A twisty dead tree
Stares back at me
And ask me why

Just before its foliage fell
I lied and said ‘it’s fine’
Yet, I knew it had its time
And days went by
Green fades to grey
Grey fell to gravity;
The world ugliest feathers
Still I said ‘it’s fine’
With hope in my tone
As I saw a little green left

Bark now exposed,
Beautiful but bear,
I remember the times not long ago
Where I chained it with wire
Forced it to bend
And twist
And turn
And formed it into a beautiful thing
So little.
So careful.

Still now, as it wilts,
My hope doesn’t waver.
I flood it like an ocean
Give it soil it would savor
And sit back to watch
Will it grow back again?
Or will I never make amends?

I love a dead thing.
Long ago alive
And I tread it better now
After losing it to love

I love a dead thing.
Once so full of life
Gambled for desire
It’s life was on the wire
And it fell

I love a dead thing.
And seeing it’s turns reminds me of the time
And seeing it’s twists reminds me of him
And the pain he had brought
When he bought me this ***
And perfect little tree
So straight and too little

Look what it’s become

To me,
My words,
Are my thoughts.
Milk in a pan drifting,
Lazily in mexican waves,
On tiptoes with fingertips,
Stroking the three litre line.

to you
my words are
the time you blinked
and clots of milk swelled into pregnant pufferfishes
and a siren hissed incessant incantions you swore fate birthed to hex your mind
and a trident foamed at the mouth relishing the theft of nature's permission to shapeshift  into a lightening bolt and to zap your stove a blistering white in three times ten to the eight metres per second

We are told what a tiger is
From the moment we can listen:
Picture books, poetry, songs and stories,
A thousand ways to show this thing
That few of us will ever see.

We grow older, the stories darker:
The tigers will hunt us, beautiful, terrifying
If we dare to step outside borders
Set by those from a time where they were inevitable,
A promise, guaranteed, that someday they would come.

We dream of the day that they find us,
Make a meal of our fragile bodies,
Leave nothing but bones and torn-up cloth,
Vanish into the night to sleep us away.
We tell ourselves the only way to live,
Is to be meat in the stomach of a predator,
The way it is and always will be.

If we had not been told of tigers,
Would they be as real as now?
Or would they remain nothing
But an amber-striped thought
Stalking the edges of our cities in the dark?

Demonic you with mischief in your bones,
Sacred the pyres in which you were born,
Fire and brimstone
And chaos is your blood.

In Lilim you wrote
In a black book of ashes,
To torture the souls
As you destroy your own
Unraveling secrets and pain in the process,
Mitigating it lightly, then
Swimming with the dark.

Oh, Demon,
A promise I made you
A century ago.

Oh, Daughter of Lilith,
All the wars in your eyes
And battlefields in your blood
Made you into a demon
Much better and strong.

Oh, Child,
Your destiny is to serve Beelzebub,
The Prince of all Demons,
His kingdom, his laws,
And it's hard to survive with the Devil in tow,
But you, Little Hellion,
Will cut his wings off.

So go,
Give them hell, Kid,
'Cause there they belong.
Their sins feed the fires as flesh turn to smoke,
And screams turn to ashes
As you torture them all.

In the pyres of Hell,
Little Hellion,
Be strong.

when my guilt found the spare key
my condolences became roommates
who never pay their rent.

living with the ghost of shame
changes one's routine;
toothpaste
tastes like apologies-
and isolation
smells like your cologne.

ive become an innkeeper,
a host,
for the parts of others
they insist on banishing.

All aglow we were
from the smoldering
ember of love within.
Each felt the warmth
loving hearts exude
when we all were
in an extended embrace.
Then we heard love
singing to us sans words
"None of you would
feel complete
without the others
in this web of love
hereafter"