my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.

she slides her slender
white fingers down the
branches of his spine

her eyes melted like
glaciers and lips as soft
as freshly fallen snow

skin lustful, but heart
unforgiving, exhaling
his every intention

she is autumn in his
palms, her trees bare,
the leaves rust fallen

flashing indifference,
thoughts plucked in
shades of violent rose

She was nature, beautiful
But deadly, her cheeks as
Scornful as a rose, the smile hid
The thorns underneath.

Her presence though unseen,
Could be felt, like the sun's warm
Breath on bare winter skin.

She led him somewhere secret
As the night lures the stars,
As clouds gorge on the
Fragile light of the moon.

Over the crumbled bodies
Of leaves, into the alien
Land of tranquility.

When he woke, hands burning,
There was nothing left to see.
Only a faint feeling glistening
In the air, a failing heart and
A tongue full of dreams.

i like angry poetry
the kind that churns
in your gut,
with razors for teeth
and gums bleeding.
i like the violent sound
of verbs clashing
on a decaying page,
like the shot of a gun
on a quiet day.
i like the poetry that stays,
that lies in waiting
like a dog in a cage,
words that creep like
voided birds into the
wired tress of my brain,
that pay their rent
like drunken travelers
and trash the place.
i like angry poetry
the kind that sears it's
screams to my lips,
which spirit echoes and
moans for eager,
****** eyes.
words that hit like *****,
giving their reader
a killer hangover.
i like angry poetry,
the kind that leave you
with a smoky exit.

Your sun stroked fingers
smooth my dusted galaxies
spoiling orbiting blues
with swipes of stardust.

You kiss meteors, murmur
how you savored snippets
of Jupiter's moons in the
spaces of a poetic eclipse.

Adorning Saturn's rings
in your nebulous tombs,
rekindling your smile with
flames of lovers past.

The memory is still buried
within my core, a pounding
resonance that evokes the bloom
of summers kiss on Earth.

A welcome release for the
nights wandering stars.

homewrecker,
you lived within every
callous and dimple,
invading my space
like dust between
my fingertips

your skin like wallpaper,
faded and worn,
pulled taunt along
these walls.

your thoughts
a constant thumping
of footsteps along
the floorboards

homewrecker,
from you i learnt
gunshots sound
a lot like a key
turning in a lock

it's because of you
i cannot look at
these walls, without
seeing the shadow
of a fist reflected
by the light

homewrecker,
the rooms are vacant,
the air stilled,
the hallways scream
and close in at night.

homewrecker,
i used to be an open house
but now because of you
i shut the doors
(i shut the doors)

My mind keeps pictures of you up on its walls
                            again
                         ­         and again
I find my thoughts drifting down that river of memory
orbiting around you, like forces of gravity drawn
to the idea of us (if there even is an us)

If I could then I’d lock you outside my brain, leave you out there to rot
in the abyss, where your words couldn't penetrate me
and your lips that work like anesthesia forbidden to numb me again

I won't do you the injustice of romanticizing your imperfections
You're no nebular, you're a black hole, a gaping flaw in creation
Your eyes that held millenniums of history, now hold me no future

You made me forget what it feels to have stability
To not walk out of a room and forget why I left
You make me want to shred the skin you touched
Like a reptile, to become reborn, purified from my past.

There never were any butterflies in your stomach, only parasites
but you fed them to me readily like a disease

So no, I won’t dedicate you another love poem
                 no I want (deserve) better
This isn't what love should be
I’ll write you a poem where the words convulse on the page
and you’ll forget to read it (you always do)

i swirl in van gogh.
i am charcoal stains
on blue,
a smile of barbed wire
for the painter,
i am mona lisa, true.

monet, he paints me
calm waters,
water lilies floating
in solitude,
he doesn't see
the fire sprouting
in my veins.

picasso cannot stain
my heart with colour,
magritte cannot
create a masterpiece
out of my eyes.

to be immortalized
i beg in pink
lick the brush
and paint myself
alive.

end my days
in escher,
sketch myself
out of the stairway,
into the globe.

throw myself
at deaths eye,
kiss the canvas
rotten, ******,
*pretty.

