Nothing to sing

Your words still linger on my skin,
but I’ve been screaming for silence with my dreams.
Been listening to you sing nothing for years
Looking at your stories fabricated from tears

I was secretly falling away
Into swirling clouds and emerald seas.
Following the footprints of forgotten ghosts
Tracing the stars with a feather pen

I don’t know if that place will be better
I would have liked the company if you would have come.
But you have tears to cry and nothing to sing.
So you sold you dreams for an ear to listen

while I was secretly falling away
Into swirling clouds and emerald seas.
Following the footprints of forgotten ghosts
Tracing the stars with a feather pen

I wrote to you but you still didn’t see
the address at the top, ink dipped in the stars.
Now you have no dreams left to buy back your sanity.
Only your tears and nothing to sing.

I've been dancing in the clouds since the first time we spoke, but it wasn't until you left that I realised where I was.
Now I'm dancing here alone..... but somehow it isn't the same.

Mine.

Drowning in the lingering song of Sirens
you were stolen away.
I'm sorry I had to make you mine
blind you with a moonlit candle.
You were so free of the burden of life
deaf to the cries of beauty and pain.
I couldn't bear to see you so alone
trapped with everyone else.
I had to show you the hidden door
to the endless slippery downwards path.
The view from up there was beautiful, I agree
but I've given you the chance to step into the painting.
The clutching hands call out to your dreams,
pricking the hairs on the back of your neck.
You've been hearing them sing ever since you could remember.
I showed you their fallacy, and now you're mine.

Dreams

I fell asleep to the soothing sound of rain on my window. Listening to the clouds put down their heavy burden, I escaped on the wings of Morpheus. He transported me away to a land of which I only remember fragments of feelings and people. He waited an eternity in that timeless place. Then when I was ready he guided me back….awaking me to the silence of a rising sun and a new day.

Dying to live

She stepped to the cliff edge, a vast expanse spread out beneath her. The wind was blowing her hair across her face, her skirt billowing slightly. She kicked the stones around her over the edge, watching them freefall silently. Her skin pricked into goosebumps. She could be that free. It was just one more step forward.
She closed her eyes, gave her body and mind a moment to comprehend what she was about to do, and fell into the canyon beneath her.
Strange thing was though, the seconds before she fell to her death- those seconds were the only time that she had ever really felt alive.
.

Have you ever felt like the world has brought you to your knees, but you’ve just gone crashing through the floor as you fell and now you’re left wondering how many floors there are till you hit the basement?

I slipped away silently, hoping she would notice, come after me.
But she didn't. I walked away alone.
I was deaf to her calls by the time she had realised that i was no longer there.
I no longer felt the need for someone to complete me as a human being.
I was complete.
I needed someone to complement my personality.
I needed someone else.

i feel like i'm holding myself back from something. But I can't figure out what it is.
Maybe that's why images of myself flinging expensive, breakable objects through fragile windows pass before my eyes daily.
Maybe tomorrow i'll decide to do it.
and the day after that i'll actually do it.
Maybe tomorrow.

Choosing my confessions

Everyday we speak and you think you know
Think you see my faults
even the things I don’t show.

You think I’m happy because I tell you I am.
You misread the signals
They’re in a language you don’t understand.

For others I’m a glass that they can see straight through,
but really it’s a mirror, a reflection of you.
We see in each other what we think we want,
All with imperfections
The mirror is cracked.

But I choose my confessions, tailor my words.
I’m carving the mirror to match your image.
I’m giving you my life in parts.

I’m choosing the weapons I’ll allow people to use.
Whether I want to be decapitated or just left with a bruise.
Choosing my confessions from a well ordered system,
some of them erased, denied an existence,

I give to you of me what I want you to see,
always controlling my image.
The mirror that is me.

Observations

I’m an ordinary girl in an extraordinary world,
watching ordinary scenes,
imagining ordinary dreams.

People go about their ordinary ways in their ordinary days,
experiencing ordinary joy
and suffering ordinary pain.

We eat our ordinary food and watch the ordinary news.
We drive our ordinary cars,
Leaders fight their ordinary wars.

You wear your ordinary clothes and play your ordinary games,
work your ordinary job
and clean your ordinary floors.

