big jet plane.

tomorrow i will be on a plane to america, so far away from home for this new year to come. if i do not write for a while, this is why. i really hope this experience unbinds my thoughts: i really do want to give something more than i have.

i love everything: that is my core being. sometimes it is too much and too fast and conducting demons. but, for the rest of it, i am fuelled by love.

none of us are lost.

like snow, collecting.

my words lately have taken that edge i so strongly do not like, too removed to fill anyone's heart, too full to take to the sky. still, yet, they have gathered, and i do take flight, and these are what came to nothing, this december catching:

I

i thought of you at this moment and my mind went limp like glass, or static, or passing.

II

you struck my match and took to the streets, and i have mistaken so many hearts, for they shimmer in the light.

III

and i see in your eyes an ampersand.

IV

my breath traces like midnight to your stare, lightning bolts toppling the crown, scraping the nose, arcing the kiss.

V

there: no more hiding. i have told the truth and taken the rejection.

VI

put your walls up. (always at the tipping point, bathed in white.)

VII

say the love out loud. (or it dies.)

and write every happiness down, because love and light are all i wanted to give to you—none of these jarring nights, these metal impulses, these insect bones. but happiness is not the easy spoil, not won by waking, not received in rising. and the screeching wreck is fast (i will throw it from me.)

but i see a new face and immediately i am constructing. if i didn't, it might pass less ruinous.

it feels like hearing fingertips

try to retrace your memories: dna strands, the perfect dance, the shiver-smile, cold hair, and those eyes.

(his dark pearl, and insecticide, perhaps velvet, in skirmish.)

try to regather your structure: close your breathing, both parenthesis and paralysis, and the slight tether of repair.

try to remember your days: she will rise before you as a story, chewing on her lip, an apple, a war that does not just go into the sea.

try to hold as much as you can.

(more than those skies that burn with the night.)

try to keep her when photographs lose their stomachs, and words shed as brittle, and only limp arch.

try to renew.

try to renew.

try to renew, and sometimes you will.

(we must record only a truth, and stumble around it.)

and the truth—does it still need a defense? we feel the world strike us through, and put as much life into the pain to follow, and hang these along the darkness, and in that scant light, that the ribbons patch upon your hands.

gimme twice

not every song is an axe wound, a bee sting, a lightning bolt

some are the endless summer, the sling shot, the big tooth smile

arms out the passenger side, mouth open, sunscreen in your eyes

revival.

no light

i freed myself today, if only by searing you from me, from this night.

and now i know your hollows stand, but as a fire I set to the forest.

no, but how i wish you well and happiness
you will come to tell, and lies you wear around your throat
i am always blessed to keep you safe, as from afar
i am not the lover.

you never leave

I never want these bones to heal, for the ways in to be worn cleanly

if I should wake to only hang under the weight of my suit

and the light is only momentarily enough, as a lull

but—a song cuts me in two

your smile is no longer cracked with any trace of me

it was always edging, unfurling into reaches

now, I remember each day to be alone, things to make and lose

twisted metal wants up through my halls

how I can trace the sweat across scar tissue

chemicals, I only record you

pain, I move the world

another song, and my eyes becoming impenetrable

and what hurts more? the spike of memory, or the words that will not

tell how i fucking love you.

will remain nothing for you—

that you would find me, soon, and so

common, on these streets

cheap and flickering

and flashing

away

but I will not hide, and you will not come in fear

though your blood moves for centipedes, sometimes

as mine to yours, crowding

the felt trigger of those mouths:

I AM STRANGE OF LOVE
YOU WAIT NOT ALONE.

new york

i know i have sang so loudly of snow patrol in these months, but, there is such reason.

this song is calling to your bones, taking what is held back.

impossible, and always

Still, we rise as the impossible children of summer, but cracking our bones behind our backs, those wishes once wry, now broken.

(we wait—we wait—we wait.)

But my hopes do not—that you stand to contain that which bucks, that rebukes these stars. No, my hopes are both horror halves and blessed-on-flames. They are as loud as the passing, that ears lick to blood, that comforts are thrown, that strayness must throw back.

I need not create for my hopes do take arms, and whole ghost pictures, they will live.

If only till you turn—away—passing—last—eyes—now.

If only for being told some shot bird of truth.

(ragged, that betweenliness.)

My hope is that you finally see me. I hold want of a small chance, a paper cup of an infinite.

And this is banished!

And this is whole!

But my hopes are juggernaut, till the last gnash of the clock, till you hold to take a body, and I fold a tarot card in half.

That is a truth, however smacked with shrining.

That is not a truth, but I give it breath.

please don't go too far.

please don't go too far. i am still here, still falling short. sometimes words are not life and life is not here and here is not then. sometimes then i close up my night sky and pack my limbs in. (the truth is always simple, safer here: i simply could not hear it, strung from ear to the fingertips of my mouth.) and i said falling short? that pure truth, but of my own will. i am basking so cheaply. i am fattened on chemicals, light bulbs, less than what i should.

but always rising up, if not messy (whole years step to their toes, as the perching of crows), if not the song i wanted you to know. but i do not think i could move so far out in this skull of autumns. i will... (loosened up, all the lovers and leaves, shuffling and easy as they)—still, just a noise.

i am building love, but never will it become real. those splinters show, and hiss of tape.

saw the graffiti

graffiti


(how we met, flashing paint to my lips, summer heat by numbers, all want and jarring)


rooftop


(I am moving through, swam by a lightness of your breath)


skyline


(the whole city knows this song, and listens warm)


sunlight


(are we not invisible in this?)

what is going on

kindness is staggering

I finally raised my mind up, but my fingers destroyed the words:

1. the girl on far.
2. the love for my mother.
3. the world on near.

I remember this—the rest was maybe just chemicals, of the moments we are alone.

So I will forget, and strive in that.

Yesterday was my birthday. and I think of the year, and all of the infant colours borne from its tumult, and the day, bathed in.

Kindness is staggered, and staggering.

When we come together, we are menders, all rush of water and arch of stars—I will never not know this, believe this, keep this.

I wish I could recover the tongues I had put forth—greater than this, tired, lapse, (he thought of strings).

Please love them. Please keep them.

life-ning

how the light runs through, soft.

"This is all I ever wanted from life."

you, before the curvature

(Pause the tape, feet pressed firmly to the wood, the trees to bear you, your breath the match, the scratch, the song.)

You, before the curvature, and lately I have fallen, that I feel like such a liar for it. We create the dark...we cannot stem the shadow while we chew through our own stomachs. I write this without that hunger, with a hand made of pearl, holding sideways, sparkling up like an army carved from chains.

Are you okay? You know you hold such light, don't you? I only write that you might catch when you are splitting up under your axes, your axis bursting as molten clung, with feathers flashing like glass, piercing break of ages.

Are you nursing your greatnesses? Your bold attempts. Your exquisite wreckage? All punched and licked with babbling charm.

Are you shifting now, the comforts of your collected refuse? (that smile scrunched, a small shiver of autumn.)

Are you remembering it? Are you frowning like a joy? Paper birds take from your hands, flickering.

You, are art, are grand, are ruinous, are crawl.

Please know, it is you. You might find yourself so common, crushed, swollen speckled egg. But it is you.

When filled with so much life it corrodes, spat in every breath.

When no one makes your eyes on the train

When love will not remember you.

It is you.

(I ran out of skin to write upon. The tape clicks.)

—Ian William L.

i'm a draft right now, and that's okay. but there was good here, there was simple joy. this weekend was amazing, planets aligning, life cascading through, and it's blinding and hot whichever way you feel, the weight or the soaring, all filtering through.

this isn't everything you are.

have i left again? just a debt to the silence repaid. i'm busy not making words, letting things be nothing.

but i do...

this mirror always hungers, always takes. i stood and saw everything flip to its mad shape, worsened that i remained the same.

so with fear and great lists.

please keep her safe. please, please, please.

and take that and break me down, but please. strike me down that spares her.

i fall in love with the world every afternoon.

wherever you are, i hope it is with them. i hope the dark is short and the love is bright. strike me down that spares her.

loss has its limits and each victory is a campaign.

remember this when time won't shut its eyes.

something

i am forever replaced but always attached.

splinter, thorn, fate.

speak like the quiet, you nerves! but that's no way to approach it, trying to cut myself to their corners. no, i burn up a tremor in my heart, i am raising elegant strings, i am howling and ticking fault lines. i come to say what has or will–but retreat! the familiarity of the aversion, the gull bones, the hung minuteness: would i sooner make for a lion song.

but there is process, the skin always thinking, (the heart!) open up and burst, with tears that take your being.

i think when we cry and cry, when we let go, that is when we keep the most. so the heart is always open and levelling worlds, that love that split you down, naked and burgeoning.

