Alone

Alone.
Is not the empty space
The destroyed face.
Or troubled home.

Alone.
Is not the victim
Of your battered strength
Or the chilling
Scream of palpitating death.

Alone.
Is not the choice
To walk
Or the advice you take
To stay.

Alone.
Is just one.
Of what it feels
As close as what life gives
To home.

Alone.
Is next to you.
Is ice between
My
Lungs.

Alone
Is all of me
Flying, falling, clinging, dying.
Just to be

Alone.
Is kissing skin
Meeting when
You use your mouth
To see.

The Spot Light

The Blank page accuses me
Taunts me of my inability
Anxiously waiting
The burning glare of the Spot Light

My imagination strains
Running into empty walls
Still words appear- lifeless, black and white
Simply, to please the Spot Light

Outside this confinement
Words run, jump, sing and befriend me
Every occurrence a melody
Every thought an adventure

But under the Spot Light
Nothing

Sick

I am sick so sick so sick so sick sick
I feel the way I feel to feel that I know I don’t feel
I cut myself to cut away to cut to stay to kill
I eat all that I eat to eat to feel less, so I eat
I talk this way to talk I say I talk you see I talk
I cry away I cry to cry I cry and then the crying doesn’t stop
Then you bleed away my blood your blood you bleed
and
I am so sick so sick so
Help me make it stop.

The Homeless Heart

So I’m alone again. And sometimes I wonder how many people out there are lonely. Is it wrong to be lonely? My loneliness has a kind of comfort. It is the comfort of not being seen, not being noticed. It is the comfort to disappear within yourself to where nothing matters. Not your weight. Not your achievements. And all that makes you significant is... the next breath.
Is being lonely a bad thing? Do we all really have the busy, social, hectic lives so easily portrayed in films, magazines and books? Sometimes I have nothing to do. These are the times my fingers start itching and the fist grabs my lungs and tries to push me into the space that I spend all day trying to forget. What really matters? Going on and pushing through. Sometimes I feel that I am the only person. And I stop and look at the world around me and it’s fucked up.
Today a homeless girl was selling flowers. The flowers, I won’t know what they’re called, were still dripping with soil and their roots were curling out. And, as you do, I avoided eye contact but I chose that moment to light my cigarette. The smoke pulled into my lungs and, as I sat down, the girl sat next to me. Despite the smoke of my cigarette I could smell days’ worth of sweat, vomit, dirt and urine on her. She was wearing a large red sweater inside-out and back-to-front and she looked at me with... hope. I held to her the key to something bigger, something she wasn’t a part of.
And then she started talking as I smoked. Her front tooth was chipped and I was thinking that it’s so strange that her hands are a darker black than her face. She spoke but I could not make out her words. I sat, listening without hearing, blowing my smoke into the air. She had no place to go. This much I realised. I gave her two cigarettes and a twenty. And then I walked away.
I wonder if I could have made a difference. I wonder what I think makes me so special that I have the power to determine where someone’s next meal is coming from. And I probably can’t change her life. I probably won’t be able to save her. But, sometimes, I wonder about the acts of kindness in my life.
I remember that a stranger once bought a scared little girl a chocolate after watching her world crash down around her. Such a small thing. A KitKat. And yet, I remember that every day of my life. So, as I walked away, I wish that I had enough courage to do ... something. Even if it was just a hug

I'm not mad

I keep a hammer in my head
Sometimes I use it
Until you’re dead

Accept

When I accept myself
For who I am
I find it strange
That nothing changes.

And when I think about
What thinking does
It never seems
What I am changes.

Finally I look
And squint and pinch and scratch.
At the flesh of my reality.
To mark
the nothing changes.

Breathe

A cloud fell to the earth
To cover the sins of a
Broken shadow.

With a pitter-patter
Conundrum
Skeleton trees poke
Into the air and
Suffocate the night.

From the bud in my breast
I call the sound
Of the root.
Which plants itself
Within the unseeing eye
Of wonder.

It is so hard
To breathe.
It is so
Hard to breathe.
It is-