the epilogue of now

i am not the writer, not right now. i am living. trust me. i put the pen down and breathe it all in.

i still see the light in you.

catching.

i lick the stamps of my palms of my hands.

we come together. the fireworks are sweating.

to sleep here.







I still see light in you

catching

across the stamps

the palms of my hands

we come together

in fireworks sweating

to sleep here.

now, if ever, if

the world is a truly beautiful place, all pulsing madness and resplendence. just take the darkness brightly and people you love brightest and allow yourself to be moved.

stagheart

and then tomorrow I am re-shattered, grin-on-grin, thrown from this slow spring's chance.

i, you, chemica

it's a busy city, it's a tectonic lung, it's a scrap heart, it's a strikeout, it's a metal thunderhead.

it is tin foil, it is loud, it is fish guts, it is muted beneath the hour hand.

it was a question, it was low flight, it was mud in my eyes.

(snake eyes, o lover in hungers)

it has been home.

blood lip, winter

i am seething, and still, with the, knowledge, that this, is
just a moment, of pain, coming up,
ghost trophies of old,

and, that, i don't, believe,
you, in, any, way, true,
or, my seafarer,

i'll kill, us, with my tongue, flared, up,
the roof of ceilings, spun,
swallowed,

deserved bruise, of, us
skin and, fiend,
skinny shattered cup,

i don't, want, answers,
just destruction, egg yolk,
mild wallpapers,

sure as, for tomorrow,
and i still,
shake,

the head,
is,
fucked ragged,

blood lip, summer

the first of the long dusks, the warm nights, the breathy midnights, the gun-metal-orange skies and steam and smell of mornings.

come into life

and all i can see are the flowers in the leaves in the wind, the green-shimmering-gold chandelier in its still smile, hung from warmth and the feeling returning.

cold mess, a week

our bruises have become warm places.

another morning in shivers, but my happiness feels like strawberry milk or hopscotch or warm book pages.

I like the rain when it's coming down into purple, slicing up the train window with cat whiskers, all of the light against all of the speed.

fuck sadness. you are goddamn brilliant. and you're a freak. and they hold the best half-smiles.

long earth/warm hands/the ten day war

You have to understand I hate being this way: the anchor that holds half my head. I know the war. You know the war. But, still, to always rise to it, and let yourself swallow it, and loudly you are cut down. I ball my fists, remain a centaur. My want is more than violence. My need is to tremble in love.

(I think of the innumerous skies, and how crooked my skin lies, and the fly cutting its head against the passing glass, and the small texture of plastic grips. Your bones warp the stories, or the stories warp the wood.)

This is never finished.

I have to turn away, and stop. I've been looking far too low. I've been struck aside. I need to remember, and not for you. I know I won't ever have a voice like you. Mine is cast in vapors. Mine resists, in ugly glow.

I won't have structure.

(These insects called home.)




But light.

Goodness in tremors.

Wax anthem.

Stand louder.

Without flight, or throw.

The fool is

but light.

the purple frozen sun sets

this vision is not infinite, not always. these words are simple, cut with one bone. these words inflict some sense of things. this day is not the end, but it is not now, that i would want. this prickle in my heart is ugly, this racing skin. this swamp i tend to, this empty flame i keep clean. this wound is heavy, and not a crown. this truth is golden, though, that the purple frozen sun sets, and that was good, and now flooding grievous.

i am shitting out these mix tapes. i am filling my mouth with these black curtains and decaying polite demands and indifferent urgencies.

how can i rise.

i am always waking up

(the cold magnetic sky, stadium lights, us wearing steam, parachutes, centipedes, a dream...)

her breathing was gunsmoke, a web of light, a forest taking arms in my eyes.

and here i am, cut clean of that, licking the thick years off morning glass, sleeves of tin foil, vodka and milky eyes. i adjust some feathers, rattle my mail, empty my fingers into sockets.

must that spins these rainstorms and silkworms, and beautiful globe, and birds of colour that my eyes are so full up, and cavernous clouds, and toothache, and memory of sex.

(there were to be no mornings without, any more)

you are printed on leaves. you taste like dry marker. you bristle smoke from an earth. you listen to some scar. you radiate spare death. you throw wings. you believe in cold horses.

////////////////////////////
////////////////////////////
////////////////////////////
////////////////////////////

the day is sick in its stomach, burning on a branch, sweating from your putrid wood. there is some sugar plastered to his cheek, some bone ragged in his lock, some string he chews bloodied. the day is heatstroke, and unessential, and jerking games. the day is hungry, filtering through fences and gates, so once far.

the way back is our dusk

it is impossible not to be crashed with awe when it is passing through friday dusk after a brilliant week. and, for tonight: rekorderlig, all stumbling in a new house, these friends who define my life as champion.

it's—really—this—grin—that—just—moves—out.

the morning

your blood is not strange, your dreams are not heavy.

the mason

in searching for them you will only always find yourself.

heavy even here

Invent new love daily. Give yourself warm bruises. Grin like a bee sting. Be absurd and wholly flaky. Make light. Make light. Make light.

