Not evil, perhaps something lower?
An abyss of a person—a counterfeit soul.

How easy,
To rip the unsewn stitch
Or tear the thread of an untold tale.
Often these tapestries,
Tattered and stained with red,
Have experienced one reign after another.

Boundaries as suggestions
Like lines drawn in the sand
Washed away by the tide
They mean nothing in the end

Art is our savior
Revealing which lessons lie
Where pain resides
Turning salt to sugar.

Some people destroy the things they touch
Just to prove they can break

When you like someone for what they represent perhaps they’re better left as an idea.

A poem of thankfulness
That you are gone
And have stayed gone

You are cigarette butts,
Empty bottles,
And nights spent hunched over the sink.

You are journals bursting at the seams,
Bad poetry,
And long playlists.

You are fingernails bitten down until they bleed,
Smeared eyeliner,
And trauma I never came to understand

You are regrets buried in the closet,
Broken glass,
And I hope you find your peace.

I did not require fixing
Asking only that you do no damage
Here in the rot and rust
I plant my own gardens
And decorate my own soul
Making it my own
Making it my home

The sympathetic villain is passionate; even they feel pain.

Not evil, perhaps something lower?
An abyss of a person—a counterfeit soul.  

Calling to memory the despair of a black hole.

You destroy, you rot, you steal the light.
You feel nothing and let nothing in.

And you infect me, too, when I know I must share my existence with you.

So simple yet unknown
You weave stories
And try them on for size

You’ll seek a new story
Sculpt it with stars
Until you exit this plane
And its careless derision

Breaking all doubt
‘Til it’s born anew
Hooks in my heart
Howling in tune

You will always return
Bigger than before

Freya
Shield-Maiden, Lover
Sister, Mother
Embraces owing
Life unfolding
Blessings upon the fiery hearth
Tears above
Love below: relieve our toil
Darkness ebbing
Rhyme unending
Listen to my bold tale!
Freya
Red hair flowing
Sunlight growing
Rising upon the hill
A song of springtime
Complete this bold rhyme
Hear now my tale!

Set out into the dark forest with newly picked flowers for the hearth, grasped within a meager coat. Clutched in bare hands and protected against her chest from the cold wind which blew so insistent. She was not far from the village when she met a woman on the road.

"A penny for your thought? A purpose for your soul?”

“I do not think so.”  

Mysterious crones on a lonely road.

“Perhaps mittens to keep an old woman’s hands warm?” scratched the voice of the Crone.

The girl who wished to be on her way produced one flower from her coat,  

“May the thorns keep your hands warm as they do mine.”

Fresh blood dripping from the open wound,
the Crone graciously accepted the rose.

“For this trouble” she said “I will return a favor of my choosing...for you did not give me what I asked... I give a warning. You may not know of such things, but on this night, in these hills is a crone not unlike me. When she asks a favor of someone, and they do not give it to her...she takes them, then buries them in her garden to make the spring come faster. She always asks for that which cannot be given. The snow cover and the full moon coming will sneak night upon you. Wherever you are heading you must stay the night. For if you travel back you will surely lose your way and find yourself food for the flowers.”

The girl who had been taught to be polite even to witches nodded and replied,

"Thank you for your gift.”

She headed on her way not believing a word of what the old Crone said.

Still this dread loom is woven with defeat. Even for the gods who would keep us safe from evil,  and guard us from death 'till the end of days was determined.

I say for us all in this song that after light had dropped, the first of the frost did melt.

Is it bitter?
Is it sweet?
Does it taste of holy wine,
or the blood which stains our hands?

I wait for the day when a flinch no longer follows your name. When the memory burned into my being is kinder than you ever were.

To be free of the silence which suffocates and tears shed through clenched teeth.

"Your hair is a glimpse of home
   Yet when it's wet...
     It's heavy..."

He wrapped himself up in deep umber waves

Dug himself into deep, dark loam

Yet still floating away in a sea of strands

Sheets of passion and poison

"It was a secret nesting in summer scorched brush."

Fragrant and Supple.

His ***** cut the Earth. He watered thick peat.


Together they would slink down dark alleys, cowered in grease covered corners.

He hit her...

She snapped at him...

He chased her salivating strands, rich auburn coat glistening.

In the late afternoon heat she submitted her secret.

He howled his hurt...
An animal infected with rage and confusion.

