There’s a girl lying next to you with a famine in her brain
Controlling the passage all the way through to her veins
Slender and slight, tender and tight
Hustle-hustle-score-shoot
The same tracks played both your arms.

Collapsed veins and your little sister
Laid out on your foil platter
Collapse her world into the torment
See it dissolve in clear water
Boom bang!
The desperate addict was she.

Feel the pop you know she’*****
Now she’s to the land of the nod
Clutching the poppy seed waste
When you’ve got smack, who needs god?
A world without reason, no conscience of treason
Contented to the same clouded dreams
Feed her the brown sugar; watch her forget her mother
Not a life falling apart at the seams
It’s going to keep her hanging on (or so it seems)

A 6 inch buckled belt, wrap it tight ‘round
Black leather, white marks, nothing felt
Shoot it on up, syringe full of brown
A ritual to the mind, counsel to the crown

Sink a needle in, red marks the spot
Take a deep breath, purple means you stop
Tease the blood’s arm, plunge it back down
A swirling mass gone, counsel to the crown

I have a gaping                hole              in my heart
From where I hung it on your hook.
It’s still ******
                                 And wet
                                         With flesh.
You let me be leave I could be led
Across the border, in disorder
I’d gasp, hanging from your clasp
Still keeping your heart warm from the storm.
But the days were numbered, no time for slumber
I’d count them out, front and back
So then, when summer came; so long so clear.
Realising my fear
You hid your mischief from the sun
In the closet, behind your gun
I hung, on your nook, beside a cranny
Looking for a way to end this

                                                           ­           Neglected,
         Confused,
                                      Unnecessary.
             ­           U       n        u        s        e        d
Fur coats of lies signal our demise
A Faux-pas of deceit you can never disguise
My wound may need stitches
But I’ll cut from you, the strings
To show, to you, the scar.

Egalitarianism
I’ve preached this practice
To its last final straw

Respite
I’ve hired the time
The strongest of clocks

Magnanimous
You’ve endeavoured too
It’s never true when you do

Coercive
I’ve attempted them all
The mightiest of guns

Vestibule
You never did let me enter
Probably knew I’d hide out

Vertiginous
Causation; I know it’s you
To Induce; I flail barely flickering

Transcendental
I divide you into parts
But your logic seems boundless

Perennial
I will continue to bloom
Even after your harvest.

Thin believing
I danced my deaths and dined my desires
Frightened clues
A love perhaps, strangely motionless
Idiosyncrasies
Hearts soiled the arrogance
Cascade thee
Gold army, glass clouds
I muse in vivid tapestry
One dream is and was awake
Everything frozen; exist lake
Meet woven conversation
I washed her light
My finger made lies
Textures disguise
And I perhaps love

The first slow,
Scraping turn
Of metallic lid
Atop ‘f my silver-stained
Hip flask
Gives way to smell of hard liquor
And sweaty palm.
It is the most eagerly anticipated
Seven seconds of each of my twenty-four hour days.
Whiskey was cheapest today,
And always preferred.
But,
As often is the case,
The lid was harder ******* on
With shaking hand
And blood scourged cheek
Telling everyone
I missed my world.

Social smoking,
Social what?
I don’t know you,
Don’t you see?

“Can I have a cigarette?”
Can you have my cigarette?
Oblige me as you may,
You are obliged to talk to me now.

Insulated, instigated community
Kept alight by the *** at hand.
As we harm our health
We tarnish our respect.

LOLs and falls are commonplace,
You were my enemy ‘til tonight,
This faithful night,
When I gave you my cigarette.

Clouded distaste
Subtly lost
As we look
For a fickle flame.

“No I don’t have a lighter”
Don’t you know me anymore?
Usurped, ****** dry
Watch me die.

Tonight I may not be so lucent.

Him:
I can’t listen to my favourite song,
Because I shared it with you.
I don’t have a favourite film,
Because you seen it first with me.
I won’t eat enchiladas,
Because “nobody cooks ‘em like you do.”
I can’t look at my guitar,
Because you’re not here to play it to.
I never visit the beach,
Because it’s where we kissed for the first time every year.
I gave up singing too,
Because you were the only one who said I could.
I don’t use fabric softener anymore,
Because it can’t comfort me like you did.
I refuse to wear my old white shirt,
Because we both know who looked better in it...

