Today is one of the hard days. They come and they go. We have fun and we don’t. Things are fixed then they’re broke. I try to be a sponge for the pain, but I caused it too. And you caused it for me before I turned back at you. The balance is lost now, but it was my numb hurt that kept it in check. So yes, I brought this hurt, but I didn’t invent it. It wasn’t born in me and to have me is not your default, no matter how it feels it might be. Today sucks because it rains And we lay writhing in pain at each other’s opposite visions. You cry and I am blank. For once in my life I am prepared and preplanned. I did my crying in instalments and now my debt is almost paid. Unlike everything else, this time it isn’t you who has saved. And you can blame me, and I’ll take it from you, Because despite what you say, I cared and still do. I’m sorry that it’s only hitting you now, And it feels like I’m stealing from you somehow. I’m sorry it’s hard and I’m sorry it hurts, And I’m sorry that you can’t believe all my words. The person you need no longer exists, Because he is me, the one rupturing this. It’s been the hardest design that I’ve ever made, And I’m sorry we never could feel quite the same.
Pockets With Holes In
The blossom drifts like confetti in the street after a parade. The afternoon dilutes weaker each consecutive deflating day. Crashed the morning into dumpsters leaking dopamine and faith. That the next fertile hour won’t be spent in the exact same way. Bare calves in bitter wind Pockets with holes in Nothing is safe in my possession
Six Storey
Gag on a pneumatic drill The pavement regurgitates Squares of digested concrete The sound of illness all day Makes me want to puke My string cheese brainstem Unplug the way an elbow Of scaffolding might drop as I look up And kill each migrain As it kills me A sudden windfall gifted From a six storey fruit tree
Back Fence Burned Down
Mexel eats a rice cracker. Tony gestures for one with squiggly fingers across the decking. Mexel throws one like a frisbee. It is instantly picked up by the wind and carried over the neighbours fence. Tony doesn’t look up from his four-piece hammer drill set. The garden’s lawn is patching yellow vanilla in the weeks since rain. Mexel has mixed the plain, caramel, and salt ‘n’ vinegar rice crackers in the same tube. Tony stays out of them this way. He doesn’t have the psyche for that kind of Russian roulette. The backyard hangs open at the bottom, spilling out into the local park behind the house. Mexel watches the baby swings alternate like pistons in the distance. Tony basks in the clicky precision as he assembles his drill like a sniper rifle. The back fence had mysteriously burned down in the night. They blame each other. Mexel blames the cheap flammable paint Tony bought at the carboot by the train tracks. Tony blames the swarms of butts Mexel flicks as catherine wheels from his top window past 11. They both know that only one of them cares enough to fix it.
Frozen Ricochet
It’s always felt sad to lose The stuff that touched your life The headlights silent scan your room In the middle of the night Shadows swell and carousel Sweeping the dormant air The stillness bends but doesn’t break The furniture doesn’t care This is every place you’ve ever held Keys to lock up for the night And never once imagined how It rests outside your sight And driven home defeated Followed hands and not your head Making slow turns lost in thought Empty streets pulled past by reflex With a lifetime’s worth of practice You’ve grown too tired to sleep Eyelid scissors have scraped too blunt To cut off from the conscious stream Didn’t even realise they weren’t closed Until the frozen ricochet Of soft lamps passing unaware Showed you your home in a new way And literally lit up your life As laid across this space That you rent and that you cherish And you wake in and you hate As a stranger you will never know For a washing degree Gifts you a feeling rare and precious Warm and sad and temporary
Heavy Duvet
How much more talking can we do In the face of disagreement In the face of something new A face so ugly to you The patterns in our curtains hang Strained and pale against the dawn In my chest I feel the bells clang Without a thought my shoes slip on And it’ll force me through the forcefield My brain objects but knows it’s true It’s fed on my magnetic blood That’s polarised to repel you You’re a heavy duvet You’ve always kept me warm Let my muscles atrophy And soft edges sore And I’m so well rested That I sweat and spin Waking up is an ending If you might never sleep again
Torn Fantasies
There’s so much to do. And it seems so terrifying. I’m always sweeping Tiny beads off the edge Pottering and waning Avoiding eye contact With the standing stones I live most of my life in the shadow of This isn’t home On a north facing lawn On the cover of a magazine Dancing on the pavement in a storm Spilling torn fantasies
Dreams In Lost Languages
Wake up with the salt in a streak A residual cave painting The minerals dripped down your cheek Must have been crying in your sleep Dreamt of the sadder things Or let the realities creep in Spin the wheel and see where it lands Eyes as mirrors within mirrors Bouncing smaller and more distant drafts of me As our cells divide, we mutate sometimes Mistakes in our code imbed structurally Did you try to read The background of the scene? The junk words on the prop signs? The padding chatter between, Backdrop recurring extras, And the stranger NPCs? That spawn off-stage from nowhere, And are never seen to leave? Noticed cryptic nods to subplot, Eerie clues to deeper themes? The hidden messages designed to be ignored But meaning can’t help seeping into all Did you do something wrong? They’re talking about you behind your brain Which busted duct did the whispers creep in from And what is it they say?
Glue
This only cooks under intense pressure Mixing raw desire with fermented exile Diced visions of some reaching future That you're a weary fool to compile Don't go alone Don't go at all Don't lose the way Don't feel appalled You're a mixture of yous Trying to surface from this glue You should reach out But I know you won't It's ok to doubt That you can navigate this on your own How can you ask for help in a search to be alone?
Liquid Shading
Make mine a tall one The liquid shading of piss Dehydrated as shit Fizzy burnt antithesis Of something stronger They can jimmy the lock Air out the closet Where the stale feelings rot.
Quit Vision 