Innocence is the days when
I thought that monsters
lived under the bed rather
than slept right beside me.

It was the times I feared
heights almost as much as
I now fear brooding stares.

Back when I thought
passionate love was the
only kind worth having
— that I now wish for a
lover who loves quietly.

Innocence was thinking
danger was an ill-advised
adventure, not a man.

It was admiring a tornado
heart and not realizing the
damage it would cause.

Faces only remind you of
How lonely you are,
You say you've swam too far
Into the sea of your regrets
That I am your lifeboat
But didn't you hear
I sank long, long ago?

You've been searching
For a new home,
One that doesn't creak
Or shudder at night.
But homes are not people
And your voice cracks
As you point out
There's a welcome mat
By the front door
But I never answer
When you knock.

It's been a while since
I started attracting
Strangers with flashlights
To search me like
A haunted place.
I finally realized they
Were the ones that
Needed scaring away.

It's so odd to think,
You once told me
You saw beauty
In clifftops,
And I thought you
Were talking about
The view.

Sunday morning,
the air froze, the dahlias
once bloomed angry,
now they shiver and sigh.

Autumn breeze, faint but still,
the padded ghost-steps
of your laugh, running wild,
like vintage photographs;
scattered Polaroids of
my memory - a smile here,
a grimace there.

How the heat of
emotions buries itself
in the clothes of yesterday,
How difficult it is to
fetch from the seams.
The needles only *****
at a faint feeling.

I wonder; do you forget me
as winter forgets the living?

Because once an old man
told me I had sad eyes

Sunsets melt to chalky lines,
like cigarette stubs, they died
when you met her.

These days only my fingers
remember summer,
I touch the hearts of others
to warm them too.

My voice wind chimes,
the eulogy of the storm,
when I breath your
name I shudder...

And listen-
because I am in
the echoes
of her, of us.

There are fewer things
beautiful than ugly,
I know that stars are most
bright when they fall
from impassioned skies,
That when your skin
meets mine, I am like an
amnesiac being returned
a lifetime of memories.

I hate few things,
except, perhaps, the murky
lakes of your eyes,
The misty beaches we
explored until sunrise.
How you pressed your lips
to mine like a death wish,
that it was deplorable,
but we wanted more, more.

My body was a map
you tore apart when you
got tired of exploring it.
The ancient psalms of our
tongues cannot silence.
Ruins of ancient Rome
survive on your lips, yet
you still live, breathe.
You call yourself mortal.

his darkness became
tainted by my red

i burst like the sunrise
on the canvas of his skin,
raw and hot, red, red, red

i set flame to the somber
blues we'd once painted
our skin deep with.

kissing the echoes of
our past, but always
pulling away too soon.

i was too red, too vibrant.

he didn't like the taste
i left on his tongue
it was bitter like him,
it stung of the past he'd
tried to bury on my lips

my skin would ash
but he'd miss the flames.
my pulse would gallop
and intrude like
summer into his veins.

he only thinks you're
pretty when you cry
when the aching
vulnerabilities sting
like red welts along
cheeks that are
white as teeth
only then are you pretty,
when the red blood
tears fall like soldiers in
the war of peace and
he kisses the place the
bullet exits
he promises he will
still love you as the lion
that murders the lamb
when the sky bleeds,
crimson echoes down
mountains of death
his viper hands
snake round your
hips and you just
don't mind, you just
don't mind anymore

i know you're searching
for a savior
but you're just another
ship captain and i'm
just another lighthouse
flashing you towards
the rocks
attention only makes
me more distant
at night i suffocate dreams
of you with a pillow
until i lie beside the
cadaver of our love
wrap it's cold,
dead hands
around my neck
like a scarf in
this winter hell
last i checked the
weather report
promised no sun
a god told me  
i'll sleep like the dead
when i live
like them too.

lately happiness seems to come and go
like a lover who bores easily
as i don't offer them enough to stay
while the depression always returns
like an abuser, it's fists made of ravage fire
masquerading loyalty and love i know is insincere

You breathe my name into
your chest, letting me settle
like dust into your bones.

