Dangling sweet ambrosia scents
Repose upon the jasmine bench
Easing sorrowful soughs
Amidst lamented long slipped
Melancholy memories singing
Suserant soliloquies in stillness


--bruised orange

I got 99 problems but hip-hop ain't one.

"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block"
Nas and Jigga beef was the first I heard of drama in the music industry-
fueled me as a youngin' crowned from my brother's love of it.
Fast forward to when the radio put me on-
in the garage, on my mongoose
I heard someone spitting through the stereo
didn't pay much mind until a high-pitched voice rang through.
"Through the wire-"
no "through the fire?"
I couldn't understand but this dude started rhyming
and speaking through the speakers at me
my hair raised up and I knew this was love-
smile on my face at first listen
never really heard anything like it.
I thought back to the first song like that I heard-
"Life's a ***** and then you die-"
knew that line all too well
resonation in my bones didn't feel so much like a stranger-
my young self started spitting around the older crowd
they looked down and smiled-
a sense of admiration.
Hip-hop was my way in my ticket to acknowledgment.
Started listening to Eminem before I was even 10.
5th grade on the bus rides to and from field trips
"Shut the **** up guys I'm trying to listen"
headphones in, finally found someone to relate
so many thoughts of suicide being taken away-
realized the radio wasn't really my thing
too much pop and not enough soul
the words they sang were nothing to me.
In the beginning hip-hop was just a facade I liked to play
so other people would notice and think I'm pretty cool
but somewhere along the line it took me over
bumping nas, em and pac through my stereo
mom looking in my room like
"where the **** did my daughter go?
she's listening to this ****, she's gotta get a grip-"
But when I hurt the music would listen
bass lines and samples running through my veins
didn't know much about hip-hop
except the way it made me feel..
Technology came abrupt and the computer was my safe haven
the runaway from the abuse I was experiencing
mommy and daddy fighting?
headphones in so I can't hear it.
crying through each verse
and then the chorus hits and I'm better
finally realized I wasn't alone in this hell hole.
Started up a myspace-
more room for discovery
Eazy-e some Biggie more Nas
and **** even some Jeezy.
Every word they spoke
became something that was apart of me.
"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block."
Nas said it best-
old school rappers speaking to me before bed.
Then I discovered Cudi, more Kanye, andre 3k.  
thought about how I had to write like this
it was my destiny to manifest this passion
put it into my pen until I could learn to lavish
in the luxuries they could afford
not the riches but the rhyme schemes
and the way it helped me
again and again would listen until I got tired
notebooks full of rhymes
my life was on the line and it became wired
then came limewire and my mind blew up
there's an entire world of music I never knew-
download after download the music became me
so much more to go through
****** up my computer
virus to the hard drive
all my music's gone. ****.
Freaking out in my room at midnight
threw a chair, punched the wall
mom asking if i'm alright.
"*******, go away"
She thought the music was to blame
but without that **** is why it happened
never gave up on this **** called rappin'
wrote my first rhyme when I was in 5th grade
poetry turned to rhyme schemes
and samples I liked to play.
Passion turned to aggression
when everyone started spitting
thought this was me and no one elses
has to prove who I was to the masses.
High School came and I was
"The girl who rapped"
freestyle lunch sessions to secure it.
Voices from the crowd
"**** she murdered it".
Slipped up-
started on the pills
too many thoughts in my mind
too many demons to ****-
ran away from the hip-hop
turned that **** to heavy metal
pop-punk and punk rock.
Turned away my from my passion
and started writing poetry
stanzas, sibilance and sonnets
filled my insides.
I suffered without the classics
the dream began to fade away.
We moved-
became a recluse.
didn't eat for weeks
but this time money wasn't the issue.
Heard something bumpin' from the basement
my hair stood up when I heard that base hit
ran down like I was chasin' after my passion again
"what is this?"
my cousin laughed "Life Changes"
"who is it?"
"Wu-tang" he said to me
I bobbed my head and smiled once again
"Wu is indeed for the children"
he laughed and so did I.
Realized my love for hip-hop
would never actually die.
"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block"

The shires bask serenely in the summer sun.
Streams flow smoothly down the green hillsides.
All is well with the world
As apple blossoms bloom.

Such peaceful scenes are soothing to the soul.
Spiritually uplifting: a sensual seduction
Of sight, sound and aromatic smells.

Snakes may hiss and stoats may snarl,
But nothing reduces this sense of peace and calm.
Assonance and sibilance flows as I scribe
My idle dreams upon this page.

