Everyday is the end of February

And I am still waiting for spring.

I still wait for my phone to ring

Waiting for the solace your sweet voice brings.

Flowers still bloom, tides change with the moon

And spring is always a sleep away,

Wake me at the month’s end.

I see you not as dead, but simply not here.

This February has lasted too many fucking years.

I spent years in the garden

Trying to grow life from a graveyard

But you walk out of stony fields changed

Like you left part of yourself in that box,

A grave twelve feet deep

Buried myself beneath

Is this soil or concrete?

I try cook, but I cook with meat

My hands made for the kill

My love for you is not money

But I payed my bills.

After a while grief has a way

Of making the world stand still

So every day is February,

This love money at a cost

My house is not haunted

But I wish it was.

Years wasted waiting for a call

Took your pictures off the wall

The one thousandth day of the month I see

Everyday is the end of February.

I hope Death held your hand on the way out,

I hope the end was beautiful, and quick.

I hope, when you crossed the river from now to next time, you smiled

And if you never wish to return,

I cannot say I blame you,

Because since you left

Everyday is the end of February.

Queen of the Weekend

You ask me how I’m feeling and I turn bright blue

Blue in his eyes, summer sky, white stained thighs at the thought of you.

Haven’t been sober since October, how am I? Or who am I?

Queen of the weekend, sunsets quiet violet

Never knew a high life could feel so violent.

Little sins, let the room spin

But who am I?

Kiss him quick, run to be sick

I should know better than this

And if this is the high life, there must be something better than this.

Queen of the weekend, sunsets quiet violet

Never knew love could feel so violent.

I swear, I’ll never drink again.

Trade my dope for hope

I’ll never smoke again,

A smoked mirror of a hollow friend

House of mirrors with no end.

I am the queen of the weekend

Yet I never want to drink again

Queen of the weekend,

But not a friend.

City in an Ash Tray

I take my pen from the ash tray,

And my lipstick from between my lover’s teeth,

And I write of people walking barefoot

Getting glass in their feet

And I swear, somewhere,

People make love in the street.

Fall in love with a people

With names you don’t know

Students don’t make it rain

We make it glow.

Gentle embers

Fuck with gender

We feel fucking rich

Although we are lenders.

Learning how to fly and then

Using rent money to try and get high again

Learning how to dye a friend

The same colour as as her eyes.

Yes, blood is thicker than wine,

But all my friends are vampires.

If your family do not respect your pronouns,

Then do not respect your family.

That is what my chosen family says

We start our libations when the day

Turns grey

And we let the rich kids in

But we never let them stay.

Give the youth new names

Set the city aflame,

My name is Laila,

A lioness mane.

Every night we got hurt

But still we never learnt.

Every night we dance

In a city that we burnt

If You Are a Man

 

It is my metal that makes me a man

But my mind that makes me

A girl. And in the palm of a

Tender hand I can hold the world

As if it were small, like a pearl.

 

You cannot imagine the forms

I will take up, God is a drag queen

I do her fucking makeup

And in my mouth I have secrets

That can shake up what you think

You know about men.

If you are one man, I am ten.

 

It is in the metal of a word

That gives me a name but

My mind and my manhood are

Hardly the same. If you are one man

I am ten, I am not flesh

But a perfume blend.

 

If humanity comes in twos

Then humanity is not what I chose,

I would rather be purple

Than red and blue

If my gender is broken

Then hold your glue.

 

If you are one man

I am two, you would not believe

The things I can do.

I will wear the crown and tiara too.

 

If you are one man

I am eight but the world only wants

Men when they’re straight.

I am not a man and I need no help.

I need not the world if I love myself.

A Joke

Do you hear that?
The sound of pearl necklaces hitting the floor;
The showgirls don’t make it to the shows anymore.
I was at a party in my hometown
And I heard a straight boy make a joke,
It went like this:

“What does Pennywise have in common with Trannies?
They’re both called ‘It’.”

Poor humour and ignorance
Spilled out of cigarette smoke in their laughs,
The trans kid at the party went quiet,
And I decided to write my own:

What do trans people have in common with dogs?
They both die in their teens.
238 trans people walk into a room in 2018
That room is called heaven
They got there early, full of scars, holes, burns and stones
Ripped from bodies they never actually got to own
What’s the funniest thing about a trans person’s funeral?
Nobody is crying.
Do you hear that?
The sound of pearl necklaces hitting the floor
And the showgirls don’t make it to the shows anymore
Drag culture has become a straight girl novelty
But RuPaul didn’t throw the first brick at stonewall
Do you know who did?
Marsha P. Johnson, she was HIV Positive, a woman of colour, a sex worker, a drag queen and a trans woman; we owe her our lives

But people like Trisha Paytas use their body rights for likes
Like a YouTube video about being trans and the truth are anything alike.
Do you hear that?
The sound of pearl necklaces hitting the floor
And the show girls don’t make it to the shows anymore.
This year, a trans woman named Kira was skinned alive and burnt
And Twitter has already forgotten her name
Like a like and a life are anything the same.
Remember their names: where is your humanity?
If you have empathy, just find it
Kira, Dana Martin, Zoe Spears
Did you hear them? TERFs have turned the media quiet
Turn their ashes to eye shadow now is the time to riot

I am real, and I don’t feel like a boy.

