Sunshine!
Sickly yellow
slow-light colored streaks
slithering worse than sweat
down my body.
That golden ball stares down at me
like a haughty goddess,
her duality shallow and hot.
She cares not for the freedoms of humans.
She's a two-faced coin,
purgatory masked by the promise
of freedom from pained brains
and scholarly shackles.
The sun laughs at her own trickery, gargling through melting teeth
as she collects suppressed confessions
from weakened teens.
When her crescent counterpart
offers solace from her torment,
the moonlit darkness
only serves to drown us
and we splutter in our own
self-taught
year-round
lies.
And the sun
rears her tattered, flaming mane
at daybreak,
belly-laughing at idle minds now unrefined,
gleefully adding her own scorch
to already inflamed brains.

The Serpent squeezes the mundane egg, for a moment in time,
…to begin the ages, turn the wheel, and so begin the rhyme,

The circus has commenced, a dancing, swirling motion,
…a pit of ghastly horrors, seen as a vast deep ocean,
…or celestial or cosmic, as some would have the notion.

Some of them were large, although some were also small,
…and grotesquely figured or disfigured, a scary monster’s ball,
…and trudging, stampeding, stomping or slithering down the hall.

There they danced, sang or prattled, where giants fought and where they battled, …thunder unto heroes rattled, with awful screams so frightening, and terrifying lightning!

Scaly, hairy or feathered, wet and fiery or weathered,
…conjoined, twisted or tethered, slithery writhing together,

Kingu and his wife, some say it was t’was his mother,
…his plan was war and strife, pitting brother against brother,

A ******* existence and so morally depraved,
…a state of sickly persistence, they found themselves enslaved.

Then abounding voice of heaven, that divided night by day,
…brought forth a princely king of Luke; the warrior Marduk.

Fourteen engaged in combat, the one against thirteen,
…and thus aligned with the ecliptic, at night they can be seen,  

Sloshing in the Apsu, beaten with the club,
…slain and torn to pieces, cutting channels of their blood,

A north wind sent them to their places, fixed on Tiamat’s wheel,
…and the starry constellations, did Marduk bring to heel.

The stars don’t define my life,
But the specs of mould on the ceiling,
I study them carefully at night,
Reading them in true light,
A sickly soul they’re revealing.

A wondering eye sees all,
And repulsion overwhelms it so
Much that one gives out a hopeless sigh.
The ceiling is too high,
To wipe Aries and Leo.

What's in a name
A sickly copper smelling flower
Moulding midnight roots burrow into soft flesh
Savagely tearing soft pink skin
Hungrily gulping down rivlets of blood
Taste of strong liquor, blood poisoned by name
But by any other, a flower yields just as sweet

The first time was in the bathroom
Of a club I was four years too young for;
Lessons will be learnt;
Bent over a broken sink;
With my face pressed against the mirror;
My mascara ran rivers down the glass
Carving lines that looked like prison bars.
With rough hands;
He reached inside me;
And broke instruments I hadn’t yet touched;
No wonder I can’t play love songs,
I am still learning how to make love to people I actually love;
But my 14 years were too few to be angry
Didn’t quite know how
Didn’t know quite what he’d done;
And what that might do.
So I hid my thighs and ribs for three weeks ashamed;
My fake ID collected dust
Buried beneath my bed and self-blame.

That first encounter,
Left me frozen in an un-safe
space I couldn’t name
So I wanted time to stop its ticking,
Hold its breath and bite it’s tongue with me
An indefinite moment of silence to commemorate the crime committed,
But lessons would be learnt
As to my horror the cogs in the clocks kept rolling,
Every day since has stacked upon the last,
Racking up years
15: it took more than 365 days to dare to share the guilt,
16:  over 730 to absolve myself,
17: 1095 to say what had happened out loud.

The second time was in my kitchen,
He was a friend between blurred lines;
And ten drinks too many;
Lessons will be learnt.
I don't remember leaving with him
Or getting home.
But I’ve never known how to have *** sober so I guess it’s my fault too.
I woke up with an ache and my shoes still on.
There were no bruises; we are still friends; and I still don’t know who to blame.

The third time,
I was walking home, the air was fresh,
I had my headphones on;
Lessons will be learnt.
His fingers were dry and nails sharp as I froze;
It felt familiar;
His breath was hot;
Soaked wet with alcohol.
The bricks hit my back hard
But I like to think my knuckles hit harder.
I saw my mother the week after
I did not cry as I explained a  purple hand.
At least I had known where to aim it.

