Grunge

I'm an out of work ex-introvert in a tired plaid shirt, with frayed seams and sewed sleeves, and someone else's insignia; on the wash-raped collar crease. Care instructions, Parental guide: Tag. Now I'm it. Faded fear, Adrenal gland: Foe. Had to win. Spin me on cold. Don't forget to fold, love. Lest your careless hold, Smooths me a scared straight curve. I'm a relentless complaint sheet, A thousand qualm army. Mortality, apparently, irrelevant to my infantry. Attention, please avoid mention, Of the punch-out final, deadline joke entitled; The healthcare commission. We're out of funds, Budget cuts: Closed. Stubs thrashing. Slice through septic limbs, Lack of heart: Shows. Pulse stagnant. Let me breathe. It screamed at me, love. Now that the curtains've closed, And all we have is blank. I'm a chemical cocktail mixed the wrong way, Etched with lead, Lead astray, Rays of ex, Ash tray veins. Bleeding limbs sing for thee. This cut's dear; The rest the letter. Hey. Fella. Beat me to death; Please. Then kiss me better. I'm diagnosed. Don't you know: Fuck. Suck this venom out. 'There's no saving her.' Don't mourn though: For, I never deserved us. Through these tortured tears. I am still your, love. There is no bitter thought. But also there's no fight. Love. Did I wear the frayed shirt because it reminds me of you? The pattern on the cuff, scuffed stuff across it too. Hardly in fashion, Hardly well groomed, Hardly turning heads as it walks across a room. This plaid is my armour. This smile my disguise. You were my protector. Why I was still alive. I'm an unemployed broken toy with no tape left to fix. I've failed suicide a thousand times, and shame like that it sticks. I long for blades to rip my skin, I pray for a bus crash. To slash and thrash, trade cash for hash. Curse the world as it goes, by. The voices increase. Please priest, let me sleep. At least make them cease, So I can iron out the crease, On my brow. On my shirt. And in me. Don't cry at the blood, As it seeps through the check. I'm blessed. For the ache trapped in my heart is, love. And it will never let me rest.

Stained

The laundry room was silent,

With soft spinning dreams,

Of me wrapped round your shoulders;

Muffling your screams.

Your eyes were vacant dime slots,

Comfort-soft ice cream.

Lullabies on Eco spin;

The demons in them mean.

I watched you as my cycle ran,

Your blood came squeaky clean,

I caught it with my colour guard,

Satan's satin stain.

Your pulse cut out.

You drained away.

Innocent, it seemed.

A lonely sock.

Forgotten rag.

Anonymity redeemed.

A filthy pipe dream in delicates,

To tongue your skin pristine.

I'm a dirty little scrubber girl.

Thirsty, raw, too keen.

And just like you I'm wearing thin,

My strength has decomposed,

I'm fading fast,

Please run my love. 

I'm hungry,

Sick;

A ghost. 

My soul is stuck dear laundromat,

You trapped me when you closed.

Now I just watch the dryer spin;

And wait here for my clothes. 

ma douleur implacable

'Go to sleep'
The nightmare hushed.
La lune, she wept for me,

A rough hand.
A harsh touch.
A muffled, helpless scream.

A wake held beneath a thousand stars,
To mourn for my identity.
It slipped away between my legs,
As you jabbed into me.

My gasps unheard.
Tear drenched lust,
How cruel a man can be.

A grunted coo.
A gruff drunk kiss.
A desperate whimpering plea.

Ripped leather began our tryst,
Unwilling dead-spread knees.
Body numb to infiltration,
Limp limbs rearranged with ease.

A rag doll I was beneath your frame,
Your words still churn my guts.
'Amore' no more,
Its you I abhor;
with your grotesque sickening hush.

'Baby please.'
'Just go to sleep'
'Then it will all just seem like a dream'.

I tried to swallow your advice,
And drift to safe naive rest.
I hid behind my tight shut lids,
But I could not ignore being undressed.

The more I begged,
That you let me die,
The louder you started to moan.

A rhythmic growl.
A sweat-stained girl.
A tragic symphony; 'help, please, don't'.

