Drop
          Drop
                    Drop

That could either be the sound of rain,
Or the beat of my heart retreating from the dead.
Beating for you –
Like it used to.

Drop
         Drop
                  Drop

You hear that?
Tell me if that was the sound of the storm
Or my heart weeping once again,
For you.

You would have thought
I was over you.
But once a broken heart,
always a broken heart.

Sure you can mend it-
But can't you see the lining of the cracks engraved?
See how deep they've gone,
Enough to ruin it forever.

I may not cry much now,
But the silent, unshed tears
Are the ones that matter the most.
They carry my soul
Through each non-existent molecule.

You can't hear
The screams of terror
For thinking I still love you,
Through the undying storm.

When you love someone
You idealize a dream
With the two of you.
And when when you find out
What you wanted was one-sided,
Would you wish to still love them?

It's hard when what my mind wants
Does not synchronize
With my heart.

It's hard to breath
With all this air surrounding me,
Giving me space to think about you,
And I refuse to.

Why can't the rain
Dampen my feelings
To the extent of being paper,
And tearing easily apart?

Why can't the storm
Soften my  heart,
Leaving it numb
So my desires would be hidden,
And finally, weaken.

Leaving no space for you.

But, here's the thing:
The untamed storm
Perfectly reflects my devotion
Of what I once had-
And still have- for you.

I carried an eternal infatuation for you,
And I still do.

When you're alone
And you don't have a book to befriend,
You think-
And that can get scary.

Thinking about your loneliness,
Trying to humour yourself somehow.
Until you slip slightly deeper into your mind.

Then, life in general
Becomes your thought priority.
Exams, friends, family,
Exes.

Love.
Weeping echoes the borders of your mind.
Slightly mock crying
That you have no love life,
Or that your previous ones have burnt.
Just like the edges of your balance.

You stumble further,
Deliberating depression,
And how life is too cruel on you.
No one deserves you.

You fall, eventually
Into nothing.
Hearing your thoughts
Echo around you.

Then they start to scream.
As if terror caught hold of their voices
And shoved it through a megaphone-
Making their fear louder.
Your fears louder.
It's hard to think,
While tumbling endlessly,
Into nothing.

You're falling into a bottomless Thought machine.

The voices stop.
Abruptly.

Instead, you hear faint music.
Flutes.
Playing like wind-
Softly,
Suddenly you're floating.
As if on a cloud.

You look up,
To see the faintest light;
Hope.
Yet it's disappearing.
However, for once you aren't afraid.
But, the bright is closing in.
The light that you once thought didn't exist
Is making it's appearance stronger,
By vanishing.

Can you hear that?
It's the music-
Not so soothing anymore.
Not soft, but loud.
Not sweet, but bitter.

The horror clearly laid out
Through each note.

Can you hear the rapid movements,
The never ending spiral of notes,
The minor clearly being played,
Loud enough to get to the inner soul?

The cloud has vanished,
You are falling-
And the ground refuses to appear.

Wind of thoughts rushing,
Terror music playing,
Your rapid thoughts repeated out loud,
Turning into cries of help.

You can't move up,
You can't stop,
You can't breath
Any more.

What is happening?
Where are you?
Is this what it's like,
To be lost in your mind?

Eventually,
your knees buckle.
The ground resurfaces,
And you can sort of feel again.

But standing up,
you look above.
No light.

You walk around, feel your boundaries,
Smooth as silk.

You strain your ears to hear a thing,
Silence.

You try to hold it the tears in,
When realization dawns upon you;
You are trapped
In the midst of your thoughts.
Forever.

I liked not knowing what to do
and doing it anyway,
without practice, with abandon;
imperfect kissing. Undeserved certainty
laughing out between sharp brace wires.

Did I cut you when I pretended,
for a second, that we were almost,
almost, uninnocent; naked
when I grabbed your leg, then
all of you. Again. Then
again. Then
again.

And then somewhere in that mess of hair,
you breathed
and I thought it was for the first-time
because
that thought made me feel nice,

just like you did.
Again.

