what's your drug of choice
hope
not the one that sits in a gilded cage a bird to watch.
no my drug of choice is wild hope
the one that raw bleeding and scarred
an alley cat missing an ear
a sewer rat ridden with fleas
that is hope
and to me it is a drug
the most addicting one of all

teeth bared in defiance / a match lit, a match dropped / hands clenched into fists / words tearing down walls / jaws turning from loose to tight/ a knowledge that there has to be more / cricked fingers hanging from holes in fences/ kicking up sand / a shirt that reveals a bony collarbone / a low-hanging light jacket / long shadows cast by a long flames / strained abstract chains bound to wrists / a scattering over the night sky falling to earth / boundaryless blue over faded white / paths run into the earth / a dented green dance / a hole torn into metal / twisted rusted wires / a sandy red yard / window bars casting shadows / a broken wooden crate / footprints pressed into cement/ shattered window/ a cloud of sand

The saddest word in the whole wide world is the word almost
He was almost in love
He was almost good enough for him
He almost stopped him
He almost waited
He almost lived
They almost made it

'You're a heap of flesh and guts and blood in a wax museum.
The only thing real. Sickeningly real.
Crimson and warm where the others are pale and cold. Revoltingly red, nauseatingly alive.
You're a child in a graveyard.

Icarus soared through the sky
Towards his god
Blinded by love
The sun rising painted them in blazing reds, oranges and pinks
He flew into apollos fiery embrace
I can make you immortal
Apollo whispered with sun-soaked lips
How ?
Trust me Apollo whispered
grazing his burning hands along the wings of wax
And Icarus fell, feathers alight in flames
wax tracing burning patterns of hell fire
along his arms and down his back
he plummeted into the seas embrace
the air from his lungs tearing out of is throat
Icarus sinks sight turning to blackness
Now immortalized in tragedy
Remembered forever for loving a god

Did you ever notice how in the Bible,
when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing,
he sent an angel?
Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like?
A whole existence spent praising your God,
but always with one wing dipped in blood.

- Would you ever really want to see an angel?

I'm sorry about the blood in your mouth
i wish it was mine

[people generally think blue eyes are pretty, but his were not.
they were not cornflower, sky, baby, indigo, azure. his were iceberg, squall, hypothermia, eventual death.]

I wanted to be born as a star
but someone had a different idea.

That's how I ended up as a street lamp. I die too soon and flicker too much. But yesterday I saw a moth trying to kiss me. It almost burned her.
I have heard stars do not get this luxury.

young, corrupted by tragedies of war and exile
alone in spite of himself
boy made of ash and a honey soaked dawn
rust on his hands, in his throat, in his lungs
bright-eyed, rough edges, scraped raw and twisted with time
where is his soft epilogue?

This is a story about two boys
The taller one has a gun tucked into his waistband
And thinks the bullets are meant for him
The older one has a record player in his head
He sings along to the same five songs
They know each other
Down to the color of blood
And the sound of bones breaking
But they are strangers
The one with the gun keeps forgetting the words
And the boy with the music Won't let him shoot

"you cried wolf,
so i came running.
QUESTION:
am i the wolf or the savior?
is my smile too sharp or just my teeth?
ANSWER:
come a little closer."

/ka / THär / sis/
noun
1. your head pounds. your heart pounds. your fists pound a bag of sand, over and over, again again again, and you hear bones crack that are not your own. the crimson blood on your knuckles is no less satisfying than if it were his.
2. the end of the year brings a summer bonfire with all your classmates. the faces blur together with one too many beers. you throw back your head and yell like a banshee, like a wild thing. I am free now, your scream says. your classmates howl with you and their earth-shattering chorus of no more goes on for miles.
3. poetry, photography, acrylic paint, short stories. you create everything you can to escape the destruction you left behind.

the hero who fought long enough to become the victim
the victim who was wronged long enough to become the monster

To be born
your body made a pact with death
And from that moment all it tries to do is cheat

the world should have protected you;
instead, you have been asked to protect it.
what an HONOR
what an INJUSTICE.

"What does the sentence "If you eat this fruit you will die" mean for Eve who is in a place where there is no death?"