Ordinary women give birth to ordinary babies
and ordinary parents soothe their children with ordinary fables. Ordinary people are dying in ordinary beds,
while other ordinary people are surviving the ordinary odds.

Ordinary people toil the ordinary earth,
while ordinary philosophers wonder what its all worth.

Ordinary miracles happen every ordinary day,
in this extraordinary world
with its ordinary ways.

I think I met one of the most amazing people in my world, and although they live in an entirely place, I have them with me, always. I’ve never had anyone treat me the way they did. Not only did they listen to all that I had to say, but they understood, even the things I didn’t say. I don’t write this as a tale of love or woe or of tragedy, but I write it for people to know that it exists. That for a brief moment in time I experienced something that most people only ever dream about. The thing that people make movies and books and art and music about. I had it. Even if that time was only equivalent to 1 millimetre in the whole length of the universe. I had it.

My lungs aren't strong enough to take the scream my body contains....so it waits indside, beneath my skin. Either for the day when I am strong enough to do it justice, or for the day when it has become uncontainable, regardless of the vessel.
Whichever comes first.

It took all my strength to throw my life into that fire. As I watched it burn it slowly became clear….it wasn’t my life that was becoming dust and ashes, but my inhibitions, the things that had been stopping me live. They licked the flames, reluctant to burn. They had been irrevocably entwined with me for so long…for my whole life. It would’ve been easy to destroy my life, so fragile is its glue…many people do. But inhibitions…..they weigh you down like lead. I needed to experience life, to take advantage of my chance. I set myself free.

She keeps on walking the same, never ending path, on and on. Every now and again she decides to veer off into the unknown and explore an undiscovered trail, but soon she is walking back on the same path again, still heading for the same place. She tricks herself into thinking that she is lost, that this path is new, that it is leading her somewhere else……but really its all alike. Every path will drag her to the same place that she has always been heading... just no one has bothered to tell her.

He plummeted down.
‘I’ve fallen’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘Into the unknown. The only way to fix it is for you to fall too.’
‘I don’t want to. Not there, not with you.’
‘…………’
‘What made you fall?’
‘Don’t know, it was an accident.'

.......Did he trip or did I inadvertently push him?

Sometimes it’s the small things that count.

You smile as if it’s all ok, catching my eyes in that special way, but underneath the world doesn’t see, all those wrongs you did by me.
You seem to forget that you hardly ever called. I know it’s clichéd but it mattered, it hurt.
You took me for granted, said you had other things on your mind. But I saw you with people, for them you made time.
You seemed so afraid that I might understand, but there were times when I just needed comfort, you to hold my hand.
You didn’t have time to think of me, you admitted it to my face. You didn’t give us a chance, just ‘it’s the wrong time and place’.
For me, I made love, for you, it was just another verb. Why weren’t you careful? I know contraception’s a big word.
Why didn’t you fight? I was here by your side. I know your reasons. You still could have tried.
There’s so much in me I wanted you to see, but you threw away your chance before you’d opened your eyes to me.
I’m worth so much more. How couldn’t you have tried?

You spend so much time looking at me, but do you really see? You play with my hair and stroke my skin, ask me to talk so you can hear my voice.
But when my hair has gone dry and grey, and my skin crinkles at the slightest touch and my voice is but a hoarse croak, will you still ask, still watch?

I watched you cry my tears. I was addicted to your pain, afraid of my own. I witnessed your tears evaporate into the night air, envious of their existence, of your ability to weep. It had been so long since I had felt those warm tears heat my cold veins. I would make you cry, since I could not. Experience the release through you.
Please, just let me shed my tears

How many people can you fit in a tro-tro?

Sliding doors are held on with string. The money collector’s head hangs out like a wing.
Someone hisses as they want to be dropped, he bangs on the roof for the driver to stop.

The folding seats clang as he slams on the brakes. The man at the back is jolted awake.
2 next to the driver, your size is no bar. Everyone accepts the discomfort no matter how far.

3 in the front, 2 more behind. The folding seats add 3 extra at the sides.
Everyone is sweaty cramped and waiting, looking out the window for where they’re alighting.

The floors are dusty, the doors are rusty. The windowpanes are cracked, from what no one asks.
2 hang off the back door, a child on the floor. We’ll fit 4 in the back…could we get 1 more on the driver’s lap?