Prose is writing that goes right across the page. It rolls on, sentence after sentence, usually about things mundane.
But Verse is where you yourself
Decide the length of
Line.

Or stanza indeed. Some call lines “verses”. They can be very long.
Or short.
Iambic metre may be used
And other metres too.
You can write anapaests if you wish.

Yet Poetry is neither prose nor verse
As such.
It is about skyscraper forests looming large,
Trees spiking though mysterious mists.
Poetry is sunshine, filling your heart
With radiant joy.
Black nights of deep depression
Give way to a golden dawn.
The lonely
Find Love.
That’s Poetry.

Paul Butters

Today she is iceberg present
Holding her bones still
Showing 20 percent
Hiding the rest
Freezing in time
Slowly shrinking down
Into her surroundings
Out of sight out of mind
Inch by inch
She forgets herself
And became an ocean
Freshly tainted
Another part of the whole

Text her. Send her messages that she won't know how to respond to. she'll read them and put her phone down. Stare at the read receipt for hours until you realize she's not picking the phone back up, she doesn't have anything to say to you.

Eat lots of chocolate. It has serotonin in it, the happy chemical. When you cuddle with her, your brain releases oxytocin. As long as you eat enough chocolate (and throw it up) you won't miss the oxytocin one bit.

Bleed. When she tells you that she cuts herself, cut deeper. This is guerrilla warfare now, and for every shot fired you must fire back.

Read your messages. Laugh at the nicknames she used. "Princess". "Baby". "Darlin". You were never her princess, never her baby. She was the child and you were merely her plaything.

Make art. Write dumb poetry about falling in and out of love, take photographs of your ****** thighs, paint a picture using only shades of red. Let her figure out what all these things mean.

Drink. Green tea, *****, over-priced lattes. Stay up all night crying. Wear stilettos. Sit in art museums all alone and wonder if being a starving artist is as much fun as it sounds. Take long showers and harmonize with your favorite songs through your tears. Use heavier, blacker eyeliner. Spend time on yourself. Adopt a cat. But most of all, remember this:

You can only love one person. Choose yourself

I watched it sway in the wind, but never did it break. I kneel now on bended knee, knowing only what you give is what they take.

I couldn't put it down in pen, faces always see. I couldn't disguise what's inside, That's destroying so much of me.

Shadows linger in closets I keep bare, regrets marked on skin. Hearts must be made of glass, as passion is said to be sin.

Handprints that match my hand, I have a tendency to choke. Yet I often forget how to breath, when everything goes up in smoke.

Ruin is a friend of mine, she is always standing at my back. I'm sitting on the corner of insanity, while she's counting all I lack.

uncomfortable in skin
repulsed by mirror images
fragmented, yellow face
white paste to hide the decay
slit the belly open
and watch everything
hang open

You are the monster under my bed
That crawls up through my pillow and wraps its claws around my mind in the dark.
You are the sunbeams that reach through my windowpane and make it
Let go
You are in my head when I smile, like a consequence, like an instinct
And you are behind my eyes when I squeeze them shut in pain or fear
Like a promise.
Like a bell tolling I hear your name when it is silent and cold outside and the stars are piercing and I am fragile as ice, cracking with the sound of it rolling through my head.
I hear it slide along my skin when I run my fingers through a cat's fur and marvel at the softness and warmth and comfort.
You are in my mind.
You are wrapped around it.
I have made you a disease because you refuse to be a cure
And I will die of it
And good.
Good for you, that you will finally know what you're doing to yourself
By seeing it worn on someone else
You
Darling

You are my nightmares.
You are my daydreams.

You are the insecurities that gnaw at my stomach whenever silence falls and I squirm with thoughts I don't want to think.
You
Are the shadow that falls on the street when I wander at 2 am because I cannot be still with your name burning holes in my bones
And you are what I wake up from full of longing and disappointment when I find my dreams were false.
You are every thought, tacked on, dragged behind, holding on so that
I know of nothing now that you do not cause
That does not cause you.
You, darling, you will be the death of me.
I promised.