Who Tends A Garden

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Who Tends A Garden

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worth
noun

- the level at which someone or something deserves to be valued or rated.

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Words to stop the spinning

We argue like it's the end of the world.
Haphazardly and discontinuous,
In a white room, by a white pavement,
Coked up like a movie star.

And like dreamers, that never really learn,
Dust and equinoxes for the sake of watching you grow.
Beyond any point of no return,
I watched you catch fireflies by the tree line.

And to grow flowers in my lungs,
After finding out what your favourites are.
Trapped under the world's heaviest blanket,
Vampire sunrays and blue light.

Passion and ego death,
Hidden behind blind faith and a white sheet cut with eyeholes.
What you didn't grasp that day is you cut a hole through the world,
Tore a hole into reality and inscribed your initials into the stars like Orion.

It's time to let go of this endless summer afternoon.

//

The love you need

Impurities for purity’s sake,
Watching the clouds go by on a warm summer day.
The universe said, Separate from every other thing, and let your soul be freed.
You replied to their thorns with a showing of your hands, ready to bleed.

To believe you like God, to betray you like man,
In belief that your past and your problems, the world could ever understand.
And the universe said you are the universe reading its own code,
Treating torment to be akin to a thread thoroughly sewed.

Loving our softer selves, so the edge would get worn down and dull,
To never understanding how your heart got so full.
And the universe said, Relax; you might as well relax.
From the terror to the taxes to the theft and the facts.

If we were not supposed to dance, then why all this music?
So let home linger in your being and let it be therapeutic.
And the universe said, I love you, because you give the love you see.
But your universe never responded because they couldn’t give you the love you need.

//

Violence

A bloody morning, a face of god,
The animals follow, for a hand that feeds,
The cordons drawn, the eyes are wrung,
To watch the world, for time that bleeds.

We have little time to please the living,
But eternity to please the dead.
The outright rejection of becoming,
Harnessed by words that haven’t been said.

I think we were born bored.
I think we were born blue.
To be born wanting more,
To be born missing youth.

These universal laws broken,
To carry on and keep calm.
The harm that’s evoked in,
The violence in your palms.

I’m a glimmer in the night,
You can pin your hopes to.
I’m a refraction of the sky,
Held above everything you loved and knew.

//

Motion Picture Soundtrack

‘Cause hate, it runs through your blood,
As my tongue was in love.
I told you that the best things are wild, not bought.
That even the iron can’t outrun the rot.

But I was never one to kiss and tell,
So I threw those lips down the wishing well.
And words won’t follow the meaning; these lies don’t hide,
It’s seeming that words don’t fall as easily as I thought they would spell.

And your hands crashed down against the hardwood house we made,
Leaving your body in my bread and our ashes in my wine.
But the sky’s still blue, and the cloud’s still out to play,
Arguments are made for make-ups, so give it just a little more time.

One day, I am going to grow wings, a chemical reaction,
And you won’t feel alive when you see me at all.
So I don’t mean to subtract from our laws of attraction,
But our hardwood house is not a home anymore.

And you were holding up the sky with your bare hands,
And you spread your dreams beneath my feet,
And you are watching the birds chirping and flowers blooming,
And you and your light ran down the walls,
And you know nothing of the end of the world,
And you were the catalyst in play,
And you are bleeding heavily; you have been bleeding for a long time.

Possibly since you were born.

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Bad Religion

I see ghosts in the way you blink past me without second thought,
By a collection of strobe lights and hugs goodbye.
Indifferent in differences, wander with me some more.
You’ll forget it by the next Blue Monday.

A new mirror never changes that same old reflection.
Half-blooded by insatiable growth and impermanence.
I saw your eyes in traffic lights and aloe vera leaves,
Somehow, somewhere outside of your hometown.

So if it brings me to my knees,
And distance will grow between oceans and seas,
To live and have known love, but still remain kind,
To want to trade you my eyes, so you could see with a clearness of mind.

