Tick. Tock. Two hundred down.
Pulp.
Swindled minds flock
so easily into their cages,
sealed vents pushing gas into their lungs.
Carpenter's masterpiece.
Hooks hanging from walls,
bloodied chains supporting old bones.
Rot.
Mirror image rooms kept secret, filled
with decay and trapped ghosts. The neon
sign flickering. 'Hotel'.
Pulling the moths in with its fire,
ready to burn them.  

Tick. Tock. Twenty seven around.
Confession.
The drugs were inefficient -
they never slept forever.
I had to help them get there. I was born
with the devil in me
and he sings like a poet in the shadow of evil.
Gruesome.
I feel their blood on my hands and I enjoy it.

Tick. Tock. Nine were found.
Possession.
"Satan corrupted me, controlled me."
"Innocent."
"I am imprisoned within myself, I swear."
"He made me."
The lever is flipped, I fall.
My neck does not snap.
Instead, I struggle, the air being forced
from my body. Darkness comes
after the fond memory of a knife in my hand
and blood on the walls of my ****** castle.

You hide behind a curtain of insecurity,
blushing and allowing your eyes to fall
to the floor when they give you kind words
to follow and acknowledge. Deflection
is a skill so fine tuned and honed
that it's innate, a reflex built
into your body. Yet you never stopped
to think that they never had to say
those lovely things
and they chose to anyway because they truly
believed them. Perhaps it's time
for you to believe them too.

I know you will be alive and in love
like a child for the first time.
You will chase and daydream
and trace their name on fogged over windows
and even though you're older,
you'll be none the wiser
and just as dazed and clueless
as I am now.

I was the bringer of dawn, pulling the sun
into the sky and allowing my constellation
to fade before His light. I leant against
the edge of darkness and stood, for a moment,
amongst the bright white of Heaven's Throne, deep
chasms of blue circling my feet.
I was the greatest of them all,

He made me the greatest of them all. I
was a prince, the lord of the air. Now,
I am nothing. The shining one, light bearer;
sent to epitomise darkness and evil.
My wings have been blackened by soot and clogged
by smoke - they will never fly again.
I will never see the sun or be free
amongst the stars once more, pushing the sky
around the Earth. I will never feel His
approving hand on my shoulder or resting
on my head. He cast me away as if
I was nothing and cut my hair from my head,
replacing flaxen curls with horns of blackened bone.

The Devil, they call me. The slanderer
who was hurled from heaven to hell. I see myself
in pools of despair: is this who I have become?
Where did the man who shook the earth
with the beat of his wings and make whole countries
tremble go? I made the world a wilderness
and now I'm gone it has been cultivated
into a dull plain of melancholy.
I am nothing without the white brightness
of the night's sky, I was son
of the morning. Venus was my head,
the morning star my heart.
Now, my constellation lies in the ashes
of soul fire because of my foolish pride and envy.

Rooms filled with fire compelling the darkness,
burning on light, emptying the room. No
hearing or seeing or smelling, only
tasting the smoke of my friends burning, feeling
the flames licking my cheeks. The faint sound of
wood thudding into a skull reverberates
through me. So far away yet still here.
The light comes back to see the bodies
of loved ones falling, skulls caved in. Bones limp
and eyes sparkless. Dead. I hear laughter as
palms hover over candles, seething and melting
skin dripping from their hands, faces.
Mouths misshapen and crude, jagged,
cruel. Skin drained, white as bone, red eyes of blood
dripping with death. Your soft body approaches me.
All is calm and well until your body
merges with the rest of them and you condemn me
with eyes of rotting flesh.

Grass beneath my feet
and soil in my hands,
tipping.
Your lips on mine,
wrapping me around your fingers
and splitting the silence
with anticipation,
falling.
I keep waiting for the world
to one day become still
but you dizzy and confuse me
as if you are a planet
and I am the asteroid
caught in your orbit.

Your arms are wrapped around my neck
containing me, choking me,
holding me in place
so you can **** me faster. You push
yourself against me in the hopes
of me returning the gesture
but instead, you're crushing
the air from me and now I'm deflated.
Heart-throb.
You touch me
but there's no more to you than skin.
You don't want me,
nobody does.
So don't touch me with those hands of yours
and pretend like you do.

