words fail

i keep drawing the same cards, 

in the past is hardship

the present is uncertain

the future is bright.


i guess i'm in the thick of it now 

asking friends after you

i can't contain you

i can't contain myself. 


i want to go out, i want to go home

i want to go home, i want to go out

my angel sighs beside me

what the hell are you doing


oh i'm just singing in the car

dreaming i'm famous

i speak to you with that energy

it's just that strong 


i speak to you often actually

i send you all the love i can give

wait for it to hit

then try to sleep


and still, i keep drawing the same cards, 

in the past is hardship

the present is uncertain

the future is bright.

i know you know we know

exactly two years ago now

g told me that grief is like a riding a wave

and gradually the space between waves becomes wider

but the peaks never become less violent. 

i feel like a child who's been dumped in the ocean

swum too far out and i can't touch the bottom

when i see you smiling on my screen

or someone i love is meeting you

and i just want to see you, too. 


i don't because i can't 

i make do with my thought through version of you

i'm so desperate for detail, 

so i trace my fingers slowly from your forehead to your nose

and still, hoping for you, 

i make myself small on one side of the bed. 



do i love this ridiculousness? this insanity? 

do i love the fever dream of writing 

wringing you out of my system

screaming in the car, sobbing at the show

looking up at the ceiling

praying no one (and someone) will hear me? 

(so i picture my death bed daily

i see you hesitate around the door

i want your palm against my forehead

i want no more time left)

'enough. please.' 

i whisper to the ocean. 


she swells

i hold my breath

the lovers

i asked the oracle 

and she dealt

Guilt

The Lovers

Celebration 

so the guilt is a deep fog

i'm caught in it.

i turn it over in my hands

i grind my teeth

and watch you leave. again.

caught in a playback loop

i'm creeping new dimensions

for the scene where you don't...

and we're bundled up in that cabin

feeding goats in the dewy grass

i'm holding my phone to the air

you're inches from the laptop

your glasses on the bedside

on the night it ended i sent you the money for the room

(i still don't know if that was the right thing to do)

modern prometheus

tonight i drove past your old place, 
and in another dimension i saw myself park out the front. 
i climbed the stairs on all fours, turned the fan on in your room, 
i pressed my nose against your window, 
watching bodies in the kitchen through the skylight. 

i pressed the pads of my fingers against your forehead, 
but your face melted underneath them

you're just not you, and every day that passes
you become less you, in these visions,
and i become less me, too

this ache is unstoppable. 
it rears and strikes,
at the pub, at a show, 
and i scream all the way home

i read this week that the cheapest meat you can get

is the heart of the pig, cow or sheep

how badly we treat the heart
oh god how i've spat on mine

i'm sorry by the way

i think my friends forget

i live in the green and wet

i crawl back home, on all fours

i lean on the cubicle door

i sit on the back of the couch

looking straight at the roof

willing tears to drain back into their sockets

and pollute everything inside 

always on the periphery, 

i dance on the outline

of so many relationships

feeling sorry for myself

eating chocolate with a spoon.

sometimes when i'm driving home

i want to drive off the road

consider it

ahh

then no

mopping up the butcher's floor

"there's nothing wrong with loving something you can't hold in your hand."

-----------

one day we'll smile at each other over coffee

like we did the first time

like we did when our friend pointedly left the room

and eavesdropped 

later i crawled into bed beside her 

just glowing.

writing that now made me think of the radium girls

who painted numbers on clocks with radium

holding the brush precisely between their lips. 

they ingested so much of the chemical 

they became anaemic, their bodies rotted

and eventually, dripping with the poison,

they would die.

i heard that one girl

woke up in the middle of the night

and the only light in the room

was the glow from inside her body

the radium infestation in her bones

gently pulsing in the dark. 

well, that all sounds spooky and romantic 

but that poor woman died a hideous death

and you and i, lucky things, get to keep on living.

one day i'll attribute this writing to some wayward hormone

or the fact i was turned down for dinner by a friend

or that my jobs are making me crazy

or my songs aren't being played on the radio

or some combination of the above, 

plus missing you. missing your calls

more so when no one else is calling

but even when i'm laughing

and i wish we'd shared it

well, anyway

what i meant to say

was that one day a coffee will be a pleasure

and we'll walk away feeling sweet and pink

that will be nice, i think 

-----------

"...every road is lined with animals
that rise from their blood and walk.
well the moon won't get a wink of sleep
if i stay all night and talk
if i stay all night and talk."

oh you seemed so happy

well here i am again. 

high ceilings, king bed 

"congratulations!" (he just got engaged, an aside to me)

i make eyes with d, trace the doorframe

think again about how i keep running far far away 

from everything and everyone else, what they're doing

"they're all out, they're having picnics," or whatever seinfeld says about saturdays

i'm out djing to two friends dancing drinking whiskey from a water bottle

dreaming about your mother 

dreaming about your hands 

and waking half reaching for you

in the crack between my eyelids and the real world waiting

you're here, finally

and i'm normal, finally

and i want what you want you want what i want...



but then it's gone, you're gone, 

i keep reaching