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.

My happiness is rising and I should be drowning
for lack of air. Endless skies are plummeting
below me at a dizzying pace.  Clouds
pass under my feet like cold breath
seeping from frozen lungs
and beauty is near,
I can feel her,
yet she chills me to my very core.
The earth curves away
from the point beneath me,
miles beneath me.
I just can't stop rising
and there's no way to return.
Mind sailing high
with limbs tied to weather balloons.

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

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.

I find myself here again,
sleeting days; fleeting nights.
Where are you? Is it raining, snowing,
wind blowing your hair as you
look to the ground and think of me?

The pull, ever drawn upwards
towards the promise of your eyes
looking into mine once more.
Should I go there, leave this behind
so I can be home again? Reunited
with the lost touch of a broken family.

I can't come to you, nor you to me,
I don't know how I'd find you. Lost in my mind
as I roam the world, filled with empty goodbyes -
forever sorrows in my mind. I need to find my home again,
otherwise I think I might be lost with you.

My home cannot be here,
Which is where I choose to stay,
For I gave my heart to you,
And you are far away.

My home is far away from here, scattered
across a coast of cliffs and geometric
birds, singing their vectors and equations.
My home is miles away from here, sands of
marble and caves of ice, filled with memories
of falling and echoes of laughter. My
home is decades away from here, a vague
childhood conjoined to a vague life of remembrance.
Lost too young and found too old, but at least
I have my new home to keep me going.
Your shaped song and vague echoes of joy will
keep me upright in this place I exist in
until I will one day be home again.

The sea treated us kindly,
falling into our open minds
and rushing back to the start.
We tumbled down in the
waves together, with the
earth all around us to
keep us young forever.

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.

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.

Where did my love go
After I gave it to you
So I could make you happy?

Where did my light go
After I gave it away
For only you to use?

Where did my heart go
After I gave myself to you
So you wouldn't have to be lonely?

Where did my mind go
After I let my guard down
And you took it all, just for you?

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

You live through me
And I live through you.
By living through each other,
We live through ourselves, too.

Your white words are giving me nothing
but the deepest teals and greens -
deeper than the oceans themselves.
The waters are awake, encompassing
the earth and drawing us in with the wayward
tides, which are unsynchronised and lost
from reality. All I see in those waves of promise,
chopping and churning with wild ferocity
in the dark winds of night-time,
comes from a simple word. All colour
is implanted in my mind, in my imagination,
from a simple image that you conveyed with a
single, colourless word.

Listen, because I think this is something
you need to hear. You are not a failure.
You have not failed yourself by being upset.
You have not failed the world by being yourself.
You failed to be happy, but that does not
make you a failure. You are yourself, you
look like yourself, you feel like yourself, and
there is nothing more beautiful than who
you are. Do not look to others for the
beauty you feel you do not possess, because
if you look within, you will see beauty
like you never thought could exist. If you
live life as yourself, you will become more
beautiful than you could imagine. Look
at yourself like I look at you, and you
will become more beautiful than you could
imagine. You are more beautiful than
any imagination thought you could be.
Imagine that.

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,
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.

I'll throw my soul
into your fire
To freeze or to thaw,
It's your heart's desire.

Two corpses we were,
alive we've become -
to lie or to walk,
in a week we'll be home.

Tongue tied, my twisted eyes
Allow me to see the truth,

Yet my vocabulary evaporates
Whenever I see you.

High in the clouds, above this town.
Lost and forgotten because I've been gone
so long. The dizzying
haze of stratosphere glues itself
into my mind and I reach boundless
heights, distances so far
your limbs would stretch
through time itself
trying to reach me. I'm gone,
speeding, don't shy away
from gazing at me in awe above you.
Scream in terror as I dive and swoop,
losing control,
dying.
Run in fear when I fly again anyway,
hooked on the high
of thin oxygen and silence.

Sitting is this lonely building,
The quiet emptiness around me echoes
With the lost sounds of playing children.
Its halls bustle with the ghosts
Of long forgotten residents.

The creeping darkness that surrounds me
Shuts everything out.
I sit in the corner of the room with my torch
And read an old book that I found on the shelf,
Worn from years of hands turning pages
And yellow from age.

As I sit here in the blissful nothingness,
I wish for nothing other
Than to be in my quiet solitude
For the rest of time itself.

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.

