I'm sorry, really.
I hadn't meant to bother you by
Messaging you everyday for a week,
Each following one more frantic than the last,
Because you wouldn't respond.

I was scared.
Really, really scared.
Scared that you had done something to yourself...

Scared that, maybe, you
Stayed in bed too long
Cut too deep
Went too many days without eating
Too many days skipping your meds-
Or maybe, took all your skipped pills all at once---

It's irrational, I know.
I'm sorry.

...

I remember, I've done this before,
I was... 10, it was 2020.
I remember, my best friend, Kaydence, wouldn't respond to my texts
for a month.
We had fought,
It was some stupid Minecraft game.
And then, she just
Stopped texting
Back.

I was lonely, it was quarantine after all, and I didn't have no one else to talk to.
I texted her every single day
Cried every single day.
I was being dramatic, obviously,
I'm always so **** dramatic.

When she came back, she acted like nothing had happened.
Her mom had just taken away her phone, or something.
I didn't have to worry.

...I think that month I spent, alone,
Thats when it had started to get bad.

...

When you did respond,
you told me that you were sorry.
That you were
alive.
I think you understood where my worry came from.

I asked you where you had been,
and you said that you were just doing school and sleeping.
It was another depressive episode.

Oh, well.

I feel bad to feel relieved,
But
It could've been worse.
You could've
Cut too deep
Or stayed in bed
Or skipped your meds
Or taken too many...

You could've
Left me.

I said sorry for being such a bother,
Said that "I hope you feel better."
And even though thats not quite right thing to say,
But I think that's the closest I could've gotten.

I once checked into an old hotel
that’s served guests for many a year.
The white-clad staff will serve you well
and greet you brimming with cheer.

Its handsome brick and stone façade
shines gold in the bright morning sun.
Inside, the red velvet furnishings’ a nod
to the lovers’ tall tales there spun.

The rooms are filled with patchouli scent,
or perhaps with a strong note of musk.
At first you’ll easily make the rent
and stay there from dawn until dusk.

Oh, how well could I in that chamber sleep
on starry fields of Elysium each night,
my baggage packed in cotton I’d keep
to stow it from whatever gave fright.

But the longer this hospitality I had
the more a locked hospital it became;
the doors that’d welcomed this young lad
soon rusted, harder to open again.

I chatted with the friendly concierge
and noticed the crease of his smile
was curled into the quirk of a sneer
while his light humor shifted to bile.

The mattress that once was thick and soft
grew coarse and lumpy with age
while the vistas seen from the gilded loft
were obscured by the bars of a cage.

The red velvet’s colors began to bleed.
All was gilded with the gold of fools.
Once this hotel had for me filled a need —
but it sought to make me its ghoul.

This hostel had to hostile turned,
its host was revealed as a warden.
With time I learned its charms to spurn
and escape to a greener garden.

Even now that hooking hotel calls,
a sultry siren who woefully wails
and summons her guests — or thralls? —
to deep sleep in her heavenly jail.

In the fridge
There sits the bottle of Joy
Every Thursday She becomes my friend
Every Friday She and I fight

In the drawer
There sits the bottle of Pain
I try to keep it away
But every Saturday
I find it open

In the bin
There sits the bottle of Regret
With its deafening yells
Every Sunday morning

Three Drinks and I are friends
And then we fight
And then we make up again.

It was a hell of a day
Sun and shade
Chequered your face chess board
And I was checked,
Heady between sips of beer and silent
like the smoke rising from your cigarette.
It burnt ruby, and I thought of jewels
And all the beautiful foolish things
I would buy you,
If we weren't here on a tuesday -
Mid-morning.
The awning weeps weary drops
From the drain that hasn't been cleaned since the place opened.
It has the colour of dark ale,
I stare at the pale in my pint glass,
think of the half a dozen things
responsibilities and togetherness
That could be part of us -
But are sadly too vast for these shoulders.

You hold out the yellowed filter tip
Lined red with the colour on your lips
Messily smeared - like it was done
The night before -
But I'd watch you adorn that ****
With shaking fingers,
Wobbly with all the worries of nothing
And everything.
You shift restless, pale arms stretched
Across flaking bits of bench,
drenched a weak grey by years and years of rain.
I rearrange the ashtray
And you smile at me, gap toothed and tired
Vacant as the breeze just dancing through.

