Canvas

Was a time
A new day would
Come to pass as
An empty canvas
Until your fingers met mine
And your hands were shades enough
And your eyes did tell 
Of the fires to come.

And I said,
Spin
A story of spring.
Wink
And clutch
These  tomorrows 
To come.
Oh let's run
Through empty fields, 
Little hurricanes
Giant swamps
With you singing 
All the while
And smile
When strangers 
Pass us by.

Our maps are not the same
And isn't everyday 
Just another 
Empty canvas, but
I'll go where the colours are
With you.

Dog

Dog

I wish I was
A dog
So you'd see my
Tail wag when
You met me.
Maybe that'd be
Some semblance
Of affection
My eyes
My words
My hands
My smile
My thoughts
Seem to fall short of
For you.

You

Words will
get me nowhere
With you.

I can see the credits rolling
Already
Already the story is wrought
With spoilers
Endings
No one wants to know.

So open me like a book
Don't let my aching spine, 
Offer any protests for you.
Pages with no smell, and
Dinner stains
Maybe neon highlights
Are but a passing
Of time.
A loss of reason and rhyme.
While the world yearns to burn
I think of your fire.

To you speaking
In the wind
Mistakes like, no one takes your picture
And no one holds your hand
Certainly not me.
Complaints, he didn't see you smile
As you walked away
on embers.

And all I'll do
With you
Is turn you into
A poem about
What I
Couldn't do.

In silence

Before streets lead to a home
Before voice leads to laughter 
Before arms give way to warmth
And eyes erupt in fire
Everything must be followed
By silence.

Night

What will we do
When the night breaks in two?
And the daylight thaws the sun 
Out of its blue
I know you will be through.

Where will we go
When this merry-go-round 
Spins no more?
When your message and your bottle
Hits the shore
You can say you were bored.

What will we sing
When your words no longer sting
And all the songs have
Left your lips
You can say it was all just
A hit-and-miss.

Paperman

I live my life 
One word at a time
And if the muse is kind
The words do rhyme.

The sky burned my streets,
The shadows of skyscrapers
I gather the scraps I can find
And sing my life on paper.

Words arranged like jigsaw 
In paper towns, they teach you
So I let my paper plans 
Become paper planes and hope they reach you.

You're on fire with all you know
Your shores are boiling too
I'm a city made of paper, vary of your touch
Lest you burn me too.

And you'll only reach me when the
Ink has dried up in your wishing well
When your thoughts are not your own
The colours resigned, you say you gave it hell.

And still I write unseen words
Doused in all that's true
And maybe just until the day
Theres nothing more left to say
So I let my paper wishes
Turn to paper boats 
And set sail to you.

Patience

I have no patience
Even for myself
My words race faster
Than my mouth can catch up
Than my thoughts can think
Stutter stammer stop
I trip and fall
Over tepid wires
Into the gyres
Of you.
Transpose terminate traverse
These shallow waters
As I try and explain
Your eyes.

...and don’t go walking
With the same old ruse.
Don’t you know I was
Never made for two?

Immerse

I'd like to draw you in chaos
Erase the lines you were born with
And throw you into 
The fires of uncertainty
Watch you writhe and dance 
Like you were reborn.

I'd like to write you
Like a stain 
On my canvas
Like a pill I couldn't swallow
Like you kept walking
And never turned back.

I'd like to be disarmed 
Disrobed, dismissed 
Dismantled, disjointed
Disappointed no more.

I'd like to see you smile,
again.

Future

I saw my future gasping for air
Screaming silently 
Mouth wide open
A hundred teeth
Five hundred eyes
I ran to the ocean
With the shadow of a woman
Left erasing herself 
Replacing every syllable with 'sorry'
Another
Who hated flowers 
But kept some by her bed
Met the man who painted them on a wall
Wilted, and never looked again
Shrunken as the man of Sundays
Heading to a church to kneel
Shrunken as a song losing bitrate
Shrunken as a wide angle sepia tinted jpeg file compressed into a floppy drive
"You're better at reading,
Not being read," said another.
I saw the gifts 
Sent to me in pairs 
In twos and threes
Trickle
Then a rain
My wretched mind floods
Then trickles to drops again.
I saw days turn to hours
and life turn to numbers
In pairs of three
We drank the ocean dry.

