Who do I give my love to?
Can I return home? To something
lost, found, lost.
Myself, the barren cage,
Do you ever stop and breathe
in where I place your love
now?

Now. *** is so commercialised, objectified, underrated and understated;
fearful and lust-driven;
you want me to give it
to you so badly ,
I don’t even get to quote
‘we made love’
anymore.

Being close with you has taken on
the same meaning
as talking
on the phone
with you for an hour.

And sitting with you
I get to relive exactly where I’ve been before.
Only days ago.
Come full circle.
My flip-book details the same seconds of
unrequited confusion and unwanted heart to neglect.

Life is made up of cycles.
All it is
are cycles breeding more cycles;
circles one can choose to stop circling
to replace it with another.

It is the mixture that we cycle through;
the number of repeats,
the speed with which we tumble, and roll,
and dive head-first into an oblivion with all the colours
of artworks and fireworks, vibrancy and vitality.
The people who make up small cycles, large cycles,
the in-between lonely transition between new circles and loops
to contemplate, fight, submit under gentle lulls and thrilling loops,
that we educate ourselves to thrive upon, those that
we unlearn because of disappointment.

Each cycle doesn’t make it the
love affair it once was.
The friendship it could have been.
The tempting mirage of escape we were to each other.
The fuel and coursing fire that once was our motivation.
It doesn’t get simpler to manoeuvre the longer you cycle,
with you, without you, around you, for you, because of you,
too scared to lose you…
it’s still the same sticky sharp bend in the pipeline
the same foreplay of games;
‘now, who loves you most?’;
fingered silences’;
your heated chase and me always one step behind;
I have to branch off the loop
to prevent myself falling over you in the dark;
toxicity bubbling under surfaces red, raw,
swollen and teary;
I know my triggers.
My shotgun is you.
I know I feel something- to not feeling anything at all.

I may only be able to walk in circles,
but at least I can make them the right circles to trace.
I need that physical space; that walk-through
corridor in my head.

And now I get to sit with you,
realising I’ve been here all before,
not quite so long before.
Only days ago.
Come full circle.
And I think it’s time for me,
to be over your cycle.

On to the new circular track.
And the later loops and whirls I get to
embrace
on my rounds.
Well and truly,
over you.

If I let you hold me,

you’ll want to stay the

night.


And I can’t let you.

For My Sake.

I’m placed between your thumb and forefinger,
like a delicate specimen;
you would howl to see me
lost
to you.

All I can feel,
is that I’m one bad-**** narcotic
that
everyone
wants
to use as the
temporary
replacement.
Leaving earth to greet heavenly fantasy,
return to earth and greet reality.
Fantasy can never meet realty.
When you need a buzz, quick fix, roll-over-and-****-me,
craze, escape, high, exhilaration,
thrill, choice joint to smoke
choice dope to taste.

You get to feel high off my body,
hallucinate to my laughter,
get comfortable with my movements.
I get to be the substance locked in snap-lock bags,
passed around in secret amongst ***** hands,
thick hands;
fingered and rolled and breathed in, licked and tasted like precious escape.

I’ll become the gift, forgotten to be given over,
because it’s a dangerous cocktail of not being enough,
and being the exact thing you want to keep for yourself.
Kept in secret, kept as a prize,
kept as an ego boost, a rationed sweet,
the very thing always denied.

I get to wait for you,
to come back to me.
Crawl on your knees and hide the words you
clearly say;
and it’s a little disappointing.
For you, of all and everyone,
to admit you need my drug.
And I get to wait for you,
biting lips and drawing blood,
mental fog and drowned heartbeats in shakes and quakes,
time lost dedicated to shouting your name in my head,
time lost getting clothed to be unclothed,
in the dark,
on clandestine dates,
dark rooms, silent phones,
standstill and empty pants.

I can’t find safety hiding.
I can’t find safety in the open, being prowled upon,
dusted and polished and robbed
of my body
of my deserving commitment
of my feelings traded to be your
low key
replacement
until your other lover
comes back
walks in on me naked
with you.
It’s ok.
My work here is done.

I’m disappointed you would ask such a thing of me.
I’m disappointed so many of you have.

I learn to find a home in the most vacant of places.
Lost between the naked form of you,
legs sprawled for each other,
and the naked ghost you sleep with on the opposite side of the bed,
with me there.

To hide with people that hurt me the most;
to hide for the sake of people that hurt me the most;
to learn to be the escape you crave the most;
to learn to be the temporary fix, the temporary her you need the most.

I can only see it crashing down when she walks back in,
and you see me as the empty husk you like to stroke
and I see you as the man I hoped wasn’t so empty.
But you’re empty, scooped out like an empty ice cream tub.
You’re cold and melted too.  

Any addiction can be solved with discipline.
It’s time for me to train you out of me, off me.
I don’t have to be insecure, because you seem to be.

Bye Bye Grenade.

I have one question.

That’s been digging trenches in my mind.

Hollowing out all the empathy, the faith,

the blind addiction to sourcing a better humanity;

better lovers, stronger fighters,

stunning believers, more tender hearts.