I
I saw this there, with someone else's brain beating in my ears, thinking, thinking, thinking. I fold my newspaper in half, I empty my glass (or do I smash it, or do I see it for a kaleidoscope, an extra way through to the world I never yet saw?) I calm my feet, slick my nose, unfold the newspaper (or a card game or the powdery...what came after I thought it pretty.)

II
Life is great even when I was—maybe I just need a new font.

III
She asked an answer and I gave her all of and every flight of my bravery. I lick my fingers now. I still try to snap my bones back to the dartboard. I still try to fit.

IV
But he takes that chaos and breaks it anew.

but you don't give me a chance. you knot my limbs and dull my heart, you spit your vision and take with lungs. you think me fallen but i am once lord on far. you think me everything without gentle reach of breath.

(This will go on forever. I am pained but without body to wrack.)

it's a desperate love like we should stay calm, it's blood through my teeth when i touch your hand, it's a song that moves like a knife, and i am bad under this midnight.

i wanted you to say hello but you were a trick of bludgeoning, treating me like warm skin and thief.

this could be so different but it is all i might remember, a flight of bastard animals, a bee sting for my heart.

i have got these organs driving wrong, something long awry. i will fall asleep with a monster in the yard, a charm in my head.

(clockwork, sweeping tongue, click of deep water, reptile sweat.)

shake it out.

my words have fallen down again. so i go about as an insect or as death that gathers the world up in its furs, what fury and want, only natural if not to decay. the want for lightning to split the room, for chalices of flesh to empty, the dawn that strikes on flame. or love or grip or vast or great. yes, i want such a simple boundless thing.

but i remain and continue, and as i do, your hope is yet boundless, too. but we never touch, we never speak, we never know just how close our broken rooms have become. cheap paint hides your name, cracked light takes my smile.

i never know.

casting lines

you know what I mean

all of it is still.

this is the last year or so, as fallen behind and discarded. drafts that i give life to, tonight.

I.

If they knew (if they knew, if they knew, if they knew!) how it is. Happiness – no – blinding heat – no, it was – happiness. And I want them all torn apart, all close and here.

I can't stop. I need to be at the gym.

HAPPINESS

He is just so damn...

HEAT

II.

some day all your pain builds as monuments, and some days it's all just seething colour, the kind of colour that eats at other colour, stripping away cheeks and kneecaps, or too much, filling all of your eyes, the whole of your stomach, a bloated painting that once held a simple smile.

i still can't hold a thought.

but yesterday, it was all a monument.

III.

and i race myself to this side again, so far away from the spark that carries me, and even the libraries have died.

IV.

i think it's more than writing, more than any one thing, and maybe any one of those things are the unetched notes to the same song, just such a lost thing, cracked pavement thing, dripping from a bent tree.

V.

and you will never deserve, if you see only skin, and your skin never deserved, the poison they mapped.

VI.

press your song to my teeth, kiss me like granite.

VII.

every day can't show itself for another colour, not drip through your bones.

VIII.

because this moment might feel so close, and this day feel so...

IX.

and then your lips, there was a knife, sudden teeth.

X.

i taste your stomach and knot my teeth, i am a bit confused who...

XI.

i have to believe. i do believe. i believe. i can't be sad because i will drown in it. every day is a fight sometimes.

XII.

but it's raining now, how it clings to the branches of the dead tree, entire worlds passing quietly in moments, and the curtains give before the light. my feet find each other and make promises, a simple warmth or secret, that headphones rewire the horrors, with a beautiful song.

XIII.

these dominoes i planted to the soil, they never grew.

XIV.

i can still feel the movie scene, my mug, your lips, you in a smile like the cold air.

XV.

you pierce my lip with a kiss, run a trigger right under my skin.

XVI.

your eyes are the sun, i'm moving to remove my wings.

XVII.

they never tell you that you will end up this far away, this far removed and scratching at adjectives. that you'd become so innumerously alone, when the coin flips to its poor axis, and you just can't change it, pockets full of blood.

XVIII.

there's meant to be something great and small, to cleave all of this into two.

XIX.

you always stood alone, always crushed beneath your throne, even in the...

XX.

sound the drum! there's this amassing force within me, that soon, i will...

XXI.

i always thought the colours of the world kept the sky pinned to its sleeve, but it was always friendship.

XXII.

i'm always just waiting for the world to kickstart, for something amazing to spark up. the sun is so bright, and you are filled with that newest brim of hope. and i guess i just recall the stories of the paths, and how they go.

XXIII.

stumble until you are living–ingest.

XXIV.

press my face into the sheets, then rip plants from the soil.

XXV

You know, just have a good life. Don't darken yourself with graves, the throws of crumpled knaves. Spill your mistakes, Send a canary into all of their goddamned dark.

XXVI.

I don't know where to stop, where is safe. and I don't want these fucking abstractions, I want first person, I want real. I don't want to be a fucking writer. I just want to feel, and write that down. I don't want it to be pretty, for your eyes to pass through those mists, to get to there. These weeks, are pained.

Everything went to shit after he left, or the feeling that sparked up there. Being in love, you know.

XXVII.

maybe i need more lists. either way, i want to do it my way. i want it to be enough, more than enough. i want it to move things. i can get there, stunted and shitty.

XXVIII.

this game we play, chaser to the mistakes we take, swallowed by the dawn, in stages, blurring out the hands, and I, glow in the dark, stapled by a page.

XXIX.

what if we are assigned a focus, and we meet those parameters, then we are finished. i know it's bleak, but what if it was our purpose. we were simply meant to meet.

XXX.

it's funny how quickly colours can change in a few hours, how strongly a person can paint our days. which is the purpose of my project, so it's nice to see the idea is solid and true. that, sometimes we just need the smallest thing.

XXXI.

don't speak, least you breathe little anchors into the world.

XXXII.

I really don't like how some people will cling to hate, that yellow life raft, sprung out from sadness.

XXXIII.

tonight, we don't give a fuck. we've got a few more hours of sunlight, even under the moon. let's just be, here. we've got our hopes and our pockets and our unshakeable hysteria. we are just plastic cups and fingers on pulses.

XXXIV.

i won't speak, i won't make a sound. i'll just wait up all night, and hope that you come.

XXXV.

so, winter sneaks up on you, tugs at your sleeve, claims you for the night. darkness is a precarious divide, between burning life and staring through walls.

no more walls

"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."

Anaïs Nin

withiner

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche.

farfire

but my breathing super-heats

and I am a flameflower cast inwards

everything keeps trying to cripple you

and you stand to defy

the defiance is tiring

sad and short and small

and so alone

but so bright.

warm water hands

"Maybe we thought we stopped, like some great trick of the magnets that hold our flesh to these words, and these days to our bones, and our hopes always a little further ahead—still looking back over its shoulder, still making eyes and taking our hands in warm water. I thought we surely had stopped. There was that rumbling low and my chest dribbling grease. There was you, some curvature of moons, that I might collapse into, turn flesh without flesh, and smiles stripped and arcing, of pulsing whiteness and upturned. But it had not stopped, and these arms strike as not comets, and my cracks don't inflict your—those smart eons. So I turn as the Earth, and am some light behind but great future."

Ian William L.

this heat

the thick of heat is upon us now. you were always questions, now the answers steals your blood, mountains so deep in your form, moth bile or headache or some far place dripping from those bones. you fill with fear, damp and rotted, wider eyes across the waters that will reap, and you come to nothing. it is dizzying, all those cavernous sunks, and revolting flesh, of skins, of stretching out and peeling away and hot blood and close, jarring, circular, world scorching bones and screams and wraps and greens, all slaughtering and warm, candles on veins, on old leather. night fur, spastic violent tic, breath clung, heaved in acid, halloween sweat, drink your body back.

for flux

it is just sometimes everything catches you, and everything runs you, to the ground, colours, and heat, and sweat.

and all you can do is think the same hot triggers, and feel the same heart rash, and say the same bent monuments.

the tape that won't allow any space to lick your wounds, the floor that lopped your feet off, the wall where you hang yourself from a light switch and manufacture planets.

