I want you to walk with me to somewhere
better than this, where the sky
won't be black as pain or tortured and blue.
You are adopting my heart
as you take it beyond the furthest reaches
of joy, to that place where your beauty
comes from. A land of music and freedom lives
within you and now I can see it.
I need you to hold me with those peaceful arms
cradling my weakened bones as you drape
your soul over mine to thaw it,
heal it, let its bruises fade. Keep me safe
when the blood stops flowing
and the tears stop burning
and all that is left is your fingers
brushing the tears from my cheek,
your concerned eyes on mine,
your tan skin glowing umber in the candlelight.
When your eyebrows fall
under the weight of my burden,
your sealed lips will trail
your dizzy thoughts across my mind,
words of beauty unspoken, heard.

I must have done something incredible
to deserve a friend like you. My karma
has finally aligned... or maybe it
is just luck. Before you, my head would hit
the pillow and I would beg for softness
to embrace me, to take me from this world
of barbed edges and harshly sketched faces
and into a place with beauty and wonder.
Now, softness awakes me. There are no jagged
lines or vacant expressions here, only
smoothness and blurred dots for daylight behind
the smiling face of future.

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.

Little Wendy *******, coming up to play.
Walking up the hills, broken,
begging me to stay.
Little Wendy *******, needles to the skin.
Seeping, drip, seduction,
eyes that pull you in.
Little Wendy's soaking, she's drowning in herself.
Sinking, sinking deeper,
addiction beyond help.
Little Wendy's cloaking, she's hiding behind blood.
Dyeing her skin bright red,
swimming, falling up.
Little Wendy's dying, she's tripping in her mind.  
Shooting, lusting, crying,
nectar sweet and kind.
Little Wendy *******, pulse is always on.
She keeps on playing these games
until she's dead and gone.

This burning nightmare never fades,
But with each step I take
A little part is pulled away,
Like a paper sheet being torn into pieces,
And a small part of an image that resides behind that paper is revealed.

Behind the burning paper world,
There is another
Made of beauty and light.
I stop so I can take in this new place
and I look around in wonder,
Oblivious to the remaining pieces of paper
Still burning behind me.

As I close my eyes and breathe in the soft,
Smoke-free air,
The heat grows again and to my uttermost dismay,
I open my eyes to the light filled world being set on fire
By those burning shreds that lay behind me.

The screaming earth shakes my bones
And deafens me with the vibrations of its pitiful death.
Heat courses through my body as the fire reaches me
And pain flourishes over my skin,
The fire that is causing it dancing with deadly beauty beneath me.

As I fall to my knees in agony,
I see the residents of this once beautiful world
Screaming in pain as they burn.
My vision blurs,
I don't know whether from tears or smoke,
And everything goes black.

Shooting up in bed,
I touch my hand to my cheek,
Which is soaked with tears.
With the echoes of their screams still ringing in my ears,
I lay my head back onto my tear stained pillow
And shut my eyes in another futile attempt
To enter a better world.

A balanced boy he was,
the equal of all neutrality,
yet she was enough to make him wild.

Fear of myself should have been fear of you,
The venom itself in my veins.
Thickening my blood and corrupting my soul;
A time bomb held down by your chains.

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.

I am a flower, while you are a garden.
I am a cloud, while you are the sky.
I hold you closer as you run away,
As I am hello, and you are goodbye.

You make the light shine brighter
And the weight feel lighter,
And you open my eyes to the new,
So now my heart will love more
Than it could do before,
And that's all because of you.

This static rain
is singing me to sleep
as the darkness engulfs your voice.

This ecstatic pain
is an unsettling creep
of silence becoming the noise.

Black eyes on the horizon;
Ominous cries start
As souls start writhing;
Faces disguising;
Ink lies reflecting grey skies,
Causing natural disasters
Wherever they hide.

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.

I stood, unseen, as the lights faltered and
I heard a heavy thud. A wave rushed through
me. My friend, out of reach, disappeared. Vapour.
The ceiling was gone - stars, stars. I couldn't
feel anything, it was all normal. Then,
the ***** came. It burned all down my throat
into my stomach, bitter bile tearing
me apart from the inside out. I couldn't
walk. Local hospital, apparently
I had a 50/50 chance. They filmed
me for evidence and I killed them in
the process. Cancerous. I was shipped to
Moscow, my wife being left in the dark.
Confidential. Contagious. Dangerous.
The ones who died were lucky, we were burning
alive from the inside out. My hair fell
from my body. My skin wept after the
false calm of nothingness. The dead skin fell
off in clouds of black dust, my flesh being
eaten and turning a violet black.
I can never have *** again, in case
I contaminate my wife. No more children.
Chromosonal damage. She was afraid
to touch me when I saw her again in
case she would die too. My skin will weep forever
and they call me one of the lucky ones.

