The Words That Hid His Hands

You spun ink on a page
Like a dancer to the stage
And with each word, I was enthralled.
The love from your lips
Slid from your fingertips
You said “I will give you my all”.

Each sentence woke a dream
To me, it seemed
That that our hearts would fit just right.
But mortal words did not last
And with the autumn past
You left me on a winter night.

I re-read each letter
But I felt no better
I was still in your grip.
Your words so kind
Left me struck blind
But the kindness in them left quick.

Your words became a maze
Your loss set me abalze
How dare you just up and leave?
Then I saw the cruel behind the kind
The words your hands hid behind
And as I read I grieved.

From the page burst your hands,
The ghost of my cruel man
Put his arms around my neck.
And by your black fingertips
The breath left my lips
Your words choked me to death.

Mother of a Criminal

Why does nobody feel sorry
For the mother of a criminal?
She was unaware of the snake
Curled up in her womb
The Christian woman
Wouldn’t harbour a sinner like him, surely?

But the police called her from work,
Told her they need to talk,
To the station she walks with a mother’s fear,
The worst could have happened
And it did
But it’s not what she thinks.

What does she do when they tell her
He raped somebody?
She took the book from her palms
And the psalm from her prayers,
She wishes, in a twist of fate
That he was the victim
But look at that boy
He was hungry for that poet boy,
Of course he loved him to death
There were flames in those eyes
And blood on his hands.

But she never raised a criminal,
His father’s fists just raised clones
He collapsed under the tyranny to which he was prone
She understood. She couldn’t protect her baby
And happy childhood memories
Of her and her angel dropped
Like butterflies in a gas chamber

After his father hit him
He played with knives
He ripped flowers form the ground
He ate cherries and kissed boys
And kissed their cherries
He learnt to sing
And captured boys with his voice
The same hands that played piano
Plucked my ribs like chords
The singer of songs
Read me like sheet music
And with his mouth and hands
Took hold of me like a microphone
And I fell.

Nobody feels sorry for
The mother of the criminal.
Who taught him piano,
Watched him get beat.
She created him,
But when he raped me
Two mothers lost their sons
One gave birth to a corpse
The other a gun
Had she known what he’d become,
She’d have twisted that babies kneck
And snap! Like opening her husbands booze.
I pray for her, she lost her faith with her son,
Took to the bottle like her father
And has the same bruises I do.

Sweet Nothing

Unpick his bones from your teeth
What’s left of him- nothing.
You sucked the marrow from his bones
Like immortality lied within them,
And stole his hands
As if they would help you
On your fame-bent pipe dream.
Without love,
The artist has no hands.

Love was a song
But the music is gone;
A lifeless tune, meaningless lyrics,
The dream is dead
And his hopes in shreds.
The space between
Victim and survivor
Is filled with him
As a therapist pulls trauma from his mouth
Like rope from the ocean
And the artist bleeds onto his page
To find he despises his own work.
Nothing comes of everything he does,
No matter how hard he tries
The artist creates
But it is a sweet nothing.

Forever For You

I would wait forever for you
Even if every second hurts;
But then he’s something else,
Beautiful and brand new
With his eyes bright blue
And his heart dark maroon.
I’m glad he loves you
He’s better fit and smooth,
His arms are built for you
And won’t fall through
At the weight of amazing you,
I’m so happy for you, honey, its true.

Maybe if we were older
You’d see I loved you.
Or if you could stay sober
Just for long enough to,
You’d see the bones I broke
To fix myself for you.
I lived beneath the ocean
And the only light was you
You brought me to the surface
And with my head out of the blue
I was fixed thanks to you!

Because of you I am here
But he’s here too
So although we are through
I am so happy for you.
You deserve the boy
Who is not broken
And the one who would not
Leave these words unspoken.
I often fantasised about saying this to you,
I can’t believe I didn’t tell you
I loved you.

Strawberry Fields

A blade, a bath, a bounty,
Cuts my mother should never get to see.
X marks the spot upon fertile skin
And strawberry fields grow from within.
Red, like rain, down my arms
And the pain like flowers that I finds in my scars.

