i sometimes wonder if you'd miss me when i die.
i've known you all my life and you've always been a sad man, but i never knew why. i imagine you had a girlfriend once, back when you were young, and when the sun set the only thing that glittered brighter than the glassy surface of the common pond was the hope in your heart.
i don't think you'll recognise me when i'm not on my back with my legs spread, wider than the jaws of an old man who has died with his mouth open.
i imagine you at my funeral, your dry, wasted eyes, the lonely cigarette in your mouth, your clenched fists, so tight that your knuckles shine as white as your hair. my coffin
dear death,
i went to visit my wife today, in the building where i have to breathe through my mouth because it smells like a slaughter house. i don't buy her flowers anymore, because they are almost as dead as she is and giving them to her is like putting flowers on a grave. i don't buy her chocolates, because she'd just vomit them up in a shit-brown wave and she never had much of a sweet tooth anyway. no, i just go by myself and hope that it's enough.
today i realised how much her eyes scare me. they used to be green. mossy green, not emerald green like they say in books, because in real life nothing could possibly be that perfect. but in
my head hurts, my nose bleeds by SameStripes, literature
Literature
my head hurts, my nose bleeds
i am tired of being feasted
upon.
through the window
i see the moon's catatonic stare
and i think, moon, you are almost
as lonely as i am.
i taste salt on my tongue
and realise that i'm
crying.
(god help me, i will not take you back.
god help me)
you'll find me curled up
in front of your gravestone,
dry heaving.
there is a prayer stuck
in my throat and
i'm choking.
you are a moan that
crawls like a tarantula
down the hall to my room.
papier-mâché girls dance
in the garden, wild women, burning
with their dreams of becoming
skeletons, and through their
parchment skin i can see their
wasted hearts struggling to beat.
a dead boy visits me at night.
i lie rigid in my bed, paralysed
while he stands by my window, white
as the underbelly of a fish,
still dripping with water
from the ocean that stole his life.
and i can still feel their hands
on me,
as cold and rotten as the hands
of a corpse,
the prick in my backside while
they fill me with their venom.
they rape me of my life
a
frozen in starlight,
an ice sculpture
solar wind respiration
against the heaving
belly of the night sky.
shining beads of sweat
like stars
dappled his bare chest.
his nipples made me shudder,
like the sound of a chair
dragging itself across the
floor, a steel skeleton,
like a dying thing on a highway.
his hair made up the clouds.
the rocks in his eyes could
impale tender breasts and
formless thighs,
could mangle celestial bodies
like a mouth of granite.
the moon turned in its sleep,
just in time for me to see
the blood on his hands,
his broad back, spread endlessly
like wings plucked of their feathers.
the wo
the milkman left a
smouldering cigarette
on my doorstep.
i pounced in my barefeet
and barelegs, all one word
like that because it's more
abstract that way. it fucks
with your head like a
centipede wearing shoes.
baggy t-shirt, dad's.
stone roses.
i smoked my first cigarette,
triumphant while my brain
sloshed, washing machine skull.
the milkman's spit
tasted of soggy cornflakes
gone sour.
i wondered: if i was to gnaw
on his stubble, would it taste
of powdered milk?
so beautifully bland.
i would blow it from my lips
in mystical rings, tell myself i was
a fairy.
i puked sugar puffs two minutes later.
i was eight.
you kn
you are a relative concept by SameStripes, literature
Literature
you are a relative concept
i wear your jacket, nothing else.
the leather is tired and worn
at the elbows. there is a crumpled
carton of richmonds in the
left pocket. i pull one out
and puff on it, green-faced
and week-kneed and watery-boweled.
you rush through me like a
ghost
and i start to disintegrate
at the joints like a weathered
scarecrow.
seagulls sing a bereft symphony
from above, feathered angels.
god,
it is so beautiful
i could just collapse in on
myself like a neutron star
and cry right here with the dead
starfish, dry as sponges
in the sadistic glare of the sun,
cradled by shells that have proved
unworthy of the ocean's foamy
embrace,
staring at singed ceilings by SameStripes, literature
Literature
staring at singed ceilings
i lapped cigarette ash
off your protruding
cheek
bone
the nicotine rush
combined with your
musk
was more mesmerising
than a car crash.
i cut my tongue on your
matted wire wool beard
and i bled whiskey,
got so drunk your bob
marley poster had
approximately
fifteen thousand and six
eyes.
your bedsheets smelled of
me and my fingerpads
played
ring a ring o' roses
around your third nipple.
your refrigerator skin
gave me goosebumps.
you'd been dead
for a while.
and i found you in between my fourth
and fifth
toes, the jungly crevice there;
you'd made a bed from black fluff
that came off my old sock, like the tears
of a storm cloud.
sat on the lawn in my tattered sundress,
i skinned my feet, made them naked.
there you were, in between my toes,
squinting as muggy sunlight penetrated
your eyes.
fucked them.
raped by a star.
i'd suppose it's better than waking up
with the taste of sour sex still
having its way with your tongue,
finding alien pubic hair in your
underwear.
raped by the sun?
at least you'd get a tan.
but then, i'd never know.
steam unfurled from pa's coffee, undramat