i once loved, and it's a shame to
agree to: better have loved and lost,
than to have not loved at all.
and as i browse the pages of
a saturday newspaper article
i like to think about virology applied
to mental illness...
and how they: life is ****
   story could really be a viral infection...
i don't know, it's not exactly
h.i.v.,
                oh i can contain my own
*******, i'm writing it on the flag
of colour white,
next time you get a brain haemorrhage
and then get diagnoses as schizophrenic:
i'll take you the crucifix on golgotha:
and imbed your head into
the cross... silent anger, contained:
and all the more concern for inhibited
humour... because as Borat said: jak sie mash:
i like. so please, don't tell me
you weren't gagging for the new golgotha...
because i wasn't...
         and i know, most of the time i have
my mouth attached to a head of a struś
gagging himself in a pit of sand...
yes an ostrich, the grand inspiration for
francis bacon attempts to redefine geometry...
oh coming out of communism and into
capitalism, for a kid?, can be a rough ride...
you don't know what ideology to appease
and what ideology to dictate...
         but i'm wondering whether or not
mental illness can have the potency to
        become virus-like...
     and drain,
and i mean: drain the soul out of you...
or whether man as mammal ever did exist...
or whether this new fashion of
feline existentialism can ever take off,
narratives about spending time with your
bonsai tiger... you'd really think japan was
a bit freakish... but it just has a large
ageing population and no one thinks
that euthanasia is a standard of humanism,
unlike ******* ***** into a face of
a woman... because right there, no
one died... if had any of those anemic
tadpoles actually lived...
    which brings this about to concern me:
so... we live for nine months, in, let's
basically say: in an environment without
oxygen, you got gills stashed in there
with that umbilical chord...
how can it ever be a miracle of birth...
that's what a god might say...
a human would look at it and say:
huh? you joking? i'm part of this horror?
     but not until you have a brain
haemorrhage and get diagnosed as schizoid
and then you think: so what was the point
of forgiving your enemies come into this?
      i can't believe it has become so, so personal,
to actually have this nagging, decapitated
doll-head on your shoulder telling you to:
repeat! repeat!
       i could literally be writing this in
Auschwitz and be like: Neddy needs a jumper
and a diaper... cos like that really needs
you to fathom the logic of assembling an
Ikea chair...
                          i mean, talking in the west
is a bit like farting into a hippotamous' nostril
for a ******* jackuzi effect...
  jack! i said ***! what's with this jacuzzi?
English, mein gott... confusion everywhere
you pigeon **** onto a top-hat.
by the way: everyone becomes
dyslexic on the word hippopotamus -
there's a reason why hippos exist...
        you want acronyms, you get shortening...
and yes, since english society has abolished
asylums, the society has become a breeding
ground for asylum instigators,
rich russians, bewildered chienese...
it's en masse, one, massive, cesspit...
   i mean the part where you don't get the brown
steamturd floating about like some
  celebrity you'd love to slap with much
more than mere paparazzi epilepsy...
because violence matters, esp into language games...
i was just asking, because there i was,
working on a roof on some construction site,
and she calls me up and says that
she hears voices...
          that's what i mean certain mental
delinquents and their choice of Samaritan...
  what does a roofer know about "voices"
if it doesn't equate to a bad conscience?
    that's why i'm wondering whether certain mental
illnesses have a virus-like profanity attached to them...
oh yes yes, the unison: bob marley: we're one
type of ******* to boot, like i'm supposed to get
a hardy and a 'ard on about it...
               ******* spoof of a light-bulb moment: PING!
and there... ain't that just dazzling?
phantasmagorical blurp at the feet of
Eros at Piccadilly Circus... my ego is a canon
that just simply shoots out viagras! and questions.
and yes... that's what we call being part
of the clown...
    and if there's a lord of flies...
what's the guy mentioned by beelzebub drunk
doing about the mosquitos?
           ah... boundless at the crucix, once more!
i'm just wondering where
does mental illness become solipsism,
  and when in fact it becomes a sort of virology...
   i can romanticise mental illness as a type
of solipsism, that it has a cage, that it can be contained...
but when mental illness goes outside of the novel,
strolls outside its cage and becomes
something akin to kissing a *****,
     i want to know.... because i swear i have been
affected by someone's mental illness being
hidden in the shadow of taboo...
   look... i'm ******* exfoliating with vocab!
        how can you become normal after someone
exposes you the symptom of "voices"...
that's demeaning given the past history of
having relationships with angels and demons,
that's like a neuter noun.... voices brings up
more concern for a pronoun-****-up than
a clear, noun association... angels, sure,
i could start looking more closely at pigeons...
demons, doubly sure, i could start
chasing bats...
              but i need to know whether mental