It’s a shame, really,
I nearly escaped my strawberry fields
The thorns in my throat,
The vines that bind the soul.
But I fell, I was bound to,
And the ground falls through.

I was nearly off my pills,
Five inches from the kill,
I had nearly found peace
But then I fell to pieces.
The ground swallows my head
And all I see is white and red.

A Little Red

She wanders into a fairytale wood,
She could never have known he was there
Until he was on top of her.
He was a wolf, with
Her tongue between his teeth:
He bit and ripped.
Darling, she had never been so speechless
And her blood was just lipstick to him
And her quiet was his favourite song.
She tried to speak;
Bloodied, choking, gargling, and
Pronouncing words with a mouth full,
Spitting blood on the page
Gasping for breath: he had never loved her more.
Red is the colour of the whore
And she was his quiet little slut,
The best thing a girl could be
In a fairytale like this.
So with her tongue in his mouth
He left, and the girl somehow survives.
She walked out the woods with everything.
Everything, but a tongue and a maidenhood.
A silence followed behind her
And her story was never told.

All I See is Flame

The look in his eyes, like a flame,
Burned the air between us
Til it was not there. His eyes
Like daggers in mine, his hand
Against my spine, how could love
Be a crime?

But his eyes had a hunger,
Mine had a temptation
But not the mind to fulfil it.
His eyes skinned me,
He wore me like a designer.
His words were hammers
And fear pinned me down.
It is only when you are afraid of someone,
And you plead to them, that you really
Look in their eyes:

His deep black irises, the ice around it:
Two moons framed by fair skin,
Like phantom with a face.
His eyes were like an opera,
Such elegance, such pain,
How can someone so beautiful
Be so cruel? A brute
In cologne, rich boy face
With a kaiser heart.

A beautiful abuser,
Wealthy yet wicked.
My pleading drowned by
The sound of his temptation.
Yes, his brutal little thoughts,
I knew what they were, hidden in his head
I could see them behind his eyes like flames.

Paper Flowers: Youth, Not Beauty

He held me in his grip
Like a bouquet of flowers
And whispered:

“It is not your beauty,
My love,
But your youth.”

“You are as gentle as this blossom
Falling from a great tree as
The wind spins you like a dancer”

He picked the blossom from the air and put it in my hair
And ran his hand across my face,
“your hairless skin is a petal under my fingers”.

But that cold wind was once a summer breeze;
He blew his gale
And I lost all my leaves.

He took the flower from my hair
And snapped my stem.
If I were still young, would you love me then?

A paper flower is forever young,
He ripped me from my roots
And killed me when he was done.

Sadly I subdued to his power,
And as if they were paper
He burnt all my flowers.

Blood on Your Hands

There’s blood on your hands, darling,
Who did you hurt this time?
Why is it when there’s sirens
They send a shiver down your spine?
A glance at the car
As blue lights run past
Before the sirens are silent
The guilt shadow is cast:
You tremble, like a child in the dark, at lights.

There’s blood on your hands, darling,
Who is it from?
The hymens of young girls
You picked up from the prom?
A past so dark
You fade into night
You tremble still
Though there are no lights;
Why are you shaking, darling?

I fell for a felon
And the void in him
Filled the void with boys
Until his faith went dim.
I couldn’t help my fella
When my fella fell in,
Lost him to that poet boy
Who drove my man to sin.
And you had to have him,
So darling, you did!
Took the heart from his body
And with the guilt you live.

There’s blood on your hands, darling,
Is the blood fresh?
Blood from the poet boy
You loved half to death.
There’s blood on your hands, darling,
It won’t wash away with time.
There’s blood on your hands, darling,
That blood is mine.
If he knew what you did, would he love you still?
Could your lover love a man who was so
Easily driven to kill?

Breaking Silence

A letter to my abuser reads:

Dear you,
I have fallen in love
With the idea of
Being loved,
And you have failed.
The silence is finally breaking
And the hushed voices
Of quiet victims
Are being heard.
Your man and your mother
Believe your lies
And at one point
So did I. But
We are a unit,
We are a nation
And you
Are
Nothing.

Sincerely,
The boy who was quiet for too long.