Blue Banisters

You can’t have it all
But when I grow up
I’m going to name my kid Heaven
Because I’ll need a little heaven
When all I face is hell

You can’t have it all
But I’ll paint murals and banisters blue
So it’ll make sense that I’m sad when I look at you

Yes I know I can’t have it all
Love:
sweet and real and innocent

I’ll have to look twice at the colours
Of a million lovers who won’t remember my name

But you see I try just like my mother
I dye my eyes in water colours
I coddle my dreams until they’re smothered
I’m canon fodder for the new age lovers

I put on rosemary glasses to cure perception
Of the candid lies and inconceivable deception

That’s life, making a getaway
With my childhood…
That’s life taking me up like a fire on the lips like someone worthwhile to kiss

But even I must die, memento mori
You can’t have it all
Death whispers into the ears of a liar
To the ears of life

-v.

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Meet the universe for me

Darling you are a sacrifice to the universe
Your life is a sacrifice
Like the birth of a star
The cancer streamed through your body
First there was nothing
Then God said let there be light
And you fell that one morning
And the day was black a void of nothingness
A black hole of treatments and regiments
Then God said let us make man in our own image
And you cried when you started losing your hair
The nappy curls replaced with a smooth surface
And you gained and lost weight
I remember holding you big and small
And He said it is very good
I remember how cold you were in my arms
You belonged to the universe and I willed it for more time but you are the sacrifice so you are not mine
You can’t have it all
There were times when I believed I could
Then like Eden you were lost to me
And now I wait for the end
And you die

-v.

Self-portrait

The shape of your love
Is the moon
But my mind is cynical
And the moon is harsh
Against my frail body
I hope to be bolder
I needed music
you gift music to people who are in trouble?
You see I have this mantra
It’s an act of reincarnation
Bad luck good luck
Just as meaningful to me as the sound of war
You gift music to people who are in trouble
I often think of this during bedtime
As I lay under the covers
To fight off the reality that
No one believes in love anymore
Gone is the golden age of the New Romantics
And when the Lord returns will He find any left

-v.

The gods we can touch

I picture myself flying
Out of the intricate womb of the universe
Face to face with God
Face to face with the Solar System

They look and feel the same
Endless and titanic
I’m just a freckle on God’s face

Then there’s Earth mother of all things living
The flowing waters are crystal shards of liquid
But then there’s you
The face of God and Solar System I can hold in my hands
I ate the forbidden fruit from your fingers
Soft like the wings of angels

Maybe you’re not supposed to eat the wings of angels
Maybe you’re not meant to savour the taste of seeing like God
But I did. It felt like the galaxy again
Endless space the clearest focus
I saw my atoms before I saw my skin then my naked body
And the realisation of seeing my body felt like spring everything was open and new functioning and blossoming
The last time I saw the face of God was
After we’d been kicked out of Eden
The next time was when you gave birth
I saw what it meant to be created
I felt again like a freckle on the upturned face of God

-v.

Beautiful crazy

Something in your eyes causes my heart to ache
I see you fighting trying to stay longer
Are you tired can you make the last stretch

I see how difficult it is for you to breathe
I know you’re trying to find it
Even if it’s not today

You look worn and beaten by the world
You’re just waiting to be cut loose
I see the difficulty every time you look up

You can’t be contained you don’t retain warmth
You’re cold you’re so cold
I hold on to you for dear life
Trying to fight a losing battle

Your laboured breaths
Are like a chorus of angels
Waiting to ascend to heaven
But you always assured me:
“I’m not knocking on heaven’s doors yet.”

You’re made of the earth and one day you’ll return
And day by day I see you walking closer
Being lead slowly up heaven’s stairs

-v.

Fallen Fruit

Are you a saint?
Show me how to be one too
Paint me into lilac heaven
Give me the primordial freckles and specks of angels
Are you a saint?
My tears are watermarks in the glistening sun
The halo over my head is marked with love
And the sword of Damocles
Gets closer as I grow older
Words are not my Saviour complex
They just fall like ripe apples out my mouth
Purged as sulphur
Said like a:
SAINT
SAINT
SAINT
A proverbial sinner
A euphoric state of existential vertigo
I’m asked no I’m expected to know
And bubbles grow from the inside
Transcendent hypocrisy spills from my lips
Are you a saint?

-v.

1AM

Lilac heaven
A bed of wildflowers set on fire
They chant Memento mori
As I wake
I couldn’t escape the silver spoon shoved down my throat
Visions from a crystal ball
Say I’ll burn forever never fading never ending
The sweet grapes on the vine
Remind me of how I write you a letter
And how you say you love me like God loves Adam
I cherry pick my days
Because I don’t have to be perfect just good
The magic that floods through my veins
Are the worlds that slip from my lips
And it’s like birth breathing for the first time
I shriek my lungs on fire I breathe it in
All the sorrows of life
My mantra is the same
“I’m a forest fire wild like the colour blue
I’m living on sheer will power so I can see right through you
And I like the other, was born to burn”
There’s a garden on the wall
Made of all my childhood memories
Mother Nature says it’s made for me

-v.

Daughter

It’s your sweet freckles
I love them like God loves Adam
And for once apples are oranges
And cherry blossoms bloom on sycamore trees
Yes love beyond anatomy
Where bodies are casings and souls are true form
Because the storm is in me and the forest fires are in you
Sweet wildflowers bloom within our wake
Your finger prints like a diptych in my body
You are what makes me woman
As you grow little bird
Bird birdy my sweet songbird
I say as I will myself not to run into the crossroad
I see you everywhere on the faces of children
My ghost child
I feel hollow almost empty my sweet daughter
How you love me and how I loathe me
Accidents happen all the time
I say as I’m screaming underwater
But I love you you’re my daughter
Sweet and perfect now underwater
Slipped through my fingers
As I was sleeping
Go quietly as I sleep
And heaven has a perfect songbird
And I am without a bird in my nest

-v.

A virtuous woman

You my love are a garden
And I forbid the rustic foot of a man
To crush you
I lay stretched out on top of you
Collapsed in sunbeams
White picket fence
Blue summer dress
The endless love makers
Laureled by the praise of silence
As you look deeply into my eyes
Searching for the brilliance of the soul
Your hand in mine our breathing in sync
But this is not all there is to a marriage
Marriage is complex and frightening
Revelatory and restrained
You will have to show restraint that is
By human standards impossible
But we derive meaning from nothing
And nothing from meaning
Nothing is sacred only if you care
The duties are laid out before you
Like Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper
All is sacred and yet ostentatious
The virago burnt on the stake

-v.

This is when I get hit by a car

You dream of being the main character of your life
And I was surrounded by the faces of my past and you were surrounded by the future out of your reach
Like a violin concerto
The infinite cracks in the universe births multiverses
When will it be enough to live to die by your side
And still we are not eternal lovers
And time so weak and fragile ended yes it ended with you it ended with me
As allusive as the greatest tragedies
Ours is merely written before it is burned
Like a pregnant woman giving birth to a stillborn
The tragedy precedes the story itself
Born to die as it was

-v.