THERE SHOULD BE BIG LETTERS THAT BEAR THE WARNING

for he caught a train, and what still grinds into his skull.

for your smile stirs want.

THERE SHOULD BE

I want you, but am safe goods.

breathers since

"One day I will catch a breath thrown for you, and tame you with these lungs."

Ian William L.

it's okay because we're not through existing just yet.

it seems impossible to think, that we've stood here before, and now my trees fall to gravity, your blood scratches my cheek. you stand a wanton moon, of vicious grace, with impossible love...

our sunlight

this kind of sunlight that makes everything fall quiet, just the warmth and the birdsongs. it is a peacefulness, and I wish the train were not to arrive.

my happiness was always going to be too big, my love for the world always too big, so there are vulnerabilities that hold its hand. but i know is that kindness is my favourite thing and making someone else smile. the other only thing i know is the electric war sticking in my head. and with these two moons it might seem that i say and think and feel the same things in constant jolting film lining the walls, filling my room, painting holes for better things to fall through.

but sometimes you have to face your fears and how...my greatest fear of saying a single word you might know, that you might catch or judge or hate or taste.

i am incapable, but i can. if you realise your sadness is growing and the electricity has grown seething,

enough.

I have a job that I eighty five per cent like. And that's the beauty of work, you always have people fall into your life who are genuinely amazing and keep you smiling in such a place of tether. It feels like another family and I want that they are always happy, especially behind the sheen and veneer. I will receive two weeks away from work in the Christmas period and as the new year comes grinning right through me. I will also hopefully be in america. this could be like a movie.

but the main idea that if things are making you sad or angry or hurt then you should do your best to change them. your hand holds the surest aim if you draw the bow.

everything always changes but i will change it now.

nighthurts

and—fuck—how it is so badly that I want to make everything, beautiful, and okay.

but the black hole approaches now and i have left myself with little defense or weight to stand against it. I know all things done can be undone and all things unmade will soon be made, but this is space and time at the reins, and soon i will forget.

lose in this smile

When I know they are all loved, and they are all happy, and they are all safe—I can lose myself in this smile, just give myself to its infinite arc.

I miss it too

smiles, sunsets, the warmth of breathing. movements in the dark, whispers in the cold, quiet endless beauty. fingers gently across foreheads, coffee and odd socks, toothpaste and jackets. wooden floorboards, huddled in couches, a closeness before dreams. faces turned away, and downcast eyes. hands in the sky, grass and feet and clouds. trickling across book pages, crawling in yellowed glows. the morning coming through those curtains, the solid realisation of skins, the colour of shoulders in the morning, and tangled sheets, and bad hair. spilling secrets, waiting forever.

closer,

It's true, to some extent, but I think it goes to the same vein as the rarity of the brilliant thing. we're always colliding and coming so close to things that feel so loudly like the truth, but then just can't be, but, again, this endless collapse leads to such appreciation and awe for the resonance to come.

don't worry. you are a fathomless soul, and that depth heralds discoveries yet still to flow.

she's wearing my shoes and maybe this is endless, my headphones crack like some sudden horizon, some spark of grace.

I thought of you at this point

I need an editor to build my arm back into its socket. I need a cloud to trick the stars and attics. I would crash my car into the stone wall of your spine, peel your layers from my teeth. I need you to believe in candles, so ugly with your truths, that might listen to blood noses. I need you to want the taste of songs I don't sing, trembling like a leaf.

nothing flux

"We're only breathing to help the trees. I am only ragged, that keeps you clean."

Ian William L.

i've had a few days to retreat, like that is all i remember from before. run whenever you draw close, come apart whenever you get started. and as i do, i can feel the magic hang itself in the air. maps bleeding into each other, thicker than the last, pulling wings from flies like you left me.

i can't force it. i can't do a damn thing.

or i stand up, yell defiance, kindness in hand and knives under the skin. because every moment draws its own rules and requirements, and your form must follow.

i got close and you crushed me. you leaned in on my breathing and i set you aglow, spitting love.

i close my eyes and your moth light remains.

speech

after midnight

"We'll stagger home after midnight, sleep arm and arm in the stairwell, we'll fall apart on the weekend, these nights go on and on and on."

After Midnight; Blink-182.

swamping.

the cold film runs across my forehead, those clean fingers finding their way down a throat, a slightest metal twitch and there might have been birds there, once. but the adjustment is dizzying, but the teeth can't be fixed by sleeping, but they never learn to devour their loves. but my hands play a story they do not know and i try to feel the way. minute recalculations, the space of breath clicks beneath the tongue, rise up and... i was here. i waited.

it never joins. my head is so far away from the thoughts. only close enough to:

1) he is a child who needs violence, something to move him.

2) it will be a beautiful surprise when that new year comes.

3) terror holds my throat.

4) remembering love. waking in the night to attach to your fire, that breathing. and how you only found a garden, a joy, some suspension of the maths to later bite down hard.

5) i remove my fingers and place them in a box, with an intent smile and curiosity, a small comfort.

but if you stood before me now, no longer steeling the arcane.

but we would know.

some sky, a piece

too often the world is told to ants below, but I see seashells gleaning the light, worlds of sand, with those hours warming my vision, every crest a breath given, silkscreen clouds with their bodies giving, into each other, hungry into us.

teenage tide

you shall know our velocity

"But see how we are the same? You and I, Will? We both see strangers and we react. We don't like to walk by people without nodding. We're broken when people are rude. We're broken when people can't meet us halfway. We can't accept the limits of normal human relations—chilly, clothed, circumscribed. Our hearts pull against their leashes, Will!"

You Shall Know Our Velocity; Dave Eggers

i still remember that electricity.

a breath like paint, words staining his lips, his teeth, the spastic rivers teetering and immutable.

I can hear my bones, and set about with a smile, somewhere on odd knees, punctuations of mountains and stemming -

the colours settle, and i am back inside my room.

i always remember it is not - what i see, if you ever saw, everything would come apart for you. it's a such a goddamn mistake, with all that green leaking through the light, the pretty fucking vibrant leaves, life, where i can go. but i stay inside, looking at the world on a spaceship touchscreen, losing all my senses, big cutting lasers through my heart, blackest wound.

but i hear the song and i don't know which way is up, that this isn't your love.

but i take photographs i won't find ugly in the years to come.

but i bury myself in pounds of flesh.

but i still hear lightning.

the switch! the switch can't you feel the fucking switch! you peel the dry skin from the halves of your fingertips, catching your teeth on cheeks, spinning through a hangover, such reason for vomit and guts and hooks and earthquakes through ceilings.

the sky appears.

you are so perfect in this moment, smile wagging in the light.

beauty so poorly translated in the fringes.

all rushing through, winter in his voice, planets fill the room. but you're still only, still only exist on a page, you haven't been here for so long. and i've kept ... ridiculous heart, machine with all ports open, taking in too much. i touch dust where we once laughed, i read a book (you still a child) and tears - this weight of sadness slamming through me. i wasn't looking, but i found all these years. i brought them back. but it's only a shade of you, where you will never be complete again, half of your childhood smile hangs before my throat, closing up.

remember that night i was scared. i was always so scared of the dark, and i woke you up and i crawled into your bed, and we read books about goblins and talked about trains. i'll remember this always. and when we got a packet of glow in the dark space. planets and stars. i spent so many hours buiding it properly, because you could not build space properly. you never could. i touch those stars now and they no longer glow, cheap rubbed plastic, but how they ignite now.

i think of my dad, still young, the concentration on reading the tracklist (that cast bone of a smile, big toothed and thumping, now mine) paying sixteen dollars for a cd, his favourite cd he would ever own, a cd i would keep, so i could be so close to him forever.

disaster button.

and with those hands

if you learn one thing, it will be that you never ever have to feel sorry for your feelings. your emotions are a fucking triumph to your name, okay? it's only the people who give a shit and catch fucking fire that truly move this planet. we are made to open up and share these things, the stupid smiles and the absolutely seething hatred for those we love. i know everything these days persists to say otherwise, but it's all wrong, and we must set out to fight fucking gravity to prove that. always go the boldest bravest move, whether breaking down or wearing your name.

i must seem incapable of communicating in normal words, but this is just what comes out.

