July 2004

It's been a week of dangerous contemplations. 

There are ideas emblazoned in my soul that I want ousted;

a coup d'etat of reckless thoughts; 

a Napoleonic triumph over the demons that clutter my mind. 

My heart is heavy with the iron of broken horseshoes. 

Sometimes I wonder if what I thought was real could ever be less ephemeral. 

Everything is blurred. 

My eyes burn from the ashes of a razed past that has been violently flung at me. 

I weep for my fallen memories buried in a blanket of still-smoldering embers. 

I toil to unhook the harpoons of betrayal lodged deep within my breast. 

Is this just? 

Is this fair? 

Show me my sins that I may accept this suffering. 

This wretched beast upon my shoulders sits, 

claws firmly embedded within my skin. 

I wrestle to cast it off, yet it simply rips my flesh and digs deeper. 

I exercise my ever so convenient poetic license to tell you all 

that there are no vocubularic gymnasticisms that can adequately summarise the turmoil within. 

It is a volcanic mess of tangled illusions, 

the searing lava coursing through my already frayed veins. 

I yearn to cry out, but everything coherent sticks in my throat. 

I yearn to rend myself upon a bed of nails, but cowardice stays my feet. 

I yearn to devour the universe that surrounds me 

but I can only hope that something more powerful than I will grant me that wish. 

I take these words as a dagger. 

May they in me find a sheath. 

"There rest and let me die.”

Just for a moment - 10/02/2015

All that's left are the memories.

It's been two years. Two years since I left myself in Michigan. Two years since I broke my best friend's heart and left my entire world for almost a decade.

A little less than two years since he chose his girlfriend over our friendship. A little less than two years of bitterness. A little less than two years of crippling guilt and sadness.

Don't get me wrong, I've experienced lots of life in those two years. I've fallen in love and cared deeply for a woman I never see anymore. I've had my heart buoyed and then crushed by another. I've made friends. I've endeared myself to others with my outlandish personality and don't-give-a-shit attitude. I live in a lovely apartment in a lovely part of town. I get sunshine year-round. I make decent money. I never lack for things to do. I.... yeah.... I live.  I live, right? I am living, correct? Is that what this is? Sometimes I can't tell.

I wake up in my bed in Michigan. I wake up with him sleeping fitfully, doing that weird twitch thing he does in his sleep that drives me nuts. I wake up and it's cold outside. The leaves are turning colours and I'm worried about all the bills we gotta pay.

I wake up. It's hot. My shitty dumpster-salvaged fan blows away the memories of a life I once led. Sometimes I don't even know what's real? 10 years.... just gone. The past comes in flashes. Vivid and solid like lead bolts in my gut. Sometimes it's so visceral that my breath catches and the tears fall before I know they're coming. 10 years....

Do you know what it's like to wonder if a full third of your life ever actually happened? Do you know what it's like to sever your heart from your body so that you can't hear it weep within your chest? Do you know what it's like to hurt the one person you care the most in the world for in order to save yourself? Do you know what it's like to know you've done the right thing but wonder at the cost of it? You probably do. I don't have the monopoly on pain...

Sometimes all I can hear is the dull click of my heart trying to fit its pieces back together again. But they are barnacled and barbed, so long out of my chest they have been.

I don't know what I am anymore. I'm a caricature of something that used to be a real person. Sometimes the mask hangs awkwardly, revealing a grotesque juxtaposition of soulful and soulless.

I just can't stop thinking about how he's gone. I just can't get over the fact that he isn't in my life anymore. I just keep hoping that some day he'll say hello while I suppress the nausea of the certainty that he won't.

I'm not supposed to miss him. He betrayed me afterall.
I'm not supposed to hate myself for leaving him. At the end, our marriage was making me physically ill.
I'm not supposed to look back. I have so much in front of me, you might think me ungrateful.
I'm not supposed to feel.... but I've never been better at anything in the world than feeling.

I want to turn it off, but I can't. I want it to stop, but it won't. It churns around within me, tapping on the back of my teeth begging to be let out. I coil it tightly and I swallow it down and I whisper menacingly until it settles and it lets me be.

I know there is a way out of it. I know I just have to be patient. But some days, I am tired. I am just so tired of fighting. I just want it to stop. I just need the world to stop moving... just for a moment. Let me catch my breath. Let me get up off of this floor. Let me rise again. Let me feel again. Let me love again... even if it's just for a moment.