With actual effort to beat on their own.


Your exclamations are false, always.

And I can tell you why

my shell is caked in your muddy, rotting stink of fake facts.

I’m cracked, embittered, roughened edges capable of paper-cut slicing skin

and all my lovely scars can tell you something you hardly believe.

I’m here to tell you why.

And why I hate how you make me feel this way;

a cynical coil of seething, jilted, passion, to fix what I can’t.


For all those who make hearts melt and weep,

shed heat and fire in rapturous thoughts and darkened, tainted dreams;

for all the single words you used as tools to build up walls,

break down my walls,

deceive me into caring about you

who chisels into only getting the gem he wants.

You can collapse a mine on me for all you care

in the end.


For all those who can make devilishly delightful

fantasies for all the vulnerable loners,

like me,

like us all when we shut our eyes,

to hover and circle over, beg for on our backs,

naked and open and bleeding raw beneath you

like ritual sacrifices for some higher purpose, some higher hopes and

goals and unwavering loyalties

to you,

my dearest demon behind every salvation;

You are the emotional abusers that gravitate in my orbit,

and I can’t seem to dislodge your planets from my line.

I admit, you got me high off some stunning ****.

Of yours.


For all those gentle, perpetually unavailable, curious beings

vacationing deep away inside

if only you would let me try and reach you, for you

to bring out all the best in me back;

before you close up like sealing a scar

We are left in a continual loop of back and forth and sideways,

hovering through open, closing doors

elevator rides to the same living routine, breaths, steps,

burdened heavy heart and raw eyelids

bruised red and blue in swollen tears

when you can never emerge from yourself to realise I’m right here

for you.


For those that run around, commanding disciples, throwing the weight of luck,

fortunate coincidences, helping fools sabotage and **** for existence,

perfection,

idealism,

licking off frosting,

dwelling in your own superiority,

I see your ruse.

Painting pristine pictures

with the lift of a finger

selling illicit jealousies and spite

like wildfire

from the back of your 24/7 Facebook page.

You make us understand the reality of one-sided loyalties,

the critical unfair rulings of want and have,

divided and mixed between people,

achievements hard fought for like precious land

and ownerships of better peoples

determined by the infernal number of people you know.


So yes.

I do have one question for you.

Why are you like this?

An why must we all break apart alone in

the boiling pressure of it all?

Forget the next night.

Wait for the return.

I want to let you in.

On a little universal secret.

We are an exhausted pool of all the little blind, maddening

instances we confuse ourselves with;

over people and instances and places left unexplored,

for us who feel the weight of lead limbs dangling limp from

the craving of sleep;

patient waits cut short in frustrating moments of self-pity and loss,

bereft and lonely over insatiable appetites.

Over friends we keep only to abuse,

lovers never giving enough but taking everything wrongly advertised;

the needle driven deep under skin after seeing jealousies dance,

float like unreachable things,

taunt and play and roast your heart in an oven,

cooking in the promise of eventual redemption.


I want to let you in.

On a little universal secret.

Being caught alive wrapped in shrouds of your own

faint darkness is miserable.

As a flower feels the warmth of sunlight,

so quickly it droops to meet the rough earth.

We are a maddening crowd ticked off at always

being second best, runner up, participation award;

jilted contestants,

competitors making allies and lovers, sequential,

in an ongoing battle of self and image and

all the ****** up soliloquies we recite with rough tongues

to an imaginary audience of our selves and their incessant advice.


I see your facade.

And i’ll challenge it every time.

Don’t think you have never heard the whispers circling;

don’t think you go home to shut all these truths inside a box of your own,

don’t think everyone else does too.

It seems like a sordid, unfair jibe, between the ribs and spikes in your head,

to wish you were that one perpetually fortunate, lucky, charismatic creature we

worship in our private dark;

we all worship each other.

And that’s where all our collective monsters feed on us poor, poor

struggling souls.


I want to let you in.

On a little universal secret,

that you can only deny so long.

There are many of us, made to feel few,

hidden in millions and billions of tight springs

that only gather so many more of these confusing thorns.

I’m talking about us,

the ones that have to leave a ‘do not disturb’ sign

inked on our foreheads when we disappear to somewhere else

because we have to. As far as we can.

We are the people who fight for conversation first,

and always back away first not because we want to

but because our minds are thick, and sore, and so

exquisitely filled with self-deprecating jargon and patched, sewed

stitched in places clumsily,

a surgeon not paying close attention,

that fails to keep the muck from seeping out.

The pressure in our heads that makes teeth grind, eyes tear,

mouths shut dry and parched, a surge of nausea

a general lingering present future lasting feeling of unsettling nerves;

sparking blossoming dull throbs of hurt that make us bow our heads

half in physiological need and half in the self-fatigue we feel

fighting ourselves every time we rise to a challenge.


I take my meds, I think things over.

I take my meds, I think things over.

Repeat until you’re tongue-tied.


All my friends are getting wasted,

and i’m feeling lonely getting self-wasted with them.

