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

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 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.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
floating, sinking, fading.
Mist seeping into your bones,
condensing within your mind,
confusion in the purest form.
Dancing fireflies taunting you
with their certainty.
Skin turning inside out
to the sound of your own song,
afraid of what those melodies might mean.
Until tomorrow
you will be lost to the night,
so enjoy the stars
shining their apologies
for leading you astray
and run your fingers
through the glowing water.

A violent need
Living inside my heart,
My spine,
Draws me to you,
Drags me to you.
Minds lost
To dangerous thoughts,
Eyes dark
With evil desire.
Rhyming bodies
Quick as lightning,
Alliteration with tongues,
Painting
With closed eyes.
Hot and cold shifts
To black and white,
Turning me
Into your prey,
Eating me alive.
Your teeth
Sink into my lip
And the taste
Of blood,
Pleasure,
Stains my mouth,
Making me beg
And beg
And beg
For more.

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.

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.

Everything is uncertain, and has been
for some time now. Panic on the air,
we rush across an empty city
in a daze, hoping we didn’t forget
the important things. I left
the freezer on. The taste
of dust in my mouth, I forget
what day it is, am consumed
by the stress of curfew, distance
and isolation.

His burning hands trace
spiralling trails across my body,
echoing my outlines
with fervent magma.
His fingers are magnets
drawn to my rough edges, cracked
hands of glass smoothing me over.
Try as I might,
I blink to the beat of his heart,
cry to the flow of his love.
I am no longer my own.
I was a girl
of the purest black and white,
living a grayscale life.
He is warming and heating me
to a vivid red,
eyes burning blue,
skin dark with desire.
He comes in colours everywhere,
purple joy, green mystery,
the sound of his eyes catching mine.
The reverberation of his music
is enough to stain my life
with colour more vivid
each time his hands meet my face
to pull it towards his.

When I put my eye to the telescope
to explore the dark depths of the universe,
I see a man standing on Mars. He has
a sword in his hands and blood pouring down
his face. He is too far away to hear
but I know he is screaming. His war cry
writes itself across his face and those wild
eyes haunt me when mine are closed. They are white
with rage and filled with the brutal, violent
love of war. He has a beauty which is
old with skin that has turned into rubble,
skin the colour of rust. Blood is embedded
in his surface and creates cracks, edges,
borders to old rivers long since evaporated.
His body is laced with the order of
a soldier and War traces the smooth skin
around his lips. I peer at him through the
darkness as he sleeps and the violence seeps
into his dreams, singing its lullabies
of explosions and ******. He weeps his
masculinity into the earth and
slowly is pulled into the endless dust
which stretches its way across his planet.

There are circles around my eyes that I trace
in dark streets, trying to find
my way home. A mind of clogged dust
settles on my shoulders, stagnant
and old. My hands are blue and heavy, slow
with ice. Hair hangs, sodden,
thick with burden.
My skin is rotting.
The sun winds around my body,
spinning me, dizzying me,
making me lose my way
as compass needles
stitch their tracks into the earth,
lines of misguidance
taking me absolutely
nowhere.

She is winding her way in front of my eyes,
dancing and weaving ivory linens around my neck.
They look like fog and I can't remember,
can't remember the touch, or taste,
if it was your soft hands holding onto me
that October night. I can see my eyes,
so blue - were they always this murky
and dull? There was something between
them, is it commonplace to have a comma
in a full stop's place? Clumsy.
I hold onto my mother with weak, calloused
hands, calling her name. What was her name?
I don't know her face. I only know the fog,
the **** fog, and I can't remember-
why can't I remember? I want to know
the call of the damp, apologetic starling
who pecks holes in the sun so he can ride
with the circus. I want to know my hands,
rough like glass over the furrow of your brow,
but the far away tomorrow is coming for me
and I know that I won't remember
my name, or trace, or the reason
my lips rhyme with the seasons,
in time to save me becoming the fog
which stretches itself over my eyes
like soft, ivory linen.

She has darkness surrounding her body.
Limbs of smoke,
Eyes of dust,
Beauty with blackest intention.
Blood coats her lips
And falls from her grace
With decadent
Delight.
When the light leaves your eyes,
You will hear her treacle voice
Drip and seethe
Within your mind
Until you find your nails
Tearing against your skin,
Stretching and stretching
Until the rending scream of metal
Shakes your bones
And draws mercury blood
Boiling in your veins.
She will take all you have
And leave you brewing in fear
Until the shadows come
To take your soul.
With no precious metals left,
You will dull
And lose your reflective surface,
Becoming a dark and cunning monster
Of greed
Just
Like
Her.