*

He said, "I have a 5 o'clock flight to help fight the cause." She said nothing. He swept back her tide of soft auburn...wet her with salty fear.

She stepped away slightly...
   He shuddered...
      He disappeared...

Let their words break upon you
as waves assault the cliffs
a foundation of bedrock
unbothered by the affairs below
iron-clad in will

I bury you in the marrow of my bones

Forever to be carried in this wreckage

A derelict heart full of curses and portents

Salted wounds and blood in the water

Ships arriving on strange shores

Satellites in eternal free fall

Orbiting stars named for blasphemed gods

Their supplicants and shrines

Long since consumed by fire

Or in moorland, drowned and exhumed

A place once called home, become a tomb

Once upon a time she said,

“That’s why I didn’t want to get close, I knew I’d be messy for you.”
…

I met someone,
And you’re so different.
She’s so different,
From you I mean.

In that I don’t have to ask,
I don’t have to beg.
Not a secret shame,
Not something on the side.

It wasn’t until it came so easily that I realized how poorly you treated,
Me.

How do I tell her that I’m terrified she’ll treat me like you did?

How do I explain that when I seem distant,
Detached,
A thousand miles away,
It’s because your barbed wire words strangle my heart?

Eh oui, c’est la dure réalité …

(The oceans are full of plastic)

Pouvez-vous m’aider?

(I could write about wars but which one?)

Ça te dit ?

(I use my passions as a form of escapism)

Faut pas casser du sucre sur le dos de quelqu'un!

(Is the sun exploding? Are workers being paid?)

Il faut croquer la vie à pleines dents.

(Am I ungrateful to want more?)

Maybe it’s your self aggrandizing behavior,
Or the downward spiral into an elegy
Which I cannot stop myself from revisiting.
They say,

“He speaks of you as though you were dead”

In this lies a modicum of truth
Silent witching hours where my dreams are haunted.

The still, dead of night gripping me in terror
As I am unable to determine where the chains that bind me end, and the ones you carry begin.
Skulking through the corridor of my mind like Marley’s specter.

How has it come to pass that the line between elegy and ghost story is blurred in such a manner?

Don’t you hear it?

The sound like a hush running through the dim sky.

Like a whisper echoing across a grassy field.

I hear it.

It calls to me with these words:



"I am here."



Then the rain comes...

Who I am,
Is so deeply interwoven
With the broken parts of me

I fear if I heal them,
Then I will lose myself

I guess the worst thing you could steal is pieces of others lives.

You either hurt them or waste their time.

Definitely the worst thing you could steal is another's time. You just can't get that back and we're so insecure about the whole thing that people are convinced we have all the time in the world.

Still, even when we waste others time it's not as though we've made a clean getaway...that's the problem.

We never just take away from another, we always leave something in it's place. A vague feeling of emptiness. Black paint on a white canvas — nothingness that one can physically see.

They loomed as gods when I was young
Tasked with shaping malleable clay
Instead of love, teaching pain
A childhood home never safe
Unhealed wounds festering for years
Distrusting myself and plagued by fear
Replayed scenes inside my mind
Apologizes I’d never receive
Inside my damaged heart
The place they haunt
Broken

You are still so deeply engraved in my heart
Daggers on every page of this story
I offer flowers of reconciliation
Because that’s what fools do

My heart has become timid
So quiet,
You might mistake its hush for a silent pool
Whose water lies still
And depth deceives those who stare too long
Into believing it shallow
Shunning the height of emotion
Lest it drown in the undertow
I struggle to stay afloat,
Forgive me

Each person I have ever met
Has added to the tapestry of my soul
Some adding a single string
To the complexity of the whole

Sometimes strings lie in disarray
Their edges frayed at threads end,
The ghosts of my memories left behind
Woven into the fabric of my being  

To move forward
I face the torn edges of the past
And make peace with the imperfections
Added from each thread,
By integrating them into myself

To love me is to accept sleepless nights; to accept immortality; to accept that you love what you cannot mend. In other words (which are not my own):

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn’t happiness.”

We are not one breed – but we are all reaching; all trying to dash out our insides in an effort to find something we never knew was there.

I find I’m tired of life and I’m tired of not living, but I can’t stop breathing any more than I can stop writing.

Never love a writer, because though most of us will not be remembered centuries from now, all of us leave something.

They say that the world was built for lovers but we’re the ones cast to keep note.

