my sisters told me i shud speak my mind

a heartless goodbye

her mouth undid my resolve
her eyes forced a forgiveness
I wasn't ready to give
she slid in between me
and the unhappiness
of everything
her lips danced with mine
a chorus of black magic
behind my tired eyes

she broke my resolve
she undid my courage
with a touche of her breath
she filled my lungs
air thick and foggy
it eroded my vision
my purpose, my nature
i dis-remembered my sadness
forgot my listlessness
foolishly, stupidly
i forgot the nature of my despondence

i fell into a water
calm and clear
but as i emerged
i find it had not been enough
to clean the mud from my skin

mother i love you,
father, i do
if only you knew
the things i do
i carved out a life
out of clay and mud
and the rain has come to make it bleed
it washes my sins into the sea
and i become shameless
and undecided
what does the future hold for me?
what am i to say
to the girl who pleads she loves me

i am neither here
nor there
im in between
clinging onto past, present
whilst the future pushes and grinds
its back into mine
do i give in?
or do i depart?
and leave nothing but a heartless goodbye?

...who screams at my tardiness...

these are the reasons i think that im ill...

she promised me a life
where i would be queen
and she herself a king
and i took up the thought
created a paradise
a dream
from a few scattered words
a few immobile notions
of something
ill-constructed
of something
ill-fated

as they say,
what begins in chaos
ends in chaos
from fire we were born
with fire we are exhumed

i cling to hope
i cling to a promised paradise
a dream created through morsels of happiness

the truth which bends
the truth that dents
is painted in past poems
in past horrors

it screams our hopelessness
it exhibits the violent despair
which created me
it demands attention
to the facts of my lurid past
it dismantles me
it destroys us

we become creatures
imprinted in the night sky
dead, bloody, lonely
we are the winter
and the rain
we are nothing
but hopelessness disquised

“Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.” 
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

each mans hell is in a different place
mine is just up and behind my ruined face

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story using only 6 words.
 He wrote:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn

A Smile To Remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, 'be happy Henry!'
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: 'Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?'

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

-Charles Bukowski

Green eyes, 
Green like the sea. 
Pity the one that sees them 
And doesn't know how to swim.

Audience member: Play a happy song?
Damien Rice: A happy song? I don't do happy.

I have a mind that’s filled

With hatred, angst and melancholia

I’d rather you just left me here

I feel afraid to speak

Enter or exit

God help me

I treat myself as you would

A thief or like a caged animal

I weep.

I utter three words

One for the mess in my head

One for the horrible thoughts

Which come howling on my skin

Fee fi fo fum, now I’m ugly

And now I’m dumb

Here I lie

Tears in my eyes

Why would you look at me?

When even I can’t?

A God that
hates and creates you
a life that softly kills you
I feel
so empty and alone

I'll take
my own life
hand it to somebody else
someone who can see some beauty in it
someone who respects someting within it
And I'll pretend
I understand the concept
called death

Such a pretty house
and such a precious life
two children and a garden
But no sight of a wife

I'm not here
Not in this body
Not in this mind
I am in love with the darkness
I want to have its baby

Take my hand
Take this
All of me
Lets go to the sea
Lets bleed into the sand
I want to forget me

god is dead

Nietzsche said: “God is dead”

My mother fiercely disagrees

She stamps outside and yells

That I too will die

And for this she cries

Like a child,

Her eyes well up

And bitterness pours out

I am a soul. I am a body.

I am a mind. I am free.

I am not the words I read.

Or the people who rest beside me.

I am this mantra.

And nothing else

I have read poetry

I have read novels

Which have taught me to fear death

Where the bloodless creatures call out to death

To come save them

They lie down

And beg

And cry

My mind is a watery puddle

Whose mud refuses to settle

And whose ideals and morals

Are scattered and broken

Unable to be constructed into something

That lasts and is not worn down

I have read their words

I have been told who I should be

But I disagree.

I will not be a copy of a copy

Of another man’s daughter, another man’s wife.

I refuse to lead a life

In which I don’t play a role

In which my wills and desires

Are a construct

Of a predetermined law,

Just a reflection

Of something that isn’t me

Are we God’s creation?

Or is he ours?

Is he simply an ideal?

An explanation

Of the unexplainable?

I cannot submit myself

To an authority

Who forces conformity

And defines a paradise

As a nation, a people

Who are incapable of thought

And whose happiness is ever-lasting

But has no basis on who they are as a being

A life is not reality if it’s simply a construct

Where survival depends on our unconditional devotion

A freedom doesn’t exist

If it is bordered with fear and angst

Happiness is not true if one has no control

Over how it is produced

And a God is not a God if he judges, hates

And creates man only to control him in the end.

i am the grave, i am her grave

Black clouds and the ground whispers

From where she stands

Here I lie

A coffin has been built

One for me

One for you

Should we accept?

Or run away?

Here are her pale lips

And her sodden hair

She stands

Two flowers in hand

I turn my head

And pretend I don’t see

The red raw eyes

That clench the veins

To my heart and all goes deaf

I cannot hear her cries

Or my repeated replies

She begs to stay

And I push her off

I say sorry

For the slaughter

Of a daughter

I had once called mine

Time leaves imprints

On this skin of mine

Her age is written

In those weary eyes

And she has wasted away

All that remains

Is the love she has to give

But I refuse to take

She is my home

The only one I have ever known

Ever wanted, ever loved.

She is the breath that leaves my lungs

And the anger situated in my heart

The longing, the shame, feelings are

Immersed with her

And I feel nothing

Without her

But I am the killer

I am the murderer

Of her heart

I’ve slayed the daughter

I’d once called mine

She is but a shadow

That creeps within

And moves without

A body, a carcass

The living feed off her

And I too

She calls upon me

Pleads for me

But I forsake her

And she stands

Cold, alone

And without a place

To call her own

I am the grave

I am her grave

Two paths split

But remain joint

For neither promises

A land beyond this

“I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy of poppies. But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”
-Sylvia Plath

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
-Robert Frost

I am not the world

This world is not I

The oceans turn to rivers

And they die.