_gossip.

To the girl with the glowstick smile
And the eyes deep enough to stand in. What are you so afraid for?
Why let them desecrate the altar of your walk
for the hollow prayers in between your thighs?
Just to forsake the God you’ve kept closed
from their beautiful blasphemy.
With your own sins echoing in the hallways
Of your insecurities
And the mocking tones birthed from strange lips.

I’ve forgotten your smile…

Formerly fearless woman…
Since when did you care?
And give credibility to their criticisms.
Building monuments 60 sob stories high
With your sorry’s and sigh’s
When none of it was of your fault to begin with.

You have nothing to apologize for.
When human beings think angels
Are strange aliens
And it’s only in your nature to be one. 

_razorblade stanzas.

Have you ever seen a razorblade
Swivel its hips across an ivory dance floor?
Waltzing across bare skin with steel stilettos
Leaving bloody passion and pain
Blazing across the floorboards.
Humming to the melancholy of her family’s neglect,
Her friends’ goodbyes,
And the somber soundtrack of burning bridges
Right until the music stops.

Her heartbeat.
Bumping a bass line rhythm
For the dancers to lose themselves in
Marching in file down her wrists
Like a barcode of all the memories
She wishes she could buy back.

Hands and feet shackled to better days
But the silver lining’s auctioning off the rest of her
To a father that sees the bottom of a shot glass
More often than his family
With a fist that falls like comets
And paints her face the same hue as the night sky

A mother reborn as a renaissance of a woman
But the only role she ever gets to play now is “victim”
Lips stitched together in gun-cocked silencers
That never betray the burdens
That her tears point fingers at.

And a brother that used to be
The only good thing she ever had.
Until she came home from school
And found him hanging in his bedroom.
The trauma screaming from the walls
Witnessing her brother turn into a statistic.
She misses him.
And sometimes she wishes that it would all end
Just so she could say hi again.
Like life…is just a race
And the winners only sprint their hardest
To get away from what’s behind them.

So she cuts herself another slice of heaven.
Because in this whirlwind of a world
That swirls crazy in her veins
It’s the only thing she can control.
Baptizes herself with her pain.
Blesses herself with the blame.
Slicing her skin, scorching
Across the meadows of her arms
Like burning crosses
Asking God to admit all the mistakes He ever made.

An inhale of fresh air
From the darkness so thick, she thought
That she would suffocate
Back breaking under the pressure
Of carrying a building bricked from all her regrets
60 sob stories high and wide as the night sky.
Singing a lullaby to her heart
That replays like shattering glass
In the crook of her smile and the breaks in her laugh
That she wields like a mourning star.

So how do you tell a broken woman she’s beautiful?

You give her roses.
Not blaming her for having thorns
But thanking the thorn bush
For giving you something beautiful
That pricks your skin just hard enough
To help you understand her.

_heart gallery.

My heart hangs hundreds of portraits
On the walls inside of my chest.
All of the same girls.
Smiling in their frames
Like they knew they tiptoed in my dreams,
Haunting me for giving them the code
To unlock the cryptic tick-tock of my pulse.
A nostalgic hum of could have’s
And should have’s
And would have’s.
Exhibit numbers in the corners
Like there were expiry dates
Tattooed on my heart
For the place I reserved for each one of them.

A. With the dimples you can stand in
And a laugh like ivory piano keys.
She stumbled in late by accident
But she was the first.
The first to Jackson Pollock cupid’s blood
All over the white walls.
The first face.

B. The girl with the crooked grin
Hanging lopsidedly like it was trying
To pirouette into a perfect pose.

C. Eyes like a labyrinth
And the fire of a minotaur.
With curves like an hourglass
With too much time on its hands.

D. A smile like a lighthouse
Unpredictable gale on a summer afternoon.
Handed me cocoons made of telephone wires
Built to birth the butterflies she left in my stomach.

E. The biggest portrait that hangs on the wall.
Paint still fresh, abstract
Like the most intentional of mistakes.
The painting that calls me out from my dreams
With a gentle breeze on her tongue
And passion painted on her lips.
Unnatural in her natural beauty.
Clumsiness choreographed with the grace of her walk
And a style: half smarts, half substance
Half hidden in her smile.
The last face.

The echoes in the halls of my chest
Like the cavity was a woodwind instrument
And they still know exactly how to play me
Like favourite love songs on repeat.
Memories mass produced in the factories
With molds for hot blooded molten metal
Dripping from my forehead and drenching my spine
In all the seconds I spilled from my fingertips.