Searching for bonds

If I could just hold your hand, feel the roughness of your skin as you interlock your fingers with mine.
I could bind you through touch.
If you would just tell me about your day, listen as its highs and lows mingle with mine.
I could bind you through words.
If you would just catch my eye across a crowded room, my eyes smile in reply.
I could bind you through sight.
I could tether our souls to that pillar of eternity….just give me something to bind us with.

The Wanderer Returns

It happened so slowly, the change inside. I did not notice, nor did he confide. I was away for so long, experienced so many worlds. At each new turn I watched them unfurl. Each earth I compared to the last I had seen. I just a traveller, chasing my dreams. Eventually I returned to that familiar door, everything the same, people still fighting their wars. That street I had walked for so many years, now one of thousands. I no longer held my fears. My world had remained, still and unchanged. My mind confused, my heart felt chained. Just yesterday home had been a distant place, now here I was carrying from all those worlds, a trace. I was different, yet everything else the same. He was waiting for me there. I could sense his pain. Who had returned from those different worlds. It was a new person. Can we change our moulds? Yes I had changed, but about this he kept mute. For despite having seen places better and worse, here I was, The Wanderer returned.

He spoke but not in your language, listened but not to your words. A flash of beauty in an abhorrent world, struggling to exist. Barely contained his wild spirit shone through, preserved for an instant. Velvet skin draped over the muscles beneath. He showed nothing, hid nothing. He just existed, obliviously radiating his coarse magnetism, rejecting its power. He had realised that he understood nothing… and that was beautiful.

Sparks

It was as if someone had dusted off the sky, revealing all the stars in
their splendour.
It was like lightening had struck my veins, as if water was passing through my cracked, parched spirit.
I had been living as a vampire afraid of the sun, but now like an angel I beckoned it in.
Yet all the metaphors on this earth could not truly describe what I felt at that moment.
The first time I saw that spark in your eyes.

My tears crawled out slowly but passionately. Each drop heavy with the pain it carried, emptying my soul. Bent and bruised by heavy tears, I stumbled through. My vision blurred by pain’s dew. My bruises will fade, my soul will be replenished, but the agony of that weep will never leave my bones.

Like satin on ice, she slipped. She continued falling down that glacier of love and faith. As each note of the song played, the further and further she fell.
He stared deep into her soul as they danced and seeing her fall reached out to catch her, until he realised -
he was falling with her.

Status Quo
Do not force your prejudices on me, I do not follow them, I do not agree.
You throw your comments like a kite to the wind and expect me to laugh, play along with your wit.
We are tied by unbreakable bonds that I have no wish to break, but I wish you could see the world already has so much hate.
You are entitled to your opinions, just as I am to mine, so I suppose (just as we always have) we will carry on as if everything is fine.

Swept away by a speck of dust.
She stands there waiting.

So fragile was she that she was scarred by the wind.
Only slightly, but it still left its mark.

Now she’s waiting.

Despite her scars, she went out and got what she wanted… but now she’s waiting.

Waiting for the thing she got to do something.
Change her, heal her scars.

Just wait she thinks.

Perfect

Perfect hair.
Perfect eyes.
Perfect sense of humour.
Perfect intelligence.
Perfect taste.
Perfect height.
Perfect for me.

Not perfect for everyone else.

Dancing soulmates tripped up by society.
“Maybe you should pick another partner honey. No-one’s perfect.”
It depends on your definition of perfect.

Nightmares

Her dreams raged on, wreaking havoc on her mind.
She could not wake, free her hands from the bind.
Her body was cold, her spirit on fire,
She was ready to fall off the tightrope’s wire.
Shadows laughed, demons waited to catch her fall.
Her subconscious shuddered, a guardian angel sat by the wall.
A flutter of wings, a swift and gentle flight.
The storms had passed, demons fled into the night.
Finally she woke to the twilight hour,
She allowed herself to succumb to an angel’s power.
Back on the pillow she laid her head
And listened as the angel said
‘The storm clouds have passed, now sleep in peace
for there are other’s who need to be saved from their dreams’.

Roses

It pulses through my veins.
The red of the roses washing off into my blood.
The roses become colourless.
Still existing, but their beauty lost as the petals fall off,
one by one.
Its appeal has gone. Remembered with fondness but now looked at distastefully as it rots.
The soft, red petals now crisp and colourless.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Maybe, but what when the rose dies?

