foreword: This booklet was created in 2019 as a goodbye to a lot of feelings. It was supposed to collect some of my old poetry from as far back as 2011, but I ended up revisiting and improving a lot of it, writing many completely new poems, and integrating my photographs as well as other pieces of visual media. Moving forward, I will be a different person, but this is what remains of the past.
Please be aware that a lot of themes visited all throughout may be uncomfortable for certain people.
download for free at palaceofnero.com
NOTE: This is an HTML text-only version of a booklet.
The booklet is the recommended way to read these poems.
Fragments, Tender Fear, Untouchable Earth, infinity boundary, IMWEARING RED, Break, ego, wires, Mist, Touch, To Vanish, The Dread, Sprawl, Simulacra, Election Day, heroin, father, Moonlight, cola, Nightwalk, December Streets, Photographer from Pyongyang, The Party, Moon Haiku (i-v, x), insect, like an old dog, Secret of the Wild, Still Here, Mirror, closet, Be Beautiful, whirl, Coffee, You
Daylight crept in unwarranted;
we had danced the entire night.
You were just like a dream to me;
you were something unique.
Bright-eyed, blue-eyed, in drunken haze:
I put out my hand and I only felt the air.
And you became just a dream to me;
you were something unreal.
Thudding in my head killed the clouds,
and hastily, easily, I soon forgot you.
Yet you weren't really a dream;
you were just the dream I had.
Outside, in silent joy, we embrace one another.
Tenderly, you hold me close to your chest, hand over hand,
and our heartbeats manage to drown out the ocean waves.
A moment, the most delicate thing that exists-
I thought I would lose you, and I worry I might still.
Your handsome face alive even in the low light.
And I'm noticing that something has changed
just from the look that you're giving me.
I was thrilled before you even said those words.
And if I bared my soul to you, would it all change again?
My trembling body relaxes itself against yours.
Your smile, like an inferno, burns its way through me
and swiftly overcomes the deep chill of the night.
All of my convoluted defences come crashing down.
Just for this fragile moment, everything will be okay.
alone
i am always alone
and that's just how it is
in the house filled with perpetual strangers and drunks,
the arms of a lover at night, drifting quickly to sleep,
the gap - between a joke and a smile
alone
i have always been alone
and you wouldn't relate
in the school full of brutes, where i never belonged,
the vapid sigh of a university life lived quietly, privately,
the digital data feigning soft affectionv
alone
i will always be alonev
and i radiate the feeling from within
in the things that i do as well as the things that i don't,
the self- harm inflicted with a glance at the mirror,
the lifelong prison sentence of mental turbulence
scared
i don't want to be scared
and it just gets worse and worse
in the important phone calls that i can't make,
the fear of saying hello or goodbye or anything at all
the vastness of an untouchable earth
The distance between our eyes
Is a boundary we can't cross
With wine or talk or sex
There's always
a space
between
u s .
*
Particles never touch,
so we just hover
i n b e t w e e n
and i ' m not sure
i can con nect ,
not anymore.
*
The look that you give me,
says that you don't want to know,
and i don't really want to think,
about the endless nature
of empty
s p a c e .
Biting through my skin
and hoping that inside:
I'll find another person
when the hole in me grows wide.
I climb into the gap
and grip tightly to the wall-
'Maybe they'll be deeper...'
I say, then slip, and fall
I've found a warm place now
but i think i've lost my mind.
i didn't know i was so welcome
who did i even want to find ?
its alright
itsalright
imwearing red
Iwillbreakaway
I willbreakaway
I w ill
will break away from this
I will break away
I wil l bre ak
i've never done anything wrong
i've never done
anything
i've never had anything but time
i've never had
anything
my ego controls the world
my ego
controls
as a kid
i used to think i was a robot
and that if you cut open my arm
like, really deeply
you'd find wires
sometime later-
i got some solid proof that i was wrong
but i felt less human than ever
A swarm in my head
Forces ebbing and growing,
Total disconnect
Touch:
I want it again,
with you, all over me
and me, all over you.
Touch:
Frozen cold feelings
like a thin sheet of ice
across your skin.
