Clear Skies Ahead

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Clear Skies Ahead

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loss
noun

the fact or process of losing something or someone.

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The Glass is Already Broken

I was 11 years old when I smashed my grandfather’s window,
Broadside to the barn I swung around rocks like meteors
Handed down from generations of hands and choked-down breath.
As if the universe wanted me in fear.

Boiling over now, half shell-shocked from the shatter,
Raising his hand far higher than any mountain could hope to acclimate.
Without our history, we are exiles from our own bodies,
He was only ever mad because he loved me.

And he too used to fly-trap his eyes shut when he heard the crash of a raised voice,
Crushing down his inhibitions, and wickedness,
Taught, bought, and in trespass of our destiny.
He wasn’t religious, but he prayed like a disciple.

What in the world could’ve changed his mind?
What kind of world does he dream about?
“I could be so much better if I stopped haunting you,
I could be so much more if I was forgiven.”

But the stone never landed that day,
Instead it found itself hidden in the undergrowth beneath the crawlspace,
Still clinging onto the life I gave it, still trying to be more than of Earth.
But the moss takes you back,

And he has no words for how he has failed me,

And the glass was already broken.

//

On Deer Island

On deer island, there is and was a stone fort
Stood victorious over the wildebeests and natural intentions.
Walls strung up like the gallows after a revolution;
Strong enough to make a message to everything around them that is lesser.

And it's birthplace outside rages in it's vines, and tethers,
Blossoms to vice the stone that houses your safety.
Inside you rest on your hollow throne, hoisted by your hollow crown,
A knife carved into your side, old enough that you forget it's cause.

And you're bleeding out,
No riches to defend, no peace to maintain because that conflict is found in your fear.
And you're bleeding more,
The only response was your name diffusing through the undulations of the air; birdsong.

You meandered your way to the courtyard, like a child taking as much time as possible in a fit of absence,
You opt to ignore the dark limbs stretching across the bright sky of your mind,
If we act like things are not spiraling out of hand, does that make them so?
Did these things not announce themselves?

But now, the dagger drawn in your side falters deeper,
You know your drawbridge must fall,
You know you must face the forest's persecution whether you are ready or not,
And the pain is unfathomably difficult to ignore.

And so you step out into what fate awaits,
But you aren't met with sharpness, nor ice, nor fear, nor the splinters of abandonment,
You are surrounded by a world of empathy,
And you chose the truth which your eyes had never even seen.

The deer return back to form,
The island embraces your code,
The world reclaims your warmth,
Not as property, but home.

You were always an island.

//

Icarus' Glasses

It was when affection began to feel like when you peer over the balcony of
A high-rise apartment, a call to the void lazily stapled amongst exhilaration, acrophobia, and
The worry of your glasses slipping off the bridge of your nose.
But back down on Earth I see you swatting at fireflies with no real conviction,
Feigning fearfulness to look stronger in front of me,
Would I think more of you if you were stronger?
Smarter?
Fitter?
"Happier is the mind when its soles are to the ground." Is what you'd say in the park
Off the corner of the town centre, half-empty and the playground never dusted.

It was when I saw your last dance through the crowds of people in town,
Ribbons tangling around you until you disappeared into the shopping centre
Clothing and vinyl stores that I search every individual disc for a sign of you.
Until it got to be the end of the night, where I'm blind and holding out my hands
Reminding my bedside table I can't trust myself without my vision,
Ironically with my frames glaring idly out the bedroom window,
At what was meant to be our swing-set.

It was when I had recurring dreams of wings ripping out of my shoulder blades,
The wax, the honey, the crimson running weeps down my loins,
The sun and your providence melting at my freedom's scaffolding.
I come to realise Icarus never thought of losing his glasses on his fall from grace,
Perhaps he wept as his skin blazed and raged against the machine that was
His heritage of ambition.
Perhaps he was laughing, and screaming his way to the grave,
Perhaps his freedom was not his wings.

His feet met the ground at midday, the wax stripping out across the ocean bed,
Painting a picture of hymns that he never got to belt out,
And I choke myself back from calling you a liar,
Because he wasn't happy, he was lost, and he was punished,
And he was blind, but instead of vision, Daedalus gave him flight.

//

Ghost In The Shell

There is an invisible man in the attic,
Born habitually through melody and the stroke of a brush.
So he tries to calm you in your low-flying panic attacks,
Like an enigmatic chaos,
Like a haemorrhage hanging onto your character.

For now, it is a darkening of your eyelids and sanctity,
Your sickness must be yielding in the face of normality,
A patient-zero of your own tidal wave of misanthropy and make-up,
You were never afraid of growing older,
Just afraid of growing up.

