In the twilight of dreams
The hollow corridors echo
Louder than ever before
The walls are smeared
In nostalgia
Memories creep in
And congests weary minds

Somehow
We march onwards
Like intrepid lions
Cognisant of unkind truth
The way is long
And if we crumble now
We may never recover.

I do not know why or how
I conceived the notion
Of being the exception
Where has irrevocable devotion drained away to
All I know is nobody I know has it.

When we heard stories
Of those who yearned
To feel the void in their hearts
with experience
To drive away the cold
through design
Stories of those who knew not
what to do with their hands
How circumstance
became the author of who they were
And how they gave up the ghost while teetering on the precipice of possibility
They told us of the fearless
Who pranced
on cliffs with steep edges
The hopeful
Who clung to the almost with dead hands

He softens my spirit
Sorely by being
Touch laced with prose
My bones delicate
Holding soothe
In the palm of his beautiful hands
Feeds it to me with reckless abandon
I know not where he has been
Nor where he is going
My very own path riddled in murk
Faithless destiny veiled in azaleas
I have worshipped in wrong alters
Built cathedrals with the bones
Of withered ghosts
The misspent vermilion on the floor
The way the darkness
Catapults a disappointed heart
Still, I love
It is for such, I agitate my heart.

I want to descend
from the razors edges
To stray from these borders
Darkened by virulent desires
My bones crackle
Blood runs cold
Devoid of reason but not choice
The familiar bother
I want to love
The will to be is
But my hair smells of madness
And running and running.

Losing you has been the most fundamental loss of my entire existence
It's like yearning to go home
But not being able to go ever go back
Or desperately trying to get a hold of
something intangible
my feet unsteady
On the muddy terrain of grief

For the both of us
I vowed to carry on
I must
Just often times
the air
gets hard to breathe
And I yearn for you
more than you'll ever know
My hands shake
The will be is
I am weighed down
with guilt, shame and fear
I would sell my soul for a room next to yours
I would have lassoed the moon to present it at very your feet
Forgive me,
I never bought you a pair of shoes
I never had the chance

The living have to live
Time keeps staggering on to nowhere.

I know you best when you are flowers in the barrels of rifles
I know your strength
When your hem comes undone
When you delicately stitch the fragments of your unbecoming
When everyone else is reaching is reaching for the sun
I know you when you ache to swallow it
When you rip through the Gods
Searching for the skeleton key
That will quieten the feeling
The cure
Vague, elusive
I know you when your love is sacrificial, ******, dangerous,
clingy but real
I know you best when fold your soul over
Pick it apart
Dangling on these edges
The soil in your fingernails
Lilies blooming in the spaces between your ribcage still.

I am in the city you hated
In the guts of the very land
which made you tremble
I am in the center of the bruise,
still
Embroiled
by and by
It is bursting, heavy
My eyes are falling.

Sea of lava
Skin peeling from bone
Sempiternal purgatory
In diablo's abode
The realm of darkness
And disgust

Gazing at the abyss
The bellowing of a thousand
Doomed souls
Trembling bone

Soul left stained
By pervasion of impurity
Expunge these earthly sins
From conscious
Rinse these veins
Beautiful lethe

Will you say to them
when I'm gone
I loved your daughter
For the fire on her tongue
arms flung open
the devotion in her bones, still.

That night
he held me
like a promise
he poured his guts
on the bed of the hotel room
his breath on my shoulder
this human
this beast of a man reduced to a coil
in my caring embrace
i understood
the molecules
of his nature

his revelations filled
the room with a heavy
stench of sadness
he told me, he loved me
in all his conviction
i know you don't love me
I said
i would later find out
he did, love me
in his own
silent
cruel
way

when we held hands
later that night
the artificial affection
i looked at him in awe still
i was so ever gladdened to bask in his glory
i watched him drive into the night
he is not the answer my faculties screeched
they all never were
this was madness
the pinnacle of circling
on the edge of the never-ending.

Something shifted that spring
The gentle hands that which caressed my bare back
Became a claw
Ripping my fragile atoms
With confusion and horror
Another faceless thing
Pulling me into the mist
Fade to black
I folded my soul over
The tremble found it's way
To the surface
In the spaces between
The cracks in the foundation.

December
Sashayed in
With soft shivers
Down my spine
Stilling the blood
Coursing through veins
Gathering bones
Trepidations
And faculties
Gathering all these things
Turn my face towards
The bright white
The reverie falling
Behind me
Like shadows.

The screams
infertile
delirious
The burning halo
Hanging on your neck
Your perfect edges ruffled
Grief awaits in a corner
at the dawn of tedious despair.

your daughter is an animal
uncontainable
She spends too much time
digging out the dirt
in her fingernails
Your daughter is too overbearing
she reeks of calamity's foreboding
her blood
soaked in dirt
your daughter scares other daughters
and sons away
her arms are too flung open
her blood and bone too sacrificial
clutching on
to hems of trousers
The quivering hands
She holds a pit in her belly
carries fire on the tip
of her tongue
burning the land and the foundations
on which she stands
Yet she worries about the visibility of her difference

Lungs inflate
The whistle of the biting wind
Hauntingly stilling
Moss covered mountains
Colliding with the sky
Enveloped in unruffled grandeur
Far from the shore's strife
The golden hue above, glimmering
On waters that lie calm
Softened
In the centre of winter

my dear
where are you?
are you at peace?
as for me
i ached to bloom
all my petals
scattered on the ground
on this strange land
i am sorry
i am failing to be
i miss you.

I felt you in my future
and i knew you'd be mine
in my dreams
Visceral certainty
when you came to me
it shocked my faculties
where you really here
i am not used to this sort
of fortune
You were too important
for me to swallow you whole
but you were all mine
The moon at my very feet
And then you were gone.

Father, remember the drives
Me on the passenger seat of your UNO
The old cassette

You were always this strong person
My giant
My one and only father
I have been frozen since your reluctant departure
Ricocheting between numbness and screaming despair
not far enough on either trenches
For fear it will all collapse

I imagine you here, still
You took the sound with you
All's left but sound and warmth
Burying my head in my hands
in shame, is all I can do

Father, remember the warm December nights
Our lungs filled with music
before yours filled with water
father, you may rest now
You said you still have a dream
I will fulfil your dream
As a shrine to your lungs
That must now sing forever
In the garden of good-byes.