16

I know I-
Am not a perfect animal, enema,
Example for your chance le gloire
Fall asleep, do a dance
And keep pining for that second chance
Because God is gone, left alone
With the quiet, rustic hotel bones
You awake, in the midday ashen glow,
‘Cuffed to the faith that you didn’t know you’d need
Settle down, and come around
Put your souvenir on the merry-go-round
Skinned memorabilia, awash in your blood
You almost didn’t wash him off because there’s
Something in that act that says
You belong to me now, my red-headed cherub
My swing of the sultan,
My burden,
My Love,
My child,
Realisant mon espoir

Worth

I crept away from your cave
And sought out reprieve
In a fantasy where,
Sheltered by hollowed lies
I could peace together the broken mirror
Of my worth
 
With bloodied hands I glued the shards
Into a linen mosaic of time-altered memories
And dreary mid-day awakenings
Haze of the carbon monoxide
That slipped from the tongue
And into my worth
 
I always wanted to be an artist
To carry and swim with
The chords that needed to reverberate in our hearts
The words that we needed to hear
The lies that needed to be revealed
The pieces that needed to be placed
The worth I wanted to feel

Looking out the Window of my 3rd floor Room

5:15 PM

Spindly branches stretch beyond the lacquer

Spider webs trapped like ghosts by the Sun’s dying rays

Branches eschewed of color – but behind that tinted window,

They seem so alive

Ce que j’ai vu

Orange lamps burning in the distance call to mind

Memories of Victorian London in the town square where I

Then a women was slaughtered by you then a man

With red lilies splashed like paint drops across the muddied alleys

A sickly sweet thing to pass into your warm embrace whilst the cold mud slowly seeped

Into my veins shining greater truths that now dance along

The fringes of my mind I don’t want to seem ungrateful

But perhaps you could’ve let me go that day just watched

And let me go                       

Old Habits

I hear breezes in the distance,

The soft call of a dying God’s voice

Just beneath the mossy timber,

Lies the snake, coiled and grotesque

The cat crouches, seeing with eyes far older,

Than it’s skin

“Shiver me timbers”

Sings the boy in my dreams

As he throws a stone

Into the last

Window

Sick

I’m sick of sitting at bus stops waiting for my train to arrive

I know trains don’t visit bus stops but that doesn’t stop me from wanting

The train to come

And I know you never gave these things much thought because you never had much time

For anyone but yourself

And I know this because I am the same way

Because I too want to crawl under the bed sheets and sleep all day

My cheek pressed against the voice of a girl I don’t know anymore

And I want to have friends but I don’t want them near me

Because I don’t want to get close because that’s an assumption

And assumptions make something out of nothing

And I’m not ready to talk about procreation

Because I’m barely nineteen years old and I just found out I have a dick

I don’t know what this is for and I don’t want to know

I want to go outside and play a game of baseball

Not even a game I just want to throw rocks

At the people who walk by,

And scream, and cry, and giggle

Because they scatter like ants under a magnifying glass

And I find a certain comfort in knowing that we are nothing

But insects

Victim

I have nothing left to say

Bad men took the words away

They came and left a place to hurt

Served screaming soup

For dessert

Nothing ever comes to misters

P.O. Box address for packaged blisters

A place where I can put to rest

My fissures, geysers,

Pedantic lovers

Moat surrounded heart,

A place where you can start,

A place where you can rest,

Where you can draw breath,

In.

Just let something in.

A rule is all you need

When you realize

That every bed time story

Is a lie.

A rule, a God.

A blade of grass to hold onto singing,

“This is mine”.

Baggy pants that scrape the floor,

Lost to use, to disuse.

Melodramatic teenagers jump off the sides of buildings,

Leaking out.

Hold onto my blood for Jesus gave it to me.

Filled my drunk body up with wine and gave it life,

With a snap,

Of his twenty three fingers.