i just: you're protective. me? i am ... i keep a piece of everyone i know. if you mean anything to me, there's already a glint of your colour held deep within me, always. and so the one thing...the absolute thing...when i see the people i love hurt or sad or destroyed, it sets me on fire. i would do anything to take that pain from the people i love, always. so i hate knowing that you carry this sadness, even for a moment.

now, turning to the focal point, i understand how you feel, about friends and relationships. it's one of the hardest changes to deal with. and i know it's a sensitive issue, so i mean, i will say things, but it's by no means telling what you should do to 'fix' yourself - nothing like that, at all. i just want to try to offer the perspective that is hard to find by yourself when you're hurting. unfortunately, as with all overarching themes of balance and change, it will and has to occur. things change, and people do change. people grow and tectonic plates shift in friendships.

i think the most important thing to do when you're sad, especially about friends and 'losing' them, is to maintain very intently the idea that this person has been sad, just like you, that same crushing despair, and now they have a chance to be happy. so whenever i am feeling bad and missing people, i try to remember them sad, destroyed, coming apart. then using this, i can make a little spark, and apply myself fully to saying hello and making sure they're okay and keeping them safe.

outside of that though, as much as sometimes people go too far with new relationships and do tend to draw away from friends, returning to the other idea - balance - it swings both ways. we can distance ourselves in turn and add poison to the mix. but then, at the same time, we're not always perfect. our brain has mapped out a situation, it changes, and we press the disaster button. one fleeting moment, and we're too far into poisonous emotions (fuelled primarily by sadness) to come back from that. we all do it, but not always do we get given the grace to redeem that moment right then. but we retreat, and readjust our heads.

it's a scary thing to face, but it will happen and again, and ultimately, we have to try to remember that the change is ultimately making life a little more bearable for someone else, even if we ourselves suffer silently in response. but then, everything does balance out - it does - it will. so hopefully when the time comes, our friends will in turn understand when we fall into the deep end of love, and we are happy for each others happinesses, keeping each others sadnesses as wards for our own unsettlings.

i know this is a lot of words, and i hope you dont miscontrue any of it. you are one of my favourite people. truly. you have a huge heart, and the fire of truth. and you are beautiful, and not in the way that says we are beautiful for our personalities, either. everyone is truly beautiful, and everyone will look at someone, where other people might not see, and find a monument, a spark, a breath for weary lungs. the length of time differs for everyone, because we all weave our own tapestry of colour and story. how long we wait does not make it any less real, if anything, made infinite, igniting, every day fucking blessed.

i think i am just trying to say, don't be sad. keep every smallest thing possible close - everything to remind you. in the storm, find calm, find landfall, and see every beautiful stupid wretched spinning slowest thing. take it all into your heart and mind and soul and smile. then we can do amazing things and we can keep everyone safe.

i only know my voice when it is for you.

she kept the diary, not the other

i would never say happiness is overrated. it is the spark in the darkness, however fleeting, but always with highest hopes for its giddy rushing return.

but then in that, it is all a matter of perspective. because you are right in the sense that happiness does not, can not and will not last. there is no permanent state of happiness because permanence makes us numb to ebb and flow. even if we fall madly perfectly in love and nail the perfect career and we're amazing and brilliant and flawless, we would never stop. we don't. the brain doesn't allow that. it's always teetering on the brink of something it can never ever attain, always taste but never touch.

so then, really, speaking from the depths of the sadness that everyone knows, always remember and feel the little things. the sparks before that brink. because they are happiness and they are real, but they cannot stay. they flitter and you smile.

but, truly, i would never say any of this to diminish what you feel. just trying to share the memory of lightness, while i am currently teetering (because i am denying this night and this doubt and will declare right now brilliant, and so the perfect place to teeter.)

p.s. you are read, and you are heard, and you are loved, and you are not alone in anything.

the falling star

"Falling stars fallen past, thawing now, this winter's glass."

flashhearted

Like a flash-freeze, but bathed in light, warmth.

can you hear me?

little transportational

But I liked that, trying to find my page number in the subway

already finding your thoughts flowing in with the light.

the pain you feel is real, but so are the people you love. but they don't fade with the morning sun, they move just before it, biggest smile stretching across every new sky, keening to reach you for every little moment.

relic punch

And every minute, the night is a hunter for my mind, and every second, I was fighting only to be kind.

heat faults

because when they know your name, they're only taking as much of your breath as they can stave, and not one of them saying, Thank you for your breathing, you will be okay, too.

naïve. super

"There's something very strange about girls. First they're not there and everything is a little difficult. But then they're there, and things become nicer. It happens incredibly fast. It only takes a few seconds before everything is nicer."

—Naïve. Super; Erlend Loe

night wounds

every sound was paralysis, every colour resounding, a dizzying arctic heart, lips shedding their skin, ravening touch, he, brandishing the night.

sometimes the wanderers, we

We are violence. We know we are. We are always aliens furthest from each other, neither bright, nor left behind. These uneasy, mercurial shadows cast from fingertips, and acid on teeth, always—always—looking in mirrors. We lose our voice, and we sing so loud. There is always another song in need of silence.

(structures are important to us, anything to cling to, silently stare on.)

We swallow days. I imagine cracks, where cracks cannot go.

(always try to find some order to it, but never—always shifting.)

Could we accept anything? Or do we cave so simply? Is that it? Well, it is refused. They don't understand. They have not yet—always have not yet—have not yet.

(thumb dragged across a cheek.)

So it must get frustrating for you, a million worlds inside a single thought, and spreading out. It could be a vast worry, but we still hold out for the spark, how clear a mind can be.

(three fingers, to lips, like mud.)

like mud.

I am sorry. I am still hiding, here. I want to say "we". I am so aware—so painfully aware—that it needs to be "we". I am not alone, and I don't want to be alone in this. And it's not the rest of the world that's "we", and it's not him, but it's you, and all of the others—far aliens, mercurial in pain, uneasy, acid bite—always—cracking—mirrors. It is you. You would understand, in some small way, if you ever saw. The violence becomes shapes, and recognisable feats of colour. But start small—start close. So we are always falling inwards, but we try.

It is just these periods, without the spark, and we cannot be assembled properly. So we are thinking, but it all comes out upside-down, shuddering colour, a bright sound. So we don't need anyone.

(but we need each other).

But how else can the spark be generated? There are small moments, always, but the battle is large. Looking out a train window can't keep you safe forever.

I struggle—the most—with communicating—without the spark.

I only want to share things that are felt. So you will feel. So all of my journal entries. So no one. And so much of it.

But if we are looking for hope, for each other, and not for the crash—if we are looking for hope, we sometimes drift away with it.

It would be that story of midnight, and her rotting eyes, and she stays. She fucking stays.

It would be the aeroplane, and he saves him.

It would be someone here made of mending.

So, just remember, the thick chlorine of the memories, in those places of, steam, and water, and holding your mother's hand. She loved so fucking much.

my voice has gone, ghosts. i am sorry. i always feel like i should be sorry, sorry to these ghosts. if you ever wait, i'm still here, ghosts.

zero

Thanks to Olivia, my favourite O, and almost zero.

bronte

‎now your bowl is empty, and your feet are cold, and your body cannot stop rocking, i know, it hurts to let go

since the day we found you, you have been our friend, and your voice still, echoes in the hallways of this house, but now, it's the end

we will be with you, when you're leaving, we will be with you, when you go, we will be with you, and hold you till you're quiet, it hurts, to let you go

we will be with you, we will be with you, we will be with you, you will stay with us.

the best I ever had

Thanks to Robbie.

night.

all that was great goes cloudy, everything that licked the skin now cold. i couldn't risk laying in the grass, and you are nowhere in my blood.

the night moves. it is not slow, not now. it takes half of your head, leaving you in circles. i press every song deeper to my skin, but nothing.

i have shown no anger but why in the absolute fuck would you once more come so close? i was fine! my heart is stronger than everything that hangs from it. but, again, i come low, and simple, and think you mine. and you - you - you, just an echo of the stars, that permanent grin. why try to haunt me? because the simplest game is the only thing that throws me. because malice, what nourishes you. i hadn't - i had not - my eyes were not yet - these irises still shrinking to take in your light, and that you rush from the room, the day.

i can't make sense.

my spark still a spark made alone.

all I day

All I need is light. All I need is love. All I need are my shitty arms, and my slowest feats. All I need is the mess—you smeared over the couch, crumpled sandwiches at midnight, a train card stuck in my teeth. All I need is that hallway, that broke the door down, knuckles like knots in your hair.

