I Live In Billy's House

for nurse, who gave me love when i deserved it least



I Live In Billy's House


Was that the best that you could do; I’ll lie and cave if made to wait
Scrape dirty blade across my want, I should never have been out that late

Did I surely need to learn this lesson or were you just keen; much too willing
To teach it to me behind shadows to scratch your name, though I was stilling

Beneath your hand, beneath your rule night hangs above; I’ll never keep
All of my skin through this tribunal and countless nights that I shan’t sleep

Roses bright red inked ‘cross your back; never my friend but so much more
A lover, husband, keeper, God. My hands yours now - chained to the floor

You ask I’ll give though breath is worn, I feel your patience; not unlimited
Payment required is enormous. Final virtue you elicited

I call your name but you’re long gone for days I’ve dreamed and wilted so
Take all you need you always knew I’d give it up before I go

Mr Sleepy

Hey there dark eyes
You’ll never know
All the pain that you melt away

You’ll grow and the world around
Will change
Be strong and feel all of it

I’ll be here even when
I’m not.
That might be soon

Though I smell you on me
The need to leave
Presses my hand; presses at the back of my neck

Tiny toes and fingers -
You are my blood;
You’re in my blood

Envy and guilt that drains
From my tangle of veins
Soft skin of your ears, do you hear the love I profess?

You’ll find victory and light wherever
You seek it
Breathe in now and let your heart beat

I am sure of your guidance
And the true circle
That encompasses you; always will

You’re all I ever needed and I’m sorry
If I’m not here
When you wake — I couldn’t help but let go

Make an Example of Me

hiatus over, insomnia continues

All the words and the ink and the marks
That can’t be read but show up nonetheless
Maybe I thought of you, and I had wanted to see you there
In the shadows and the curtains; in the darkened corners
As I inevitably shattered into the million pieces that I
Had never really been holding together
I admit I did forget, not just the quiet form darkening my doorway
But all the waiting and the lows that were enough
To force hopelessness down my throat
I slipped free of my chains only to discover
Myself; just as fouled and weak as I always imagined
Those pieces flew up off me — had they been bats in the night
All along. What am I made of. Hedonistic shreds and
The darkening bruises of indiscretion
Imprudence so grand that the fallen one himself would blush
I came to this place quietly and I will leave just the same
I am not transformed, but unleashed.
Pulled at the edge of this tether for far too long
The tight circle of my allowance that might have held
If it weren’t for the fact that I am the serpent, the apple,
And the sin
Salvation be a lie, just like the ones I told myself
When you knew all along, you knew the truth
Before I forged my own and now don’t I look the fool
Feathers ruffled and skin broken open in all the soft,
Pale places where I pressed my own knife, unable to stop
I stare out across this glacial silence and realise that
We were out of time before we started
Away from home, the trees looked different and it was
Too late to pay all that I owed, I found words were worth nothing
And the storm that I weathered couldn’t rage on
I had convinced myself that nothing would be as harrowing
As the beginning that we both endured; that first breach;
That inceptive, brutal perforation
How often I am wrong

By the Same Name

Lo! There you are
I thought I’d lost you
Maybe hoped or perhaps prayed

Thought I’d left
Your spell in broken pieces
On the dirty floor

But here we are
I know your face
Didn’t outrun you in the woods

Didn’t survive you
On the sea, didn’t
Escape you ‘cross the dunes

Your creeping fingers
Made of black and
All the truths you torture with

Come flooding back
I hear the knock, but it’s
Too late, you’ve pushed inside

Old friend, you say
Touch my shoulder and take
A seat upon my bed

Maybe I always knew you’d come
Back to me when
I had but calmed

Back to our bond, and
Our dark corners
Back where we lay for o’ so long

And then much farther
Beyond purchase
That I have made; I’d come so far

Have you no pity
No moderation?
Will you test me once again?

My quickened blood
My cracked control
Eyes cast upon your curling smile

I feel it now
I’m stretched too thin
Already dead, I knew your name

I watched you slip
Into my dreams, and you
Grew huge: Leviathan

I’ll watch you bring me down
Again, I’ll watch as you watch it
All burn

Brother

this heat has fed my new-found addiction. dear God, save some forgiveness for me....


