Alone with my thoughts
Drive me insane
I can't stop wondering
The rules of your game
It's crazy to think
That I had a clue
How to win a game
I rarely lose
So tell me how you've won
With only pawns on your board
How have I fallen
For the one I'd ignored
A little move there
Short and unseen
The rules of your game
Aren't routine  
With only a rook I don't stand a chance
Against this cause of circumstance

It is said in time,
That beauty to the beholder is a sensation.
The most powerful statement of forgiveness to a human being is the ability to behold and practice creation.
Ice figurines can’t hold under heat,
Yet their demise creates life sustaining substances,
Like dangerous chemical concoctions,
Company never really felt completely perfect.
We kept masks on when we gathered,
It seemed like my friends could have always made it to Hollywood,
The way our lives were just mere performances.
Highlights of high times,
Quality, picture perfect film reels burned into cyberspace,
But the ladled space between our fingertips became foreign as the next new emotional overhaul was just fingertips away.
Obsessed over why perfection isn’t an issue yet imperfections are celebrated,
Yet not the ones you have.
What is desire if the object sought is someone else?
Elsewhere, the first half of the year is spent trying to remake the second half, pretty in pink,
Only when it didn’t rain.
So soulless, our bond became,
The hollowed Ravens became vultures,
Clearing the pathways to prepare for a feast,
Not caring whether death would actually take us,
But what would be broken would cause the death of our own ways,
Our own souls terrified,
Shocked to the security of a coffin.
Do we merely search for what is rightfully ours?
No,
For we are dream catchers,
Simply grasping for a reality that would be a shame to the creator,
Formed by the realtors,
Sell your self worth for a secular sense of selfishness,
Steal the dream,
And be complacent.
The worst part wasn’t when I lost you,
It was what became of my dreams when I lost myself too.
My first half is done.
I wish no longer to live the second half in misery through.

dusk settles over the hilltops
and you find me
back resting against a tree trunk
wondering
"whose spine is sturdier?"
raising a cancer stick to my lips,
refusing to inhale after ******* in the smoke,
and i think
"coward"
and i know that i will never
be rooted;
i will never
stay loyal to one patch of earth
unlike this oak that supports me

holding the smog
between my lips
is a little more dangerous
than Augustus' metaphor
but it's sure as hell
less dangerous
than letting it clog my lungs―unless
storing it for a moment before exhaling
is likely to give me mouth cancer
instead of lung cancer

well, i've never been one for commitment
i think i'd rather spit
and pretend
that the tumour
is being expelled
than know there's something
deep inside
that grows every time i so much as breathe

oh, love,
what an illness you are
both of you:
the feeling, and the holder of that pet-name
no chemotherapy
is going to save me,
not now

i think i'll hand myself over
to ignorance
and wait for the problem
to go away

my immune system has always been impressive

God help me, I've tried
to get you off my mind but it's
i m p o s s i b l e,
especially when the memory of you,
your body pressing me firmly
into the grass, uncaring of the lingering rain-damp dirt,
is still burned into my brain
every time you double text for my attention.

The graze of your tongue,
against my own,
a motion so languid, a feeling so warm,
a taste so sweet―

you're like molasses against my lips
sliding, impossible to ignore, down my throat
and dragging with you the words
I can't seem to spit out

and I'm grateful for the soothing relief,
the way your syrup coats where I'm raw:
a glaze that leaves sweetness in its wake
where usually there's bitterness,
both from the coffee that wars with an insomniac's exhaustion
and the way I feel about feelings.

And that's all well and good, for a while.
After all, who doesn't have a sweet tooth these days?
But once the molecules in my throat
have melted away, gone is the glaze that
sweetened the taste in my mouth, and the dark thoughts in my mind;

smothering the taste of coffee with syrup
doesn't remove the stains from your teeth,
and then the more you do it, you find yourself with cavities
and heart disease.

He says he's getting feelings,
and I'm oblivious to what he means
even as my skin prickles and itches,
like there are flies crawling over it
and leaving their grubby, microscopic footprints behind.

He gets nasty about it,
and then I get it. Funny, that:
I only ever understand things
once demonstrated with aggression,
violence.
Or maybe not so funny at all.

