Angels melt like candlewax upon their pedestals
And I stand here to find with you this heaven of mine has flown
Though some may find me ignorant of more than apparent facts
I still find myself in the man who carried out such acts

You helped me though you broke me and I must thank you for this
My body is somewhat stronger from the virus in your kiss
And these angels made of candlewax can be reformed with just a flame
Though, in sorrow, something was lost which will never make it the same

So who am I to get down on bended knees when tears come to my eye
Pray tell me soon if tears will help my journey to the sky
For though your intent may have been to break me, in survival lies my will
And I may not be flying soon, but I'm not standing still

There is something beautiful about two sad people who agree to hurt each other.
Something comforting.
It is a comfort only very damaged people understand- the tacit agreement to cause pain, and to receive it.
Pleasure is for people who have what they want.
But for those of us who are starving, ours is best peppered with suffering.
Being with someone who understands that carries its own worth-
I don't want you to make me feel good.
I couldn't stand it if you did.
I don't want you to touch me gently, or ask if I'm alright, or stop to look into my eyes.
I am starving, and so are you: I want your teeth.
I want you to make me hurt. And I want to hurt you.
I want you to hurt me because I'm not him, and I want to hurt you because you're not her.
We want to see each other suffer because we are starving and we need to feel that someone else is.
Don't hold back. I want you to lower me because I'm too good for her.
Don't love me, don't caress me. Dig your nails in. Drip candlewax on my stomach.
One step down from torture is all I can stand in the way of human connection, when it isn't her.
Punish me for looking at her like a baleful puppy tonight, even as you waited in my room with your soft skin and your sharp teeth.
There is nothing you can do that will be too violent, too brutal, too sadistic.
I don't want to be loved right now.
I am too raw.
I want to be touched. I want to be ruined. Leave marks. Smear lipstick.
Lower me because I am
Too
****
Good for her.
Let this heart know on no uncertain terms that its needs don't matter.
Help me **** it. Help me pin my demons to the bed and make them writhe, and I will do the same for you.
Let's exorcise our loves tonight and banish them to hell.
Let's tell our skin that it is irrelevant.
Let's say "*******" to the things that bind us. I will cut your heart out for him.
I will kiss your scars, not to heal them but to remind you that when you put them there you fought for something, something we both fight for now.
Hurt me. Fight her. Do it for her.
Do it for her because I'm not good enough to hurt.
Do it for her because I'm TOO good to hurt.
Crush me.
You could boil me alive and it wouldn't make up for her, so at least leave me bruised.  
I will give you what you need, and you will give me what I need: not love, but contact.
Please,
Let my heart know on no uncertain terms that its needs
Don't
Matter.

There is something beautiful about two sad people who agree to hurt each other.

he is pulling snails from my petticoat
making sure their antennae do not grow
and left feeling such as candlewax,

flesh walls seep from under their
pulsing bottoms, the apex of one head

and I am the girl it is given to, a gift
******* at my breast –

how uncomfortable to be the center of
such longing, being touched and
fingered with when something does
not belong into your body’s crevices

pressing, oh, like candlewax –
I know he removes them because he

loves, but I want them to stay
because they love me just as much,
dyed pink against my body, snail hugs.

Running down your face
Candlewax melted tears
You wipe them away
But they stick to your hand

Hurt is finding the truth in the blame
And
I am overflowing with acrid shame

Taking the trust that we had
And throwing it all away
I can see the opaque gauze fall
And your blue vision dims

Your smile unravels, love is packed
Away.
You are gone under a barrier of thickening wax

Sorry can’t hold the heat to burn it away
So, I will pull down the sun and swallow it whole
Take you in my arms, try to reignite the love heat
As I beg a thousand pardons for my infidelity

Let's see..
well,

..there's the writer who never gave a **** about anybody but himself

..and the writer who had a fetish for pouring melted candlewax onto her own toes, while being watched by her cat

..and the writer who owned a chimpanzee named Tom, one afternoon when the writer wasn't home, Tom frenzied around the house chasing down a moth, this caused obvious concern to the neighbors, who heard the commotion last for an hour or maybe more, ah well..