Touch:
Hand on your arm,
and it's as though
I can feel the hollow void.
Touch:
We don't
and i break
The shadow at the end of the hallway,
vanished by the rising sun..
The reverb of a piano key,
fading slowly into the corners of an empty room..
I find myself easily likened to that which is there
but
cannot easily be found
.
it waits for you in the pictures on the wall,
and at the back of your wardrobe,
and sitting in your bookshelves.
it waits for you in the phone call you have to pick up,
and it's everywhere else too.
it follows you when you go to work,
and when you show up to school,
and to parties with your friends.
it follows you and your lover into bed each night,
and it's everywhere else too.
it's there whenever you feel visible,
and also whenever you don't,
and whether you expect it or not.
it's there when you try and hide away from the world,
and it's everywhere else too.
too long spent staring out of that window at dead suburban trees on dead suburban streets,
where row upon row of uninspired buildings house family after family of uninspired people,
where sexless boomers lounge in their sofas and stare half-drunk at charmless game shows,
where they stir only to mutter half-remembered answers and then remain motionless for the ads,
where relationships died years ago and only debt is to thank for keeping couples tethered together,
where your pet cat has been missing for two weeks and now you're starting to feel jealous of her,
where you buy cigarettes from a grey faced clerk and hope you're lucky enough to die young,
where you gamble not because the odds are good but because you just need something to hope for,
where inescapable and identical estate agent advertise identical homes with unaffordable rent,
where most of these homes sit empty as the homeless population finds itself ever increasing,
where the landlord still won't get back to you about the black mold creeping across the ceiling,
where people are conditioned to salivate over the chance to be controlled by uncaring vampires,
where you sit in traffic for hours every single day listening to obnoxious cut-and-paste pop music,
where it's normal to give half your day to painfully mindless mechanical action just for minimum wage,
where what you do serves no real purpose beyond lining the pockets of people you've never met,
where the idea of selling your body starts to turn into the fantasy of finally having some control,
where being unceremoniously replaced with a robot is a matter of 'when' and not 'if',
where that technology has to worry you rather than make you excited for mankind's future,
where promises of opportunity and success have started to become distant childhood memories,
where passion projects remain untouched for months as they drown in the sea of your lethargy,
where being treated as a genius in school ended up doing nothing for you except fuck you up,
where being treated like an idiot in school ended up doing nothing for you except fuck you up,
where it's as rare as rainbow that anyone had parents who weren't abusive and alcoholic,
where they overlook the decaying socio-economic landscape to blame you for your own sadness,
where they say you should just pull yourself together and give up on thinking that anything can change,
where you go to parties just to have an excuse to get blackout drunk and stop thinking for once,
where people wear overpriced clothes that they don't even like just for an imagined prestige,
where people spend entire days on messaging apps and still fail to make any real connections,
where you go out on dates with people who you don't even like just for fresh air and free meals,
where people forget to ever get to know each other just out of desperation to for once have feelings,
where you have to wonder each time if you're seen as a person or as a collection of commodified labels,
where surprisingly few will hesitate for long between saying "I love you" and robbing you blind,
where you realise it has become very easy to mistake possessiveness for genuine affection,
where you talk about politics for the escapism more than you do it out of expecting any real change,
where you go to protests which wouldn't make a difference even if they miraculously succeeded,
where you're blamed for setting the world on fire by the very people who set the world on fire,
where your taxes fund illegal wars which nobody even cares about the real purpose of anymore,
where we sell weapons to genocidal regimes while pretending we didn't know they'd use them,
where an army of power-tripping, wife-beating cops are now more likely to rob you than any burglar is,
where this is what you're told repeatedly that all of this is just the best system that we have right now,
where you take walks after dark through your drab labyrinth just to feel the cold air on your skin,
where even the pavement beneath your feet is harsh and cracked and dangerous to walk on,
where it's so hard for you to feel anything anymore that even tears become something to wish for,
this is not living.
we lose the real to what is realer than the real
and to pictures and stories which are more vivid to feel
to identities invented for purchase and consumption
and thin air with prestige value as a basic assumption
we watched the invention of Iraq in a news broadcast
where constructed images will the noumenal outlast
and lounged in Greece thinking it was a billboard ad
using songs and poems to teach us how to be sad
and when we make out it's like we're on a TV show
so we start to embody characters that the other knows
and wait for a Summer that existed in a magazine spread
and an american dream that can happen only in your head
Bleeding gums, chewing on glass
Just like politics
You eat what you have to
Suck it up
Bleed out
Got to be like Heroin:
She hits FAST, lasts FOREVER...
fucks you up.