Your pedantry owns you,
In a force-handed attempt to tidy up a scruffy universe,
Isolation caves in, held by stitching and pathos,
Haunted deeper than within,
Chasing your witches and ghosts.

And you could say things are getting better,
Since you haven’t thought about it in a few months.
And you don’t avoid windows as you pass by them anymore,
Now your skin doesn’t burn red from the scratching,
And you don’t hold your breath just to silence your influences,
And you’re okay.
And you’re breathing.

And you are not your end.

Somehow, you both find that’s all that matters.

//

The Rot

I told you It tastes like sugar on the end of my breath,
It vices me by my catharsis to put my inhibitions to death.
It finds some new words for some old clichés,
It moves the clock-hands just a few inches from doomsday.
It races your heart-rate off you like children into the midnight air,
It’s a stranger in a dark room, that you find by pretending they’re not really there.

Will we ever learn? We’ve been here before,
Hindered by this want that owns me right to my core,
Why me? Or better, why you?
Let me hold onto my old dreams, while you hold onto someone new.
Like dynamite, my wrath and dependency is always as blind,
How can I think ahead, it’s always on my mind.

These will all be stories some day,
Every blink and splintered lips elapsed,
Every smile and scattered motion satiated.
So if you love me don’t let me go, because you know I won’t quit,
But if you love me don’t let me go, because I feel myself rotting bit by bit,
Now if you love me don’t let me go, because I need you more than I care to admit,

And if you love me don’t let me go, because I’m dying for it.

//

I Exist I Exist I Exist

There is a creak in the floorboards of my childhood home I mapped out when I was young,
That I listen out for like a siren song while silently wringing my hands tucked deep enough into the corner,
As if I were growing mould from my immobility.
And I breathe in square, circle, hypoxia rhythms,
The motherboard beeping and clattering around in my head in St. Vitus dance,
The neon-backlit signs scrolling up and down in algorithmic ubiquity.
And the waiting, God! The waiting drives you crazy, feel every dry part of my flesh snag to the bare sheets,
I didn’t change them because I was scared of the recency clinging to me like an uninvited guest,
To a very under-attended birthday party; the loneliness is riddling me, but there’s something about this presence that makes me nauseous.
And I want to talk to this discomfort, this paralysing, autonomy-rinsing change in actuality,
This envelope is too large and too finite to spread the seeds that I swallow down,
To be boiled in my stomach acid and refuse to grow, out of want to be a casualty.
And what light my sweet artificiality still spreads, set to wash my walls in its toxic light,
A lot pursed ‘round my neck, crushing, crushing, crushing until my atoms are gone,

What in the world am I thinking?
I exist, I exist, I exist, I am sinking.
My eyes riddled with absence remain half-slitted.
I will never rest, because I suppose I am wicked.

//

Count back from five

I handed you a Judas Cup for your PTEN along with the headache medicine,
Does the sting of these sterilised floors make my words seem genuine and relevant?
Metastasising along the clockwork and the orange of your skin,
Iodine mixed with stardust might cure this pain found within.

Do you love me tender? ‘Cause I do love you true,
If I had more than this passion, I’d surely fix you anew.
So could I borrow your light for tonight to help me watch these passing cars?
Like the sun burning out at the applause of all the other stars.

I have a feeling you got everything we wanted, just not here with me,
It’s in a place I guess I’m choosing to refuse to see.
But now I hear you in the morning coffee and heartbeat monitor blips,
The drying of your lonely hands, and the stiffening of your finger tips,

You said it’s time to leave this bed and hide away in your favourite colours,
Faced watching videos of your siblings as children playing with each other.
I, I know you have to leave, so let me hold the door open one more time,
One last hit of your departures while we watch the world go by.

She is the Christmas time angel at the top of my tree,
And it’s in her blood, containing the sea, that keeps her from coming back to be.
But baby, honey, amor, the apple of my eye,
Please, just take in a one more deep breath,

and count back from five.

//

Beautiful Boy

My friend Jack hid his veins and changed his hue,
My friend Jack compromised his perfect view.
He said to call him if I need him, to call him even if I’m fine,
He said even when we’re undone, we’re friends until we die.

The stars met his keenest interest when he was only 4 years old,
The stars greeted him like his mother’s eyes, and his favourite evening snack.
He loved his mother, but I saw those stars burn out when she heard the words I told,
“He loved you forever. You hear me? He’ll love you forever. But he’s not coming back.”

While the most fascinating idea for him was his father’s old hunting rifle,
While the doctor’s voice trembled to acknowledge that he was dead on arrival.
Through his scent of gunpowder after the bullet landed where it was meant to be,
Through his withdrawal and agony, I find that my guilt doesn’t purify me.