It’s good to let your imagination loose
To planets out there amongst the stars
Or simply let it roam over the slumbering countryside.
Good to escape the struggles and strife
Of daily life.
Good to sleep easy
After meditating at our leisure
Refreshing ourselves with Mother Nature’s
Soothing Love.

Paul Butters

© PB 8\1\2022.

Love is a thousand women who fail to amount to one,
Peasant seductress with bared shoulders of red dun-colored roads and candle smoke,
Who pours down her wet, ungoverned hair, like a fast-fading storm to dry over Aurelian walls,
In that dark sneer of sultriness over the sentry-like stillness of ramparts and stone,
A wasp in water whose sibilance comes from what the sting makes,
Like the upgathered phalanx of spears in the sand,
Or the sisters of fate who have coiled their hair as sunset snakes,
Her fingertips ***** into me like much-traveled and ancient rain.

How wonderful it is, I say, to the retreating
yellow form of your feelings I mistook
For Infatuation, you’re a romance heckler
far and far away from
Accepting fruition within classrooms and
being labelled as an angel.
And it was within forbidden hell of
euphoria, I found
You nestled in the society’s psyche
neither content or calling
For help. Neither did you neglect the
pink spectacles of the society,
Even found yourself moulding and moulding
into a fungi green
That I could not recognize, within that
half-sanctum, half-oasis I found you
absentmindedly
Bathing in, you were already out of
its waters.
And I was no longer seeing you within
the dry desert or the sibilance
of my desires, but instead
in cement woodlands and
Within artificial communication and
Intimacy I gave willingly.
Now how does it feel, to have your
heart in one piece,
How does it feel to not use
whipped cream to fill in the
Cracked, salty sections of your
own ***** that,
Out of confusion, continues to
play its favorite song but
in all the wrong beats.
Somehow within cacophony I found
you, nestled, comfortable in
Bogus, fraudulent wings of a former
angel- who now weeps under our
Feet in theory- Somehow, somewhere,
I lost you within an epiphany
That reeked of bliss and pleasure-
Somehow, we end up losing
Twins of the heavens when all is well.
How wonderful.
How wonderful it is, I say, to your
lost, secretly-weeping figure
That I can’t tell whether transparent or
yellow your figure is.
But I keep speaking-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To love the first angel I’ve set
my eyes upon-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To lose an angel, no matter how
phoney, to a social heaven.”

- enriko. aug 5. 11:45pm

Testing:
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Sibilance,
Sibilance,
Hello,
Hell­o
Yo!

I wish I could formulate-
into poems and stories,
fiction and film
the way your eyes
show the innocence of love
and the vulnerability of trust.
I lost myself when I found you-
in the most extreme way
I found double entendre's
inside your tone of voice
and sibilance in your silence.
But it was never your intent
it was and has always been
my greatest downfall
putting more into others
than I will ever get back in return.
Slowly, I am crawling back to
the skin I used to find comfort in
and the smile I used to hide behind.
You brought me out from underneath
the mask I had spent years painting
beneath my eyelids
and above my cheekbones.
The scars from my old skin have faded,
but the wounds from my mind are still present.
It may take some time
but I will form a new exterior
and it will no longer be just a mask
I will run far from the person
that didn't quite love herself
and I will run into your arms
no more self harm.