But when the news tells you ‘you aren’t real’
You tend to feel like a ghost.
The media puts trans people on roast
And TERFs eat that shit up-
I’ve had enough.
It’s spitting honesty at ignorance, at this point I give up.

I’d go back inside to hide
But my mouth is too small to swallow all of my pride
What’s the funniest thing about being transgender?
You are the joke.
Your pronouns are smoke
People say it and choke
So, the showgirls do coke and blow
They don’t want to make it to the show
They hide at home instead
We only wish we saw them
When all the showgirls are dead.
Trans women are getting shot
Their pearls scatter on the floor
We aren’t making it to our own shows anymore.
Trans bodies have become doors to a cisgender society
But if we don’t lock ourselves in, we’ll never be free.

Do you hear that?
The sounds of trans people losing it all,
These are the sounds I will hear

No more.
Here’s what I think to your fucking jokes.

Call Me Nicotine

When you called me nicotine,

You also called me lung cancer.

You called me lover

But treated me like a private dancer.

Smoke curls around his fingers

Love may be gone, but the smell of it still lingers

In the linings of my sheets;

I bury my feelings deep.

Soft little laugh

But jokes so cruel

You may look like a man

But I’ve never seen one drool.

You escape from me like curls of smoke

I try to kiss you, but I choke.

And when you say that we cannot have this

I turn self-destructive

Swallow fags whole and drink like my liver is endless.

You love me as if I am made of ashes

And as the dust settles with my tears

Atop my eyelashes

You slither like smoke into the air and vanish.

Don’t you smoke anymore?

Don’t tell me I am your regrets

Like putting out your final cigarette

We could have had something

But how quickly you seem to forget!

You loved me and loathed me as if my name was Nicotine

How soon, too soon, how quick you drew sick of me.

We fucked and now I’m fucked up

Like crazy for you, write a poem for you

Kind of fucked up

And I’m screaming at the Shakespeare in my head to just shut up

But he keeps saying

Thou haveth fucked me upeth

I sing you sonnets between your mutters.

Close the shutters until you leave me again;

Until you say I’m just a friend.

You are a cigarette my love,

Bad for my heart and never quite lasting long enough.

You are just like a cigarette my love.

How strange, I have fallen in love without love.

But I have kissed enough burns to learn

That I must stop when it starts to hurt.

To Be in Love

I could move mountains with my fingers,
Fill the oceans with my tears,
Know all there is to know
And banish all my fears.
I could be a queen with diamonds in my hair
But to be in love, and loved in return:
Nothing can compare.

I Am

I am not flesh and blood.
I am fire and gold
Secrets untold
I am a house without doors
I am more than God bargained for.
I am damage and bruises
Pop music and blues
I have been used, but I hate users
I love men but they all end up abusers.

I am more than a boy in a dress,
I am more than a boy who got hurt and depressed
I am survivor, or victim, and some days
I am both.
Some days, I am death
But others I am hope.

I am fire and gold
Secrets untold
I am burnt love letters
I am love turned cold.
I am a broken heart
With love spilling from the seams
I am a dead boy
With a million dreams.

I am Luke,
I am also Electra In Love.
I am non binary, and gay,
But also blessed by God above.
I am a journey,
My body is my home,
My childhood was taken,
So God told me to grow.

Loving Love

One day,
You will be
The best thing
That happened to somebody.

A Rare Kind of Man

But if you really love me for who I am then here:
Take me by the hand.
And if you hold me and do not to hurt me
Then you are the only kind man.
A rare kind of man,
Gold gushes from the floor
Onto our feet where we stand
And my world is brighter knowing
I can be loved for who I am.

Finding

We drove out of that town
Where the world fell down.
The sunlight, new and blinding:
It’s a new life I’m finding.

A Day Away from Strawberry Fields

Some days,
I’d wake up
And that was enough
To feel defeated.

Some days,
I’d wake up,
And feel the strawberry fields
On my wrists.
I am a scar left by a kiss.

Some days,
I’d wake up,
And I’d fall back to sleep.
Because you still live in my day dreams-
Life is easier when I don’t think about what you did
But some days it’s all I do.

Some nights
I’d wake up
In cold sweats of post trauma
I think of you more than I ought to.
Thorns still grow out of my skin
These seeds grow from within;
My garden is yours.
I am a haunted house without walls,
Hell itself reached deep inside of me,
Beneath the fields are flames,
Burning the walls of my sanity.