In my mind the music I write
is for an instrument that is not mine, unknown
to me. It cries and rings its wailing
tune and a chord of despair sings its way
into my core. I feel the pain
of the music I cannot write, the song of a million
cuts spreading its way through my skin.
Instead, my music plays through cracked sobs
with my instrument pressed
into scarred skin, tears mingling with blood
on the bathroom floor. I muffle it
so it remains my own secret, a song
for only me to hear. Music
makes no sense to me anymore, only
the sound of infection and dripping death hits
my ears. I look at my reflection, vacant, tracing
my used lips with blood stained fingers.
I am hollow.
No amount of heartsong
will fix those wounds.

Crooked, narrow heart. Blazing bright,
right through the gaps and slats
on the way to the rippling waves
of breath. Eyes are tilted in laughter,
discreet and unassuming.
Subtle glances, warm skin,
touching again.
Magnets on a countertop
intertwined.
Fistfuls of skin.
I can't get close enough.
Deafening quiet eyes looking into me,
nowhere to go except into you.

I'm afraid that I don't have much to offer
the world - I've had this dream of being an
artist since I was able to dream, and
as the reality approaches, I
grow increasingly afraid. What if these
words, these hands, the things that come from these fingers,
what if they are not enough for this cruel
world for which I have nothing to offer? I
only offer something to the people
of this world, yet that isn't even enough
anymore. Depressed thoughts push me into
a cycle of pushing and being pushed
away by others, yet the cycle is
a circular behaviour pulled into
the swift motion of a line. It is a
ball bouncing between two walls for eternity;
an object always moving forwards yet
only through the same two points, in a constant
state of deja vu. The happy face of
this out of time clock seems to be one which
people like to use, being friendly no
matter what. This depressive face, bleak and
lifeless and filled with wretched longing, is
one which those who cluster around other
faces are eager to abandon. Their
friendship is superficial; their love is
superficial; their faces are superficial.
Everything dissolves into superficiality,
a fog of poison around my dilapidated
mind, and I am left, alone, with nobody to love me.

Like forgotten cables
on the floor,
we intertwine ourselves
and can't seem to be undone.

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.

You somehow capture me in my essence,
revealing a beauty so profound
that I can't quite believe what I see
before me now. There is a sky above us;
filthy, full of words and phrases
which are unable to be formed
when I see you, walking, looking off
into the world with narrowed eyes
and the ignorance of how my eyes change
when I see you. Your face removes any analytics
which before dominated my mind and instead,
I stand dumb before you. I am unable to recall
your face for all of the power
it holds over me. I find myself
standing on the edge of us, ready to jump,
because I know that I will be able to fly
if you stand on the edge next to me.
Despite the despondency within me, I grow
stronger every time I see your deepening green
flitting across my eyes in the night,
every time we share a short second of eye contact.

Sunday morning, dark and grey,
Coming home from December.
I can feel myself wasting away.
Look down, the skin is a mystery,
All I see is the history.
Too much history.
For a moment, I forgot.

The ******* the furthest right,
Skin too thin and preciously white,
She was in the hospital.
I want to be that way.
Six and half a dozen,
It was all a bit of nothing
Until my bones started breaking
For no reason,
No reason at all.

Stress.
Too far from home,
From what I know.
Not the hands touching me,
Every night from before I was ready,
The trauma in a bedroom
Hanging icy on the air.
A name on a label hanging hanging
Icy on the air.
Packaged hands waiting
Behind university doors,
Unknown,
Afraid.
A kind face telling me to come in
As I hesitate in the open door.
Do I remember the way,
Can I really run faster?

I don't see him anymore,
Not since summer.
We sat on the shore,
I almost hated him,
Hated myself instead.
It never takes long.
There must be something wrong
With me.
Went home to the city.
I didn't sleep.

It won't be long
until I'm somewhere beautiful,
green, serene,
with clouds hovering
in front of my eyes to hide
phospherous tears.
It won't be long
until my eyes fade,
clean, gleam,
with speckled fireworks
bursting like life
in the midnight
of my pupils.
It's not far,
it won't be long,
I can feel it on the horizon.
I can feel the spark, the life,
the igniting sense of betrayal
warming me,
making me new again.