Brother


And I dreamt of your death woken quick in the night
But seemed day for sunshine, sweat-slicked skin ‘neath the light
Pondered grace and past self, stumbled through glass-black street
Hope shall stars twinkle less for now my end be meet.

Follow with you and your chance; render peace ‘midst this swarm
Enemies blind and lost, we shall rise, thin our storm
Life-hot tears crack me open, long for done though remain
These our promises be broken and our futures all but wane.

I have wont to worry of you and such child-like selfishness
Same moment, cast my soul toward Oblivion; heart enormous.
Sick with need, skin foul pallid, sticky cold and all undone
Such that you were, and are, above it and your better is to come.

With fettered limbs hung in temperance honesty quiets all our words
But fat lenses prove to damper calls of flighty, wing-clipped birds
And this worry be it useless, and this rusted, worthless frame
No cut true, for us be liars and our shared fear nought but shame.

O’ your sister; that I am. Cemented here, unmoved. Benumbed.
Remembering that happiness so surely spanned, crested love’s drum
All of your smile and dark-framed face, we missed you so, though time passed clean
For when I saw all fate become, as easy task to fit between.

Untitled [03.11.14]

You test me with malice ‘gainst the rough anchored ground
To surrender me to knees believing I am unbound
By the words that defile, by quick stabs to my chest
But it’s such turning change for I know you have messed,




What you’d thought was pure eat, steady hand touch my lung
Push the skin back to open. Let bee in, and be stung.
All your wars won’t be won and your tests I can’t pass
What was said shan’t be un’, not with my face through the glass.




And those keys you’d give me, though use gone: pointed loss
Doors I see up, down, far. Pined need cold; what the cost?
Money, gold, silver, blood. You’ll take pulse upon pound
‘Till you’ve sated the black want and I end, trapped; turned ‘round.




Drained but still to the hilt, longing stale. Envious.
Eyes so glassy, pushed, pressed you. Feel me now, insidious
Though that moon looms above, past is done, find this middle
I’ve come just to seek you, meet the source of cruel ripple.

Lady Fingers Shot Me Down

literally written by candlelight, the night before my last day perhaps


A crack of doom
and endless wasted
wait, for moon
My will protested

Fell down these steps
eyes blind fumbling
Tripped catch cut next
was torn from limb

A goat you need
I'm here, I'll sing
Blood mess will breed
Staunch bottom King

Still time beat breathe
Hands trussed in penance
Grin bare beneath
burnt ashy remnants

Sting of the whip
brash green sin's token
Warm crimson lines
Payment unspoken

Example made
on hands and knees
Shines silver blade
Hot shame, beg please

Hand pressed to jaw
contempt runs rife
They scream, rut, claw
put end to life

Such burning blame
with want for hold
Push, yield, play games
Your shape to mould

Ruined and stripped
Sleep take such mind
Wings caught, held, clipped
This; you designed.

Twofold

an exercise in cutting the fat on a poem that i wrote tonight. funnily enough i think it turned out better than the original, so here’s the skinny one:


Twofold



Knowledge of a bad idea.
Above, dark, storming.
Not the lucky ones
Cursed and wicked.

Pushed along
Can’t see
Down a hole
Rabbit in a fox-suit.

Don’t absolve my sins
For what are yours?
So wrong
I knew it was.

Sordid temptation.
We both falter.
Edging the truth
And we’re not forgiven.

Admit it, undignified.
Though I can’t
It’s indiscretion’s pull
A siren calling

I wanted and it was criminal
Indecent
Imagined, nothing more
So I hold

Needful force
Fire against my hand
Space; you deny
I’ll lose

Pointless yawning berth
And threatening dreams
My undoing
I blame you.

Distemper

My heart, powered by batteries,
Cold and plastic-hard
It doesn’t beat or make a sound.
Let me go now to where I desire.
To where I long for. For

My lungs, enlarged; infected,
They lift me up and help me float
Far from my troubles, chest up. Back to the earth
And back around again, back
To where I never slept.

My skin, dotted with steel meteor impacts.
Sink holes, raised scars
That will sit with me forever, in the light and the shade.
Broken veins and pink-hot cannula damage.
My baby who doesn’t breathe.

Who never did.