And my heart refuses to take them down.
Frames them in my regrets
On a mantle of missed opportunities.
Masochistic in its stubbornness.
Its idea of beauty.
The beauty where the art comes from in exchange.
Where the words band-aid the scars
Where the pain is a pigment
And the canvas bleeds beautiful
But I can’t get them off the walls.
Still hangs onto the nails I drilled into my back
When each one emptied their feathers onto my lap
Just to remind me it was wrong
To try and go too close to the sun.

_my first girlfriend.

I have decided that my first girlfriend will be loud.
She’ll whisper like a megaphone in a mausoleum
And sing with all the finesse of a jackhammer.
More Motley Crew than Madonna
Ink running through her veins
Tattoos sprinting across her arms
Like she wanted the Sistine Chapel on her skin.
And her earphones sing the steel hum of heavy metal
Speaking enough gut wrenching chords to drown in,
Beating cymbals and hi-hats on her eardrums.

 My first girlfriend will curse like a Death Eater
Punctuating her phrases with all the profanity
I never had a taste for.
She will have an affinity for blood and broken windows
A shot glass full of poison and tequila
And she will look like a model
Waltzing down a concrete walkway
Doing her best impression
Of everything she tries to hide from her bathroom mirror.

 My first girlfriend will be honest.
She’ll tell me things like:
“Your poetry doesn’t make sense”
Or “You’re all talk, all the time”
And “Don’t be so afraid to take a chance!”
She will walk with the authority of Eve
In the Garden of Eden after the feast
And she’ll be confident.
Knows she’s beautiful.
Knows she’s smart.
Knows she can play your games better than you can.
And doesn’t care about any of that.
She’ll bring up death, bring up life
And she’ll look up and ask what heaven hides
Like she knew that there were angels
Playing peek-a-boo through the cumulus.

 My first girlfriend will be half Asian
Half “who gives a shit?”
And she will have a name like Catherine.
And Catherine will love spicy chicken wings
And extra sour Skittles
She will never like pink or purple,
Has this odd attraction to the colour crimson
And be fascinated by broken sand castles and cracked clocks.

 And she will confuse the shit out of every girl
That I’ve ever known!
Like “Why her? Why that dark crimson woman
With all that anger and electricity in her tongue?
Why her with her painted limbs, the sharp wit
And the thunder in her voice like a rock anthem?
Why not someone like her?
Or her?
Or anyone else!?”

 And I will reply:
“Because she’s not YOU!
And they weren’t her.
Or her.
Or anyone else!
Because she’s here.
Because she cares. Because she stayed.
Because I’ve tried and I’ve always failed.
See, I tried being your favourite love song
Your gentle symphony.
The one-man band
With the bass line of your ballad buried in his heartbeat
Trying to keep tempo when I could have done better
With a woman who wears the electric screech
Of a broken guitar riff instead of an acoustic melody.
A girl…so wrong from the get-go
But we jigsaw into each other’s arms
Like destiny painted us in a constellation
Too close to the sun but too far from the Earth.
All that warm sunshine with nowhere to go
And all the time in the world.”

 My first girlfriend will be different.

_lessons.

I’m completely convinced
That every girl I’ve ever fallen for
Has two distinct parts to her.

One part was a handwritten letter from God.
Curves from his most beautiful handwriting
So sweet you would swear
He had honey in his pen.
A linguistic masterpiece
Of every style and genre
But every story was beautiful in its own way.
A symphony in syntax
With punctuations in all the right places
Crossed every T
But lost as soon as I got to their eyes
Signed with a:
ps. I hope you learn something from this about yourself

And the other half was an avid student
That never missed a chance to sit in the front
Of every class taught by Satan.
Knowing exactly what to do
To make me feel alive
Just to kill me a little bit on the inside later.
I swear all of their notes
Were written on the inside of their throats.

If that’s the case then the devil
Is one hell of a teacher
Because he always managed to teach me something too.

_an open letter for single mothers.