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'm in misery,
so please find a way to bring
my love back to me.

A misunderstood mind,
A heartache of mine,
My main frame covered in dust.

A good clean long overdue,
Awakening when I find you,
Helping me to vanish the rust.

We destroyed ourselves and all others
With our malice and greed and hatred,
And now, all that's left
Is an empty world
That has been devoured by fire.

Poseidon's home sways with the water's
breeze, swirling bubbles and seaweed cocooning
a historical fantasy. The owner
of the oceans, it becomes a place of
refuge for the lost souls looking for beauty,
and every life force in existence is
prized at its worth. Swathes of coral, green, blue
and yellow undulate with the sand and
live, breathing in their silent protest as
they begin to be killed by our wretched
humanity. Our need to seep into
every orifice of the land and control
the very atoms which compose beauty
itself is what has created the complete
death of beauty, taking over this place
and corrupting it. Brown and black may as
well be red, for they are the land's blood. That
home of Poseidon, watcher of the
world and owner of the oceans, it did
not deserve to be murdered by a race
of idiots who were blind to the beauty
they were destroying.

I wait for the lights to turn down but they burn my eyelids.
I hear animals scurry into the darkness that I am waiting for.
Aching limbs, strained eyes, tension,
The soothing words grind between my teeth patiently.
I wait to be grounded, by the soil in my toes
Or the light passing between my fingers.
The time filters away, washes my feet with tenderness
And begs me not to go back to the city.
Although formless and absent, it sings sweetly
And reminds me of my loneliness.
Maybe I will stay for a little while longer

There is water all around me,
water pulling me down
and filling my lungs with ice.
Oceans surround me and I can no longer
see the ground, why can't I see
the ground? I'm wrecked,
so destroyed that I can't even breathe
anymore. I have been beaten
and fractured by the powerful waves,
hitting me with such speeds
that my mind was knocked
from my body. I had a core of love
and now it is an ever-expanding
cavern of hollow, black weakness.
Soon, there will be nothing
inside me except the cold burn
of the wind
and there I'll be,
completely and utterly
useless.

The rumbling of the coming earthquake
echoes beneath my surface,
threatening the very idea of normality.

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.

I am becoming tired of these mundane words
That give nothing, take nothing, feel nothing.
I am becoming afraid of the way I can use them,
How harshly they hiss when I speak them,
How bleakly they twist when I write them,
How solemnly I worship them in my silent self.
For all their power, these words hold nothing.
I am starting to fear that they will soon be meaningless,
Even to myself.

Psychotic is my normality;
pure dust is my reality.

Normality is pure insanity;
the jester in my reality.

I went back to my secondary school recently
just to see what it was like without
me in it. I still saw the blue, cheap flooring, rooms
with wooden panelling that definitely
wasn't wood. I still saw ill-fitting shirts
and teachers scowling at boys wearino green
for that girl who's never going
to look at them. I still saw big kids,
too young to be so old, falling into a naïve
love and thinking it's forever.
I could still see the traces
of my clumsy hands
dropping ink all over the floor of the hall,
the streaks where I desperately tried
to clean it up before anyone saw.
Lockers still lined the walls,
only the stickers that had once covered
mine were gone - the only colour
in that hall, the shock
of red in a sea of grey,
had been taken away.
Teachers walked through the halls
to poimt their fingers at herds
of giggling girls but they didn't stop
to smile and talk to me
like they used to. Maybe
it was the change of hair,
or maybe it was just
the next generation of names
erasing mine from their memory.
The next generation of hands
pulling red stickers from old doors.
Soon, hard-soled feet will wear down
the floors and those black trails
of ink will be removed, all of my fingerprints
and scars will be buffed out, scuffed out.
The paintings I left to be exhibited
will be replaced by newer, better ones
by younger students who offer more,
the halls will be filled
with new faces who don't look
quite the same. They don't laugh
quite loud enough or smile
wide enough - they are more vague
and distant than memory
ever suggested.

Limbs on my limbs, back to my back,
fingers dancing everywhere.
The hair on my arms is tall.
I don't know what it means
that last night I dreamt of you standing
in the cold, October night, breathing smoke,
that safety lives in the weight of your head
on my shoulder. Whispering into my ear
all of the beautiful things your heart feels,
I am lonely and unseen. That heavy feeling
only seems to fade when it's your heart
beating next to my heart. I almost love you
in the dim lights, the taste of a name written
between your eyes, the way I loved her,
recklessly and without abandon.
I see your eyes shining so bright,
so close to mine,
and I wonder how the world would be
written in your broken verse.
Splinters and thorns, I split apart.
I leave over and over again,
I no longer remember the way.