Tethering me to this moment,
eyes fierce, burning as vibrant
as tiger lilies in a vengeful sun.

Your fingers burning holes in
our sheets, leaving remnants
of their disgust in my scars.

Even to this day I cannot stay
up for the sunrise, I find your
taste infused on my tongue.

And I'm still left to wonder if it
was Lucifer I saw in your eyes
or the gods that condemned me.

this is not a death-wish
this is a resurrection.
on nights, you grow
weary of the sound of
your own breathing,
there is a fierce sun
burning inside you,
you must use it to grow,
not to scorch all you have.
you have tender hands,
why do you use them
to peel away your
conscious?
there is a thunder in
that insipid heart of yours,
go, forage it out.

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be.*" - Wuthering Heights.

beauty, is in love's eyes,
i once read that if he still makes your heart
anchor itself to your abdomen,
after three months, it's love.

well, my metaphors are wasted on you,
my words are a fancy way of
expressing myself and they contain
too much of you.

you've got a temper,
enough to rumble under these streets,
and collapse what i've been building.

i get sick of building blocks,
love is child's play, and i just want
us to be adults.

i promised to love you, and i do in
my own odd ways,
you broke my heart, i broke yours.
i still want you to know,
a mosaic wouldn't be so beautiful,
without all the cracks.

mother cried
because she was beautiful
her daughter,
the placid girl.

she cried,
because the men wanted her,
yet could not love her.

as millions plucked
flowers for their beauty,
then threw them to pavements.

they touched her,
because she was beautiful.
they defiled her.

they ripped the petals
from her throat,
and left her to wither,

a rose on the sidewalk.

There are parts of me that
lay unrested - they are ghosts
in hallways, they are smoke
suffocating in locked rooms.

Sometimes I can feel
myself fading and it takes
all I have to pull myself
back from the abyss.

I'm walking on ice, yet
to find a stable foothold in
life seems unprecedented.

I still haven't learnt when
my hands began writing
rather than shaking.

He's the dagger
twisted in my gut,
all the pretty words
dolled up with a
smile that is anything
but pure or true.

He's a spicy treat,
when all I'm looking for
is something sweet.

Perhaps it's wrong of
me, to search for love
in eyes that wander so
far I have to make
maps of their journey.

He has me falling
from the tallest crevices
with promises to catch
me with arms that are
already holding another.

He's a lost cause,
a candle blown out,
the stolen kiss that
was never returned.

But I'd bet all my
money on him within
a heartbeat if he said
he felt even a mere
shadow of what I did.

it's nights like this, when we tangle
together like weeds in a seabed of lust
i beg for once, your eyes instead
of your mouth, would confess
how you felt for me.
your lips grow like ivy along the grey
mortar of my spine, your fingers write how
much they don't love me all over my body
and tiny birds take flight from my breath
to be together, is to be apart
when i am with you every word is a mistake,
we press our lips together
harder than we want to press
them against each others mouths
i keep tripping over apologies
and you just want someone who
is steady on their feet
i once knew a boy who told me
he wasn't an artist, but painted
the shores on my cheeks
when he spoke, even the trees leaned
in to hear his beautiful lies

your absence is
like the aftermath
of the storm

i'm left to wonder
whether i prefer
the desperate
insanity you blew
into my life

or the deadly
silence.

tonight, something a little
stronger than poison
runs through my veins

it festers, intangible,
pretty like belladonna,
sweet like nightshade

it sways in the wind
of my lungs, it has it's
own tune you see.

i know it's a plague,
like him, we've all
been infected once.

tonight, it's angry,
venomous,
gardens of deep rose

and happiness returns
to being but a distant,
wavering sun.

most nights
i'm only loving you
in fragments,
i'm only loving
you in death

i wander your
mind like a child in
search of it's mother,
but you were
orphanages
not loving homes

only drugs can
compare to
the feeling of
disillusion
i had when i was
with you.

i love you,
i crave
you

We will leave you in the midst
of a poetic truce, as you spill
experiences into our open palms.

