When I was young
I didn't have any doctor bills
now I get statements
special delivery, envelopes
full of X-rays I hold up
to the moon, that rock
sinking deep in my gut
looking like all of those cold
feelings I've swallowed
the many curses held inside
wooden matches chewed twice
and not spat out, a cancer
like a two-headed speckled trout
swimming around
trying to find its way out
when in fact it's just a feeling
I get trying to swallow regrets
one rusty old fish hook at a time.

it's been a wild ride, one of those roller coasters that make you sick every time
but the thrill is worth the nights spent shivering over buckets at the edge of your bed
and you've given me more downward plunges than anyone has, anyone since her
but the crawl to the top was so slow that i thought i loved the drop more
i've always lived fast, too reckless, too uncaring of my own worth
and staring down into oblivion as it steamed and smoked was its own kind of drug;

as a kid i was scared of darkness but that ride made me feel alive
i just had to close my eyes when it got dark, but eventually i got so used to darkness
i didn't have to close my eyes at all, and it took me too long to realise
your drug was not a medicine, there were no doctors writing you down on a prescription
i picked you up from slumming with the wrong crowd and injected you into my veins
just like you tempted me to do so, and now i'm feeling low from living high

the cost of euphoria is way too much, and now i know i'm dying inside
it's in the unhealthy coping mechanisms and the days spent wasting away in bed,
the bruises under my eyes and the way i chew through half the fridge
then spend three days eating nothing but the grounds left at the bottom of a coffee mug
don't get me wrong, there were times where you and i were so, so good but the cost of
living high is a debt i'll be paying for the next twenty years of my life - if i survive that long

anxiety guillotine, hanging
from a thread, suspended above
my sunburnt neck. i'm utterly spent.
another day, back bent in the stocks,
latched in for the Kafka-esque:

carnivalesque body-horror.
shovel white-hot daggers
beneath finger-nail keratin.
bite my tongue off with police-tape teeth.
sadist, savor my godless screams.

drawn and quartered. send my limbs
to the map's furthest corners.
horseflies' aborted eggs
nest amidst maggot-infested
intestines, dangerously dangling.

turn my frown upside down.
stick a razor-blade
in my mouth
and pull 'till i grin
like chelsea.

interned within an unmarked grave,
save for the cairn made from the same stones
i flung myself upon from a great height. a wave
dashed against the rocks, endlessly rebuffed—
the sea's clairvoyance couldn't budge the boulder.

i'm at that point
where death is an embrace
and i crave that cold love,
but the birds are singing
their beautiful song
and it's nearly five am.

i wanna go outside
and be with them,
listen more closely
in the chill of early morning
as i pretend
it never crossed my mind:
one hundred ways to die.

they pause
and i frown against tears

please sing for me again
because i,
i don't know how to live
and your song keeps me
dreaming, of freedom
and escape
from Death's cold embrace

don't let me
stop to think
of how warm cold love might be;
do not let me
wonder about the way
Death loves me

i'm at that point
where death is an embrace
and i crave that cold love,
but the birds stopped singing
their beautiful song
and it's nearly five am.

my loved ones' dependency
is the only thing left
for me to cling on

my life: a responsibility.
good thing i'm responsible.

04:59
i'm waiting for number five

...

05:00

moon, mon lune
and i the ocean,
with darkness
and storming waves;
but you guide me,
pull me back to shore
as you spill your light
across my murky depths

draw the tide in, love
i am home
i am home
with you, mon lune.
when you wane,
i watch you:
despairing eyes,
tidal waves of misery

when you wax,
i am calm.
there you are,
returning from shadows
and back to me,
and i love you
so, so much
whether i can see you
or not

i froth onto sand
dry land soaks and
***** me in.
i lose myself
on the beach
but am never lost
with my enigmatic, magnetic
cratered centre of
gravity; pull me in,

draw the tide in, love
i am home
i am home
with you, mon lune.

clear water glass windows
bordered pure white
framing a distant horizon
softest shades of honey, fire, daffodil
and a sprinkling of translucent sky

one tree roots itself atop that small mound of
rolling green hill, its grass dying out
but it's still beautiful
i think they told me a person's image of paradise
is a place they feel most at peace

your ghostly voice whispers close and near
but i can't feel your breath against my ear

white noise, bad reception, it's all gone
outside, the sky is ash
but there's no fire or warmth to be found
as rain hails down and fights to break its way in through my window
i can see people running

they're all under hoods and umbrellas
scuttling around like the faster they move, the drier they'll be
but they're already soaked through
and i think of you, so different
how you'd throw your head back and laugh
open your mouth
catch the drops on your tongue, eyes squeezed shut
clenched in delight

you'd have stripped all your garments if you could
so full of life, so full of energy

the static bleeds into my awareness again
white noise, bad reception, it's all gone
you're a ghost of early winter past
and here it's mid-October

your anniversary is upcoming
i wish i could say it was you instead

i wish i could say that you aren't dead

Tempting,
to test your luck, to push
the boundaries until they
break and let loose like
floodgates.

It may destroy a lot, but it sure as hell changes the landscape.

Besides,
there is a sort of sick beauty
in watching something
come apart, something
terrible and mesmerizing
about destruction.  

See, there are some parts of god I understand.

And you,
always you with the other
answers, about love and
mercy and all that rot.

Together we sing the pieces, you said.

It's all we can do.
It's all we know.