I was lost
and you were gone
but here we are,
together, complete,
and there is a symphony
waiting for us
somewhere better
than this.
I'm sorry I thought
the light
had left your eyes.

Hatred turns my mind to liquid
and it seeps through your fingers, clumps
pouring down the drain,
punishing me for ever believing
in something other than the crippling
nothingness that haunts my horizons. Sudden
emptiness is brooding over me,
soaking me, and
soaking I am. I think I'm going to die here.

His fingers move like lies over the rough spark wheel
of his lighter, the sweet release of nicotine
in his hands - trusting as a lover.
Sepia tones drift over his head,
addiction pulling him place to place.
Hopscotch.
Dancing under trees in the sunlight,
dappled shadows warp across the smoke
engulfing him. Laughter,
the promise of friendship.
Hand-holding by chipped letterboxes.
Inhaling and exhaling
an ideal world.

Words float in lost eyes,
broken veins are calling me.

Where dawn meets the sea she lies, broken,
her laugh echoing the moon
and pouring with salt
across the morning waves.

I am halfway to becoming an artist,
someone who will have the power
to weave beauty at her fingertips
into true masterpieces.
However, the journey
is no longer one I can enjoy
as it has become a race;
I am halfway to becoming destroyed
and what scares me most
is I feel as if the killing
will happen sooner than the awakening.

It's strange how I didn't even know
I missed you until I saw your face
from the other side of the crowd
and my heart knew it all, instantaneously.

Somehow, he took away my mind
and now I'm drowning in my heart
because there is nowhere else
for me to hide.

Let's burn the paper roses which I hang
from this chandelier of falsity together.
Cradling the ash in our hands and laughing
as we dance together in the strange
light which comes from nowhere, we can be free.
This place has a glow which comes only
from you; without you, my tiny room is dark
and cold and my breath shatters the silence
with droplets of ice and blood.

I am utterly, entirely yours,
For only you to destroy.

What I once would call a friend
is dying at my feet
and I can't even say
that I recognise their face.

These words are all I have - hear me
talking, talking.
These words are all I am - hear me
talking, talking.
I hear you calling me in the dead of night.
I can hear you crying in the dead of night.

You lean towards despair at any given
opportunity, always tripping
over the fence that way. But maybe, just
maybe, you'll understand some day that

these words are all I have so hear me
talking, talking.
These words are all I am so hear me
talking, talking.
Hear me calling in the dead of night.
Please hear me crying in the dead of night.

Somewhere within me
lies a girl, but this face is
just cracked plaster.

Somehow it's possible
to go from the pretty girl
to absolutely nothing
at the opening of a mirror.

I was fractured until I met you;
the boy who saved me from halfway
across the world. Somehow, you pulled
me from the waters I was drowning
in without being there to touch
my pathetic body. You taught me to swim
rather than pulling me out;
you never were afraid of taking the road
less travelled. When I finally met you,
touched you and saw you only to cry
when saying goodbye, it was as a complete
person. I could look you in the eye
and love you the way I should have
for all that time. I was your equal.
I wasn't fractured anymore.
I'm not fractured anymore.

So many moons ago, before the tides of your love changed
me, the November grey of ink which surrounded my groggy
limbs pulled me down. I was drowning, always.
Yet all it took was for me to see that the ink
had power to do something more - to stain
and change the paper beneath it instead of destroying
it. It will take away the blank inanimacy
of the white and make something storming, wild
and capable of feeling. It will make something different.
I will use this ink to make something beautiful
to be remembered by instead of letting it defeat me.

She is dancing in a cloud of rain with such reckless,
joyful life that she sings a thousand melodies
with her limbs, flying by grasping
at the air around her. She forms paintings from the dark
clouds above her and, screaming
her laugh into the night, is free. The embodiment
of beauty, she is the newness of the green spring and the
sweet smell of cherry blossom which comes so easily to
the tongue; a fond memory. She is the coming
of something new, the feeling of freedom and love
which fills the hearts of the young and naive.
She is beauty embodied
in the face
of a month.