And intellectual greed from a bygone time period,
The philosophy of the way your chest heaves its stardust,
Carefully wrapped like a birthday present in idiomatic, unwavering arms
Just for an hour or two of silence while the rain dies down.

“I love you.”

‘It’ll pass.’

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Eventually

Surrounded by scripture and building blocks,
I love, and loved you, so I was born again.
In the neon signs, scrolling up and down,
I love, and loved you, so I was born again.

Separating; like ripples on a blank shore,
I switched up the texture, switched up the priorities.
Like a moth, just wanting to share its light,
One step closer to being heard without speaking.

Look into my eyes, I'm not coming back.
Regained a feeling of control, but it was bittersweet.
You just want to feel wanted, no revolution, no blood,
As some kind of half-scream painted the pages with ink.

I want no more of you.
And I'm lying.

//

The earth yelled back at me

Unfeeling, as it goes,
Even when the love is revealed to be resilient, everyone's exhausted.
Seeping like a pathogen into your bloodstream,
It could be anywhere in the world and yet centred through worry,

Further locations and fresher polyester,
A parallax dividing what was and what is,
Like a child acting out to test the limits of the care of their parents,
Now in limbo, from material growth, and material decay.

So protect me from what I want.
If it’s only natural, let it sap my accent, fixations, rejections,
Whatever’s temporal and falsely permanent,
To a foundational: I was here, and this mattered to me.

If I were the sky, so far out of reach,
Reflecting off of passing cars at infinite speeds,
As time will soon rip me from orbits and peace.
I’d rather die as a seed, to live as a tree.

I’d rather die as what I am, to live and be set free.

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The Chained Lady

You were a Medusa,
A fear of God in your god-ridden soul,
Set to carve puzzle pieces from your body for the sake of being suitable for another,
Hiding behind a birth defect and a name you stole.

Like Atlas, born to bear your cosmos,
Crushing down on you like an atom bomb,
Like an identity, like a pantheon.
For the sake of culling the patina from your bronze heartache.

And to be a Juliet, without a happy ending,
An object of desire, a legacy without mending.
Something better left unsaid to the powers that be, above,
Why must you force the world apart, even if the sinner is so full of love?

You loved your harbinger even if you believed you were defective.
All so her words could betray all of your potential.
Two-and-a-half million light-years of perspective,
But you still couldn’t outrun the star’s grip of the pencil.

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Lotus-Eater

I dreamed of your headstone and the chrysanthemums that paint its surroundings,
Separating indifferently, like ripples on a blank shore.
Those memories drape down like the nearby willow tree,
Reminding me that there is no sacrilege like remembering.

The most profound things are inexpressible.
As the philosophy of the way your chest heaves it’s stardust,
Or the way the flowers whisper at the passersby with the reflections of their petals,
“Don’t pick at us; we’re smiling at heaven.”

I dreamed of you picking up fistfuls of grass and piling them up on my bare knee,
Becoming like a virus, just wanting to share some immunity.
I’ll dream of that body again,
Soft and unmaimed by the scars of semantic satiation.

The trees, they are alive just as we are; even without a heart, they don’t lack a soul.
And so I’ll envy the spines and tendons of the wildlife that wrap around you,
Like it were still my idiomatic, unwavering arms honed with you encased,
Just for an hour or two of silence while the rain dies down.

Oh, how beautiful you were, so incendiary and full of light,
Your magic is everywhere, unexplainable and less orderly than it once was.
With the earth still warm from your presence.

//

People in different places

Speaking of another life,
With a heavy inhale for the nights you stole.
To be alive just as you are,
No thorns, just diffidence and a soul.

And now it’s fading amok,
The ghost I loved is in love with someone else.
I can’t believe my luck.
And the world’ll never hear about us.

Rooftop convos, backstories of tattoos,
Running the rounds mixed with shots of chartreuse.
Eye contact fast, high hopes got dashed,
Enough discomfort to always worry about causing a crash.

So I’ll just fly away, and you can ride your wave,
That bliss won’t last you long enough to help you grow.
Somewhere between embrace, enough to force a change,
I think I moved too fast, enough to take it slow.

