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 am waiting for you.
I have been since your last call;
the last words that left your lips,
the way they shaped each sound,
crisp with feeling;
the last hold I received,
warm hands withdrawn into the cold.

And now I’m busy playing your constant, forever
eternal mind games;
waiting for an end I know has to happen,
and waiting for you to make your moves and marks,
haunting mistakes or gracious choices,
whatever they happen to be in your mind.

And now I’m busy holding my heart in my hands,
watching all the people pass me waiting on the ***** street,
feeling awkward,
feeling stood up,
nursing it from the rain
and polluted breaths of people eyeing off my treasure,
smoke steaming from gaping mouths and sharp exhales,
like cascades of shining gems and mounds of
glorious entitlements, rolling down dreams
to those huddled beneath the city lights.

And now I’m busy deciding how long to keep
holding it.
Or to place it back inside it’s chest;
to thrum and pulse alone regardless, because I told it to.

And now I’m busy trying to adjust,
to leave this alone,
move my feet and leave my post,
waiting for you.
Keeping me and you alive is exhausting.
Draining nuture and tears, touches and examinations
to check that we are ok.
Are we ok?
I haven’t heard from you in weeks, but
you said you would be here.
To tell me your answer.
To make all this relentless pressure in my skull,
tension in my body
go away.
What happened to you not being the bad guy?
Like everyone who trailed crumbs of running-out love,
driving to me though the gas tank has finite space,
and held out commitment as they cowered behind it.

I haven’t heard from you.
And I desperately need to hear from you.
Should I stay, or should I go?
Are we meeting halfway, or are you expecting me to walk to you?
But I’m not.

I haven’t heard from you.
And I don’t know if I want to anymore.
Or whether I should just make this stop.
Whether I should stop denying it, and commence the
pain that stems with loneliness myself.
To be honest with myself that it is what I have to feel.
To escape from you.

And let myself
breathe and mouth the words
‘I miss you’
to the empty air.

I’m lying on my side, in bed,
thinking of you.
Spare a thought for me…
But I know you aren’t.

Beat the same tattoo on my skin,
with your invisible caresses, touches;
I’ll never know the patterns and marks are there,
until my fingers start tracing gouges and craters…
I’ll get to think of you every time I touch it,
only making it deeper when you don’t think back to me.
Don’t think about me.
Like I do for you.

I will have my one-sided love affair with your ghost.
Because you left it small and afraid,
in my care,
when you were with me.
As soon as your eyes began to know me.
As soon as your lips got their first prize of many.
It grew to such a true second you.

Because though I may still spare such
thousands of thoughts for you,
I know you removed yourself from thinking about me.
So how about I write this up, and
you can
think of me
now.

Cold hands warm heart they say.
Always clutching cold hands on warm nights;
being together yet feeling alone;
aroused, stimulated, distracted, absent-minded,
lost, perplexed,
all at the same time as focused,
like steel blades and the precision of knives.
You know what this is.
But you can’t ever outrun its fingers.
Can’t pull your throat out from under a choking hold.

Hiding is like allowing the wolf to catch your scent;
fighting is like battling a wave;
accepting is like russian roulette.
Are you daring enough to play?

‘Why are you crying over that?’
People said to me
in scolding tones and glacier eyes.

I can’t be this vulnerable; it’s spiky
and stinging and
rolling over hurdles backward.
Condense, squeeze it down so
you don’t have to swallow too hard.

Emotional vulnerability is feeling all those
spikes of emotions, all those acute,
mount everest’s climbed without warm clothes
allowing them to hit you full in the face,
being driven under the pull of a wave.

We feel these rides of our lives,
micro moments in days of episodes.
There is nothing like intimacy to completely throw you
off everything;
the superficial cover to fill out the empty spot.

We roll onwards in our spirals;
our cycles and roundabouts of fear and self-pity;
contempt follows us whilst
dusty, aged hope drives us.
I know my triggers.
I know the cycle I feed, I bleed into,
I run chased by myself,
branching into more cycles,
looping on each other in
disgusting order;
concentric whirls,
at alarming speed,
facing walled obstacles,
tackling nightmares hands bound up
waiting to see if someone can pull you up and out
or make you draw
the ugly patterns
of your own mind games
out in circles, broken lines
and scratches.

I was emotionally abandoned.
In a realm of angry, biting storms and
numbing head spins.
Knocked around by severe internal seasons,
wearing sweaters under hot sun,
or drowning in half-shirts under icy rain,
I can keep it away.
Don’t look.
Suppress.
Bite down on something hard
before you scream.

And then they burst in bright beautiful sparks;
feeling swept in delicious tastes,
explosive episodes,
rapturous warmth and synchronised heartbeats.
Painful glows and inspiring tornadoes;
destruction and recreation,
a chaotic peace and warm sweats,
stinging burns and hot tears
mixed with not-so-equal parts
of silken nights and glorious
wakeful dreaming.