—Ian William L.

in your light

i can see the last drum beats of the sun, my mouth still stung from your song.

starry configurations.

dear infatuation,
you do not see me
die here beside you
in see through obscurity.

jets to brazil; starry configurations.

i can't speak of the world like that. my words are torn and ugly, limping between intentions, they lose the form. whole frozen places shatter in that instant, spittle washed up against your turned cheek. and if you knew the tongues of the wreck, i think turned to steam, the kind you never felt passing, then a thousand tiles passed.

IV.

a breath that wants for your throat, burning up the night star.

III.

a breath tonight i carry so cold.

mend

Mend an object. As you mend, you mend something inside your soul as well. You mend something in the world as well.

Yoko Ono

one day when i'm happy, i won't have a voice any more, or maybe i will find it, i can't tell either way. tonight is only the smallest colour, when today was so bright: all my friends crashed to the mini golf course. but tonight i wanted to retreat, and every time i retreat i feel a little better and a little worse. i think retreating is movement, but it's not a constant movement. you only retreat so far and then all the teeth are poisoned and all the minutes hold eyes - the hands move, watching. then you walk forwards but with such small colour, it is to face a fog of things removed, memories of gas, not the steam i look with wonder that licks the bathroom where i've gone. but moving back to the front where everything is close and sharp, heavy to snap bone with - (blinking light, one instant, hands on forehead). the march back only gets you so far, never as far as you were.

and what fucking madness: i was going to create something. i don't want the truth, not this truth, truth from fear.

but this can go nowhere further. (snapped off here, eyes full of angry border places.)

i have a total crush on you, baby

the beautiful measure

II. Life is a long and beautiful breath, tempered by the cruelty of breathing.

a strum catches in my throat, those fingers capped, we were crooked once, a song i thought, catching only smoke.

an almost sadness

This is a journal entry. It is a quiet storybook, with a picture of a tree all dressed up in blues. there would be pictures of feet—cold —the kind of feet you can't match to a face, or maybe you would think that person was incredibly sad, by how cold their feet were. I think coldness is sometimes sadness. I think cold feet on cold floorboards are pretty, but cold, and sad, and blue. So it is just you sitting quietly, and you look outside, at a tree all dressed up in blues.

But it is important to remember that a blue day, a world of blues, still has its colours. There is also a crumpled picture: two neighbourhood ducks. I think they came down in a storm one day, and have remained since. I looked out the window, just past a tree all dressed up in blues, and there they are, together, such small things, out of place, and jarring in their togetherly smiles. I see two ducks against a metal fence, wire, sky come crashing to the ground. But they just stay together, finding life where they fell. they are so happy. They make me so happy.

Don't worry, I see you, too. I see you most.

I have ordered two new books, The Lover's Dictionary, and Naïve. Super. I always need things that take my whole attention, so I don't need to stay anywhere in between.

I could not write any more, without fear of safety, and how your eyes are always heaviest.

you look so sad.

I.

i breathe you in, i take you far, the death for a child, a love for the heart.

for lovers and fighters

"Sometimes while I ride the subway I try to look at each person and imagine what they look like to someone who is totally in love with them. I think everyone has had someone look at them that way, whether it was a lover, or a parent, or a friend, whether they know it or not. It’s a wonderful thing, to look at someone to whom I would never be attracted and think about what looking at them feels like to someone who is devouring every part of their image, who has invisible strings that are connected to this person tied to every part of their body. I think this fun pastime is a way of cultivating compassion. It feels good to think about people that way, and to use that part of my mind that I think is traditionally reserved for a tiny portion of people I’ll meet in my life to appreciate the general public. I wish I thought about people like this more often. I think it’s the opposite of what our culture teaches us to do. We prefer to pick people apart to find their flaws. Cultivating these feelings of love or appreciation for random people, and even for people I don’t like, makes me a more forgiving and appreciative person toward myself and people I love. Also, it’s just a really excellent pastime."

—For Lovers And Fighters; Dean Spade

it was only one missing floorboard, when we fell through, and i retreated, a little quiet, the scared fire, the violent child.

yet symphony to bloodied lips, yet fist fight as breathing.

the face

But my face has been the bigger advantage. I have the two qualities you require to see absolute truth—I am brilliant, and unloved.

Doctor Who

13248711

A cold scratch to a woodland thigh, then spine ran down the earth lit touch.

glossolalia

I will calmly state the facts. I scrawl a few notes: last week was uneasy, spilling at the throw. This will happen in periods of change. Sometimes taking notes and making lists is not enough. Sometimes there isn't enough ceiling to stare at, isn't enough story in the song. But it is another violence survived, another badge on my ward, iron feather. (and here the perilous point, where my mind stretches, abstracts, to other matters. I think of being alone. I think of smiling. I think of what I could do, but will not.)

But if I write about my life, then it is a journal entry I don't want to keep. I think that defines moving inwards, which I do—so the fear? I am not sure. It feels like announcing that, so loudly: I will not create. Only rest in stomachs.

I will always report the world felt, hold my forehead, where fire settles. Don't lose it yet—but Chelsea is the only one who can drive me outwards. My tenses forge—what sense! But, without, I try to take the colours of havoc, and stretch them out, nailed down—spider teeth—for they to show. In my head, the only point that matters is that all of this is just an introduction. I haven't moved to the end yet—told that—but, always seems to be so. The end for a fast mess. Even though I was careful to make notes, and structure lists. But I am keeping calm for now. Saturday allows me that much. ("you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness") I count cat hair, and see volcanos. Plasma reaching out across her, unaware. All the ghosts that she must see, and my expanding skin. Guard me, keep me, know me.

I will turn to demons, but what did I want to say? The problem is even though I am calm, and safe, in Saturday (the late hours, the bottom of cups, something pretty), I can no longer write. I have recorded this so many times now—the slipping tenses, hiding my eyes from yours, even here. If met, what for collapse, I remain forever afraid. My brain will not let me. I am not sad, but I cannot pen a single line, that would greet you calmly, the weather, (the broken backs of) sports. I cannot write in first person, or not with head up, eyes ahead—you, standing in the field. I will always be looking away, unable. He was sown strange. He was reaped with the walls coming down. Whole things thrashing their bones into one. Too sensitive to every soul, and word of oak.

Which would drive me to heat up, the crown of fire, electric divine, fucking violence of time. I would speak—a nonsense—and strung between worlds. Parts of books yet to be born, but teeth already pulled, shirt collars, and bullets across the sun. And, see, is that a colour? A thought? A pattern I am tracing—always tracing. I want sense. For I am happy, or in between. Passenger of light bulbs and heavy glow. The smell of pupils, that which sees the night. I speak of fucking eyes, the dark. I am getting somewhere here, with this, though I was retreating, the patron saint of—

I wish this writing had a colour to say I was happy, because i was. I was okay. But it's still a sale. I will always be this way—unable/possibility. Defined as a freak, and then an angry song gives me the taste of blood.

somebody that I used to know.

come clean

the venom begets you, and everything you never speak.
(i have to make this colour.)

your lonely furs
(waiting.)

you're better than this?
(i am simply in autumn.)

you're better than this.
(guarding my shoulders, the sun burn.)

but you're only under light bulbs
(i did have a voice.)

really, believer?
(i have to. i always have.)

what licks your wounds
(i promise.)

i retreat, in steamy breath
(but recall knives.)

you will never give this.
(no one means or sees.)

the path
(sold to clocks.)

a smile
(hope.)

wound song

too easily I cave! I wound myself, while I try to gather sutures. I won't slip into these tenses.

but before I begin, I tried reading quotes—am I the one that feels nothing? I get more of torment, a violent song. I remain hopeful, but the hopeful quotes instill no rare colour. I was hoping I would not need to write—a good quote could bear the spark, but here I am, pressing myself to a chair as hard as I can.

(I don't like the apologies in the writing, not here.)

so I was not going to break tonight. I had a day that did not start, a quick drug already spent.

(and, see, I'm—still—not—here. I want to show my voice.)

this means nothing tomorrow. so why can't I strike it out. no, I won't ask questions, no, I won't apologise. I am trying to navigate myself around the war tonight. one half of my head holds the crippling poison. it turns bird flight to ash. it turns reflections of light—to pluck away the eyes.