500 blue skies

this is my 500th letter to you. i've been gnawing at this for days, unable, and of course i would have to start at where i began: you, filling my skies with light; him, my love made leonine and crumpled. and though i knew i could not continue, we are both here. and though you were ragged, you are the cup of life. but i have changed, you have changed, so much has. could i recount it for you? but you were there. we unfurled, more than words can check.

i know i've seen my friends carried high on love.

i have seen winters end.

i have seen days licked as stamps and kept in rare.

i have filled my lungs with foam.

i have felt the ten seconds before sunrise.

i have loved with all my life.

i have said goodbye.

i have broken down as the tempest.

i have lost larger limbs than myself.

i have been renewed.

i have found you.

almost.

thoughts of wallpaper/love

i'll give you a summer grass and icy lips and mothdust hands. i'll give you a nothing smile and breathy promise and warm bed. i'll give you an ocean room and blurry love and pressed teeth. i'll give you a tender coat and painted locks and hot dreams. i'll give you a soft drink and hand claps and autumn skin. i'll give you a patchwork whisper and loose change and childhood glances. i'll give you an old song and clumsy sunset and comfortable bruise.

passenger II

you know those moments where everything you see and hear and feel is unbelievably otherworldly? bones recast by pure happiness? breathing in life that crackles and ignites? this is that moment.

every shivering song falls perfect, every raindrop spat in my eye is worth this.

passenger I

everyone in this carriage is so grey.

I am staring into signal lights with a thumping smile, trying to remember every daub of the sky.

without sound

you hold my hand and i cannot know the faulty wiring of my sea bird.

you keep holding for some scar of an ocean.

you keep holding the tide in.

you keep holding.

shaking light

THIS IS THE NIGHT THAT
TAKES FROM YOU
THIS IS—
ITS VIOLENT SKIN
BUT YOU
NEED TO MOVE TO
CAST THE
NEW SHADOW FROM
THE
LOCKED ROOM

your toothy wings revel

loneliness is always trying to raze you down and the night is so careless with its weight and you are thinking of book pages to wear and writing down heat signatures.

fidget strong, you uncertain force of birds, you acid zeroes, you blushed travelkind:

keep your head up, keep your heart strong
ben howard - keep your head up

animal fortress child keeps

i am alien: too fast, too slow. my breath radiates, my head to swamp. is it best to float and touch nothing? the silence or violence? or the pluck from your ribs that once held far? now i find you in my bloodbath, stony love. now i find nothing.

this bruise hangs round a spider's web, dripping cruel ghosts into shuttering gills, mouth wide with the miles, running away from the robots in his head (there is voice but requires a way to cup it in these hands.)

i cannot show you the miles of invisible ink all prickling around my dead crown, and yet this orbit has such intent—if i defy stars then all metal-flight, horrors chains!—but i can show you joy.

i am a shivering planet before happiness. i am the name of the moon of all my friends that come.

(i am crippled by some strange dictionary that licks my blood, but there is no light to dwell there, and so.)

(but though it is still not an easy thing, to try to show the imprint of love: its bones, its rags.)

all i can try to tell you is that while i have retreated from months (it's...somewhere in my pocket...some breath) i press my face to the glass and there is still a shimmering hope for you. and i cannot hardly think of how cold a wooden stair is.

i will be so much older

the universe plays to catch your question with its own catechism and sometimes there is something pretty in that.

away

i am sorry. i know how silence plays at your sweat, the exacerbation of fears. did i leave to look for you? did i find only smoke? did i lose something, there, and i just remain small? yet it can all be so peaceful, your breath strums acoustic, fingertips too much to fasten this skin.

i find no love, dear. i fuck those who are not you. these bodies that trick fuses.

i want so badly to find you in these fits of nights.

the broken ones

Chelsea gave this to me a few weeks ago, and in infinite lapse I did not shiver out loud for its beauty and message.

thrashing line

my yellow bird has an elephantine memory for the hope that perches here. i am loud when i am cold. i am so unfinished.

i have tried:

I.
I think it's important to give yourself enough time—always more time. Still, we always think we can harry time, hurry, and defy.

II.
Razor sharp of day that lights: this night will be heard.

III.
but sometimes it is nice just to go back and know what is already there, every one we have loved, everything we have made, everything that heats our iron and fills our coats.

IV.
there is some magic to the cold, crystal song, a shivering ink, the charm of city lights flushed golden and alone.

V.
the moment you thought to ignite went more gravel than breath, careful ache. and i still feel the debt. i love you and will give you more. but tonight i am turned out: a bottle of glass slipping through a milky film—her cigarette eyes choking on the streets—this divine speck.

as we groan as do stars

If there plays force within me it is loud and it is love.

i am moving as you shiver so

your golden leaves before the storm, breathing in the rain into your lungs, holding ice in sparking hands, spinning under a midnight bloom, smiling through a bloodied lip, some skin grafts, caught in the awesome eye:

i love you and am dizzied

keep bleeding as you shine

through the warmth of an earth

to moth wing and carpet and bones.

the night smoke

invention yet moves / on arcane strings /
hearts steel / of whisper and din

the moment

That brief walk was one of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering. 

