(s)mother

I fled the scene

A reckless scream

Embroidered tongue

A hanging screen

Intrusive holes

A leaky ceiling

Hold it—or don’t—

A strangled feeling

.

You hid the crime

A deathless prime

Unraveled lips

A drain, some grime

Illicit goals

A stranger’s flooring

Hold on—please don’t—

A breathless pleading

bucolic

wayward jaybirds in the window

rows of clots tilled deep to pick

stead illusion, scant imbroglios

rotten orchards ripe with panic

.

whirling stale air in the bedroom

where the corpses shimmered blue

exposed to love and pure sunbloom

to free the worms from pulpy rue.

[ something like the word for invisible burnout, you don’t remember what it is and funnily enough, no one remembers you either ]

keep your passions out of sight

out of mind

otherwise you exist and you’re begging for friends and begging and friends feel pathetic—you’re pathetic—you ooze of something resembling toxicity when your shaky hands send your sugary messages and say an insufferable hi; and whenever there’s an extra stressed diacritic or a misspelled goodbye in between the crooked lines, suddenly silence is falling fast and the loathing is indistinct from the love and you’re a bloodless strawman tattered with pleasantry pins and niggling needles, digging into entangled veins as it scrutinises

what have you done wrong again?

a psychological tarantella in the stumbling beat of one-two trying to keep your pulse awake, a metronome of apologies

so-rry, so-rry, so-rry

so-rry i-sur-vived but that’s breaking the time signature too much

so apologise for that all over again

in a room full of starving venus flytraps, better to be an innocent fly on the wall, better to innocently drown in ointment than to suffer through the blackout pain of wandering—wondering—whimsical flagellation

turned to a starving artist’s magnum opus

turned to crude art and wasted words and dissonant notes and vague madness and messiness and inside jokes and all the things that make you you

all of the things that make you wish you weren’t you

a lack of understanding leading to unmending

better to keep yourself out of sight

out of mind

than to exist and have your devout passions scourged at the pillar of better judgment

keep creating. the universe will not hold its breath for you. stop creating. the universe you control will start to suffocate.

keep existing. stop existing. what’s the difference except finding out

there’s nothing—no one—nothingness—

left to exist for?

and maybe that should be enough.

because one of these days, the world will get pulled from under your feet and you’ll fly, oh you’ll soar and it’s going to be beautiful and no one will be there to watch your plight

and no one will be there to see you c r a s h

Need You (To Need Me)

The way you pursue has always been so see-through

Drugged in the veins but your system’s more ice than blue

If I dipped my red flags in it, would it come up white?

If I asked you to stay, would my rotten lips cave in tonight?

.

Everything seems opposite when you pull the rug from underneath

I never cared for normal, but this groundhog day is making me sick

Everything’s back and forth when you swallowed up the ocean waves

But the taste of drowning wasn’t enough to bring me back to my grave

.

So give me one little careless gasp, and a strawberry swisher lie to match

I’ll splash it around my mouth and smile while I promise, no strings attached

Shrug another chip off your soulless shoulder and shatter it to smithereens

If peace is all there is, wouldn’t it be better to just-be than to end a has-been?

.

Because if I tried to pursue, I’d only end up more than see-through

Drugged with fake dopamine but love the rush, my failing system can’t get a clue

If you dipped your fingers in my chest, just before you falsely confess

Would my temples come up bloody red, or would the words cave in my unmade bed?

headgames

modern concussions

the weapon of a liar

modest-edged repercussions

immolating in style

gurgling under broken teeth

the kind of “we and me”

a bloodstained flavour of sweet

masquerade the cruel veneer

.

