Here she lies still
Breaking the box spring
Twisting words around
Her father's wedding ring

"Dying," she whispers
Her hand on her chest
Prepares for the evening
Of eternal unrest

There's a creak from the closet
There's a crash from outside
A boneyard war being waged
A corpse trying to hide

"It's never enough,"
That's what we'll assume
The dead go on living
And their dreams are exhumed

Bust through the coffin lid
Break your own heart
The dead and the dying
Are only six feet apart

I fell in love with a superstition.
She kept crystals at her bedside
to ward off wraiths and bailiffs,
selling friendship bracelets to
strangers on the internet whilst
keeping family in her prayers.

She would wander the fields
of **** and sunflower seeds,
howling at the moon without
another soul to converse with;
obsessive-compulsive murmurs
of a Hail Mary and incantations.

Potions of ayahuasca and sugar
brewed on the hob in the kitchen,
fridge magnets full of idioms and
passages from the Book of Psalms.
By the fire sat a pristine tin cauldron
with the price-tag still left on it.

Broomsticks were mounted on the wall
like lazy guitars or executed deer.
No photographs, only proud trinkets
and yoga mats; a crucifix hung over
every doorway, whilst she had learned
to cross her legs from all men and pain.

She laid me down on the bed
with a hungry sleight of hand
to show me her favourite trick;
I saw the marks on her arms
before she came alive in the dark,
and by the daylight - she had gone.

It's all nameless splendours
and 'return to sender's.
Without the clarity to make sense
and the rarity to be heard,
we are blurred together
like colors on the canvas.
Where I settle in and make my home,
it's insanity and ****** sea foam.
        Straight lines where everything careens
               into smokescreens and blackened eyes.
                       Cruelty in disguise.
                              Lonely demise.
                                Unheard cries
                                   Dark skies.
                                       Lies...
                                          It is here... I make my home.

It's too often in this life when we pretend
that every deep-end is a wading pool
and every fool with a dream
is a philosopher in disguise;
because we weave lies into silk and grieve
every time a tree falls with no-one around to hear
but we still appear to fear our past paths
more than our futures.

We live in a world built with false pretenses
and barbed wire fences,
but we still make wire cutters for every time
he mutters of freedom reached our ear.
We make the road ahead clear
with a You Shall Not Pass mentality,
swapping between dreams and reality so fluidly
it seems that we will never truly wake again.
If I could make amends for everything I've done,
I'd take a pass,
because sometimes you'll only be sorry
if in the process you look like an ***.
But everyday, in the looking glass,
I see a man just a little older than the day before
with the worst day behind him
and a new one in store
and a future no bright, no-one could even try to ignore.

My poetry is hardly crowd control,
but I'd like to think that winter night's stroll
through my mind wouldn't be hard but it would.
Because even the urge to do right and do good
gets lost in translation
and each radio station is broadcasting spells
and each songs just a hermit crab in an already used shell.
Am I expected to enjoy that?
I'm not better, but anyone better would crush them flat.

I digress, I suppose what I'm trying to say
is that this sorry mess of a love story
has gotten to a gory conclusion
and I can still make magnetic fusion with the ashes left.
It's hard to carry on when each footstep leaves behind
a memory people can use to find you,
but my heart can still beat black and blue
and I know that I'll have a place
no matter where my road takes me to.