You are my pen
        I am your paper
Together...
        Let's write our
happily ever after

Sometimes you can erase your life
Easy as tearing up old pages from a diary.

At first it might resist, but it eventually tears
Suddenly you’re free.
Hidden from yourself, once again

Easy as that and thrown away
Discarded into the bin.

You didn’t want anyone to see it.
To see you.

And now they won’t.

Later, you may think about those pages
Scenes from your life now lost
Thrown into the ******* trash
Like they didn’t matter.

You wonder what was on them
Were they really that bad?
Did you need to throw yourself away?
But you’re gone now, only vaguely remembered years past.

Why did you do that?
Why were you so afraid,
Why did you hate you so much
Why were those thick bundles of desperately blacked-out words
So wrong and so easy to throw out?
Taken out on trash day
Never to be seen again.

Maybe it was easy to throw away
But never easy to remember
Or forget.

Maybe it was hard to rip up
To tear your memories from your head
Took all your strength, your force, your everything.
But was it?

Shouldn’t it be harder to throw yourself away?

You held the paper
between you lips
and inhaled

I've never
Been so jealous
Of a cigarette

You have a mother;
She doesn’t know
That I’ve given you a paper
That you have yet to throw.
In other words,
Your mom’s a ***.

I guess it is a relief to see you
Again, my old friend. Cloaked, your head of blue,
You wander among the graves like fireflies,
Absolute darkness, jittering night skies.  
It never seems to fail to startle my
Child-like sensation of life passing by.
Orderly rows, rigid cartridge paper,
Ink and tax reports, functions to cater.
Misanthropic, naïve, idealistic
Degenerative and narcissistic,
Paranoid, poisonous, parasitic
Fear giver. Fear receiver. Entropic
Skeleton, dancing in caustic acid,
Looking on. A quiet, forlorn Aphid.

delicate folds into endless
creases, the wrinkles
in mother's hands. asking for
more, taking
& creating new faces
when you think the last of you is gone.

& though the world may
    tuck away your
    flaws &
    pleat you into
    origami stars,
take to the earth,
uproot the trees.

stand tall as your last in-
carnation,
become the called bluff
& bloom in the space
between   sky
                   &
              ground.

                     before you hit the earth,
                     become the bird that you
                     are & perch on
                     opportunity.

I cup a paper likeness in my hand
A flower, you say, but it's dusted
In prussian blue that stings my eyes
The colour of the end of movies, twilight
Mirrored in the smoky Thames

How can it be a flower? It doesn't breathe
I call it an onion

It spreads its biting petals out in agreement
A reminder of what it is to cry
Halfway through a song even though
I've only just finished laughing
Alcohol will do that

You name it "flower"
After your mother's smile, perhaps,
Or the gentle drift of lightning
In a summer storm, but to me
It is only a vegetable, round, familiar,
Painful with nostalgia, not saccharine
With some aesthetic pinterest sentiment

I grab a stranger's cigarette ****
Litter the paper creation with ashes, watch
The silky tissue wither
Like blind marble turning grey with age

This is what I think of your flower

How can you be happy, hang it on your wall
It's so thin, so bitter and dead
Where is the romance? Confusion rises with the fire
How can you be happy when this is fake

The warmth ****** my fingertips
I stamp it out just in time on the street
Look, the paper
It's crumpled
This is what I think of your flower
This is what I think of your happiness.

will you do me a favor,
a crease and a fold.
turn me into roses and hearts
for the dear one you hold.
turn me into a thousand cranes
and your wishes are sold.
turn me into envelopes
for the letters in the drawer gone cold.
turn me sideways, over and upside down.
turn me into something i can never become.