awaken awaiting

allaying misconceptions

if nothing if never if something

desperate fascinations

charred black lungs click

serpent kiss of a separator

papercut thin and sellout ascetic

to kill the venomous instigator

i don’t know how to make myself useful

crawling crying clever huh

my veins are filled with saltwater

clench love stop heart

beat i must beat i must beat i must

wash my hair and get out of bed and wake up

necessarily in that order

if i want to love myself, but i can’t

god i don’t believe in you anymore but

god help me

god damn it

please pleas people pleased

pleasure’s all yours

please don’t come again

i am rotting inside out

i am going to put a knife under my abdomen

and write a going-out poem

for the pretty mortuary doctors to gobble up

if no one else

and nothing more, burn my high school yearbook

into lungfuls of cigarette smoke

and first last kisses

and conversations in unflavoured seltzer

bottoms up and choke

after all

i am only another failed experiment

in the class of 2024

neon glitter pen signatures rap tap tapping to

the hypnotising rhythm of

a crisis hotline

oops. i’m sorry. i swear i meant to live

i swear i don’t know how i got all the way down here

and yet cannot get out

i swear it’s my slaughtered knees

being bad butchers

making squealing pigs out of my soul

squeeeeeeee

i swear it’s not me but it’s always

always me me me

meeeee

i can’t count how many times i’ve uttered tired

but burden hasn’t been dulled down

and i am all play and dullness

dig me out back with the jack and build

a house out of my bird bones

and cheap twine

when my head’s heavy with birdseed instead of

oozing medicine

i swear i’ll be someone else not me

i know you didn’t want this

didn’t want me

i’m so sorry, oh god

i just wanted to be okay

let me be.

but i can’t i shan’t i see

mama, i swear i didn’t mean to make you sad again

i didn’t mean to. i didn’t. i didn’t try to

spin your vertigo with unravelling spools

of unconditional devotion

untangle my anchor

from your sturdiest continent

and let me be, sinking sobbing stupid

i’m sorry i’m so

tired

huh. i never tried but

mama, give me the strength to love you back

Shotgun Seat

Fear our mild discretion

We’re here for total sensation

Disciples without morals

Finding love under car crashes

.

And I’ll be your pure creation

Your god and sin lacking aspiration

Babylon hinged on a pedestal

Forsake loathing for crumpled metal.

They Say “Don’t Open Old Wounds…”

I don’t want to reopen my old wounds

But it’s simply the only thing I have left to do

There’s nothing more to be said about me

Except for a condolence or a passing apology

.

Picking at the scars, hoping for an infection

Hoping the festering bacteria would spread through

Hoping for sensation, or something maybe close

Hoping that these old wounds would feel brand new

.

I’m already too numb to ask for more medication

Already too debilitated to beg for a final miracle cure

I’m already too sick, far too late to try on and on

Already at the brink of extinction to still feel unsure

.

I’m opening old wounds, bleeding them out to dry

Doing everything they all told me not to do, only left out to die

There’s nothing more to be done, no band-aid left to rip

These old wounds seem useless when there’s nothing left in me to fix.

a toast to apeirophobia

you are love at the end of the world, something spelled without a glottal plea

the stars on my crown hang heavy tonight and i’ve barely slept for an hour but my mind drifts off to weary constellations and i sometimes wonder if we were aligned at all

you, vague hurt, you, toothache in the middle of a birthday party

you, a love like no other

and running without wolves to guide our journey, the forest scratches every inch of bare skin and i would cry out if you hadn’t done the same to me in your restless tossing and turning, there is love in your eyes but no love in the blood you make me bleed

there is still something left to be said. but my mouth is dry and full of sand, kiss it and catch a fly on the wall, smear ointment on its wings and maybe i’ll tell you about how i feel

and it isn’t a good one, it isn’t a love i towed beyond fathoms of seawater and across miles of irradiated coastlines, it isn’t me, count the distance and end up with infinity in one sitting, infinity with end, infinity to beg you of love

beg me of a message unclear, home sweet home

it’s better than nothing. the woozy way i walk into the ocean with a pocket full of rocks and a mind full of bitter sloshing around, is better than nothing, love

it’s better than everything love

because it’s something i still wish to keep, wish on a nebulae cluster that doesn’t exist the second you force yourself to breathe out, screams

no comforting the choir, i’ll drape mine around your bruised shoulders and shake both of them softly until i’ve killed half the universe with my hubris, until we’ve killed off every erstwhile incandescence just to look a little off-kilter, early morning murder, i’ve never felt better despite never finding out what repose ever meant

the sky is red at sunrise and then what

and then we, and then we

feel fine

you are love at the end of the world, and i am ready to struggle for survival. invite me into your rose-tinted apocalypse and allow me to decide a fate which was never mine to rewrite

it’s nothing

it’s better than nothing love

breeding ground

set the pace

and fuck like animals

sweet sensations

bloody glimpse of dorsal

sinking teeth

right down to the spine

shrieks of pain

was it yours, or mine?

.

screw disgrace

and fool monsters bare

salty cessations

marrow in white underwear

slipping fingers

right under skewed torsos

submerged remains

will it be mine, or yours?