I've become acutely aware of the gravity in the fact that all I said to her was that I don't want to be the one who starts all of our conversations anymore
And that since then we have had no conversations.  
I don't think I will be rid of the haunting that this is my fault until I am haunted with the fact that it may be hers
In so making her not the woman I wanted for
Nor the woman I was all too eager to give myself for
Thirdly making me that man who opened his rib cage exposing his heart for her taking
Only to collect dust, rain drops, and those twisty helicopter things that fall from trees in the autumn
All from being left open so long on a very windy day when she saw what my heart was stretching to offer her and chose to leave it there
Couldn't I once be the one worth taking
Or at least notice when she's not the one worth opening up for.

There are days I wish God hadn’t built me with a zipper for a sternum
You know I don’t always mean to show them everything
It’s just sometimes I forget to zip it back up after I take it on walks to the liquor cabinet
My heart is a bow-tie drinking Manhattans at the center table with a chair full of friends and a twinkle in his eye
My tongue is a rolled up cuff drinking whatever’s on special at the end of the bar confusing, “I’ll have another” with proper conversation
My mind has an unplugged mini fridge in the corner with two luke-warm ciders waiting for a chance to celebrate...remembering to brush my teeth
Depression is a funny sort that way, it’s all her fault, right up until you remember how hard it is to brush your teeth everyday
At which point it’s either your own fault, or we’ll try again tomorrow.

Knowing is not half the battle when the battle is not being waged in your head
Knowing it is all going wrong is just another reason to never put on the helmet and see what the battle may bring
Seeing what right looks like on Pintrest is not motivation to check my zippers
It is the battle cry my stomach gives my lungs after lunch
It is the battle cry the fists of my mind give my heart when we are alone
It is a crop duster driven by the Morton’s Salt Girl, who never misses the open wounds of my torn innards strewn about an open field after losing the battle for the day.
I am a slug on your porch and I shrink with every grain
And you will never hear me scream
It’s just so tiring to tell someone you hurt and have no blood to prove it.

I do not much dream for stars or skinny girls anymore
I am afraid of what their sharp edges will do to my fingertips
I’m just looking for something I can hold on to
Someone who will remind me that I have a place here
If that place is only to take up oxygen
Sometimes I let my dreams get away from themselves and I dream of great magical things:
Like being loved back
Feeling important
Sleeping peacefully

On occasions I even see myself at work opening a love note in my lunchbox from someone who felt compelled to take the time to tell me they love me
It always swells my heart
Makes me want to be a better person
To get out of bed
Run a marathon
Sing an opera
Lift a weight
Sky dive
Read a book
High five a stranger
Take a dancing class
But then I wake up and look across my room at just how far away the light switch is and decide I must be afraid of the dark
Since I never remember to turn off the light before lying down and I never have the strength to get back up

I dream most of all of having someone to tell me the things I need to hear
To give me a purpose
A vision
A reason to live
To stop letting me find better excuses
To yell in my ear or write me a note that says,
“You are worth it, every minute, every cent, every effort.  You are worth it, because you will become a great man and because I love you, and because you are destined to change my world, and because your son needs you, and because you are brilliant, and because the world needs your words, because I need your words”

But the only notes I get are the ones I put into my own lunchbox as a reminder come noon-time
That even if for no other reason than because I said so,
I am worth it

We were sat in a corridor
Two ciders beside you and
Empty space with me.

You looked me in the eye
In the midst of a conversation
I love you - said with a laugh

Without realising it
My eyes lit up.
I hate that.

You're teaching me the meaning
Of cheapening your words.

But you still ask what I think.
You ASK about my thoughts and views

not many people do that
So I forgive you.

I thought I was done with princes -
royalty and pompous nature
Once again I'm wrong.

You demanded that I leave you
The puzzle
Alone.

But why do you stay?
Why do you stay and ask?

You and I are alike, I'm sure
and if you want me to leave
show me the truth, show me I'm wrong.

Because if you are me
I think you're just scared of opening up
Scared of being hurt.
True, I may hurt you.

You have no rhyme or reason to trust me
All I can do is wait for a chance-
And ask that you let me in to try.

Last Friday I did a very good job
of drinking away
my anxiety.
The sad part was
the only person
there to see it
was my mom.

It took me awhile,
but  five beers
and two
hard ciders later
I was free.

I’m almost 19
and I’ve already
started solving
my problems
with vices.

I had my *** phase.
It treated me no better
than any cigarette I bummed.
In the end
it was all just smoke.

Alcohol made me into something
I believed to be better.
I smile because I mean it.
I don’t shy away
From people.
But I’ve come to realize
that I’m worth more
than two shots of *****
and bottle of Mike’s Hard

It’s so easy to forget
what’s circling
in my brain.