Untitled [24.09.14]

Sit in the corner of the lot
Give up,
Time stops not for you

Get lit and make promises
Bear down,
Reality won’t bend to your hustle

Love strangers against the dark
Make me,
Taking can’t be undone

Push poison through your blood
Feel it,
The broken things remain

Make a cut and open it wide
Watch me,
I’ll never die for you

Take my cracked soul
Do it,
This isn’t everlasting

She was The End

On that last day she didn’t get out of her button-through or her slacks.
Coming across the threshold of the door her feet stayed in her shoes and the
Worn grey nightshirt in the drawer stayed where it lay. There was a feeling of clarity
That pulled with more force than the need to escape and be far from this place.

Instead it was the temptation to sink down and to suffocate and to writhe underneath the shadows.
To allow it all to fold in on her and let the indignity have way. To give in.
They came quickly, those flickering beasts in the fading light, they didn’t offer warning,
Though she hadn’t hated them for that; they were much too glassy to be held accountable.

The hardest day in September had started with sweet peas on the morning air.
In the final moments, she saw her own hands in front of her, concern and entanglement drifting up from her finger tips.
It disappeared before her eyes as if nothing had ever really been concrete or anchoring or true.
It was the enviable weightlessness of release.

Water in her lungs but no snares caught on her heart. She was free; a fish in the stream.
There was no beat of her heart.
There was no hitch in her breath.
There was no more anything.

She met her creator.

This Uselessness

And be it true that no man is an island,
for out here, perched on the ocean sheets
I see no land or refuge
Empty vessel, for
My crew are long dead
Rations gone, in tow with sanity.

This is my envy -
Belly round and cheeks flushed
Her small hands spread out and protect, but I,
So far from her, feel
Too close to the edge, I would be broken with a single word
I’m already somewhere else.

Usefulness evades me, I dissolve into the grey sky
Splintered, adrift.
Skin and hair caked in salt
A future, thrown to the wind
And with a force into my sails there is nothing that can be done to salvage
What will surely be wreckage, soon enough.

Empty vessel
That I once thought occupied with life itself;
With the fire to give and engender, so foolish
Now creaking and cracked open
It will sink to the seabed to become a slumbering aquarium
Dotted with puncture marks.

Barren, even for all this water
Cold, but that is to be expected
I curl against an internal tundra.
Give me a line of sight to safe passage
And maybe I could forget that I am fruitless.
Could I possibly put stop to this death march?

Though the swaying does not cease
Accepted, as if it were the law of the sea
Gulls circle above, knowing things that I try to pretend aren’t truths
Shall something more come for me when I am finally
hollowed out and rotting
Vultures or hawks, or The Devil Himself?

As the course of this voyage changes;
As my fate is is left to the sea
I do not fall upon the rocks, but instead
am pulled under, out in the great depth
Insides filling with the inevitable.
Features swollen and preserved.

My vessel;
empty.

I'll Pick Your Bones

At the start, I only ever wanted a sliver
of you, of yourself; your flesh.
It was innocent enough and I believed it to be so.

I wanted a little more, then. Hoped it would satisfy.
But I was wrong.
O, far more so than I should ever admit.

My stomach, tight with want, I took a step over the line.
There wasn’t any going back
after that.

I pushed and you failed to fight, so I pushed some more.
Fevered momentum threatened
to ruin it all.

A hunger that I had failed to notice before, this hunger,
he took both hands and placed them tight against my wrists.
I did things I thought impossible.

Then I pushed more. Harder.
Until I could feel that there was very little
left of you.

I could stop the want, no longer.
Nor the force with which I had resigned myself to taking.
Pilfering all of it without apology.

But by that point you were too far gone to notice,
as I pulled back your skin to see inside.
Searching to find what I ached for.

Cutting away at the sinew.
You could have screamed, though I was deaf
with determination.

I saw my need before me, manifested.
And I thought
of nothing else.

Layer after layer of your worldly, organic self
fell down to my feet.
And here we are, now.

I push my fingers into your old wounds.
I rip them open, search for truths; answers.
For God.

Your pain is nothing to me.
I convince myself that it sets you
free.

I grab hold, struggle to retract another portion of reality.
You wince as I tear shreds from that
which is yours.

It’s almost over.
I pick your bones.
And you let me.

Frank

“Frank” the voice crackles, garbled with static over the loudspeaker.
Everyone on the floor looks up from what they’re doing.

“Frank! I need you in my office.

Now Frank.”

