words moved me, and
God
i wanted my fingers to blister and my
bones to ache
but my mind withers and my heart breaks
i swallowed ink and still i couldn’t
make the words flow like they used to as if
almost as if
they refuse to

I ***** stanzas -
I spew literary clutter
My poetry is aimless
The words all muddled

I write unsharpened
The point pressed pointless
A fire smoldering with no tinder
The universe questions its existence

Like smoke you dance in my daydreams,
Beckoning me with **** me eyes and a lazy grin
An orange hue sunsetting your fire,
The curl of your finger saying come hither

And I wake from this like fire into water
I watch you twirl slower and slower
Into steam, you disappear like the wind
and with resignation again I'll dream

I think of you when I am alone.

When I am cold, and the warmth of a duvet does not quite match the heat of your body.

When it is 2 in the morning, and my thoughts jumble up and form a caricature of you.

When I am asleep - my few hours of refuge from the constant letdown of sober consciousness, bombarded with images of you, dredged up from memories I would rather forget.


I wish that was it.
But I see you everywhere else.

In a sea of gin you sailed,
To conquer a future you dreamt of
In a hallucinogen induced haze
You exhaled smoke with every breath,
Fogging the world over with your intoxicated ideas
Sentencing rebel thoughts to death
You figured you were in an epic,
The ones where the hero stood against the world alone
But only you were against you and it was tragic
That battle was lost when you sold your heart for a bottle of poison disguised as magic

Growing up, I watched my mother leave a man she married too young. My father, in his grief, traded tears for beer and a marked ring finger for a string of women. I swore there and then I would never believe in happiness.

Growing up, I watched as my mother’s boyfriend hit my younger brother, careful to leave bruises only where cloth covered up skin. I watched as my mother watched: silently, and never raising a finger. But I was the better person, I think: I was waiting my turn. I swore there and then that I would never trust anyone, not even family.

Growing up, I watched my older siblings stumble through the pitfalls of teen life: they fall out of love as quickly as they fell in, and rebelled against anyone who dared presume authority over their lives. I watched as they sought the attention our parents could not give: from strangers, no less. I swore there and then that I would never need or want of anything from anyone.

trembling hands
they are trying to let you go
but you keep ending up here
still you remain

promised that you'd stay
i wish you wouldn't keep your word
you tried to leave, i know
still you remain

idly i searched for you with you

Must've known you in a previous life
You were the sun, and I was grass worshipping the sky
Must've known you in a previous life
You were the sea, and I was a cliff worn away by your tide
Must've known you in a previous life
You were a flower, and I was a bee heartbroken by your side

Would've known you in our current lives
Intertwined like vines but never really seeing eye-to eye

I have written enough to fill libraries about you.
I have painted enough to fill a museum or two.
I tried capturing worlds with words and universes with brushstrokes and everything in-between.
Did you know there are over a million words in the English language? And only 10 million shades can the human eye see.
I didn’t. It took your presence to realize there were so few words to describe your eyes,
And your absence made me notice every shade of gray caught in the damp morning light.
Flowers will grow from the dirt beneath my ribs and the world will die a million times over before I forget to write about you.
I hope you don’t stay forever, but I pray my words do.

Stubborn as all hell, I am
When you say you just want to be friends
But what happens when I kiss someone else
And want you on the receiving end?

As I pull off her dress,
Wishing it was us making a mess
Feel fire rolling off her tongue, in full heat
But my heart still plays your beat

She shudders and moans the way you used to,
But still
Still she’s not you

I cringe at the sound of your name
(my heart leaps when I hear it)
I am outwardly disgusted with news of you
(my knowledge of you wants refreshing)
I am sick of your inclusion in my thoughts
(my mind is serene only when it’s filled with you)
I hate not knowing if I said something right or wrong
(my exhilaration when you deign to respond)
I lie, because I hope the falsehood comes true
(my lies are for even myself, but never for you)

Fire in my veins, blood in my mouth
Her mind was shattered, while mine travelled south
Did he cut himself on your pieces? Or did you learn to put yourself back together?
I hope you grew out of finding beauty in sadness, that you understood the possibility of happiness without depression.
I hope you learned never to fall in love with a broken mirror.

I’ve seen myself in the mirror.
it’s one thing to acknowledge your existence,
and another to question your place in the universe.

I sleep with the television turned on.
While I scream, it drones.
I don’t think I’ve watched a minute of it in the last three years though, I’m glued to my phone.
We’re glued to our phones.

I don’t yell much anymore.
Lack of living has beat the life out of me.
I’d worry about what any of this means, but being chemically inbalanced means I’m prospectively challenged.
So I don’t worry about it.

Maybe tomorrow will be different.

You have to understand. I know it was my fault, but you need to accept the fact that you chose me. The cynic. You chose the one who would break up with you, and you chose wrong. You believed in huge romantic gestures, the kind you so often see in your Hollywood productions. You believed that love was real, as if it was something you could hold in your hand. And if it was, then I am sorry, but it was crushed in my palm and the smoke breathed in to coat my heart with yet another shell.