And she says I want you to be like Heroin:
You BITE, she MOANS...
and she cries.
Vanish into pleasure, vanish into hurt,
can't get away from the vein --
And we want more.
crack of thunder
meandering through a storm,
breath stained by vodka
recklessly, angrily, cursing,
i really wish you hadn't come here
don't even remember you sober.
pools of piss and blood,
maybe saved your life,
'stupid fucking child',
tempted to agree
There are emotions that I have only ever known
at three or four in the morning.
These are feelings that fade away quickly
as the new day is dawning.
And so I will admit that I might be prone
to growing a little bit sickly.
But I will happily stay awake through a quiet night
as the lonely prisoner of its moonlight.
nursing a cola
i notice after drinking
six blugs in my glass
black sky on black steel,
a car waits alone for nobody
at ominous lights
blasting crimson across puddles
which grant insight into a distorted mirror world
of the empty storefronts and dim row houses
holding rainbow signs which advertise nothing and to no one,
and the bus stop notice, buzzing strangely,
with a garbled string of alien characters in place of a schedule,
as though haunted by an electronic ghost
that makes even the wind scream in terror
and the clouds cry and disappear
but here-
the darkness clears your mind.
The stars of the open sky: matched tonight by man's electric fortresses.
They live and die in battle, as towering showcases of the holiday festivities.
A stranger approaches me suddenly - filthy, toothless, and without a home.
He grabs me with both arms and we wish each other fortune with wide smiles.
Then I stumble on -- through the black, jolly streets of Christmas Eve,
and I am humming holy carols about some old stable or another.
Photographer from Pyongyang, his cigarette half-gone,
lifted his heavy camera again.
His body thin, but his arms still strong,
he just did his job and then--
He lit another one.
And he smoked than enough,
but then, so did everyone else he knew.
He had a lot to get done,
shooting the same old stuff
for every tourist group who passed through.
Photographer from Pyongyang, he'd been everywhere before,
everywhere he had been permitted to go.
He sat and gazed out beyond the shore,
it was boring work and so--
He lit another one.
He liked seeing the new faces,
but he could only ever tell them so much.
And then came the setting sun,
with its light heading for far away places
that his camera could only dream to touch.
The photographer from Pyongyang, he sat alone,
lost in thoughts that are beyond my pen.
His body tired, all skin and bone,
he made a decision and then--
He lit another one.
You're singing along to anybody's tune.
You don't really know the words.
You just need to fit in.
You're dancing furiously.
You're overwhelmingly drunk.
You got yourself into this.
You needed it to get going.
You need to give it purpose.
You hear the chorus begin:
Your time to shine!
You needed this.
You sing louder.
You jump higher.
You burn up more inside.
But I know they're getting the lyrics wrong too.
i- through all the insults,
the whole world meant less to me
than seeing your smile
ii- it's the ones who love you
who come to hurt you the most
we both knew this well
x- a thousand words of fucked up fantasy
is all that came to be
from a hope that raged like a dying star
and destroyed both you and me
iii- those nine troubled years
gave us many broken hearts
and still i miss you
iv- it stings me to think
that we might someday cross paths
and not speak a word
v- we were always doomed
i just hope you don't hate me
and wish you the best
me, an insect
worthless creature
pretended to be more
than i ever really was
so please show me
my place
my love
lock me up
bury me
six feet
six feet
six feet
six feet
six feet
six feet
deep
Delicate voices hidden in the breeze
guide me deeper through a maze of trees.
I lose myself to the path I tread
with no idea of what lies ahead.