An Abundance Of Katherines; John Green

hot grey day, a cold water smile

The truth, like all immense things, is shattering. It plucks worlds away. It stymies, and it bucks. 1. I have been putting the truth together for a while now. 2. I have been trying to make a truth. 3. I have been trying to make my truth loudly. I can't exactly say, why there is a broken traffic light sitting in my bones, that has this life slamming through, scathing, in abandon.

There is a small bird. There is a whole fucking sea of birds, and sky of birds, and wracking flight—LEATHER. SEIZURE. NOISE. The small bird is still there, and it is still pretty, and I could still be sad for hours about it.

Why can't I make truth? It is there, but remains haunted by rot and shoe string, these things you have loved falling under water and never coming back to you. The way that violence makes my mouth drop, my teeth all bared like an animal all gun-shot through.

And yet some kind of happiness—the way you count your words, the way the curves taste, the repulsion of remembering, the smear across the earth.

The truth fills me uncontrollably, violent, loud. And it empties—cold toes, vacant eyes. The truth is an orgasm of my years. (Convulsion, hand in mouth, sank biting into blood, and the small of death.)

Ian William L.

the human stain

"But the pleasure isn't owning the person. The pleasure is this—having another contender in the room with you.

—The Human Stain; Philip Roth

head arch

this night has lost its stars, and he has fallen back through the dinner table, where i don't go, and they are museum pieces, tagged with plastic private breath, and you are a strange show, stung me through with halving charm.

impel

the truth is, I don't know how to remain still, or silent, to not feel the spur, the glow, the spirit. and right now, from the train carriage alone, I feel the steam on the glass, the old couple making hands, that togetherness, how loud and clear the passing light, beckoning for such quiet life.

Ian William L.

reach high

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal. 

Pamela Starr

old pine

such a slow day song, and such a beautiful clip to accompany it. I would strongly recommend watching it directly through youtube to watch it in true realised size. such light, such colour.

unfettered howl

Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream—exhale, release life's rapture.  

Vladimir Nabokov

split

Fault lines hold the earth together, flaws make us brave.


filled with love and noise.

he tells of a spark

We are all born into a single moment in time, filled with our own force of colour, of sound, spinning through a spill of days and finding hope. We can't expect to master all pursuits, or know all great kindness. But neither can we cripple ourselves with a shrug of our spark, where such invention yet moves to radiate. We should hold warmth for the happiness of others, and perseverance for our own. We should wear ourselves well—ragged—lightning bolt—brave.

my eyes were clicking

so much sings within me, but on broken legs and flickering and hung from a clock, bloated and coursing and measured and still. there is vinegar—my tongue?—skies thumping, purple-into-orange-into-green, a strong love that might bruise, an acceptance i slowly keep. i am licking street graffiti and following the dusk chiming with a pinball glow, brilliance. i fell heavily on his lisp and wanted to hold his bones all thrown as dinosaurs and might of days. i pulled at her string, the spill of words knitting to my disease, trapped her eyes on my snaking light. but there is a path here only i divine, this soil in my blood, rush of daybreak, wanderlust scraping at my bird skin.

make

you are a jar they will put back into the earth, a secret i would like to believe, a wound that refuses to weep, an apple that uprooted the tree.

you are an earthquake awash in a spare room, a breath of frozen jagged sleet, a language curling with bruises, a wild growth that pierces these streets.

(you are a reference card once stolen for a book i am yet to write.)

all my days

"And even breathing feels all right."

Every now and then shuffle brings this back to the surface, and how it brings its own smile. Discovered a long time ago via Away We Go (which is such a moving film in its own right.)

For today I lie in the grass, and watch—the leaves flare green-into-gold, the sky continuing to search.

you are a detective

This gave me my last smile before sleep—a page taken from How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum by Keri Smith.

[via ffffound via don't touch my moleskine via keri smith.]

let it in

It is only lightning bolts that arc out forever all before us: the brilliance made clear.

—Ian William L.

sometimes to feel the morning even here

I make my body into a flint, so that the night can't get in, and strike every heartbeat of the hall as i find my way down. the scratches are familiar, and comfortable, and I hope they are enough. and I am always turning back, finding it could be a new season, finding you made of puddles, and mop-hair, and corners of pages tugged, finding you crumpled and real and softly still, catching on the wall.

the ugly end of the month

i can't seem to keep my focus for more than a few minutes. it strikes me as getting worse and i am scrambling to defy it. these all fell to drafting.

i have turned away from you now, my compass stung wrong in halves, and i never see the fire set...

i want more for you and always have—the only strength i could hold. my sadness is easy, with every hour, and violent strings, and a head that moves faster than my body. but you were an even weight, and blinding light—

i feel the house creeping up on me and my tongue buckle.

or it comes like a lung full with lightning, fingertips that are not fast enough, signals that burn up the chorus dusk, suddenly a single cracking note, for the fire song, my skin straps yours—

is this how a cartographer must feel, to have his whole world come to be found?

we will all be changed

The chorus fills the morning with light.