..and the writer who began experimenting with a dream machine, but stopped upon feeling his brain's physical presence within his own skull, weighty, and terrifyingly colorful!

..and the writer who did the same thing, except kept going and found herself bored with it after a while anyways

..and the writer who broke down out front of a Walgreens in reaction to a phone call detailing a nearby tragedy involving two cars + a logging truck (and a tad of ******* but shhhhh) grief was part of that performance, but also in knowing he may have been directly responsible for the crash (coke was given by him, to the driver)

..and the writer who experienced the best ****** of his life without even a single poke of physical contact to his ****!

..and the writer who became addicted to biting her knuckles, to the point she needed to see someone about it

..and the writer who filed for divorce after finding out that his lover had caught numerous ****** infections/diseases (and only having been told by their cousin, too! probably from two recent trips to South America unbeknownst to their partner)

..and the writer who had a hobby of taking photographs of lampshades of varying textures, ages, sizes, and which emitted sometimes very exotic colors from the bulb inside.

..and the writer who never left his city, due to a paralyzing fear of travel

..and the writer who fell in love with another writer who was in love with someone else (as is usually the case)

..and the writer who passed away yesterday
..and the writer who will pass away tomorrow

..and the writer who admired the work of Charles Bukowski and tried too hard to be like Charles Bukowski, at the peril of those around him

..and the writer who's family hasn't messaged her in a few months now, and continues to wonder why

..and the writer who's favorite song was "I'm So Happy (Tra La La)" by Lewis Lymon & The Teen Chords, though in reality she was never happy (let alone SO happy) and often played the song as a front to convince herself that everything would be just fine
"JUST AS HAPPY AS CAN BE"

..and the writer who never knew they were a writer and never wrote anything in their life but **** it if they did!

..and the writer who's favorite month was July, favorite day Saturday, and time of day at around 2pm

..and the writer who's last words were never written down or heard by anyone outside their secluded office to which he screamed "HELP!!!" and then died from heart attack

..and the writer who actually lived only three blocks away and was good friends with the guy, and found his door unlocked and the smell came first

..and the writer who found it funny to imagine getting involved in certain scenarios inappropriately contrasted with specific songs, settings, or themes. An example: funerals where everyone shows up in clown costumes, sunbathing in the Arctic, being invited to a nice dinner and the restaurant is playing loud shoegaze music, closely befriending the person you hate the most in the world just to see if you can, and bringing a large cage of parrots to see a movie with you

..and the writer who really DID some of those things mentioned above (I won't say which)

..and the writer who wrote about all these other writers (me)

..and the writer who may be reading about all these other writers (you)

Shadow's fingers
making the contours of your
face breathe fire

She cooked the final meals at the gaol,
Collected the hangman’s clothes,
For he inherited everything
Of the hanged man, heaven knows.
She gave the widows the twist of rope
That he’d used to hang their men,
It all came down to the widow Crope
And whether she liked you, then.

She’d interview the widow-to-be
With a questionnairre or two,
About her man, was he handy, and
What did he like to  do?
Then later, in the condemned man’s cell
She’d say that she’d cut him free,
‘You’ll never see your woman again,
So all you have left is me.’

Her husband had died on the gallows, so
She’d known of that final *****,
A widow Kerr had done it for her
Before she was widow Crope.
Then down beneath that terrible drop
She would wait for him to appear,
Hang on his feet, as well as not
While he kicked at the air in fear.

Then once that the corpse was pale and still
She’d take it down to the morgue,
Lay it out on a slab, and then
She’d borrow the gaoler’s sword.
And while they were pouring the candlewax
For a later hanging in chain,
She’d slice a couple of fingers off
For the rings that were hers to claim.

But then she might, in an act of spite
Cut off a dead man’s hand,
Dip it well in the candlewax
And walk it late through the land.
She’d light the end of the fingertips
And carry it like a torch,
Making her way where the widow lay
And spike it, out on her porch.

And wives would say as their husbands lay,
‘Don’t mess with the widow Crope,
If ever the hangman comes, that day
She may be your final hope.’
And those awaiting a capital case
Would sit with their husbands there,
And tell them that it would be okay
In that final act of despair.

