So that anytime I was frightened
Anytime I felt threatened
I could look in the eyes of my villains
And remember
I had the power to end them
What if the beast in the story
Preferred his talons and fangs
And the echo of his mighty roar?
What if he enjoyed striking fear into hearts
So they never again had a chance to hurt his own?
The beast stays a beast in this one.
My love is a fist
Clenched hard
Inflexible
Impossible to miss
When it hits you in the face
My love is a dagger
Cold edged steel
Sharp
I use it to carve scars
In your skin that spell my name
I remain a cruel man
Uncaring
A villain at ease in his skin
But my love for you is kind
If that isn’t magic, what is?
Not all princesses need Prince Charmings to save them
Sometimes
They have dragons who protected them
All along
I am at ease with hatred
Comfortable with deviance
And friendly with rebellion
I wear my wrath like a leather coat
And my venom is a cloud of second-hand smoke
You see me and want me
Do you know why?
Because I am the edge you need to fall off
The adrenaline rush you want to try
I am too close to Death.
He hounds me like a loyal shadow
Whispers dark delights in my ear.
I am his friend.
Disciple.
I learn from him the way to take men apart
Like dissembling a tool.
They learn to fear me too.
A walking nightmare in motorcycle boots.
But what about you, sweet girl?
So close to life
So full of pink peonies and gentle verve.
What would you say if I told you
I wanted to be the nightmare you claim for your own?
It’s the art of a poet
To take something unerringly ugly
And give it the right words
To make it something lovely
We watch the stars
To pull down the blue ink
In the wide bowl of the sky
And use it to write philosophies
About the universe beyond the curved slope of our horizons
Because sometimes
The dark abyss of the unknown
Is less lonely and less terrifying than our own remembering
What a self-fulfilling prophecy it is
To pave a yellow brick road
Line it with exit signs
Protect its boundaries with monsters
And then grieve when people inevitably walk
Down that path
And out my door
The bomb in my chest
Ticks louder
Each day
Counting
Down
To
A
Time
Where
I will self-detonate
And implode
If only there were gentle hands
To reach inside the chamber of my chest
Cradle my ticking heart
And bravely turn it off.
She wore black
And coloured in her many scars
With red sharpie
Like fresh blood against the ancient wounds
She wanted to remember every hurt
Illustrate every painful memory
As a warning to everyone
And herself
That she would never forget
This is a story of boy meets evil
With the face of an angel
And a body that could tempt a saint to sin
Of a time before the boy became a man
When he met the demon
By the name
Of
Delilah
And spoke her title in a breath of supplication
This is the journey of that boy
From the sweet stumble over lust
To the willing jump he made
Thinking he would land in
Love’s perfumed embrace
This is the story of what happens
When the boy lands on the spikes of cruelty
Savagely impaled by lies
Where he brutally bleeds out
This is the story of what a woman
Will do
For
Revenge
The legacy of men.
Sometimes
I yearn for the apocalypse
So that all the nonsense will implode
And the only things left
Are you
And
me
You were born a pretty fish
Put into a pretty bowl
To swim around looking pretty
For the rest of eternity
What would happen if the glass smashed?
Would you grow lungs and legs
Deformed, but free?
Or die
So pretty
In the glistening glass?
I was born in a stinking mire
But I made it into compost
Took sustenance from the refuse and rooted in the soil
It was on the filth of my mistakes
That I rose to the greatest of heights
And I was all the stronger for it
If you succumb to the heat
You will melt to your core
And nothing is ever as strong as something
Forged from fire.
She was a witch, a bitch and a cold-hearted queen.
She was a witch
Made of magic I wanted to shape in my hands
A force so great I shuddered at her power
And reverently learned the shape of each spell
So I might wield her.
She was a bitch
More magnificent than any woman I had ever met
Because she liked her world cold and anti-septic clean.
They judged her for that and her words
The way they hit their targets
Precisely
Rat tat tat
A semi-automatic weapon with a chamber of red lips.
She was a cold-hearted queen
Who ruled without aid from a throne she made herself
In a kingdom of steel towers and glass ceilings
That she punctured with the lance of her ambition
And watched crumble to dust beneath her stiletto heels
She was a witch, a bitch, and a cold-hearted queen.
Sticks and stones would never break her bones.
(It was easier to hate her than submit an application to be loved by her)
The witchcraft of womanhood
I sipped from the chalice
Sweet moonlight down my throat
Silky and silver as the ribbon of water
Sewn through the moss-covered ground
At my bare feet
I danced over the green mottled earth
Wet mud sucking at my toes
Packed earth vibrating with the kick drum beat
Of the revellers circling the fire
At my naked side
Women revolve around the flames
Leaping through the sparks
They chant in one voice like an echo
That emanates from the earth
The howl of wolves
In the dark bowl of night
Echoes eerie
Like a gong struck in my chest
They call to me
And naturally
I follow
A girl is a weapon
Whether or not she knows how to wield
her power
Is another question entirely
I don’t want to give you the world.
I can’t afford a diamond ring or a house so high on a hill.
I can’t take you on a trip or pay your way through school.
But…
I can give you something I’ve been aching to give
Since I first saw you so confused on my stoop
A child without a dream
You see,
I can give you you.
