spiced wine poets

add your syllables to my pentameter,

voice like wine; it's a rhyme in thyme.

venice

your tongue twists around mine,

like the r-r-rolling r's in italian.

you are my little italy, savoury skin,

and i'll discover all your canals,

humming mamma mia 

over your bubbling,

in your gondola arms.

poseidon's child

i am an ocean and you broke the moon,

still silent surface like salient sapphires,

you are a drop in me, a ripple in a pond,

leaving no corner untouched or

undisturbed.

i am a river and you are a rock,

swirling over smooth surfaces soundly,

you draw out my unending laughter,

low like a babbling brook,

unrestrained.

i am a waterfall and you are the edge of the world,

staccato stuttering as blue is crushed,

you make me hold my breath, leap of faith,

as i tip over you, spilling, falling,

endlessly.

i am water and i am flooding

the whole wide world

for you.

sixwordnovels

you're like chocolate;
i'm lactose intolerant.

my sammael

  stars b-l-i-n-k to the rhythm of your heartbeat;
you're a fallen star, forced o u t of heaven,
  for shining too bright.

angels don't feel,

and envy is a s i n.

  you blessed my brow and confessed love to my chest,
with all the Grace of heaven,
with nothing but a slow, measured blink,
  of stained-glass eyes.

midnight maze

you're the kind of guy who'd take me to see the world,
but we can't go before i show you home,

streets alight with swinging lights,
winding lines and coloured umbrellas,
shadowed faces, side by side, and where
no one matters but us.

we'd stop by a vendor, and take a drink,
cold and condensing carelessly,
mine a soursop ice blend and you get lychee,
because you're predictable, like that.

there's dust, flying up from the uneven road,
sweet meat's smoke, swirling and scented with spices,
fleshy fruit, cut open and raw, mouthwatering,
the smell of the night, musky and heated and subtle.

we'd buy satay and eat while we walk;
the night won't wait for our lunch break,
succulent meat and cool as a cucumber,
snowy rice cubes and greasy fingers entwining anyway.

flip-flops fill with grating gravel,
mosquitos bite braille up our legs,
and the stars are a map in morse,
blinking us a way out of this midnight maze,

back to a carpark, hondas all in a row,
and we have a nissan, now, so
turn the air-con up high,
as this gets pulled back from the surface of our skin.

you can show me the world,
but i can show you home.


note: 
pasar malam : malaysia night markets.

strangled moon

your curtains stifle the moonlight,
and no one can see us.

fingers trace sigils of love and protection and mine,
on your cheekbones and wrists and spine.

dusky, dark; an empty sky,
eyes woven with all its colours and brushing stardust on your skin,
blinking, flickering across, effervescent.

you're gone, tomorrow morning,
but only because he wants you to be.

pause

                             in between all these dramatic...pauses.
                                                                        p
                                                                    m
i write in ellipses...                                      u
                                  ...hoping that you'll j


safe to say, you never do.
how can you, when you don't even know,
what i'm stopping for?

leave me

take me away from empathy,
it's just a|pathy.

reflect. then deflect

i've got shards of glass and silver where my soul should be,
and whenever someone smiles, it's not really me they see.

you shield your smiles behind closed lips and closed eyes,

eyes are the windows to the soul

and your smiles are light



and i curl in to hide this emptiness.

glass cuts,

and it cuts deep.

roman goddess

don't build so many walls,
a someone whispered to me, sometime
it'll only bury you when someone
comes crashing in.


i forget the details,
and he is insignificant
(well, he is!)

walls are stupid. i'd have to
go through the effort of decorating
them with wallpaper and dulux paint
and pretty pictures. it's easier to build
pillars to hold up my temples so i
don't crash, any time soon.

rome wasn't built in a day,
but it was burnt in a night.

and my flames are blue.

grand staircase

my heart's like a winding staircase,
in an old palace fit for a queen;

it creaks every single time
you walk past me.

mannequin

when i think back to my childhood,
there is a doll.
                      no wait, that's not right;
                      i was more a mimicry of humanity
                      than something so easily different

so, daddy carved me arms and legs and
a mind of diamonds and rosewood and
sugar, and big glassy doe eyes complete
with a set of curled eyelashes as i wrapped
men around my fingers like a chinese finger
trap or a set of rings, three sizes too small,
                      but he was never really happy with me,
                      not really because there was always something too plastic
                                                                                                glassy
                                                                                                transparent about me,

this isn't a case of the bitch biting the hand of its owner,
not when the maker calls his child a whore
but you made me, goddamnit

and these are the words i will never be able to tell you,
because my mouth has been sewn shut by my web of lies;

-

i'm an unfinished work of art,

but i'm still art, right?