Darkness, I name you. I can keep writing, and you can't stay. you might think you've won again this evening, but I am still noticing, and I still know my palms.

you have been hurt worse than this, and you have remained alone longer than now. you have had so little hope, and so you hold no—I WILL MAKE HAPPINESS. THERE WILL BE SOUND. SUCH FUCKING SOUND. DO YOU THINK YOU COULD STAND LOUDER THAN THIS?

mend: these things do not bring you to end.

and for a moment, the tree branches are spider webs, spun across morning light, cracks in the day, where i can't follow.

at wolves

To the shape of heartache to come, ink blots thick to—pressed to—under the warmth of eye lids. And you cross your kneecaps, and count your sentences, traced to, cracks to cracked lips. Under the hunt, body for sun spots, for wolves blood I can—I can—can wear this blood, to breathing—I'll have you yet.

one day we will be more than neck bones, and our hearts——pull from their frame, i will show my face.

the lightning strike

burial

this is just a mess. I hate that I am ruled by so many things, and wearing bad days like cloaks. but the spark of a song sets it away, and then it—staring at secrets, and counting my skin.

I don't feel bad for mess—simple structure—butterfly wings—chain wire—dog tears.

I have to always adapt to survive the twitch, what spurs hyphens. I eat this pizza, and count higher, play a song for safety.

this will be filed under mess, and that makes it okay. if i say it is to be ugly, then it can't be thought to be thought to be otherwise - the judgment that is learnt. skipping. skipping. skipping. -

and from here i control it all, could go every ways.

i am only one wrong foot in a puddle i didn't need—that far away from—closer, in that.

somedays the reels don't play. the picture is all dead insects, burning their fucking eyes out, writhing. crackling. will they love us in flames?

i would give you answers. i would always give you answers. every answer, if i could understand—the—empire.

hard light.

and suddenly it hits, that weight i seek to put to words - i could explain - but only find the same deficient sting. my brain becomes vulnerable to everything, trying to swallow everything in the room, the hours, the bodies that are not mine. but could i change - i want to provide the map. i don't want just the poison. i don't want just the confusion (i can't feel the right paragraphing that would help. five lines, and that clean space? freeing or damning?) i have to communicate in means that are relevant to me...i have to make a mess but my brain will not allow! i want to. i can escape the hard light... or, i am. i am the light, and that's hard.

(autumn, falling down and i didn't feel my teeth every day) i - and i won't include Try - i am one good thing. i want to be one good thing. i don't care how terrible things can be. i want to be good and bright and hope.

(staring into the plate, so big, such a mess) the problem is i am not stable. but then - the fire light! i blaze true and rasp without. sleep will rekindle.

(at the brink i find my futures) it leaves me so tired, sometimes. dizzying to look away, everything wrong, jarring.

(these people are) unfinished. madness. searing direction.

(a tree once stood there, infested, and its distance... even the tree's ghosts sleep, even she has grown.)

you patch up the world and wound yourself.

always—you

"With so much love for the world, that always you are—always you will—always you know, the calamity of sound."

Ian William L.

keep the car running

a looking

On the morning train to work, and it is really pretty skies again, all purple and bruised lips and sleepy, or grey like rain, and Yellowcard is playing:

"All I can think about is you and me driving with a Saves The Day record on."

Just remembering, that this is not a moment for looking forward, but looking around. Noticing the guy with his knees pressed together, tripping over himself. The pretty girl somewhere between her hair, her headphones. The old angry man of stature, but with stories creased to his cheeks, imagining that one smile would be so hearty.

The story sits alongside you, the world gleaning your smile.

eastern drive

"It is like the track has been skipping, like the city lights begin to your breathing."

Ian William L.

i saw lords but they were cheap, now all the stars are cold and wet, clinging to the glass of my passenger seat, just wandering the streets.

you will always know this

And it's just so hard not to feel alive. On the train back home, and it's so dark, the entire world outside, weak moon and hungry sky, under the eye of winter. And then Kings and Queens plays, and the train moves through this burst of city lights, as the chorus hits. And that's where I don't have enough words—that moment—where everything melts aways, and I am just colour. All of their slow indifference, and I am just love.

brightest dark

"All of that suffering, and still we soar, a hawk struck to the lightning bolt—what brightest dark."

Ian William L.

every time, look

"For every time you got to see the sky, to breathe in the warm sunlight—the sound that traps in your eyes—words without bodies for the beauty of it, and then past."

Ian William L.

the train is a cinema

I think the tennis courts are ugly

I think the mansions are empty

I think the graffiti is bold but not limitless—not yet

I think I remember your sadness

more than the photocopies of your smile

I think I will find you in a passing train

I think Flagstaff isn't far enough.

gay pirates

head house

but whatever i come to make, i still feel small, the curtains crawl and crack and hiss, no sunlight, and i don't like the light bulb, what i used to think about eating it, and my feet aren't that pretty on the cold floor, they are just cold. a graveyard of papers, a hum of machines, hours falling limbless out of my eyes, and i would grab at anything to make it okay, staring at the webs in the corners, the old paint cracked and the new paint doesn't... whatever i come to do, it's small, it is taking my temperature quietly, a funeral illuminated and buzzing and shitty seats, just a little faster than my art. i breathe out, press my feet into the floor, the dead warmth in the dust of, his feet. i can't make the voice calm, even though it is quiet. the world is staring into a refrigerator, losing its guts on chipped tiles. the world is pretty. but my hands are so cold. the answer is on the tip of my skull, and i shouldn't.

that all of this is just the weather playing tricks. this is my breath taking the world away, the ticking of metal. this is cold feet and papers unsigned. this is a lover in a restaurant ordering the cheapest shit. this is a favourite mug shattered. this is car keys and napkins and the sweat on a forehead and a printer that never fucking works. this is the clouds without the sun, an old woman in a business suit, a spider shriveling in a window you never open. this is her face remaining in a rot of weeks, beaches of mud, urine in the sheets, the television glow. this is a library of magazines and snakeskin, the darkness of planets and cracked lips, old cars and heavy medicine.

it is standing barefeet on cold dull coins and all i can taste is broken cds, warming my hands on insect husks, a permanent summer of rubbish. it's a torn newspaper clipping of your mother's crumpled smile, a dubstep love song, that scabs of the nights remain in filth, on teeth, a crippled kiss.

i kiss your lips and chew my teeth, holding at my mug, finding you so well, i no longer sleep beneath my head, my heart climbed below the cliff, beneath.

the falcons

headstands

It was a smile bursting out through fingertips, as a headstand in sunrise, falling over.

Ian William L.

i wander such worlds.

it's a slow thing, chewing coins for a coat check, the girl hiding behind moths wings, and then your crooked swan sings.

i've laid you out here in the softest sounds, but i can't keep you forever. you've remained as flowers on the table for a week now, but they are dripping colour now. they can't find the sun. i don't want you to fade this slowly. i don't want you to go without the sun.

merle

rest in peace, Merlene Margaret Hallett. you were a truly brilliant and loving person and grandma, and all that you gave to the world, how that came to surround you at the end. it makes me so proud to carry on your awkward smile, your love for animals; even a portion of your heart, your steadfast, your compassion. you remain forever, in every memory of my childhood, in every christmas warmth, in every song.

i remember so much that it hurts, sharp burns where you once were. i remember that house, that bedroom. i always terrified of that room, that house, how big and old and alive it came to be. i remember a waterbottle, the teddy bear, the old comics, the garden gnomes, the pictures on mantles. i remember the beltstrap when i wet the bed, but also the biscuit tin when you just wanted me to smile so much, that it meant so much.

i remember the hornet nests, the rocks that only lived in your garden, the reddest sand, the deepest grass near the back fence, the walks down by the river, up the train tracks, always so afraid that a train would come along. i remember the milkbar and how i found two dollars frozen to a popsicle you bought for me. i gave it to the milkbar owner, but he told me to keep it, and you were so proud.

i remember the old couches, the rugs, the paintings, the SEGA, sitting next to you while you played your favourite games, tongue poking out.

i can't write any more. it's breaking me apart.

i wish you could come back, but i will conjure you in me if you can't.

if they accuse us of anything, let it be that we were held such big dreams, that we leaked and lost beauty, that we clung to hope so loudly, with such magnitude of heart.

i have licked suburbs because i couldn't find a stamp, and i swear you were somewhere along the lines, in that night train crashing for my eyes.

the morning is a cinema

"The morning is a cinema and I am quietly smiling, still hugged with a ragged tooth, upon our mess of hands are warmed."