My heartbeat ticks like a clock on most days
the pounding of my chest reminds me I don't have much time left
I start to wonder why being shaped like an hourglass is such a good thing.
We are always running out of time.
So much so that we don't even count when we reach a mile-
in high school they train you to keep time
but somehow you always end up running and running away from it.
Other kids shamed you for not completing the mile fast enough-
but your body thanked you for not pushing it so hard.
There are days when my alarm wakes me up before the sound comes
like my body somehow knows my time for sleep has ran out.
Things are constantly running away from me-
kind of like you.
I try to slow down the hands to this clock
but as yours wrap around my waist
it only speeds things up for me
because I no longer pay attention to the sound of my heartbeat.
Yours is the only ticking I can hear on those days.
I find myself using too many metaphors
and not enough alliteration or sibilance-
or any other methods of poetry for that matter.
I am too busy organizing these thoughts too quickly
so they do not run too fast away from me.
My mind is something I'm always trying to catch-
trying to keep these emotions in order and on cue
so I don't run out of time with you.
But somehow I end up losing it,
all of it and I am on the brink of insanity again
because how can you feel secure
when you don't know how much time you are wasting
I do not want to waste all this time with you.
If I am just another hour on this clock of your life
it will be the best **** hour you will ever encounter
because the rest of mine are spent trying to place
these emotions that have run out on me.
Spent trying to learn how to keep time,
how to keep them in mind
how to not let them change who I am again.
But see these emotions are not an alarm clock-
they are a pop quiz
an erupting volcano that has been dormant for years,
a hurricane you knew was coming but you weren't sure when,
an hour of detention that goes by so painfully slow
you contemplate your entire life.
These emotions don't come every other sunday-
they don't become planted in the soil inside of me
and sprout when I water them.
They are the dust that collects under your bed
from the particles of your skin-
and you don't know they are there
until you clean out the things you've been meaning to for a while.
My life is all metaphor and not enough logistics.
Not enough order and routine-
the only thing keeping me is time
and the dust has settled again.
It had rested in the lining of my lungs
and sits in the bridge of my nose-
it won't be long until it collects and overflows
and I am dealing with the consequences of not keeping
this life in order, in detail, I made no room for cleanliness.
There is no freedom inside of this mess,
inside of this wristwatch that will not leave
even when I try to cut it off.
The ticking of the clock is all I hear-
it aligns perfectly with the sound of my heartbeat.
I fear it will stop ticking
I fear I will stop feeling
I fear this heart will stop beating.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Tick.

You require at least three similes.
A metaphor or two.
This section needs more sibilance,
and another allegory on alliteration too.

Creative writing
now a standardized test
where a poet seems
to do slightly poorer than the rest.

You receive a checklist, told
bye and buy the book.
Drain away the colours upon your pencil
or face the examiners sickle and hook.

Creative writing
now a slog a convoluted use and reuse
of that which
"improves"
your descriptions and inscriptions.

You need a conclusion.


something befitting a happy end.
Try anything smart
and a bad grade i'll be "sure to send."

times like this, the plenary moon
  tonight wearing many faces,

the white-washed truant at bay
    white-hulled still, the brim of the sky
to a full, on such a bright night leaving a trace
   of say, prongs of fire on the kiln

the skin the soft breeze molests with a chill
flung from pinecone – the blackened spires of the
very heart of flame and the mullioned wood that understands
  what the heat of placeness mints underneath
  our skin – what silence remains a translation when the smoldering
  remains are bitten repeatedly, aureoled in the moment of vital meaning.

we hear its threat, retained in clock-whirs
like a primordial word or the fluting of  light’s bendable
   rondure harnessing a truth we let in.

I fail behind the walled-up lip of laughter
because the weight of passing
is heavy on my back – like a bough dragged
  by rainwater, or sound elected to drown:
the smell of poinsettia assaults,
lifting its slaughter against Kiltepan and Ambuklao,
  past mountains lulled to sleep: the moon sleuthing
  like a well-oiled machine.  what do you hear?

  we are aware of its full absence,
like that of our undulation after a fall,
  or the wild sibilance of breath trying  to  utter something,
  going back home with a song in between teeth,
    without words.

Alright page…okay, fine, I admit it;
I've been avoiding you.

Your face, beautifully smooth and innocent, reminds
me I have yet to find the time to paint it…so:

I apologise,
to the eyes I should have coated in the eyeshadow of
romance (scorned, loved, lost, lived)
to the cheeks I should have blushed with eroticism
to the ears I should have punctured with anger and
passion and vanity
to the skin I should have smeared foundation over: covering
bad rhymes like concealer over spots (still there, just less obvious)
to the lips which I should have animated with laughter and
sarcasm.

I apologise,
to the body of the poem which never:
Felt the stanza of a corset
Felt the **** lace of an internal rhyme
Felt the bra of a title
Or the shimmering dress of a metaphor

Or the thrill of removing every last bit.

I've missed a million date nights, and I
want to try to fix it.

Please? Despite our marriage of minds, we have drifted, I'd like permission to take our hands on a date once more
Letting the wine of ideas pour between
Sighs of Sibilance
complete contentment

**Tasting the catharsis of your lips

I have walked this street too long
My legs hurt and my chest rattles
As I light another smoke
To fuel my endless march
Sneaky slow-motion suicide
(note the sibilance of the wheezing lungs)

I have to stop for a while
But though my body fades and fails
My manic mind remains restless
Merciless and remorseless
Pushing punching and prodding
And defiant unto the coffin
Get the lid down quick, boys

                                         By Phil Roberts

I followed a writer up a tall tree
And every leaf was his poem.