illness is worthy of taboo, i.e. it's worth
the category of being physical, in that it can be
contagious... whether it can act like a virus....
whether it can become an epidemic...
    and to be honest, i think it can,
but that seems pointless, since western society
has exchanged asylums for taboo...
                  look at me now,
a once budding roofer, reduced to writing poetry,
i might as well be an ******...
            safe-guarding king Solomon's harem...
oh sure, eunuchs were able to **** his *** slaves...
they were slaves themselves,
what they weren't allowed is to usurp
    the ******* crown of the king passing his
d.n.a., mind the frivolity, never the seriousness
of geneticist, yawning when their genesis was to come...
    i'd love to see hans andersen on the trail of
dolly... the sheep... and dolly really does become
a trinity of animal prior to human in the out-reaches...
what with laika (man's best friend)
and later fiztgerald... oh wait (man's worst enemy,
the money) Baker....
   thanks to de Sade and baron Sacher-Masoch
we could truly begin the orthodox occult of science...
   how the two patron "saints"
interpolate... it really is a dualism worthy of
dangling a crucifix... shame the first monkey in
space wasn't called Brian...
    i don't know, then, perhaps, the Caesars at
the coliseum wouldn't boast so much about
   the: lacking the ambidable thumb
(yes!) googlewhack no. 4 / 5 -
mandible thumb you idiot! d'uh...
but still, a googlewhack at the end of it...
type in: lacking the ambidable thumb
and, yes = 1 result in the google algorithm...
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Have-Thumb-Deformity/728760,
i call this the alternative version of, or rather,
the digital version of fishing...
     a tail like a thumb, the grip baron...
   but my peacocking the tongue shouldn't
be deemed as: straitjacket panic button prone...
  why would it?
****! he used the colour azure in his blue period,
that picasso did! chain him! gag him!
stash him in a kitchen stove!
i mean the inspection of genuine viriology
dynamic concerning mental illness,
the anti-thesis of solipsism, as the proper counter...
or should i say: membrane / barrier?
    can mental illness make ranks, i.e. spread?
like a virus can?
            well, if you take to explaining a zeitgeist...
ideology akin to communism and ****** can
become virus-akin... so i guess... yes...
it had to become a self-serving question easily
answered... mental illness can be very much
akin to a common cold... it's not really a case of taboo
being the lock-and-key to contain it...
nor the asylum... i suppose the best prescription
is the idea of solipsism...
              but isn't this grand,
i'm actually lethargic, coinciding with
    a tax on robots... and the French slashing
their 35 hour working weeks to 32 hours...
    and the Finns paying their unemployed
    (2K, placebo dosage for the actual
   237,000 unemployed) - a random €560 a month...
such are the times...
           it really has become a sort of
year 0 orientation lesson... because it's just
gagging for a guillotine to snap it awake,
so a decapitated head of Charles I at Whitehall might
say it's final farewell...
              and is mental illness capable of
being akin to a viral infection...
     it probably can... you probe the waters in an
environment of poets... they're good enough
to succumb to a white rabbit experiment...
              question is: do you apply the rule
of solipsism or an actual asylum? in a post-asylum
society, i don't think there's an option
whether solipsism should, or shouldn't be used
to counter the more serious form of the flu...
   but, as ever, it comes down to the age-old
cartesian model of dualism... or as any siamese twin
might attest: i'm not that further away from
my sister as you might think...
  the dualism that served so well for so many years
to appear "peaceful" became a real dichotomy...
  the ergo suddenly failed... when people realised
that the fact "i think" didn't necessarily
precipiate into "i am"... given what the media is
interested in, and how many people become missing
and all that... the numbers were too much
for player uno to simply give up the canvas
of newspapers and t.v. to some poor schmuck
trying to impregnate his canvas on which he worked
his paint-brush (power) and paint (wealth) onto...
   the cartesian ergo simply failed...
    oh sure, the other two facts worked... but they
didn't necessarily congregate universally
in the crux of ergo,
        i was told it would be a monsoon of thought
established on earth... instead i got a light-shower
   and the Gobi desert.
in the same way the subconscious exists
as a fake of the trinity...
           to me it has no need for a chisel...
as a realm... treat the conscious as a realm
akin to Hades, and it becomes wholly
de-personalised... there's not individual in it
that might require it... it's a covert mechanism
of subterfuge... but if we're talking
making rabbit heads with our hands
   in the shadow form... we're talking
nothing but puppeteering...
   or like saying, let's create an evolved
version of the definite (the) and the indefinite (a)
article...
                      well... there must be
a direct and an indirect article...
                well there is...
con                                 and sub-con,
       un-con is an indiscriminate article...
meaning: what are the evolutionary gains
of dreaming, given the cinema?

