She walks alone, defiant
in clothes as black as night 
hiding her heart in shadows
never seeing light
she kicks at life and lovers past
and picks at healing scars
she'll talk to you in riddles
and hide behind her 'art'
she fears the darkest deeds within
her  blackened, broken heart. 

She has need of nobody
that's how she makes it seem
and only few will ever know
the glory of her dreams
but if she lets you come inside
she'll beg you not to stay
as love is never hers to keep
and every heart must stray

She'll push you to your limits
as you sink into her skin
her passion overflowing
with sweetest velvet sin
but when the game is over
she'll lay sated on your chest
then lock her heart away once more
at her haunted soul's behest.

for Cally*

Stay. With me
I won't let you go
I can't, I refuse.
After all you've done,
let me help you.
Please.

Stay. With us.
We won't let you fall
We'll catch you
and hold you close
until the tears dry.

Stay, do it
for you, for me
for whatever reason you choose
but do it
I need you,
you need this.

Stay.
It'll all work out.
I promise
with all my heart
to take care of you
I took my eye off the ball
but no more I swear.

Stay.
Be here, with us
your friends
you may not love yourself
but you are loved
more than you know.

Stay.

We are nothing that matters,
created in mystery
while slowly dissolving to dust.
Pretentions and delusions our comfort as reality bites with it's point filed teeth.

We are not made of stars, nor moondust, we are products of all that has gone before and the destruction of all that is yet to be. 

I yearn to see this life through a rearview mirror, it's withered form a speck on the far horizon, for the hurt to stop as this knife in my back plunges further into my sickened depths, severing my spine from all it holds dear. 

I yearn for silence, for these thoughts to stop spewing from my acid tongue, burning my unkissed lips with a million wasted words while attempting to say only one.

Minutes turn into months, decades of meaningless days and miniscule triumphs. 

The stage is set, my role is uncast but the curtain never falls, I stumble wildly through blind utterances, dreaming darkly, while anxiously awaiting the applause that will herald my passing.

This is not living.

I thought you'd done a runner
disappeared into the night
and left without a quick goodbye
I thought it impolite.

You hadn't posted poems
Nor answered any calls
hadn't ventured to your inbox
no sign of you at all.

You really had me worried
cause I know you have to write
perhaps you'd gone and left us
for another poem site.

Then as I woke this morning
my inbox brought a smile
there you were, still with us
just not writing for a while.

You said you're feeling ******
and you're stuck there in your bed
and havent had the will to write,
no poems in your head.

So I'm writing you this poem
as a sort of get well card
the rhythm might be sticky
and I find rhyming hard.

Before I go, one question
out of concern, just for you
because I'm sat here wondering
Do women get Man Flu?

This night is too long, without you I toss and turn in hope of slumber, finding only isolation and shattering need. I ache, my heart a pulsing bruise, my body weak from all the wanting, my mind lost somewhere between your echo and the closing of the door. 

I am barely here, gossamer silence wrapped in satin bows and weeping scars.

I have become my own tragedy, a lost soul wondering through darkness, chasing the fireflies of my imagination but never grasping their glow. My age leaves me weary, too many years have passed unnoticed while your hands dealt passions blows in the name of fun and inappropriate pursuits, but to what end?
My loneliness is a heavy blanket that offers no comfort, our love is a lie without remorse and you, my love, are the noose from which I will hang.

My grandpa took me camping
it was an intervention
this was denied by him of course
as soon as it was mentioned.

We pitched a tent on forest floor
told tales around the fire
we swam the lake and walked the hills
no WiFi his desire

The night was filled with twinkling stars
the heavens lay before us.
We woke refreshed and entertained
by a hundred bird dawn chorus.

We packed our kit and travelled home
of signal I was dreaming
I heard that beep, so comforting
my cue to begin streaming!

You sit at your screen
fingertips flying in the face of decency
like a spigot attached to a vat of arsenic
dripping your poison, slowly, surely into the ears of the unthinking.

You justify the burnt skin, the orphans, the unending torture as deserved.

Deserved?

How can it be so?

Go tell the orphan, scarred and screaming that her fate was deserved.

Go stand beside mass graves and thumb your nose at the deserving corpses, stained by the blood of ages.

Where is your heart? 
does it choke and sputter,
buried beneath your all encompassing loathing?

You call me stupid, maybe so,
my views naive, my compassion wasted
yet my heart beats proudly, swells with love 
while my tired eyes drown at the unfolding horror.

War is not a spectator sport,
it is not justifiable, nor deserved.

Call me stupid if you will, ridiculous if you must
call me any number of names in your attack on my spirit
I will not care, I will not bend or bow.
Your hatred will be your undoing.
Not mine