And it's funny, because I just
don't believe him, and yet I do
at the same time.
He's a player and a cheat, but
he has a heart as he tells his side of the stories,
and I kiss his frown away.

Funnier still: they all have words to say about
him―the player, the cheat, the *******, the guys that
leads their friends on-
they talk about him
as if he dangles bait from the end of a string
in front of starving mice
so he can snap them up in his jaws and
swallow them whole,
only to spit them out later,
mangled and broken.

Perhaps a little like him.

I think they forget he has feelings too.

Even funnier still that
I feel like I'll be the one that breaks his heart
because I'm all well and good for liking him,
but my heart belongs to another,
and my friends, they like me, think me better
than the way I advertise myself;

I know they're wrong, because I know myself.
Always without intention, though often
without remorse, too,
I break the people closest to me,
snap them like twigs,
chew them up like defenseless mice
between my gnashing teeth,
and spew them up later
with the bile-burn of self-loathing,
mangled and broken.

Perhaps a little like me.

I think I forget I have feelings too.

i am sick and tired of people
trying to get to know me,
trying to figure me out,
trying to show me i'm better than i believe,
that i'm nicer than i make out to be

i'm not

you can't romanticize me
into being some kind of anti-hero,
into being some kind of lost soul who
just needs saving
or a hug

no, no hugs
please no hugging
i'll break your arms
physical contact? i can only accept that from a
limited few, on rare occasions.
it sickens me.

some people are imperfect and flawed,
irrecoverable,
and they own it.

sometimes you just have to accept
that some people are pieces of ****
and they like it that way.

i like keeping you all at arm's length,
at the very least

who'd ever want to let down their defenses
in front of
strangers

with grenades disguised as encouraging words
and guns disguised as empathy,
or sympathy...

i won't let your petty, loving instincts penetrate my armour

*******

just let me be my own villain,
and you can learn to hate me

as much as i do and don't hate myself

You taste cold
Like chlorine in pool water
When I lick the tears away from my lips
And press the heels of my palms into my eyes
In that darkness i can see
The way your curls fall over your shoulders
I don't understand it at first
Tears are warm
Oh, but you are so cold
Cold like the first snow in winter
The type of cold you're drawn to
Until you're chilled to the bone
Day after freezing day
Clutching your coat tighter around you
You're cold like Christmas morning
All twinkly music and twinkling lights
While the families are snowed in, buried inside
It feels so warm until you look out the window and see white
You're cold like New Years Eve
Complete with the fireworks and the noise
That I was so afraid of as a child
So I guess I really need to learn to trust my instincts
Before I catch something that kills me

Beloved wanderer,
What are you running after?
your external commitment to reach crassness is taller than a benevolent Tikbalang
you are quicker than its long legs to lead a soul astray
But my beloved,
where is your soul?
your Passion is non-existent
like an ondine, all you seek is an immortal soul to waste
on your blinded fate
on the woes you continue to create
and your petty blown up mates
a thick, bold flesh they’ll never extricate
surrounding the empty stems from which they originate
My beloved,
your eyeballs were so viciously extracted and replaced
with poisonous bile
your hellhound eyes are so vile
if one stares at them twice
they’ll be seized, and they’ll be sacrificed
and their souls disintegrate
their roots begin to decay
they merge with your spirits
and they aimlessly gyrate
around in circles,
my beloved, you **** the souls
dumping their bodies in holes
indulgent in mutilating the skin around your heart
vandalising your worth and claiming it's art
but my beloved wanderer
where is your drive?
where is your start?

Lace up my throat
With lace and chains.

Bind my heart in place
With the finest cashmere yarn
And life-******* ivy.

Secure my feet
To the ground
with rusted nails
And silk thread.

But you cannot clip my wings,
For my feathers have grown to be
Made of carbon
That your dull steel sword
Cannot hinder nor damage.

My wings cannot be clipped
Any longer,
For your iron sword,
As sharp as your tongue,
Cannot and will not
Graze my feathers.

I was born to burn,
I have learned to rise.
To put it simply,
With a Bluebird I'll fly.

If I shoot you down,
Please, don't take it personally.
I am a walking trigger warning;

It doesn't take much to set me off.
I explode at the slightest provocation
And make sure the cause

Is stained as red as my vision.
Your shirt might never be clean again.
Neither will I.