spit out those bloody ulcers, they’re bad for your health

a stomach full of rusty nails

i spit out one by one

to build a coffin, or come undone

let my fragile abdomen taste the sun

if i twisted our kitchen knife

or let the doctors inject every dose

then there will be an evergreen dying

from my asphyxiated head

to my amputated toes

and if i’m not who i say i really am

or who i want to be

i am only the growing lump

in my failing insides

i am only the cancer diagnosis

patiently waiting for me

but say it isn’t so, please

say my mother will finally get

some rest tonight

say my dreams are worth more than

a tasteless grain of salt

as my tongue is too filled with bile

was it worth it to be childishly contrite?

i don’t want to succumb to

the sore loser sickness

to let the senseless sear poke

holes in my surrendering system

screaming at me to stay awake

and stay fucking still

it’s all in my head, all in my

deathwish-daunted cells

in the disgusting skin i’ve serrated

one too many times

to mend back into something

resembling human

a wish come true, come late,

come too bad to be good

i brayed and buried myself in

one too many blades and open sores

until the point has been lost

in the overwhelming pain

but i’ll throw up expensive medicine

and eat up snow until it’s numb

as i sign away my final winter breaths

for a simple DNR

i don’t want the hospital bills

to dig a hole right down my empty skull

and past my family’s feet

so they could plummet with my systolic rate

they’ll live on and on, and on

an arrowshot horizon, even without my

wasting bones and complaints

to build them a big crumbling castle

or perhaps a birdhouse

with just enough room to stretch

comfortably, enough—

i am far from a saving grace

i reject every silver feather plucked from

my guardian angel’s corpse

and if they truly love me so, then

let me get ripped apart by the

black hole in my midriff

in peace, without a home to distend

things are better if they’re not

i swilled the blood between my cheeks

and swallowed all i’ve got

and if the pain tells me to run

into sunset gold

then i’ll purge every blackest night

and i’ll simply do as i’m told

don’t let the suffering distract you now—

you, now we’ll slowly let

the watercolour hallucinations

take over and over and

overboard, reopen old wounds just to

prove another harmless point:

this body isn’t mine to argue with

this fight isn’t mine to win anymore

i don’t want to live a life

that refuses to live with me

and i’ll grow up but i won’t grow old

now, i’m just here to be a prop at the surgeon’s table

as i close my eyes and corrode.

Sign Of My Love

I weaponise my own overthinking

Pretend it’s a martyr’s stealthy stifled game

Don’t react fast and stay unblinking

I’ll cherish the love but not the foreign name

.

Devoting that single line of pain

Only one more bad confession would suffice

Immune to the pieties of disdain

Find another distraction to reveil the disguise

.

I love it, I stress, swallowing spatial headaches

Oh god, what a mess, a pretty pulsed mess to unmake

Am I stupid for supposing you’re not the wolf?

For lying for you to see more than just their said truth?

.

What had she done to you with those shriveled-up veins?

Entrancing away younger venom with untold ancient remains

Why do I wish to wake your worth, oh why should I descry

Persist to save the saveless soul—as if I’ve crawled still to try?

.

For it’s done, no, there isn’t much more to be done

A lost historian cannot weep for their bloody discoveries

I dream on and on with the stain of our loaded gun

Finding softer murder in between all our golden mysteries

.

I’ll weaponise their mass overthinking

Understand that maybe seventeen is a bad place to be

Don’t listen don’t pray don’t let it sink in

I cherish the leisure but not the most twisted analogy.

inga andra

the peculiar ways

i allow you to make

the slumped ruck of my

tired shoulder tighten

.

oh, we are so full of

extravagant lies, building

novelty chintz mug

cupboards and mayhem

.

the way your lip service

scarred my silky smile

into a fat plum-pulpy leer

another curse to mend

.

like a nice rabbit punch

to the nape to dislodge

the liquorice mint i had

suckled on last weekend

.

maybe i could find your

humour within the drop of

your forehead, the tilt of

your unshaved chin or—or

.