And I told him to stop forcing down that medicine,
And I told him there was something much more.
Now I come to forget his attempts at dancing himself clean,
Now I come to wander around that same dance floor.

How you never saw yourself growing old, or doing yourself proud
How you never forgot about the ones you loved, until it came to talking yourself down.
But you had a universe behind those eyes of dead-sea, the blue in the blue.
But you have everything you need to be set free, so I won’t stop you.

Our rivers never intended to race the mountain, but we didn’t reach its end at the same time.
Our rivers ran as dry as the needle blossoming from your arm into a future that wasn’t fair.
You’re finally where you wanted to be after you swallowed down your pride,

You’re finally at peace now,
and I’ll always make sure to think of you,

Take care.

———————

‘Have you seen my son?

Have you seen my beautiful boy?

Tell him I miss him.’

//

Éclaircissement / Like Wildfires

Trying to start a fire was the worst thing I could’ve done,
At least to the oak, and the birch, and the twilight I see only after.
The ashes reek of accident, emergency, retirement home suppers,
And a sound that no one really wants to hear, at least not anymore.

Likewise, viewing you crawling around what sap was left,
Gathering it up in the name of commitment.
You hand yourself off to me, you think you’re righteous,
A beautiful angel pulled apart at birth, limbless and helpless and unrecognisable.

I have few words in response, none that do me enough justice,
To justify your smile; God, where did that rhyme go?
Cleansing is the torrential downpour that covers the forest ground,
Too late to extinguish what was, us.

Maybe a fog lifts every Thursday, if it’s a full moon,
If you see a spotty dog on your way to dig up more gold/-rushing in your heart.
Maybe you see my diffidence and falter just slightly in it all,
Maybe you realise I can’t seem to hold you, and you can’t seem to let me go.

The snow comes down, and I’ve only got a box of matches, barely sparking,
Not everything we had was powerful, and moving, and incendiary.
Don’t come back to our little heaven, do not bother coming,
Because the fog lifts every winter,

That not everything profound must come like wildfires.

//

Revelation

So came armageddon, before man, before you and your frowning lips,
Before you make this walk look easy, this day look easy, this end.
Blood deserted, a map of your favourite cuts, just like the first time
I saw you, come on, take my hand, fucking take it, you don’t have to go to bed sullen.

So came the addiction, your crown got so heavy it snapped your senses away,
Words as hard-boiled as paladins guarding a burning Rome.
The rain tries to wash your ashes down the sewer grate,
You, and your bladed guise too stubborn to go back home.

So came the sobriety, a war older than gravity,
a war older than the knives they fought with.
Feel your teeth gnash in my mouth, siren song, bedrock yearns against where I held you.
Every single part of my lust for you was hanged behind enemy lines, sirens sing.

So came the hunger, I told the wheat fields of our stories and they wilted by supper,
Bread-less and disembodied, no saviour can reap what lacks form.
Galloping in the distance, I felt your eyes like super-natural lasers,
Cracking the heavens open like my youthful skull.

So came the death, and you told me it’d do us down,
All those little things, I should’ve said out loud, that weight heavy on the clouds,
I’d be free if you just took my hand, I’d be there with you right now,
But those day-plans should’ve stayed delayed,

Because the only thing you wanted
Was out.

//

Bodysnatchers

Please rise for your national anthem,
And hold still as your skin becomes property of the artificial.
Watch the light die from the eyes of artwork,
You will remain solitary and simplistic, featureless and altricial

And it’s too late, the damage is done,
There is no sweetness in this circuitry, no warmth in this code.
The land is antique now, the soil blitzed and worn,
Your oxygen is now less than a courtesy, and your matter no more than a payload.

There is an obvious irony to the sketch artist wearing a bullet-proof vest,
And that to our own world we have become impatiently hostile guests.
Though our horsemen were digital, they maintained their barbarity.i
Revelations takes place not in pages, but in self-installed singularities,

The rivers break, and the breakers live,
The givers take, and the takers ‘give’.
From dust, to dusk, and your culture as counterfeit,
You were born plagued and flesh-riddled, though you will learn to love it.

You saw this coming,
You saw this coming,
You saw this coming,
Now reap what you’ve sewn.

//

Haloes

halo
noun

The metaphorical aura of glory, veneration, or sentiment which surrounds an idealised entity

This is the gap between my commandment and heart,
Hidden in the world’s cracks, where the heat makes you indifferent.
Where they end, and I begin, where they mend, and I part,
Where the good guys go to dissolve their disinterests.