I have a tendency to romanticise,
A habit of hoping.
Jumping to conclusions in my mind,
Maybe it's a way of coping.

It's caused a few issues,
Assumptions tend to do so.
But my mind won't give up that easily,
It sure doesn’t like hearing, 'no.'

So I may as well embrace it,
After all, what's so bad about hope?
Maybe that’s what we all need,
Maybe that’s a good way to cope.

Ana

Forgive me if my pain has touched you in ways my hands never have
You’ve got wounds I should have kissed gently and fire beneath your skin

Instead I bought you flowers you’re allergic to and wrote poems about your tears

Some days I tend to over-romanticise your bleeding lips that you never stop biting
Other days I can’t stand the way your lips curve when you laugh and the freckles on your hands

I’m a mess but believe me when I say my hands are clean
I’m just trying to love you
Even if it’s the wrong way

A spiral
A staircase
A long fall

How ever you decend it's always down,
Never do we see the light before we go,
It's forever darkness,
Never do we know what waits for us,
We think we know,
We hope we know,
Never do we get a chance to change our minds,
It's there it's easy once you've made the distance to get there.

What ever we do we decend,
I won't romanticise it it's not a decision we should make yet we do,
I won't tell you to stop because that will push you even harder than before because hell what do I know.

But I will say is this:

My mind is my prison
My body the vehicle I use
My soul the fuel
The decent my escape

Every morning it is there
Every night it welcomes me like a lover
Every time I close my eyes it becons to me
Every time I get up it threatens to pull me down

Yet I stand strong
Resting on the edge
Like running a knife across my throat hard enough to bite but not bleed
A damgours game to feel alive
To feel at all

A decent into darkness
A game we play alone

An Open Letter To The New Boyfriend....

A few things you should know before dating me.
1. The first time I realised I was infinite,
I was staring down the mouth
of an alcohol bottle,
my head swimming, laughter bubbling
from my lips,
it was also the first time I realised
I am guilty of living for fleeting moments.
Something inside me is screaming
that we are a fleeting moment.
2. My life is a whirlwind of
passing daydreams, photographs,
ex boyfriends, and re-used poetry lines,
that's something you're gonna have to get used to
because sometimes, I just don't know
when to shut up
and it'll annoy the crap out of you.
3. I'll tell you about things
you don't want to hear about,
ties between my exes and my illnesses
and everything in between
and it'll depress the crap out of you.
4. Trust that I'll love you
more than my own self destruction,
which, let me tell you,
never ******* stops,
trust that I'll love you more
than the razors across my skin
spilling out my regrets
and the nights I spend heaving
over toilet bowls
the burn of whiskey down my throat
that numbs my thoughts,
trust that I'll love you
more than I hate myself,
trust that I'll love you more than I romanticise
my own death.
5. My memory is crap.
Please don't get angry
when I don't remember your favourite pasttimes
or the songs we dance to
when the dates you take me on fade
into the back of my brain,
peeling off the walls of my brain
like paper
and falling to the floor of my mind
memories that you'll never forget,
I like long walks on the beach,
romantic candlelit dinners,
dancing under the stars....
Now, wait for me to break down into tears
because "Dancing Under The Stars" was the name
of a song the man I **** near sent to jail
wrote for me.
6. I live in metaphors.
My realities consist of my own broken promises
and I pen my feelings in suicide notes
but I still insist that happiness
is just a trip to the stars away
I insist on inhaling the stardust
and exhaling the twilight
and tranquility
of my peers,
I still see their faces etched
into the corners of my night skies...
When I said I lived in metaphors,
I wasn't kidding.
3. I'll tell you about things
you don't want to hear about
and the idea of that terrifies me so much
that I hide away in my room
because if I don't say anything,
I can't say the wrong thing.
7. I bet you expected this poem to be happy,
or funny.
8. This poem is not happy, or funny,
this poem is my truth
and my truth is that I don't know how to live
without some semblance of destruction
inside of me
and it's ruined every relationship I've ever had.
8. This poem is not happy or funny,
this poem is me,
and while I am not happy or funny...
I do find happiness and laughter
in those fleeting moments.
Fleeting to me, of course,
because I never ******* remember them.
9. I never remember anything
10. but I'll always remember how I feel about you.
Even if we don't work out,
because I first met you 3 and a half years ago
we stopped talking for two and a half of those years
and I didn't even recognise you when I saw you
but as soon as I heard your name
I broke down in tears
because you were somebody that I never truly forgot.
10. I'll always remember you.
0. I remember everybody
and that's something I'll never shut up about
10. I'll always remember you
and the way you make me smile
and the way you make all of the things I've talked about
fade into the background.

You think I romanticise suicide?
That I can find glory in death?

You're wrong.

I don't hope for romance, there is no romance in laying six feet deep.

Being defeated by your own mind holds no glory, there is no pride in suicide.

You say...
Get over it.
You can fight this.
It's only in your mind.

And you're right.

It's only im my mind so stop telling me how I feel.

So shut up.