Her:
I listen to your favourite song,
Because I don’t want to listen to anyone else.
I watch your favourite film,
Because you were so excited to show me first.
I eat enchiladas every week,
So that I might have reason to invite you to dinner.
I stop by the music store every month,
So I can be reminded of you and your guitar.
I visit the beach every year,
But the wind never quite blows the same when you’re not there.
I wish I could hear you sing to me now,
It makes you so happy when you do.
I use the same fabric softener you have,
Because it’s the smell of your arm around me.
I want to ask you for your old white shirt,
But I’m afraid that you’ll say no...



Him & Her:**
I want to call you, talk to you
But I’m afraid you’ve moved on.
I don’t want to seem lost and lonely to you,
Even if it’s true.
Because I want to hold your hand again
And feel the perfect overlap
Of lines across our palms.
I want to be drawn to your eyes once more,
Locked together and speaking
All the words I can’t say.
I want to dare to touch your skin
And trace outlines
Across your back.
I want to share your smile
First thing in the morning, last thing at night
Knowing it’s because I’m there.
I want cold beers to turn warm
In the evening sun
Because I’m lost in your conversation.

But I’m too afraid to knock on your door,
When you’re around,
And find disappointment, crushing down.

I’m holding you, in my arms
But I cannot see me in your eyes.
They’re looking down, to the ground
And all the world away from me.

You take a step, two steps back
You lie, with your back to me.
You’re taking kisses and giving none,
Why do you steal away from me?

Friends and foe, show their face
When ex-lovers knock on your door.
All the while, inside your home
I’m trapped in your life ‘way from mine.

Afraid to ask, I need to say
All this heavy fear, its anchored deep.
You may tell me all, please make it quick.
My heart bleeds from beneath my knees.

Drowning us, day by day
This cancer on my mind is growing deep.
But I never wanted to give up on you
Even when you began to stray.

                I’m screaming,
                  And cursing.
                        Angry,
                  And helpless.
                   Then quiet,
                  And sobbing.
  Finding goodbye, before hello.

Vehement rage pierces
Like shards
From a glass once half full;

Viscous sorrow,
Exposed remorse,
Bludgeoned pride,
Impassioned anger,
Bottomless love.

Tears caught in these cracks
Run the length of his soul,
Stretched too far to ever be the same.
You ****, you shot his baby girl.


Surely, the Harrowing of Hell wasn’t any worse than this?
Please God let this man feel hunger again,
Let him conquer the infernos,
Let him take her back from gates infinity.
She should not have to wait for her father there,
Let him wait for her.

You stole not just a moment but a lifetime
When each bullet punctured a parent’s caring nourishment;
One for each year;
Four lodged in arms and legs,
Three between shoulders,
Twice through his heart, once between her eyes.
Each one garnishing a rose red, then black.
Each one sinking clenched fingers into fleshy palms
Each one a hardened fist.
Each one,
Screaming,
Sorrow.

It takes a lot for a man to shed a tear
Every teardrop steels a cold hard revenge.
Killer beware, he will not rest his grievances
(This man’s eyes have wet his anger for five long years)
Fear the unforgiving wrath of a parent’s love,
The devil’s hand cannot help you now.

Sleep gurgles peacefully,
While innocent dreams float on by.
Vague memories, glide like driftwood downstream,
Dangled from our tranquil surrounds.
But you, you clung on like a vulture to its prey,
Deep among darker dangers.
Pillaging mercilessly,
You pierced my mind.
Red panic gushing out,
Black fear soaking in.
It was cleaned quickly away by a bubbling blue stream,
But boy, oh boy! I will always remember you.

Grip tightens.
Loss of appetite,
For food, for fun, for mischief
All but for self loathing.

Something so simple ,
Made so awkward.
More than just trivial,
All so hard.

I could be so happy,
Elated,
Infectious in fact.

Instead questioning so much
Too much
Appointment? Yae of Nae?
Arranged or by chance?

If chance does arrive....
Take it?
Or be it gone like the wind;
Never seen but felt by all.