Once at the top I could look out
Over a sprawling poetic landscape –
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom,
O’ vast quivering sibilance of
Melpomene and Thalia!

And there I remained

Until a long winter wind came
And undressed each tree!
So from my perch,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…
The low-slung place
where each poem fell

I thought, “so many writers,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy.”

And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over resting leaves
while red and rust
ran from their veins
Into the rich palette
of my memories

O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.

I followed a writer
up a prodigious tree
Every leaf I brushed,
his poem.

From the crown
I scanned the pastoral
a poetic landscape in repose,
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom.

O’ vast vibrato of sibilance
slipping the breaths of
Thalia and Melpomene!
Alight by dusk, I lingered.

Comes the long wind of winter
to undress each tree!
So from my aerie,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…

The low-slung place
where each poem fell
I thought, “here so many,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy…
recite their odes
of heaven and hell.”

And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over quiescent leaves
while red and russet
ran from their dendritic veins
Moldering into the palette
of dormant memories.

O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.
From the rot of the roost
to the dust below boots,
by the pen of the winter writer
Spring will come again.

S is the 19th letter of the alphabet.
I had to count twice on my fingers to be sure of that.
It glues together many, many words.
It fixes people to the walls.
It shrivels fruit in the bowl.
It sticks us all in the same soup (****).
Let's swim.

You have 19 reasons to die,
written out like manuscripts in manila folders  
  populating a small cubicle containing your confidence
   pasted to the walls, and neatly nested on the next door desk
     at least you told someone.
The logic of your feeling breathing life into the spreadsheet,
The simple clicks of order covering up the shame of dead weeks
Day in Day out working toward a little more
Waiting for the future where the ability to break out is yours.
Cage around each arm. Suffering in small doses.
Never overwhelming the epicenter.

I have 19 reasons to die.
Scrawled in sidewalk chalk on 17th street.
  Ringing in the ears of all my close relatives and their next of kin.
   They say, "Hurry up and usher in the next generation so we can stop worrying about fixing yours."
The crumpled cover letters in my compactor spell pure love, and the reasons it's never noticed.
  Simplicity in disarray, a life of static colors. Repugnant sorrow odors.
I am the only town crier left in this town.
  Always complete but never fulfilled.
The sad sequel to a Mexican standoff with a self-referential story.
  Narcissism and narcotics.
  Nihilism and Mnemonics.
Space and the stuff of the stars.
Love and the war of the heart.

S is the 19th letter of PSEUDOPSEUDOHYPOPARATHYROIDISM
No it's not but what a great word.
No it's not but aren't you glad you tried to count?
No it's not but aren't you satisfied with yourself for trying to decipher?
No it isn't and wasn't it worth it to try to speak the sounds?
No it is not and wasn't it the sibilance in your mouth worth every second?
No it is not thank you come again have you had your fill when we're only 19/26?


Reasons to live:







Seemingly unneeded. We're here aren't we? Doing what we could only be meant to do.
R is the real 19th letter.
One more would have been S.
But you'd never know if you didn't count.
So let's count.
Ready?
3...2...1...

The language of lips at the waste side
A bottle of whiskey on our tongues
And the sound of sibilance between our hips

Pure and utter Bliss

you take the fall’s seriousness
         like you were a leaf from the bough
of this tree called love –

     as you were nearer to me than any other
light with its hands clasped, starting rivers in me;

   you, whose mouth benignly twitch to utter
such glibness that even the stinging fragrance
of newness sings in me

the darkness swallowed slovenly as if all of the world
swims past the squalor of my blood – new to old wholeness
bones to a gleam of washlines,

       wherefore there is nothing left to guess
in such hypothetical kisses when you looked at me
with two strutting cities for eyes that
churn to fade out such articulation of sibilance –

     it is like this is never a better fate than plunging,
the moon between the hill and my body
    within your body.