I know it's weak.
Selfish... but it is my choice.
I know you think it's a choice to be happy.
If it was did you really think I would choose this?

sadness
pain
depression

Suicide

Trying to write a goodbye.
Wondering about the music for my funeral.

Suicide

I'm always scared but fighting.
I am weak but never giving up.
Never giving in.

I don't think this is fun.
This is suicide your talking about.
No romance.

Empty of joy and glory.
Suicide.
A way out.

I beg you,
Do not make this out to be a love note;
Do not romanticise my words
     until a list of all that is wrong with you
          becomes a letter in a bottle, washed up on an island’s shore.
Do not teach the child I will never have
     that the locked wooden box of dated but unsent letters hidden beneath her bed
          will one day become a novel.
They are all addressed to you--
   just as every thought I think echoes with your name
              every song is about you
              every tear burns my skin with the acidity of your touch
         the smoke from
              every cigarette tastes of you.
It is you.
It is you
             who is the black mist enveloping my lungs from the inside out,
It is you
             swirling in my hollow veins
                as they wrap themselves like chains
                   around my organs, screaming for night,
and you capture my beating heart.


And it is you
     who tells us to teach our children
                         to make sure to say their pleases and their thank-yous,
And we taught them not to talk to strangers,
  but we never taught them to say
                                                      ‘no’. --
Now I don’t speak to the kids hanging out on the corner
And I don’t speak to the man when he pulls up his van,
And now I don’t speak
                                  when I'm lying in bed
you never taught me to say no
I don’t speak when your hand runs down my body
          like I am something you own
          like my bones are the ivory keys of a grand piano
               and you must hit every note on your glissando
descending
   to
hell.



I don’t speak as you wrap yourself around me
metal chains on a summer’s day
I close my eyes
            and listen to my organs screaming for night
                   like a child who just wants her bedtime story,
                                                          ­   her mummy to come home,
                   like a child who is not afraid
                               of monsters in her head,
                          or of monsters under the bed,
                          or of you,
Lying
     beside her.


And we scream for night
   And we close our eyes
      And we float up into a moonless sky.
The definition of a black hole is
               ‘a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can
                escape’.
If it is the matter that creates the pull that traps the matter,
   then you are not so much in me
         and I am not so much in you
               as we are trapped inside each other.
The world made up of people and
      people made up of world,
                                          like Romeo and Juliet,
      we do not exist without the other,
                                          you and I.


For the words
           immorality and immortality
                                            may be frighteningly similar, but there is a difference between
                 apathy and anaesthesia;
I do not close my eyes to shut you out,
           I close my eyes because it is only darkness that can make the space between my bedroom walls appear infinite;
           It is only music that lets me hear your screams as you suffocate mine;
                  only smoke that lets me taste your toxicity as my ashes spread like a virus through your veins.


I want to die.
And I'm taking you down with me,
   So don’t you dare tell me to teach the child I will never have
      that her scars seek attention,
         or that she needs them as proof of what you have done to her mind;
   Don’t you dare teach us that the rope from which we hang is a diamond necklace;
          that corpses are more beautiful when drained of blood,
             that we are more beautiful when broken.


Dear world,
   I beg you,
Do not make this out to be a love note;
Do not romanticise my words
     until a list of all that is wrong with you
          becomes a letter in a bottle, washed up on an island’s shore.
Do not teach me that my suicide note is poetry
     when our existence is intertwined
          and my death is yours,
          and you are too cowardly to do it for the both of us,
  but, darling,
                    so am I.
So please,
   I beg you,
You can make this out to be a love note,
                                             a letter in a bottle,
   just close your eyes;
      float up into a moonless sky;
         dissolve into infinity.
                                            Die with me--.
                                                           ­                                                       *j.s.

There was death and gore,

During the second world war.

Many people died in extreme violence,

Killed before they could call out to loved ones.

Young men were trained to ****,

Often against their morals and will.

So when I see your 1940s weekend -

Your 'war was fun and cosy' pretence,

Your clichéd polyester and fibre glass mockery,

Aiming to re-enact a mostly imagined happy-go-lucky camaraderie -

Forgive me for not joining in,

As I happen to feel it a cardinal sin,

To idealise and romanticise a decade,

Made up of austerity, rationing and air raids.

I've read a little social history,

The 1940s were not idyllic or crime-free,

Just as now, there were heroes and villains,

Among the soldiers and civilians.

Heroism abounded but so did black marketeering,

There were brave sacrifices but also racketeering.

City-wide black-outs were a gift,

To those who would rob and grift.

Your jolly nostalgic tribute is an annual celebration,

Celebrating your own fabrication,

Of a time when the machinations of war and a crazed ideology,

Saw the near extinction of an entire ethnic minority.

I do not wish to be a party pooper,

But don't just step into the fake shoes of a fictional trooper,

Please occasionally remove your rose-tinted glasses,

To remember that beyond your nostalgic narrative of the routines of the masses,

People lived with the daily fear,

Of the likely deaths of people they held dear.

