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.