Ian William L.

but art must be all these things, even that i cannot make shape of. it's the shiver and the dampness of skin, how the sky keeps every breath we have spoken, the warmth of the pavement when you're pressed to the sun, the songs that do slip under your tongue, a smile you sometimes catch on corners of sharp days.

i drop matches in my brain that flare up because i swallow the smoke.

and you are too kind that i can not taste the colour i understand.

but he is controlled by blood and could he keep my name?

we're both time travellers, too fast for these hearts that flood the past, burning up for the thrill, when we try to obey what the present wills.

hungry for thorns, or control? i've let the forest run right through me and there's music in my ears or violence. i need the control, that i know these things and they are done. i make the thorns. i make even an hour of calm. two spaces, can't you see? or compiling lists. or paperwork and pleas. or throwing up my skin. or shaving my bones down.

but all i can taste is the letters filling their slots. even if it's just ghosts.

even if it's just loneliness, even if it's just alone. and something stands before you and you can't tell the truth. i should sink my teeth in. but i'm only snakes.

pale.

this is... i don't have the strength of mind. it rots. two spaces couldn't save this. i'm keeping my distance, ugly and disinterested, pretty for a certain surface.

killer, jailer, heaviest head.

the woman who thinks like a cow

five parts. thanks to matt. this made me shiver, sleeves pulled tight, hood up over head, compressed and understood.

winter sun tear me apart.

another Violence. dry skin on fingers, and can't get the music right, watching the silhouettes and can't get... that colour of the wall, in the sunlight. I focus on the colour of the wall, the green, the painting, the light leaving. brush of lips for sensation, bent spine, cracked knuckles, spine, knuckles close.

it feels like too much so the actions falter. and i can't force another action, that would: Fuck it.

Can't, just for the colour. he won't, just for.

bomb

You are walking through the streets, not sure where you are, or, I am walking through the streets. I am walking through the streets. I am walking through the streets, and I don't know where I am, what this is. But this is the dream where I am ticking. This is the dream where I kill my mother.

I don't know my age. I don't know how I've come to tick, tick, a lack of face to remember. I do know these streets are not real, fifteen years later. (I wanted to say more on that, but I don't like using ages. It halts.) I am walking through the streets, ticking, ticking, ticking. I find my mother and I can not look away.

stow

a giant must keep me for some safe, to stow such his heart.

i am able to retreat to the metal, forfeit functions to the machine. i just keep limbs warm and far, and never look past the sweat, good head of steam.

as our eyes close

"A picture of our fingerprints, and the taste of tongues, as my eyes close—but for your impish colour, our sharp tooth."

Ian William L.

cold compass

thinking of the cold, and the cost, keeping secrets close. steam could only rein this in, if i am so removed.

and as i speak, I need a spark of life: the sun lights up before my eyes.

that i would always be licked to the small things, the spider pressed to the glass, the leaves of sentry, the wink of frost to dead branches.

everything remains.

equal parts

If I am intense, that is only one facet of me. I am equal parts the fool, equal parts falling down with friends.

the thing that rust

"You wear that skin so clever, so thrown out with luck, and catch the sins of leaders, the thugs, the things that rust."

Ian William L.

too many earthquakes behind these eyes, too many planets between the seconds, stretching out the soil spoken to be beneath my ear.

i've poisoned myself with the moon taken to a lung.

i wish but there's noise. steam can't clean it because i'd have to eat through my skin, sweat. sweat because i'd cut through this stomach.

pulling teeth, pulling teeth, pulling teeth, and with this poise, i am so far away. so lonely in my head. it doesn't make sense. it's shattered perfect glasses of milk. it's knuckles stretched out over skin, all of time. it's bleeding from the elbows. my neck is a math book, or necklines deserving of trust, an angle to a painting, of a window of the world.

Machine! close off your limbs, string yourself up to the sheets. wreck of sun spots, cold winter iron, bones splintered, chasing the back of tired skull. the sound keeps: moss moves upon the tooth, for i have remained too long.

worker

Wednesday morning, and the world has moved. I am still a little stunned—the period of my life denoted by MYER is coming to an end. I think of all the growth, the exceptional people I have met, all of the moments echoed in brilliance. On the 13th I start a new job as legal transcriber. I can't imagine how I've gotten to this point. My mind is the whitest ghost.

into wires

You left us to our own devices, stretched out the wires, plugging into all of our worst vices.

reverse strings

"If you could translate me, wouldn't that be fated, wouldn't that save you, from shedding all that skin. You bite at my cheek, told me to forget about the truth, I recite every song that, spoke volumes to my feet."

Ian William L.

story arc

"You are a picture, trying to tell my thousand words. But where was the flash of sentence, the camera structure to save us, from a story arc, paralysis arched, from the tips of my teeth, to your shining throat. Now, my ugly feathers, wash across your bald heart—tell me a photo with worst intentions."

Ian William L.

i can't compare you to the mess i keep, for you will be nothing like it, to ghost scripts strung round my head, for you keep such rage. i can't write a letter to you for every day removed, i can't write to you, the sun, that spark, my truest breath.

For you are real, will be real. you will steal eyes, and bring me down, chip my favourite mug, speak savage tongues, turn grey and remember only steam. we will fuck in violence, you turned away darkly, my sweat and slowing skull.

you'll test ink on mail i ignored...

i can't finish what is forever.

rest assured, the things i forget are the most important things. and how your eyes, forget my days or, of dark.

BEAUTY.

all this beauty just, boils within me, the colour of ages, the faint toll of eternity, the distant scrape of once infinite. i am a dying architect. i am keeper. i keep this, all of this, i feel so strongly that it will never dull, never dim, ...

i am not dead for i keep death writhing.

strange warm limbs.

i am not very stable right now, but i think this is okay. i always find my purpose in this state, where i draw special focus on cold feet or how a smile feels. right now i can tell you that it is not a simple feeling, really. it kind of skips within you, draws your elbows inwards, covers it with balled up child hands. a smallest sun inside you wakes up from its infinite hill, with too many trees and oak and shadow things... or how it makes me feel? the smallest sun, child hands, i really do smile and cover at it, such loud uncalculated happiness. i like this smile. can it keep me?

i am not very stable because (and i might use a list. i like lists because they make me feel safe. but i never use them here. i hate so many rules like this.)

1. i keep feeling alone. other people finding someone that makes them less alone, leaves me still alone, or maybe even slightly more alone. this does not mean i am not happy for them, because i truly am. you can only celebrate happiness, not try to tear it down, even if it's not your own. i keep feeling alone. and sometimes music or gym or making lists or staring at the ceiling does not help.

2. i still do not have a full time job. though, this colour of the list is actually a good thing, i think. not the not having, but i have started looking and participating. this means hopefully i will have one soon. then i will be tentatively normal.

3. i always get sad anyway.

4. i thought i had a fourth colour, but i do not, and i really do not like lists with only three colours. they feel messy, and i need my lists to be safe.

i keep drawing inspiration for my book. if a book could be just book titles, i would be very much complete and happy.

so damn pretty, between breaths, fewest cold seconds.

i write my tongues on these walls, only for me to see, this quiet only mine. i harness the violence, but it slips now, only throwing ugly shapes, stories without colour, the longest death of birdsong.

Who will come forth now?

charged with ruin as i am, a lover stooped to clay.

MADNESS, I GIVE YOU NAME AND CREDIT.

SOLD ALL OF BLOOD, I THAT WAS WATCH.

i love at the, sideways of necks, your, skin ticking to that breath, the glow of plastic hanging, round your glances away, cheekbone and fingers pressed to, little memories of oceans, young pink sweetest smile for, night of friends, what keeps our love and, blushed warmest kid heart.

a surge of love, the world rushing through your fingertips.

i know the book i want to write. i want to let others know, if they ever might find it, or feel it: They are not alone. We are not alone.

nothing can remove your spark. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. Nothing.

i'll write the book where we're all so alone, trying to be less alone, and hope can only come from every fresh wreck, vibrant wound. when we keep our hands still in the water, our necks beneath the blade. when the whole world is crushing us in, breaking our bones down to the corner, and still we fucking spark.

i'll write the book. i'll apply for the job.

please catch me.