I forgot about
school starting
in 2 weeks.

I forgot about my friends
and why
I’ve been feeling
that there’s a lack there of.

It is no ones fault
but my own.
I have no pity
for myself.

I’ve refused to believe
that taking a pill
would vacuum
away the half finished
poems and the
torn up ideas I have
in my mind.

It’s become very
difficult
to explain
myself.
Most times I wish
I didn’t have too.

I’ve never been approachable.
I look mean
But I promise
I’ve always tried to give
everything.
I always thought
that if I said yes
then so would others.

I woke up that Saturday
at  five a.m.
Realizing
that the world kept moving
when mine slowed down.
School will still come
and so will tomorrow.

Give me a pack of cigarettes
Because it’s much easier
to wash that smell from my mouth
than it is to get
these thoughts out.

There are some days
When one fatal heart-wrenching
Rejection can cascade into a torrent
Of gut-punching, sick-inducing barrages of failure.
One rejection after another for one long week
Of un...something misery.

The first, well, I saw it coming.
There was a heavy inevitability about it in the air
Like the thick sweat before a summer storm.
Yet, despite this, almost foreknowledge,
My heart still lies in shattered pieces,
My head awash with regret, self-loathing,
And a deep inexplicable sadness.
Swiss chocolate - she was meaningless,
Surely soon forgettable,
But in that moment ever so sweet...
And the sight of her would brighten up my day.

The second was a reminder of my "situation" -
That constant battle between our demons and our angels,
The latter of whom have mostly hung themselves by this stage,
Or drowned themselves in vats of ciders,
Awaiting judgement or an epiphany.
Maybe they were waiting for a train,
And the demons simply gave a firm push,
Or whispered sweet infinities into your ears
As they bristled against the breeze atop a tall building.

The third was another, somewhat self-inflicted, destruction.
Less a rejection, and more an ultimatum:
"Sort your ******* life out Thomas
Because you're ruining hers tall, dark, and handsomely."
- That's not what she said, but it stung,
More or less, with the same venom,
Whilst maintaining that same tinge of flirtatious tone.
Somehow I stumbled into this mess without malicious intent -
Just a stupid little boy with a box of matches,
And a canister of petrol, and a blissful unawareness
Of the inevitable inferno.
Undoubtedly, the demons are laughing
At all the tears that will surely come.

The fourth was particularly unfortunate.
In classic "Thomas" style my first thoughts were to hit restart.
I wonder if all Thomas' are arseholes?
I mean obviously Edison was, and no doubt
There was malice behind Thomas the Tank Engine's smug grin,
But I wonder if it is a scientific certainty, or just dumb luck?
Needless to say I packed my bags in my head
And applied for the trabajo.
New start. New beginning. Old cliché.
And inevitable rejection -
One I didn't see due to my
Rebounded energy to avoid failure.
The repetitive nature of life's cycle is somewhat nauseating.
What kind of sadist designed this ride?
I wonder if his name was Thomas too?
Ah well, I've nothing better to do. "Another go, please."

my husband, my lover
the man i hold dear...
you know the one
the sports zombie
who dress's so fine.

sauntered out to the back
deck and asked
"beer or wine"
as he is the chef of,
this evenings decline.

now, here is the conundrum
that often,plagues my mind.
wine, tonight, is not really, my palates delight
but beer, tho tasty and thirst quenching,
expands my quarters hind
and leads to wrenching and
writhing in midweek training or at least coniving
of how to be released from
exercise captivity

which way to go,
a cheeky pinot griggio
or a robust boutique beer.
which way, crisp chardonay
or mango ,belgium wheat,
micro-brewed  pilsner.

oh, for the days
of the cask or the
slab of vic bitter.
when the biggest
problem was how
to drink fast enough,
to gather a blast.

the man mountain,
has become impatient.

....now i need to
make a decision.

so,with a women's precision,
i state with a smile,
wide and then wider.
"i'll have one of those
apple-pear ciders"

