That sickly sweet chocolate taste is a lingering reminder
He’ll be back again tonight
Sweet-talking you out of bed
Your father, he does love you, but not the way fathers usually love their daughters
Oh honey, you’re too pretty for the other boys at school
And your mother’s in bed with your brothers giving head
Look out!
They’re alive again tonight, and you wish that everything will be alright
But you’re late again this month
And everything’s a little bit sweeter with chocolate on your lips
Better than the baby on your hips, oh put the cutter down, and bring yourself to bed
So he can “gent-early” caress, and the sounds of the street, come crawling with defeat
Through the window, like your bigger brother the other night
When his crack pipe no longer lights, it’s a habit that she gave to him
Like the deformities of your mind, and the way your mangled body squirms
Oh dear, you've fallen down again
And the kids at school all laugh
Because your shabby clothes smell like kebabs, and ****, and last night’s brown-watered bath
Watch out!
It’s dark on the streets today, when the clouds refuse to go away
So wander the estate wondering if this is how it is, if this is all there is
To be the doll tied down for everybody’s love
Dangled up above, you on the bed
Just playing dead

You tried to not enjoy it, you tried to tell your secrets
But you’re a liar and a cheat, and nobody believes the scars, or bruises on your knees
Get it together; you could leave it all one day
Like your sister did before
Only now she lives next door
With a ghetto husband of not so distant relation
And you hear him beat her when he’s drunk
And you hear him beat her when he’s sober
And you hear him beat her when she’s unconscious
And you hear him
And the whole street hears him
So you wonder if they can hear you too
Echoes through the zoo, that you call home
Monkeyed enclosure of ***** flinging beasts and your mother getting ****** on in the shower
Every hour on the hour
Because your father loves the power
Listen out! Can you hear them?
Dear reader, look outwards from the window
And see the way her winds blow, how she walks the streets so aimlessly
Dead inside her eyes, where the spirit cries out in the morning when she’s late for school
Because her father’s got whiskey **** again, and now she’s trapped underneath him
And her mother’s fast asleep on the floor

Stupor of the soul, it’s always taking hold
Cover up the sadness, or cut away the grief
Everything is different when they’re taken by police
And now you’re sat in a foster home, feeling welcome
Until Mr. Saviour creepily creaks the door
And your freeze in fear
Because you feel that your father’s here
And Mrs. Saviour is in the next room with the others

Try and pose some grand question to the innocuous universe overhead
Or run and fall on tired tread train tracks, flailing arms and legs, screaming
This Elysium falls over broken skulls and your life is shattered too, screen-door glass shards
Pompous waterfalls of the soul crash on a vacant rock, and you sit crying to imaginary songs
Take walks through empty towns and fantasize about some crumbling bridge
Or even smash vending machines in anger
Or kick at tenement building walls, and hope to God that they fall
Like you did when the spirit left your body
We were too young to understand, the slanging match of the soul
And how the doors that slammed were representative of a larger being
The ever present societal constructs that they were bound
And now even in adulthood we too scream at one another
Wishing we were not them
Praying we were sane
So you wash dishes by the grease fire, moonlight faded curtains
And I sit by the table, grinning some unfathomable grin
Because just yesterday I stood there too and washed in the same manner
Fighting urges to lunge and fall at the humming beast in the corner
Or so and you make eye contact
And but I am lost in trains of thought
Or thoughts of trains
And just then the kids come crying, from the upstairs rooms
In the house that we grew up in
Or perhaps, the house I lived in and you grew up in

By the old garages near the railway sidings
slipping or sliding, through the tiding hiding
away, or near to the solemn aspects of ******
with ease, she can tease the eve of your heave-
**, or go, no, stay, she says, just today, or all
of your tomorrows shall be forgotten
Lonely was the name on a tag, lagged, left
forgotten at the bottom of the river, where
she lay, today, floating away-
But he stays, the way his spirit lays, let( )down
or all around this town, how it lingers;
the memory of love or lust on drunken Friday
nights by the fright of old Frank Alight, setting
alight the houses in furor, or moor the more
he bores by the moored shore of that amour
armoured, charmed, alarmed at the speech
patterns in the night sky, as she lay down
to die, or to cry, questioning why, Frank
could try and do this, Brutus, brutally
mutually assured destruction, social construction
or constriction, the friction of hands
around the throat, she never floats, just sinks
corpses stink, porous ink stained every lane
leading to the place where in disgrace, he beat
her face, and replaced the lace, in the place
leading to the lake