She was small, quick, agile; a red fox darting
through the forest, quiet as the moon.
She was the fox and he was the hunter,
chasing her like owls chase the stars.
Those never-ending forests were an infinity
of dark limbs reaching from the earth to grasp
at the sky and pull it closer, and they circled
one another in its depths. Slowly and curiously,
she moved closer, only to dance and shift away
when love's embers began to settle within his eyes.
She began to run once more and did not stop until,
one day, the hunter became a fox
and she turned around to look him in the eye.

The mothbitten light streaked in from the yellow moon, dodging
between ribbons of old curtains and dust, and bounced
from your quiet face in stunned silence.
Your clear and cloudy grey eyes transformed into diamonds,
staining your face with a reflected blue too
beautiful to ignore and not at all dulled, igniting
blazing fires within each iris and bringing them to life.
Wild and honest like the wind, I fell
apart when you looked at me
for you have all of the stars in your eyes
and I wasn't ready to see them yet.

Everything is falling apart again;
my head won't create the words I need
to sustain my fragile state of mind. I
cannot even bring my thoughts forward to
help you understand, or write them into
something cohesive. I am completely
unable. I am terrified that this dreaded
block on my hands will never lift and
I will never get the power of words back
which I use for entirely everything.

His eyes were gleaming
in her wake; black and white
yet holding all of the colours she could see.
If it was possible for eyes to refract
in prismatic glory, his did,
and only for her.
Her hair, blowing
in front of her eyes and half obscuring
her wild laugh,
being brushed aside by a straying,
tender hand. They tried
to stay so solemn, so serious,
but they couldn't help it.
Love like that, when it shines like that...
It can't be dimmed.

There is a girl somewhere, somehow;
impossible and true. She shouldn't exist -
she should have evaporated so long ago
yet somehow she kept on breathing and existing,
condensing and condensing
until she finally moved with solidity.
She sang in sorrowful silence,
was free in the terrors of the night,
lived and loved
regardless of the loss in her heart.
She survived because life told her not to
and now she is there, running
pure and clear as a dream,
wild and crazed bewilderment
shining in her alive eyes.
That Latin beauty, she is vivid and gleaming
in the light which shines
true and bright and effervescent.
She will be waiting for the liquid to return
and to dissolve into transparency once more but,
as she always forgets,
she will never die out.
We are all like her
in some way or another.

They ran through the cold fog;
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing.

I watched them with keen eyes
as they clambered through the haze
which once stopped us in our tracks.

The mist turned to rain as a river
formed beneath them and took
their souls of youth away from them

And as they cried in fear,
I breathed in the cold fog;
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing.

I was silly to think that maybe there was something
here and I was enough for you.
My poor, numb heart needed someone
and I thought you could be the firefly
to thaw me, but now I only feel
the stupidity of my actions,
of how unapologetically I pursued you
with so much blind hope.
I waited. I waited and waited
and boy, did you have me fooled,
because I thought you were going
to wait for me too.

How can your hands
be so warm
when your blood
is so cold?

You kiss me as if
I was lost and you never
stopped looking for me.

The sun becomes softer in these cold months,
and your soft gaze matches the dappled light
on your cheek, red and alive, your eyes moving
across me like the wind as I breathe.
My eyes are eclipsing and yours
are of the ocean; they are dancing in that
warm sunlight as the frost eats at our breath
and brings our anticipation to life
in swirling forces of nature.

There are words within me
that flow through keys into music,
or ink into paper,
when I write the ballads of sadness and love
that are contained inside my head,
yet nothing comes to my tongue
when I stand in front of you.
I have never been verbal,
one of the poets who stands
and speaks their beauty to others, tongues
of silk weaving their words into impermanent art
that will soon be forgotten.
Instead, I write poetry
which your eyes will never see
in the hopes that I will find a way
of saying how you make me feel inside.
The way you capture me
and manage to see me as an entirely new being.
The way you make my laugh permanent
with a single image, childish and playful.
The way you are so unapologetically you.

All of it.

I want something just like this,
I want everything like this,
and I don't know how to say it.

Breathe in my life,
Love away my fear,
Drink in my mind and
intertwine with me.

I'm the ship that doesn't sail right:
no wind is strong enough.
Weak in strength
and short in length,
I am tired and over-rough.

I'm the colourless sunrise:
never beautiful enough.
Red in the wrong ways
and blue on warm days,
yet here I am, if I'm enough.

