I'll take this thought and banish it
to the land of unfinished poems
along with all the many failed metaphors
that are not worth reviving.
----------------------------------------------------------
Fire burned bridges
and melted time
but I still want you
to treasure mine.
----------------------------------------------------------
I wonder if you were put here with me
so I could learn that love feels warm
like a hug, after so long spent thinking
it was a cold and sharp kind of knife.
----------------------------------------------------------
Looking at the sky right now, I can't tell
whether it is dark with light clouds
or light with dark clouds. This confusion
doesn't make me feel lost; it's confusion
in the open-ended that I've been looking for.
----------------------------------------------------------
'I love you.' Three words made from glass
that fall out like my teeth used to do
in the darkest of my dreams.
To conclude- I am made out of stone.
I attempt to bite the rust from underneath my thumb.
To conclude- I am a bicycle chain, trapped by endless walls.
I pass through windows, floodgates, tremors and fingers.
To conclude- I am phantasmagoria.
The night has a callous caterwaul, a gently blushing sky.
This body of contorting and changing and blooming
has complete control over me and I can only try
to ignore the undercurrent threat, the persistent looming.
I don't much want to navigate between raggedy portals of love
when the temperature is below zero, sick of plotting maps
for the icecaps of a mind contaminated, mottled stars,
pits of hunger, pits of wonderless. But I still think perhaps
it will all be alright if we stay here and close our eyes
and mime the journey home, creating shelter in imagination,
regenerate wasted time and find substance in lack of substance.
Where did the rain go? Why can't I look at my reflection anymore?
Too ugly- not a hard answer, just a hard realisation.
No stranger to ugly things, spent most of life ugly
hoping for some mercy to come in learning something beautiful.
Tragedy on the train platform, the reckoning, massacre in motion,
losing consciousness, fumbling for the invisible pearl, a spilling
of soreness like sea, a blossoming of conscience. A beheading.
Careering down roads like a panting dog chasing its own tail.
Taking in the first breath after a kiss. Falling headfirst into the water.
It was not something made to speak or to understand,
only to interrupt and scold and belittle. Take note.
I want to tell you that I know and it's okay that nothing can stomach us,
not in this world or in the next. I want to tell you in a whisper,
I know, we are a blast of cold air but warm,we are living and we are dead.