what's left unsaid
for a while now,
these words hidden buried in pockets
clenched tightly inside sweaty palms,
forming confessions, prayers,
intertwined with the lint and $1.25 loose change.

over and over ive memorised how they felt in the dark,
but i could never let them out.

is it a lie that i never let them see the light?
wrap them in apologies (too little, too late, i know),
leave them by your bedside window
for you to find on the evening i pack my bags,
walk out the door and leave everything behind.

and maybe that will be the heaviest regret of all.

--------

random burst of inspiration on a bus ride with a great view of the sunset.

also thinking of possibly remaking this blog (keeping the content but changing it a lot site wise) so am busy looking into a lot of that as of this moment. 

is this home. 
You try to settle within your skin,
the home you were long given,
make your bed between the bones and sinew.
Sometimes you want to tear the greying wallpaper down,
fingernails to wall to wall, corner to corner;
Take a hammer to the floorboards
Pry out all the dead memories and set them free;
Break all the windows, lie on the broken glass,
to just let yourself be.
The locked doors and broken hallways lead nowhere.
You light a match to the dust just so you can see.
I’ll rebuild this house from ashes just to live again;
carve marble staircases from blood sweat and tears.
I’ll rebuild this house just so I can finally breathe.

between us
We’ve walked lifetimes to meet here,
opposite sides of a river rolling, dancing downhill;
turmoil and crashing currents of impossibly, between the love,
the warmth, all of it and none of it.
We speak as if we’re side by side,
words drifting through the tides turning back and forth on my tongue,
threatening to drown us both.
Here’s a crashing river, we’re brought here to stand across,
here’s a crashing river between us, never to be crossed.

forgiveness
We can turn the guilt between our fingertips, wondering,
if we can’t forgive ourselves for all the small things,
how can we forgive ourselves for anything?
Confess our sins at a broken down payphone late at night,
heard by no one but a dead end road.

Maybe we don’t deserve this 25 cent salvation -
a dial tone buzzing on and on.
I know you’re tired of tasting apologies between my teeth,

for all these things I can no longer change.

(of loss)
every night the heaving of breaking bones,
there’s a moth with a broken wing and it beats endlessly in your chest.
frail fingers’ hold to hope like spider silk,
a baby bluebird with crooked feathers looking to the sky.
falling through the cracks of hope in endless dusk and dawn,
a body curled up on its own in the ferns,
sinking through the trampled soil and torn up roots.

(bodies)
this body bends and breaks around
the bones that struggle to hold a
frame
steady and in place.
the taut skin pulled tight around
sharp discomforts
serrating the insides.
sculpt a smile,
hold your breath for just a while.
place your voice down on the floor,
place it between your feet.
close your eyes so you can’t see
them wearing your skin down thin.
body breaks through
bones that hold a misshapen frame
forever steady and in place.

in the stars
swimming in the indigo night above,
we were immortalised by the stars.

how they heard our quiet words,
saw the smallest smiles,
hair billowing out window sills,
highway blues at twilight,
silhouetted by the horizon laughing breathless,
arms spread wide to the sky.

captured by the pinpricks of light,
in a million years when our time is done,
they travel on,
remembering the years
we sang our voices hoarse,
we ran danced laughed at the edge of the world.

I could have frozen those moments in time,
delicately into amulets of amber,
threaded soft blue string through,
hung them on our necks against our chests.
we were immortalised by time,
we live on through the night.

mantra
the soft thrum of pulse underneath the chest;
it spells a mantra, on repeat.
i want it to be better, i don’t want to get better.
there are floods and avalanches in the veins,
in every breath.
fight it or drown. fight it or be buried.
inhale the bedroom fumes,
pinch the skin, again and again.
slivers of memories fill peripheral visions,
the single sound of the door closing behind him,
fills the head again and again.
your mind is in the skies, in the clouds,
not here nor there, resting peacefully
unmoving in a field somewhere.
waking in cold sweat, you see storms
and storms, you can’t breathe.
the soft thrum of the heart,
it spells a mantra, again and again on repeat.
i don't want it to be better, i want to get better.

kid games
(when) I was little;
he tore the tendons right out of my heart,
fingernails scraping against muscle, sinew.
chewed it up and spat it back -
barbed wire. all hard edges and sharp hooks.
serrated my teeth and burned my tongue,
that’s how I learned to live.
even a laugh is ugly, a threat, a defence.
stay away from these bones and flesh,
I will tie knots in the wire,
bite it into two,
spit it right back as he did, right back at you.

a desperate man's plea,
tastes like a dissonant chord held between the teeth.
if you hollow out his chest, take a spade to the charcoal
lungs, replace the sinews with tightly wound
corkscrews.
a breath held under icy water and never let go,
sharp and thin and neverending.
desperation yields a disfigured disillusionment,
a hatchet to the dissonance,
to the stomach to the guts.
a desperate man’s plea that falls silent,

silent on deaf ears and it will never be heard.

untitled 01/09/17

all those laments about leaving.

dreams of crossing your name off of every memory,

every face. scramble the letters,

find a new alphabet for yourself all together.

it’ll take years to untangle these threads

to moments and memories and mortuaries,

in your dreams it takes a second, a single clip

of the switchblade. they all fall to the ground.

all those laments about leaving.

in three years they won’t remember a thing. 

untitled 12/12/16
3 am, muted glow in the fog drenched sky.
Street silent and unmoving, layered snowfall swallowing
daydreams, memories, lost in the cold
and gentle air.
Across, the buildings silent, inside them
two dozen sleeping soundly,
a single warm window glow several houses down.
I lean against the frosted glass,
I take in the unseen unheard stories born
in the thralls of winter nights.