But at the end of the day, I don't want the one who will spin my head round, who will make my blood boil, whose kisses will feel like I'm on fire, whose touch will make the universe explode. No. I want the one who will be okay seeing me throw up after we've had a bit too much to drink; who will hold my hair and call me a loser the next morning, but will, nonetheless, leave two Tylenol on the nightstand. I want the one who won't mind taking care of me when I'm sick, who won't mind my coughing fits and my runny nose. I want the one who will be perfectly fine with running home in the rain after we've missed our bus; who will be content with wearing ugly sweaters in front of the telly, drinking hot chocolate and watching silly movies. I want the one who will cook for me and who won't mind my cooking. I want the one who will be perfectly comfortable with us walking around in our underwear and who will drink as much coffee as I do. I want the one who will lie in bed with our laptop while I'm reading a book and won't mind the silence. I want the one who will buy my parents silly Christmas gifts and someone whose mother I'll be friends with. I want the one who will laugh at my jokes when they're funny and will call me an idiot when they ****. I want the one who will beat me at computer games and who won't mind that I sing even though I **** at singing. I want the one who will open up to me and let me help them; who will listen to my worries but who will respect my personal space. I want the one who will call me silly nicknames and who will tell me they love me everyday. I want the one who will take pictures with me and will pin them on the fridge. All I crave is comfort and stability. Don't romanticise love: the only thing you'll ever need is a best friend who wants to sleep with you and spend the rest of your life with you.

sometimes I wonder what it would be like to meet someone
who would kiss my scars and my nightmares away.
then I remember
that I have myself.

I am strong
and I do not need anyone to rescue me.

// she falls in love the same way that she falls apart; quickly and all at once.

tumbling into his outstretched palms with a startling intensity, his fists clench and she cries.

she wants him to hurt her, leave smouldering bruises around her neck. Force your fingers down her throat and make her beg. maybe this love; choking sounds and blood.

it’s almost funny, the fact that she still hasn’t learned yet; make him your everything and you will be left with nothing.

and it feels like hell, almost romantic.

her lips part in the dimly lit room, gasping for air.

that’s the thing, there is nothing he could do to her that she wouldn’t do to herself. hold a knife to her neck and watch her soul drip from her mouth

one rib at a time you snapped them all like twigs and complained that she made too much noise. too much,

too loud.

lungs swimming in fluid yet she breathes out flowers, because that’s what pretty girls do; that’s what you wanted isn’t it babe? beauty. perfection.

don’t let him inside your head, keep him between your thighs or else everything around you will become white noise; fading into the background.

go on, romanticise it. i dare you.

force its unwilling bones into a metaphor or a simile.

pretend that we fall apart into beautiful, tragic spectacles and simply glue the broken fragments back together

she sat in the dark with a cup of tea between her shaking hands, resisting the urge to split her veins over the white walls and string her organs from the ceiling like fairy lights.

wanting to die in the most violent of ways is a lot less convenient than it seems; an unholy addiction of the rawest degree.

darling, i’m sorry he made you feel like you are hard to love,

because loving you is the easiest thing in the world //

people go on and on and on
about the love they have for their boyfriend, fiancee, wife
thousands of books and tv shows alike
dedicated to what we deem to be the answer to everything

obviously if you have a significant other you must be happy right?
isn't your life all together? oh well, could be worse
you could be single
you could be alone

you could be

we are not the
nicholas sparks novel
read wrapped in comfort
of store-bought quilts
on rainy days

or an ed sheeran song
in long-haul flights
flying us
into one another's
longing embrace
once in
a blue moon

how long will
the movie screens
and best-selling novels
continue to
romanticise a
love like
ours
all of its
torturous;
troubling;
tragic glory

even with dreams
of your laugh
and the most short-lived
imageries of your crescent eyes
the sheets on your side
of the bed remain
perfectly
uncreased
i cannot stop
my heavy lids
and tired bones
from gravitating into
both Arcadia
and Erebus:
another
sweet,
wicked
dream
of
**you.

I once met this French man.
Just a brief encounter; but towards the end of it he looked at me
with almost pensive eyes,
slowly he said "I could love you".
I laughed aloud.
Was it cultural differences
for him to have said that so casually?
Or was he just the brave sort?
I mocked him, of course.
Condemned his lionhearted statement even.
His eyes never left me, all the while,
they looked like a sad storm now.
Like somehow he already misses me.
And that was the last time I saw him.
Despite him asking to take me out to my favourite restaurant.
Despite him asking to take me camping underneath the stars,
Or for a midnight swim.
All the things I like, really.

A year later, and I'm still thinking about this
beautiful, brave French man.
And what could have been.
Haunted by his sugar heart.
But it wasn't my colour to romanticise happiness,
or the feeling of being wanted.
But he was right and, I was wrong.
He could have loved me.
I just didn't let him.
Wherever you are in the world,
I am sorry.
I hope you have a good life.