They say all dreams come true but they forget that nightmares are dreams to

if there was no evil there would be no hero's

if there was no heroes evil would rule

there can be no light without dark

and no dark without light

/ dev/ i /steijn/
noun
1. shadows wreak havoc under an oil-black sky. what once was a gemstone of a city, shrouded in a film of dust & decay. i linger in the aftermath of a bomb-swollen storm. a thousand babies are buried beneath the ruins, wailing for mothers long gone.
2. war is a plague. i see more and more phantoms with eyes like the void, haunting the streets after twilight. an orchestra of bullets patter on my window, sliding down the glass like rain.
3. the emptiness of my home was a lot to bear. but when they set it ablaze, i salvaged my soul from the ashes.

i am
         craving something unholy
i said
unholy, not
blasphemous
                                          drink the blood
                                                       of a god
i always
get those two confused

I am the end of all things
i have seen the fall of Babylon
i have drunk the blood of kings
I am a GOD

He was bored so you created me.

It was painful for both of us,
When you clawed at his ribs
Searching.
Your fingernails tearing out the calcium in his bones.

And his bones became my muscles,
And the muscles became my skin,

And i was naked,
and he and you were pleased.

He and i were on ambivalent terms,
But we knew we were there because you
Wanted us to be.
And we knew that was why
The fruit and animals existed;
And these were good things, we
Enjoyed them.

Later I'd blame the snake.
He reeked of knowledge;
I was interested,
I didn't know they'd use my story as an excuse
To pound curiosity out of woman.

I ate the apple
Its juice dribbled down my chin,

I realised things.

He ate the apple too; you were angry at us.
And i committed the original sin.
I realised that even though you had made the world
And me as a plaything,

My body would be a vessel for a new species.
And they would take
This earth from you.

hero's aren't fearless
hero's are brave
bravery requires fear
fear is born of loving something
loving something so undoubtably
losing it would break you.

that how villain's are made
when a hero loses what they love
there minds break
they have nothing to live for
except revenge

i wish i wrote the way i thought.
obsessively,
uncontrollably,
with maddening hunger,
id write to the point of drowning
id write myself into mental breakdowns    
pages spiralling out like tentacles into the abyss
and id write about you
more then i should

Ik/sting(k)SH(a)n/
noun
1. ultraviolet silence. fracture patterns in the exposed knuckle bones. we pray with our knees in the dust but the gods do not answer us. the pines creak with the weight of ghosts.
2. it is a fire light dance. it is a marrow-born dance. close your tired eyes. let yourself be spun in winding circles. remember to breathe, remember to breathe.
3. no red feathers, all red ashes. listen to me, child, it always starts with you saying, I am doing something right.

He felt his brothers arms around him (a fight, was it, or a brotherly embrace? Either way, it suffocated).

you were destined for glory

the fame and privilage

i was destined for war

to be the gun with no name

-fates been playing the long game with us love

don't be what they made you
you fought to hard
to ******* hard

/'god / es/
noun
1. you know what it is to be holy. deep veins filled with ichor ache for wounds the earth feels, lightning storms and hurricane pain walking hand in hand across a ground you helped design. the thousand voices that scream your name in both battle chant and song. their lives are not a game but you play anyway.
2. you are sharp edged steel. a lone fragment of a shattered mirror, the broken bone reflection of a cruel smile. all that you are is ripped edges and cracked glass but your heart still throbs with lioness blood.
3. ichor drips from your fingertips, gold glistens on your lips. you took to power like Icarus took to the sky and you know your fall will be just as sweet.


ache
/a k/
noun
1. heavy wind, cold rain, & yes the stars, & yes these hands of mine. a dream in my chest is melting. my dream sheds its muddy, thunder-stained skin & asks for a heart of peony fields this time.
2. & the nights get heavy like they always do. i am older which means when i think of forests i get stuck not on the robin eggs but on the fox teeth. in my head I am hunting for myself, but I come up empty again. the night grows so wide it could be a cavern & i am somewhere underneath it, inside it, lost. but travellers always leave lanterns behind & as i feel for the candle there arrives a memory of bronze-coloured light.
3. so i dream, i dream, i keep dreaming. one word in my mouth crystallizes like sugar: hope.

why should god care
about the blood you have spilled
they bleed golden ichor
us ... us...
ours is rusting, slow rotting iron

veins to young drowning in amber liquid
stashed in duffle bags to pour down throats
bibles pages rolled to form cigarettes
clutched between burnt fingers
throats exposed as smoke pushes of mouths
with scarlet smiles made of red teeth and ****** lips
god gave up on us years ago  
bones bent under a chapel ceiling
ghosts spread inky fingers inside my chest and strum my ribs
nights and days lost in a blacked out haze
god asked to much of them

Your lips are bruised
from the apple you bit into,
and my heart is empty
from leaving the garden.
But your sin is mine too.

It was written in the stars.
Who can explain this dream
that fades soon after waking?
Truth becomes tainted in time.
so let's live in loveful doubt.

Did you know I thought
of eating the apple first,
just to spare you from wrath?
I knew and did nothing,
so let me carry your guilt.

