Clipped

It’s been too many nights with you
Now to be without
No one should feel this alone
I stay awake
Tears playing across warm skin
Wondering if tonight I am in love with a man who is not

These days we wrap ourselves in bright smiles
And ignorance
Talk safe
Keep low
And so our wings are clipped
We move mindlessly around this empty pen
Assuming, abusing over and over again

Go

And I can’t love anyone but you
So here is my heart
Keep it
I have no use for it now

Gather yourself at the end of time
And I will love you there

Flash your will against me now
Relieve this red smear
Smother the beating
Dull the pulse

Leave now
This aching heart will never cease
Don’t speak, stay
Or forever hold your peace

Untitled

Proud as the father of a newborn son
Who holds his head so high
But will that father stick around and watch his son
Until the day he dies?
And if so are his motives true
Or is his love made of lies?
Because his pride seems very strangeIn my, a cynic’s eyes.

The poet

Baby, take the pen over there
Bring it here
And write the way you feel right now
Bleed every page, paragraph, sentence, word, letter
Across this body
Okay so I’m not a blank page
But there will always be space for you to write on me
With or without your pen
Because your eyes scrawl nothing but imbrued prose here over me
Lay me down take up my shirt
Strike a poem in ink down my spine and let it run
Dance in a spiralling verse of blood and love
As my eyes glaze over, vacant
‘Lost in a rapture spun of your words’
((You know))
Let go. Weep it along the small of my back and I swear I will not tell a soul
Turn me over. Open your mouth
Speak what you create as my breath deepens and every action, every motion I make
Is involuntary
Whisper will you? All the things you want to feel
Breathe the love you know you want and I promise I will make it to you
But first I want to inhale you
Stop. Look. Listen
Embrace the silence only poetry brings
And then
Then…
With me and my poet alone in the bedroom
Nothing else matters

Hello

Night falls
Keeps falling
Like rock-a-bye baby
And I lie here
Waiting for you to fall into a sleep where I cannot join you

You say hello

But I don’t believe you

Tough

Tough on joy. Tough on the causes of joy.

I learned the different sounds of silence on a need to know basis.
I needed to know, early on, when the muffle of indifference glazed into glassy irritation, or frosted into icy annoyance, or towered into incipient rage; but I found a magic shield to protect me from it all. Self blame. I got there first.
Tears and pleading never worked but stammering apologies and gutting self-reproach did the trick.
The quietness soon mellowed, like a cougher silently purring.

Missing You

For once the muffled goodnight could not be heard through the bellowing silence that fell to the ground in rags, as we laughed, in my head the way we laughed back then…

Because

Laughter

Is

So

Far

Away these days

((Oh yes))

And so are you

“It”

Vanquished, settled and accepted.

Broken down to silent dust and floating between commitments like a piece of air. The space of separation, mind, body; strangers in the hectic seclusion of the day.
There is a calm sweeping the afternoon. Seconds ticking. Moments of my life, gone forever.

You never used to make me smile, so I can live without you.

Nothing’s changed. I’m no more alone in the world than anybody else.
Sometimes I hear you crying in the night, imagine your little hands, little feet, little fingers, little toes…
Shapes, stars, pictures, colours, green.
Hospital green.
- I can still see it. My nostrils still burn with the smell of disinfectant. You never used to make me smile…

But now these lonely nights bring back visions of ‘back then’ – blood gushing, spilling out as sterilized metal scratches away the surface of an unborn child, as torn flesh slowly rots away in the womb.
Walls, splashed with the blood of human pain. An ‘it’ I thought, and yet he cries – night after night, creeping into my sleep. He speaks, but his words never reach me they just seem to – fall to the floor, and then he fades away.

I awake, drenched in hurt, and sweat, and loss, and confusion, all I want to do is figure out my life. Figure out my life? Do people really do that? Do they do that when they’re falling down a deep, dark hole?
Then again, you never used to make me smile.
I’ll forget, I tell myself again, and draw the curtains, let the sun stream through and chase away my thoughts. The light, it blinds me for a second but you – you blind me for life.

