Clean

I want to be clean again
Bones carved from cherry wood
Blushing as he looks right through me

I am angry at feeling so much love
I wish you wouldn’t find me in my darker places
Maybe this time I will get it right

There is something wild and untamed inside
Uncontaminated by knowledge
Burning with purity and rage

They call him numb and dreamy
An endless battle of contrasting memories
The beginning of all possibilities

Sad things make me feel warm
Little prince of a forest kingdom
He flickers when you turn your head

I want to be clean again
Pale white skin stretched over innocence
A house becoming a home

Prophecy

The old curses have echoed into silence
In the shrines of the unwanted
Uncompressed feelings of trauma
And half-eaten purity spells

What suffering is behind your anger?
Being withdrawn is the common legacy of shame
The seat of power is a rotting stepladder
The tree house above thick with dust and mistletoe

You grow for me in the cracked concrete of city pavements
I wait for the starlight to clean your wounds
Holding my breath
Reaping harvests of waste beneath the frozen skies

I’ve been to this place before
This is the garden that I abandoned
Holding hands with ghosts, skin torn on barbed wire
Silence stifles the tongue of a jealous God

My self-control is stronger, but my fantasies remain the same
Hurt by the very thing that moved me to love
Dysfunctional remedies
Amid the sickening syrup of empathy

Woozy from the sedatives
Shattering my screen so I cannot see your messages
I dream of prophecy
Breaking
At the edge of dawn

Shadows thrown by stumps of burning trees
I am a blank page, waiting for my story to begin
Everything grows brighter even as the night grows darker
And there’s a plastic star guiding me home.

Runes

My tears tasted extra salty today
Like the sea air encrusted on a rusty nail
Old magic seeping through the doorways
Faded memories of places I’ve almost been

Bowls of milk are pale pink mixed with cherry syrup blood
An offering to the elder gods that time forgot
Your changeling ways will make them sick and sweet
An ancient stone altar in an overmedicated world

Blood magic is the strongest just after dawn
I do not feel safe here anymore
Simmering energies leech through consecrated ground
The crown upon your head is hollow

These powers are older than man
Their names decaying into oblivion
Like ancient runes cut into my skin
Fading scars of battles long ago

Leave bowls of fruit and feathers at the power lines
Let the weeds grow tall, curling around our throats
Caustic asphalt eroding into ashes
Nature will make things pure again

Flames

The shadow is not that big, it’s just closer than you think
The church doors have been locked for years
No one tries to open them, people pray in other ways now
To different gods, with plastic chandeliers

Foxes watch as we drive by
Wildflowers wither and dissolve into sickly obscurity
The black soil is staining your hands
The blasphemy of dried blood beneath peach coloured Band-Aids

Please burn my memories
You are lucky my pain is keeping me occupied
Sorting through all the missing pieces
Soon we will be strangers again

We play the piano as loud as we can
Hoping it will drown out the rain
The pooling water smells like sulphur
Iodine fading into blood

Throwing matches in the leaves just to watch them burn
In chaos, innocence was transformed
Like a pilgrim from an ancient time
Guarded by obsidian and childhood hymns
Whatever you went through was enough
Stop pretending you are whole
Tears glitter in the soft light
Only our intention matters

In the deep concrete glen
The medication feasts on our memories
You invented a face for yourself
And was reborn, an angel of solidified heartbreak

Your clothes smell of campfire smoke
It matches the fire in your eyes
The scorch marks that you left behind
The way I welcome the flames, burning something new.