Some nights I can still taste
Your metallic tongue,
Ours over and under
An iron snake in my throat
You were the lightening and the thunder
And I found an iron blade
And ripped myself asunder.
These stawberry fields
Just won’t seem heal-
From this cat of nine tails
Are scars on my back
You are the reason the sky turned black.

The other day I nearly didn’t wake up.
The day after, I wished I hadn’t.

Yesterday,
I woke up.
And I felt
Safe. From you,
But also from myself-
Like I knew the worst was behind me.

Today,
I woke up
And I thought about
Not thinking about not thinking about you
Today I woke up
And the sky was blue.

Tomorrow I will wake up
And shower for the first time in weeks.
Wash from my hair these sorrows
Life’s too quick and my time is borrowed.

I will leave the house
And not be scared of seeing you
I’m thankful I’m a graveyard
And the ghost I made of you
I’m thankful I worked through my pain
And I didn’t become you.
And I’m thankful for every day I am given,
Both the easy and hard ones I’m living
And I’m thankful I live them without you.

You are in strawberry fields,
Trapped in your tomorrows
You choked on your pain
And drowned in your sorrows.
I am more than the corpses you buried in me,
And I am more than a victim who sets himself free
By forcing his sadness into somebody.
I saw myself through
What you tried to do
And I have outgrown you.

Heal, they tell me.
But they are asking me to make
Medicine out of madness.
Heal, they tell me.
I have no choice.
Once you told me to be silent
But now I have a voice.
I have to do it,
Face the world and walk through it
The strength of an army in my spine
I am taking back my life.
You took my world with you,
So I made one anew.

And I am more than clusters scars
Over sharing with strangers
And crying in bars
I am broken, and beautiful.
All the best poets are fucked up
And dying made me realise I’m good enough.
I will not blame myself
For the shit that I’ve seen
For what you did to me
I will trust desire and run free
And know what it means
To be young and happy.
I will not think of love and feel sick
I will kiss strangers
And suck a thousand fucking dicks

And when I do
I won’t think of you.
And when I do
I won’t think of you.
Memories are pending in this pain
And one day I will forget your name.
I am thankful that I love
Who I have become;
I am beautiful. Yes, I am beautiful
And I am strong and worthy.
I will be loved, and know how happiness feels.
I promise you,
I will walk of out these strawberry fields.

Beyond All Reason

I love you beyond all reason,
Commit to myself a spiritual treason
Split my heart in half
And give back these sad seasons.
I love you beyond all reason.

I have not a mind,
Only two hearts,
You ask me to slow down
But I can’t.
My hearts are engines with no point to end
And I will never be able to love you as a friend.

You ask me to love you
Within reason
But you’ve never understood
You are asking for something
I never could.
Loving you like this doesn’t feel good,
But I do, I do,
And why I do
I don’t know.
I was a soul without a home,
When you kiss me goodbye
I have nowhere to go.

I long for you,
My heart a heathen,
When you are gone
The world lacks cohesion.
I love you- beyond all reason.

To French Kiss a Facist

We’re shooting angels from the sky
With bows and arrows on fire
This sexual sadism seldom does tire,
I show you their blood on my hands and you kiss me.

The first time we kissed
You wrapped a grenade up in tape
And told me to swallow,
I do, it detonates.
Smoke reaches from my mouth as an
I love you
And as I tell you this
You kiss me.

You’re kissing me down there
But my mouth is up here
Listen to me, won’t you?
My words could find diamonds
But you pull molten gold from between my thighs
Take from me these pathetic wet gifts.

You and your fuckung quiet,
The air between our lips
Eats you alive
And you point at me;
As if the blame is mine.
We’re shooting angels from the sky
With bows and arrows on fire
This sexual sadism seldom does tire
The remnants of my childhood fsr past expired
It is a melted pool on the ground.
You pull molten gold from my thighs
And make yourself a crown.

You break my heart in two
And leave me,
As if I don’t give enough to you.
Look at me, look at me,
I’ve been dying over you.
Trying to for you
Listening for you,
The music goes quiet:
Every word you say is a song
But the opera finishes.

And in that bed where we lie
Every kiss hides a lie
I ask you to keep me grounded
And you turn my face to the sky
And show me angels on fire.
Now, look at all remains,

You and your Achilles mane.
Faggots are drawn to fascists
With passionate flames
As lovers play losing games,
Never sun, always rain,
Now look at all remains
A conquered body,
A ball and chain,
Teeth marks on my skin
Like a tattoo of your name
I brush my fingers over them
And think of you, and the pain.

Now look at all remains,
Your face vacant and plain
As you lean in to kiss me.
We are broken and moonlit,
Every word you say is a song
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
And hasn’t everything I’ve done
Been for you?