The one bedroom apartment
With a clock that ticks too loud
The woman who fights her man
At four am
Something breaks as always
Some know and just sleep through
Others wake up a little earlier for work

The cat that can’t get in
Because something is blocking the hatch
It purrs on the doormat
It forgot its been fed

The teenager who left last week
The father who doesn’t care where
A mother who calls him every night
And sends money to him
Puts her own phone on silent mode

The old timer on the first floor
Who waits for the mailman every Friday
Just to exchange a few words
He’s got the best smile and saw the Stones
In 66’

The two lesbians who just moved in
The guy below them who’s only met
One of them
Thinks he’s got a chance with the redhead

The others who rarely are seen
Who live quiet and mundane lives
In between
Me smoking a cigarette like it’s the
worst thing

I’ve been here
Paying rent
Dusting and wiping
Smiling and crying
Forgetting and *******
Forever it seems

On paper
All her characters are men

In person
Her friends drink till two
She knows
They must love her like this
Like a burnt bulb
A firefly and cocktail straw
Her laugh is complimented
Her hair is orange burnt dark and thick

She talks men and breathes the femme
Out with it, shout it from the rooftops
Be free and go with them
The men and the drink and the love
A lonely tear stays behind
For the femme
She has been broken before and will again
The femme is naturale and yet what dies
Is a card not dealt

Eats and sleeps
Hasn’t had a dream in years

Writes his second hand words
on borrowed time
And still

The writer makes it so
he cannot help but fall from grace
Friends and colors go to paint
The mortgage weighs

On a dreary note the writer thinks
I have so much here and yet nothing to give
A turn key life and even clean sheets

I cannot write because I have changed
I cannot write and so I just exist
Spirits high he just repeats

Your significant other is waiting
Maybe she’s the bank clerk who waits
For people to come and go
Or perhaps he is standing by the shore
Shooting stars with finger guns and drinking in the sea

Alone
Or ever born into this madness
Of searching and yearning
Of having love and spilling it on the counter
Of losing and forgiving
Dividing and conquering bodies
We all share with each other

Fingergunning a flock of sparrows
Poisoned by the suns carrot seeds
The sparrows don't give my antics the time of day
Untethered by the sky, which is their home and not mine

The sun still amazes
Newborns and other innocents
Whom have not tired of looking at its rays
Magnetized by the kerosene
Eyes awakened by a force majeure

I was worth more to you
When I was less perfect
When I was still unpolished
Grit between my teeth and telling slapjack stories
The sun still a drawing force of unprecedented power  

I know now that there are more powerful things than a sun
The increasing feeling of losing you
The sadness which chokes my heart
The dread of dying ordinary, just like the rest

Your face, reminding me less and less
Of stars we gazed at
Of pictures we were both in
The laugh which shared a cigarette
A sun to ignite its glow in complete agreement

Love is everyones gossip to be heard in alleyways and bars
A notion of macabre jealousy erupts over my own life
Stillness digs the dirt from under my feet
For I hear the voids instead

The solitude of decisions yet to be made
The shapes and instruments to carve out rain
Are mine alone to keep
It seems I hear voids instead

To be loved is to be forgiven
Forgiveness granted in quiet woods and between brothers and sisters
Familial graves which light the way
I hear the voids
Still

Let the painbirds deliver their chirps
Let the craven feelings own my body
Let the voids drive their spikes into the chosen ones
Not cupids arrows
Not star-spangled promises
Only voids

Shouting down the stream of years
Those which have been
And those which will follow
It seems I'm running out of the latter

Bury them deep.
Forget lies and their other words
Swallow the key.

Their indifference and lack of truth
Even when you loved them
They were cruel.

So **** them, **** the memories
**** even the stupidest ones
**** the glass of water from which they drank.

You’ll never be happy otherwise.
You’ll stay “friends” but they will
love.

Again.

So **** your darlings
**** them dead.
**** the old ones
And the ones you haven’t met.