magnificent scars like red ribbon wires
wrapped around my arms in threads -
a tapestry of pain and pleasure
branded into flesh

ephemeral creations
fated for a day
beauty only you and i can understand
emotions doused in petrol
set alight inside our paperback hearts
chapter after chapter turns to ash

squeeze, crunch, tear and scratch and pull apart, pull me apart into shreds,
destroy me, burn me, erase me, inflict me inflict yourself into me let's outrun our rational minds, taking flight into ocean blue squares and Vincent's starry night.

gouge me again,
remind me i'm still breathing
remind me i'm here
right here
right beside you and nowhere else
if i close my eyes i can still see you,
i can still see us,
my vision's floating out to the heavens like ancient eyes inside a pharaoh's tomb,
Lota's street looks just the same.

dig in and ask me if it's okay because it always is,
bloodletting is a treatment for the ill and i've corrupted myself to the bone and the cinders,
and sometimes it's all so heavy and pointless that it rises up to the surface like a rusty naval mine
distending my entrails
whenever you aren't there

it's an adventure
an unrelenting typhoon
Jupiter and Saturn dissected
into caramel clouds dissolving,
mythic shapes in the fog
falling apart forever

you run your knives through my body and I cry out in excited existence which I don't have to question. and I know the corrosive rocket fuel that's eating out your heart,

I know how it ties your tongue and freezes you apart into smouldering fragments of what used to be a mirror,
I know how there's no other way to express this manic love
but to pull your body taught like piano wire burning out in chemical fire
or write broken lines of almost-poetry

it's a shame you can't tear at my lungs
but the throat is just as good
warm dull pain draining out so soon
my lungs go pop,
like a water balloon,

tiny grains brushing in my veins
scalpels from the future, past,
but not the present.
if you only you were here forever
but then it wouldn't matter,
would it?
we'd turn to dust,
but aren't we burnt already?

close your eyes,
the sun is here to eat us.

* * *

[i wish i could see you]
[one more time]
[but your life will be better]
[without me.]

* * *

No. Enough.
Even if the sky is bleak,
and this chasm -- empty,
I know that you're out there,
and I won't ever give up.

we scattered all our
secrets and our dreams
as crimson threads of yarn,
tangled over midnight Paris
in our forever friendship-love.

the tide comes in,
and the tide comes out,
the threads remain forever.
to a Universe, we are insignificant.
to a Universe, our actions mean nothing.
but what's a Universe to your smile?

without the rhythm of our mortal hearts,
the starry sky means nothing.

* * *

zip-lines, streetlights,
reflected shadows, rain,
the scars are our melodies,
our souls don't feel the pain.

* * *

'we' are the Universe.
it's all Brahman, mun.