I remember when we sat on a park bench at night, and your head lay nestled in the hollow of my shoulder.
My arm circled around your waist, reaching to meet its twin’s wrist.
I looked at you, and you blushed, and told me that staring was rude.
I spelled ‘M-I-N-E’ in the space between your collarbones and your brow with kisses, and breathed words I never dared to speak.
You were flowers in May, the sea spray in July, and the cold wind of November.
I was obsessed, and I knew I would never be good enough.
Two days later, we broke up.
Every kiss since then has left me lonelier.

I am haunted, I think
By the ghost of you
It lingers in hallways
And in the corners of my view

The faint outline of your head
I can see, lying on my chest
Ethereal hair brushing my skin
While I lie with someone else

It is worse when I am alone
Staring at the space between my hands
My delusions resuscitating
The memory of how well you fit that span

"Write about me," she said.

No. How could I?
I felt nothing.
I was nothing.
Putty in her hands,
just another boy in her bed.
Another notch on her bedpost
Another night she wanted head.

With all honesty, I was only
here because I wanted the same:
to dive in quick and after,
still feel sane.

"Stop writing about me," you said.

No.

She felt like fire,
leaving scorch marks across
the inside of my chest

It burned everything I was
and I was left like residue
from a catalyst used wrong

I felt like ice
running from her flames
melting under her smoldering skin
I felt fluid and chill
but I was burning up too fast and


I feel like air.
Quiet.

Be silent, I wish you could just listen
For once, at least to my honest admission
I found stars in your eyes, and fire in your gaze-
IT'S ALL WRONG
I will never ever get it
I wanted to write about you
But it's making me feel tragic
You are the fuel, and the flame
It burns well, but ******* all the same

I hope this gets to you like you got to me
I am up to my ears in unwritten words
I hope to god you understand why I could never breathe
I am up to my ears in unsung verses

most normal nights it's about something stupid or other, like my mother's tendency to cry when I visit her

like my inability to find something I could stick with for all of adulthood other than writing terrible anecdotes on existentialism

like the look of abject disappointment on my father's face when he found out I was getting dropped from school again

like the whole of 2015, where I spent all year convalescing behind a bar counter, convinced I could save peanuts for a degree

like when I watch motes of dust wrestle in dim light and tell myself it's just a phase


it's just a phase

I was tongue deep in her when you crossed my mind
And I wish you would go away because I can't stand closing my eyes

And imagining it was you there I just miss you something terrible
And I wish I could take back everything I ever said

Some nights I dream of your face
And when I wake up I have the most painful of aches

It starts in my chest and spreads everywhere else
I wish I never ****** up, Barbie

I felt like a thief, undeserving of the air around me
Every breath stolen from the lungs of someone less unworthy
Even then I couldn't stop breaking hearts
Despoiling souls, taking them apart
It filled me with completion
Causing another's destruction
Reducing them to shattered nerves,
Trembling hands and ****** curves
It made me feel significant, that I existed
Just only with the toll of self-hate

I wonder if you know how it's like to be irrevocably aching. I wonder if you understand when I stumble out a club at 4 on a Saturday, my hands filled with her and my head filled with you. I wonder if you can tell that I am spineless even when I am inebriated, that sobriety only brings back a lump in the throat that came when you left like a sick, sick, sick replacement. I wonder all these things, and sometimes I don't have to wonder, because I know you don't, not a little bit, not at all.

regret
[ri-gret]
/rɪˈɡrɛt/
noun. the lump in your throat that arrived when she left

It ached. I remembered you, and it ached.
I walked where our feet treaded, my sneakers in sync with the prints we had left in my memory.
I held her hand, and thought about how warm yours felt that first night our lips touched.
The smell of strawberries coming from her hair suffused the chill night air, and I couldn’t help but compare how similar it was to the flowery aroma of yours.
Almost angrily I pulled her chin up, and stared deep into brown eyes that looked so much like yours;

I kissed her,

And it didn’t ache anymore.

We met when summer was dying and over the flutter of their wings you couldn’t hear the birds sing.

The breeze in the night couldn’t cool me down long enough to stay away, but still you were worried.

You were right.

I left when fall came, letting the chill set in and seep through your skin.

I strayed, but not far enough to not notice your heart wither and curl up like so many golden leaves.

still i wait. will the Stars deign
To reply? skyward i plead my case
but my best has fallen just shy
i see them leave, one by one
even the clouds have left the Sea behind

Still I wait.

you were my Yoko,
but i traded starfire for
a couple more thighs to keep the colder
nights away but I wouldn't
dare presume to be
Lennon, writing verses across the universe
instead I scrawl on the walls and hope to
god you never see your name
scribbled so facetiously
indelible, never forgotten but so undeserved

It was 5 in the afternoon
We hid from the world behind a closed door
The smell of flowers stuck under our noses
Your pale lips shook me to my core

of course i dreamt about then
insidious, hazy but now all i smell is
vanilla and it reminds me of a heart
twinge the way it envelops my
sense of self. the hill i would die on is
the hill i ran from, the spiral
downward familiar i
wish you would see me burn

i hate seeing my reflection - it is a
stark reminder that i am here.
the call of the void is always fleeting - how easy would it be to step in front of a bus?
i struggle with coming to terms with this - even suicide is not an option, even dead i wouldn’t want the responsibility of my own death on me.

sometimes she forgets, and
she wakes me up by touch - i hate those
late nights, because i am robbed
then of hypnopompic tranquility.

most days i wonder what it’s
like, having zero obligations -
i dozed off in the surf, painted neon blue
by some nearby coral beast’s castoffs.
it wasn’t dawn i was waiting for,
but just the tide rising high enough
to submerge me completely -
my lovely wicked moon its accomplice.