He was kind to me
Got me a special box
Just for me to sleep in

Gave me sweets

I called him Uncle

He cut my mummy up and
Experimented on my baby brother
Growing inside her
But Uncle said she had to die

The other kids were sent away
To the gas chambers
But Uncle liked me
Because I was blonde and pretty
And he was going to teach me
How to be a doctor like him

I'd have my tools and I
Could put other people's brothers
In jars to keep
Like he did with mine

He said I would be the first one
To have twins planted in my belly

Would they sprout like trees
In my stomach?

We had tidy beds there
And it smelled nice

My mummy and daddy are dead
And I loved my uncle
But it smells funny in here
And everyone is coughing

I think I can hear his voice
Calling me
And I want to run
But there are walls surrounding me
And I can't escape

His crazy eyes are following me
Until I collapse on the floor
Dead

I feel as if you can tell that I've lost
my mind, my heart,
everything I moved for back at the start.
There is a rush of something unknown
within my body which takes me to dark
places, places of fear and pain and horror.
Places where your face turns to ash
when I'm not looking, where Death
holds my fate in its icy fingers.
I am intertwined with the shadows,
unseen gore dripping from my limbs
when I move, trickling through my skin.
Poison. I am being stained
by the black blood slowing me down
and as it heats up,
I feel it creeping into my lungs.
There is only so long before the cold returns
to save me from boiling alive.

Sticky trappy honey, I am a fly -
Hungry, greedy, drowning in you.
I would like to see you again.
I think about your mouth
More often than I can laugh away.
Your eyes and limbs linger gently
After I leave for the night.
I noticed the slow peel of your eyes
Leaving mine, the reluctance and weight
Of the motion. Is this not in my head?
The touch of your hand brands me,
White hot metal flaring against my wrists.
I think about you when I'm alone,
Can hear your accent tilting
Over the shape of my name.
I stand close to you and look at my feet,
Go home and write about you
Like you're someone else.

I'm ready to leave here.
Her eyes, her mouth, her breath,
they despise me.
They loathe me.
Ready for exile,
I will be pushed from June
and into the arms of July.
I will lay there
until I suffocate,
spores taking over my body,
the ocean of the sighing
forest floor choking me,
waiting in wretched harmony.
I'll be dreaming of yesterday
as the claws of tomorrow
tear my body to pieces.

A storm is boiling above my head, a
raging, red storm which has bubbled and brewed
in the skies around the place where I have
been ****** to for centuries. Electricity
surrounds my limbs and keeps me in the spot
where my hands have been nailed, standing barefoot
in an electric ocean which buzzes
and burns the skin off my feet. Like molten
wax, the sky drips down my arms over and
over until the flesh fades away and
all that is left is the sound of my screams,
tortured and angry, tearing apart all
physical matter around me. Metal
rain and anguish hit my body as power
surges through the coarse ground and I am left
as a sacrifice, with torn skin and lost
hope, underneath an eternal storm of thunder.

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?

I spend too long thinking about words.
About what to say, when to say it,
When to get the words out of my head
That choke me, suffocate me,
Put me in desperation,
Sadness, need, greed.
I shove them down my throat and hope
They will keep me going for a while.
I consume my language quick
So I can't move or breathe or see,
Words filling me from tip to toe.
On a vacant breath I will spill into your mouth
My poetry and lust, predate upon
Your silence. Know that this is just
Temporary.
Fleeting.
Almost over.
Almost.

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.

Run away, my love. Just run away
with me. We are animals, lost
in bite marks and desperate visions
of bleak futures where you are no
longer here to light up my skies
with your starlight. My limbs are lost
to your touch, my mouth empty
as you breathe me in. I am
human only when you observe me.
There are no skull shaped prisons
or cries of terror, only
the sound of laughter ringing
like the songs of lost
birds in the night,
longing and true.

I may create and belong
and language
which seeps so effortlessly
may pull and bind my being into knots
but I bleed for knowledge.
My lungs fill with words and I choke
on memory as it hits me.
Mastery, meaning, crushing definition.
Division, collision,
a crash of colour and lightening
crushing my skull in anticipation.
Knowledge of death
worse than the idea of dying.
Nerves tied into knots
impossible to untie
unless I know the code,
electric pain
with my limbs
flush to the flames.