-

weight on my shoulders

you're scary and you know it but we both gotta admit

i can be pretty fucking terrifying too.

i can see the gratefulness in your eyes as i bite the

insides of my cheeks raw and my overbitten nails

cut into my palm and my teeth grind into nothingness.

i hold back my words because you don't need to

see this part of me, not ever and you know it, and

you're just sitting there, harsh words falling on my skin

uncommittedunfocusedundisciplinedlazyunrefinedclumsystupidstupidstupid

like a new brand of morse-code bruises.

and, maybe, that's what hurts;

you expect too much from me,

sometimes.

block

i let you fill up the silences, whispered words and stuttered sighs,

until there's this e n d l e s s rushing in my ears,

so that maybe, i won't feel so alone,

so that maybe, my screams won't sound so

c h i l l i n g.

and i let you fill up the s.p.a.c.e.s between my words, each i and t

dotted and crossed with your eyes and smile in mind,

so that other memories don't se e  p where,

where i should've apostrophied your name,

to show you're mine.

and i let you fill up the sp.a.c.es. inside my soul, because i 

never knew emptiness could be so heavy and liquid

and viscous and it's better to have you there than that

d-r--o---w----ning me in endless misery. but there's these things lying

[                   in wait between my thoughts and memories and they're                  ]

murky and malicious and malevolent and they look

and awful lot like

em|me. 

but sometimes, there's nothing left to fill, because everything,

everything is you and it scares me because there's nothing

but you where something used to be. and it scares me because

then, then i have to talk about myself instead, a broken sob and

endless crying and i have to write about myself instead, in brackets

as an afterthought or even a post-script (p.s.don'tlookoverme) and i

have to face the fact that i'm so broken i don't think even my

mother loves me.

it's not healthy, being broken

there are some days where i'm sh a tt e r ed, completely wrecked,
but more often than not, i'm just                          t                                 e
                                       e
                                                                a                                                                   t
                                                                                     d
     c
                                                      s                                                                  
                                                                                                                        r

and it seems like i've been waiting ohso long for someone, anyonepleasepleasepleasehearmeseemeloveme
to [pickup] the pi e ce s
because god knows
i can't do it myself, anymore.

yellow brick road

sometimes, i think if i squint hard enough,

i'll be able to see a road from here to you

materialise out of the ground. 

but then, i squint

too hard and the world is dark as my eyes shut

and i get too scared to open them again, especially

when i can feel these dark, shadow-folded creatures,

baring teeth and claws and talons and hate, waiting for

me in the edges of my peripheries. 

my love is bright, brighter than the stars and they'll

lead you home. but i am endlessly lost in darkness,

forever wandering, afraid and without light;

you don't
      can't
      won't love me, no matter how much i want
                                                           need
                                                           plead you to.

steps, baby, steps

hot lust threads between my talus and calcaneus, 

pulling my medial arch into a curve, 

settling behind my peroneus longus 

and gastrocnemius muscle before 

surging up my hamstring 

and that's what makes me takes the first step.

but it's the sound of your vocal chords, 

writing themselves into the staff of my heartstrings, 

the small bird fluttering around in my ribcage, 

the angel sheltered in my clavicles, pressing grace 

notes to the thudding behind my sternum so that my 

blood sings in acciaccatura in the presence of your name 

that makes me take the second one.

she is

she's always lived in between,
in grays,
and hesitation,
and dreams.

there is more to art, she says, than just technical ability.
and so i make my words t a k e  u p all this s p a c e so no one see how hollow they are,
[how hollow i am]
whilst hers--

                             inky hair and parchment skin and candle-lit eyes;
                             watch her cadenza crescendo and split a p a r t at the seams,
                             each note and simile and metaphor and feeling
                             a thrumming baseline in her head
                             as her muse tangos with shadows,
                                 and makes love to light.

i am a streetlight amongst the backdrop of a meteor shower.

for thedreamer

meteorite

i used to wonder about the stars and i dreamt that an angel told me the pagan gods of old, once angels, had compressed themselves into tiny beads and weary and tired, threaded themselves across the night's blanket, trailing feet and galaxies across the skies, looking for heaven - for home - once again.

there's a meteor shower, the night you were born,
countless shooting stars f
                                      a
                                        l f
                                          l a

                                              l

                                                l

                                                  i

                                                    n f

                                                      g e

                                                               l

                                                                         l to the earth,

pinpricks of light unfurling into tall, forgotten goddesses, all ice-cut beauty, flaxen hair and diamond-cut smiles, and they hunt for you, feet flying over the rough ground swiftly, teeth bared and voices crying out in a cacophony of harsh cries and they're hunting, hunting for you and the call of your soul is mesmerising.

seventeen years later,
they climb their way
back to the stars, weeping
like harpies as a bundle of
blotchy pink skin, tousled black
hair and henna eyes are born
in the south, because they'll
have no chance to devour
your soul, not anymore.

leap of faith

it's not right, and everyone says that, if i tell them.

but this tastes nothing like original sin,
this "i love you" whispered between the confessional
heart's lattice layer, looking for penance, words heavy
and heated, like warm blood pooling in my stomach.

but this tastes nothing like sickly sweet
apples from a fallen tree, a snake whispering
between the two of us to eat, eat, devour;
no one's looking.