'Of course you may hurt, of course you may cry.
Of course you can sing and laugh and ache, anything
you want to try.'

And this is why we feel.
Why we need to feel.
Why we love the slow smoulder of being caught up.
Caught up in emotions and their separate rides;
shifting speeds and tracks each new time
they crawl to our surface again.
Holding back is wasting precious passions;
it’s exhaustion you crave when everything else is
flat, blank, rigorous rigid routine and ripping open
empty boxes.

So you say I always have cold hands.
Cold hands warm heart they say.
This is the reason I love you.
This is the reason I wait for you,
to realise you love me too.
This is the reason I can only
hope
you make the right choice.
Not for me, for them, for anyone.
For you.
I don’t have a say anymore.
I never did.
I can’t speak, or help, or keep you warm anymore.
I can’t be your escapism.
I can’t be crack, dope, speed or any of your illicit nonsense.
I can’t be your forbidden fruit
in your late night feast;
creeping around, undercover lover,
giving you pleasure and happiness and smiles
locked under secrets and
silent words.
I’ll seethe and brood
underneath you, caged in the dark
shadow of your body
dreaming up it’s presence before I fall to sleep.

Cold hands warm heart they say.
Fuel my fire.
Keep my hands cold.

There are demons
on my boat.
Shhh
You’ll wake them and then I
won’t be able to look away from them.
It is an all too simple
contract; our deals
sealed in tears and thickened, old blood;
silences coating emotions,
covering sounds and words, and smiles and secret screams.
Shhh
You’ll wake them if you come near me.

There are demons
on my boat.
I steer my lonely ship onwards,
beneath the hesitant moon, and restless stars.
Bright, dark, bright, dark.
It’s still, a smooth mirror reflecting an endless sky;
I don’t disturb the empty ocean, unsettling in all its quiet rage.
Its hidden heart.
I am willed to follow my aimless line, as far as I can travel
on the
numbing breeze.

There are demons
on my boat.
I promised them I’d behave.
I am not allowed to wander, not allowed to explore without
a rambling mind;
I am not to follow the course of other ships I see,
or meet the deserted spits of land I’ve let float by,
or travel with company that stills me,
or make my own speed that goes against the tide.
They scrawled words along the wooden boards,
scored crude nail marks one evening while I slept,
hovered over and drooled on me with teeth I could feel
the ****** and beads of blood.
They scrawled words that told me they would leave me be,
if I left them be.

There are demons
on my boat.
And now I see a ship, with bright red sails,
drift to land not too far away;
a flaming banner across the surface of my shadowed sea.
I move my wheel, aimed at land-
assailed.
Onslaught of teeth and scales and spidery limbs,
pointed daggers and sabres of nail,
breathing hot spit and foul stench,
musty rot and all
rushed at me.
Blackened ooze of shapes and
distorted beasts;
I can’t take in any air that isn’t
toxic, ash making my eyes water.
Too gruesome to stare at them, intensely black,
yellow eyes and a multitude of ravenous, slick tongues.
I right the wheel,
and they creep back,
to rest in the shallows of my boat,
biting nails and shedding skin,
keeping guard on me.
Watching.
Restless flashes in the shadows hunted by the sun,
and drawn out under the moon.
Waiting.

There are demons
on my boat.
And it has been like this
for lengthy years.
Hopelessly blind and painfully aware,
at once,
of frozen breaths down my neck,
and bubbling fear inside,
of feelings.
Anything that leave me open to onslaught.
Anything that opens windows and lets their darkness
trail in,
tumble around and entangle innards,
I’m left speechless and sore inside,
nursing wounds I suppress.

There are demons
on my boat.
And the scary thing.
Is that I’ve made peace with them, and their scrutiny.
Yet I see birds above and blue trembles beneath me,
green jungles to the left and empty sands to the right.
And I refuse to hide and cower in peace.
Now.
I once again move my hands and face the
glimmer of land I see-
and they come rising from their graves of slumber.

There are demons
on my boat.
But they aren’t that terrifying under the sunlight.
They hurl abuse in my face,
spitting and writhing and screeching;
But their scales are actually just drifting smoke,
their nails just scraps of tattered fabric,
eyes just glinting stones and teeth just blunted stumps.
They scream and bleed before me,
because I’m focused on the distance behind them.
After hours, they retire,
like burnt out candles, the smoke dissipates.

There aren’t any demons
on my boat.

I was played,
played for a fool.

I wish I didn’t need to abide
by my own rules.
I wish I didn’t have to feel for you.

I wish I didn’t have to build a
shelter of broken sticks and dead leaves
while you fight your insecurities and
a heap of people I walked in on
around me
like I’m the no-man’s-land,
you trample to edge closer to nowhere.
I only want to leave your suitcase,
in the middle of the ***** street,
and not look at it,
as I walk away
and abandon it there.

Because I can’t take this
slow ****
anymore.