I know it
It preoccupies both our minds
I know it
But self doubt is unrelenting
Questioning, always questioning
All too noticeable.
All too late.

I know.

“Haha, very good”
That’s what my father says when he finds something clever and amusing.
A simple phrase depicting the way he feels.
I’ve noticed myself using this phrase
When I too find something clever and amusing
And I wonder what I could have created
Had I not been subjected to this line.
Would I have been more descriptive, charming even?
Perhaps ever-changing from day to day, keeping seemingly interested.
But then I begin to ponder,
If his father too had used his phrase,
And his father before him,
Keeping alive a generation through subtle words.
And I begin to think “Haha, very good.”

I will not conform to your ideal.
I will not follow the footsteps of those ahead of me or those behind me.
I will not copy the beliefs of my peers
Unless I agree of course.

For I have my own mind, my own style, my own grace,
My own pace.
I walk the way I wanna walk
And I talk the way I wanna talk.
And I feel the only way I know how to feel,
With passion, power and a delicate strength.
If you are so lucky to see...

I will not groove to the sound of your music,
If it’s not to my beat.
I will not laugh at your jokes
To be in your good seat.
I will not play in your colours,
If you’re not in my team.
Because I can jump and kick about,
Or stay silent in my dreams.

I am not trying to be a rebel, renegade or revolutionist
Being different is all the same.
I’m not going out of my way to defy, disregard or disagree.
I am an influencer, influencee, influenced.
I am a piece of all of you
And I am a picture of no one

I believe everyone makes mistakes.
I believe we can all be a disgrace .
I believe we can all fall into the same trap.
I believe once and a while we can all snap.

What I believe you may not agree.
What I say you may not relay.
But you might just remember this,
I believe being wrong is a right.

I look into my pocket and I find a card
On it my photo, my identity
Is this really me,
Or who I'm supposed to be?

I go to sleep in fear, not for me
For someone else.
No alcohol to numb the thoughts,
No book to lose myself,
No film to ponder.

I turn to writing these things
In my head, in my mind,
All around.
At first something to leave my body,
Grapple with my fears
Before being taken by exhaustion.

Failing that I feel the need to cry.
Now is the first time I truly
Miss my old friend,
Someone to talk to 'til i sleep,
Comforting and kind
To reassure my mind.

I realise that writing this down
Could result in its finding,
My thoughts and feelings falling into
Wrong or right hands.

Maybe its what I want deep inside.

Regardless I do not want to stop
For the tears well up inside.
Besides, this kind of creativity
Doesn't come too often.
Something like this should be taken advantage of,
It may well be useful.

But had this be found
Please not by my kindred,
Or those that I live by.
For their worry would be needless,
Like I pray mine to be...

As I come to the end,
My heart is happier.
Temporarily free of it's burden
But my stomach still undergoes
The brutal battering of the storm inside,
Tearing it apart,
Unknowing to the world outside.


But it will die down.
After a good nights sleep,
A new day and some company.
Least this way I can remember another feeling,
Another experience
I can say I have achieved.
Before I go to my sleepless grave.

Don't utter those three words,
Keep it to yourself.
Until it becomes unbearable,
'Til Eros is standing at your door,
Arrows dripping with insatiable delirium,
Bow in hand.

Keep it to yourself.

Until you see it everywhere.
Dotted across windows of shops,
Films you watch,
Books you read,
Places you know,
People you meet and greet.
'Til it’s walking with you everywhere, everyday
Turning daisies to roses, rope into ribbon,
Black into bright.

Keep it to yourself.

Until your mind is lost,
Your knees weak, your stomach sick.
Lost to everything but those three words.
Haunting you, possessing you, controlling you,
Watching your every move,
‘Til you’re lost to its every move,
Becoming morning's favourite child.

Keep it to yourself.

'Til every sound you hear,
Every scent you smell,
Every sight you see,
Every taste you savour,
Every touch you feel,
Every feeling you sense,
Every thought you muse,
And every thing you do....

Then maybe...

Just maybe...

But before you do
Just remember
Those words will remain the same forever
Live them for as long as you lie in one's power
Because,
Nina will one day answer.