Let the love of your life be the woman looking back at you in the mirror.
She is your best friend forever and your tireless champion,
If only you’ll give her words to speak and the power to be
Seen.
Sometimes the only lesson you learn
Is from a mistake
Not worth making again.
You can’t light a fire without kindling.
The scraps and waste of life that didn’t work out
That tore strips off your soul
And ripped through your defences?
Those are your tinder to light your dreams on fire.
I love with my whole soul
But the weight of that love is too much for some.
They drop it in the dirt.
Trip over it as they run away.
One day,
I hope I find someone Atlas strong enough
To hold it up.
You broke her.
So I took her and taught her how to fill her cracks with gold.
She is tangled up in his dangerous love
Wrapped in the yarn of his malicious lies
Like a fly trapped in a cotton web
I want to be the shears that cut her free
I’m a night person
Because she works at the 24/7 diner
Off exist 99
I’m a pie person too
Because it’s the only edible thing they serve
She was deep dark waters
And I was never taught how to swim
I was afraid of her sharks and currents
The absolute blackness at her depth
But as I watched
She tossed and churned
Eternally turbulent and ill at ease
So, I took the chance to soothe her peaks
And dove right in head first.
Love is sink or swim.
Who told you
You were hard to love
And what made you
Think that was a horrible thing?
Everything hard is worth having
We spend our entire lives
Doing the hard things to survive
I will tell you now
I can survive your love
And I want to
What makes you tremble
Alone in the dark
What is the stuff of the nightmares
You imagine at midnight
Let me know all those things you fear
So that I might slay them
Even while you dream
I would break my own heart a million times over
If it meant keeping you safe
From a million heartbreaks of your own
She was a live wire I wanted to hold in my hands
Take her electricity between my teeth
And feel her currents race along my skin
She was the shock I needed to come alive
Touch me
And
I burn
A lit match to dry timber
The press of your lips on my skin
Douses me like amber liquor
And up I go
In flames
Baby girl
Don’t think
I’ll forget that beneath the sting
Of angry bees
You taste as sweet as honey
Her beauty lay
Within her brain
Like a pearl trapped
Between layers of pink velvet
I thought I needed
Currency
To buy it
Class
To own it
But I realized the only way
To gain a pearl
Like her
Was to be gifted it
I’m sorry if I kiss you too much
Too long
And
Too often
But I know the time will come
Where you won’t want my touch at all
And so
I take advantage
Of your lips
And that smile against my smile
Because when it is gone
I fear my mouth will forget the shape of yours
And the taste of yours
Even though my heart with forever mourn
You went to hell
On a one-way ticket
Condemned and beaten
Only to meet Satan amid the flames
He took your warm hand, kissed your fingers with cold lips
And said,
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
She was conceived, born, and raised in the light
The dark, they told her, was full of horrors
If she stayed far away from the shadows
She would thrive
So why did they whisper to her like lovers do
A caress at the base of her sensitive spine
A sinful kiss of desire at her neck
Rage tucked like flaming tissue around her
Strange multifaceted heart?
Because nothing is all black or all white.
I fell into the deep abyss
Between the mountains
Of love and hate
Arms pinned
Heartbeat shallow
Mind awash with the fear that this was my new and bitter forever
It was not comfortable but there was some safety
In being alone in the dark
With no one to hurt me but myself
I tried to work myself out of the pit of despair
But it was hard to remember
the heart was made to be broken
and the only one who could mend it
was me
She was an old coat
With pink silk lining
A cracked vase filled with
Passion red roses
A hundred-dollar bill
Found in a forgotten purse
She surprised you with her beauty
And instead of judging you for your shock
She blessed you with her kindness
Instead
She had daddy issues.
She wore these problems
Shame-faced but bold
Like a tattoo that seemed
A good idea
While drunk.
I won’t lie.
They drew me to her
Those daddy issues
But not for the reasons you think.
It was a call to action
For a man like me
To show the woman what she could be
If she had a man to love and protect her
While she fixed her problems herself
What is more dangerous?
A man with a gun
Or one posed with a pen?
The kind who threatens your safety
The one where you might end up dead
Or the one that will never let you go
Who will trap you forever with that pen
And his ink
In a poem.
You can call me beautiful
Compare me to a summer’s day
Or a spring morning
Romanticize my winter storms
Into cleansing tempest that stir your soul
But we both know just like the
Mother nature
You compare me too
I am so much more than that
My summer’s day could scorch you up
My spring morning could leave you b
lind
And my winter storms could rip you apart like confetti
I could as easily kill you as kiss you.
Damaged souls
Aren’t broken irrevocably.
They have a condition;
PTSD.
After wars of the heart blew open their ribs and scored shrapnel into flesh,
They dream about the horrors of battle
Stare at the scars that will never fade
And feel the ones on their soul that will never be seen.
The magic of healing
Is that such a small act
Can make a lifetime of destruction seem small too
Wrapped in your arms
Washed clean by your faith
Day by day
My damaged soul is made once more whole.
Be water
Constantly moving
Flowing through time and space
Carrying the debris of the past
But still
Streaming
Full of life
Do not let life
Turn you into ice
Trapping the detritus