Were you ignorant to my revulsion?
Or was that what you wanted all along?
Was I the first victim of your destruction?
You knew you were doing wrong.

Even now as I lay with a man I trust,
You're right there next to us.
As you came your wet words hissed,
Delusional declarations of love.

When he says it I hear your voice.
When he holds me I feel your clutch.
You are there in my dreams,
And I weep,
And I scream,
And cringe away from his touch.

I exhaled the last breath of the girl I was,
that night in the Parisian air.
So a vacuum was forged,
Where nothing belonged,

Not sex,

Nor tequila,

Nor drugs.

You're a monster, monsieur.
The cruel thief of pride.
But there are scabs on the lesions you left.

I am sorry for her,
The her I was then,
Because she never deserved what you did.

You fucked her away.
She was killed by your rape.
All that I've left is a husk.

Yet my chipped china can be glued back together,
If the artist is patient and kind,
And with each day that breaks,
A detail's erased,
And I am beginning to be glad I survived.

Vines

The night took control like a glitch surging across a power board. I was lost. Fried. Fused. The black swelled around me; the dry breast of a perverted vulture come to devour my corpse. There was a glint to the dark, a twinkling crystal blood to the pulsating onyx organ. It ran through that night unseen by mortal eyes only gazed upon maternally by stars and the Angels that screamed within them. The feathers scorched from their wings long ago they willingly withheld the flame; they found pleasure in the pain - this was both their punishment and their reward. The glitter that seeped through the earth's night was their cum, their tears; their death. Was it my death also? 

The feathers that dissolved from their arching limbs began to prickle at my skin. They teased at first, bath bombs trapped beneath warm steeped limbs. But they grew lustrous and stabbed through me. Needle after needle poked through my skin until the golden wings began to mold. They grew corrosive and stagnant. I jumped for the sky, clawed at its impossible edges. 

But I only fell. Down and down I twisted. My lungs froze in my chest; weeping lashes appeared like desperate piss across unsuspecting snow. My eyes burst within my sockets. The dark exploded across me completely like a proud firework display. My brain stem was the glorious finale that sent my flesh away in a glistening macabre mist. Ooh. Ahh. Then black. Time to go home. 

Where is home now? I have fallen for so long the pain of my destruction is fading, becoming familiar. I welcome the sting. My home is my body, this pain is my lover. I yearn for this death. I crave it. Soon I start to rub against the needles in my skin, scrape and scrape headless thus thoughtless. I carve my begging across my skin; 'more, please'. And I stop falling. The spines calm. 

Then we are rocking rhythmically together, and I am rising like a rouge balloon, shooting into the sky like a Pegasus. Blood is my liquor and my wounds are my masters. I feel heat unlike anything I've ever felt before and as I reach a climax so high that I can not feel the stomach acid pouring from my gashed torso, or the hug of ruby sinew encrusted barbed wire; I shed a tear. 

For I see a man below me being consumed by a twinkling black claw. He smiles his final smile, eyes flash metals of the burnt spoon twitching in his hand. Flecks of red rain down as his pupils blow and he evacuates his bowels. That man is me. I am the angel that seeps onto his grave. The restraints begin to rub again; my body seizes as my cock rises; and I realise only this level of intensity could make the kind stars smile on our dark, dark world. 

Birds

It's the chirp of the birds that set it off. The night has slipped away. Slowly, quietly, almost accidentally. I once counted the blinks it took for the sun to rise. I forget the tally now. It didn't seem important enough to remember, or at least that's what I tell myself now when I try to count them again. Too many graves have been filled with exhausted breaths since then. The death toll is in the millions now, each gruff exhale a soldier lost in my battle for rest. I build their coffins in my head and write eulogies for them to calm my frustration. 'Here lies a man who was killed by caffeine.' - I carve the pathetic truth into the back of my lids every night, as the beat of my rampant heart pounds in my ears. The angry footsteps of a relentless insomnia. But the birds. The birds still sing to me come morning.