Eyes roll sideways in heads towards Frank. Brows raise, looks are exchanged.

Frank scratches his one-o’clock-in-the-morning chin-shadow and sighs his usual sigh. He’s only two hours into his shift and his feet are already aching from the cold seeping up through his shoe-soles.

Giving a nod to the 2IC floor-supervisor over at the main desk, Frank surrenders his clipboard and gloves to the pallet of boxes and heads back towards the shed office. Dozens of eyeballs follow him. He pulls his standard-issue beanie further down and tramps his trail to the back office door.

He feels the heat of being watched like a thousand tiny matches against his cheeks and neck.

Pushing through the door with his shoulder, his hands making fists inside his jacket pockets, Frank hovers in the hall for a moment.

That quiet place between pick floor and office is sacred. A sanctuary of sorts.

But not quite...

The walls are covered in expensive printed wallpaper. The pictures are that of The Man and His Sons. Wealth, yes, before it was grand, but wealth nonetheless. Black and white, Sepia. Grainy, pixelated photos blown out of proportion and clarity.

Frank shivers. He wishes he’d worn his thick socks, but he washed them last night and the drying machine in the basement was broken. He pictures them now, hanging on the head of his bed, those three-fucking-dollar socks that he stole from Dimmeys.

His hand on the door knob, Frank pauses a moment. Breathes in. Breathes out.

The office is warm, hot, more than comfortable. Cal is sitting in his swivelly-rich-person chair behind the clean desk, hands clasped calmly over his crossed legs. Cal smiles.

As he enters, Frank makes a sudden synthetic smile, mimicry. It’s muscle memory at this point, yet he tastes bile at the back of his throat. He coughs, stops, drags up the smile from where he dropped it.

“Take a seat Frank.” Cal says to him.

“I, I don’t think so. I’m….a bit tired.” The flourescent flickers above them.

“You see, this is the problem Frank. A tired worker makes mistakes. And mistakes are something I really can’t…tolerate.” Cal cocks his head to the side on that last word.

Tolerate. Tol. ER. Rate. One of Cal’s favourite words of late.

There are client gifts all over the office. Flowers, chocolates, tickets to some game of some sport. Probably box seats, whatever the fuck they are.

Frank doesn’t watch sport. Frank goes home and drinks, and sleeps. You don’t need electricity or heating to drink. And once you’re drunk, you don’t need electricity or heating to sleep. A perfect circle, as it were.

“Are you listening to me Frank?”

The heat is making him sweat now, this office is too hot, too stuffy. Cal is perfectly still and looks questioningly, if not condescendingly at him. Cal is wearing a too-tight checkered button-through tucked into a belt and snug fitting jeans. Cal and his teeth are immaculate white lies.

“Frank?”

“Yes,” Frank responds, his eyes pushing up through the thick honey of night-shift.

There’s a little polished brass card holder at the front of Cal’s desk from where a tiny Frank-reflection peers up at him.

“Did you pick and pack the Baltimore order last Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I see you’ve signed your marks here.” Cal’s holds up a piece of shabby paper unnecessarily pointing out that which Frank already knew.

“Yes.” Frank is thinking about the eggs he had for breakfast. Were they off? They weren’t green but the whites were quite runny and he’s feeling a churning in his belly. When did he even buy them? He can’t remember buying eggs for a while now. Maybe last Tuesday…

“Well, unfortunately there’s been a problem.”

Unfortunate for who?

“Baltimore have called me and they’re missing a number of important items. Items that you’ve signed off on.”

Cal has put his horn-rimmed glasses on and is scanning the papers for effect. “Ah,” he says and points to a green highlighted item as if remembering a crossword answer.

“This here,” and he holds the paper up again for Frank to see.

Frank squints and moves slightly forward, eggs churning. “Yes, I had the fresh items double checked by Martin on Friday morning before the cargo left and I confirmed the quantities with Baltimore. I also came back to this pick just before the transport arrived and recounted everything. See, I’ve marked RC next to that line.”

Cal purses his lips and turns the paper back around. “Hmmmm,” he says.

Frank looks out the office window onto the floor. Everyone’s back to work, but they’re stealing glances at him inside the interrogation room. Mumbling to each other, placing bets and spreading rumours. He can’t blame them, there’s not much else to do except work.