(they're always looking,
and this? God's always
known.)

this can't be wrong,
this tastes sweeter than heaven and it's hotter
than hell, and more bitter and tangible than earth.

this is a blessing,
pressed to our foreheads,
like a fleeting angel's kiss.

(this is for you, because i saw the way you looked today, when they mentioned we all had original sin.
you did look back, not at me, but at something and i wanted to tell you that this is not wrong. it never will be.)

pour your heart out

my hands are laced in your hair,
glimmering golden in the sunlight,
like an intricate crown on your head.
                                                    you're not the king of much,
                                                    but i've never been a princess;
                                                    i was always, always the queen.

and i don't know how this works,
but my heart's leapt out through
my throat, a silly little effervescent
thing and flown into you, humming,
content across your skin and yet,
it's crashed down, down, d
                                         o
                                            w
                                               n
curling like a small sun in my instep,
heavy as concrete, holding me to this
moment for eternity, making sure i
don't float up && away either.
                                              
                                                   i was the woman with no spaces in
                                                   her head and in my chest and skin
                                                   which stretched over her just a little
                                                   too tightly. my fingers and bones and
                                                   the gaps inbetween my atoms have all
                                                   been filled up by my loneliness and fear
                                                   and heartache and shame and if it's all
                                                   going to spill out now, it might as well be
                                                   in your hands; i've always really really
                                                   liked them.

kissing you is unlike anything it's
like trapping a storm in a glass jam jar,
like speaking in a forgotten language,
and it all just pours out of me and you
build brick houses in the spaces left
behind so that you'll always feel like
home to me.

-case study

you speak in lowercase letters, unless you're saying MY name;
don't you think i notice?

I SPEAK IN PERMANENT CAPS LOCK, HAVING TO TRY SO MUCH HARDER
JUST TO BE SEEN ; EXCEPT WHEN I SAY your NAME, BECAUSE YOU'VE
NEVER NOT SEEN ME, HAVE YOU?

i don't know what this means, but i think i'll just keep my mouth -shut-
because, don't you think they'll notice?

elastic time

i'd like Time to stretch out between us; he slowly
braids my blackwave hair into silver chainlinks,
as your long fingers s lip in the gaps be.twee.n,
your plain gold band clinking against the identical
one on my left 2ndlast finger, like the wind chimes
we'll have on our front porch: i want to grow old with you.

la petit mort

eternity's reproduced an infinite amount of times,
in the span of time it takes for you to touch our lips together.

and it's never felt like this before.

and this can't just be simple lust;

not when the brush of your skin against mine

has me breathless already.

it's a bite of apocalypse when you do finally get round to it;
i'm stretched out underneath you, earthy expanse of brittle
brown shaking and quaking with tremors as your light-white
skin moves across mine like lightning; your voice an echo of
Gabriel's Horn, signalling the end and your fingers stroke
angel-harp ribs and i make the most jawdropping sounds.

my death is little,
and i am remade, reborn,
in your large warm hands.

verbal picture

i think, if i could be any book,
i'd be a dictionary. you'd read me,
always -- i'd be an oxford dictionary,
of course. (the best kind, you said to
me) and then i could make you words,
so that there's finally a word for the 1000
shades of blue in your forget-me eyes. so
that there's finally a word for the little half-
sigh laugh you give when you're amused.
so that there's a word out there, just for you.

if i was a dictionary, i'd make sure that you
could be [captured] on paper, scribbled on
scrap paper and stuffed in squishy pockets,
typed out in a million fonts across mac and
window screens, traced lovingly by frosty
fingers on glistening glass; you're forever.

but i'm not; i'm human and all these sighed
syllables, similes and sibilant sentences are
frag me n ted and just kind of die; there's just
not ever really enough words to take your
verbal picture, literally.

eden

you've grown into oak,
tall
               and overpowering.

sometimes, i'm the sun which
makes you thrive.

sometimes, i'm the driest leaf,
fallen too

f a r

from your tree,
the crunchy kind that's always
the best ones to step on.

sometimes,
                  sometimes, i'm a vine, smoothing out the tough knots in your bark,
                  almost suffocating and i can s . e . e  that.

sometimes, i'm just plain old yellow gorse,
huddling, dispersed under your canopic branches.

and, more often than not, i'm an azalea plant,
growing right there beside you, always.

