Unuseful clarity

The darkness has always been that gentle softness to embrace and soothe my worn heart, oft burned from ravages of daylight

Soothing and sweet, you hold more than any eye could comprehend

But possibly, the depths to which
My heart will extend

And so it has begun
That I miss you more than I ever loved you;
The deep imprint remains-
your fingers on my flesh
Grasping so tight I could not exist anywhere
except in that moment with you
The imprints leave such ghastly hollows in your absence
Sharp contours like sunken cheeks
Incongruous with the plump pleasantries,
Like pastry, I crumbled in your hands
To be consumed by your love
Such fresh and living agony!
Contrasted now by the staleing crumbs of my heart
***
Once alive with blood in every breath
What else could painlessness be, but death?

A young woman hid, in a world long ago
A world full of hunger and greed
.
Asked,  "why do you hide?"
she answered, wide eyed,
"I dont want them to see how I bleed

Goodbye my lover,
My sweetheart, my friend
If that's how we started I know how we end
It's been a long day, short month. Whole year
Walking the line between joy and fear