vanishing made easy

PARKING LOT PLAYGROUND
You call the parking lot a playground,
and the berries that grow behind it lunch.
You don’t know what they’re called,
not yet, not now.
You don’t need to know,
not for a while.
You just know
that they’re safe, that they’re constant.
Until the school decides enough is enough
as they tear out the bushes,
the vines,
Until all that’s left is that nagging hunger.




They dance past me,
the half-forgotten ghosts of your dreams.
Had life been fair,
or kind,
you could have made them real.
But life is neither of these things.
It's a pity, really.
You've such a beautiful mind,
such an aptitude for ideas.
Weaving stories out of nothing but
Silver tongues and soft words.
It's a shame they've gone to waste.

You’ve become Icarus,
all wax-wings and faux feathers.
When I tell you to fear the sun, the heat
you nod in quiet contemplation.
But the sun is a distant force, and this Icarus knows nothing of heat, but a malfunctioning radiator.


HOUSE OF MEMORIES
I hope I can one day be,
A framed memory
upon the walls of your mind

WHAT THE WATER GAVE ME
Stained-glass memories of an old, forgotten church.
Blurred through rose-tinted lenses,
the same colour as the
red-hot fury
it’s so lovingly bestowed.

LOVE LETTER TO THE SUN
THEN:
You give me the world because you’ve become mine.
I give you the sun because it’s all that I dare.
(The moon is too romantic, I decide, for even my best-kept secret)
NOW:
I’d take a sledgehammer to the sky if it meant that I could forget the comfort of your lips.

ODE TO OMAR
You shouldn’t have ended with
a bullet to the brain.
You deserved more than that, I think.
Some elaborate sequence,
a shootout, a fight.
Something with a real bite to it.
(Still, you deserved it.)
Just a bit less than the others)

DEAR PAST ME
Time will change and so will you.
In ways you can't,
I can't, quite comprehend.
Embrace it.

ONE FOR YES, TWO FOR NO
A bird perches on my windowsill, as his
Jet-black feathers begin to
Drip
Drop
Onto the sill below,
Ink pouring onto parchment.
He’s singing something,
High pitched and fluctuating,
an eloquent scream.

Lives poured into full glasses
Threatening to spill
I have loved you
You have loved me
But it passes
This is why i leave
I cannot, will not miss you
and yet i do

MEDUSA’S BASTARD SON
Snakes coil down my back,
pulled back in a braid.
I hide them with a hat, a hood,
maintaining the charade.

GNATS
Daring gnats fly in my eyes
I blink and it becomes a suicide.

RIVERRUN
I remember a book I once read,
a fictional afterthought forming a kingdom.
And I imagine:
Young lords and ladies,
Racing in unison.
Their oars cut through the water like knives
and they laugh,
unaware or uncaring of the encroaching winter.

INSECT EGGS, CEREAL
They fly through the air in swarms,
Spawned from a single,
stagnant river.
When they drop into my boat and hitch a ride,
I try not to think about where they came from.

I stare at my soggy cereal
and try not to envision it
crunching as I bite in,
But thoughts of insect eggs are as common as the bugs themselves.