When Death comes by
Do you really see a man, a mere human?
Is it possible that an entity as ancient could be so?
It’s been there longer than any of us
Seen more than we could imagine
It would make the bravest demigods
Children again, crying for their mothers
It's an entity as old as Change and Time
- Something not many can claim
It's seen Change and stagnation
Seen triumph, as well as the bitter tears
Of one who has lost everything,
Including their own identity,
After having known ‘everything’.

I am Fire and I am Ice.
Get too close to me and you will be,
Changed, for better or worse.
You will be changed. Anything that
Comes near me does. I am inescapable.

Even galaxies explode, even stars fall
I am inescapable. I am indestructible
Come to me and you'll lose yourself
Look me in the eye and you shall see
A reflection. You will be changed.
The worst scars I give, remain unseen
You've looked me in the Eye, and now,
You pay the price, with nothing less
Than Mind, Heart and Soul. Bodies are
Now reparable. Scars can be hidden
The soul and your heart... That is where
Your true weakness lies and I leave the
Marks of my possession there. I am neither
Moral nor immoral. I am and I remain.
Some might romanticise my presence, but
I am neither good, nor bad. I simply Am.
I might bring pain or I may bring salvation
I am as I have been and as I shall remain
Humanity will come and go, the Milky Way
Will be extinguished. I will remain.
After all, I Am.

I hope I’m not being pedantic
when I say you’re not being romantic

but the scars you gave me are romance
affection through a stockholm glance

it’s so dreamy to feel so scared
maybe that’s your idea of love

Did I ever tell you that I miss you?
That now when the sun shines, I can't feel its warmth
Because I'm quite sure that you were the sun for me
My own bright star.

I could romanticise the constellations for you,
I really could.
But you of all people know that I was never a
Romantic.
Instead of love letters I'd give you stutters
And instead of flowers I'd give you a crane
Made from the napkin that I used to wipe pasta
Sauce from my face.

Unsurprising is the fact that you left without a word,
Leaving me here to write words about you and
Your arms when they held me,
Even for the briefest of moments.

Sometimes my brain tells my eyes that it was you
That passed the corner by our cafe.
But I'm still convinced that you're a dream and I'm
An insomniac not quite woken up,
Since my eyes are still half-closed.

You could be my Sirius or my Adhara,
Or even their flanks.
After all, Mirzam and Sirius were lovers-
Or siblings, I never did quite get that right.

Forgive me, gorgeous.
I lose my mind around you and talk about the
Stars as if they're your eyes.

That would indeed be the closest comparison,
After all.

The fault with seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses is that we do not know when to stop.

When the lights at the crossroads flicker red, all we see is light, not colour.

We run, we hide in nostalgia’s walls, playing with the toys we grew out of, talking to the skeletons in our closet.

“Life is so strange,” we say, as though we are no stranger ourselves.

Romanticise, don’t realise
love is like hate
passion like anger, anxiety
and blood, just another fluid

Roses, red all the same

Wine, flows through oesophagus like water flowing like tears of the child’s sighs at night yearning for a relief of the pain of a

strange life

being no stranger ourselves

seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses

not knowing when to stop.

There's poetry in scars.
Do not romanticise them, they do not deserve such compliments, but
There's a story there.

Often I stare at my own and I remember
What it was that drove me to put them there
What forced me to guitily indulge in my habit.

Scars fade but they never disappear.
They're a melancholy reminder of my narrative.
They are the promise of a sequel.

I appear to be pushing back tears,
And I'm trying to stay strong.
Why have I been seeking forgiveness for all these years?,
Why did I romanticise my Demons in song?

I feel like the stem of a Rose,
A quaint mind of beautiful words to take away others hurt.
But I pierce the skin of those who comes close,
As I stamp on the acquaintances I left in the dirt.

Spawn of a Speed fiend and the ******* of an ***** freak,
A walking disease.
Ever so volatile and ****** to Hell like a Sinners smile,
Walking for miles in my own head,
Only to fall to my knees at Satan craving;
Death.

I'm writing narrative poetry
To please the masses with verse
Un-versed because nobody knows
How to do it anymore.

(insert metaphor for the heart)

Heart's are just organs teaspoons are the real deal
Here is happiness,tempest on a teaspoon
Getting quicker with the drips don't call them tears
Where's the originality?

(cackle at alteration and appreciate the notion
of a bracket and enjambement)

If emotion rests in the balance of milliliters
I'm calling it real because hearts beat
And that's it; don't romanticise, rationalise.
Your brain is intelligence doesn't mean it's apathy.

