The carriage ushers forth the dead-

The Reaper sits beside-

And I am holding mushroom thread-

Along for quite a ride.

Upon the grass, a dewy slat-

Petunia's furrowed brow-

Existing paranormal pit

Insists that we all bow-

Unguarded garden of delight 

Succinctly shedding shame-

A tombstone etched and partly writ-

Inscriptions of a name-

Beneath the soil- some six feet down-

She waits without remorse- 

American in skull and bone-

She hops atop his horse.

Unmarried time- a cloth display-

The white gown full of sod-

Escaping rooted leafy ply-

Removed from under God-

Inclined to wink and sink the stars-

Unlike the Sentry's breath-

Her wordy echoes birth a stare-

We poesy rosy Death ...

It is about fucking time

I am shredded

I've had it.

Drug face down behind a semi

My gravel face is laughing

With mad delusion jousting

Flesh is hanging raw from

My milky bones

I am naked and cold

I stepped out of my suit

And my black heels

My red prescription called

Splashed sideways in a box of wine

And she went down easy tonight

But it took a long time

The bitch-face of Resilience

But finally...

I am drunk

And your face was here

You are blurry now

Creamy smears

Laced with blue tracers

Like LSD

Everything is distorted

And your words

Are distant & irrelevant

Characters in reverse

Emerging from Alice's hole

And your smell is faint

A fire exhausted

Fading on the breeze

Smokey and grey

And carried away

By the sun-dried leaves

Everything real is dropping

And your image is crumbling

Your beauty baptized in acid

I am numb

I feel nothing

Except the lump

Sorrow resting

With permanence in

My narrowing throat

I dissolved in your hands

In front of your eyes

I pleaded the entire time

And you watched me fall

From your once-loving hands

I am haunted by your heart beating

Like Poe in a box

And my awkward sobriety is

Minimal, at best

A vampire by day

I am mixed up

Fucked and destroyed

By your wordy promises

Carried by metaphors

Clever and deceiving

Hanging by the winter moonbeams

Now gone

And I am confused

By the devotions you pledged

I cannot drive

By your cardboard house

With the stray cat

And hydrangea porch

I will watch you smoke

Miming your tongue

I am drunk

Inebriated with depression

The loss of you is torture

Insatiable pinpricks to

My buttoned heart

And it is ruining me

I cannot shake you

But Cheers to my senses

They will mourn indefinitely

& they will swim in spirits

For my desire for you is

Unquenchable.

In memory of all those who have fallen for what they believe in.

Eighteen.

You were eighteen when you finally touched the sun and danced among the stars.

Memory shining brighter than any gaseous sphere,

Eighteen and you became a martyr.

In this town, all war is holy,

Double edged Jihad fought by double edged sword,

Because when you rob a child of a chance to live,

You take away that which is sacred.

Eighteen,

Your American friends were "finding themselves" in European bars and hostels,

Driving fast cars and living faster lives,

Alternate realities coexisting in the same dimension.

Eighteen,

You found yourself in between struggle and structure,

A boy thrust into the metamorphosis of man.

Eighteen and you became a butterfly,

Still dangling from your premature cocoon,

Eighteen.

They say those that shine brightest burn out the fastest.

They say,

They say.

Eighteen and the only women you had time to love were your mama and your Motherland.

You,

You learned about true sacrifice,

A far cry from those that cry over spilled milk and FOMO,

You've looked Death in the eye and given Her the middle finger.

She took you in return.

Forever eighteen.

He knew the importance of words

and treated life like a crossword;

taking hints and context to places

that he never knew were possible,

solving them faster than his mind could keep,

he was full of it,

and every letter got him closer

to his dreams of entitlement.

Oh you've solved it, all right,

but his genius was limited,

nothing but words on a page;

The puzzles? He'd just skimmed it,

and each box became his defeat

for his words would no longer speak.

He could only solve the same book;

shoulders up, blamed his luck

on his limited palette,

maybe he'd done better if he invested

in a thing like vocabulary.

A forgotten mission, a new edition,

blew around in his mind,

but somehow he never could manage

to find the time

to understand these riddles' complexity,

and so to this challenge, he'd flee.

Can you believe it? 

It just slipped in. I thought...I thought we were tougher. Risen from the ashes of ancestors that have seen a million suns dip beneath the horizon. 

My skin, calloused and weathered by those years spent shielding myself from the harsh winds blowing from the western plains. I had imagined it as an armour. Yet how with such little force the blade eased in, reminding me of the early days when my feet disappeared into the heaps of black snow on the northern mountains. I would look down at my foot, a sunken spirit in the wasteland. 

Now all that remains is the hilt that erupts from my chest. Red lava slithering down and pooling beneath me. 

I manage to lift my head and gaze with bewildered awe at the mushroom clouds dotting the horizon. Peer down the rock face, stare at the broken body of the boy I killed. I caught him stealing from me. He tried to take all that I had left of her, the only thing I tried to save at the beginning when the white flashes filled my room.

I yelled. Grabbed. 

He slipped. 

The valley beneath absorbed the waves of sound that carried his last guttural scream, bounced them off mountain walls so that they should seep into my heart. 

Then he stood before me, the Father. Lips curled, eyes wide. Hand flashed to the hip.

So quick.

As my last sun darkens before me I am peaceful in the knowledge that I would have done the same as him. 

I can die with that.