All mine. Your sandpaper hearts And the marbling lips pressed to my temple, The salty sting of barefoot strolls Around and round, back to you, endlessly. The leaf rolls over, and the plane takes off With an everlasting sigh like some feeling, Akin to pity but not quite, that clutches me When I think of those who had you, before Fade in and out, my darling statuary, Return to me in a minute renaissance Every time I behold you, And bleed your soul through iron fencing, into me. I shall not peer through the cracked façade, Crumpled concrete skin descending, Outline in the dust, taste of iron, And rain washing away at your core. Truth: I’ve no claim over you Yet you are still mine.
Find you and lose you, often. You are the birds in my palms I cradle and caress and embrace, And I hope it’s enough. I rattle and fall and choke, I sizzle and burn, taste carbon, Keep you close, In vain, in vain, And I crush you With my contaminated heart. Pulverised teardrops hiss Amidst the remains. Just you wait, sun You’ll destroy the world; Just wait, sunshine, Until the world destroys you.
I'm just a human rocking in my cradle of habit sing me to sleep with your pearlescent lies mark my cheek with shivering fingerprints so in my dreams I can let your voice take me binding me still; the riptide of your aria
The valleys of your fingers against mine we could paint a landscape I would cry rivers into your shoulder and you be the setting sun These sights bore me but somehow you don’t all I can think of is how much more apocalyptic it would be to see your smile reflect in the river’s frothing tides The entire ocean could flow by I wouldn’t know nothing would exist if not for the day I surrendered to your cupid’s bow because you were the moonlight to my van der Neer I look for you in a dream I’m not sure I know is false I drown in the stream of my thoughts
I was buried in the seams of your winter's day something delicate clings to me that I can't shake I tried to grasp onto the stories you would weave I can't piece them together the way you would I can't grasp upon your sleeve the way I could caught up in your wind, but I yearn to stay still you didn't have a home, we found one in the hills you've engraved your name in my nailbeds I try to scrub it off but I don't want to bleed I'm rooted in the weakness but I don't want you to leave destined to seep into the hues of the sunset it might have been anyone else's bed I was sinking in your hastily draped curtains you'll become ink nothing more than my purple burden you were everything carved into my bedframe are your whispers the very ground you walk on gives me blisters I’d still let myself be led by the echo of your steps I’d float eternally behind wait for you to turn I'd go back if you came back wait for me to learn
It was quite predictable, I’d say, after I couldn't stop you falling. It could be traced in the lines of your face a simple truth, that's all; you broke me to mend me and it started when it was over. A wall between me and your chest, a knee between the legs, and the crack in the ceiling I looked for until, in your arms, I found my resting place.
Step into your home, the cold tile Hardly touches my bare feet, And the first time I cowered in the corner All but a hazy dream Well, you lay my sticky fingers on your chest And you didn't say "I love you", But I knew that's what you meant The coat hanger in the corner, She watches while we sleep, And I dislike the way she assumes So could you hide it somewhere, please, But keep that soft coat you donned On the misty, silent streets: With the memories sewn into All the patches that adorn it The way your breath has sewn itself Into my nape And will you frown if I share: I envy all the air That has touched you inside, Through places I wouldn't dare, But when we're half asleep you make up for it With the way your fingers swim And trace the ponds and create ripples Through the liquid of my skin
Head trickling colours of the night Embellished with water lilies Respite for a while beside the ravens Here’s a crack: a cruel tongue had swept Eternity dark across the marble Reach ever so fitful, inadequate Heliographs lament in whispers Echo through tear tracks, discarded wine glasses Repent for the laughter, abandoned, Helplessly tugged from a mouth, drips, Evaporates, sedating trembling leaves Remedying trembling minds Haunts the orchard, bows to trees, Each breeze scatters sound like smithereens, a Revelrous chorus of her peace
He hugs so well, like absolution, I could swear he is made of tiles Shining with shifting flowers, Like the ones that had framed my grandmother’s kitchen. As the sky breaks, he does descend, Words in ribbons at his altar. What is to be said becomes dew And mending his wings would be an exercise in futility. I’m guarded by the folds of his cloth, He is the single sailboat I strive To capture and free at once, With my paintbrush. His silhouette in oil is my home.
The flowering hedges cannot hide the home, Not the tightly shut translucent curtains, Not even the cracks in the street as we walk Can hide my trembling fingers. They have an important job, Apprehensive acceptance of love. They must not loosen when the car passes, When you braid, then unravel my hair, When your fingers that are so adept At keeping love graze mine. You fragile thing, Candleflame in the wind, dusktime light, The flowers you weave through my hair Transient, but shine so bright - My purpose is not the keeping of love I simply safeguard it, Pass it on to the person driving the car, The garden I picked the flowers from, or Just you. Because holding on is the one thing These hands don’t know how to do.
All your stones have turned This purple shade of black And they are dappled with snow I regret that you'll never know Tell me the truth in questions Oh, Sunlight through the dust, Blind, not sure if I mind That, no doubt, you'll make me cry She said "Darling, no matter how you try You'll never grow to be the flower Your nectar isn't what I truly desire," It's just you
There is a gentle kind of truth about the way you speak as if your Cadillac soul, driving down the valley was just a passenger and not the one twisting the wheel: your turns are deliberate, and your words. they are just as well, poised with purpose aimed to wound but not to kill, incapacitate with niceties, unapologetically peel away others’ spirit; tender, like we’d asked I admire that about you for all it’s worth, probably as much as I am to you: a split blade of grass on a field, inadequacy carefully concealed.
He was a bronze statue, perfect on that bench. Tried so hard to break me, But all I did was bend. He said “Take what I can give,” and I lapped him clean, “Nothing but the truth, sir,” And the truth was in his skin. He did not intend his words to carry any meaning, But I was dark night, So he was the moon gleaming Within my ribcage, marked by something unbecoming. He gave me his all, But I now know nothing. I took to him like a leaf, being swept up by the wind, He said “I’ll show you,” And show me he did. I read him, pages dog-eared, watched him like a show - He showed me freedom. It was him inside my bones. I stay helpless, he good-naturedly smokes his long cigar, ”I can say words, But it’s all they ever are.”
You live and die here in her muddy waters, What you take I shall return, Like leaves falling back into place. There exists nothing that you can't trace Except the valleys of my weathered face. As a last resort, I let myself speak to you. These are the forbidden ghosts Look at her the way you do at the stars Breath bated, your lips part, Like the universe ends where her words start. You'd been kneeling at the gates of her glory, While I wait for you to play me until I solidify Into crystal chess pieces in ordered rows. I could still grow into your dead bush I hope And burn into ashes in-between your toes