Every day another desire

I feel
the pulse of him
in me
filling up
before the skins touch
before the bodies crash.
If desire has a smell
it's already
in my nostrils
making me dizzy
from afar.

Ways to self-destruct

The way to self-destruct
is to live two parallel lives
and let the one overwhelm
the other
Where you let the imagined freedom
catch your reality by the throat
and bleed into it,
just to point out
all the ways
it drowns you.

Of course
sometimes
the ways you self-destruct
reach out a hand
that grabs
and saves you.

I am
for I chose
small, eroding, self-destructions
over eradication.

Your arm

It came to me unexpected
while out with friends,
the sudden image
of your hand
circling around my waist
under the bedcovers.

It was so real I felt
the sensation of your arm
against my skin
and I was flooded
by the presence of you,
sometimes your existence
overcomes me.

And I was so ready
to touch
that I wanted to reach
within the gaps between us
and somehow bridge
the light-years of seperation.

Measurements

Sometimes I forget how to measure time.
It used to be
from song to song
and now it's closer to
disaster from disaster.

Sometimes I forget how to measure space
It used to be
from step to step.
Now it seems to be from
Imminent danger to danger passed
to danger transformed
to danger carried out.

Sometimes I forget how to measure people.
It used to be from tender touch to tender touch,
from value to value.
Now I no longer know
how to measure myself,
let alone others.

Sometimes each person feels
like a potential black hole.

Future plans

For the first time
I felt the need
to put a piece of you,
the piece with my heart,
in all that I do
the gestures of all that I am,
to honour you
and also let you go.
Like an exorcism
only I am able to perform
to set free
all that I hold.

I've put in motion
every piece of me
and a new plan has evolved
so that we don't often meet.
I only hope,
though I crave you still,
that if I keep cutting
somehow
somehow
it will not pain me more
to never have the chance
your presence in my life to keep.
I cut
and cut away
hoping that no connection will be left
though the silence suffocates in its grip
and I want to tell you all
but you have other problems to resolve
and I dare not
burden you
furthermore.

Waves

Last time
you asked me
How are you and I said
Hey I'm fine, you?
But I wanted to say really,
You'd better not fall for me
'cause I am fine and well
when I am in the sunshine
but inside I am made-up of storms
and no sailor ever reaches the shore
and I can promise nothing but
that I will break your heart.

And hear me now
I know there will be a ceiling you will reach
For I recognise the lovers
from a mile away each
and there is the burning in the heart
and the earthquake in the ribs
that only being close brings.

I have tried and failed
and failed again
to move those tremors from my heart and limbs
to place them nearer to others
closer physically
but try as I might I can't deny
That I don't feel
for you the tidal wave
I feel
swiping at my knees
the moment I lay my eyes on him.

Let the goldfish

Let it

Let that sink in

Let the goldfish do their thing

Let the water wash away

All the wounds that bleed.

(more drawings here)

The coming silence

  I have learned to be wary of the silence that rests upon my lips sometimes.  Every silence has its own taste, a distinct quality from one to another. I revel in getting to know each and every one of them, appreciating them and weighting them before my eyes. But there are silences I prefer to avoid, whenever they approach there is always a different air about them. I used to be afraid of awkward silences but that has changed ever since I got introduced to another silence, the silence that befalls after a certain delicate yet distinct line has been crossed. I'm afraid every time this kind of silence engulfs me, when it rises from within me and washes over everything, it takes me over with the technique of scorched earth, stealthily and surely.
  When I become silent like this,  a page has turned and in the past I've firmly closed books that I have never looked back upon. And though it was unpleasant, I have not come to regret it yet. I'm afraid because when this silence stirs, everything else goes dormant.
  At times I wonder whether each time there are parts that never fully awaken.

Things that made me unexpectedly sad

I developed
a set of films
and realized
I didn't take
a single
picture
of you.

You'll understand when you get older

I was promised
of the land of understanding.
That I'd know
when I was older
but I grew up feeling old
and my skin
is now thinner than the paper
on which I used to dream
and rust has grown and spread
over my soul
and I
can't claim
I know any better.

Shared beds

I can't sleep next to others anymore.
I'd love to say
it's because they are not you,
that I grew half-dependent
on your body next to mine.

But this premise fell apart
and the lack of you was merely
the final nail
on the wood
and now, you see, I wonder
at the probability of it all.

Deprive a person of one thing
and soon they grow an allergy to it,
it goes hand in hand with obsessive hunger.

I grew used to
never sleeping beside you.
Sleeping next to others
deprives me of the absence
of the shape of you.

Except that too
is fading.

Purgatories for love

Some times I wonder
what would it be like
to touch you once again?
To get a glimpse of
your tender heart,
to see your eyes filled with sunlight?

They say old loves
never die
but I get the sense
it is not so.

Instead they get stuck
in the purgatory of souls,
they resurface in between
the new moon and the old.

Still there I guess

Sometimes the heartbreak is still there
Or maybe it never really leaves.
Instead I overlook the cracks
Until they start creeping up
in every new step that I take
And the gap feels almost
Just as big as that time.

Except that now
There's not even the ache for you left.
Just the gaping hole that stayed behind,
like a mute mouth hanging open.

Cheap thrills

Sometimes it's the cheap thrills
the anonymous hands
that almost erase your name
from my lips
and empty my mind.

Sometimes it's the whiskey in my breath
and the required pressure
in all the right places.

In any case, at times
I manage to give my desire
another guise
and I don't know what makes me more shameless:

That I wash away your image
or that I always come back to it.

Small obsessions

Sometimes I write into the void
I address the lover
I have not met yet
Or have not touched
The could-have-been
The will-it-be?

Sometimes I write to my addictions
Small and big ones
Material ones and not.

Who said cowardice
is not another pill to swallow?

I was always smart about the wounds
-keep them invisible
they're usually easier to hide.

Sometimes my addictions are of the mind;
small obsessions, sometimes to songs
or words
or unaddressed emotions.

The hunger always eats from the inside out.

2018

It was a year of pieces
and in pieces
and gluing them back together
clumsily trying to make them stick
in any way that did not hurt
often failing
sometimes not.

It was the year
I started unlearning to shut up
and shut off
and started gripping with
having a voice again.