Stitch me up with words and ink,
Between the pages, let the black sink,
For I am a tale,
One to be told,

Lest I become human and *****.

I am fragile, hold me tight between your pages,
There, I can live for lifetimes, for the endless ages,
Cover to cover, I shall be bound,
Until the next reader comes around,

Never shall it occur to me the words are simple cages,
Lest I become human, and *****.

I am walking toward mirages
with the knowledge that they are fake
but with the thought that
moving to a new area of the desert
will not hurt anymore than remaining sedentary,
and I am thinking that maybe
if I walk far enough in one direction
toward these delusions
eventually I will have to reach something
other than sand
because this wasteland cannot be infinite and
I know these visions are malignant figments of my imagination
but one day there will be an oasis
that does not disappear at the touch of my dusty palms
and this will be what I have been walking toward
all this time
and these mirages are not lies,
they are promises,
they are foreshadowing
of a place better than this and
I cannot ignore these signs
because they are the only things
that keep me from sitting so long in one place
that I erode my own grave into the dirt.

may my delusions
be smashed

may my sanity
be restored

Poetry Schmoetry!
These pretty words that rhyme
sometimes not even every time
creep into your heart...

Like water seeps into a rock -
deep into the smallest crevice,
these words seep into your heart
and find the small, dark spots
the unspoken hurt and yearning

like water that melts and freezes
can split a rock in two,
these words seep into your soul
and split our precious delusions
we so desperately try and conceal

like a rock split in two by water,
so our souls are rend open -
left exposed!
and the poet's words like warm sunlight
tempts your heart
maybe even *steal your soul

He sits next to me in the waiting room, his breath labored. He’s good looking, in his late twenties, wearing a red vest.
“Hi.” he says.
“Hello.”
His face is suntanned, but one electric white spark splits the colour of his forehead like a bolt of lightening. It confuses me for a moment, until I realise it’s a frown line that hasn’t tanned.
“Listen, mate...listen, mate. What’s your name?”
“Arthur…”
“Listen Arthur, can I call you Arthur?”
“Of course - Art if you like.”
“Listen Arthur – what are you in for?”
I put down my copy of ‘Perfect Home’ as the water dispenser blows a great gasping bubble.
“Bipolar.”
“Yeah? You being sectioned?”
“No, no. I’ve just come out of hospital. I’m having a review.”
“Right.” He chews his lip. “Do you reckon I’m gonna get sectioned then, or what?”
“Well - I don’t know. What are you here for?”
He sighs darting his eyes sideways, and his frown deepens.
“When I was sixteen I was at this party, right…”
“…Right…”
“And I was drinking. You know how it is. Few beers, bit of fun. You know how it is, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, so I’m at this party. And I feel sick, ok? So I go to the toilet. Nice toilet, friend’s house, pink bath, air freshener, nice. And I’m sick all over the place. What do they call it? Project summat...”
“Projectile vomiting…?”
“Yeah yeah, projectile vomiting. And then I gotta take a ****.” He lowers his voice, leaning into me. “So I’m all beery and I feel kinda terrible y’know? And I unzip my jeans and go to pull the old fella out…”
“Uh huh…”
“But there’s nothing there.”
“What do you mean there’s nothing there?”
“Exactly what I ******* say. My **** is just…gone. And I realise, right, that someone at that party has chopped it off. One of my friends. One of my friends has chopped my old fella off.”
I lock eyes with him.
“Jesus.”
“I know. One of my ******* friends.”
“And this was…?”
“When I was sixteen. Anyway. To cut a long story short – I went to Thailand a few years ago and I took this drug over there, some party drug. And my **** grew back. Everything’s been fine since then. But on Monday, well, you can imagine can’t you? I wake up and my **** has been chopped off again. Again. God knows who did it, but I've got a good idea...”
“And that’s why you’re here.”
“I’m here because I want them to find out the name of that party drug, the drug I got in Thailand, the one that worked. It worked. It actually worked, mate.”
“Was it ******?”
“**** knows, but it worked.” He rubs his face with both hands, sighing. “So, what’dya reckon? Do you reckon they’re gonna section me?”
Of course they’re going to ******* section you.
“I don’t know, mate. But I thought that my neighbours were poisoning my cat, and they weren’t too pleased about that. Do you get what I’m saying?”
My psychiatrist interrupts to call my name, standing at the mouth of the waiting room with a smile. I shake the man's hand and wish him all the best.
I look over my shoulder as I go down the corridor, and he picks up my copy of ‘Perfect Home’.
He puts his hand down his jeans, adjusting something.

To find something that was not there before,
To stare at a telephone that will not ring,
With a tiredness of the eyes and a taint of the heart.
To notice that sometimes words are not enough.

To follow the dances of strange fingerprints,
To terrorize the etchings on the skin,
To burn last nights cigarettes into the lips.
To distract the longing of the heart.

To know a moment in many different ways,
To understand that it could not exist,
To wonder if it was ever there at all.
To find a sincerity in delusion.

To understand the power moonbeams,
How they mar the bones, in their fictions,
To know the subtle parallels of love and hate,

How they act as partners in crime.

To the devastating follies that transpired in the night.
So hauntingly lovely.
That one may not mind carrying them,
Like sad love letters, clinging to the loneliness of secret places.


It's the type of sadness you don’t really mind noticing.
-


*"I wish I could kiss you all night."
"Maybe you just might."