the peculiar ways

you’ll allow me to wake

you up before your

nordström eyes lose colour.

violent delights have violent ends

come wash your sin with me,

i am a flightless soul covered in gossamer

i am love in the form of locks

you cannot unchain with bared teeth

and bare skin and the blade

of the twisted dagger strapped against your thigh

i adore your spirit but i do not

adore you. i am a capricious madness

drink me to excess if you so wish

me to be—a cold chestful of chemical smoke

a sink full of the remnants of

an unborn child, eject me

i am unwanted, i am a wanted hallelujah

with a swollen-gum smile in every

lithographed dead or alive poster, please save me

please buy black water lilies

for my funeral the priest won’t attend

please let the worms make homes out of my

gaping throat, and i shall whisper unto

you. one last time. it will be done

unto your will without wisdom

i am corruption in the form of conscience

i am the riptide washing away your firstborn son

with the taste of bloody verona.

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

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.

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?

d i s i n f e c t

i.) flashes of mild colours; the way crucifixion feels when remorse is all but forgotten, and forgetting leaves nail marks under a heaving chin.

ii.) a biting abrasion, contentious ire, freshly-drawn blood soaking a shred of an unsigned epistle already falling apart at the edges with timeworn apologies, nothing that could be heard but everything that could ever possibly be felt. keloid indentations form at the crux of a baseless memory, sorry i broke you sorry i broke my brain sorry there isn’t a better broke-up excuse for us to feel better, would you feel better if i attended my own funeral? the double casement windows are wide open and there’s nothing but miles of uninterrupted air and the occasional downdraft below, far below where i wish to be splattered liberally and scraped up like the remnants my final fucked-up artwork, unremarkable creations which have been largely ignored for most of my existence but perhaps my pipe dream will come true (come through?) and i’ll somehow gain notoriety postmortem; like poe and woolf and plath and hemingway and all those other beautiful talented suicidal headcases i so vicariously look up to—but the difference between them and i is that they have made a considerable legacy with all the woebegone wordsmithing they have purposefully composed, whilst all that’s going to be left of mine is a few washed-out notebooks and termite-ridden journals buried deep within the collapsing attic of my grieving mother’s house—and we don’t even have an attic.

iii.) i am piegonholed into this arrogant condescension by my own wounded hand, after all. crowds without limbs line up feet after empty feat at my concession stand and creak as they crane their stiff stuck-up necks upwards; just barely enough for their sharp flashing eyes to glide over my performative sorrow and show me their pure contempt, their gilded conversations, my loss and lack and misguided lust for wanting to become someone else—mea culpa, i lament. and they laugh. i laugh along, as i should. i smear the spoiled egg on my face and let them snicker, as i should. i saw off my own arms and legs and throw it to the panting wolves, as i should. it doesn’t fucking matter if you could, they interject. yes yes yes yes YES. my meekest form of assent gets completely lost in some unhinged iconoclast’s phantom stranglehold. and we’ll all die laughing. ha-ha-ha.

iv.) there isnt anything in the world i’d willingly give up for this. maybe a cold open or a last resort, but not mine. certainly not mine. call that living? call me at ten and ask me again. chewing discarded cigarettes and florid cholera, it’s all just bullshit wrapped in velvet and bad decisions romanticised. flocculating. forgotten. fucked. forget it.

v.) convince me of that, why don’t you?

Psychoactive

Inject me with doses of venial notoriety

Iconoclastic illusions and swindled sovereignty

Affect me with notions of what you seem to be

Allow yourself effervescence without transparency

.

Infect me with doses of vulgar expendability

Imperceptible imposters lacking sheer propensity

Afflict me with distortions and what you are to me

Alleviate our own indolences without slurred stability.

ready, steady…

ready steady

hit the clutch

i’ve got your greed

you’ve got my guts

.

ready steady

please me dim

please you sober

displeased again

.

ready steady

back and forth

know thyself

more than thy worth

.

ready steady

hit and touch

bruised and blue-lipped

unlove too much.