Neither Lover Nor Foe 6/9/2015

Neither lover nor foe
Neither lover nor loved
Dancing between the restless waves of your heart
Mired in the ceaseless tumult of my convictions
I twist to gaze thirstily at you once more
I soak in the promise in your amber eyes
Lap up the speckles of yew on your thighs
Taste the blueberries on your arms
Is my thirst slaked by the hush of the night
Filled only with the catch of your breath
Am I sated by the crush of your mouth
The moans that escape you in the chill may air
I want you with a fullness beyond touch
I crave you with a sorrow beyond lust
And yet I remain...
Decorum-bound in the sanctity of the three
The holy father whispers to me the words of the son
"You are sin and filth you remain"
The holy ghost spits at me
In fear I tremble
I speak my confessions to the beads I still count in my head
Hail Mary, where is your grace?
Is the lord with me too?
Blessed are you
But I the sinner sit cold within thy womb
Holy mother, will you pray for me now
Or at the hour of my death?

Weights 6/8/2015

This is a new one born from an exercise I did at a queer sort poetry night in London. The activity was to receive five random words in an envelope and write a poem on the theme of "what queer freedom means to me." The first poem I wrote was submitted to the host on the spot. I don't remember what I wrote, but I didn't care much for it. I decided I'd try my hands at a new poem with the same words on my own time. The words were: mass, kin, road, nails, heat. Here's what I came up with:


Her mass of hair rests softly against my neck
I watch the steady rise and fall of her chest
   kin to mine
Her fears are plain in the curl of her lashes
My fears are plain in the shame of my longing
We lie still
   embraced in our grotesque desire
Her mouth parts like a break in the summer rain
   the heat of her body whispering her want
   the relentless drumming of an anxious heart
Her nails trace along my skin...
  "what if they find out?" they ask in the dimness of dawn
  "can you love me?" my eyes ask in response
"I should hit the road" I choke out in a faltering whisper
   artfully untangling our limbs
   dressing with practiced efficiency
I creep out into the approaching morning leaving self and truth
   cooling quickly in her now empty embrace
I face the wind with a courage I lack to face myself
"I don't want to hurt my family" the refrain plays
"Besides, who would want a daughter that's gay?"

Graceful Hands - 09/30/2013

Graceful hands for graceful tasks
Striking success from the unwilling flesh
Ringing forth destiny
Willing, willing it to the fore
Twisting it out
Complacently
Yet agonizing and sweet
Graceful hands
Gracefully turning
Gracefully closing
Around your graceful neck

Untitled - around September 2013

she looked out the window at the world
slanted and cock-eyed careening away at alarming speed
the greens and browns of surburbia
speckled with the blues of swimming pools
brimming with chlorine and lazy summer affluence

Her eyes traveled out and out
to the far reaches of the distant horizon
she was mesmerised by the sky:
a strong, flat and steady blue,
white clouds bobbing cheerfully in languid clumps

then she realized that it wasn't the sky at all
it was a vast lake stretching miles into the ether
those clouds were far above
yet appeared to sit within it
lake and sky were one indistinguishable mass
water wed to air

you and i, she thought
we are lake and sky
fathoms apart
seamlessly bound to form the heavens
blue and white and shining in the sun
sparkling and waiting for the storm to come

Untitled - December 2009

Could I ever really be the same?
Could the sun ever dazzle me so brightly?
Could the air ever fill me so completely?
Could the grass ever tickle my feet so perfectly?

My emotions are multiplied tenfold
Every sensation is orgasmic
The joy in every breath is boundless
I am at the threshold of complete satisfaction

Your spit was like liquid poetry in my mouth
I could feel your fingerprints on my skin
Your breath was a wholesome vapour in my blood
I could feel your body crushing me like the deepest waters

I peeked into your eyes and stole your soul
Your glances feed into me a feverish desire
I pulled out your hair to possess you
A single strand to tie up my passion
I scratch open your skin to show my longing
Those wounds feed my intoxication

You touch me with your thoughts
You caress me with your voice
You tear me with your want
You break me with your lips
You kill me with your simple existence

Yet my only hope is to make you smile
My my only hope is that you might,
even in a fleeting moment of indifference, think about me