I watched as angels fell like hellfire and broke up on impact.
And you crossed my heart in the name of home,
Tied my tongue, incinerated the rulebook, and reminded us,
“Just because monsters die like humans, doesn’t mean they deserve to be mourned.”

I tasted loss in the gunpowder that left their structure scattered,
As only God as above us, only the devil as our equal.
Now with eyes glazed over, and a mantra to remind us our mission.
“Great men make good men lose what makes them whole.”

So it takes a few years but our autonomy breaks,
And It takes a few months but our haloes heal,
And it takes a few weeks but they bury their own,
And it takes a few days for their fates to seal.

Our words hanged, as picks in the ice,
Every syllable, every thread.
Leaving the martyrs to remain alive,
While the rest of us are dead.

In the name of divinity is how we sanction such removing,
They will die our history, is there anything so undoing?

//

Abaddon

History told me of a man stood 7-feet-adjacent to a lottery list of
Bodies strung out like bunting.
A bullet of faith clasped between his crack-smiled teeth, and it tortures me.
For now his heresy is naked before my eyes, his steadfastness declared in the graveyard
Where you'll find my blood rinsed and erased.

It was a face of god in his weapon-wounds and provinces,
What ever's left of our flowers bloom from concrete and fortune.
Though since his commandment is far wilder than my own,
He prevails.

This house holds the pack that writhe in the fresh game of unrest,
The deer sharpen their antlers, the wren carries a
Knife-sleeved message to whatever prey suits their feast.
“Bless our ashes with a test drive of your divinity.”

Grand texts of hunger cascade like wine, along my mouth and flesh,
Whatever youth dared to burrow under my skin,
Hiding like a horrified, helpless, unarmed, weed beneath your garden,
Stain it, cull it, and harrow.

Now Concordes sent to displace what matter was our own,
Grace unfurled amongst the graffiti of our homes,
History read of an unworldly king pushing the envelope to be dethroned,
Yet even our royalty is found scattered in our charred wicker and bones.

History told me of my unadulterated sin,
Even if it was written in victory, venom, and spite.
We never wanted to let him in,
But who are we to deny him his birthright?

//

Sorry, Sweetheart / без тебя

I’ve been meaning to tell you,
The birds have been keeping me up again,
The sound weighing titanically on me, miles away
From my limbs, and yours.

And when I do see you,
I’ll be crushing down the chasm that is my stomach
Just to fit properly at your side.

You can’t seem to hear me at all,
Maybe it’s my sore throat, my sore skin and arms from resting too much;
Or perhaps I haven’t said a word.

Now sometimes I do sleep,
I let the blood soak out from a wound that never staples shut,
Pale and ill-minded, I’ll never mind it,
Since what’s the point in dying at a time like this?

An olympian of love lent me her romance,
But to my calloused and battered heart,
Wrapped next to my lungs begging for my skin to move out of the way,
Self-exhaustion prevailing against my empathy.

Hearing wind-chimes and children playing outside,
Fonder of a life in your scrapbooks and lipstick marks,
I will always be falling for you in a vacuum,
This empty, growing distance, between us taking everything I had with you.

There was a time, maybe it wasn’t in absence, or in the cold,
Caramel in my hair, a sweetness on my tongue, and a smile to grow old.
I clutched my sweater, and tossed away my love-lettered parts,
I wanted to make sure that I will never get to love you, so I’m sorry, sweetheart.

I dreamt of you again,
So I can’t help but stay asleep.

//

Goatsong

The morning after you left,
Spring poured in like blue bile spilling from
My split-open head. I liked to believe
There’d be something outside of the nausea,
Lucidity, rawness and freshness of your stillborn
Eyes. You then tell our hardening bodies there’s
Still a way back to before,
You just haven’t found it yet, your shyness
Took everything from you, fixtures snapped
In what we lacked and lapped up feverishly.
I then told you, you acted primal,
And working-class, and like you were bleeding
From untrained knife-work,
Whatever cut you didn’t know how deep to go.
Now you stream like autumn lights through
Dark-yellow-leaved birch trees,
Fingers splayed out at the gaps you flood through,
Finding the moss and not our initials
Carved into the bark - the boundlessness of your
Refractions, there must be something you’re trying to reach.
You were buried in winter, body still
Offering up it’s lungs and liver, scorched and poisoned,
A type of selfless hue to your skin, Even in death
You do your part.
I fill my mouth with honey to ignore the wolves of your absence outside,
I wait for a twitch, a spark, a letter from you in the post,
But that’s to say we could make our bodies do anything at all.

I skipped the summertime,
My floridness purges,
I miss you quite terribly,
I still love you everyday.

//

loss
noun

the fact or process of losing something or someone.

//

FIN

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