The Silence

The silence is chaotic.
I can hardly breathe, hardly see.
Shivering as wave after wave comes crashing toward me from the dark and desperate sea.
It’s floating around me, caving in.
Strangled by my own dreams,
Stalked by passion,
Drowned in my love, my lust, my temper, my sorrow,
A stagnant rainbow, all the colours of my soul.
I can see home from here,
The cool blue at it’s knees, singing my praises from the ends of the earth,
And yet – it’s never close enough…
The tide will soon rush back, leaving my emotions lazy, untidy on a heap on the shore
Where is my rock?
Where is my life?
And will it be, that the ocean will drain me and carry everything away?
Leaving me here.
DeadLike the foam on the sea

Simply

When I speak of him
I can’t explain
My words are simply what they are
Purely because he is who he is

Pond Man

Pond man wakes, yawns, stretches.
Saplings push up, green unfolding, rise, rise, rise to high trees.
Lilies burst and die, over and over, pink fireworks.
In a blur of busy people a house lurches us, thatch shaped to a roof, rots, is thatched again.
Girls clutching notepads flicker round pond man’s edges, briefer than mayflies.Pond man yawns, sleeps, another day done.

I should know you

You speak beautifully
Your words they cling to me like the stench of raw onion on a sharp knife
Amazing
I return here to listen to you
To take it all in – you make sense to me

I know nothing of you
I only know that I should know you
Nothing serious need be
But serious friends I would plead
I would like to know you better
Maybe know you forever

Stamping Stars

Fire
My reason or my remedy?
I ask you.
Have you ever seen so much hate
So much passion
So much fear
As the kind you poured together and beat into the clear paste you rubbed into your skin?
Like suntan lotion
This amazing, invisible protection
Fire
The question or the conclusion?
Stamping stars in the sky from every direction as your heavy heart falls light as a feather to the ground
And you break
Softly
Silently
Into a river of tears
Why?Which liar told you they would put out the flames?

Unheard

The tears on my face
Filled with your lies
My mind in complete chaos
Hating every minute I’m alive
Helpless to the situation
And this desperate lack of communication
You don’t seem to careYou sleep as I cry

Words

Broken, deserted
Again I stand against the loneliness
Silent as can be
You don’t see

He tore my heart out with a sentence
I cannot move, can’t speak
Although words are crucial
In times like these

As…

Sometimes I feel as lonely and a suitcase on an airport carousel, slowly going round
And round
And roundAfter all the passengers have gone away

Pond Man

Pond man wakes, yawns, stretches.
Saplings push up, green unfolding, rise, rise, rise to high trees.
Lilies burst and die, over and over, pink fireworks.
In a blur of busy people a house lurches us, thatch shaped to a roof, rots, is thatched again.
Girls clutching notepads flicker round pond man’s edges, briefer than mayflies.Pond man yawns, sleeps, another day done.

You Kill Me

…But I still think of you sometimes.

You kill me every time you speak. Your words – they skip out merrily with blades on their tails and happily, prettily – cut me to shreds. You make me worthless with a whisper, with guilt-trip carefully lined up as plan B.
Eyes dry, I wonder if it feels the same to have bucketfuls of tears forced into your sockets, to eat all the sharp words you want to spit out because I can hurt you so much more.

You kill me.
You kill me every time you cry. Every time you put yourself so deep down that no one can find you and you don’t get help you call on me. You kill me when you suck out all my energy to feed yourself. I wouldn’t mind, I really wouldn’t mind but it never stops.

You kill me cause I don’t understand. I don’t understand and I sure as hell can’t work out the rules to your game. But that’s exactly what you want, every ounce of power you can get. You’re already watching your game come to a desperate end.

You kill me. You bleed me dry. Tell me I’m nothing, over and over again. You think I don’t know that the reason I’m nothing is because you’re taking me, bit by bit, consuming me, abusing me.