I'm not opposed to my introspective nature
that most cling on to with broken fingers
and ever trembling lips.
I am forever embracing my most outer self
in more ways than just one.
The sun never really rises and falls,
the earth where you're standing just changes locations
and I am located just above the brink of insanity
waiting until the world turns just enough for me to fall again-
but as the fleeting world speaks to me with tone deaf hears
all I can seem to dissect from the conversation is
that forever means nothing in a world where
tomorrow could never come again-
I could never come again
but I will not take that liberty from myself
I will not sacrifice my freedom of expression
for a small sense of morality
I'm not sure exists in the eyes of those around me anymore.
The one being of my own being means more to me
than being something I'm not
so the facade I play day by day
seems to break away at the edges
like a clay molding of who I once was
and I will make a stone masterpiece
with just my broken fingertips.
Spongebob ain't got **** on me
because these hands can carve memories
into the retinas of another human being
and make this life a masterpiece.
Don't ******* try me
because I will swallow you whole
and spit you back out faster than you can tell me otherwise.
I have self-inflicted my own pain too long
to not come back strong like stone.
Like dark canvas silhouettes syruping over sunrise
when sibilance meets promiscuous  
that's where you will find my sunday best.
My meeting with the God that may or may not exist
the self-loathing meets with the self-fulfilling prophecy
and I am the head of the dinner table.
So dig in-
feast your eyes upon the glory that can be.
Feast your eyes upon defeat below your common nature.
Remember morality is a game that only you like to play
just to show others you can win-
but what good is winning if you don't know loss?

all that is the sea
  
         in
               one
         full
                    wave:


      the fritter of each line
      reaching for shores,
      the multitude of eyes
      in in phosphorescenr sand:
      memory etched
      in flumine! erased by
      the arrival of blue hands
      rinsing all, leaving foam
      of passing tides already
      full with derelicts.
      sibilance of breath speaking
      its origin and now
      i swim past all ruins,
      moss, seaweed, crush of
      light and opaque contest,
      lifting with the voyage
      of a ripple, and back to
      your breast,
      i dream of fish!

Lord, I sure got the blues this morning.
Woke up with nothing beside me, but a pillow and a stain.
The gray clouds crowded around me,
And that drizzle became a pouring rain.

I feel so melancholy -
when I hear your name.
The sibilance of those syllables,
Triggers a recall, Pavlovian pain.

Music's like a wicked woman!
Fickle and sour as a pickle she can be.
Before you go dancing with that damsel,
You better check out the scars on me.

There's a reason or three,
they call me, call me, call me....
Mr. Meloncholy.

We have now become this bleached wall exposed
to graffiti; you and I, lost in a vector dwindling somewhere
between flight and ground-woven footing.
Like only such delicate secret opens to tongued up
and thighed upon space – only nightscapes the air dares elope with,
but isn’t that what absence hands over, a roughed up winding
moonlight suspended in crunched ether, or something else
that bade sibilance of speech rammed in preterit?
A blossoming descends in Maytime, besmirched with dreams
collapsing on obelisks. The moment in which I thought you
to be devouring space, nurturing a whelm of heat squalled and
intent, fanning a spleen of intimation, riveting a conflagration.
Else it was before, sulking in the finagling quiet: truths hauled
out and carved to foists,
      much room it was to differ a voice and fragment message,
      staring at this world the first time and the last – all at once
      in that rampaging instance, the rest of the world pinned down
                                                        befo­re me.

This dog of a sun
And how it remains
As it stains the hole
Of larklights in blue
Obstinate nuns in the hold
As they fold on forever

What a blessing, Sue
To see vicious sounds
In the halls of commotion
Now we surround
With our teeth, amber glow
As it sows a piece of forever

Fever, fever honey
You know what begets
The regret that you feel
Dance in the garret
Now, I hear in my fear
The hounds of forever

Think of what will never come
And it breaks the hollow sound
Of sweet repetition
Where pain is not mentioned
Hold your lover sweet
And you will fall, complete

See, hear, taste that sibilance eye
I shan't cry, nor state why
For freedom, despite its size
Will fail me in time

Wallace, come here
See the face I faithfully
Made in the image of you
I hope you find
The beauty that you
Have lost to old forever

Goddess, be soft
Know you're not known
By the people that hurt you
Stay in your loft
And let the lamp resound
The drums of forever

Don't fall to greed
By planning for fates
That are best left forgotten
Knowledge will wait
Unlike the sun or the moon
For they deny forever

Think of what will never come
And it breaks the hollow wound
Of sweet repetition
Where pain is not mentioned
Hold your lover sweet
And you will fall, complete

Strenuous, this malarkey eye
Waning clock in tentative sky
Do not take life for granted
Even when not wanted

Strong Héloise
Lay upon me
With your shackled aroma
Let it release
And scatter away
In your piercing gaze of forever

Héloise, come to me, see
That I haven't stopped
My attempts to capture you
On a damp canvas
Of trickling hues
That dare to uproot forever

I'll start with your nose
And give you a pose
That mimics your stature
Rock in your chair
As shadows deface
Your grace, lasting and tethered

Think of what will never come
And it breaks the hollow wound
A sophomore face
With sweet ******'s gaze
These gibbous hours cease
As the day finds peace

Your fur shambles so
Your fingers corrode
As the deluge below
Now blows us into forever

I was made different,
Same brain, same race,
But I was different.
Same smile, same face,
But something was different.
I could never speak in sibilance,
Stuttering stressed sounds and somehow,
Learning to live with who I am now.

