Stain.

I always left the room
as the stain on the bed
not the lipstick kisses
on the vanity
Cigarette burns on my chest.

Quill.

Tiny holes, perforating the 'i'
You can see how angry I am
Where my pen has failed
between the 'e' and the 'n'
A knotted scribble, torn pages,
Words burning paper.

Creepy crawling, looped 'L's' and 'S's'
The tip of my pen slices
through the parts
where I leant too hard
pressing metal into the fudged white
scoring ink like pink meat.

You can see how angry I am
The scene fuck you
hollowed out with the blunt end
of a spoon.
It doesn't quite translate.

Acid & Eggs

Yvette had ordered a banana smoothie and banana bread and commented on how she might turn into a banana with a breakfast like that. He wished he could tell her not to say such things because they were inane and embarrassing, and didn't she know he might unravel her hair, peel her skin back like a troublesome orange? His eyes travelled the surface of her arm and acknowledged the fresh bruises. He wanted to reach over and press them hard to see if she would fall apart, scoop her flesh like soggy pudding, an arm full of hemorrhaging fruit. He put his hands deep in his pockets and played with the loose stitches at the bottom, fondling the side of his thighs instead. It wasn't until the giant fruit asked him why he wasn't eating that he took them out again and wiped his sweat down his jeans. Greg wondered if that came under the definition of irony, but thought he had better shovel down a few forks of substance before his thoughts looked suspicious. 

...He was eating the essence of the chicken, the fucking formula for their existence. He wondered if he would feel more inclined to climb the human pecking order at work. Reproduce. Scratch crumbs from the floor. He liked that one the most, unable to to cover the smile that had now spread across his face like the Cheshire Cat...You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself. 

Yvette is staring at him across the table. Her big deer eyes wet with tears all the time, moist dewdrops at the end of her lashes. Yvette is staring. Her pregnant eyes are dying to burst out their salty placenta all over the cutlery, but he can't have that. Not at breakfast. Not here, like this. Not with Yvette. It would end him. Fork in egg paste, Fork Fork Fork, Egg Egg Egg, Repeat. His once wobbly mountain had turned into yellow smear and he yearned to dip his fingers into the goo and wipe it over his cheeks. He would be the the anointed yolk warrior, champion of breakfast, god of embryos, KING OF TOAST! He eats the decorative sprig of parsley instead of placing it on his head. Its a welcoming mix of heady tang and sickly sweet.

He hates this cafe- this place with its grey carpet and white walls and pictures of spots on the wall that are grey. They remind me him of Yvette, so small, so grey, so boring. The eggs are steaming inside his body like last weeks forgotten garbage. The gas is rising, painting the inside of his throat a putrid green. It makes him gag. He knows the smell in his nose is floor disinfectant but he knows it's not real. The smell lingers anyway, an imaginary shadow reminding him where he is even when his eyes are closed. He hates this place. He hates it even more than he hates himself.


 The walls begin to resemble fluid, small ripples on an unmade mattress, slick wet bedsheets. The kind he used to pull off his bed when he was seven years old and was desperate to hide the evidence from his father. The memory makes him cringe. His stomach feels like rust, there is something crunching on the inside, scraping together like clustered terra cotta pots. The walls are grey. The walls are wet. The walls are bedsheets. The piss covered walls are closing in around his eggs, his plate, his split ended moffet. You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself.

He takes a few breaths in. 

He breathes. 

In. 

Then out. 

In, then out. 

The walls recede, slipping back into the solid. The walls never moved. The walls are walls, and nothing more. He catches a glimpse of his smile in his butter knife and wonders why his Nana's wedding china is in his mouth. None of that seemed to matter now, as he realised the waiter had forgotten the mushrooms- and acid and eggs isn't complete without mushrooms.He thought he should write that down, but he didn't.

Etch-a-Sketch

There on the low table, the drawing, you had once done for me. I cease panic and reach for it, curious to why its here, of all places. I know its yours from years away. its done lightly across the surface of the paper, grey dust settled around the edges and in the cracks where you kept it folded in your pocket. Your usual style, there was no indent in the grain, just whisps of soft lead, curling, stretching, threatening to leap from the white in a silver cloud. I told you to use hairspray but you were always too busy washing the stain away. 


