lips like razors
tease my neck:
my head tilts back.
from the moment
my eyes first met yours,
i knew i’d bleed for you.
your eyes
pierced me plenty,
stripped bare
in your gaze.
but you hide
behind the drawn curtains
of your soul’s windows.
unreadable.
unreachable.
how unfair.
the promiscuous psyche:
laid bare
for anyone who’d look.
there’s a certain freedom
in saying “to hell with modesty,
to hell
with emotional chastity.”
i don’t think life is exhausting,
i think lying is.
these two things have become
ink splotches,
their vines bleeding into one another,
their tendrils tangled.
our prudish hearts—
their binding.
you alone
hold the shears
you alone
will cut that ribbon.
your ribs,
cell bars—
are we not all born
with caged hearts?
freedom:
a decision.
the crab crawls
from its shell.
exposed.
but there is no sweeter taste
than the kiss of saltwater
on your back.
your pain grows wings,
it evaporates with the water
into the blazing sun:
angels to the heavens.
you’re made clean.
you don’t
write poetry:
you go and soak yourself in the elements,
and then let them write through you.
you don’t
write poetry:
you go and soak yourself up
in as much love and hatred
in as much medicine and poison
as possible
and then bleed them onto paper.
you don’t write poetry,
you don’t move souls,
you don’t inspire,
you don’t make
anyone
feel.
you first
are moved;
you first
are inspired;
you first
feel
with all that you are;
and then,
you lay yourself
bare
on paper.
you don’t write poetry.
I’m sick of being sick
tired of being tired
anguished by anguish
burdened by burdens
fed up with this emptiness.
i pray to god
for something real,
yet i don a mask.
how many candles
have i blown
how many pennies
have i thrown
wishing for love
in a heart
that’s closed?
i plead,
i beg,
to eat,
be fed
…
but i purse
my lips.
don’t
do that
don’t
look at me like that.
don’t
make me hope.
nothing
more cruel.
i won’t
let you in,
though the warmth
in that gaze
threatens to melt
the ice on my heart.
things
that i love,
they tend
to hurt me.
i fail
to see the barbs
till I’m
in their arms.
..
i saw
the garden
from afar:
lush. green. alive.
you
welcomed me in.
as soon as i stepped foot,
green
became black.
all
that was alive
wilted.
what was gold, in my hand,
became ash.
stay away
i signed my life away
when i met
your gaze
one blink:
never the same.
i have a special affinity
with dead things.
they understand me,
i understand them.
there was a time
when i
was alive.
i dislike
thinking about it.
remembering:
it’s like
the past’s warmth
seeps through the now’s
cracks,
like god’s knife
cut a gash
through the dark.
it bleeds light.
it burns my eyes.
i’m a qubit
whatever you want
to see
that’s
what i’ll be
i wish
i could be
a transistor
wish
i could be
one or the other
if that’s
what you need,
go love another.
how can you say
you love
Me
when i
don’t have
a self
to be loved?
you love
your own
reflection.
you
are narcissus,
i
am water.
i will play
this role for you
so convincingly.
i’ll be clay for you
shape Me
however.
oh,
what a privilege,
to be made
in your image!
how can you say
you love
Me
when i
am nothing?
the fuller this love makes you,
the emptier
i grow.
my veins are your spouts:
drink.
it isn’t self harm
if i can’t feel a thing
Love Mercury,
Let us weave our personal myth:
What is a life,
If not mythologized?
Epic tales spun
from threads of mundanity,
Fairy castles built
from bricks of banality —
Gaze of Midas! one touch,
symphonies sprout in technicolor
from muddy monochrome monotony—
Observation, breath of life,
Color returning to your cheeks—
What is life
but a series of strings,
waiting for deft hands,
nimble fingers?
And love: the greatest weaver of them all!
before my thread
converged with yours
I felt you,
on the way the wind blew on my face,
the way my first sip of water tasted—
I knew something was different,
I felt you.
never knew what it meant
to live
till i met the one for whom
i would die
how funny.
the touch of fate
is a strange thing:
she grazes your lover
with the tip of her finger
then suddenly:
she is sand
through your arms,
dust in the wind.
yet your lover’s ivy
does not leave too–
no, it sprawls
through the chambers
of your heart and mind
the ones you thought
were well and truly locked.
love, love, love:
its illusion is this:
seeing eternity,
where your love
is a heart drawn,
initials enclosed,
by the sea shore
with your fingertip
in the sand.
One wave:
all it takes.
but i will fall
for this ruse
every time.
i will fall
eagerly.
yea.
i will fall.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 