Writing to make sense of what
has happened, nestling your
deepest secrets in our fingertips.

Our roots so deep in our poetry,
if you tried to unearth us, we would
shriek louder than banshee's.

Unravel our words, enter the
labyrinth of our minds, there are
sunsets in our stomachs, and
December runs through our veins.

We are the stars to your blank skies,
the pause between each ragged breath,
the tragedy suffocating the air.

We are the pause before the applause,
we are rarity's like Haley's comet,
making you scramble for a telescope.

Only crows writhing with broken
necks are more twisted than the life
stories resting under our tongues.

We are poets, engraved in history,
fluent in all that is artistic and worldly.

Poetry is a warm blanket we remain
hidden in on a cold winter morning.
Reality is a cold floor that our
bare feet are too scared to touch.

*By Rapunzel and JannaLee Perry

I stay up for the moons
Quiet gaze
The light by the bedside
Carves shadows of you
Into my bare frame
The air itself is naked
Vulnerable of all scent.
I kissed you thrice,
One on the lips
For devotion,
One on the ribs of
Your teeth,
On the elbow of your
Favourite book.
As all writers do.
I created that arched frame
That pulled your
Tendons tight
To my inked sheets,
Shot you into blind space,
While I teethed on
The bow of your
Fingertips
Our skin tarmac,
There was roadworks
Of our bed.
Toes dancing morbidly
Between bursting stars
While night gulls
And ravens watched
Through the window
Waiting to peck
At the mangled carcass
Of our hearts.

sometimes boys will whisper  
i love you's too quickly
and you, anon, will believe them
with your gentle heart, and
capacity to believe in miracles.

sometimes the first guy isn't
the only one,
sometimes you didn't like him
to begin with and that's okay.
i know you wish it was that easy.

people say to look for love
in all places, but love likes to hide
in the nooks of bookcases,
in cars parked under trees,
in his reflection in the rear mirror
as he glances to see you
walk past with your heels too high,
and smile too giddy.

but that wasn't love.
love is mutually shared.

sometimes you fall in love
and it will hurt worse than that time
you broke your wrist.
you will shake with tremors
of madness and you will
remember his name.

it's like hearing a song
you haven't listened to in years.
something jogs your memory
and you still remember the lyrics.
you will list his hobbies,
his favourite colour, with
perfect memory.

anon, you keep finding love,
and you keep losing it,

but be patient, please.
when you are ready
tell love to come another day.

I didn't think danger had a face,
I saw you and I saw red beauty,
Plump, ripe lips,
My strawberry kiss,
You taste just like chaos feels.

You sold yourself sweet,
Red beauty,
In every book left unread,
The only thought in my head.
I could never find a warm lover,
In eyes, cold as these tombstones
Which we now embrace.

Sunsets asphyxiate skylines,
Tear lines, fate lines,
I think God wanted to see his favourite fall

Tantalizing fruit, stains like wine
On the mouth,
There is red beauty in a kiss,
And angels aren't so kind,
But neither are you.

Kiss me where it hurts,
taste the indefinite, there
is something beautiful
in the moments that will
fade without warning.

I've been missing the part
of you that craves only me,
I'm a finely wrapped gift on
your door  — unravel me,
unravel me, I'll buy you more.

You desire the mystery,
feeding the elusive hand
that beckons you — there
are layers to my story but
you only skim the surface.

My ego is a divine thing,
you dress it well, embellish
it with swift strokes, and
pause with fascination.

There are a million ways
to tell me I look good in red
— but I like your way best.

She looked for love in the backseat of his car
She looked for it in dusty store rooms
In abandoned buildings, the rough palms of hands
She didn't find it in his whispered sweet nothings,
She didn't find it in his apartment building either

He looked for an easy conquer, a one night stand
He looked for an innocent smile, naive doe eyes
He looked for it in needy fingers, hitched breathes,
He found it in her hair balled up in his fist
He found it in her salty skin, her soft thighs