(end it here before people know you're being insulting
and **** ink tears into little noteboks)

The first time a blade danced across my skin,
blood dripping from my open wounds like stagnant springwater,
a pain that I can mark as real, as consistent, as constant,
a promise of friendship stained a deep red,
I fell in love with self-mutilation.
The first time I skipped a meal,
first time I saw the thin frame of a girl all skin and bones,
all pointed curves and sharp edges,
I fell in love with self-destruction.
The first time I tasted nicotine on my teeth,
ash dropping to the floor and crumbling,
my demons lit up with my lighter
I fell in love with the taste of what I knew would **** me.
The first time I skipped my stomach meds,
later that night, I threw up everything good I thought about myself,
and I fell in love with self-hatred.
When I was taken off of Prozac,
I sobbed because he was my best friend who made me
so much ******* worse and I loved every second of it.
The first (and only) time I attempted suicide,
saw the innermost layers of my own skin
dripping with adrenaline and fear,
I fell in love with the bleak hospital walls
as I lied in a bed, watching this ****** poking and prodding at my arm,
stitching my pain silent-
no, no, don't- just let me die here, ******!
let me slice myself into oblivion,
it's not like anybody would miss me, anyway.
The first time I slept with a man,
a 27 year old,
the man who felt like a better father than the man I called "dad",
who was there when nothing else was but my razor,
I was 11, and I didn't realise what it meant
to give yourself to somebody so completely.
All I knew was that I was in love with him,
and that an experienced, older man
meant that *** felt really ******* good.
I presume that was when I fell in love
with the physical aspect of relationships
and for a long time, those physical aspects were all I saw.
The first time I penned my frustrations and hate,
raw and naked and painful,
in the form of an apologetic suicide letter,
I fell in love with the way I could romanticise pain.
I must have a notebook full of those by now.
but the first time I saw you...
I fell in love with the way you could silence my hate
without lifting a finger,
your stormy grey eyes that recognised I was seen and heard by everyone but myself,
your arm that I could grab onto so easily
because I knew in some way that it could stop me from falling to my demise,
your voice that could drown out all of my demons that swim around
in my mind,
that for the longest time have been trying to **** me,
I fell in love with you.
I fell in love with the honesty I found in you,
with the cold fingers that interlaced with mine perfectly,
the way my head fits on your shoulder.
I fell in love with the way you stood by my side
and pulled out your own rusted sword,
said, "I'll fight with you."
The suffering was definitely worth the reward
when it comes to what us being together put people through.
You've seen almost every side of me,
you've seen me consumed by hatred,
anger, rage, laughter, fear, joy, love,
slit wristless and bare skinned,
and yet, you stay.
You've got a few parts of a soul,
I've got a few pieces of a heart...
Let's make eachother whole.

If your poor like me,
Your flesh is gonna be burned
And added to the pollution problem,
And our smoke will rise
And be added with said skies,
Should I romanticise
Your body's burning a bit?
OK:
You shall join former skies
Like a mist of your essense,
Your embers will burn forever
Until they fall back from the waves
Of winds that have carried those before
You, and those that have yet
To join you.

And if you have enough money
Your get a proper burial
And get seen by many people you
Really weren't close to any more,
Those who already became cadavers
Long ago in your heart,
They walk with other corpses
That never penetrated your true self.
      And $5000 in a plot of dirt,
Your picture on a slab of marble,
     A song sung awkward by some
Niece or nephew,
Tears for the day,
And your body cannot rejoin the
Earth because the coffin
Isnt bio degradable.

Its just your body,
But the soul is finally free
From the riff raff of the flesh.

It is time to remember in this sinking sadness,
Of the conjuring mind, and the fickle passing of winter.
In the presence of death, there is opportunity for living;
If I only grasp and pull through each turgid torrent of time.

Rome fell and so too, will this empire.
This ivory tower of profiteering,
And dodging answers on the screen.
Love will out, if you give it time and patience;
As continents collide and create new land
On which to dwell.

Friends pass through life, as I hold them like sand,
As memories modify, romanticise and alter.
I cannot keep tending to the past to make a future,
Nor can I make new friends over suicide hotlines.

With pills to take me from these trembling hands,
I burst into rhyme, and embark upon new lands.
All I ever knew shall untangle within photographs;
Into affection that no words can understand.

Please stay with me, reader, as I grow up;
As these new bones falter to a start.
I am waking up to find the youth that
I thought I’d lost in the fullness of my heart.