She’s not the same person she used to be.
Something less. But something more.
She’s a patchwork symphony
Of band-aids and bandages
Trying to hold together the fragile fragments
Quilting together her memories
In a Faberge fashion

A rose watered by stray prayers
With her roots embedded in turmoil
Working graveyard shifts
In tandem with the skeletons
She’s buried in the back of her closet
So her seed can blossom past her station

A tender touch that can nurture
A struggle into a diamond
Raging thunder, into silence
A son, into a man
A daughter, into a woman
And the cries of her children
Buzz like a crowded cathedral
In the hollow hallways of their home
Where the heart is

Labeled by her gender
By the grace in her hips
And the shape of her tits
Identified by her gentle touch
And the regal curve of her spine
Like a tower of a waving daffodil
With her chin held so high
Her crown grazes the heavens
Parting the sky like lightning
In the clenched fists of an angry god
Vandalizing egos like *snap*

She has no time to be broken.
Too strong, too tough, too tired to be broken.
Her fatigue hangs off the weary joints of her skeleton
Like paintings of a better tomorrow
Looking into a mirror to a broken yesterday.
Studying chalk traced outlines of past relationships
She hangs in her gallery of lessons and regrets.
Too many men have
Treated her eardrums like a landfill
So now there’s an abyss in her chest
Her pride won’t let a man fill
And a place in her heart
That her mind won’t let a man feel

But still she stands with her arms
Spread like magazine articles
Or the legs of that 16 year old girl
Who treats love like a rental film
It lasts less than two hours
Is best enjoyed with the lights off
And holding to it for any longer
Only means you’ll have to pay in the end.

A solemn woman
With a portrait of her battered heart
Swinging on a noose between the vaulted arches
Of her ribcage like a metronome
Counting time to the rhythm of her heartbeat
In the music box she calls her chest
With ghosts of miracles
Haunting the space behind her breasts
Visible past the stiff lipped armor
She tries to protect it with.

Weary eyelids like a horizon cradling the sunset
Between cumulus clouds and rays of sunshine
Slowly closing to the lullaby of mute songbirds
Trading lyrics to a chorus of cannon fire
Through the windows of her pupils

She has katanas hidden
Behind the ivory tombstones of her teeth
Sheathed between her cheeks
And the shimmering mask she calls a smile.
A tongue that cracks like whips
On the backs of pregnant silences
And broken sentences
That cushion the missing apologies
That sandcastle in her ears
Her speech is covered
In a thin film of sorrow
And every syllable sings a song of sadness
Chanting a broken hearted testament
Layered with passages she uses to escape with

Her essence is impossible
Her demeanor is the eye of the storm
And she moves with the grace
Of a hurricane with broken wings
Wishing she could hide beneath her dreams
When reality starts to look too much
Like a nightmare
Just so she won’t have to wake up one morning
And build up the courage to tell her children:

“Daddy’s not coming home.”

angel.

She has eyes the colour of raindrops.
Violin strings for vocal chords
And a laugh like sunlight fighting through thunderclouds.
A smile like lightning
And a heart well worn on frayed sleeves.
She treats her past the way an alcoholic treats an empty bottle
And there’s nothing left
Because she spends all of her time trying to earn her wings back.

So I’m trying to paint a picture out of jigsaw pieces
Searching for her reflection in stained glass windows
To try and understand her.
Why she keeps herself locked away
Like Rapunzel with long locks of regrets
Hanging heavy from her eyes
Wondering if the burden
Ever becomes too much for her cheeks.
Because she wears her sadness
The way most girls wear their skin.

Then one day she confessed her mistakes.
She said she was wrong for thinking he was perfect.
He who made her believe she could fly.
And the first man to tell her she was beautiful.
Until the day he got tired of her.
Snatched her hopes away
And sent her down to me with tears on her face
And a broken halo.
Her paper mache wings fighting to lift her up.
I think I’m praying to a broken angel.

She doesn’t remember what it was like
To have God as a neighbour
And treats joy like a friend
That packed all their memories in the back of a truck and left.
She tells me heaven is a lot more golden from the other side.
And down the block,
You might be able to get your fix for salvation
If the darkness didn’t swallow you first.
So she looked for rainbows…
A reassurance that the rain might give birth to music.
That nothing was ever as bad as it seemed
And baptized herself in nothing but daydreams.

Now I’m locked in her eyes
In a gaze like confessionals in the backseat of a car
And all her secrets gift-wrapped and addressed to her grave.
But I swear…that the first smile she ever threw in my direction
Must have felt a lot like heaven.

Every time I try to tell her
She loses control
And her lips quiver and spasm under the weight of tears
Heavier than concrete and hotter than lava
Hurricane Katrina in a whisper
Like my words were prayers being poured over her
Like an exorcism for all the demons she was left with.
And the rainbows she used to look for
Stopped reassuring her that everything was going to be fine
And turned into ashes of Armageddon in the sky.
A thunderstorm of disappointment
And a broken hearted symphony
Exploding with such force that it knocked God off his pedestal.