You kill me because it hurts more to be with you than without you. Because it hurts so much to see that every time you pull me close, eventually you will push me away. You say you love me but you only want to love me on your terms, There’s something craven about you that makes me want to look away, because that desperate look on your face is starting to repulse me, and you won’t let whatever it is go – or it won’t let you go.

Inside you there’s an ugliness way beyond definition, and I want to break past it.

I haven’t seen your face in so long. Every time I see you in my head – you’re crying. I feel so guilty all the time – if I believed in hate, I’d probably hate you.

You kill me because I want you the way you’re ‘supposed’ to be. I’m selfish I know, but I can’t deny it. You kill me because you’re the only one who ever made me cry.
But most of all you kill me cause I miss you.

Lost Affair With Loneliness

Sometimes, Loneliness’

I wonder weather you love me more than I care to love you. It was fun at first, I could do anything – a way out, escape from pain that hurts and into the sort of pain you can easily get addicted to. ‘Self-destruction’ they call it. Oh how little they know. You tricked me into playing your game. You stole me. So I left you; closed the little heart-shaped door behind me and went a little way away to start my life again.

But I was thirsty, and nothing and no one could satisfy me and you knew it didn’t you? You knew I’d always find my way ‘home’.

Right where I left you. You are of course – beautiful, as I knew you would be. Chained to the ground, under lock and key.
We gaze and one another, Loneliness – you are stunning. You look down at a key, a small way out of your reach – my key.

I know that I shouldn’t bring you the key. I know that I will bring you the key, not immediately, no. I will resist a little, but eventually I will bring you the key. I shake furiously in your presence. You know it’s because of fear. Fear of what happens should I set you free. Fear of what happens if I don’t.

I really should leave.

I do not.

My fingers tremble as I lay the key in your hand. You look so strange – amused even.
It’s now that I remember I have friends to be with, family to see to, work to do, a life to live. I turn and run. My thoughts snatch at me as I go - my breath comes out in rags. Keep running.

I hear you.

I hear you coming. I don’t know why I try to run, I cannot outrun you.We both know this.

Temptation

Temptation, you play across my skin, and whisper broken promises, softly, sweetly. A simple touch; ensnare me – you and your evil plan. Oh, sweet temptation, how you plague me – with every step, every thought, every breath, I feel you, thinking with me, thinking for me.
Why put a smile on your pretty face? It doesn’t become you. So gorgeous in your dark ways, I am powerless to resist. You are my light, my darkness. A fallen angel sent from hell straight into my arms.

This love was made to kill me.This love was meant to last.

Even Though I Hate You

You are like a black cat, a screeching symbol of life’s hard luck.
Am I desperately in love with loneliness, knowing that you lie in it and it lies in you?

I like to watch you creep through the dark alleyways of my mind, slipping in and out of secret windows no one guessed you’d ever know about. Stealing the small things as if we wouldn’t even know they were gone.
It’s like we go searching for something obvious, because we like to think that the truth lies in simple things. But what’s truth to me when you hold me so close to your lies that I fall through your trap and get lost in your memory.

You are beauty.

You sew my eyes together and blind me in a mixture of blood and love. I love it. I love those pretty lies, warming me up. I’ll be your fool; I’ll be your fool.
You life me up to heights I’ve never seen before, and we sing the silence against a smudged chocolate sky. Life is an illusion, love is a game. It’s as if in my own way I believe you - even though I hate you.
God – I’m in love with loneliness, even though he’s killing me.