'I'm bored' your voice slurs,
Like the thin trail of wine down your glass,
The redness settles and colours the stem
Colours your teeth.
It'll taste sour if I kiss you,
But I won't. I smoke.
Exhale the burn, blast it to
The clouds that creep across the sky
Lazy like each blink.
The world fades,
Black then bright.
Black the bright.
I think there might be an epiphany in my lungs
That song of something exciting.
It dances with possibility and makes
Me fidget in my seat
Maybe
Might be
Could be
Possibly.
Expectation makes me shrink into my sweater all holes and broken stitches, that itch as I pass you the last bit.
You smoke it, flick it
And all the potential goes with it
'Do you want another drink?'

Wicked is your tongue

Saying forgive me

And I am sorry

Love is poisonous

From your mouth

I feel tainted and alone

Each touch that grazes my skin

I wonder if I could just leave

With you hand lingering in the air

Tangled in my shadow

Would you keep drowning

In your insincerity

Or would you finally realize

You will never have me

on a staircase in frankfurt, german financial centre.

a habesha lady in company of two brothers; one of them, a rastafarian, is carrying a beautiful young girl in his arms.

the habesha lady grabs into the girl's ***** blonde hair, saying: "her hair looks so good."

by the sound of her voice, i sense clearly that she has been on strong drugs excessively.

what will be her fate?
and, more importantly, was this girl her daughter?

take me away from this journey
i am trapped in the land of placelessness

blind / hypnotized
route 36 / bolivia
deaf / treated with ultrasound
simultaneously

scarcely knowing
what all that means

i am feeling the rising of blood
a wave of heat like sandstorms

inevitability: willful / knowing / aware

i am putting myself at risk of dying
long ago i read about the risks and consequences
of my ******* abuse
pervaded them intellectually while

my heart remains deafly because
of *******
bitter
sear
aflutter and in panic

there is just:

one life
one heart
one body one man

man what are you doing?!?!
i am hollering into my inner
embracing the envelope
obsessed over bitterness
numb love
in the dungeon of plotted heavens
lofty as never before
is where i am running away from:
every day

in the 1920s there was a man
who they called "koks-emil"
he sold ******* in the nightstreets of berlin

the national archive has been keeping
a picture of him doing business with
two girls out of gangland we
can't see the face of the one standing left only  
her back

however her companion typifies precisely
what the drug creates in our souls:
a form that can not be imitated
like the effect of the drug

a form of longing and greed in the
girl's face

longing and greed
balancing each other
not one of
these states predominates

while beholding the girl i am becoming
horridly conscious
about myself
horridly about

my relationship with *******
my affair with *******
my love to ******* this
sounds sick?
indeed it is

we call it
suffering from an addiction

we call it
suffering from a dependency

become clean.
i wish you willpower
wish you strong luck
wish you peace at last

the rate of relapsing
******* users is vast
during the night

when the wind is
breezing mildly

when the stones of the cities
are breathing out the heat of the day

while you are
sneaking over the streets

while every street corner resembles
the very one where
koks-emil used to sell his product

while you are sensing the smell
of bitterness

while you are being preoccupied with
her face: her longing her greed

while you are experiencing
yourself:

more deeply
more soberly
and more knowingly
as before

while you
are reaching out your hands searching
with kidfingers for koks-emil

the guy with the warped corner of the mouth
the reliable / greedy one

the one who is always ready

a salesman has to be available for
every second of your longing
every second of your greed

koks-emil: your world is made of black and white
your hat is grey its bonnet is vanishing as your
shivering hands

hands that spread capsules
hands that grap at bills
hands that you use to brush away your sweat

**** between the lipps
shabby coat

koks-emil your spirit
blows through inner cities like gas fumes
a grin on your face coming from
lurid lights

you became immortal
you underwent rapid decades
you were an addict
you created addicts
you served addicts

the ****** expression of the girl
your child-like customer
remains for

all for everybody with a
*******-addiction

for all and for everybody
who depends on *******

for all and everybody
who is clean from *******

for all and everybody:
longing and greed

rest in peace girl