i) my father never taught me how to shave, so I guess
that’s why a razor to him and I are two separate entities;
a symbol of his pride yet a symbol of my sorrow.

ii) and it’s not my mother’s fault that I am the way I am,
neither is it my own. but when my wrists twitch at the hour
when I miss the way she used to smile; I blame myself.

iii) they say family is in your blood and that will never change.

iv) if so, I am related to healing wounds and the wisdom-less
circles of the trunk of a mind not made for the kind of tired
sleep can never cure. I am the father of my own mistakes
and forever the child of a forever without a beginning.

v) not even the poetry in my arteries can save me now.

There are poems lingering
in the pit of my stomach,
syllables hidden in the
depths of the bags under
my eyes,
sonnets cowering in dried out
veins
and haikus dissolving, drowning
in my arteries
at the pale midnight hours
that no paper
could ever materialise.

I still find myself
feeling your skin
in the spaces between
bed-sheet creases

and if
missing you is like
swerving into
oncoming traffic,
then tonight
I’m sleeping
in the road.

I’ve drank ***** that tasted
better
than your biter heart
and smoked cigarettes that
smelled sweeter
than your gut wrenching pride,
glided razors across my body
that are softer than your
words
and swallowed pills that numb
me
more than this heartbreak.

I have witnessed poets clinging
onto life by the skin of their own words
and the finest novelists terrified
by the bullet tick of their typewriters,
in knowledge that each click is part of
a continuous countdown to “The End”.
The late night sound of their pens scratching
upon paper not made for emotions so raw
drives them insane, urges a hunt for something
that will hurt them more than who they write for did.
I have read poems that scream “save me”
when the voices of the composers silently echo
off cold walls from therapy offices and cracked paint
in chapels that forget each of their
empty confessions.