This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a   poem. This is not a     poem. This is not a
                Poem. This is not a.                       Poem.

I look out of my window
And see clouds lightly
prickled by antenna
And gently swaying leaves.
But really,
I see nothing at all.

This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

I hide in words — tucking under their shade;
Dressing letters up with sequins and baubles.
Now showering in limelit obfuscation.
Makes it seem as if I am really there:

Dressing letters up with sequins and baubles
Blinding myself in the flashing of their colours;
Makes it seem as if I am really there
Amidst flowered touchless abstraction.

I blind myself in the flashing of their colours.
Submerged in repetition, my thumb drowns
Amidst flowered touchless abstraction,
Swirling in whirlpool ******* me underneath:

Submerged in repetition, my thumb drowns
Now showering in limelit obfuscation,
Swirling in whirlpool ******* me underneath.
I hide in words — tucking under their shade.

Has your soul ever been displayed,
Framed by thick wooden-glazed borders,
and set up in the gallery of another's life?

Can you say the painting of you
Beams with joy through heavy clouds,
Sliced by sharp shards of glass-like light?

If not, may you then brush-up yourself,
Quick blots of pink on sunken cheeks,
Lighten the shade under each eye?

Or will you draw the curtain,
Blind me to me, and you to you,
Pinch out the last flicker of fight?

It's when I need the words
The most that they get jammed
In the back of my throat like
I just swallowed a nail and
The rusted point rips my gullet
As I spurt it up with congealed blood.

It's when I need the words
The most that my entrails
Wind like a python round my
Lungs and squeeze them tight
Until they burst.

It's when I need the words
The most that my eyes swell
And drip — red and sore — until
I swallow and forget.

It's when I need the words
The most. Then, I look and
See there is nobody.

It's when I need the words
The most.

It's when I need the words
The most.

I cuddled up with
a metaphor that was
caught in the corner of
my room.
I dressed it in the
silk of kings, and fed
it from the fractured
trees of innocence.
Low-hanging fruit of
despair gets us
every time.

Music isn't the same anymore.
The purity and grit are gone.
It's mechanical and cold.
I remember the days of
records and record players.
The crack and pop, the
sizzling booming bass that
rumbled in my soul.

I think of a song, let's say
something by Zeppelin.
I close my eyes and smell
the ****, see the
blacklight poster on
the brick basement walls.
I lift up the needle and
ramble on.

"I looked at him like he was my forever,
not knowing he was already turning into a memory.
I closed my eyes, hoping to sleep—
but it hit me like a punch:
I was already gone.
Already dead."

He found someone new,
someone better—
someone he now looks at
like I once looked at him:
like forever.

His love moved on.
Mine… stayed buried.

Seeing him smile again
healed something in me—
but not enough to put into words.
Not enough to write.

"deserved to be someone’s forever too. And I still do."