She’d never worn anything else but black,
She called them her widows weeds,
But never, she said, felt safe from attack
For her husband’s evil deeds,
She finally married the hangman, Jed,
And handed the job to her,
An hour since she’d hung on his legs
And made her the widow Claire.

David Lewis Paget

Veasna Ta Kvak recording
playback
over Chinatown cafe again
while recounting recent events
to journal pages
muddled from frequent
exchanges bag to bag
(Been to Taipei airport, Bali, Vancouver, most
recently)
blind fate
blind fate
shower me with Indian daisies
and photographs of Railway
New Delhi!
Hanoi Old Quarter/
Vietnam monsoon/
evening on balcony/
Darjeeling water boiled
and filtered anti-malaria
golden drink for honeylungs and
spring-soul morningtide
under moonlight canopy
of Avalokiteśvara
the fruitful
Bodhisattva!
English lessons
and future
hourless
comely chimera
in sleep phenomenon
Benares phantasmagoria YELLOW
(near Mata Anandamai Ghat)
speaking to Aghori
prophecy
Kala Bhairava
FIERCE ILLUSORY APOCALYPSE FAMILIAR
WHERE IS YOUR NOOSE?
the Ganges is full of lice and flowers
candlewax melted into holy water
sickness
equal to
harmony & jubilant
eyeclose and mouthcurl.

The future mysteries in
Mexico City poorboy
$2 mystic orb jade green
reflective underneath
dirt now in North American
bottom white four floor house
basement suite coffee table.
Visions indivisible
from the Viridian roundly haze
but surefire in their accuracy
I'm absolute
and universally formed
for the next few cacophonous
decades!

I don't know
how painful
the candlewax feels
---or at least,
I can't remember
when my life started fading away
---or so I thought,
for I don't have a candle
to begin with.

i.
He told her
That mathematics was too
Sombre.
Too, too
Linear
To be poetic.

She said that
He had only seen himself
In a mirror,
A reversed hologram
Of his external self
Burned into his retinas with
His subconscious filling in the gaps.

But she had seen him
The rays reflected straight off him
Into her eyes;
Not some half-assed reflection
Off some silvered surface.

ii.
She said that
His jawline was
The ***** of a curve
Pencilled on a graph sheet.
His candlewax skin
A wavelength
Quantifiable on paper.
His spine
A number line with
Dashes, to show real numbers
The set of which was infinite.

She said that
A Fibonacci sketch was
A minimalist rose,
A post-modern bouquet.

And that
The reflected pale morning sun
In a half finished cup of camomile tea
Was a cardioid
With fixed coordinate values on the axes
And an algorithmic tangent.

And he
Was a negative infinity
A paradox not sorted under
Quine's classification system.

iii.
She had
Recorded his heartbeat and blood pressure;
Measured the distance between his lips with her own;
Tried so hard, so very, very hard
To put him down in a numerical form
And write him off as an equation.

But all she could say was
That he was more
Than the sum total of his meagre parts
And that she
Was his reciprocal value.

He lived in a tiny attic, set
Way up on the second floor,
I’d never have known he lived there, but
He left his shoes by the door,
A note tucked into the left shoe said
‘They’re yours if I don’t return!’
The right said, ‘Put on a dead man’s shoes,
And know that you’re going to burn!’

The boarding house was for down-and-outs
So you know where my life was at,
The final link in an endless chain
Since they threw me out of my flat,
I had no job, I had no friends
My family moved away,
They hadn’t left an address for me
So here’s where I had to stay.

I heard him shuffling past my door
With a walk like bone on bone,
His eyes were dim and his face was grim
And his skin as grey as stone,
I chanced to be in the hallway once
But he just stared straight ahead,
I said ‘Hello,’ but he rattled back,
‘I’ve just returned from the dead!’

He’d sit awhile on the balcony,
In the fading rays of the sun,
Trying to tan the greyness out
But the pallor was not undone,
I grabbed a chair and I sat by him
And he finally looked my way,
His eye delved into my very soul,
‘What did you want to say?’