Lost moat-heart,

Leaking out onto the floor,

Christ’s red-wine,

Screaming of our divine

Design

Crowd Surfing

I always see my own breath

Before I jump

The pearl-skinned Scandinavian Princes

Beat there drums in communion

With my feet

It isn’t like falling at all

Or submission

It is flight             

Because their hands are like God

And if I don’t jump,

I’m already dead

Kingdom

A Pepsi-red sky frames the white stone

City-still shadows swim across its face

Dry leaves fill the cold air

And invisible children rap their knuckles

On tree trunks the color of skin

Stone sieve, heir to the dead winter

Noble corpse, that headstone

Leaves lament their fallen father

Whose neck now enthrones,

Lord and marker

Statuesque carcass, preserved

By the rock

Preserved,

Like men wish their souls

Could be

Dan Smith

There’s a man screaming into an empty crowd

His face painted by the sweat dripping from his furrowed brows

His hands hold a microphone in a knotted grimace

A purple horizon cuts the room,

Dipping undertones into the man’s words

There’s not enough blood and sweat left on the floor

So the man shakes his head and wrings it like a used towel

But he bleeds nothing but tears

And angrily he spouts another line as the agony climbs

Octaves bounce and dance, pain-skinned balloons can’t fly,

When they’re filled with screams

Around and around his seizures dip into rapture

A sweet serenity slipped inside the madness

The eye of the storm

A slim smile creaks beneath his barbed mustache

A crack of joy beneath the grief

AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She is crushed like the leaves, of a tree in a storybook’s yellowed pages. A stream full of silt from yesterday’s beating. She was my holy ghost before I knew I didn’t believe. And her ankles were chains sweeping into my veins, singing softly.

She is tangled in my hair, of the dreams I wouldn’t dare. No I could never dream of anything. There was nothing else left to dream of, and of her I wouldn’t dare dream.

Like the moss covered stone, I am always left hanging. A dead thing giving life, searching for my others that surely must be inside of her.

A coward, yes. Afraid of life. A self-proclaimed heretic, mewling in the shadows of my heart, never loud enough to burst the strings, but how they ache as the singing builds inside. Oh how I wish I could die. Save myself from my heart, save myself from my shame that I have convinced myself is shame, my love…

But she was just a ghost. Just an echo of my lonely soul. Just a whisper in my sleep, as I chased after her dream. Singing in the summertime high school halls, hanging from the pearly teeth on the wall, gold emblazoned victory-plastic, never more out of place, then when she was home.

Human

At night I toss and turn along the curvature of my slender spine. A gentle touch from the sky lets me know I’m going to be up all night. And if I dream it’s only because I haven’t got the time. I haven’t got the time.

I haven’t got the time for thinking and for caring so I’ll let my neurons burn like Chinese fireworks. I’ll hold my hammer with a grin before I dip it in my skull. And maybe you should think that you could think instead of dream. And maybe sometimes you should think.

Oh God, oh God, can you tell me your name? I’m sorry but my mommy says I’m not allowed to talk to strangers. You probably wonder why I even bother wondering. I can only laugh and say there’s no hope for humankind.

It kills me that my hatred turns me into a killer. I could not save me from me if I wanted to. But you hold on for hope and love for me. And I can’t leave so long as you’ve got your leash around my love for you. Pull as hard as I want but it’s sewed in like the teeth I tried to spit out.

My teeth were never meant for eating. They only helped me find my voice. Just like kites were never meant to fly. They were meant to be held down by a child. When I find that I can’t speak for fighting, I eat the teeth I so despise. Their bony fragments travel inside me. I cough blood just to make a sound.

No Screaming Allowed

I have no regrets

About the sadness I’ve let into my life

The depression that ate away at my insides

Made room for the birth of my soul

It led me astray from the popular enlightenment

Standardized by the trend setters and the beloved

The glorified toothpicks that scratch at our brains

Until a crisp pink mural of unity is etched in our heads

Speak yes and you shall receive

That is why I was given a voice

Not to scream or yell

But to whisper

Like a chant

And just imagine,

An alleyway full of desires and longings

Rocked and baptized in the blood-stained cobblestones

Blood left behind by the 4^th story jumper

Who couldn’t hit the ground hard enough