Originally published as volume one of ‘A vague interpretation of a youthful imagination’ (2003-2008).

These poems were written during my late teens / early 20s. They are filled with raw emotion and angst, and while my poetry (hopefully) grew beyond the below, these poems still hold value for me as they were part of how I got through some of the heavier times. Content warning: self-harm

Deactivate

Deactivate your main feature

Lurking in the dark
You may be pretty
but you’re a devilish creature

This ivy creeps and crawls
Up my spine and clings to my chest
But it is still more gentle
than your hands that hold my resist

Deactivate all of you
that tries to be

Devouring me alive
with this…

What seems to be
Your favourite feature

A memo to disregard

Not defined by youth or maturity
Right or wrong
Soul mates and with whom we should belong
Just of real love
Excepting what the dealer turns over
Not dependent on each other

Moving on to others who adore and wish to look upon
Either too selfless or not selfish enough to say I want
For announcing would take you, from you that I love
But missing you and with a head that swarms of you
…I crave for myself to be more selfish
‘Do not leave, stay laid with me and feel it now without thought’

Hazy Eyes

Asleep drunken on a steady shoulder
Unreal but real by the time I wake
Lean across the table so I catch enough of you
It’s the ‘good mornings’ that alter your day
The same conversations held in a new mood
Everyone in life bleeds
It’s a case of who helped us off our grazed knees
The one I shouldn’t have lost
The only one who seems enough
Who came for you without a call
Who held your cold hand
Sat upon the derelict docks verge
Gazing with hazy eyes upon a blackened lit up sea

September captured me

Tuesday the 18th, sitting on the corner talking to myself
Convinced you won’t
why would you show
To see you standing in the rain with your hood up
To see you and be speechless

Days later, Friday the 21st
In your room watching the urethra chronicles
Contained in something better than a dream
Nervous but not scared
Nothing could have prepared me
Prepared me for that first kiss on our second night

Today
Today the rain is typical
Smudging words upon my page
You standing there in blue again
With your blue eyes that break me
Life would be softer if I could hate

Grey brick stained off the rain
Cold and wet dirty floors
I can’t believe your untrustworthy mouth
I won’t step away from this wall
You captured me inside you
You cheated me with all of you

A girl stands in the corner where you sent her
Smiles that you can create in a second
And dismiss in less
You ask her to stay as you kick her out
Your power captivating her
And making her your captive to take it all out on

Mindless Glass

Across and through my throat
Provide sweet music like the violin bow
I stood and took too many stands yesterday
Feeling far from the realms of child’s play
Now you give me a precious fall from such a height
Include some expression like at least this hell is worth the fight

Love films draw pictures in my head with lines felt
“I would rather fight with you, than make love to anybody else”
So foxy in your top hat and tails
Fickleness, I fail the trials
Sleepily back to the translucent girl
Lucifer wile me into a lucid world

Nasty Tricks

You make me feel like there is nothing in the world I couldn’t handle…
…except your betrayal

My unconscious saw it in simple pictures months ago

Temptation

Maybe I was prepared

Either way I have felt pain worse than this

I am in love with you
Leaving would be more painful than enduring,
moving past and forgiving you and ….her…
You were honest as I asked you to be
Strong enough to tell me that you played equal parts

My mind will tick away and play nasty tricks
I will see your lips on hers a thousand times
A hand on her cheek, sliding down to her waist
No matter what actually took place

I don’t need to ask you of any more than you have given

Misled

It’s mid-morning ….

Needing you to kiss me
No questions asked
Don’t make the scars bleed
Just remind me of how it felt
Without you is suffocation
Needing to breathe
Where is the air
Seeming to have escaped my struggling gasps

Drowning, drenched within my tears
Would be a sweet death
Cheeks drenched in crimson
Underneath a sky once blue
As I lay this blade to my cloudy skin
Will this convince me what it is to feel again
Dissatisfaction, unknown if deserving
Misled from the only guide

I’d say I’m late for my life again
But I can’t say this belongs to me anymore
Time is irrelevant
I’ll hear your unthankful confessions
Bringing up reappearing mistakes
With unknown reason, you destroy me

Predictable morning

Predictable morning,
Outside the window everything is so fast it blurs
Inside, this side of the window
Everything drags on and digs deeper heels
Slowing down enough to remember

Too long on your bedroom floor
Why wasn’t I good enough

Soon I will have lost all of me,
I want you to know that’s when I broke
That night alone in your bedroom when I stood up
Why wasn’t it good enough

Hanging from rope like meat
You kicked the chair from my support
At least I knew I had emotion
Come on, take some more out on me
Why your efforts aren’t even good enough

A sickening contradicting smile.
When the questions finally come
My reply…I’m fine
Their naive eyes
The only ones that should matter
Are the ones who gaze upon you
In such an idolistic way
The ones that belong to me.
Why weren’t my words good enough

You pierced me with your words
That intoxicate your head
While you never heard me speak
Just the echo of your own voice

Be content with the counsel you said
And sit where you lie

Scene Five

Unclothed and intertwined in each other
in physical and true non-physical form
Body bathes in the energy that flows from him
Sensations, a throat that begs to be kissed
Pulling each other close while hands running away
Contact and contact, flesh on flesh
Upon yours or mine, I am no longer sure
Eyes full of charm
Distorted by dark hair falling upon his cheek
As if taken the role of a character from some fantasy

A hand on the back of my neck pulling me,
with strength and gentleness to deepen a kiss
Passions excess rolling to the base of the spine
How is it you are everything I love
and also everything I desire
When day is in the moon’s phase, he illuminates
Slumber or not, warmth glows from such a face
Spirit and soul that have me gripped
Although I could not deny a kiss from his physical lips.

Numbed Possession

The two of us sat in tension high silence
Two hours and my legs have gone numb
Crossed legged I sit on your bed
Memorising every poster on your walls

The strangest feeling I’ve known this often

A little smile and ‘click’ darkness races
From every crack and corner to fill this cage
Can you hear the rain outside…
I’m the weak fool who should be screaming
But I lose myself,
My eyes are out the window and on the moonlight

Waking surrounded by solitude
Moving…
Becoming aware of my body
Bruised…

I can’t find the start
Dimly lit flashes
I have nowhere to begin
Longing to admit defeat
Nothing but confusion
It was to be an end with him

Numbness unfelt on my lips, by your lips
Abandoning myself there and my dreams

I am no longer
I am no longer of consciousness…
….or unconsciousness
Just an object, wanting to be loved.

209th Sonnet

As smooth as that blue flame
My skin burns on you
And blisters beneath you
Fire ignites beneath my skin
Pleasure and power under your callous tips
Glowing under unseen Luna
Unearthly nights hold no colour
Breath, heat, a loss of presence
Clumsiness while growingly intense
Movement to overwhelm senses
Energy pours to the body’s edge
Rebelling against boundaries
Gravity centred in our energy
Creating a world that ends at us

Only those who have known Being in Love can say,
what these true nights are like when we are nothing but our souls.

Negative

Black skies on a velvet night
Stars covered by thick clouds
Your room dimly lit by the frosted full moon
Turning on your sleeping sounds

You’re not going to rise with time
But I’ll watch you as the light does
Sound won’t cure my quiteness
The blood you bleed may as well be mine

If I can’t save you,
Why do you stand on the edge with me
It might just catch you tonight…
If it doesn’t we can drink again

Sobberness carries your anger, you feel condemned
They’ve bound you to yourself
The rain never talked down to you, no matter how gone you were
Come stand in the rain with me….

Bluest walls but the brownest eyes
It is inevitable unless you help yourself
It will kill you
It will be the end