untold

Have you or have I
rewritten the story?
I recall like yesterday
How I recoiled
How he called you out
How you insisted, then persisted and convinced, yourself
How I went along,
against all my instincts
because I wanted to destroy something that night
Because the one that should have stepped in, hadn’t
Because I should have asked him to
Because he shouldn’t have had to Because I shouldn’t have had to ask
Mostly, because all that came since was born of your love and my spite
Oh, what a story it would make

small measures

It has been a while, measured
in breaths, in, out, like tick
and talk about the weather
Time marked and dismissed
with the taking of pills
and meals and chilled tea
I haven’t thought of you
in days, maybe weeks
Thyme cures all, they say
Rambles and brambles
would etch patterns
more entrancing than
the creases of these sheets
imprinted on my skin
Artists, like prisoners,
make much of so little,
dying to be remembered

waking

5:35 a.m. and mortality
rattles my dreams
to shake me from slumber
and dump me in the clamour
of consciousness considering
probabilities of you waking
to another day

Across the way we ponder
ifs and mays to outfit
ourselves against judgement
Would that you would see me,
and I you, we could spare
the world our gifts
wrought to hit the right spot,
weld the right cage,
forge our thoughts, and fix
this rift in perpective

considerations

I tire of strategies and ways
to cope with oncoming days
relentlessly repenting my weakfisted displays
of resistence
Should I walk you through
the maze of forays I’ve made
to breach your frame of reference and make you see me
Or should I don those gifted feathers and the walk
that make me talk in ways
that appease and rename me

South, North, West, East,
Worst, Best, Most, Least

these things matter
to you it seems

And just like that
I’m calculating freedom
Considering extractions
and subtractions
against the cost of inaction
And alone glows like a full moon
This ill-fitting life
spreads a feast before me
While I, measuring my worth inversely to your silence,
starve for the stars above

supply and demand

With this body traded
I feed
I clean
I listen
I provide
I soothe
I stroke
I give
I give in
I bear
l pay
for some peace of mind

since then

It was a day like this
Sun slanted and stunted
of the warmth it precociously declared
I wandered posthumously blinded,
numbed by the pretence
of levity and relief,
as though we’d sown seeds
when all we’d done
was bury our stillborn intentions
To carry on, haunted

lost in translation

I got lost in the search
of a self not determined or undermined by the source
of that itch I can’t appease
And blamed you for all your shortcomings
Like you would understand
my codes and mixed dictions,
twisted tongue fictions
written uttlery constricted
by a need to tow the line
Lured,
betrayed,
exposed, driven out and
abandoned unforgiven,
I watch myself, say/do/lie
without a leg to stand on
And cringe at the flatness, falseness, hollowness, transparency,
of all interactions
We do not know what it’s like
And yet enough
to judge each other
as harshly as we judge
our mirror in the morning light
And even in my finest hour,
when words latched onto my ideas,
and flowed on a breath
worth some attention,
at best, I’ve received
polite applause
And praise, sometimes given
in the shadows of hallways
far from witnesses, and
the perils of affiliation
My last confession is
I made shameful concessions
Liking the attention and words
far more than you
Just to feel some extension of my being
in my effect on you

stuck

stuck here waiting for nothing

stuck

Crossposting

love of the day

Today, I fell in love
with leaves drooping under frost
in raging red despair
And with tree stumps
sitting lost amongst bushes
trimmed back into restaint
While ivy took advantage
to reach greater heights

I fell in love
with the mute garbage bins
sworn to secrecy
And the stark sky overtaken
by a confusing haze
I drank the autumn draught
and spewed some words
on your crackled withered heart
To see if it could spark
enough light for the dark season
But silence boxed away
all rhyme and reason
worth the harvest

before

Before I went to sleep
Before I washed my face
Before I brushed my teeth
Before I found my way home
Before I wandered lost
Before I searched for where to wait
Before I expected
Before I set things in motion
Before the incitement
Before your sly smile
I was asleep