‘You look like a man of secrets,’
Were the first words that I thought,
‘Maybe you have an insight into
Things that I might be taught?’
‘There’s nothing here in your life, it’s clear,
That would help,’ he gave a sigh,
‘I only know of the deathly fear
That is yours, when once you die.’

‘Nobody knows what happens then,’
I said, ‘for it’s understood,
Once you have left this mortal coil
You’re dead, and you’re dead for good!’
The old man shivered and shook his head
‘I’m the only one who knows,
For I die nightly in my bed
And return when the first **** crows!’

I didn’t believe him way back then,
I hardly believe him now,
But I crept into his midnight room
And I put my hand on his brow.
His flesh was icy cold to the touch,
He had no pulse or breath,
His eyes were pointed up in his head
And I knew he was caught in death.

But still he came on shuffling out
In the first grey light of dawn,
After the **** had crowed, he said,
When his body began to warm,
I asked him what he had seen out there
While caught in the clasp of death,
And he spoke of the chambers of despair
When he finally caught his breath.

‘The chambers are lit with a flickering light
From a million candle’s glow,
A million tubs of candlewax
That light up the rooms below,
And set in deep in the candlewax
Is the shape of a human form,
The head protruding just like a wick
Who wish they’d never been born.’

‘The flames are burning the tortured flesh
The heads are trying to scream,
I pass along them on right and left
As if it’s a nightmare dream,
But this is the fate of terrorists
And suicide bombers there,
Their one reward for the cause they fought
An eternity of despair.’

I turned away and I felt quite sick
At the things death held in store,
And all the other horrors he’d seen
When he’d nightly passed death’s door.
‘How long must you go on suffering this,’
I said, as I turned my head,
But the old man sat in his rocking chair
Quite still, and finally dead!

David Lewis Paget

I was travelling through the country
That was once East Turkestan,
Keeping my western mouth shut in
The province, Xinjiang,
I wasn’t going to linger there,
I had planned to head due east,
And follow the Western Wall to where
They spoke my Shanghainese.

They spoke a myriad dialects
All over Xinjiang,
There must have been forty languages,
And I didn’t know but one,
I had to get by with signing ‘til
I wandered in through the trees,
Into a tiny village where
A man spoke Shanghainese.

He stood in front of a tiny shop
That was selling drink and dates,
And something evil that looked like worms
All white, and served on a plate,
He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in
And I took what I could get,
Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,
I can taste the foul stuff yet.

But there in the back of the tiny shop
Were a host of curios,
Most of them antique statuettes
The sort that the tourists chose,
But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp
Covered in grease and dust,
I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘More than your soul, I trust!’

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,
But that was the Middle East!’
He shook his head and he said to me,
‘Aladdin was Chinese!
His palace used to be over there,’
And he pointed out to a mound,
A hill of rubble and pottery shards
That covered a hectare round.

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound
And found all sorts of things,
Cups and plates and statuettes
And even golden rings,
But the thing he found that intrigued him most
Was the finding of that lamp,
He’d dug it out of a cellar there
That was cold, and dark, and damp.

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll
With instructions in Chinese,
‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought
For the Djinn will not be pleased,
There are seven and seventy wishes here
Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,
But if you should wish the seventy-eighth
Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’
But the old man shook his head,
‘If I knew that, would I still be here,
I would rather this, than dead.’
He said that he’d been afraid to wish
For the lamp was ancient then,
Had passed through many since it was new,
Back in Aladdin’s den.

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,
But he shook his head, and sighed,
‘I’d rather keep it a curio,
It’s just a question of pride.’
I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan
And his face broke into a smile,
‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,
And she’s been gone for a while.’

I paid the money and took the lamp
Then wandered into the street,
Held my breath and I thought of death,
And then of my aching feet,
Shanghai was a couple of months away
If I walked as the rivers flowed,
So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,
Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

It only had taken a minute or so
To travel a thousand miles,
I put the lamp in my haversack
And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,
I had a meal, and rented a room
And fell in bliss on the bed,
What I could do with another wish
Was the thought that entered my head.

I’m writing this by the flickering light
Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,
All I can smell is candlewax
And the air in here is damp,
I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish
But smoke poured out of the spout,
The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,
There’s no way of getting out!