Why can't I cry?
I am numb -
Lost and confused and upset and diffused,
And I just want to cry
So I can at least hold on
To the sadness rolling down my cheeks,
Yet I can't.

Just let me cry,
Please.

Autumn frost seeps in through the cracks
In my bedroom window.
It follows the footprints left behind
By summer, still blooming
Vivid green and burning orange
On my fingertips.
I open my eyes again
But it's all just grey.
Grey.
Grey.
Grey rain and grey hands,
Grey fog dripping from my frozen throat.
Grey.
It's a depression that's cured
By the singing sun;
My skin hasn't seen the light
In decades. Blue broken skin
Burnt by ice and bruised
By the desperate hands of winter,
Trying to grasp me
With all of the gentle laughter
That comes with summer's warmth
And instead leaving thick, black
Marks upon my skin,
Marks which are fading to
Grey.
I held hands with the sun once,
Felt her power and grace,
Her hair swept across valleys
And wove itself with golden leaves
But now it's matted
And falling out at the roots.
Her skin is pale and thin
And she's plucking the eyes from her head
As my limbs are encapsulated in ice
And I'm greyer and greyer...
And I'm gone. All gone.

Brush my skin,
sepia freckles, moonlit paper.
Touch my face,
cotton cheeks, rosy hue.
Run your fingers through my hair,
silken and earthy.
Look me in the eye,
so bright, so blue.

I wrote my words into happiness from
my agony, in hopes of regaining
something. My agony turned to happiness,
and I was able to write the future.

I wrote my words into agonies from my
happiness, in hopes of it never happening
again. My happiness turned to agony
as I was able to write the future.

I wrote my words into alternate realities
where I had lost you, hoping to avoid
that pain. My fear turned into reality
for I was able to write the future.

So now, I am writing my words into a world
where I didn't lose you, venting my agony from
the happiness I turned into pain, in the hopes
that I can still write the future.

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.

Thoughts darken as I find myself
becoming the nightmares
that I keep my eyes open to avoid.

I am on an island.
An island surrounded
by streets and houses, ebbing and flowing
with light. People crash and rush
through me and past me
yet I am still trapped on this island.
Everywhere is shared -
I am invisible
yet they are watching me.
My hands are shaking
and spilling the contents of this heart
over myself. They will see,
they will hear.
Eyes. Mouths.
Words pointed at me,
bullets waiting to explode,
tear through me.
Collision.
Breath like hot blood on my neck,
dripping into me.
An expanse of hollow space
filled with nothing but terror.

Unwanted words
keep spilling from my mouth
and I can't escape them.
They cling to my surface,
twisting and seething
every time I reach
my pathetic hands
towards you.
Why did I even bother?
I knew from the start
that I was destined
to fail,
that there was nothing
worth dwelling upon
in my cold blue eyes
and numb, emotionless
smile. You
were my youth,
my everything,
but you were gone before I had you.
You're a wingless bird
flying further,
further away from me,
the beginning of summer
in the middle of a blizzard.

I stared at her all night
before she came to speak to me.
No such thing as lost time.
I imagined what it would be like
to kiss her, and despite her anger
I knew she would come.
I didn't have the taste on my lips
but it filled my mouth the same way
it always did. She had her head
in her hands on the beach that day.
I couldn't stop staring.
Like a dream that is endless, relentless,
she laughs on the doorstep and waits
to be invited in. She walked me home,
held me close for a time,
but left me alone again.
Excitement clings, her bones strong
against every edge of memory,
every nerve and eyelid.
Every line on my hand follows
the curve of her thigh,
deafening and beautiful.
She makes me small and insignificant.
For a time, I was in love.

