Mentally, I started titling my poems
“If you only knew…”
the minute that you left

See, we were more like
Mother Nature’s children
Than we thought

Both of us polluted
Like the Ocean, I’m so full of this
Trash that everyone seems to leave me with

You were like poisoned vines,
Twisted and full of thorns
And roses you hide from the light

We built a garden though,
psychedelic and shining through the nights
we always stayed up
late for

Three psychics told me I’d love you
And one of them
In a dying breath told me you’d be
A rose

Boy was he right
I pricked myself just to
Hold you and adore you
Every single time
And I’d do it again

See, gardening takes work
So I cultivate this imaginary love
I hold something fragile every day and
Practice moving slowly enough
Not to break it

I listen to strangers talk
Until I’m bored and I keep….on….
Listening
So that I never miss another word
Love speaks

I look at myself in the mirror
And I find something beautiful
So that I can try to grasp
At how it felt the few times you
Actually looked at me like
I was (AM) a flower too.

I AM A ROSE TOO, ******* IT

I breathe you in like the fragrance
Of these roses that bleed my heart dry
And I wish you cut yourself on my poetry
Half as hard as we both have cut ourselves
Wishing we could bleed out whatever
Makes us undesirable

If only you knew
That I hungered for the few times
You came and watered me with your tears
Nourished my roots with your lips
Rolled around in the dirt
And loved our garden

….More than you loved her.

I'm not a hypocrite,
I'm just paradoxical

If this were to be the last of my odes,
Wait, an ode this isn’t for all of them,
Let me tell of this poet’s misfortunes
That has engulfed her to a requiem.

Everyone who sees her turns to sweetness,
Who wouldn’t turn down her cozy ambiance?
No wonder they turn to her blessedness,
Heart so crystal pure you won’t miss a chance.

She desires to fulfill her own heart song
And change from a sad and perilous past.
Alas, Fate is toying her all along,
Plummeting her to a prison aghast.

Now, she is but drowning in her own blood,
And all she can do is wait for Hades;
I see her soul being caught by the rod,
Gasping for her life, clasped into Eris.

Sadly, she falls to a tragic pure death,
Her carcass as feast for the dogs and worms.
Meanwhile, her soul is given for a breath
A dark ambrosia rejected like germs.

I can’t help but cry of how life fared her,
But no, pity isn’t to be given;
All the pangs of pain, she’s now the bearer,
Anon, the goddess of the forsaken.

Enid and I
stood on the balcony
of the flats
outside my parent's place
looking down at the Square

she rested her chin
on her hands

I held on to
the top bricks

kids were playing below
skip rope
or war games
or chasing each other
in some tag game

that boy over there
called me a skunk
she said
pointing to a boy
playing football
with others
he said he could
smell me for miles

o him
I heard
he still wets the bed
a night
I’ll remind him
about smells
I said

and that one over there
with the ginger hair
said he'd give me a 1d
to look at the colour
of my underwear
she said

what a cheap ****
it ought to be
at least 2/6d
I said

she laughed
he ought not
to ask at all
she said

no he ought not
but that
is a mystery to him
and one should pay dearly
to satisfy one's mysteries

she looked at the early
evening sky
orange sun
weak clouds
birds in flight
heading towards night

I looked at the moon
becoming stronger

I like it out here
standing with you
I said

do you?
she said
most try and avoid me
even my parents
except my father
seeks me out
only to punish

your old man's
an after birth
I said quietly

what's that?

ask your mother

best not
she said looking down
at the Square again
I wish your parents
were my parents
she said softly

I gazed at her sideways on
the uncombed hair
the dark eyes
the left one
still slight bruised
her pale complexion

then you wouldn't be you
you'd be another
and I’d be your brother
and wouldn’t know
you as you
as I do now
and I’d miss that aspect
somehow

she looked at me
then she looked away
at the darkening sky
and closing of day.

Cloud burst drenching us,
That day, love glistened, laughter—
  .  .  .  Caught in a shower.

The tattered laid bricks we young reluctantly call home, in gaze to feast to live again as once new lovers tip toe fluttery footsteps toward the desolate vanishing point.

But beginning forward I won't find myself locked between a memory.

Like battered homes of old we do so to find the leaks and breaks. Within withered structures of bone and ice we collect fragments off the pavement to restore.

But as a whole we never were. Like lovers fail to see in bloom.