David Lewis Paget

Your eyes touch the back of my mouth. Make it so hard to swallow.
I never breathed so evenly, my stomach feels so hallow.
I'll bury my face in your neck. Allow me to sink my tongue, and
Drown my teeth into your arms. Your breath fills my lungs.

Everything is easy now, since we simply let it be.
This is anything but sarcastic, the way our colors bleed.
I love your golden irises, I love your sepia skin.
Wrap yourself around my bones and melt into my ribs.

I feel like our arms glide through each other,
Like dancing lovers, after years of familiarization
Predictability in every step, but for once
Comforting to know what's going to come next.

Your hands hieroglyph the language of my fingernails
Decoding a sensation that belongs to something bigger than us,
And finally understanding that it's okay to touch that.

Contentment for war. Trading pity for empathy.
Trading sympathy for care.
You were always in the confines of my aching head,
Your name is in all my search-bars.

If I had the right fingers, I would create you in marble
I would design a statue and have it be gilded
In your honor. And if there was a temple for us,
It would be in the shape of a man, aimed at the earth.
He would be bowing to a large evergreen tree.
And our initials would be carved on the side.

Let's finally spraypaint our faces in underpasses
Eyes like this deserve to be gazed into.
Eyes like yours.
Deep breathing, my face in your chest.

Breastbone meeting skull
Dripping my lips onto your skin
Like candlewax.
If you kiss me with finality,
"I promise, darling, I'll kiss you back."

to pluck out his eyes and
stain the earth with vitreous humor.

to separate the lonely wind from its
counterpart in my soul and its
thickness choking my lungs—

to escape the death grip of
the twisting jaws and
****** talons of the
sharks that rip us raw
hawks that
streak from the sky
harpies
harbingers of

to eat the flesh that
drips like candlewax from our
febrile skin

to hold morality in one hand and
maps in the other

to learn the general principles of cartography
one must commit genocide.

Abed, dark, and at night,
In some God-ungodly
hour of morning.
There am I underwater,
Drowning,
watching stars explode.

                        Everything is
falling away.
                        Everything is
crumbling away.

Before me, my own life;
Out snuffs the candle,
Wax on the floor.
Burnt or unburnt
Eternities
Which do you prefer?
                        And what a difference
would it make?
                        I am one empty candle
all the same.

Everything is falling away,
                        Everything is falling away,
Out snuffs the candle
                        by whom I could not say
This is my candle –
                        — Just an empty candle, all the same!
And oh what a difference it’d make!
I’ll be dragged to the nothing whence I came!
Everything will crumble away
And the void will have its way.

Garth lay still in the gilded cage
Unable to move a thing,
The bars were merely spiders’ webs
Of a faery’s magicking.
He’d wandered into the Faery Ring
Where he’d seen the mushrooms spread,
And now was caught in a faery spell
With the rest of the living dead.

With Tom, the Candlestick Maker’s son
And a barrel of candlewax,
He’d dawdled home from the marketplace
And lay in the beckoning grass.
He woke to find he was tightly bound
With a faery up on his chest,
She said, ‘Lock him in the cage as well,
Along with all of the rest.’

And Madge, the maid with a milking pail
Who was sent to milk the cow,
She’d wandered off on her way; she thought,
She needed to feed the sow.
She woke to mushrooms, ten feet tall
All towering over her head,
The stalks were bars, set under the stars
And her limbs, they felt like lead.

While Tim the Tinker was there as well
With his knives and sharpening tools,
His grindstone lay in a pile of hay
And the bonds on him were cruel.
The beggar lay in his filthy rags
While the rich man muttered, ‘Shame!’
He’d soiled his boots and his Regency suit,
Was bound with his watch and chain.

They lie not far from the caravans
Of a gypsy camping ground,
So Faeries say: ‘Let’s take them away
Before they’re seen and found!’
But dancing into the faery ring
Is the Gypsy, Mavourneen,
Who stumbles over the gilded cage
And steps on the Faery Queen.

The top flies off from the gilded cage,
The webs of the bars are torn,
And Garth crawls over the mushroom heads
To swear, ‘I feel reborn!’
The faeries weep as they carry their Queen
In death, to their Faery Dell,
There’s mushrooms still in that Faery Ring,
But now, Toadstools as well!