She left her cave,
heart full of bones,
and unzipped. Her dress fell
to the ground. She stood, exposed,
layers unravelling in the sunlight.
Toes curled into fresh soil,
the smell of rain. Her body exploded
with bright, vivid colour.
******* bared to the whispering wind,
a bead of sweat found itself trickling
down the centre of her back.
Her arms stretched upwards as she
rejoiced the morning air,
laughing to the sky.
She stood firm.
Birds came home then left again.
Days changed to night then back again.
Winter came.
When the ice began to thaw, it started
at her feet.
She willed it to.
You can hear her peace
in the thrum of the ocean.
Her skin became the enticing
reeds, swaying to the beat
of the wind's drum.
You can feel her sorrow
in the cries of lonely wolves.
Her limbs became the stretched shape
of trees, making the horizon jagged
and green.
You can sense her anger
in the crack of lightning.
Her body became the earth, each
person born as one of her children.
You can see her, even now,
glowing with the sun and singing
to you in the morning air,
standing firm.

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.

He sat at his window
And looked out at the world.
What he saw terrified him
So he ran away,
But he was always drawn back to that same window.
That's the way it always was with him.

She walked out of her front door
And embraced the world
With open-armed eagerness.
What she saw excited her,
And she happily continued on her way.
That's the way it always was with her.

He sat alone at school,
Afraid of the darkness he saw in others
And the anger and hatred that pulsed through them
Like black blood in rotted veins.
They were all evil to him,
Because that's the way he always saw them.

She looked at everyone
With happiness in her eyes.
She couldn't help but see
The astonishing beauty of others
Wherever she went.
They were all perfect to her,
Because that's the way she always saw them.

While he only ever looked into the darkness,
She glanced up into the light,
And maybe all of the evil in his world
Could be washed away by the beauty in hers.

Watch out, boy,
the world is behind you,
holding you,
waiting for beauty to sigh
itself from your limbs.
I long to feel the
yellow music
seeping from your hands
in the pleasure
tingling along my skin,
the sound of your high-heeled
shoes as you dance to your song
bringing out the movement within.
I dream of seeing
the joy of performance
as you hold the guitar
which led you astray.
You're going somewhere, boy,
so watch out.
Pick your weapon wisely
and play it
with your heart shining
in your eyes
and your blood suspended
on your fingertips
until you hear that song
called 'applause'.

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.

I don't feel much when I'm with you,
But it's a lullaby that will do for now,
A lilting swaying song bowing at the knees,
Stuffy and overbearing.
I'm a line hanging on the horizon
Endless, muted,
You chew me up and spit me out,
Viscous paper foaming on the tarmac,
A receipt glued to the window,
Discarded next to bins
Overflowing
With a plastic ocean,
And I'm floating away,
Further and further from you,
On a whisper of cellophane
Lulling me to sleep at night.
Lurking in corners, I sit foot under foot,
Dreaming of wider eyes.
Less to offer is all I want for myself
And us becomes them, something else
That I don't think I want anymore
As long as I can have someone to hold me,
Someone that my heart breaks for
Twice daily like clockwork

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

Some days when my feet hit the ground
and my heart passes by another
I feel a glimpse of warmth,
an inkling of something better
than what I have become used to,

but I am a mountain of ice
in an eternal desert. I have become barren
of all life and love, entirely forgotten
in a realm of fiery beauty.
There is no one who can see me, why

can no one see me? People only find
me once they have become lost
and forgotten, once the breath leaves
their body and the spark abandons
their eyes. I have been buried

alive in the deep hills and left to drown
in earth, left to rule a disturbed, haunted
land which makes every inch of my body
and every twisted landscape in my mind
ache for something more than this wretched life.

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?

Something igniting within me
constantly pulls them in,
a solar flare
drawing creatures of the dark
into my body. I am hollow,
skin worn
by the bodies of moths
to shelter themselves
from the darkness. I am a haven
of addiction, hooking
you on my light and drowning
you with my power. I switch
on in a heartbeat
and stay lit, eyes burning
with desire, hands shaking
with sacrifice.
Thistles embedded
in the palms, stabbing me,
clenching my fists into them
to embrace a darkness
I am unable to possess
within. Blood reminders
of what it once felt like
to be afraid and in the dark,
alone.

Brooding overhead,
swirling, storming;
other hearts warming by fires
as mine shivers with delight;
beginning to wash over me,
chilling me, relieving me.
Purified.

They say you are a rainbow, that you need
that lost beauty which cascades down in the
winter winds to reveal you. They say a
smattering of colour sprayed on the horizon,
which can be seen even on the clearest
of mornings, cannot be true, or have any
sense of clarity. They say that without
the rain, you would be dulled and colourless,
but I do not think you need the thunderous
awakening of the clouds to brighten my sky.

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.

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

The war carries on
And people are dying,
But all that remains
Are families crying
Over gravestones in the rain.

It was meant to be a sunny day
When their son came home from the war.