I am cradled in inescapable
darkness, kept alive by my perpetual
insanity. These clouded eyes and
purple skies hide the secrets of a lifetime;
hiding away in the shadows from my
own truths in order to free myself from
the lies I once told, the mistakes I once made,
yet there is no escape.

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.

An inconceivable fiction that
somehow became a tangible reality.
I am at a loss without *you.

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.

So maybe we can hide,
all the others meet
over on the better side.
Maybe all these chips in me
are just because we're tired.

So maybe we're out of time,
all our love, it fleets
over to the other side.
Maybe all these chips in me
are caused by our desire.

So maybe we have younger hours,
where we broke one day
yet never gave up to the cowards.
Maybe all these chips in me
were made by who we are.

There are holes in the soles of my feet. Open,
bleeding holes. Their edges
are crusted with salt. Their silence
says everything about the nature
of my pain. I'm like a mermaid,
cutting my tail in two just for a shot
at somehow finding happiness. Feet destroyed
from the hot glass I walk on
to find you, hair clotted with blood
and heavy with agony. My legs are long
broken. They fall to the floor
at all angles, shuddering screams
tearing the earth apart around me like weak
skin being ripped open by a thousand claws.
Ocean waves drag my blood back with them,
possessive and snide,
waiting for me, wretched and pathetic, to die.

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.

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 once was a mathematician, who
hypothesised long ago that I would
learn to love him. His words were all logic,
plans and placements, everything set in
stone for me to keep. He said that, one day,
my heart wouldn't break at the prospect
of love and that I would get over my
pure fear - of me, of him, of... us. He
promised that, one day, his love would be
returned to him when I realised exactly
what he was to me.

He was right.

But I was too late.

There is a moment of warmth that everyone
is familiar with. It reminds us of home,
the heat soothing our shivering souls
and lighting up the dark. There is a moment
of peace that everyone is familiar with,
when we have that feeling of tranquility
that overtakes the chaos the second
another's arms hold us. The second we
know we are safe within the grasp of another
living being, it becomes easier to exist.
We fight and fight, never dropping our heads
and never wavering for a moment,
yet all of our guards are let down when we
allow ourselves to be so close to someone.
Kissing their shoulder or pressing your cheek
against theirs, an arm around them or with
your entire body - all embraces are
the same when they fill you with purpose and
wrap your heart in strings of multi-coloured fairy lights.

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.

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

You,
with your freckles
and your crazed brown eyes,
you can't help it.
Those longing sighs and
warped sights only for me.
Your breath is a songbird, your voice
a flock of birds all in harmony.
You are like the ocean,
the sky and the hazy,
confused line between them -
endless and effortlessly immense.

Nothing. There is nothing within me, I
don't feel anything except the overwhelming
burn of tears in my eyes. I am
cynical and bitter, sad and destroyed,
and apathetic towards everything.

Except you.

You have brought a lighter colour to these
rotting walls - you are a vivid, emotive
shade of life. You brought me back to this fervent,
dizzying wildness that never stops tossing
and turning within me, even in the
motionless depths of darkness. Apathy
has been turned into an eager chaos,
the weather dissolving into northern green
around me as my tireless eyes gleam,
reflected in yours.

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.

You and your wordless words - you
give them all to me when you
say you have none within you.
Your mind is a swirling pattern
of that non-existent voice, and
I am the comet, shooting through
your atmoshpere and becoming a
storm of fire, in delight as
words hit me. I don't know
if this will burn me up, but
all I know is that I love the
feeling of being on fire again.

Wellbeing is an illness that plagues my mind
regardless of what others believe it to be.

You were a part of my life before,
But today you are not.
Feelings that were there between us
Are now all forgot.

You replaced my fondness with hatred
By injecting it into my veins.
Where once there was love and happiness
Now there is only pain

The sun is in her eyes as she glides
through the trees, her hair tangled
with ocean, and she is extraordinary.
Looking at her, I am stranded
in that musical way, only a leaf
floating on a wide, wide river.
She swims beneath.
Miles away, I hear the winds reciting
her name, and even in September, she is a summer
watching the rains appear, reappear,
birds flocking in confusion.
I close my eyes and line the pages
with constellations, see the stars murmuring
on her forehead. Gold glimmers
in front of her eyes, my eyes,
and I am no one, nowhere.

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.

I am sympathetic towards the blind ones,
Who have been engulfed by how alone they are.
They cannot hear the others that are like them,
So all they do is shine their lights from afar.

They hope that another will see them,
Even though they are so far apart,
As they don't have the strength the reach them,
But they need someone to light up the dark.

Some people are born
With crystals in their eyes
And hope in their skies
Of blue and green watercolour dreams.

No such shimmering exists
In here. The glimmer
Of past wonder has long since
Been destroyed by fear of existing.