Found some older poems around that I haven't posted on here before (3/3)

supernovas in your stomach
the stars spin heavy in my vision
and I slip, tendrils trailing from fingertips
into the indigo sky.

there is a nebula scorching my insides,
cracking ribcages and collapsing lungs.
solar systems are spinning circles
in my throat.

they’re crashing out of control.

losing sight of it all again,
thoughts will spiral into galaxies above.
a supernova melts my neurones
weightless and untethered, burning through.

I let the silver threads tangle through heartstrings,
feel my stomach plummeting again,
a sickly sweet feeling of flying, falling.
unreachable.

the night sky is so boundless and inevitable.

I swallow the aching silence,
let the stars collapse in my chest
cascading atoms through the veins,
they cannot and will not ever rest,
I am never to rest again.

Found some older poems around that I haven't posted on here before (2/3)

flowers and dead things
flowers growing on me
where dead things used to be.
they’re buried and gone
but never for long.

it’s an itch that can’t be scratched
and a weed that curls around
the limbs, rooting and seeding,
all the way to the bone.

compost my thoughts beneath
the skin, nurture
my mistakes within the cracks
and the creases and the weeds.

forgive the flowers for their bended
stems and weeping petals.

the curving roots tell bitter stories,
that may soon be washed out by the rain.

I pick at the dirt and try to nurture the growth,
I want the shoots to heal
these previous crimes;
let this garden be slowly reborn.

forgive yourself for the graveyards
and all you’ve buried with you.

flowers growing on my body
where dead things used to be.

Found some older poems around that I haven't posted on here before (1/3)

undoing 
your shadow haunts my peripheral vision,
inklings of your voice seep through
trailing words and blood vessels,
entwined barbed wire into
my tendons and veins,
and I’m ripping them bloodied
apart and away.

the knots in my stomach are
rose thorns.
you’re lead in my thoughts,
you’re heavy metal poisoning.

I still feel your gaze in
unpredictable places.
between the cracks of pavements,
at the bottom of glass bottles
and stubbed out cigarettes.

your name is a stick n poke tattoo
carved into my palms,
I can’t unclench these fists,
they crack and heave under the pressure,
of never seeing you again.

you’re no good, I was no better.

I fumigate our memories,
dissect the blurry heartbeats
and wash the slurred words
down the kitchen sink.

I want to pick pieces of you
out of my brain.
I want to pretend that I never felt a thing.

I put together a little poetry collection book of 18 or so of the poems I wrote from 2014 until now. Includes 2 I’ve never published on my blog before, but doesn’t include everything I’ve written the past 3 years. The little cover doodle/design by me as well.

I've uploaded it onto my payhip here, where it's choose your own price. Can be downloaded for free or if you can spare a dollar or two, that'd also be super appreciated! Hope you all enjoy.

years ago

So close my skin is pinpricks on hot coal,

I am aware of every inch of myself with a brutal honesty.

In the palm of my hand I hold out my thoughts,

she reads between the lines, doesn’t really care for what she sees.

My name two swift syllables from her mouth

crashing into me, every time.

Her name two swift syllables in my mind

poignant poetry I still hold inside. 

Her eyes rest on me silently from across the room

My words unsaid catch in my throat; 

they burn the insides of my cheeks and turn them

crimson red, my eyes burn, I close them quietly.

We read each other inside and out,

Secret confessions in the dark never repeated in the light.

Her voice in my ears on a school night,

I hold the sound in my fist so tight my bones creak;

I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever hear the same

string of soft, slurred sentences again,

same intonations, vulnerability, from anyone.

I know this will end, I know it never truly began.

Even now I try to remember how her laughter used to sound like at 3 am,

and how back then even when we were hours away I had just wanted to know her thoughts on

something mundane I saw earlier that day. 

couldn’t know 

When I couldn’t know,

I looked in books and dictionaries,

tried to see myself standing diligently

in words and descriptions,

a diagram of my insides

labelled left and right.

I would listen to the others,

try, imagine my mouth forming their words,

telling their stories and singing their songs. 

Slip into their shoes; ill fitting,

fall into their clothes; slightly suffocating.

Try to make them all feel right.

Searching for answers in the stomachs of others,

bookmark myself in autobiographies. 

Try to match their shadows and reflections

side by side, never mine. 

Projections and analogies and conceptions,

never did feel like they were real life;

they never could feel like they were my life.

This is quite an overdue post but thank you Imaginings 2016 for publishing my poem observations of a stray thought during the school year. This was my last year to be eligible to submit something to the school magazine, and I was really happy to have been included!

starry night

I will wrap us 

in constellations,

our breath will light the horizon,

the indigo sky.

We will breathe stardust,

we will hold each other tight,

safe and sound, across galaxies

space, and time. 

No expanse of darkness

could ever quench our fire, our light.