[via we are fuel you are friends.]

there was a without

IT IS ALL ABOUT TRYING TO FIND A WAY TO EXIST

AGAINST THE LOUDNESS OF THE AIR YOU BREATHE IN

AND MADE INTO ASTEROIDS AND SHIPWRECKS

AND COMING APART AND BEING STILL

IT IS ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF

UNDER THE PALMS OF THEIR LOOKS

IT IS BANDAGES YOU COLOUR

WITH EVERY DAY UNDERWATER

AND MAKE BRIGHTLY

TO STAND ALONE.

it burns through me, that you do not know, and i have more, and you are more

everything that does not belong to this world moves as a beautiful, fucking marvel.

trying to burn up into a sentence

... / but the wave swam in my lung /
and sprung up this statue / old ivy and cracked belief /
this rolling breath catches no stones

always gold

how beautiful this is, that I can shiver and cry.

dust, maybe, never mine

this picture i keep blurs into the gasoline, swirling until i nurse a blood nose and i'm singing. i smile, and it stings, and i name the shapes, really just chasing them back to smaller bones, thumbing at rings of so many taller trees.

i hear autumn, my car keys, your stare. still, i have fucking tried, to understand your sparrow pieces, and how they chip at mine.

know no violence

xx x.

i swallowed my gum, spat you out, forgot how to close my eyes, shut you out.

xxxx.

i take a drink, from the gas, and in an instant i'm on my veins, black conductor, stitching up, and out, these rats, this song—exile me from here, sable child. you lose your guts and—thuck-thuck—the remote—pressing to the ocean. your eyes take smoke and the sea will not turn away. your head is scathing, empty, winsome, elemental. but breathe me back, breathe me back, breathe me back.

from fever takes

when was the last time you knew the spark, when it flashed before you, and you flickered, and all the math to the stars could not divide such a force.

you make eyes on the street, and all the colours have been waiting for you to create.

you sit by the water, dripping foul from midnight, your favourite song and favourite smile.

you chase them from the sun, and always stay together in many sought bruises.

(fall away from this.)

for me, for you, for never remembering the difference between time and cherries, always strong, and always far.

(I am raw with fire.)

the world comes for me, but I am not ready, and the days wait to patch to these jeans.

and told:

You can only graft things to yourself, not speak them there.

Ian William L.

recovery

I have been sick, and crippled for six days now. today is the first day where perhaps I can feel my throat has not become a grave, and my house slowly grows a door—beautiful fucking sunlight. there were fever words, and tremble songs. I am always so embarrassed for anything I write, that it carves a journal where I want a story, something to give. I know this will never leave me, and it is a toll I am always wrestling to keep. still, I write everything, horrific night wounds, glory of the days when we are not alone. I still only do this for those who need to scour the mark—the end of seasons, and steam engine, and skull tangles.

or, my sister—my venom bloats me, to carry her through. my light surges to keep to hers. my hope breathes a sky for her smile, to see all from above. we are both made from the same broken angle. I know her wrath to hang upon, the world to give her that much sadness. I visibly am undone at such—

your happiness was always going to be worth these lungs filled with hurting truth, taking away twenty breaths of this night, its kind strike.

good ghosts

They would tell you to let go, but I would tell you the memories are beautiful.

...once the tempests.

—that you are light—to my flame-lick—days—

for—all last touches brook and—jet

—under pirouette of, storms-arcing-kiss.

(some absence)

that paper cup holding back—a night—sweat cuts, to a lip—in expanse of his breathing—in—moving out into the grass, never stopping for—a streak, scant, of star flashing—palpitation, or eyelids firing, or weight of love—cast forking spider-silk I claw, that—wake in this blood-tremor—and—clasp from mooning lover.

Ian William L.

on the road

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn.

On The Road; Jack Kerouac


I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

On The Road; Jack Kerouac

the lining is silver

head combusts, pt. II.

do you get afraid that your words are drying up and that soon all you will be is heat and violence?

these are small and nothing but they were there:

[swim for the lightning bolt divining the light, the cannon shot cracking...]

[she felt the whole world move through her: the lady crying into her storefront, selling shit she doesn't believe in, the small bird trapped at the bottom of a subway station, its eyes holding simple unheard light, the ax wound of getting what you want, and only spitting out bones.]

[you breathed me in and waited (i had memories, or these thoughts, that your hands were crumbling toys, things i shouldn't remember here, but still i circle the buttons laid around you, with this smile that you found, and felt as warm newspaper clippings.)

i emptied my pockets (we always make sure that the puddles are held last, that they well, and fill from our good days, that chime as sea shells, you once scoured from loneliness, cold sweat of foam.)

and we both knew.]

[autumn fell and i just fled. and now i'm here, feeling something that must be like eating glass, or storing it in my head, heavy enough and that glint, and cement underneath my knuckles, these pavements i do not come back from. the alien triggers that used to come so easily, and now just gift boxes brimming with silence, spitting lockets—this should reflect noise!