Your shattered souls will, one day,
Be remade by someone new
And returned to you,
But I understand that right now,
You are just a group of disintegrating hearts,
Smiling in the daytime with pretence of happiness
But falling asleep behind curtains of tears
In the lonely darkness of night time.

Unstack your load onto me
as my fountain rusts out, and I will
throw my love on your frozen ground
to thaw, unlock and lift it all away.

I will twist the sun and the moon
to change the weather and seasons for you.
This is pouring rain,
yet this is paradise.

It was a cold time. I lay in the frost
alone, immobile and blue from the treacherous
air, but then you passed and lay with me just
to keep me warm, seeing something worth saving
in my empty eyes. It was a cold life.
Yet movement came back to me, dispelling
the ice and banishing it from my heart.
You were the fire for me, the fire that gave
me my sight and filled my eyes with starlight.
The fire that heated me and danced with a
scarlet tranquility in the night, calling
me forward into safety and saving
me from the wind which so harshly froze my being.

I am becoming so sickeningly
happy, and now all I ever want to
do is dance to the music that your words
sing to me.

Your starry eyes and my galaxy mind
dance together in the depths of the night.
No matter how bright I may seem
or how darkly you gleam,
no light compares to those stars I can see next to me.

Everything is monotonous.
Endless rain falls in my heart,
And I dampen anyone
Who dares to come too close.
If only the sun would find me
And dry me out.

Throughout the existence of our earth, beauty
and logic have never been as one. I
know that now because your beauty has no
logic to it, and there is no beauty
in describing you logically. These
functions and algorithms within me
cannot process your astounding beauty
and I cannot take it for one more second.
Why isn't there a fathomable reason
for your infectious smile, those eyes of earth,
or your face as it lights up entirely
when you see someone you love? No, my logic
cannot solve why you are so beautiful
as you shine in that light
which only I seem to see.

Those three words;
hurt me, burn
me, know me.
Desolate delight. I
will burden you
with identity. I
will ache for
my divine shadows
to return. Yet
the clouds parted
and I saw
truth, some strange
recognition within, brought
by my thoughts.
"I know you."

You have always been my heartache,
But I'm not placing you under the blame,
For love caught me off guard before I could breathe,
And it unknowingly swept me away.

It dragged me under to a hidden city,
Where I found myself as I started to drown,
So I looked to you to save me,
But I knew you wouldn't follow me down.

Maybe I will catch someone's eye
The way she catches mine.

Where is my language
and why can't I speak it?
It's being replaced
with a haze of Spanish eyes
and olive skin
casting shadows across itself
in the mid-morning sun.
I would be one
to remember the days
of what I could say,
words integrate,
binding my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
Colder, colder, migrating south,
hold my hand and tell me
it will be alright.
I wanted to know how the bird in flight
felt to have its feathers washed from its body,
how the decaying leaf
felt to be buried in snow.
And now all I want to know
is how it would feel
to be the world's smallest organism.
How it would feel to divide, divide,
roots so shallow I can't find my feet,
swept away by the smallest rush
of pins pushing against my body.  
How it would feel to be torn apart
in the name of science -
would I still be beautiful
if my ribs were inside out?
Would I still be beautiful
if my heart bloomed like the winter flower?
Would you love me if I could be anything,
a wasteland with a clear surface,
water being poured down the drain?
If I was a sequence,
the number of steps before the next system over,
would my DNA align just enough
to make me reflect you?
I'm hapless,
lethargic,
entirely theoretical,
and I'm counting the number
of substitutions I can make
before I no longer exist.
What will it take to wipe me away?
How many cells do you have to remove from my spine
before it is no longer my own?
I used to want to feel
the air breathing with me,
to know what it is
that makes the water love the earth so dearly.
Now all I want to feel
is soft skin on my hands,
the curve of my waist as I sleep,
the skin pale under the sheets,
beauty sighing from between my blue lips.

For a moment, everything lingered. Words
lay suspended in the evening air between
us and we sat together. The silence
cradled us and we had nothing except
enjoyment - the enjoyment of experiencing
one another - yet my eyes fell to the
floor as I realised that this was a mere
dream, being half the world away from you.

This red sanctuary of want guides me through
the sacred breeze - memories of autumn
leaves flying and kissing against trees in
the moonlight. I am backwards in motion
yet forwards with my words, so listen to
the green winter as I give you the wild
despair that is my everything.

I fill myself up for you to take it all away,
Watching the flood commence as you do so.
The broken waters that refreshed my being;
Smiling through the day, crying through the night;
You always liked putting old agonies in sealed bottles.

Falling faces as sunshine turns to dust inside,
Stuck telling the time on a long-broken clock.
Minds wandering as beasts draw nearer,
Blood in their eyes. ****** on their breath.
Killing it and taking me with. Instant relief.

I breathe.