Roses Are…

You’re under my skin
Your face etched on the insides of my eyelids
Your laugh screeching in my ears
Long gone
Long lost
Still here

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’m alive
And so are you
My blood is red
My veins are blue
I’m lying here
Still hating you

You’re crawling through my hair
Your taste burning on my tongue
Crying acid tears on my chest
Far fetched
Far away
Too close

Roses are red
Violets are blue
My mouth is dry
My eyes are too
My heart is black
My veins are blue
I’m trapped down here
Just wanting you

I’m broken
And you
Long gone
Long lost
Still here

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’m dying here
And where are you?
My lungs cave in
Your eyes are blue
I close my ownAnd picture you

The Small Things

She is, indeed, the perfect example of beauty, sings a song so sweet it draws them near, seducing their hearts, corrupting their minds.

She loves them true, each one, each man, and she weeps - even as she feeds on their flesh, she weeps.

She breathes deeply, her bare chest rising, falling, sending him into a trance; filling his mind with excitement and passion. Making him hard at her touch.
Oh, poor creature. Delighting in only the small things. Such as the sweetness of her victim’s last breath.

‘Why Writers Are Dreamers’

Breathe easy.
Silently.
Breathe easy and no one will know.
Why?
Why is it so important that they don’t see? Because. Because…

Answers with a look,
Un-ashamed, insolent, mocking; but with eyes wide, childlike;
Seen too much,
Knows too much,
Forgets too little.

Smiles a pretty smile,
A shaky smile,
A lie.
How many lies has this small mouth uttered,
With a word,
With a laugh,
With a smile?

‘Bravely’ denies herself the few gifts this life offers for keeps.
Betrayal and abandonment, over and over again.

Why?
Only I know
Only I can tell.

She lives, loves, creates this fantasy life inside her hectic colourful mind that consumes her every second, every day. Barely has time to breathe in the outside world; comes up every now and again for air – a small dose of realisation to send her crashing back to her secret fix of perfection.
How she believes in destiny, and love, and truth so badly it makes her lie awake for endless hours pondering why and what these things actually are. Why writers are dreamers and wrong is so right, and why she loves clichés.

It’s funny outside, listening to your life from behind closed doors.
Somewhere, between the ever popular fixation of where the universe ends and this infinite range of colour, she drifts into her perfect place, while outside, in the real world the most perfect winter sunrise approaches corners of the world she is yet to see.

“It”

Vanquished, settled and accepted.

Broken down to silent dust and floating between commitments like a piece of air. The space of separation, mind, body; strangers in the hectic seclusion of the day.
There is a calm sweeping the afternoon. Seconds ticking. Moments of my life, gone forever.

You never used to make me smile, so I can live without you.

Nothing’s changed. I’m no more alone in the world than anybody else.
Sometimes I hear you crying in the night, imagine your little hands, little feet, little fingers, little toes…
Shapes, stars, pictures, colours, green.
Hospital green.
- I can still see it. My nostrils still burn with the smell of disinfectant. You never used to make me smile…

But now these lonely nights bring back visions of ‘back then’ – blood gushing, spilling out as sterilized metal scratches away the surface of an unborn child, as torn flesh slowly rots away in the womb.
Walls, splashed with the blood of human pain. An ‘it’ I thought, and yet he cries – night after night, creeping into my sleep. He speaks, but his words never reach me they just seem to – fall to the floor, and then he fades away.

I awake, drenched in hurt, and sweat, and loss, and confusion, all I want to do is figure out my life. Figure out my life? Do people really do that? Do they do that when they’re falling down a deep, dark hole?
Then again, you never used to make me smile.
I’ll forget, I tell myself again, and draw the curtains, let the sun stream through and chase away my thoughts. The light, it blinds me for a second but you – you blind me for life.

Incubus

Incubus

Unseen, he lies
Behind the walls
Beneath the floors
My midnight visitor
My silent muse
I am unsafe ((unsafe))
Here. Not here.
Trapped in the last of his sweetness
The worst of his pain
Lay it down
Lay down your hurt
Lay down your shell
No strings attached
Just heavy chains
And you, and me
As my tongue rips slowly at the surface of well-painted-over lies and
Strips
You
Bare
This isn’t sex
This isn’t love
You are here
My eyes open, the darkness surrounds meYou are not here.