Touch the sky with me
and we can fly, fly, fly
away from these places,
wrong faces, all the traces
of the spaces we created
between our lonely hearts
and forgotten minds;
the parts of us that shouldn't exist
crying in their cavernous
pinholes, echoing
and rupturing in feeling
through the waves of something
more, something undeniable
and true. The pinprick
in which my emotions
are contained
is gargling with a blood
that pours black yet,
as it trickles through
me, I can feel it restoring beauty
to the yellowed valleys of my skin.

What is justified about you sitting there,
the devil's grin on your face,
when she is crumbling to the floor?
You touched her, moved her, forced her.
Now, she's gone.
She spelled it out for you
but your illiterate limbs moved on anyway,
and now her heart is disintegrating
from the horrors you put her through.
How did a boy like you ever
deserve a woman like her?

There's something about the way he holds the
door open, something about his strange, straying
eyes, which scare me. Maybe it's the charm within
them, the blonde boy acknowledging my existence
without ever hearing the heartbeat which
goes with my name. Maybe it's the lost boy
who left her behind and is now paying
me the same regard, looking at me with
a kindness all too familiar and
an eagerness so unwillingly accepted.

There is something that needs
to be dedicated to the beauty
pictured within: the effervescent and wild
youth dancing in the rain
of your heart. Alone and free,
buy yourself a single flower.
Watch it bloom in its impermanence
and keep it until
there is no colour left
because you never want it
to stop singing with its clean beauty.
Appreciate its life and decay
and allow yourself to be happy
because of the beautiful colourless flower
you sought out to be alive with.

Capture me in a moment of whirlwind
as I dance by the sea, floating
bursts of fabric backlit by
the midnight moon. The water calls me
in to dance with the waves
it sends to me but I cannot go
there, so I must keep dancing
for the water so it
will continue to love me.

Porcelain bodies are hovering over
me and my shattered remains, yet here you
are, in your soft beauty, pulling my shards
together with thread into a palpable
stretch of thought. Who would have thought that beauty
like you would see this in a pile of
dust that was left to disperse?

There's no deeper meaning or connection
here, nothing at all to spark my brain into
a chaotic explosion of thought. I
can't even use my words to string you up
to some greater power, or an invisible
force that is controlling our lives, because
you render me useless and simply apathetic.

There are some clumsy minds in this world
but she has a good soul.
The girl with the head of fire,
wild and true; she is
a goddess of flames and beauty
in her certainty of herself.
Something about how fervently alive she is
pulls me into a chaos
I hope I never escape.

He loves me, they all love me.

If I just stopped singing, then he
would realise the monster I am
and he would run.

But I love him too,
and for the life of me,
I can't stop singing for him.

The viper will entice you with her weaving
figure and gleaming eyes, but when she wraps
herself around your body you will see
the fangs and scales likening her to death
itself. Her jaws will retract and she will
sap the colour from your being, discarding
you once she has stolen it all. Once you
become colourless, she will move onto
the next one, never hesitating or
wavering for a moment and turning
everyone into the blue stone that will
become of us all eventually.

Your eyes are rough as
your fingers dance over Rubik's Cubes
in achingly distant memories.

How I loved the echoing sound
which I am slowly forgetting.

There is a sad song within my heart and
it is echoed in the quiet of yours.
Something about that silence, the lack of
a voice between rushed heartbeats, contains a
strange certainty which makes me completely
uncertain. Your whispering thoughts have drifted
around me like ink swirling through water
and you have somehow swept me off my feet
with the power of the cacophonous
choruses, which I have only before
felt in the winds of the sea. How, my love,
can you make me feel such madness when your
entire vocabulary merges
into only three words when you look at me?

I feel unsafe now, even though I'm not
in that place. He really does trump them all,
doesn't he - the bigots and fascists,
homophobes and racists alike. He is
going to lead them and unite his country
in hatred against us. We are becoming
afraid again, the lost and the ostracised,
so we will hide from the people who will
reverse our progression into the light and
lock us in the darkness of a conservative
world. But it will not be enough. They will
find us, they will shame us and they will neglect
us, sending us back to the fear and danger
of being free. They will tear our wings from
our backs and leave us to die, bloodied and
trampled, in the dust that is settling
on our "freedom".