Instead, I am careful not to breathe.
She's swimming in the sketch, pursed lips, dreaming like an angel. Chin and cheeks submerged, tentacles of black flowing behind her skull. I thought it was me for a moment, before I realised. It looks so familiar, closed eyes, darkened slits, tranquil lids, floating faces. Is it not me? Looked for your mark in the corner just to make sure and there it was. 
Bunched scribbles, the only hard in a trace of soft, Dog eared and crinkled.


It is not me, after all.

Tectonic (Alternative love letters #2)

Dear....you.

Try not to screw up this this letter. I know you've just realised its my handwriting and already turning the paper into a crumbled hen, some unrelieving stress ball at the doctors office. This letter is not target practice for your trash can. Just read this once before you hold it over a flame.

There are certain tides I cannot resist.

It's those tsumnanis which I stand still for. They encircle my ankles and drag me into the calm of the cold and the arms of the deep. The internal shift that drags one long fingernail down along my spine, lurking as an awkward, pretty shadow. I wrap myself up in it, content with silken promises, curious to weave lies. Even now, after so long, it lingers like an uncomfortable hug and I am unsure whether to let go or press harder.

It's here where I'm free to relish my increasing state of decay and so I do. I become my own turning hourglass of liquid mortality, red mercury floating on the surface. I wake in the morning and my coughs are full of powdered bones... my tectonic plates colliding under the surface. It changes me in ways that scare me, destroy me, excite me. I am willingly suspended in it's silky dark, a salty prisoner pickling in the rapture of misery, immune to the screeches of gulls and the hallowed calls of the outside world.

I'm sorry I did not hear you when you called for me.
As you can see, I was busy.

Of course, like all things, it is only for the now. The worm cannot stay cocooned forever. The floods will eventually recede. The horizon will suck back the blue, and it's this scene of destruction that scares me the most. These moments are the ones that will damage me, and they have. Bloated corpses and broken wood, blue lips with swollen tongues, some deathly landscape I created, to which I think I belong. Your bleached bones have found their way there, nestled between grey foam and the backbones of cuttlefish. I picked the flesh off them myself.

The tides turn, the winds change, and all that's left is my exoskeleton, hanging from the underside of a leaf. A cicada's shell, a snake's skin, some lost keepsake. The water may have skilled fingers, forming my outsides into something more circular, more solid, than a wobbling mass on a turntable -- but you were more than an artist. You could have plucked me from the silky dark. You whispered through the earth and my green coils unfurled through broken clay...you poisoned the unforgiving weeds when they tried to strangle my fragile roots, you tore through the thorns with your boots.

And I was an epic cunt.

Yours in empathy but not in sanity.


.

An Ode to my Cubicle (An Office Haiku)

The grey walls are bleak
They are most suffocating
I cannot see past.

Numerous dog shots
Adorn their hollow outsides
They are so ugly.

I comfort myself
at least there are no pictures
of kids with big grins.

Pieces.

I am always fascinated
by those girls
you know the ones
they wrap their heads in bows
their ribboned crowns
like fruit hampers on
Christmas morning
only to disappoint the men
who open them.

I am always repulsed
by those men
you know the type
who crumble puzzle pieces
a breaded trail, behind them
they are waiting
for someone to pick them up
rather than follow
them back home.

I am always bewildered
by anyone
you know the kind
who are waiting for to strip
back their obvious layers
salty pearls welling up
in the rim of their eyes.

If I wanted to unravel something
I would buy a ball of yarn.

Bedtime Stories.

There is blood on the moon.

My mother told me once

murder would reign 

on the same night

souls would be snatched

by a murder of crows

like ripe grain in the fields

plucked like heavy fruit 

on a mulberry bush

they would leave only a hollowed husk,

a rosy puddle

of the person who stood there.

My father used to swing me 

upside down to bed

It made his eyes crinkle

a paper bag, under foot.

He feels the warmth from the

people before him 

though they have been

cold and buried for years

He always looks concerned

even when he's laughing.

My grandmother is afraid of crows

She tells me they signify 

the sudden and

unexpected death 

of a close family member

should they roost

in the trees of your home.

She likes to wave her hands at them

from her balcony

and curses in another tongue.

She prays a lot.

I wonder

if it would be better

for a long and expected death

to take place instead of the one

the crows bring.

But I realise the long and 
expected death is life

Both will end the same.