(hello, i would like to get to know you.

hey, i guess, i will speak again soon.)

my tongue recycles my pulse.

and this colour—blue. do you feel like this sometimes? i have to know that you do. i think of glass and pavement and aliens. i feel them where my blood should beat. i can taste it where i keep my alphabet. (i can hear a blood nose.) i throw fast. i don't want to apologise. the problem with that is this madness and moving forwards into it and:

people: are you so fraudulent? are you so strange?

hope: but if you can feel this, too.

i had so many dreams and ideas and words, but none of it that comes in any shape i can name. there is blur, somewhere between—can you feel my fingers now? they have left me, and surely i would have left them with you. do i need them... or believe in colour?

if you think i am broken, that must seem apparent, but how i function, really. just i think too fast for my eyes to travel...]

[the past is so loud and you jam your skeletons in the lock.]

head combusts

I said I wouldn't write again until I could start without apology, and currently that isn't possible. I have written these weeks down, but they are chipped volcano, and wading ocean. I feel like a fool. I grow hot, and taste the haze I have always known.

still, life is beautiful, and I wait for my voice to make sense.

endless summer

with you, gwen

you take the street with you now

all those years

a life spilling into ours

your kindness with arcing wonder

and infinite grace

she spat smoke, and locked the water in the jar

it is calm, and i am losing my guts, in a smile, propped up. there are so many things: pictureless mail—water in a bottle—centuries.

(the list of so many things:

I want to protect my mother from the whole world, her smile clicking over like a cassette tape. she doesn't know.

the future.

my bruised lip, or band of stars, or intoxication.)

but I am so happy, scratching, with an ant carrying the dead up. I need a blood song. I need a violent jaw. I need some thoughts torn, and limbs re-read.

crease me—grimacing—a tangle of sex.

his calcium levels defined him, and every winter coming down, and every funeral was still shitting itself, and foaming in prettiness, or traffic.

we were there with the sunset, though. the golden light cutting hands off with the heaviness of—I am walking faster—through—this night of trees.

we were together then and not now.

(the list of what it feels like:

impassable.

I sewed a blanket of this cult.

my tongue flickers.)

you want to speak, but offer nothing meaningful. you want rage, but this wasp has one head cut off, and apologies on his road map. it could say: I AM THESE MOUNTAINS. PLEASE DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME.

it is still trying, a paper machete of sadness—I don't have colours in my mind of a sun. there is a grey that stands still, and the wires behind all these eyes, and this breath composed of anvils.

I am cut. I am dripping, and spouting, and losing. I can't find the mouth of it, because it is invisible.

I cannot move like this. I am wasting, these acid heartbeats, this storm dive.

too much—I have pressed my heart to a universe, and jammed my head in a loft.

help, for my battery needs some care, because it is not working.

(this is how it feels right now. the lists are so heavy, and I am still vomiting them from me.)

Ian William L.

0112

I take the reins here. I am marking this as a journal entry, only that I hate the idea that you think I write this so it could be about me, but that is the least that I want. but I am a real person, too.

I have a favourite mug. I love you from my strange place. I feel the warmth of my loosing socks. I could misfire and think it hope.

I haven't had words largely because I am trying to keep myself in check. they will give you so many pills, but gym and exercise are truly curative. I sweat out the night. I am wracked with happiness.

and friends return, and I let go of lovers, but for the force of love.

don't hide away. we won't leave. your darkness must keep its season.

two hours ago.

you are not a liar, and you are not small.

take that one breath. that's where it started, you felt the thorn. but before it writhes and burns hot, spit it out.

those mornings, that gravity shivers, time sheds its skin, still clinging to the branches.

breathe out in slowness, the wires that run you through. your eyes don't crack, your skin doesn't leave you. and take a sip from your lists, and a bug bite that keeps your thoughts. this was so important, that stills the gun and climbs the wall.

i am a cold stone in morning light, the last thing you threw between us.

and so frustrating to hold a voice but be unable to speak.

and your sutures grow like teeth, you spit them out to be released.

i won't tell you not to be sad, and i won't tell you not to be wrong, but just that i remember you retracing the light across the floor, soft but for cracked lips.

write your own goddamn horror show and live faster than time.

studied.

the little fumble before you breathe

the elipsises catching before your fingertips

held the plastic sleeve

you stand against the wall

a purple ladybug, in violence

thrown the great streets

valentines/breakfast in bed.

i hope you are warm.

i took the wheel all the way to the dark.

i am shamed again or uncontrolled or sad—this fucking sharpness all the way through. i could not write because i was happy, and now it is rat poison, ugly bones. i have been alone for two years, and that always unfurls and—(the sound of———)

HANDS ARE HUNG AROUND MY SPEECH PATTERNS. I PULL AT MY THROAT, CATERPILLARS FROM THE BRANCH. MY BLOOD STUTTERS. I CAN NOT SEE YOU WITH THESE WORDS.

stop. fight. stand. halt. (redeem.)

breathe. gnash.

1. no matter i collect in this jar.
2. there is no way out of strangeness.
3. everyone around me is falling in love.
4. i am shy.
5. tomorrow i will fight harder. i will go alone.
6. but you're so pretty tonight.
7. i made you a mix tape.
8. the colours are not translating! right now, this—here!

the light bulb is vicious, this tic is pulling at my jaw, wide eyes and looking all the way down. and my forearms are heavy and i snap them against jam, against clocks. and i have said the birds break their necks and i think that every word ever spoken cannot be spoken again and i am losing this language to reptile blood and eyelid circuits.

i am trying to speak. i am gripped.