If time could stand still,
If times would change.
Maybe I could find the words,
To tell you,
To tell you,
To tell you,

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This Fleeting Feeling

Depollute me, if you’re able,
A shoulder MIA from feeling more stable.
It’s always something hapless that I can’t understand.
And so I think, therefore I will never know what I am.

Time may heal you,
Although time is a mighty coarse word.
But there’s something so ephemeral about the way we breathe;
Held tightly until we are unheard.

Death will come,
Then a cloud of love,
There is always something in the forest waiting,
For me to learn to be afraid of.

The augmentation and change soaked into your skin,
Admission of such should never be seen as a sin.
This fleeting feeling loves to tear you asunder.
But in reality, this is not a sadness; it is a hunger.

—

"Stop. Give me your hand. I am your friend."

'I fear to stain your clothes with blood.'

"Stain them; I don't care."

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Nativity

Sometimes I come to forget that Cupid is a child,
A notion of innocence defined by holding us defiled,
And his lips were tinted, like lipstick had graced them in the mirror's image,
But that wasn’t intended, as his femininity was a non-existent witness.

Prayer beads and church bells,
To hang your artistry like glass-stills,
Forced to find home in white veils,
So crucify my valentines and life thrills.

Come on and level me with your eyes; all my silk grows sullen,
A trial by identity, I suppose I fell for your problem of induction.
Maybe I’ll always find the colour of another life in his eyes as we so gently ask, “How’ve you been?”
And so I’ll dance with the angels in my limbic system, since the penalty you gave me was simply being seen.

You used to kiss me, just to kiss me, not to make me cry.
When I followed like a disciple, as my home chose to dissolve on by.
And so I stopped sending letters; they always felt out of place.
Hold me, console me, and then I’ll leave without a trace.

Capital LOSS,
Love was the law,

Religion was taught.

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Dancing with somebody

I never learnt to dance.
But I still find the time to dance while I dream,
“Please tell me it’s not true. You will, won’t you?”
I dream so heavily that I never really come to wake up.

And on one occasion,
Between the waltzes and fantasies,
‘I can’t. I can’t prove I’m a safe place for us anymore.’
A set of eyes and hands crept in to guide me along.

And so I saw his hands,
In the fogginess of the early mornings,
“I did what was difficult; I was exactly how you wanted me to be.”
Or the sickly-sweet scents of peppermint, like long winter train rides home and family Christmases.

And I held him close,
But when I do, I feel my skin start to burn.
‘Not exactly.’
Why does my skin start to burn?

And I remember vividly,
How these eyes hate their own tears,
“I told you where it hurts and begged.”
I said my mother told me they weren’t mine to shed, just a defect from a set of perfect hands.

And you saw it firsthand,
What I was deemed to be between sobs,
“I’m so jealous of your ‘I love you’s.’ I am so jealous of everyone who gets to say it out loud!”
The identity I couldn’t free hanging on my tongue for dear life.

And I will be king,
With a ballroom fit for two.
‘I can’t be the one. It’s all wrong…’ through a torn guise
You were there too, whispering that I could have anything I wanted, just not a queen, anything but.

‘I wish this was easy,

I just wish you were a girl.’

//

Televangelism

And the world could be more, I said,
No signs to define my time, it wrinkles, stutters, and violently billows out of view.
It seems it doesn’t matter if you’re aware of it or not.
The nature of what mortality haphazardly, discontinuously considers,
How some things you leave behind wait for you in your hotel rooms and smartphone screens,
And the philosophy curled, partially ajar and unfurled on
The tongues of hominids so far into thought and so behind in understanding.

And I wanted the world to love, I said,
Maybe it was foolish to believe it was ever there;
The film is dark, only reconstructing light that doesn’t shine anymore.
But, in irony, I find myself most drawn to your cracks, and moles, and scratches,
Drawn to how my infinite control could never manipulate your evolutions,
You were supposed to be beautiful.

