I’ve got a signboard pinned to my chest.
It reads:

“Beware of the door. Trespassers will be
versed and put in rhymes.”

Ten-thousand volts of electricity for the man
who dare enter; an auction of body parts

is the central theme to my story.
I gave away my heart to the one with the easiest ways

and my mind for whom I could not find
my tongue. Every time my heart skips a beat

sirens wail into madness and lights start
rolling into the night. I wear barbed

wires as a wristwatch: telling me to
wake up whenever I have a sleepless night.

Put your ear to my chest and you’ll hear
clanking of bolts out of place and the death rustle

of a mechanical beast settling
into his bed for the long, long

night.

I love you like clocks
breaking their arms
on my bed,
trying to stop time
from making me forget
what you looked like.

You can't hold the short arm of the clock
and call it yesterday.

Why do you take beautiful things
and turn them into instruments
of sadness?

The way I'm going now,
I'd probably crash into your living room:
tearing apart the art-deco set up
with my red car,
mashing art and steel into a subculture
of hate, and the unrequitedness of love.

Baby,
I'm rocketfuel and bedding-
I'm churning up the cotton into kindling
and I'm burning so bright
I don't think I'll be able to top this.
I won't be able to top this.

I'm swallowing air and the sea,
the sea can wait a little while,
I'm yelling so hard at the waves my
throat has more salt than your tears,
listen

you don't need conch shells to hear
me pleading for you; strumming six songs a second
and wailing into a chorus of
"I'm sorry" and "I love you";

it almost sounds like

I'm apologising.

He was the one person
who held storms in his fingertips,
and still touched you with the softness
of rain in springtime.

Leave me be;
I’ll die if I leave here.
Chained to the bedpost, my body is
no longer your sanctum. Every inch
of my skin is paying its debt back
to the earth. I’m dust.
I’m going from whence I came;
the clock is turning back its arms,
as far as it can go; mothers are closing arms
round their boys in embrace;
the rain falling upwards;
conversations are being unspoken;
(lies are being untold)
((your heart yet unbroken)),
the seeds are going
back to sleep; I
am going back to sleep.

Our lips make music
softer than the rustle of leaves.

It's almost autumn,
and I'm still waiting
for when you actually
tune me.

You fall in love only once.

The rest of the times,
you're just learning.

I kiss you with more guilt
than I thought
I was capable of.

You kiss me with more forgiveness
than I thought
I was capable of.

Anxiety is
wishing there were ashtrays
in dress trial rooms.

I love you
the way the sun
burns the earth
for it to rain again.

I’ve never needed more words
than the ones I already have.

I am a lost library book.

I have become overdue, forgotten
and I once gave you a good time.

If love means having to burn this much,
then tell the moon
I'm the sun.

And I'm never going to sleep.

I.

I’ve swallowed too many I love you’s
to be afraid of coughing up blood.
They cut you on secret.
Who knew it was drinking gasoline
and sawdust and every little inflammable thing
and then sitting down cross-legged
in the heart of a howitzer; soft.

II.

You are a soft explosion.
You are streaks of a rebel orange
in a sky that is supposed to be blue.
You are steel rods in the curve of my spine,
holding me straight.

III.

I love you’s are like death notes written in ash:
you’ll have to smoke your way to it.
Smoke cigarettes, journals, curtains,
and yourself to get that much ash in your lungs;
trying to blow smoke rings into your finger;
my ceiling knows more about my sadness than you do.

IV.

Saying an I love you once will have you
chanting “don’t leave me” on a rosary;
love will take your bones and leave you
lusting for somebody whose back
is the last thing you’ll see, and whose
skin you’ll think you left your keys in:
and now you’ve locked yourself out
of your own house, in a storm
whose sirens wail in your ears and remind
you, you’re hopeless and homeless.

V.

I love you’s leave no exit wounds,
no shell casings, and when the time comes
you’ll be telling them all how his bullet
ricochets in your ribs,
but emotion never made up for evidence
in the court of settlements for a broken heart.

VI.

Telling someone you love them is like cutting your jugular
and not expecting to bleed out.

VII.

I love you like the pages of a mad girl’s journal.

VIII.

The moon turns from an ally
to the haunting image of science and realisation:
you share the same sky, but no longer the same bed.
And astronomy keeps ******* you over
when you look up at the sky
and no longer understand constellations.

IX.

Love makes it more getting-back-at-you
than getting-back-together-with-you.

X.

Every time you taste blood,
you’ll know you kissed somebody
with teeth like needles
and they cut you everywhere; they
bit you, they bit you, they bit you
and you kept letting them.

You can't close your heart down,
and then blame the rib cage.

Grief can take you places
where love never will;
valleys of sheets, unclasped
hands: your eyes,
an ocean of sorrow:

walking away from the shore
and into the deep blue
deeper, and farther;
I forget
I can't swim.

I didn't know
the 'I love you's you gave me
were borrowed.

Running can take you away from here;
I am homesick for a home I have known
only in the soft ridges of your chest.

Two legs and a broken heart
will not take you far.