The fourth time,
I knew he was dangerous and I liked it,
Lessons will be learnt
With my hands bound above my head
He took control and mine with it;
He savoured every scream I spat;
So I, silently simmering, left my body there sickly still.
I am not a believer
but I told him he’d rot in a hotter part of hell
As he unbuckled me with a malboro red and a laugh that I choked on
So I took the cigarette and gave him a dose of what the devil will do for me,
A small vengeance that burnt like the venom in my veins

I have felt like flames so many times now
Been consumed by violent flickers,
That set this bloodied body ablaze,
But even the biggest bonfires burn out,
And I am no different
My bones are black with char like wearied wood
So when I take the train home I count my bruises;
I'm unsure which ones were left without consent.

A sickly sweet smell
of a steaming liquid, tainted rouge from the cinnamon-
the potion of peace, what a brew;
will it help me sleep?
Surely, it was made with simplicity;
tea leaves in hot water,
no divination necessary.

i’m seeing things
my blood is pale
it’s sickly white

to my unfortunate delight

it’s curing my cute cuts
healing them
in adorable bandages

i'll only have lilies soon

The future is a blur of smudged paint
Dragged across the canvas by inexperienced shaking hands
They tell me it is beautiful
But I can only see the mess that I have made
The sickly brown smeared across my palms that however hard I try
I cannot wash away

I cannot dream in future vision
I cannot slip those time traveler lenses over my eyes
I cannot see the ultraviolet, only the ultra-violent
And I bleed away my worries in words that no one shall ever read
And I scream away my sorrows in voices that never belonged to me

The future is a daydream,
Bright skies and gentle waves
That wash away my purple fingertips
And yet when I dream of my own
Those waves become polluted, the sky falls upon the crashing waves
Drowning my fingertips in their suffocating embrace and tightening the nooses on my toes

My future is non-existent
It is late night conversation to keep the day away a little longer
It is glances through crowds of people who, like you and I, will die eventually
It is your face breaking apart with a smile that expels so much light- so much goodness
My future is a daydream, a night dream and all the in-between
My future is the terrifying unknown

My future is sitting at bus stops waiting for a taxi
And knowing that it will never come
But waiting anyway just so that I can watch the sunset
It is snow storms and rainy days
It is running barefoot through a field with no real direction
It is counting the stars at midday

I tell myself that my future is non-existent
And yet
It is so full and so bright
It may not last forever
And I will die, as will you.
But this moment
This is the future.
This is rolling skies and glittering streams.
It is streetlamps that never seem to turn off
And streets that I don't yet know the names of.

My future is a blur of smudged paint
And though it may not be clear or simple
It is wonderful and it is mine.

The bitter blueness of melancholy hit and kissed me,
That beastal mood, who vouches in burdened pity,
It wraps me in sickly heart-strings & closed me tight,
Longing for breath, I near choked in agony streams,
How passive is this music, while trembling Venus sparks Love,
With long beams of hope declared, but little is there for me!
I so wish my heart will collapse, that suns of silver
Teach me to seek her Light, but with my endeavours lost,
I sit by holy castings of dying babels and their mothers
And weep with them, soon to replay their parts,
Should I suffer these heating cries or leave my place?
The invisible lashings of Melancholy has wounded me,
     Forlorn music plays His beating, and he will not leave me,
     Nor can he be tamed, even by the flaming might of Nike.

If I considered you for a day
Would I know love?

You pull at me
like taffy.

Place a sticky tendril in your mouth,
and deliberate on the sickly sweet
as it coats your tongue.

I look from where you have
taken
and feel
like empty calories.

someday i hope you
and your sticky hands
know.

I C 2H
      5OH = C2   H6O
                              
                       is ***** neat.  
Rearrange to (NH4)HS and  it's Saturn,
breathing sickly.  
Both afford our imagination an atmosphere.
Neither tolerate our flesh living here
Like her,
sore with the boredom of a world spun
like a top for the screaming.

But another cocktail feels like Healing.

I've never met a beauty that was
Without the pain it inevitably brings
Never a gift without tribulation
And even nature gives thorns to its roses

It's a law that everybody and everything obeys

But who are we
To not question this natural authority
To not seek answers in the first person
To just lay back in all this sickly comfort
And turn a blind eye on impossibility

It's a ******* waste, if you ask me!

And yet I am the optimistic hypocrite
Stuck in the same trenches he's dug
Pacing, pacing, pacing his daily rituals
In stagnant comfort, without impossibility
Running from death, and never fighting it

So be that soft beauty, please

Somebody has to and it can't be me

Scouring walls
sanding hands
grazing galls
varnished strands

upward stroll
winging tips
silent roll
grooving rips

sighing depths
whispers fall
staining breaths
unknown wall

senses bare
flooring sand
wetted air
dripping gland

morose dew
sickly lashes
mourning pew,
perching ashes

sleet-river veins
mist-tide lobes
stringing strains
vermilion globes

pale slim
stilling beat
liquid brim
sinking seat.