9.41. PM. WHY DO THE SHAPES HURT? IT'S—IT'S—IT'S—i am breathing and my eyes are closed. the sounds are all coming to life and the colours hurt.

AND I CAN NOT PUT UP A WALL.

(You are beautiful. You spasm in a little smile. Your blushed nose, teetering frame. You craft from paper things. You hear only the song that wants you here.)

the morning coming back.

a small bit of sunday morning love, all staticky and smoked, the radio smudge, and strum of hot breath, yet ash cloud, yet sea bird.

the only moment we knew.

COLOUR

live loudly, through all fault and favour.

WOUND

i burn through cheap math, brand the life you spit.

...to the stars through adversity

all my words are living

pass only to a smile

and i have untucked this small warmth

and nights that do not lash

i do not know when the lightning strike

will crack home—but how

just to be the sky

love without talent

light without end

feet soft under the grass

a shiver-kiss within beats.

it's nice to be alive

If you needed a hopesong, a happy light.

(I am sorry for the lack of words, but this needed to be shared.)

give it all back

File this under—that smile, chipped tooth, hot breath.

Can you feel this?

Or this:

1. The Maccabees - Pelican
2. Dan Black - U + Me =
3. The Maccabees - Went Away
4. Eugene McGuinness - Lion
5. Noah And The Whale - Give It All Back

For these moments, we could go together in the same sweat, thickened, a crumpled charm, remnants of relief, a board game, thrown, holes in socks, jam smear, the ceiling spinning.

a bright army follows you even now

Whenever there is a moment where someone else's happiness makes you crumple upon yourself, you need to be furious—a fire—a force of thought. You need to remove whatever entitlement your sadness spits to lend. The insect in your head cracks so loudly, and you wander under its dusk song. But this does not sing out—only calls you out alone. Know this weight, but do not throw it further than already held.

And here, the happiness of another cannot break you down, but cast life. Forgive yourself of crooked rings—the far violence of a planet, the stinging tree—emboldened with your important bruises. You are not scar upon scar upon an end, but such a shape of love.

If ever happiness feels sharp, please be strong. We see your bruise. We see your colour. We are coming. We are coming.

I just looked for the sun/something goes right

And the sky feels like the song, and the light feels like the words, and I would be ruined not to sing.



And I heard this, and was so far away.

I loved you for eight seconds, and had not yet met you.

somewhere, a violent stopclock

I see my head and try to trap the fire in one room:

1. I am alone.
2. I am always alone.
3. the patterns are too loud.

it is really hot in a burning house. a lot of goodwill goes and is cinders, and a blinding haze of what was kindness. it is against the door, or teeth, or where songs would be beautiful. and an inferno is not like insect legs being pulled off—it kicks.

I am your friend—blaze—I am okay—blaze—I will keep you safe—blaze:

4. breathing does not correct anything.
5. I spoke her name with such ash, choking.

I am sorry. you will go, and look at yourself, and feel sad—I wrought that.

6. I do not want to be alone, but I cannot change my shape to any other.

I will fix it with sulfur, but it burns through even closed eyes, and i fight like a merchant.

I record this as a loss, but so forged with trying.

8.01, p.m. I am unlit.

10.46, p.m. the poison stays, once it starts. I breathe a lot, and try to be calm, but it is always a growing violence. and it is not a fair thing, to be fuel, and every day precariously striking the earth until it catches. I don't want to be different. I never wanted to be this acid slideshow, broken joke, impossible light. I could talk to people, who I think are cute, and they would not try to cut me with their words. I could live one whole day without the chaos plucking at my strings, and how a quiet brain would feel, I have never known.

but I am steeled against this. I record every mood, for those who don't, and who can't see that anyone else hurts like they do. I can't give up, not here, and I rise against—you cannot know the size of hope and where it moves, how close you are.

I remember that it is simple to think yourself someone else, that lightness of being, that you could trade everything and feel happy. but it is easy in the darkness to trade in shadows. when given enough thought, you must also sell your light. and there are so many things that only you can bring to others' lives, however stunted or squinting. so much that i would go on forever to let you know.

oils

and this sweat, like a bullfrog splayed, and muddy snowflakes, the guts of the day, and fingertips.

but then a small wind, a shivering light bulb, an ocean lapping against your tongue.

and you are not entirely okay, because you were just great, and now your thoughts click like a telephone, the heavy kind, a nickle pressed to your forehead,  the taste chiming in your ear, metallicky rainstorm.

it is passing.

hopewriting

I need to shape up, get started, take all that fire from the moment and use it. I started this for you, and I will be bold for you, even if that is only simple words, no cascade, or colour, or lightning within—it still crackles. The truth cannot be scared to stand only on itself, and therein still remains my weakness. But you believe, and you smile, even when I paint devils, even when I only strike as hell. I'm closing my eyes, trying to make it—yet so sure in my thoughts!