They are as predictable and naive as my bed time routine. Their melancholy chirp is the adrenalin needed to arouse my nostalgia. They remind me of the slow creep of the sun over a tranquil beach, of the rush of wind past my ears as I ride through empty streets, of the accomplished solitude soaking the hour no one else knows. And all too easily they remind me of your voice. The rasp of it, as you began to share my vices. You never occur to me without the sun rise. I think I prefer to leave you in the light, things are clearer there. The day does not rage in my head, it does not mutate my thoughts and stab them repetitively through a wavering logic. With you restrained by the shackles of dawn my hatred of each witching hour leaves you alone. I can smile fondly at the birds and refuse to admit that you help the dim to crush me, that you are one of the knives it uses to impale me.

When we shared this sickness you were my bandage, I wrapped you around my gaping wounds and my delusion soothed the septic cuts. But you were just a band-aid; I was a desecrated leper who'd lost all his limbs. When you left the shock of your departure displaced that of my anguish. You saved yourself, which I could never blame you for. I was quickly decomposing, the air between our sighs was becoming heavy and toxic. As pure as you were you couldn't rescue me. I had begun to infect you, the skin across your perfect body was beginning to mold. I commend you for not fleeing sooner. With each subsequent night I endured alone the shock wore off, and so the blood seeped faster from my trauma. I was a fool. All that time you kept me together and I never even noticed. My punishment now is the memory of you, the shadows of you that mock me in this silent darkness. But I still have the birds. I'll always have the birds. Even if they'll never sound as beautiful now that I don't have you.

Stop sign

The chaos of my mind dulls to your eyes. Part of what is raging within me purrs and coos in your embrace. I am a dulled firework, reaching the end of a glorious performance. My ignition a distant memory, lost in the translation of your gaze. For what was this life before you as my medication? You are the glistening heroin my fiendish cravings fetishized. Even when your touch felt repulsive, and your words cliche, I still basked in the warmth of such long awaited belonging. I tried to reciprocate - to be the baritone echo that the glory of your faithful ballad deserved - but there has been no practice by my kind for these moments. This established scene is but an improvised awkward sketch, the two actors being I and contentment. We are strangers to each other. Its grip is alien. I've studied how to respond, but in practice being human is a lot harder than one would think. Your eyes help. Your hollow smile. Your gushing lies. They encourage a hush that regulates the storm behind my dead pan mask.

I gave in to your charm unwillingly, kicking and screaming my resolve fought, wept, then fled - the new self assured delusion that your admiration animated from the moldy cells that littered my valves was stronger than any walls i'd built to protect me from affinity. But once you closed your eyes those walls returned. Their guard off duty. This time however they did not stay dormant, they were not there to protect - they were built for attack. My cage of solitude became an implement of war. I was handed a lease to cruelty and torture; my new homes, one for the summer, one for the fall. The murky pools of acceptance I had so naively bathed in began to corrode. My mouth filled with the black sludge of dependence, it coated my lungs and every breath became a battle. Allowing myself to drown was not martyrdom; no matter how much I wished it was. I simply forgot how to swim. No voice to lead me, no optics to rescue me, no hope in hell. I was alone. Abandoned easily, without sharp eyes to guide my morality it ceased to exist.

However on the surface I was happy. Ecstatic at the slightest whiff of longing from your direction. You were never to know how unhinged I had become, or suggestively how deranged I always was. The screams in my head that punctuated your innocent snuffling were only audible to me. My smile imprisoned the wailing. Nicotine-stained teeth were the bars that contained my torment. Kept like a convict by the near art of fitting in. Your torture was ward to an inaccurate painting of me, a wax scuffed less-than-idyllic replica. But further beyond that I was the captive of gloom. The loud infinite admission that under my skull was nothing but ill feeling and calculated revenge dangled before me the keys to my freedom The morose orchestra of clinking metals sang furiously through my mind. It incubated true fear. There was always fear.