My parents told me to value honour and integrity,
But come eighteen years of age, they came begging me,
To fall on my knees and kiss the *** of my overlords,
Between finding me and growing up, I lost my vocal chords,
Never able to project my thoughts,
Because I was to afraid of projecting a rejected side of society,
I wasn't really being me.

I was like a car losing its tyres almost edging its rims,
I had all control over my working limbs,
But I never had a control of my voice and it seems,
That somehow as I grew up I started to fit into seams,
Never the thread to stick out from the patterns,
Always be the one to stand back and watch the shattered,
Picking up the pieces of their lives scattered.

I watched people fall like flies and flies fall like pollen,
And from all of it, the message that I have always gotten,
'Humans will never be perfect',
But it doesn't matter, perfection is mere mortals exaggeration,
Of what it really means to be you.
We live under the same sky, same blue,
So being perfect, simply means being you,
Able to voice your words and keep true,
That the message you're upholding is alive, because of you.
**You are you,
And you are perfect.

When was the first time you took a pen and stabbed it,
sliced it, into your mind?
When was the first time you found you could find
almost every last fault
from the vault in your head?
Didn't it feel good, almost ******, almost narcotic, when you spread
your thoughts, in
liquid onto paper
Made something real from pure vapour
And destruction
Staring upwards at construction, the
foundation laid down the first
time you frowned and thought
Maybe I don't like myself?
Maybe I don't know how I tick?
or Maybe I want this moment to simply
stay and stick?
Was that when you first picked up the
brick of a pen and hurled it at the cement of paper.
That first time you felt you had to
vent to someone who couldn't possibly judge you?
Nothing safer than hollow ears listening to the

Seduction of Words

In life, awkward
absurd
But here, beauty is found in
the language of verbs and sounds, and
they take full rein, on paper it almost
helps to feel a bit insane, because the
Pen Society isn't traditionally a celebration of
normality
It's a celebration of more
So you drill yourself down to the core
and let your soul spill out, the most silent
shout in the world curled round every letter
Every evil neuron left to fester is found and
hurled out.

At first you tiptoe round the pain, but, as the addiction
of pure solace overtakes you start use every single vein
of thought you can find
Shooting up by peeling back all the fat and
rind of your mind, letting yourself
snort the unquenchable peace from
sighs of sibilance.

Contentment
No more repentance
Take you stupid cruel conscience, and tape up
shut it's mouth
Take down every photo album from the shelf
of your memory,
Present
Past
Let fleeting moments last
a hundred paragraphs
Let Lover's laughs last a decade.
Destroy every blockade
and allow yourself
Vulnerability
Tranquility
Love
Lust
Life and dust
Wipe away rust on repression
Take sessions of loss and
turn it into seconds of acceptance.
Let the paper love you how
you wish to be loved.

Fit yourself a glove of comfort
For the cold nights of desolation
Reach out from isolation
This all happened that first time

So,

When was the first time you took
A rhyme with
the knife of your pen
and stabbed yourself, again
and again
and realised that wounds don't
have to be physical to be real,
Don't have to bleed to require attention
Don't have to visually scar to prove it's
retention like a tumour.
Sting as much as a rumour.

Lodged.

And I hope that the first time you
hurt yourself
The first time you let
yourself feel
I hope with it came another first time
The first time you felt yourself
and the first time you let yourself
Heal.

because, in here, comes the most beautiful part of fiction feeling real.

she says
i should neither touch her
light-plastered fringes
nor the sibilance
of eyes.

it would be unwise
while i am amidst
the storm of laughing
if you say
that my heart
does not shatter
in our despondence.

trilling in light
is the colloid of breath
foaming in the silence
shrapnels of this mellifluous
separation - we, flawed,
dawdling is this punctuation
of you and i
are no more

because you do not
gape with the voice
of sweetness like a cigarette
receiving the shadow
of my once dark being,
yet, someone within me
whose hands still carve
the figure reminds me
of
you.