A poem is never finished 
Only abandoned
But who
Reads a poet
Who does the task 
Of chipping away
At the rock
All alone
'Sshh' the universe hisses
"Sorry", chipping softly 
And slowly now
As you drown in wires 
And lights 
Disguised as tomes
Tones can be misleading 
Digitally 
"Sshhh" louder now
Everyone stares

Insane

The salt on your lip
The sweat in your brow
The hands you slit
The hate in your marrow

The way you undo you dress
The way you say you're a mess
The avalanche in your empty belly
The heroes and queens on your telly

Tell you you're the scene 
You can be the rage 
Burn the stage 
Be the gates to everything 
Cold and warm
But July stings and April won't sing
You're just a silent storm

Fold the girl

It's all the same, she said
The days and the ends of ways.
New city, she's seen before
The keys that dangle from her chain
The eyes that follow 
Down the lane
I steal the songs she used to hum
And when it snows, she breaks
Into a run.

It's all a game, she said
The sun has kissed her eyes too often
And the rain has not
left any pore dry
While I drown in bottles of different shapes
Darting between pills like scattered beetles
An old passport smudged with stamps,
She leaves home.

I know why I'm not in your view
My seaweed hair holding on to the ocean floor 
Eyes darting like a chicken running from the knife
And after all has come to pass
All I want to see is
you, unframed 
After all this
All this time I can't 
Hold the girl
So I fold the girl in half
And put her in my pocket.

#55

Your machines
are miniscule
Your time is elastic,
stretching on
Like the waste band
The wasteland
Of your yoga pants
Your car goes from
0 to 'fuck me' on
The never-ending oil rig
Of your dad's money
Your sex is rapid
Sorry, I mean
You like to 'make love'
Within the span of a
Men's magazine article
Read while taking
A shit
And you flush
Your diet
Down the drain
For protein shakes
And avocados and
Artisnal brown bread
And I would like to
Read you this
Poem
But you want
Bite sized dreams
Universe in a sentence
The world in a ball
And the sky
Within your veins

I don't want to write something sad
Anything that rhymes with hope
Will do, would you?
I'm tired of edging towards pieces
That I've called home 
Homes of people, pawns
These words are my summer gift for 
The winter in you
For your seasons that never change
And for my sun that never sets.
If I am a memory of what you used to be
Jagged edges of a knife carved with age
A no tattooed across your chest
I want to sleep like an owl in the day
To have you see me
Smiling where I stand
And no, I can't dance
But for you, I'll try

#56

Yes
I believe
Everything you say
And them when
They tell me
Like a lamb
Lead to slaughter
You were manipulated
And him when he
States you believe
Everything
For you are too nice
Too much
Too less
Too little
To comprehend
How someone could be
All you want
And tomorrow they won't
Need you
But now
The nod
The wink
Is everything
And it leads me
Offroad
Into uncertain caves
To ashes
While I
Look for gold

#57

I return to your shores
And find you changed 
The thrill has departed 
And your smile doesn't
Sting the same
The old house
By the sea is gone
The tides took away
The things thatmade you belong

#58

You
Who I haven't met
In the light
Or moving like
An island
In the dark
I'll slowly
Kiss your
boundaries
That the waves
Couldn't wash away
you leave little room
For hands and feet
And the rest of me
But I will nudge
Till the cage of
your ribs
Gives way
And your palms
break open
But maybe when you
Let me in
hold
A mirror
And in your eyes
I'll find
Myself

#59

Haunted, we meet
Broken, we speak
Like the town we birthed
now lies forsaken
Our language
needs no translation
And I'll never know
Who's waiting by the shores
You departed
Who's still feeding the fire
You started
Who still trembles
When you say the words "Let's go"
And who is saving your rain
In buckets by their window.

#60

Alone in a box of stone
Life is a lie we've known
Rolling and tumbling
Down the mountain
We are fire
We are the waters
Of the unknown
But we make
Haste, running
Through the sun's
Golden lace
And they say
Living is
just another
Waste of space.