You stiffen when I embrace you. A scowl curves your brow. Perhaps you're dreaming of combat, to you the cautious touch of my nervous hand is a balled fist launching across your subconscious, not a lost frightened girl seeking validation. Or perhaps I am a pitied enemy in your mirage, my claws pleading and desperate. Ironically the accuracy reaches beyond your fabricated scenery. My desolation is obnoxious. It roars across my face. But perhaps even you are unaware of my pathetic hunger. Perhaps to you this hour is reserved for sleep and I am but an intruder demanding attention in a time you allocate to blank dry rest. You know nothing of the way my brain is crawling with fury, the intrusive thoughts and the endless loathing. You are adrift on a cloud of ignorance, and no matter how hard I throw my spears you remain imperceptible. When will I give up anticipation? When, if ever, will your bubble pop?

There was a time when my monsoon was mine alone. I kept it in check with a cemented routine of solitude and abrasion. Me and my illness grew fond of each other throughout those intimate meetings. I learned to cherish it for what it was; irreversible and fascinating. We mastered a trust in each other, forged a respect for each other, we even began to need each other. But then you crashed into our visceral entanglement and you dislodged all i'd spent years building with one soft accidental huff. My capacity to love is limited at best, so in order to let you in I had to banish the security of my demons. Of course they were furious, and now when they return their horns are sharp and their intentions sordid.

I suppose what I am praying to discover is whether the hours of clarity and bliss make up for the subsequent bedlam. But of course this query doesn't plague me long. Because as the sun rises so do your lids they flutter open and let their innards consume- and once again I lose my rationality in your irises. My trepidation leaks from the ducts atop your lashes and I resent my doubt. How can something so beautiful possibly be toxic? Is this desire for pain and unease pathological? Will it ever release me? Must I release it? Your sleep cycle is my traffic light, a red, green, amber fog. You dare me to rush with you, teasing as my mangled engine revs. Will victory earn your devotion? Does the steering wheel spin a reciprocated tale? Could this quest cleanse my desecrated guilt? Yet alas delicate, powerful creature, retaining no regard to logic or lust; I am simply too drunk to drive.

Breakfast

The shattered fragments of china were of varying sizes. The littler chunks that littered the room were an opaque hue of green; a sugar bowl perhaps, or an ornate cup. The bigger pieces were obviously plates - smashed like fireworks and exploded in shards across the ceramic tile. The way they spread across the room was a mine field - the nightmarish quest of a shoeless adventurer. But blood from nicked toes was not enough payment for this crime.

A black lake spread across a chequered plain. Oozing with a friendly morning steam which ascended in a mist to the default cream sky. The lake was advancing, stemming from a weeping glass tunnel with a snapped plastic handle. It shrouded the red and white squares that were unfortunate enough to be stagnant in its path and it ran for the edge of that plain. In a feat of escape, or with the thirst for an end, the lake dropped beyond the plastic coated horizon and slid to the mystery of the ground below. One drop at a time it leapt to freedom; if it survived the glass would not know.

What was that sharp demanding note? A pitch violent screeching, monotonous and endless. Was it a warning? What was it warning of? The accompanying flash of red was like a light house signal; screaming 'please, please, please' to those ignorant to danger. It passed through the dense smoke that was quickly filling that place like a navy ship search light through a sea-hung mist. But like a singular match in the depths of a chasm - it could do nothing to help.

The licks of orange were hungry today. They passed through the world feasting on victims of cheap fabric and dry leaves. Able to be where ever a banquet lay, invited by the accidental slip of a hand, or the heat of the sun. Today the slip was of feet; the dance of spilt coffee - which lead to a soft skull on a hard floor. The licks tasted the woman tenderly at first; savouring the initial raw lashes of flesh. Delectable and virginal. But the flames had been growing ravenous since they left the charred breakfast exhausted in the pan, snacking on curtains and cabins in preparation for their main feast.

The coffee wept for its careless mistake and the drops picked up pace, thinking that maybe were they able to catch the licks in time they could stop them from gorging on the woman who gave those drops life. But the battle had already been lost, the moment her slipper lost contact with the ground. The fire's gluttony consumed her, drooling blue heat and roaring with a thousand degree bite. The only solace the murderous spillage could cling to, was that the damage to her lungs caused by the friendly coiling smoke would kill her long before she felt herself becoming a meal for the heat. At least that was what it thought; but of course it could not hear her scream.