We know abandonment like no others,

because even our minds leave us for a time,

even our very selves walk away from us like broken lovers,

hurt friends, empty strangers, sworn enemies

it lays ambush to our patterns of self, lightness,

trodden leaves melting slowly into the ground like

the cycle back to dirt and lowness again.


This is half my little secret.

But I’ll tell you in time if you’re ready.

So now I’ve let you in.

On our little universal secret.

Always look back

over your shoulder twice,

you never know

if there’s a chance in hell

to see them again.

A time,

sometime before the last time,

or even a little more lost

in a dusty box

the time even before,

I wanted to tell you something, sweet.


When you press against my skin,

or hold me at length,

you are wearing, shredding,

tearing and smoothing my very

surface.

I wear myself upon my skin;

internals are external,

I don’t hide behind mirrors or imagery;

magic tricks, pops of champagne,

dazzling details or embellished,

encrusted, coated

and processed

goods.


Those who are privileged;

ungrateful and cursed with ignorance,

little awareness for the multiplied demons nesting

in blackened hearts,

sipping sour emotions and rancid feasts,

those are the people who hide what doesn’t need to be hidden.


Those who are privileged;

independent and cursed with anxiety,

pressure behind their eyelids at night

and a very heavy head to move and keep

the walls up, guarding against the terrors and the screams

and the glistening shadows, slick with grief and

self-pity, self-loathing and what people judge

as an infernal mental contagion,

but really is just an unfortunate, battle of imbalance and chemicals.

Awry and lost and deep trodden in a mind that never rests,

always misses a beat chasing other beats

and fearing the biggest monster in the fields called mistake.

Those are the people who wear it all like skin, coloured by bruises and patterned

with cuts, carvings,

soothing over the outside and deciding its already faulty,

can wear it on the outside because its already broken,

not really worth protecting

and don’t hide would could and would mostly be hidden.


Sweet,

this is me.

I’m rough, I know.

I rest

in your bed

when I’m scared of being alone with myself.

Depressed again and as I lose control,

realising I never really have an end

keep pounding and chipping at

every word I’ve ever though and every feeling

I’ve ever had to succumb to,

I’ve ever always had to feel,

sending for help and working on strength to rebuild,

shoots flares in a black blanket of sky;

lending your little demons the opportunity

to find you.


Jealousy is the most dangerous form of punishment for us.

Me.

These people that we are.

We crave respite, sweet.

Out of earth and mind and here and now,

out of beats and taps, clicks and repeats.

Out of straddled cycles and digging into ourselves with

our own fingernails.

But really, I can’t call you sweet.

You’re just the person I imagine

so I’m never caught alone with myself.

You’re just the person I want for myself,

and can’t reach towards, afraid and corrupt and broken to you.


Blacking out with my eyes open.

A blank space, a blank knot and a blank guess,

rolling over inside.

Short-term memory shot.

Feeling the weight

and the hatred of my omnipresent self,

mind disheveled, unraveled,

fighting a battle you can’t even see;

takes one to know one.

I deal with my pain,

no one else digging enough to find a spring,

land-locked and bone dry,

questioning the mirage I stumble through a desert for.


Questioning what real is,

something everyone can pick and grasp,

smoky cloud and bitter wind to me.

I try and see some reasons,

stumbling in the finding

of plain ground, nothing else.

Perpetually uninvited yet constant host,

parasite,

addicted to everyone else’s company.

Asymptomatic to symptomatic,

mind the bickering beast,

same person, same bodysuit,

but I,

I’m locked inside with you,

yet watching you wreak your havoc,

vicious, bitter monologue ringing wall to wall,

grating and wailing and driving me broken

and twisted and pinned like your own art.


This is what I wanted to tell you,

eventually.

When I noticed a break in the internal racket,

a clear view from my cell into yours

I realised nobody wants to hear about this abuse,

not even you;

avoid, ignore, pretend it isn’t real so you can sleep

alone in your cell just one more night, again.


I just want people to better understand what this is like.

Why I simply can’t explain it.

Why I can’t tell you.

Why you will run.


Now here’s your cue.

Stand up and

Walk out on me.

Starry eyes

soft hands

red lips

daring smile

brushed cheeks


Cool silences

heated touches

under clothes,

sparks sizzle

mouthing lust

cradling hunger

******* seduction

pressing desire


Stolen glances

furtive nods

open legs

graceful back;


sprawled apart

lights off

always are,

fingers invade

hands clasp

playful bites

exercised tongues

mouths explored

rough caresses

skinned alive,

beneath you.


Devoured clean

each gasp

shuddering ecstasy

tastes tangy

mouth over

mine whole.


Rolled over

pinned down

held up

crawled over

arched high

we come

clean.


Long received

wishes unveiled

want realised

fancies overturned

lust cold

power charged

but

empty socket.


Leave me

opened up

spooned out

messy bruised

cut bare.

Hollowed out

carried away

with sneaking,

light feet.


Wondering lonely

your whereabouts;

touching who

under covers

right now.


Lost darling

snatched love

tapered heart

stranded crush;

sing alone

sad songs

without me.

Empty rain,

weak winds,

nothing everything;

you’re lost,

without me.