Discarded. A distant memory of something that once was beautiful.

LOVE. A four letter word.
But what does it mean?
A question that’s been asked a thousand times,
Each time answered with a thousand different answers.

But there is no answer, it has no definition.

You can feel it, show it, say it, not say it.

But it’s intangible.

Love is love.
Sometimes you are filled with it whether you want to be or not.

DIY KITS

Have you ever felt like life is one of those DIY kits, just without the instructions?….You have to make it up as you go along.
Sometimes you end up with the picture on the box, sometimes you end up with something completely different but still functional…..but other times you just end up with a pile of wood and nails on the floor, and a load of cuts and bruises to go with it.

Mistaken Identities

I watched him declare everything, but heard him say nothing.
Was he speaking to me?
Or was it to her…the one who is always a little more prominent; is able to express herself,
Yet is always mistaken for me.
How do I know?

Shards of light pierce through my painted skin
Their infrequency makes them blinding.
Is it illuminating enough for them to see?

Locked Doors

I couldn’t breathe you anymore,
I couldn’t feel you, hear you
You were on distant shores
I was thinking of people new.

The world was rolling onward
Time was moving faster than me.
I didn’t realise it would be so hard
I thought I was finally free.

But then I saw you.
I was on those distant shores.
I was hearing, breathing you new
I was reopening those locked doors.

I didn’t mean to slam it in your face
But I had to lock the door, melt the key
I don’t want don’t be in that place,
I thought I was finally free.

Forbidden Love

Although we spend our days apart,
somehow you still touch my heart.
I dream sweet dreams of our days together
And you’ve told me that you’ll love me forever.

But my love we can no longer be,
For we could never make others see
The intensity of what we feel,
They would never believe that it is real.

I’ve played it over in my mind
A thousand times, but I still can’t find
The answer to how we can stay as one
So my sweet, is our love done?

I can still feel your soft hands on my skin
And how you made my whole world spin.
Are memories enough to keep us going?
If we stop, does our world keep going?

But my love we can no longer be,
They said the best things in life were free!
But the price of our love is far too high
We must forget it and hope it dies.

And so our secret must remain
We must hide our sorrow and pain.
For in the end, you and me
Have a forbidden love that can no longer be.

False Memories

You talked of our conversations, but I’m sure I was not there.
You reminisced of our songs and dances, but I never danced with you. You described the dreams we’d made together, but I dreamt those dreams alone.
You repeated jokes that we had shared together, but I’ve no memory of the fun.
I don’t think this person was me my dear, infact I insist it was not me. Perhaps you saw my body there, but my soul was not with thee.

Colliding Snowflakes

Falling aimlessly.
Born in the depths of clouds, we fell
Listening to death’s deafening knell.
We had only this time to exist and feel
Can 2 snowflakes turn society’s wheel?

We collided high, far from the ground
Spectators were few, even fewer heard the sound.
Our encounter was brief, intense and unsafe
But it altered my course, I paused in faith.

My formation was altered, though death’s peel still loud,
I realised I could not be protected by clouds.
My alterations so fine, they’re seen only by some
But so fundamental they cannot be undone.

So I continue to fall, with gravity’s demand
Now I have no certainty of where I will land.
So that’s my story -I wish you well,
While I wait for the ground, to freeze or to melt.

Circles

If I could smash that chair through that window.
C-R-A-S-H.
Splintered glass, wood everywhere.
All over the floor.

“Why?” you ask. You would ask that.
You weren’t here, how could you know.
You weren’t here. You were too busy running.

Slow motion. S – L – O - W. Slow down.
The whole world is running as fast as it can, round and round in circles.
The faster you go, the more circles you make.
Are you running after someone, something?

Everyone’s running in different directions, around different circuits.
And when they cross with someone else’s circuit, do they stop?
No. They take note and move on.

Somebody stop running and look.
There are people walking, strolling, making the most of everything.
They’re going SLOWLY.
Taking time to really see the people they meet.

They saw that splintered glass, wood was coming before I even picked up the chair.
They tried to stop me, they couldn’t.
The only one who could had circles to follow, was too busy.
They didn’t have a chance to really see.

If only they’d stop and see like I‘ve seen them.
I could help them break the circle, make it into one infinite line.
We could walk parallel with each other.