How old are we all, really?
All the years you spent playing catch up.
Running with your broken legs.
More sinister than it seems.
No patrol, no not today sir.

Dead hair in sink drains.

I forgot everything I ever learned at 14.
Fell down the rabbit hole.
Ivy clinging to houses, pulling down walls.
You're pushing up daisies, at least last time I heard.
Somewhere your mother cries and the bells begin to toll.

Blowing old dandelions out,
trying to cash my expired wishes and bring you back.

Wonder how old you were the first time you died.
I was 7.
12.
14.
After that, 16.
Ask me again tomorrow.

Drowning in bathtubs.
Falling out of nests.
Our baby bird wings weren't ready yet.

Cutting your hair at night, rainbows blooming.
Empty train stations with bricks as our luggage.
Nothing left to dream of.
Green water spilling out from beneath the potted plants.
Life is a domino effect.

I've been living in shades
since the day they buried me in robins egg blue.
All I'm really trying to tell you is babe,

I miss you.

Wind whips through my hair
Sending it like a cat of nine tails
Across my face

I smile on

A foam of gray spreads its wings above me
So different from the blue of yesterday

Bleak brown figures reach
Their bare arms towards me
Begging for the coverings they have shed

I glance down, and rise up
A shiny black surface smiles at me
How odd that the chariots that ride it
Are so rusty
And unadorned
Unlike the solid ground
I once rode on
Gray and ugly, but ridden by shiny, beautiful things
Almost as if to say that the most beautiful
Things are found at the lowest point

Sky above me
Trees around me
Ground beneath me
Blood inside

Take me to a summer where
Glory will in my eyes shine

dissonant is what it was.

that foreverness of din.
criminal—
  aloft, eluding some captive way
    of emphasis.

  scraps of papers fold
and truth is rarefied. hammered
for its malleability is its common trait.

truth and always its never ever.
the men mumble words as if
  oceans whirl in their palates.
the women hide their thighs
  and think of fornications.
the children learn to pilfer
      stray coins in the keep.

dissonance is what it still is.

there's a slow moon over the aubade
     over the culled garden.
     over the cloverleaf curve
    in Balintawak. over no trove of truce.
  caterwauling noises flailing
      belch of automaton metal. mendaciloquent glower of lampposts
    to die early, abandoning EDSA—
we cannot name figures any longer
    of the same axiom, equation,
    salt, crossovers.

Its all a lie
A huge mirage
Life has a mask
And you have to take it off
I know its hard
It will just get harder
Trust me, I've done so many
Dumb things

I am with you
But ALONE
Never felt so blank

Your society
Created a
Vanity, so ugly it
Poisoned
punctured and
Primed
A youth.
Self-obsession
Attention starved
Cruel and mindless
inhumans.
Smartphones breeding
this dumb
Generation.
Martyrs,
On digital
crosses.
Look at me.
Define me.
Press "like".

On the drive from St. Andrews to Aberdeen
I stopped at a roadside cafe,
For toast and jam and tea.
The young blonde server
Took my order,
And never spoke a word.
Then her mother bellowed
From the back of the room;
And her father barrelled through the door,
And a baby cried;
She's wanting more.
This is their country;
She was their girl.
I paid for the platter,
I tipped the teen,
And continued on
To Aberdeen.