And all I’m asking for now is a miracle.
To bring her back to life
So her wings can carry her back across that horizon
Then I can stop praying to that broken angel.
See…
She has eyes the colour of raindrops.
Violin strings for vocal chords
And a laugh like sunlight fighting through thunderclouds.
And it’s been way too long since the last time I’ve heard it.
Forgetting that sometimes...
I used to think it that the angels were singing to me.

StoriesThatTheDeadCanTell.

One day…
We will lie six feet beneath the earth
And wonder where all the time went.
When our skeletons waltz with earthquakes
And bathe in nothing but raindrops
That tap dance across our ribs like xylophones.
And the clothes we were buried in
Have rotted away with our designer flesh.
Stripped to bare bones
No longer able to hide
Behind the tags on our shirts,
The confidence in our walk,
Or the thickness of our skin.
We are vulnerable.

The hollows of our eyes
Lie empty so we can no longer see the sun set
Or feel skin beneath our fingertips
Or smell the grass cut because we rest beneath them.
Day and night bear no differences
As we lie in our tombs
With nothing but shadows for company.

So I ask them why they put the dead in coffins
When we hated being boxed in our whole lives.
And the weight of the world
Presses down on our bones
With all the burdens of a guilty conscience.
Cracking bare knuckles and creaking joints
Knocking on the lids of our caskets
Until we’re only left with our spines
Being used as rulers to see if we measured up
To who we could have been.

And we can only pray that enough people cried
When they lowered us into our graves
To make us feel valuable.
And wonder if the dead can feel
The caress of fingertips on their tombstones,
The moisture of a teardrop
Watering the soil above them,
Or the weight of a wreath of flowers.

And wonder if those we left behind
Will forgive us for leaving.

The heart we prided ourselves on following
No longer beats between our ribs.
Nor can we stomach what we’re left with.
And the hands of time
Are the only digits we can still hold on to
As we count down eternity.

While the sand spills
From the gaps in between our bones,
We will remember our fear of death and laugh.
The chattering of our skulls
Creating the background music
For all the stories that we still have to tell.
While our flesh gives life to those who feed on it.
And life grows from death
As roots creep from our veins
And our blood waters their seeds.

I will lie there…
Past thunderclouds and clear skies.
I will remind you that, after you die
We will all laugh and trade jokes
About how afraid we were of dying.
But then we will know better.

SticksAndStones

They say sticks and stones
May break your bones
But words can never hurt you.
But what am I supposed to do
When your tongue lashes like whips
Against the torture rack your lips turned out to be?
And the words I never said are the ones that hurt the most.

Like…
I love you.
I miss you.

And my legs rattle like earthquakes
Wrestling with hurricanes
Afraid of what’s going to happen next.
Cold sweat drips in beads
Like machine guns unloading bullets
In a point for list of everything I didn’t do.

And those sticks and stones
Are the words I never wanted to hear from you.
So I tell myself…
…those sticks and stones
…wouldn’t have been so bad after all.

There’s no emergency room
For a collection of scars
From should have’s
And could have’s
And would have’s.
So I’m left with notebooks
And dried out pens as painkillers.

While your words form balled fists
In the pregnant silences they left behind.
Growing lives of their own.
Until the walls start to tell stories
Of scuffed knees
And actions stitched together with good intentions.

And in the end…
Those sticks and stones.
Are just sticks and stones.

ZombieApocalypsesAndConsciences

I am legend.
And my biography was written by George A. Romero.
I’m Leon Kennedy
And my conscience is a zombie.

That I’ve already Left4Dead
For telling me every good thought had a right to live.
But 28 days later I see the dead rising
Like Lazarus but I’ve already been crucified
With my arms spread wide in acceptance
In an attempt to embrace my conscience.
Telling me I want a real relationship
When society dictates that I only want brains…

Treating good intentions like a virus
Coursing through my veins
Blaming the angel on my shoulder
For what he did to me.
Now I’m looking for a cure
When he’s already put me on quarantine
So I couldn’t hurt anybody else.

I’m a dead man walking through the devil’s playground
Homeless…because I already burned down the house
With a thousand corpses of the bad decisions I’ve made
Trying to evacuate the resident evil.
While I Rob-bed zombies of their identities
So I could feel a little bit better about myself.
With ups and downs on the seesaw
Manipulating games for entertainment
Like the blueprint for Jigsaw.

I hide behind a mask
And pretend it was Halloween.
Because it’s on nights like this
When living with the living dead feels like the better option
And a dance with the devil turns into Thriller.
See my family’s always been religious
But I accepted my demons with open arms.
Stripped decency and bare skin
Like rotting flesh because nowadays
I can’t live with myself.

And my conscience keeps coming back
Just to tell me that I’m not the same anymore.