David Lewis Paget

Disappearing
step by step and one by one
soon
we'll all be gone.
The things that we once knew
are like the people few
and far between.
Everything you've ever seen is being vaporised
and rebuilt
in concrete,steel and lies
and there are spies
cameras watching every move you make
can't take a krap no more without some busy-body camera
poking through the toilet door.
What is the world that we once knew
coming too?

Well you
can stick your face where the sun aint never going to shine
we'll all be gone in three months
time.
Fine by me
I'll just put a match to the gas and blow myself one free pass
into the other place.

At number twenty one Leadbetter Street stood Pancho's cafe
where the local lads would meet
to talk and drink a cup of chai
watch the girls go by
but that's gone too.

Who could have guessed that all we've known would be blown away
by the city boys who earn more pay
the more that they destroy.
Oh boy
what a place.
The face of it has changed and I no longer recognise the roads
where under clear blue skies I grew.
Now I chew on candlewax and **** on fishbone stew
Not the world I knew
Oh no.

Time is all I've got
I find a little lonely spot on the dial of Grandfather's wind up clock
tucked under number five
and the big hand comes and wakes me every hour
just to check if I am still alive.

One day I'll wake and find that there is nothing left at all
everything will have disappeared
and I'll fall head first
into the void.
Should I be annoyed at what my fate is going to be?
Should I kick off big time and attack some nameless ministry?
or should I take the big six
lick my wounds
chuck out the sticks and stones and watch my bones disintegrate
or have I left it far too late?

Mister Lee who used to have a Chinese take away
saw it all
before it all was took away
I never listened to what he had to say
one more regret
but that will disappear too
they always do.

Mr's Singh who had the corner shop for as long as I recall
lives in a three bed semi now
somewhere in Southall.
She took the fall as did her shop
the mavericks that betrayed us never stop.
I feel like tooling up and taking on
but even thoughts of violence have been taken
they're all gone.
Disappearing one by one
and tomorrow should it ever come had better learn fast how to run
or they'll take that too.
This is not the world I knew
and every day is more oblique
I should seek some medical advice
which would be nice
but they took the doctors
disappeared them all away
and that was only yesterday
which is also gone.
I can't go on living in this bubble wrap
it's krap
I see that now it's just a case
of disappearing without a trace.
So long
I'm gone.
Feed the cat before you go.

it is dark inside the moon.
the moon tastes like candlewax
and cold sweat.
you cannot be beautiful on the moon -
the earth will not allow it.
that is why,
if i should ever slip into a spacesuit
and you should ever kiss my helmet goodbye,
i will not think of you.
i will think of the earth
and break out in a cold sweat.

Shards and candlewax,
ache in my belly,

I am
lost in the looks
of the
transient.

I am ready to leave,
this nest of
m&s duvet covers,
The smell of pasta,
Fresh linen,
Striped carpet,
Laughter,
And candlewax.
This nest has kept me in its
Clutches.
Safe, warm
Like coffee in cold hands,
Surrounded by the scent of home
For 18 years.

Finally this bird
has fully extended wings
and
will fly
Onwards.

high voiced Irishmen and spun sugar turned to
teenaged dreams and a teenaged circus

cold beaches in October like candlewax and promises
to call
bacon on the stove and cemetery gates and no one
to answer

if-this-was-the-cold-war to
this-is-the-*******-cold-war to
how'd-you-ever-get-so-blind

to the summer of warm warm warm and
the nights you'd have wanted at
sixteen and twenty
if you'd thought about it

and the big empty road in front of you that
under Orion's patent-leather belt looks so
not empty

how you're tall
and freewheeling

but not without

I sipped candle wax
and was told I was a genius
As it hardened in my throat
And every cut and bruise
Is honored as glory and strength
When it's just a sign of my pathetic mortality
And every step I take into the ocean
On cracked feet and hot skin
Burned because I demanded it to
And 60 days of minimal sleep
Is a sign of dedication
To my waking hours
Rather than successful neurofunction

And for all these reasons,
They tell me I'm smart because
Intelligence is measured in longetivity
In the face of persistent self destruction
Because the sick are those who've truly got it right.