I'll let you take pictures of other girls in their bras
And I'll never quite get over it.
And I'll let you sleep all through the night
And I won't say a word when I'm feeling left out.
But I'll save all those rocks in a little purple
Crown Royal bag on a tack in my room.
And I'll throw those rocks at you when push comes to shove.
But I won't tell you how I'm feeling, I won't
Let you know how I've been doing
Because I'm your little princess and you
Expect me to be happy
But I'm not.
I always order too much
Food to handle and I
Pay for movies with a gun
Stuck in my back because I'll never watch them
But isn't it nice to think that I'll have a way
To stay sane in the case of a catastrophe?
Isn't it nice to say that I'll be able to
Mask my self indulgence in
Cigarette smoke and bad puns?
I hate myself, I hate myself,
I hate myself for engulfing myself in this load of *******
But I didn't ask to be born.
If I had it my way I would have been a wasted mess in a ******,
A wasted race in a piece of latex
Because I hate myself and that won't change.
I want to go to Chuck E Cheese
But I'm a hundred and twelve percent sure that
I won't fit the tubes.
I'm the lost cause of the century,
A piece lost in the puzzle.
The piece you dropped while making love
Underneath the covers
With that ***** you call a friend who's really just
Out for blood.
I want you to see, oh how I want you to see,
That you're a ******* and she's a ****
But you're building your castles and I'm just
Sending smallpox-ridden corpse heads over the fence.
I've never put my lips to the bottle because I'm tired
Of people using ales and hard ciders as excuses
Because we were all born once and we'll all die
But these people won't even let the most solemn of us
Dream.
Why can't you let the solemn ones sleep?
I've gotten older and I long for deeper things
But I'm a casket in the courtyard,
Not the body so much as the casing
Of a human bullet heading straight into your back.
I'm the whiskey in your glass, the nicotine of a cigarette,
So addicting but so remorseful.
I am the unwritten play,
Waiting for the day in which I'm published
But I'm ahead of my time and no one will do it.
But at least I'm in love with the best of the best
Because I know that at least if I **** up,
I'll still be loved deeper and more succulently than any of you losers.
I'm that geek who sits with a plate of food in front of them
But doesn't eat.
I don't care if my games don't come with the instruction manuals,
I'm all right with the value of being incomplete.
I'm intelligent because I see all these maddening things.
I'm the better person because I am walked on.
I am the queen of my own kingdom
And I'll have my king by my side through and through.

When I was young, sometimes I’d forget
to be afraid of the Jabberwocky.
I’d skip along beside his emerald-wet
scales, on the sun-strewn sidewalk, me
prattling on about apple ciders
and Lucy Maud Montgomery,
half-humming boats and spiders
beneath a pale sky, dry and summery,
and he would lumber, unsteady, by my side,
trudging heavily through wild glens
till the dusk at long last turned to night
and I remembered his name once again.

You visited my sleep
Again last night
An after-image of our
Decayed friendship
You were a giant
Huge hands and feet
And you hid
In the back bathroom
Of my childhood home
The one with the yellow handles
And towel racks
That aren’t there anymore
And the real human skeleton
In the hay coloured wooden box
That’s long forgotten but still there
You weren’t seen in the dream
But I knew you were there
A bit like
In my waking life
Where
Not even the bones
Of our friendship
Survived

(Because unlike my parents
I keep no skeletons)

The flesh of our bond
Wounded too deeply
When you tried to pretend
I wasn’t there
Because it was convenient
Because you wanted what I had
And you were too cowardly
To seek it out with integrity
And honesty
Two qualities I thought
You really did have

Sometimes
I have
An imagined conversation
With you
I say all the things
I can’t say to you
I point out the moments
You’ve pushed out of your mind
The laugher
The thousands of texts
The ciders I bought you
Because you were poor
Running in the rain after work
Comforting you on Elizabeth street
When you said you’d never meet
Anyone, ever
And I remind you again
What I said on that walk

You will. You may even know him already.

I give you a look
In the scene, in my mind
And you
You can’t hold my gaze
Because you understand the irony
You know
That my loss
Was your gain
Then I say, what I want to
But what I can’t say to you

*You may have the trophy
But you didn’t really win
No matter how much you
Polish your prize
Your guilty face will
Always be reflected back at you
A gilded distortion
An ugly elongated shadow
Of your form
The same reflection
You’ll see in the sheen
Of your ring
But do you know what, Sophie?
I don’t need a surface to
Reflect anything back to me
Because old friend
I am free

Dear Poetry,
Please be gentle.
I’ve admired you for years, and despite all of my tears, I’ll never forget the way you caressed my heart. Warming it and patching it word by word and verse by verse.
But this will be my first, and this is not very well rehearsed,
So
Dear Poetry,
be gentle.
Let me stumble and tumble through the first and second lines but don’t run towards the concubines just yet.
There’s hope for us right?
Dear poetry, don’t go so quickly.
Come sit with me by the window and tell me what way the wind blows.
Whisper to my soul all the things I need to know.
Lift my hair with your metaphors and beat a rhythm so deep I have to feel my heart beat to know I’m alive, because you -
you are the only thing that makes me unique. I can weave through words and sing the similes until I get too dizzy, and when I look up, there’s no eyes I can’t meet.
Dear Poetry,
be mine.
Let’s sit in the grass and laugh on our backs
Let’s wade through the creek bed and read thoughts in my head,
Let’s skip like my heart when he played his part.
Let’s drown scorned love with ciders in a pub.
Let’s be silly and really, really- -
Dear Poetry,
I’ll be at your door every day. Waiting for a hint, a taste, of what to say.
Line by line I’ll build you a castle, stanza by stanza add a rung to the ladder, and poem by poem I’ll make us stronger until I can no longer see the ground and all we have is bound-
Dear Poetry,
Let’s do this again sometime.