The purpose for all of this was to keep you safe—two years—234 messages—your name divining the light. I can be slow there, knowing you have come to be so happy, so I should stand here now, rise to breathe against the flame. but I still tremble, and show cracks—the thoughts of others terrify me. (the fire!) I am trying to show—map—depict the calm, the chaos, the shift of—(take heart. think of beauty. say the love out loud.)

All right, this is going to be ugly now. (a breath of pavement.) I started this for one, but I know there are so many, and that there can never be too much love, that wants to be reached.

You—I am in debted that your eyes even pass here. I imagine you small and strange, but a blaze of life, hope mapped on your palms. (a breath of storms.) Are you small? I won't tell you to be brave. But imagine that your smile is a strength that crashes against the stars! You take the light in. (a breath of sand.) I try to stand up for you, too, as best given from clay, madness, schedule.

The dream of 2011—the year has gone to bed. But this is a dream that survives all that hungry daylight. (a breath of fire.)—shit, fuck, I dwell—I want that we can all be so loud, or thankful, or kind—that smallest kindness can stave someone's war. But it can be hard to be weird, and speak like you are very wounded, or worn, that crown of fortitude. It is hard to be that they can not expect the colour of your flight, take through as easy braille, cast you out as cruel. It can be hard for so very many consequences—weird and ugly and great as you are.

(THE SLEEPING DREAM OF 2011.)

There are great people all around you—I was always fond of the pretty girl at the coat check. But if you look around—I also know the sad lady on the bus (for sometimes you can see the weight of the day hang to her lower lip). If you have fought a war, do you hear all those guns shots? But they don't mark your song. Be more than a soldier but as a traveller. Be more than a well but as an ocean. Be more than dimmed but as the determination of light!

(there is a hole here. I think for the words but they do not come.)

Move outwards as they cut at your branches. Cycle through the memories of sunsets when locked to the night. Sing your ugly song so close to their machines. Tell the stranger they are not.

(a breath of watercolour.)

For those of you who find comfort in PostSecret, this draws from that same hope. We send secrets that find ourselves, but what for the love you feel for the world? The idea will survive the tremors. You can make something real. Is there someone you want to tell such a warmth to? Maybe you will never see them again, or maybe you wish you would, or maybe they are a friend, or a guard, or a lover. Maybe they served you, or maybe they fell over in the train. Maybe their smile was enough. Tell the stranger they are not. Send your message here and I will post them (a string of lights) on Wednesday, anonymously or otherwise. Wednesdays are always hard, always lost, floating somewhere between, but maybe it could be found. And maybe they will never see your words, but kindness always travels quietly. Maybe one day they could find themselves here, on the wings of the infinite, quicksilver fates. I can think that they would smile.

This is the sleeping dream. This makes me blush violently and want to hide, but I remember you. I will replace your bruises with apples, and let them tell you the art of your worth, closer than I could ever draw. And though I know there are only a handful of people who might read this, I can not just rest with my earthquakes. I will try. I hope you will understand. I hope you will be a hopewriter.

the gay rights movement

This is just—

Everyone deserves love and hope and happiness. these are three things not inflicted, but given, and given most if we could.

We can—we goddamn can.

for jasmine, the words

I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower; Stephen Chbosky

You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work—fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest. 

Little Miss Sunshine

I'm going to pull time apart for you.

Doctor Who

If a thing loves, it is infinite.

William Blake

I tried to notice everything, because I wanted to be able to remember it perfectly. I've forgotten everything important in my life. I can't remember what the front door of the house I grew up in looked like. Or who stopped kissing first, me or my sister. Or the view from any window but my own. Some nights I lay awake for hours, trying to remember my mother's face. 

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close; Jonathan Safran Foer

So why do I see a glorious fucking headfuck thing?

Skins

There’s this kind of songbird that thinks it dies everytime the sun goes down. In the morning, when it wakes up, it’s totally shocked to still be alive, so it sings this really beautiful song. I've sung every morning since I met you.

Restless

Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.

The Stand; Stephen King

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower; Stephen Chbosky 

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness—only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate—only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr

Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower; Stephen Chbosky

Thank god for books and music and things I can think about.

Flowers For Algernon; Daniel Keyes.

To love would be an awfully big adventure. 

Peter Pan; J.M. Barrie 

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower; Stephen Chbosky

Father, mother, always you wrestle inside me, always you will.

The Tree Of Life; Terrence Malick

As I look to you, I breathe in the earth.

Intro; Park

like water, i was

breathe out in slowness, the wires that run you through. your eyes don't crack, and your skin doesn't leave you. and take a sip from your lists, and a bug bite that keeps your thoughts. this was so important, that stills the gun, and climbs to the wall.

you will be happy for him. if you've learned anything it is that while happiness inflicts, it is of ghost barbs, and head locks.

be happy for him to be free. let go something you cannot.

do not move—it is okay—but make maps, of how the body will walk from this place. it may repeat—repeat—it may repeat, and trap, but there is trying. conjure that love from even the smallest moment—you are trying—

we can not always be great, or what you need.

and I hope you know I spit fire in every winter.