She was looking for love in all the wrong places

we take long drags
of each others skin,
the addiction comes
in phases.
day 1: my lungs sigh, weary,
air does not satisfy,
day 2: we're chasing
lifelines, that are rusted
and in vain
day 5: bad habits are
hard to break, beg, at the
holy altar of our mistakes
day 8: hands desperate,
clammy, unfurl
like belladonna palms.
day 9: i hope your
vocal cords strain, that
the only word you can
bear to say is 'stay'.
day 11: last breaths
muffled in the
graveyard of a kiss.
day 17: darling, i'm
losing track of time
day 28: i'm finding it
a little bit hard to quit.

tell me
why private thoughts
become so loud and violent
upon our faces that
they peel the layers of skin,
and our own form of sun,
burns us alive inside.
i waited patiently for your breath
like hot summer nights,
a whisper of a wind, a secret
tantalizing, lost in lulls of sleep
and i'm restless in bed,
sheets suffocate me with the
lies of your body, and
ghosts are more familiar
than your scent.
tell me, i screamed it with my
eyes as you slept.
i once held your palm and
felt your fingers slip,
did they reach for hers
instead?

he still doesn't realize
that beauty has a price

he plucks roses and
wonders why they wither
when he's never learnt
to check their roots.

with thorns between his lips,
he speaks softly about
the way love has eluded
him over the years.

his palms like written verse,
scarred and coarse, petals
falling delicately out of
time from his fingertips.

he sees beauty but he
does not see underneath

he has always been
one to see the flames
but never feel the heat.

i still remember the nights
spent tracing her lips, looking
for meaning in their cracks.

(shrunken spines, curling
lips and cosmic eyes.)

she'd kiss away my fears,
paint them black and blue,
distorting memories until
they became meaningless
lies dripping so easily off
her tongue that i'd soon begin
to mistake them for truths

(shrunken spines, curling
lips and cosmic eyes.)

Untouchable, she was the
kind of beauty to keep you
transfixed, swirling skies,
killing time, the crescendo
building up in your head
until everything just
suddenly
               goes
                       blank.

she was shrunken spines,
curling lips and cosmic eyes

i loved her, i hated her,
i still wish i could see her
without the memories
lying breathless,
clouding my gaze.

Truth is you
weren't blameless
I saw your eyes
flash red that night
the fire in your palms
wouldn't burn out.

Together we were
a suicide pact,
there was something
about the drug in
each others eyes
that made us want
to overdose.

We itched like
razor blades
on each others skin,
our tongues a noose,
heartbeats fast,
furious.

My hands bled love
my knuckles
bruised like skies
I puked up every word
until I could finally
say goodbye.

The sun forgave itself
long ago, for burning too bright,
it scorched our touching palms,
cheek to cheek, it burnt.*

That night we whispered
A song to the reeds,
Let it drift down that
Wayward line of memories,
Let it settle in the graves
Of each bed we slept in.

We let fate colour our
Hearts recklessly, like a
Child who can't stay
Within the confined lines
Of their drawing book.

Until the dawn began,
And we let our skin simmer,
Melting on each other's lips.
Until we are only skeletons
Embracing through a
World set in flames.

i raised her
with a violent birth
my vocal cords tangled
like a drunk couple
making love
with her name.

she emerged from
the slit in men's throats,
a grown woman,
her sister followed,
from suffocated coughs,
glowing like streetlamps
from mouth to mouth,
never happy,
never settled.

girls like her,
they don't enter this
world easy,
they leave it in a mess,
exit it like a highway,
move on to the
next place.

there's a stain they
always leave,
yellow on the teeth,
marks on bed-sheets,
empty rings on
bedsides with last
nights drink
gone cold just like
their feelings.

just a girl they say,
harmless,
girls have endless love
in their hearts,
and endless hate.

they make goodbyes
sound easy
when they're at your door
late at night
and they scream your
name like a warning
from the bottom
of the staircase
you leave them,
until apologies make
your tongue as raw as
saw-dust
those nameless boys
the one's with
smoky breath,
they write your name
to the skies
constellate it to their
forefingers and cross it
over their forehead
like a baptism
those boys with hands
that eat like worms
at the dying heart
of your feelings
no, they don't love you
only death can
love you,
nameless girl
with the
countless faces.