I couldn't look into the mirror today
I was afraid to meet the bloodshot eyes of someone I barely knew
I'd seen that look on a dozen faces before his, and I couldn't deal with disappointment right now.

what a riot.

I've read this before, in countless YA novels that ate away at my brain; the soda of the written word
"I don't recognise myself," he says to himself, fingers dancing over his reflection.
"I have to figure out who I am."

what a riot.

I took another hit, and another and another
I couldn't afford it, but needs must-
And I needed to forget.
I couldn't look into the mirror today.
I'd recognise him too well.

what a riot.

So out of it - it’s a shame you had to learn to write their names down on skin, because paper was left for better things, for obituaries and weddings
way past using, we’ve regressed into abusive but you don’t believe me when i say
**** helps, sober i overthink the bigger picture, sober i don’t stop to smell the flowers

seeing is believing, i avoid mirrors just to avoid the ****** with bloodshot eyes - but even eyelids scrunched shut i still see myself


I can only hope that one day the ache will outhurt the fear of whatever’s after

It is burning outside. I
argued with the stars too much
I think and now the
sun wants to melt me. And I
would let it, let it
thaw the tiredness from my
bones, let all of what I am
seep through the cracks
and dissipate like old ghosts
confronted by the sunrise
but instead
I am burning on the inside.

I dream about you still
even in my waking hours you come, unsolicited, like bugs in the walls of an unkempt house
and I would let you in,
and warm you up by the firelight
but you insist on staying away
and I am left with soft echoes of you
haunting the recesses of my brain
I wish you would come back
completely, or leave forever
because I cannot live with halfdead memories
Only to wake up and feel empty again

i’ve never seen her in the sun.
i wouldn’t care to,
to see light touch where i never have
to see light own what i could never

maybe i read more into it than i should have.

i doubted it most nights, but every once in a while you’d look at me that way and smile -

and all i ever wanted was someone to look at me that way, and smile.

the tight ball of nerves sitting in my gut
has not left
only you, everything else is white noise

do you know this dream? tied
to a fence, barking. the mailman comes, afraid -
he confuses your overeager friendliness with ill feeling. do you
know this dream? the sun never goes away - your cratered imperfection never shows his face. do
you know this dream? on her sleeve worn, you wear away.
the wind never blows you straight - do you know
this dream?

suppose we splinter at times.
i remember splitting knuckles on gravel and
tar. staring at the insides of my traitor hands, thinking it was remarkable how pain looked so
different, so comforting as opposed
to how it felt

it's always a little wet this time of
year. I don't mind the cold
so much as the dampness, but it fans
the anger a bit, when it should be tempered.

I am mad, yes, but not the
manic kind, I'm mad the way old men
rap on your windows with their
bony knuckles and yell at you through the thin glass for playing the guitar too loud. I'm mad the way the same ***** old men try to
drink and smoke and ****
themselves to death,
trying to drown old hurt or
some ******* like that but it all comes
out in the wee hours, covered in bile.

they say you lose the voice first
the way she sounds, the way her laugh makes your toes curl
i think you lose everything in a night
when you stay up late wondering how the two of you died

I've told no one this but I always did
love your madness. it was honest and intense. but i didn't come any closer because
it was like wildfire, and I'm more used
to the cold.
you were still in my head
then, and I kept myself out of your grip.
just out of your warmth. it was bad
enough to see other men burn but I never
did even once think I was above it all.
hell, i tried to smother your inferno. now I'm the one on fire.

my dreams have been wanting, as of late
it's a shame you cannot wake up dead
i dream of the shiny hook in my throat
of blue skin and bodies that just won't bloat

are we fishing for words here?
or do we want them to disappear?

my mouth is a graveyard, filled with everything I could never say. the musings, the ravings, they lose sense as soon as daylight graces them and they unravel and unravel and unravel into a giant headache, the kind only opiates can help with and even then


even then the yelling does not subside

I vaguely remember us on the edge of a canal
Fists clenched, holding the night sky
Standing, screaming that we were alive
Back then it wouldn't have been a lie

And on barstools as well, faint guitar riffs
Echoing through smoky pub air
Heads lain flat on damp tables
Wish we'd known then the difference between having purpose and simply breathing

Also our beds, with the lights dimmed
Asking questions neither could answer
Just two ignorant kids waxing philosophy
Just two ignorant kids already forgetting how to live

i’ve had them, resting their heads on my chest
listening
listening
listening
to the same ******* beat that my doctor tells me isn’t right, and they think it’s for them.

she slowed it down so well some nights i felt weightless, every ba-thump a microsecond offbeat, my entire being syncopated -


flit.