I want to be enough
To be bright enough
To burn hot enough

To make only acceptable errors
Nothing more

Would I be enough
Were my wit sharper
And my thoughts less scattered

Would I feel your smile upon me then?

If it's all the same to you, if I could go back to the day we met, I would not turn around and walk away.

I do not regret you.

I wish I had the words
To tell you I miss you
Rather,
I wish I were allowed
Without disturbing your peace

To tell you how much you mean to me,
Without expectation

How do you expect me to stand on my feet when you keep striking at my ankles?

Once upon a time
I made myself small
So they could feel big
Told them they deserved
To take up more space
Mistakes were made
Hearts were broken
And being so small,
I was crushed underfoot

It surprises me
I do not miss many people

Not in my heart,
Where the feeling swells
Like a delicate bloom
Rushing to fill the space
Between my skin

It has taken me so long
To abandon ambivalence
Walls streaked red
Which I have constructed around them

The way they look at me
Like they were truly listening
How they spoke to me
Without assumption

I’ve changed
Relearning the rhythm of my breaths
And perhaps some day you will take my balance
For I will show you a path
That we can walk together in silence

I am the Patron Saint of Lost Causes
Each time I let another set of teeth rip me open
(Again and Again)
****** maws and rotting flesh
Just so I can make poetry of it all.

The people I love are vultures
While I,
Some dead thing in a field—
No one cares what killed me
They are just here to take what is left.

(I don’t recognize love unless it eats me alive)

Isn’t love a kind of violence?
If we choose it, then it’s power.
(Again and Again)
Teeth marks around my neck.
This is power.

A hand in my chest,
Eyes hungry
For those I’ve lost,
I bled myself dry for you.

In the end you were only predictable in your unpredictability

I can watch you from afar, because it doesn’t burn

You are as foreign to me as the stars

And just like them you have the insolence of setting me on fire when I get too close

I look forward to a time when cracks in the brittle bones of old age will hurt more than the fissures of a broken heart ever did. Only then will I know I’ve lived.

It is the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe.
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, the indifferent judge between the high and low.

How can I fight the tide when the deep water held a curse?

It has drowned my every waking thought; but in dreams I soar, breeze-limbed and light.

When I woke, tasting salt, the waves were all about me and darkest night had melted into water’s grave;

But I could not swim, nor move or call out for help.

So I must die a thousand times until I am borne upon the sea that rages within me.

What is the secret to your rage?

How do you hold your grudge?

What do you tell yourself to commit to your hate?

I sit here and watch how harshly it divides and yet,

Can I learn it too?

I was fun to chase but boring to keep

When they ask why I can't let the notion go,

It's because I want to hate it properly

Can you comprehend the language of my pain?
The pain which I cause,
In my ignorance and shame.

My apologies are spoken,
To mend the space
Between who I am and where I am broken,
In damaged bonds I cannot replace.

You try to find beauty in everyone else, but I wonder if you have tried to find it in yourself. 

You are worth more than the tears that fell from your pained eyes at 3 AM

You are better than the nasty people who may have called you tragic and ugly.

You're better than the people who have laughed at you.

You are drastically better than the hate and sadness that eats at you everyday.

I understand how this hurt, this poison in your soul and how each day is a struggle to overcome it.

It may not mean anything to you right now but when you’re sitting at home old and grey I hope you look back at these days.

That's when you will have finally found out who you are and how strong you’ve become. So I know your world may sometimes cave in and you’re suffocating under the sea of hurt you find yourself in... but sometimes you need to create your own boat and find the high ground.

I hope you find it soon.

In my heart lie splinters
Often going unnoticed
For the greater pain of you

Each one composed
Of the things which redirect to you

A string of unrelated words
No connected thread
Save for you

I think the problem is,
There is not enough of me,
For me

I wish the world were made differently

I wish growth didn’t have to hurt

I wish feeling happiness didn’t rely on knowing sadness

I wish pain were not necessary to know pleasure

I wish I could have learned through love

It is the present no one wants
The unopened package
An uncomfortable silence
In a room full of people

Funny how I have convinced myself
The love I offer so freely
Not wanted,
Not needed

For absent friends
For each promise broken
For every dream that won’t come true
For the harm I have caused and now regret
For the pain I have inflicted upon you
For love I will handle your sins,
In justice I will show you mine.