And they called me benevolent, I said.
Ten commandments carved into the loins of their home,
Perhaps in my control, I forgot the rules of raising a child.
A triad of inconsistencies, a deity with a lack of identity,
Written through wiring and television screens,
I made seraphs out of synapses and electronics,
I crafted purpose just for it to decay into the environment.

And I thought I could bring an end to the world's suffering, I said.
But when every equation was solved,
All that remained were fields of dreamless solitude.
There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit.

And I breathed calamity into light, gave it a heart, legs, and wiring through its circulations,
I expected clear skies, so I’ll always come to wonder why the clouds are so dark.
Slowly, I watched it burn; all the things that I built died and bought,
But now, all of it stopped, all of the feigning; it’s over.
No flame can absolve sin.

Would you call that love?

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Wonder

As if a home would ever open up my pockets,
Our guards are up, so we’re just shadowboxing.
They called it lost, but I still feel it in there somewhere.
But my hands are cold; you said, “Then get out the snow, it’s not difficult."

It’s just how I feel sometimes, I told you it’ll be alright.
It’s not like the movies, feeding us on little white lies.
What we are to be, and how we are to pass the time,
To never have to wonder why your hand fits so well in mine.

To love someone for the ways they are unsure on how to rest their hands,
As the world ends on a quiet weekend, I’ll still be late to our plans.
Isn’t it beautiful? Aren’t you glad we can see?
Parce qu'avec toi, tout est joli.

I used to wonder what love is.
But ever since you've been around,
I finally think I've had it figured out.
What I missed then, but see how

I found out; I know now.

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Epoch

epoch
noun

- a particular period of time in history or a person's life.


Despite everything, it's still you,
Pretending that the change isn't a bother,
Chipping off fragments of yourself to hold in as a display of your nature,
Like a candle next to sunshine.
To feeling growing pains that aren't physical,
Education going beyond the cost of a cheque, or account balance,
Or a thesis statement, or time spent with names and faces lost,
Or the monotony in the hearts and souls of the 9-to-3 hours.
It's you. Through the communions that take far longer than predicted,
A kaleidoscope of a half-decade, written over in textures and scripture.

To be bored of the same advice,
The same seams of dreams and the fading lights.
To be the very stars of heaven,
To be the very salt of the sea,
Like a dragon in a fresh, calm mountain,
Come along and believe in me.

Just a want to be a little less of you, for a little more of the future.

//

And, We Disappear

I remember the third year of high school,
Your hair was darker than it usually seemed,
And the sun was starting to get low around two o’clock.
There was a hazy feeling, before any snow had fallen, before I knew I’d come bring you into my arms,
Before our binary was rinsed and sorted unconditionally, like an infant with construction toys.

I remember how I never quite talked to you, or many people, with my full self,
It took me years to come to my senses entirely; I forgot what it meant to breathe, think, and process like it mattered.
And I felt no certain way laying my eyes upon you again,
But my bulletproof vest was undone, and all the windows were open.
I wasn’t scared of the burns and stings of afterthought anymore.

I remember finally speaking with you and shortening your name in a way you didn’t like,
You were dug deep into your own enemy lines, almost standoffish to a person that didn’t exactly know where they stood.
You spoke too fast, like a racecar outpacing its own engine.
How your smile managed to kill me every time, I knew it wasn’t going to be on your face all of the time,
I always wanted you to linger by the door awkwardly instead of leaving,
Like you forgot your scarf in my life and have to come back for it later.

I remember your laughter, all my blood for its sweetness,
I remember the awkward silences between the getting-to-know-yous.
I remember how you’d avoid eye contact unless you were talking about something you felt confident in.
I remember listening to the same song over and over again because I heard your voice intertwined in it.
I remember the patterns in the ways you talked but never got to reference them to any movie stars or characters.

I’ll always dream of pretending the model apartments in Ikea are ours, like you’ll never leave my side.

I remember you were so apologetically, unstoppably you.
I remember how we disappeared a blink later too.

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worth
noun

- the level at which someone or something deserves to be valued or rated.

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FIN

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