Never was for now.

i wish i could be loved. that's all i've ever wanted. i don't care that i'm an ugly bird in a...why can't you see through that? all of my heart is here. every ounce of love. but oh fate! it's only ghosts, satellites, blood fights. i'm feeling stuck again, and i know i can move. i just haven't.

fuck it. this night, fuck it to hell. i can't share this, people just laugh and act cruely, never to your face. this isn't fucking pretty! i'm not fucking pretty. spit on my ugly face so i can...

find beauty. the steam in my veins, the glass run under my palms. we just think we're dead at night, so with first light, completely fucking, awed with life. the mirror of us shatters, the pressure releases.

box of stones

my world of ghosts, fingertips run along cracked lips, the soft song and the tree, quietly, words for colder feet.

her birthday

when i lose the pattern, I slip away, and am the string missing the needle through lost eyes. I can't keep the headphones close enough, can't have friends in furthest reaches. there's no light in the—garbage—paper bill—cold metal tongues—clippings.

and speak: Reclaim the beauty!, but unmoving, swallowing the hours, stealing bathroom tiles, monsters behind my violent ache, the clear corpse of things, and her birthday.

fifty-three minutes until you fight for another, until colour upon colour, the beauty of blood, and scar of ages.

what would the page number, paragraph—my stomach rising up to, visions of death.

(I am lost, in hiding here, the brackets, of safe wood.)

beat out the darkness

With eternal thanks to Vino for this.

you'd sell any limb, wearing your photos like skin.

if your love for the world is louder than your fear then you will hold to so little hate.

waiting for your heart to crawl back into your chest: a harpoon from me to you, or wailing at cathedral walls.

these are my feelings, they don't exist to be pretty: i never write to be pretty. i write my feelings. beneath it all, i get scared of sharing feelings, because you are not allowed to feel so intensely, without being judged: that people don't understand how you could derive so much from so little? so, yes, like the scared kids spilling elipsises——the black and red and violent——this is just another slow moment, cold moment, clean moment, quiet moment. this is another crow catching in my breath.

though i don't think i want you back, i don't ever let you go. so i struggle with my strongest belief: that everyone deserves happiness. it's not all about that, but it's there, and so i will continue to write it. it couldn't be any other way. not till a yellow bird descends.

just, the endless cycle of growth crushed underfoot. too much duality, and belief for the good in that: i am learning——we have learned.

so it feels, my true feelings can't fill a page. they curdle, crawl back inwards, obeying alliteration, losing their limbs.

there are so many secrets, and we only hold a photograph, or a word.

i tend to think that if i am only the writer, there is someone out there who is only the reader. they've read photographs and tasted sentences, whole landscapes made of stories, pieces of brilliance, prose. their nights punctuated by dreams, quotes worn on their sleeve, they have waited. they end world after world, tucked a bookmark beneath their tongue, finding the thought: Is there anyone who can, write me a truth? Just one sentence to believe in.

what we don't have, we have given, even if but the memory of a smile.

you'd need to tear the sun down, to bring me down.

your descent into beauty, your boiled skin, your broken soul.

scrapsong

I saw you hang yourself upon an end of a quote

some small fate that your books fall by my feet

and I'm owed to one bank, to lend you both these hands

and that smile before we spoke, almost always whispered:

I swore that the stars no longer rule.

you hold my world here, have seen you writing yours

could I tell, your greatest fear is that all of love is only borrowed

carved between stone and the length of sorrow

the dreamers stand casting weight to move the water

or not sure that I would follow, mistaken for the restless

secrets you won't know:

slow bird, brilliant suns, my last light of fear of none.

—Ian William L.

schema

I drip circuit boards, curl my toes, wrong fingertips, staring out sleepy windows, chewing on limp skies. I stare at the ceiling, places where I have never looked before, paint I have not tasted, creeping slowly, pressing water from its lips. please just keep me here, in the chipped foil, cracked smile, cold shadow. I can live here. I can tell you about, the telephone wires passing through her hair, the way she bites your cheek, all chess moves as she strives to move.

and the sunlight, everything, propelled into question marks.

and you go to these things, and you're full of life, and filled with alone, and your eyes might meet, his stumbling on the script, and it's never enough, to not feel the war, or spill your bones, or give up happy.

the why machine

there is metal cut through my brain, from the sound waves thrown. and I close up, a small mechanism away, mechanise away from their love, pulling levers for eyelids, sockets for vocal chords. and you might plug me into the grave, plug me into, liquids falling to my feet, my face to say: my aeroplane wings are lost.

i tend to the graves, i keep all of the names, but it must get so hard, with hands losing colour, to hold to another, to tell anything in this, world of rain along the wire.

(though i slip in every puddle, skipping a hope you will stir and, like the water falls through your hair, i'll drip the punctuation, a tide you can swallow, and offer only ...)

what is the point of love? it's a cruel thing cut deep into us, poison that the lungs don't know, that sips at our limbs, and talks to the stars, us, dim, half stance and unable. we're playing to the same sacrifices, hiding our teeth and holding onto trick rooms. if you try to care for it, it will snap your neck. if you reduce it to war games, it will sew itself to every rotten calendar page.

the stars still linger here, can't they know that they're dead, but they go on feeding, and fuck with your fate.

this isn't fair. i don't deserve to put in this fucking corner, every single thing with rot, tearing my limbs away. just, to come close, and end me. you inscribe me, remind me, i was put together to die in pieces.

all i want is that fucking chance to live. i want to fill your mouth with blood. i want a song to shatter my skull, paint the stars with what they have denied, scream until its all gone, gutted, absolutely fucking nothing and destroyed, ruined, raped, torn apart, alone.

You were the madness of soil.

when the black wave crashes down, reminding you how to wear your skin, and you stand up, spitting wounds from your mouth, that blaze of heart, you bear.

the bones of gulls that hold the room, the albatrosses that stretch across knuckles, the feathers at the corner of your teeth, how they shimmer for, all death, all flight.

if there is to be magic in this mess, then we are to be magicians, and all magicians need assistants, those friends and fall-guys, to fake-out the blade, and piece your heart back to your mind.

i was already feeling small tonight, and i wrote down the knives, recorded them safely away from my skin, but not safe enough, not without pockets full of blood. no one warns you that you'll end up this removed from the world. they tell you to be brave and ugly, they tell you to live so goddamn bright, and now i've seared my eyes, all ash and smoke in the sockets, all remains in my ears.

alone, loud and roaring in flames, wretched, wracked, trying to wonder.

but it's so loud! this silence! this fire! this. this. this. this. if you could see, you would probably help. you might take an ember away, you might kiss at teeth.

we won't see you breathing, we won't hear your words beneath the sheets.

an ocean before i tell you.

these little stones within our ships, and everything we keep beneath, and when i breathe you in, i'm drifting, and when i breathe you in, i'm sinking, these little souls within ourselves, and everything we lose between, and when i find you, i'm already broken, and when i find you, i'm beginning to think that i'm hoping, our two breaths, that they could span the ocean.

a little lonely with just these rhymes, the blood coursing through my biggest dreams, retract and recreate in the midnight of my bonds, the world has left you within. i smash my kaleidoscope down, to pavement and bite my knuckles and seventeen weeks away from safety, sifting through once colour.

I still feel you here.

a lack of words translates roughly: the blessed days, the living bliss. if i should never write the book, i guess i was buried with all my happinesses. if i should die without love, i guess i kept my throats in perfect posture.

i think you need to understand that the violence won't ever leave you. there's no great moment where in, a single spark of starry breath, the war retreats. the violence is as intimate and threshing as the lover, and as much as it needs you, you need it. you need it to ask the question, you need it to know the answer. you need it to crack your skull, you need it to remind you, your skull can always still crack. you need all the paths it remembers, all the ruin it has traced, all the cracks of light from the corner of eyes. all the quiet eyes of violence are no fools.

but the love inside of me is bigger than the hurt, and i've fought bigger battles than this. this, another rejection, is small, just another scar of colour, of note. i'll find a place for it, and laugh so stupidly at how, bent, it all was. i was a soldier of lust, and i lost the war. i already know the truth of it.

the love inside of me knows that i am surrounded by a force of hands, and smiles that question the same. the love inside of me is bigger than the mind, the violence, the lurker in dark places.