“Yes, well, as I said you’ve signed and so responsibility must lie with you.” Cal has this conversation predetermined and as he crosses his arms and eyes Frank, the air around them snaps sharp like a belt between two hands.

“Would you mind if I just grab some of my other documents regarding this pick?” asks Frank.

“Of course.” Cal smiles. He stinks of rich-boy confidence.

***

Frank leaves the office and walks calmly through the foyer to the back room where the boys all leave their personal shit during the day. The keys to his locker are on the stretch cord around his neck. Socks, Cons, gumboots litter the floor.

It smells of piss and man-stink and hopelessness. At least, what Frank thinks hopelessness would smell like. Probably a combination of desperation and yesterday’s pizza.

Frank grabs what he needs and heads back through the foyer. The receptionist notices him this time and smiles. Her name is something floral but he can’t remember exactly what, so he smiles back and feels some strange kind of peace without meaning to. She says Hi.

She’s wearing a brown silk buttoned blouse and large-lens nerdy glasses. She’s really, very pretty. She doesn’t notice the 12 gauge Benelli M4 in his hand, it’s 18.5’ barrel dragging quietly along the carpet.

Lies a Wolf Hound Under My Bed

Lies a wolf hound under my bed. I can hear his breath in the darkness and when I close my eyes to sleep I can feel the quickening beat of his heart. Pinned down by the night I have no choice but to stay and sleep through it, though my dreams are frantic and fearful. I wake many times and feel him there, waiting for something. I know he won't tell me what he wants.

By morning he is gone, leaving me with his heat like disease. Hungry, thirsty, needing. It is all at once and I pray it will stop. I dress and sit to work but I can't ignore the lack that I feel in my stomach. Coffee. Toast. I think I am sated but I realise I'm wrong. Distracted, I daydream of the ripping open of flesh and the splashing of hot, sticky blood.

Lunch time passes by and I relax when no one comes to see me. I look in the refrigerator but there are only condiments and empty milk bottles. Working again, I notice my hands are shaking. The strongest feeling I've ever had comes over me, as if I could smash through the wall and come out the other side uninjured. I want to do it. I don't though, because that is insane. Isn't it?

The day is over but I feel more awake than before. In the mirror I see my own eyes, wild and black. They used to be grey. Maybe it's the daylight fading away. I am unready for what is to come. An impetus, to run. To pursue and gorge. A heart in my hands, it's not my own and it still beats warm and wet between my fingers. Do I hear myself howl?

Lies a wolf hound in my bed.

Choir Invisible

Angels came to my door last night.
Unannounced and brimming with need.
They woke me from slumber, banging against the big oak door.
Knowing my name, I let them in,
but they wanted to take more than I was willing to give. More than I ever had.

Angels stripped me bare and left me cold.
I kept telling myself that they didn't mean to,
but as my memory solidified, I saw them opening up my heart as far as it would go
and ceasing to stop.
Down the middle, I was ripped.

Angels considered their own perfection and punished me my mortality.
At least, that's what they did last night as they crowded my bed
and consumed the remnants of my soul. As they
devoured the last pieces that I couldn't hide from them.
A shadow was all that they left in their wake.

Angels came to my door last night.
Unannounced and brimming with need.
I started to believe that this was what I wanted. But in the end
my heart was small and the meat was scant. It didn't sate them. I was unworthy.
I am unworthy. Of Angels.

But they came to my door last night.


This is for the shitty day that I've had, and the claws that I felt across my face. May today never be repeated.

My Left Hand

In the night, when the black has set up shop,
and the mist is thin across the far off fields,
I feel a worry.

A certain loss of control, a flurry of concern.
Like slick oil underfoot that threatens
to undo the purchase that I've gained in the day.

Pressure building behind me
and then a bloom of far too much.

Consumed, I am knocked to the ground,
overcome by that which I always anticipated,
feared,
but imagined would never manifest. Lies. Untruths.
It was all pretend.

None of it could ever touch me,
as long as it was in my head and not in myself.

My left hand, it wants to touch things.
It wants.
It wants to take and hurt and ruin.

My left hand throbs;
full of blood and twitching.
All those impure thoughts,
and unclean feelings.

Bottled into a single appendage.

Well, it makes for a numbing proposition. Cut it off.
But I might just bleed out.

My left hand.
It haunts me.