Why I came here, it is hard to say;
I woke up at night with an urge to stray.
From the depths of the forest I hear a call,
and at that moment, I trip and fall.
The world rotates around my mind,
and suddenly, it's no longer blind.
I can see the things between the things
and once again, the calling rings.
I tread the path, I know the way,
into the clearing is where devils play.
A lonely chapel on black granite rock,
and to it many strange folk flock.
Intuitively chanting words I do not know,
I am made to dance as the wind blows.
We spin around and we shake our hips,
and the rain pours down to kiss my lips.
Dancing, dancing, kicking up mud!
Frenzied, frenzied, frenzied blood!
Over the church, moon low and red -
nurturing life under the flesh that we shed ..
Coming undone, and undone into more,
emerging as beasts from out of the gore.
We grin, we laugh, we celebrate
for our delightfully disturbing fate.
We frown, we weep, and then despair
for knowing that this was always there.
The rain had long since stopped,
but you wouldn't have thought so.
Eyes closed - I stood below dead branches,
letting cold droplets hit my skin.
It sounded like a downpour,
and I felt life flowing through me.
I didn't die when I took those pills,
but you didn't seem to think so.
Eyes open - I walked to clear my head,
through the fog outside of it.
The world looked so white,
and I felt like I would be fine.
The path ahead was getting clearer,
and I didn't really care what you thought.
One step back - Two now, forward,
over frost-tipped grassy hills.
Everything and everyone,
it was all a little bit more beautiful.
I hated the mirror
because it only showed me
a thing without a future,
a poor imitation of a person,
and cut off from the world.
I hated the mirror
because it only showed me
an ugly brutish creature,
hellspawned freak,
devoid of all beauty.
I hated the mirror
because it only showed me
a wasteland of damage,
acne and scarring,
never to heal.
I still hate the mirror,
because I can never make sense
of what I'm actually looking at,
but I know it's something
which only gets better.
in that closet, leather jackets strewn
with the history of an ex-person
and a melancholy feeling tucked away on a shelf
empty bottles,
glass for alcohol, plastic for pills
a puppet torn apart and stitched back together again
with its heart stapled on,
marks of a romance that one day stopped mattering
toys left homeless,
once loved, now find their place
a handmade wooden box left empty
but for a scrawled name long since unused
in that closet, a crypt for the past,
and the ghost of an ex-person
gone but still here
be beautiful on your own terms:
don't give anything to people who don't care whether you live or die,
be beautiful on your own terms:
when they demand conformity, let them whine, let them wither away, and
be beautiful on your own terms:
forget about bowing your head to flaccid normalcy, living death,
just be beautiful on your own terms:
don't give anything to the anxieties in the back of your head:
you can be beautiful on your own terms:
this life is your life and to compromise is to waste the whole world,
you must be beautiful on your own terms.
bare feet clumsily, swiftly sweeping across grass,
golden light sunset, sky set aflame, burning bright,
cool breeze hits, exhilarates, makes my hair dance,
happy, laughing, running from you, too slow,
grabbed firmly, pulled spinning, tumbling down,
crying out, whirl, frenzy, rush of adrenaline,
suspended in your arms, wholly out of breath,
looking into your eyes, looking into my eyes,
squeezing me hard enough that it hurts,
but lowering me ever so carefully down,
like i'm the most fragile thing in the world,
before shattering me with kisses.
Coffee together:
it smells like comfort,
and warms up my hands.
Your coat blankets my shoulders,
and we're talking a lot
about fantastic things -
with my guts twisted to hell.
Wrap me up in your arms,
like the treasure in your chest:
You are the one who keeps me warm.
Kiss me all over,
from feet to forehead:
You are the one who helps my heart beat.
A day spent with you,
is never a day I've wasted:
You are the one who brightens my life.
Holding your hand,
makes me feel stronger:
You are the one who keeps me safe.
Treat me gently,
and whisper softly:
You are the one who could break my heart.
I'll strive to be enough,
and accept all the risks:
You are the one who I would do anything for.
© Palace of Nero (palaceofnero.com), 2017 - Present.