(my greatest fear, always, that never shakes—I try to work towards something, and the way there feels weak—your eyes are imaginary and, cruel. the dread that I speak only clockwork—and—you,—that—arch—stare—dividing.)

well, I hate my writing, it's all the same, when it drips like posture, my head just hangs.

—a dizzying splendor is here resigned to fate.

awkward

This is your song for a simple pure happiness, probably licking your fingers, squinting.

amélie

Amélie has a strange feeling of absolute harmony. It's a perfect moment. A soft light, a scent in the air, the quiet murmur of the city. A surge of love, an urge to help mankind overcomes her.

Amélie

the moth sting

marker sweating on your cheek

hair slides honey through popcorn

scrunched

thick like a jump rope

your lip snags in the light

and eyes already held

a curious song



I breathe in a mass

fizzy and crackling

a little fire dance

the smudge of postal stamps

spilling

my hands all over

a warm year


Ian William L.

if it is an insult

Were you upset today? Were you made to feel small? By those eyes, or those words? The ones you know are there, and you splinter as they strike—goddamn, we believed in you so much. You probably feel so broken by now, but I know you are loved, and I know you cultivate your quiet colours, with all those things that will make life kind for those who are able to draw close enough.

Take heart: the insult is unsure, the hate is trembling. You know this so deep in you.

So you were cast down to your beautiful puddles. So you were bent out of a common shape. So you think about it all, and find yourself with more wild dreams than the intent of the cruelty was to imprint.

If you are heavy now with it all, then you should be, that your belief in lightness was that inspired—how anyone could carry that grimness within. You realise they did not even know your name. I would hope that they were not so alone (surrounded) as they seem, to throw such spit.

We move so violently between these feelings, because we are alive.

(I received such a hurtful cut today, from someone I do not know, and hold no intent to hate them for. It moves even here—you are not alone.)

another end of yourself

Sorry, I swallowed the receiver, the bell, the doorknob, the handle. I slip into myself, and the colours hunger like spiders, and it can't be very pleasant. But I do wonder what happens when there is no more soil to drop the ballasts—I move that way bound.

But I remember the plane coming down in only the candle light, the smoke from every warm smile. I remember the fireworks at midnight, and the flight of hopes. I said I knew I could be myself, I could give everybody fair warning, and open outwards—only the truth can be mended. It's still my biggest dream and I will, but how and when?

You are hope across infinite night.

so, it's okay, you know? everything is only guiding you loosely—summer clothes you should not come to fall under—

but if you can hear me i will give you one thing: this stick remaining in my soul. I loved someone, and maybe I was not lost before that, but now I move with such beautiful fault.

—and hopes that will not come easy. so your sadness is not such a terror, blood nose, apology. I will be here writhing for you, if that could ever be what you needed to know. i will hold my conversation to many more seasons, because you always liked time a little bit. I will be strange, and maybe a little warm—you smiled so terribly crooked and swept up, all warm dough in cheeks, a wet dog nose in happiness. I take one picture, and it's you, and I keep it.

so i am telling, if you might catch that.

call me in the morning

you would be surprised how nice this is.

I know what you've been through, don't let go, honey, don't let go.

you are as cracks ran through me

the lack of sleep, all these wounds that we keep, and I am trying hard to know you are not there, and how these tremors used to stir faith.

(the strength of sadness is how violently it moves us.)

but I rest, with this, constellation—of—past—sorrows.

I am trying still to be okay. I was less lonely, all alone across the oceans (cruel, untruth.) I hold nothing more (liar.) what cannot be fixed (a faulty circuit, fucking safety.) I never speak (sideways.) you never hear (child.)

if you are sad, and you stay in the darkness, then you can only be smothered.

START WHAT YOU KNOW—REARRANGE—RUIN—FOR YOURSELF—KEEP, YOU DEATH OF VISION.

(I only record everything.)

and my spine arches, and goes cold, under this milk and bile and film.

hold on, lover, and it all fades—milk.

watch your fingernails grow for nine years—bile.

pluck out these insect eyes—film.

THE TRUTH IS WE ARE SO FUCKING AFRAID.

HOW DO WE GET BACK TO BE OKAY?

I STILL TIE MY SHOELACES WITH A LITTLE SMILE.

I HEAR HOW BEAUTIFUL A CAT IS.

I WATCH YOU GO ON FOREVER.

I BRUISE.

THE MACHINE BRUISES ME.

(there are page numbers, all bloodied on my lips, and scars.)

it is rushing through millenia—a taste of jet engines—crushed stag—skeleton dust into concrete—swallowing.

this is how it feels. this is how it always feels.

returning, you.

give me distance and bravery: i am home. but i feel jetlag takes my thoughts and so i cannot yet say what i want to be known.

(this is the new year. this is not a disappointment. this is enough.)

1. i will rest and recover.
2. continue to believe in love, against all!
3. everything crippling can be turned outwards, made kinder.
4. what i said: this is enough. i spend all my time afraid of what i write because i think you will think it not enough. but all i want to do is help and find the way through, so why would that be judged, if? so this year, this bold new fucking year, we move forward, outward, and we are enough—i will make this clean, with midnight seconds, if believed.