lumen love

      i get jealous even of your carotid artery...
                                  ...
                                  ...i wish i was oxygen so you could b r e a t h e
                                      .         .          .                          .   .
                                      ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
                                           .           .         .    .     .     .                                                                          
                                       me in and i could diffuse into your cells.
                                             .          .            .           .       .
                                      ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
                                          .           .                             . .
                                    ...because i need to disperse into your s k i n,
                                                                     ...
                                                                     ...
                                                                      .
                                                                     ...
                                                                     ...
                                                                      .
...and move to the drumming of your pulse, forever.

there's nobody else to impress

she strings moons along on a silver chain to tie around her neck,
and plucks stars from the sky like it's a tesco to turn them into
earrings. she's wearing halos as a belt and dances to the wind
like she's got diamonds on her heels.
                                                               she doesn't need that from you;
                    the man with the common accent and thousand-shaded eyes
  and heaven locked away underneath his skin, Grace leaking through from
                                                         raking cuticles is more than enough.

turn up the volume

there's sunlight pouring in through your windows and i can see you wince

with each step i take across clear cream floors, each sound

amplified like a surround sound system to your heart

kickstarting it like a refibrillator, jolt by jolt.

"don't be an idiot. anyone could walk in."

"so what? have i ever cared?"
a brush of the lips is all
it takes for you to
give in to me,
all of the
time

en avril

anger clings to my skin,
the way the humid air does,
in the fourth month.

it builds up, unbearable,
and grimy and dirty,
like a second layer of
thick, heavy scratchy
burning skin.

i tell you, i'm in april,
and it does mean more
than just the month that
makes us destined or just
my birthday.

slowly, spirals send
my temper away, as
water, cooling and
clear like diamonds,
wash everything 'till
it's all so so clean.


i surround myself
in water, hydrogen
and oxygen pouring
around me like my
own april shower.

i need to let out some steam.

shall i compare thee to a summer's night?

(for the earthgoddess. i love you and keep strong.)

this is easy, you think, and purse your lips.
pillows are deppilf to the cool side as you press your feverish skin,
and you're sure you can't sleep tonight.

it doesn't take much to forget, you reckon, as red strands caress your cheek.
push them away and huff some more, soles (souls) of your feet pad-padding against linoleum ground,
his voice and hands follow achingly in your steps, thick molasses stretching out along your shadows.

you still kind of love him, you admit, and drink freezing, condensing water,
it's not that which drips steadily onto the table in front of you and each droplet shows you a thousand moons;
the stars are dead, long before you see them.

three little words

     there's something
     [trapped]
     bet-                                        -ween
            the net of my vocal chords
            like ~fish in the sea. i
p-u--l---l them kcab, that tide
    of feeling and force a different
         iambic triameter past poetry-
                                     kissed lips -

                    "how are you?"

scattered

if only, she thinks, there were enough words in the world.

.

if only, she thinks, there was enough time in the world.

.

if only, she thinks...

.

if only there was enough of me left to love you.

dear dryad daughter, time's a-tickin'

(for thedreamer)

-tick
        there's a grandfather clock adorned in twisting oak,
        and it looms above you, ancient, mad and menacing,
                                                                                       -tock,
tick-
        the pendulum's burnished edge reflects his g-g-green
        eyes and it swings serenely from one side to the o-
        ther like conversation and banter 'tween you should,
                                                                                      -tock,
tick-
        there's clear glass covering the gold as hands worry
        away across a glinting face and you've always been
        a tad transparent to those who know how to look,
                                                                                      -tock,
tick-
        marble floors just create a thousand overlapping
        shadows, parts of his personality you never ever
        wanted to see; he walks away, the best things end.
                                                                                      -tock,
tick-
        there's a grandfather clock adorned in twisting oak,
        and it looms above you, taking up it's old bad-paid
        job; it looms above you and shields you from the
        world.
                                                                                      -tock.

"i think we need to get that clock fixed."
"no, leave it. it's always been like that."

blackout

                        the air is cool and its like all the electricity in the powerlines
                        were sucked out and trapped between our brushing fingers,
                        sparks igniting like flames in the dark between us. it's all dark,
                        all around and everywhere, but you're careful, careful enough
                        to scratch, light the match to bring to life the candles whilst we
                        flutter around them like moths, not to the flames but more to
                        each other. your eyes are trapped days, a sun and sky all in
                        one, and your kiss is far too brief but your arms are on mine,
                        squeezing to keep me from melting into the darkness
                                                         ["happy birthday," he murmurs against my
                                                          lips and i just trace the powerlines of blue
                                                          electricity on the skin of his neck, quietly.]
                        the thin striped candles make the shadows glow and the
                        silences golden.

happy birthday to me.
wishes this year, include you.