As Icarus fell, he laughed. Because for the first time in awhile he felt something.
He felt the wax burning his skin.
The wind rushing around him.
And the sea acting as cement.
For it was Apollo the sun
the Anemoi who controlled the winds,
and Poseidon who witnessed his last moments.
But it was Thanatos and Hades who took
him to his new home. Where he could live a new life in the underworld.
And thats what they don't tell you in school.

/gref/
noun
1. the pain says, i have come for you, and you say, you are too blinding, I don't want to look.

2. your chest is a wall of fire. the pain says, I own buckets, and I own torches. you pick torches.

3. your soul is a wall of thorns. the pain says, what can I do for you? you say, nothing. this is dream from which I know I will wake.

4. your heart is a wall of storm clouds. the pain says, I will lend you my shoulders and my hands. you say, I don't have strength in me to touch anyone yet.

5. life shivers, melts, moves on. the pain says, I have come for you, and you look upon it and say, yes, I’ve kept you waiting too long.

I could not find ballads or books
that spoke of the feeling of losing a friend
its not like a tsunami
that crashes into you all at once  
No
its slow like cancer
the kind that doesn't appear for months, years
it’s a stab of pain here and a headache there but manageable
then suddenly it strikes and sinks its teeth deep into you
coils like a snake wrapping around your heart
inside your ribcage
poison seeping into your veins
turning blood to fire
and all you can do is wait.

i. I wasn't always a house on fire, but I've always been full of light.

ii. Constellations get named after either heroes or griefs. Wild heroes. Wild griefs. The outpour of emotions within me is ancient, bronze-tipped, earth-changing.

iii. Someday I will return to the salt and the sea. Someday to the sun.

The sun is still rising.
It goes up,
even as he goes down.
its not ******* fair
she waits for it to explode.
she waits for it to go out, to burn up to collapse in on itself ,
dying as he does.
but it just rises

Isn't it funny.
I enjoy my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love.
Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands.
Love uses you, changes its mind, and leaves you hurt.
But hatred, now, that's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield.
It's hard, or soft, however you need it.
Love humiliates you, but Hatred, Hatred cradles you.

i wont glorify or romanticize heartbreak
for me it was a kind of death
and i was forced to keep on living

i. there is old blood crusting under your nails like rusting metal and you don't know if it is yours or someone else's but he looks at you like you are something holy and you forget about the sins crawling in your bones.

ii. he finds you in an overflowing bathtub - head between your knees, nails carving ****** moons into your skin; later you tell him yes, sometimes shower water against porcelain sounds like gunshots raining on your skin.

iii. your name is a whispered prayer that spills from his mouth and he repeats it over and over like a mantra; he breathes words you recognise from a dream and they condense in the frosty air between his lips and yours.

iv. he tells you that your bruises look like galaxies and holds you like the world has cheated him of you for far too long. tonight, you run out of names before he runs out of kisses.

v. hazy-gold sunlight sieves through the moth-eaten curtains and frames his face and you can't stop holding his cheeks in your palms because he is here, he is here, he is here, and you've long grown tired of wondering why he hasn't left yet.

but
i
can't
breath
without
you
there

if you want to learn
what someone fears losing,
watch what they photograph.
- that explains why he never took pictures of me

she has little innocent demons inside her eyes
they recklessly play with matches.
setting nerves alight
chocking her brain in billow smoke
and yet I’ve never seen sparks so pretty.

the saddest thing about this story
he never had a .....
happy begging
happy middle
or happy end

history remembers victory
but the victory forget the lost

Hope is not a delicate bird.
It doesn’t have colourful feathers or comes.
When you need it most
Hope is a starving rat
An ugly thing
With broken glass claws and yellow pointed teeth
That carries diseases like rebellion, revolution and change
Were ever its tail flicks they drop
It snorts pesticides like coke
It survives in our world
Able to find a way to live were nothing else can.

Fire turning anything and everything in its path to ash that is how some say the world will end, others believe it will end in an exquisitely haunting ice age but they are wrong it didn’t end in the world being engulfed by blazing flames and choked by thick billowing smoke clouds, it didn’t end in a ice age that slowly froze the very sea and turned everything to eery sculptures of ice . It ended with the raw devastated scream of grief so heart wrenching that the stars fell one by one into the icy darkness of space. The sky bled; darkness rose where the stars once were erasing lights across the once glowing planet and then the change. Instead of griefs broken voice there is silence. Silence that swallows the world whole, that screams but no sound follows,

A dog that weeps after it kills
is no better than a dog that doesn't

my guilt will not purify me