The apple’s shot through,
Wormy and brown but it is her lunch.

Through her hood, she sees the buzzing market.
She is condoned as always, the ***** brown

That harbours near the fruit man, like an unwanted
Sofa, lumpy and ******. Only her grandma-fingers palm through.

Her mane of rags render translucent pebbles of benevolence:
A rare cinematic view of the world, her weary eyes absorbs every colour.

It is gentle and kind these holes: a myopic happiness
That triggers this lady to jump about, and holler and

Holler until the random clanks in her stainless steel
Plate drum up impressive beats. It is encouraging to her,

This sympathetic validation. Though she knows
false hopes don’t hold up too long. It is her sunrise,

The kind of thing we often take for granted.
She cradles the apple (the raggedy couple symbiotic in nature),

Smoothing out its ciders. It is her afternoon’s asset,
Tasting as foreign as mother’s milk.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

Travel has ruined me.
I live in a desert
Where the people drown themselves
In spirits
And ciders.
Today I visited the sea
It renewed the spell it has on me
So that when I venture out of its sight
Weakness grabs a firm hold of my throat
And pulls me under foaming waves.

Whatever is that urge, that unthoughtful splurge, to annihilate every last thought of that day
to drink to kingdom come, conversations with anyone, and spend all that you have been paid

what ungodly flicker of thought, has you drinking that last drop that you bought
until the sun rises, awake on a bench, lessons that really cannot be taught

Rewind that human clock, until a time when all was once well
hindsight on a wrong word said, tripped in conversation, drink brings up its show and tell
that marriage that you could have had, now stalked each day on Facebook
sent them a drunk friend request, regrets in the morning, crazy thoughts that overtook

I love you man, a Tesco ban, for stealing ***** after the midnight hour of twelve
we laughed and sang, kebabs and dips, only here once so what the hell
the morning after, 12 cans and draught ale, anything that doesn’t touch the sides
your head is thumping, hair of the dog is calling, Round 2 of this stupid drunken ride

But at what point do we put the brakes on, man’s liver this wasn’t built for, the older the less wiser
you’ve tried the lagers, you’ve tried the ciders, lets knock it on the head, time for the Tizer
for the greyer the hair the less you can bare, as our bodies are not getting any younger
now I love to be merry, but it’s a weight I can’t carry, as drink is a thing I can’t do any longer

Drunk

JJB

the middle bedroom:
brother's torn futon pointed at the television
he controls the neon animated race car
sister sits on the top mattress practicing
braids on her doll's golden locks
the youngest lay below with the her cousin behind
everything seems fine

until she feels his warm palm stretch across
her innocent hip
steadily inching his way into her ruffled *******
and making her touch the untouchable

she couldn’t even tie her shoes.

the bathroom:
pain began to suffocate her
a razor blade made pretty lines along her thighs
blue face refused air under the grimy water of a tub
a lanyard wrapped around her neck twice to extinguish any oxygen
thirteen caps of sleeping medicine

she couldn’t even drive a car.

the cheap hostel:
one too many ciders in the berlin pub
the gentleman grabs her hand
clumsily walks her home
“stop.”
it was all a blur when he led her upstairs
when he took off their clothes
when she said no
when he never stopped

she couldn’t even legally drink.

memories burned and ashes buried
she needed to let go.

life was now perceived as a kaleidoscope of meaning
each color representing a state of mindfulness
and for her to attain the sacred
metamorphosis of nirvana
she accepted that attachment is the root of all suffering

a radical change was desperately required
because happiness is a warm gun.

she shot her past self
from her present existence
and now life was in her control.

Two sticky Devils pit ciders
embalmed in strawberry juice.
‘Tell me why you messaged her’.
It’s not just the sun causing
those sweat beads.

Fiery fingers fly through
your book as you ignore
me. The sand creeps in
between my folds and
Irritates my skin as if

it wasn’t crawling already.
A beautiful scene mocks us.
Glittering grasses, crystal waters;
today is perfect.

If I forget that you’re next to me.