Nietzsche spoke of an inversion of values
Where weakness becomes our pride
And strength is deemed repulsive.

You see, modesty's a virtue
That it's easier to promote
With candlewax
hardening in your
cold,
dead,
throat.

The poor children
That's what we were called
Surrounded by drunks and drug addicts
Single mothers and their hordes of children
The future cleaning ladies and harbour workers
We sometimes watched the orphans
Wondering what would become of them

In our own world
We were richest of them all
While the mothers worked
Through sweat, tears and stress
There was always someone
To show a little kindness
"Those kids can come with us, we're neighbours"
This meant pizza for dinner

The summers were for exploring
Golden fields hiding rabbits and phaesants
Truthfully covering a dump yard of course
Trees were naturally for climbing
Move through the forest without touching the ground
A tailbone got injured here and there
No time to see a doctor, it will heal on it's own!
Play hide and seek
Race each other on bikes
I always cheated
Where that stream really lead to, we never found out

But by that very stream we built
From planks and nails
Isolated with candlewax
A little cottage
Every day after school
No one knew where all the nails and candles had gone to
And how the community wood supply seemed to vanish
"Only the good planks" because we had standarts
Who would've noticed the little ones when the grass grew so high
It was our little secret

Naturally the road workers took it down
"Unsafe structure" someone said
A whole summer lay in ruins before us
The toolboxes were quietly returned to their rightful owners
Bored as we were, we gave it another shot
This time supported by a tree
We'd hoist ourselves up with a robe

That was taken down too
We felt sorry for the tree!
But winter's close
That meant snow castles
Never wondering what might happen
If the structure collapsed on us
The tunnels lead to nowhere and everywhere

The mothers were working
Who would stop us
But when our mum was home
All kids were invited for dinner
Us and 12 others
Future cleaning ladies and harbour workers
Blissfully unaware
What lengths the mothers went to, to feed us
I've never been poor in my life.

I am cold
And you're far away
My hands are covered in stars

I am crying
And you're probably asleep
My hands are covered in snow

I am candlewax
And you are matches
My hands are covered in sins

What would you do if your world were blue
You're down and out as the limousine passes you
What will you do when your dreams all fall through
And who will you blame for your sadness and your gloom?

I tell you, you can do anything you want at all!

And in the dark of the very next room
Asthmatic gunshots, those sirens in tune
Pull your self up by the bootstraps and all
They say you're going down, but the writings here on the walls

I tell you, you can do anything you want at all!

That pounding sound, at the door or my head?
Start dancing now or soon you'll be dead
Then you can rise, your eyes beaming instead
Candlewax tease as you're tied down in bed

I tell you, you can do anything you want at all!

You've got to write it
You've got to ride it
You've got a right
You've got the will

You've got to fight it
You've got to like it
You've got to try it
You must do well

Light pours in through vaulted beams,
golden sun streams on darkened oak,
whilst soles echo on the mosaic floor.

A chorus rises, and flies amongst the eaves
where starlings coo and spiders nest.

A stained-glass tear rolls down Mary's breast,
hot candlewax pools like the spent love of a *****.

Castrato lilts fill the heady air,
winter chill banished by glinting lamplight
that catches in the eyes of sinners,
a memory of some distant hymn once heard before.

For late night adventures in woods
and abandoned buildings.

For strangers that sneak glances at you
between bookshelves and street corners,
and always manage to disappear when you no longer need them.

For candlewax and the flame that flickers.
For the light of the moon on paths untamed.
And for the snowfall that covers my tracks.

There is so much beauty in the wonder that you bring.

I found a really disturbed
Individual she looks
Like me
She looks like me

I can see black candlewax
Running down your back

I cannot afford the tea in
The gated community
Snow-covered mountains and
Foo dogs
Orbs in clawed paws
Through my static lids
Shaking the snow off my sleeves
Wiping the windshield
Swerving through the street
In a stupor

The real world looked good
On me
Pristine and polished but
It felt like I was living
Someone else's dream
So
I've forgone the Kool-Aid