War; absolute
This will be my macadam into re-assemblage
For if I'm not on edge, I'm taking up too much precious space
What wickedness lies beneath the surface of the skin?
I should know this place better than anyone
But my landscape has become mercurial
Ever changing, impossible to map
I am forced to navigate its pitfalls in ever complicating ways
It has become a desolate place
I alone should rule here, my sovereignty unquestioned
Yet I've become content to be complacent, and have allowed a sickly intruder to slip past my walls
They infect, demoralize: turn my skin to stone
They must be expunged; cut out, snipped from the healthy flesh like a cancer
As one removes a gangrenous foot to save the leg
Though my tools at the moment are blunt, I sharpen them daily with the whetstone afforded to me
They will not continue to expel bile into the bloodstream for long
My strength returns by the hour
They know this, and they tremble
I am the goddess to whom this altar is devoted
I am righteous fury, come to cleanse this blight with holy fire and flood
The war drums sound as the gate is lifted

The iron bell tolls -- judgement day cometh

Have the trees all fallen?
/
In my absence,
Did the lights turn out in Santa Fe?
I’m walking in a shadow,
Cast by who knows what because
The skyline’s bare
/
Now the leaves are gone,
And in their wake the branches
Lie gutted on the pavement
Stripped to shiny bones
That smile and smile,
The call to arms blares out
So sickly sweet
/
A mind rang out across the room
That blazed so hot we’ll never know
And in one blazing human breath
They breathed their last
/
to think they were children
they were just children
/
I feel a great and quiet darkness
Has snuffed out those sparks
That could have ignited the world
And so I wonder
How many million seconds, meant to be,
Now never will?
/
Do good men die so other men
Might learn, or worse still, win?
Will those sparks
Snuffed out in Santa Fe
Ignite this world of apathy
To shame?
/
I ask again,
Have the trees all fallen
Down in Santa Fe?

I want to slash at my skin with the same intensity that the beehive in my skeletal frame has when the worker bees attempt to seal all the broken parts of me sickly sweet

I want to scream so that It goes hoarse because if I’m not being heard what’s the point of having one anyway

I want to take the weight of their spines lift the broken onto my shoulders so that the shrapnel embedded feet they own no longer have to sink deeper
Embedded further

I want to feel love like the love my parents have in the subtle ways  that they check in on each other
In the small favours, they do for each other

More so

I want to hear her voice say the words I have always longed to hear the words that I know won’t be said the words that are difficult to comprehend

Call me naive.
Blinded by a honeymoon phase
and sickly sweet jest

Because I want to keep
this blindfold
pulled down over my eyes.

I don't want to know
what time it is—
day or night, stars and light —
but this comfort
wraps my body and glues me to my bed.

He likes me
He likes me, not
the me I always try and hide behind
but the me that's real.

And he's honey sweet
and golden feat,
how I managed to find him
I'll never know.

He tells me once
twice and again, actually,
that they couldn't have made
a better half for him in a lab
if they had tried.

I'd lift my blindfold to see
you and your gorgeous honey blue eyes
shining through the dark like a moon,
and what we bake together
might just be the most delicious cake maybe ever.

If my words were sugar
I could have told him then
and there, his lips on mine
tasted sweet.
Like everything he says to me.

But I'm bad at baking cakes with no sugar
and all the store had was keyboards and pens
so I wrote him this instead;

To my perfect other half,
Each joke you make resounds
laugh for laugh, I sculpt you a present
epitaph commemorating you... for you
with words, to say

I think...
I might love you?

Nick was a lost boy
With a whispering heart
He held proper Victorian sadness
Until his public strength bowed
As it does with the artistic type
His soul beating modal
And his mask of gilded paper mache
With glue dripping and drying to fragile dreams
He needed to get back to the pastures of Tanworth
Yet London had other ideas
And his stiff upper lip cracked
He was a poet, you see
Who danced with trees...
And everyone knows
Butterflies don't ride bikes
Though that would be beautiful
To see one on a banana seat
Sailing down a country lane...
Alas, butterflies can simply fly away if a bike objects
And feel no pain
But Nick was hurt as he fell to the ground
His sickly hunched posture told of a great weight
Shoulders struggled to shepherd the world
With only Flower his power
And Pen his staff
Sadness met the River Man
And the River Man broke down
Poor, the fame of falling poets
Rich, the earth’s garden of toiled words
Caked under soiled writers nails
A headstone,
"Now we rise
And we are everywhere"
His tailwind to us
Go and look at what our fellow poets eyes do see
And bid hello to another artist’s soul on parade
For, as with you, they too are simply lost
And desperate for a garden to share and grow


© 2019 MJL