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monsters

a poem to calm your anxious thoughts, some words to soothe your troubled mind. you have survived everything. you are still here. 

everything is lovely
don’t you worry,
don’t you worry.

I know you can
see the monsters,
my darling.

but I promise,
that they will not hurt us,
I promise you.

it’s not bloody wounds
that you see on
your sacred thighs,

it’s not acid
that you feel bubbling
in your throat.

I promise,
my darling,
that it will all turn to gold

if you can
just hang in long enough
to see it transform.

kindness is queen,
so treat your own heart
with sweet compassion.

the rest will follow,
the rest will follow.

ashes

year after year
I drop
cigarette ashes
and salt water
on your portrait.

is this not
a potent enough
concoction?
is this not
the spell
that will work?

my arms are dirty
with the
tea stains
you left behind,
no
vanishing solution
to clear them.

my lungs
and heart
they perished
along
with your
yellow skin.

but mine
emptied of
organs,
travels onward
despite complaint.

there was
no need
to breathe in.
no need to
beat.

the lesson
was learned
then,
in a hot room
of lilies
and machines.

the fifteen holes
in organs
rotten from suffering
tighten into
scar tissue.

they are
you
as I am
you.

I will
visit again
soon.

honey

your peaceful dreams
they dissolve
like sugar cubes in
below-average cups of tea

and your nightmares,
they stick to you
like hard golden toffees
stick to broken teeth

by now you should know
that sweetness rots your gums
and gives you gaping cavities
that are costly to repair

you may crave the
dripping satisfaction of syrup
in your little mouth
on your little tongue

but do you really want to remember
the honey trickling down your throat
when you are scrutinizing
the size of your hips again?

my darling, no
replace the lid of the biscuit tin
and be grateful that nobody
wants to see beneath your summer dress

mud

grief makes
your heart
sick
not sick
enough to stop beating and
kill you,
just sick
enough to suffer

grief makes
the veins collapse
makes them sticky,
so they
punish you
lest you forget
what you have
loved most
and lost

lest you forget,
as if you could
when you feel your
blood choking you
again
and you wonder
why you
are sentenced to die
so slowly.

vitiligo

beautiful boy
you are gone
but I will not
let you die.

the sickness of death
so heavy
the black rain winds
that so many others have written

would be easy
to concentrate on.

my friend,
you were not sickness
but for a tarnished
group of moments.

the pain of your absence,
leaves us open-surgery hearts.
but the steadfastness
of your soul

pumps scarlet blood
to each fingertip.

still you sit
underneath my window,
your breathing turned to droplets
laughing so hard

the cigarettes fell out
of our mouths.
still we dance
for hours and hours

to average white-boy beats
(I always knew you could make better).

you could never
vanish from existence.
how implausible
to imagine.

as if
your vitiligo arms
could cease to be
in the world.

no, they are here.
just as the rest of you is here.

beautiful boy,
I will not let you be gone.
because the world is too small
without you.

the vigor of life
so light
does not matter.
you have only slipped away

into the next room.
and so it will continue to be

until I see you again.

happy 25th birthday finn

(I used a line from the Henry Scott Holland poem “death is nothing at all” that bears some relevance here. points if you can find it)

soldier

the lonely
titular warrior
never won
any battles.

but she had
no choice

that is why
they called her
the lonely
warrior.

the single
swordwielder,

dies lush in
folklore,
but she dies covered
in blood and shit

like every
nameless soldier.

there are no
dragons
to slay
in abrupt reality.

no princes
to peel

from cruel enchantments,
crumbling castles,
vicious step-parents,
or jealous fairies.

she speaks alone,
alone,

in battlefield pits
to nobody.
what good,
is your war cry?

what good,
is the war cry

from your sweet
wound of a mouth
when said
into nothing?

star

a burning
hot
cluster
of atoms
falls
directly
in front
of you
blinding you
with
incandescent
white
starlight

do you
reach out
to silver
your fingers
or burn
their flesh
do you
open your
delicate mouth
to receive
perfect
fiery
light

we
obsess
reaching out to
the sky
but when
the sky
comes to us
we shiver
hot-cold
scalded
by something
too pure
too powerful
for mere
skin

stone

stone girl,
you look in the mirror
who do you see there?

do you see
the cracks
in your
nature

do you see
how you filled
them up
with technicolour?

stone girl,
you feel the storm
weathering your heart

I wonder
if you know
how implausibly strong
your barriers are

I wonder
if you feel
your rejections
of splintered wood

stone girl,
you brace the curse
of a compromise

the others
made of clay
could never know
your power

the others
so delicate
when mixed with water
glazed over

stone girl,
you were thrown
into the fire

stone girl,
you came out
at one thousand degrees

stone girl,
if only you could know
what you have defeated

rose

heart out poem
wit soak prose
my still life painting
of a rose

released in here
past sensitivities
gertrude’s buttons,
mauled sylvia’s bees

what’s past now stalled
is yours to come
the well-wrapped present,
now undone

read and word,
forbid concluding
pen through love,
here drunken feuding

draw the velvets
leave your clutter
for we now go
down to mind’s gutter.

teeth

two rows
sweet, straight, together
they belong to your mouth alone

no words
are available in language
to describe such utter loveliness

visible only
after exchanged words
and sharp intakes of breath

a small price
for lifetimes of pain
the gift that only we could know about

gone quickly
fleeting like rain
but sealed in memory
languageless, kept forever.