I

The road flies past underneath the tires of the car
and there's a hazy blur as the trees fly by
as fast as the regrets flitting across her mind
like so many white lines falling beneath the left wheels

She's never been to Chicago alone before
Yet she's felt alone in so many places
It was time for a new environment and new faces
and to drink greedily from Illinois skies

She plans to drink more air than alcohol for once
To be drunken in lust or contentment at a push
To feel and experience fully without substance
To be intoxicated on some profound emotion

She pulls up to the curb and kills the engine
so that time ceases to exist
Heart pounding, mouth dry, she steps onto the hot pavement
Every movement magnified in a Midwest summer meeting

Her ankles wobble over 3-inch heels with each step
stumbling like so many times before, but different this time
She takes a deep breath of her new-found independence
and takes the first steps into the welcoming light of the sun

II

It's funny how philosophical eyes can interpret the mundane
Every step an existential crisis under the surface
But even so, the days continue to come and go
as sure as the sun, blocked by clouds occasionally, but still there
like figures in the city, obscured by passing buses
You slash tires and try to blow the clouds away
because even big bad wolves run out of breath

The colours ran psychedelic in the drear night skies
above a ramshackle house on a country lane
He heard music from the open windows
it was meandering and opaque
Myriad drones flew from a cellar door in the backyard
and a burnt out Chevy housed a family of snakes in the front
"Understand that when you enter-"
A voice came haunted, from a tree in the yard
"... that you will be forever changed"
The door fell from it's hinge, and made no sound on the deck
Everyone was ghosts, pale eyes sunken, yet absurdly alive
Preachers and pragmatists drank beers in the bathroom
discussing Plotinus and Pleiades
Rainbow haired women ran through the walls,
wailing some transient ecstasy and crashing to the floor
eating wildflowers and berries
All eyes washed, acid dipped dreams, screams, it seems, that they were all-
"Hello my name is forgotten"
"Hello, I've forgotten your name"
"Goodbye I must be returning home now"
"Goodbye? But you're already there."

The wooden paneled walls started to peel in the August[ine] humidity
but they kept singing love songs in the kitchen
as the toast burned in the sink
Eat more kosher meat, kid
Hi my name is Doner
But what's in a name really
They squat and lunge in harmonic deviancy
Though by the statuesque running man poses, the dance-floors of hydrodynamic and hydroponic release and reconnaissance were blasted by the man of zen, but only in his third eye, the eye that saw it all

The floors started to bleed, some toxic glue
and the shoes of a tribe were lost there, nobody cared
Bloodied scepter of the soul, rapier of wit
Oh how cruel the searing whip of understanding
and falling away from reality with every dip of stick in candy coloured goo

The morning sun also rose, rosy fingered...
It's all been said before
search for answers on the bathroom floor
or muddied ground
or in the sullied unsound

It's far from profound
because when the night was over
The house was nowhere to be found

The idea of making love to her
- or to simply watch her smile/laugh
- or to hear a solemn gasp of morning air
   when the dun sun creeps through the blinds of our room
- or the idea of spending just an hour in a thrift store with her
- or a car ride with her
- perhaps a midnight walk or trip to Walmart with her

is only a fleeting notion of the incontestable bounds of the human soul
and the all encompassing adoration I (personally me) have for her (actually you).
These weird disconnected nights are leaving me sleepless in wonder, as to how we fit
and when you smoke to escape some inscrutable sadness it leaves me cold and lonesome as the endless drone from the [I don't know where]
but and so, I'll sit or lay with you
and think of you
and confess to you
that I am madly devoted to you

In ways that transcend physical bounds
(a spiritual lust)
I want to embrace your aura
to kiss your soul and be warmed not by the summer heat but by the radiant glow of your incredible mind, as you read self-help books in some dark corner of a library weeping but only internally; as the facade you guard stays raised like so many bridges for passing ships into the harbour of eternal truth