You destroyed me,
And I let you.
You lit a fire within me
I mistook for the passion
Of poets
And I let it eat me up
And consume the light from my eyes
Until nothing was left.
I mistook you for a hero
When all you were was a person;
no better, no worse than anyone.
And I loved you.
I love you still,
And always will.
And that flame consumes me
Even today,
Because a misanthrope like me
Cannot help but romanticise such things.
That fire burns like the blood that runs between us,
And I mistook it for the fire
That warms the soul and the hearth;
That flickers between friends;
When in truth,
You were merely a lighter
To a pathetic piece of paper.

in all honesty, i've become a supermarket ghost, one shelf stacker inquired whether the cheap ***** i'm buying is any good, well the beer Amstel is decent, but the whiskey i mix anyway - a wake-up call to stay away from writing ancient greek style epics, a shelf stacker at a supermarket, that's all it took, bye bye chaos of the north, or northern chaos, or whatever i tried to romanticise / or make a fetish of.*

concerning ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ,
in an analogical form, very much akin
to mozart and joseph ii of austria
(the famous yawn - Amadeus quote
'too many notes!'),
people need nibbles!
nibbles! i tell ye nibbles!
like the opposite of cinema,
as bird-man states at the end of
the film: people want action!
explosions! alien invasions!
they don't want existential angst
screened, they're so sadistic in
this department that they want
the solo eventuality - they want
to experience existentialism solo -
existential: out of every exit of example,
themselves. bird-man got it spot on,
but revise cinematography using
poetry, and what do you get?
the destruction of western and even
middle-eastern narratives with
the haiku - the haiku ****** up
prosaic poetry like karaoke ******
up innovative ballet of the tongue -
translated bird-man's investigation
of cinema, put it against poetry,
yep, pair them up,
when cinema craves for action
and adventure,
poetry craves for nibbles,
no one is going to burden Homer
for the next 1000 years, or Dante
should it matter, they'll want
nibbles, haiku upon haiku,
short and sweet... fellas' bring in the
insecticide! we're going to smoke
those cockroaches out with one
smooth toxic cloud! puff! and they're gone!
poetry can be a cinema,
i mean, if cinema appeases the public
with extrovert activity without
the necessary identity of the protagonist
all the better... i dare you
to create a protagonist's introversion
as some point... Mr. Gorgonzola!
you're up next... messerschmitt nose dive
into a parabola... kneeee-uh -
you can just hear the propeller like
a shark fin cutting air;
if poetry is anything like cinema is
that less is more -
it's people we're talking about, after all,
cattle, you can join the cattle throng
any time you want, i know i do,
no point being optimistic about
your individuality or the individuality
process you devise,
you have to be pessimistic,
the wildebeests are optimistic when together,
the tiger is... well, a tiger, alone -
predatory antics are scaled against
herding, with stampede the only recognisable
antic - but me, between predator and herd,
in a vulture group (committee) / vulture feeding
(wake), etc. add hyenas to that
and we're above parasites -
pocket-proof of a group of foxes never existed -
solitary musings i say, theirs' the wanderings -
but with examples like ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ, epic attempts,
you slowly begin to realise the un-importance
of your daily routine, the mundane reality
of it all, the lost excitement,
before you could **** out all the essence
of a little encounter, but when embarking
like Columbus to find only Jamaica you
end up finding three-continents and shrapnel
from the eastern face... well you miss
your spontaneity, your little consistency -
no due to atheism - it didn't **** off theology,
that remained constant, a fudge berg
in your imagination, it just killed off history -
we have pre-history and stones,
iron and brass in between, and then
we have 24 hour newsreels - who's going
to make up the time? we're taught
of being insignificant before we even decided
to become the next Audrey Hepburn -
****** shoo shoo they call us - ushers
of shoe-shine smiles - see what i mean
about trying to write epics in the 21st century?
enforced evolution, chicken nugget poetry,
not even a whole chicken, chicken ******* nuggets,
and yes, coarse words act as conjunction
lubricant, no offence, but they do -
so with bird-man telling us explosions are
the case for applauds and throwing
free bread around - poetry is all about
scavenger nibbles - haiku can almost be ranked
as a poetic technique equal to pun or metaphor -
we lost the narrative,
the narrative isn't coming back to
rejuvenate poetry - it's... gone!
or as they say where champagne is cheap...
chimp champs of the innuendo
wrote many more rocking-a-cradle poems
and never bounced a tennis ball
against the same wall
with the signature of the game stressed as
        i sat on a chair
        and cut my hair,
        without a mirror:
        kdump (linux) error, error.
how a little holiday into excess narration
proved the point of the everyday emphasis
once again spotted.

our generation, drenched in nostalgia
clawing, desperate for a time we don’t even remember
romanticise the past, the simple times of genuine human emotion
no pressure when the only thing that mattered was pure devotion
to writing, art, travelling, dreams…
feeling free like the beatniks we hold up so high in our estimation
put on a pedestal, the lives we envy and wish we could lead
no expectations
whatever we once believed in
it’s been stripped away
and now we lie here naked and shamed
"a respectable career is the only way"
rapid change left us cold staring at static
blank screens
we’ve been born into the age of the void
no empathy remaining, no way or means
of expressing ourselves accurately
anxiety and sadness dominates
technically we’re developed but our minds are broken, falling into disrepair
in the end we just don’t ******* care
we just want to remember how to feel without numb indifference