How much longer do you think I can withstand
the pain of being torn apart from the
inside out? The claws ripping into my
heart, piercing my soul, making this into
a nightmare; tear-stained wishes pouring as
love floods off my tongue, easy yet broken;
my mind running circles until the thoughts
make me dizzy and I fall; paralysed,
hypnotised, terrorised. How much longer
do you think I can cope with this hole in
my heart, the hole that can only be filled
by you? Let's count.

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.

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.

You may just be a ray of light,
But you are sunshine to me indeed.
I was locked in the dark before,
But your light has set me free.

Far on my right, I can feel a sense of presence
lurking between your eyes.
You make me sort of crazy.
I feel like an insect in the moss,
ethereal worlds all around,
choking me, enveloping me,
whirling every other direction in the tangerine wind.
I fall into you every day.
7pm again and I don’t remember the date.
The bright of your eyes is whizzing away,
trees are peppered like windows with spray
by citrus scents blooming under a Scottish sky.
Your head always fits into mine,
we’re dancing and I hear the tune you’re singing inside,
an echo, a little breeze, subdued and quiet,
vaguely entering the room.
Echoes in the hallways, these walls hold no place.
Your arms around me are a city,
loud, relentless,
a ring of light pollution
hanging around restless sleep, tapping feet,
all of this just another haze
or darker phase come to take me away
from this place I have grown used to.
Paranoid and half-dreaming,
I'm not sure if you're somewhere behind me,
always writing love songs,
or if you're still only stringing me along.
I wait like paper under needle
weighing down the rest, nerves float into my chest
and I didn't hear what you said to me
in the breaks between the strings.
I am sometimes stuck,
motionless and out of sync,
suspended in the air we breathe.
I dream of living within you,
of how it would be to see the lonely tree
from your eyes,
the one with the leaves that emerge from nothing.
I think you also feel done in like a winter glare,
cold shadows going nowhere.
I think you know what it is to be a shard
of the blue, unwatched and unknown.
I only feel alone when I'm with you.
I know it's the same.

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.

How I feel, it's a sin, longing to be
something I've lost again. I can't find your
eyes in the crowd, yet the burn of your hands
still lingers on mine as our fingers reach out
across a breath of wind, desperate, calling
through the abyss, calling to be heard.
Blundering and old, I have begun to
long for you in that ancient, harmonious
way, mouth wide open, feet swinging
high above the ground. In between wisps of
dreams, I feel your hands in my hair telling
me all the secrets of the world, dark eyes
shining through the confusion. You
unravel me and leave me glowing on
the horizon, my body turned to ice
under invisible hands. Your trickling
words weigh me down, stick to my skin like tar
and feathers, itching. In silence, I can
taste the ghost of you on my tongue, honeycomb
bursting between my fingers. You crumble
before me, sugar on my limbs, but I
can't get the bitter taste out of my mouth.
I feel you echoing over my skin
and, for a moment, the warm of your breath
blazes on my lips. And then we fade,
dissipate, cold hands grasping at the sheets,
whimpers bouncing over the grey waves.

I am losing my mind, slowly but surely,
just like I was lost to your murky eyes
so long ago - never able
to find myself again. My head is collapsing,
caving inwards, and now I am too weak
for sanity, too weak for anything
other than being hollow. The part I
need to love him is lost in your mind, and
the part I need to love myself is lost
in my heart. Return to me, my love. My
lost, broken love. I need to feel you.

Come back to me.

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.

I am dying within this body, and
it is only made worse by my terrible
indecision. I had never felt love
until that warm month of March, and now I
find myself with love for three.

First. You, my love, my starving, lonely love.
I love you, I miss you, I need you, yet
I cannot give myself to you because
you love me too. You love me more than I
thought was possible and, for fear of breaking
your sorry heart and cracking your icy
eyes into rivers, I cannot tell you.

Second. You, my love, my resonant, blazing
love. I love you, I hear you, I see you,
yet all you see is her, so I am not
allowed to. Your song ignites when she is there
and nobody exists or matters other
than her. Your graceful dancing is enough
to make me keep my silence, so  I cannot tell you.

Third. You, my love, my fleeting, dying love.
I love you, I know you, I want you. I
am counting down the days to tell you. Every
second, every moment, every hour of
every day is spent waiting until I
can tell you. You are everything to me,
setting me on fire and embellishing
me with your warmth. But now I remember.
I have a love for three, those three sections
of my own world which I know so strongly.
Therefore, I cannot give myself completely
to one walk of life, and I cannot tell you.