Chop off their ears

A father clever but cruel

Had many children

He watched his wife give birth

To every single one of them

They entered the world

They opened their eyes

But as their lids rose

They saw their father,

They cried and cried

He was scared for sure

What if they abandoned him

For another father

He knew not love

But he knew control

As they cried and cried

So he did decide

Better all my life

I shall be their guide

Then let them see a world

They might deem better than me

So he cut out their eyes

And they could not see

So they followed him blind

Until the day they learned to speak

And they learnt words

And asked why the world was dark?

And was it the same for everyone?

And so he had others cut out their tongues

Better they think a type of loyalty to me

Then realise the cruelty I decided

Before even memory they could not see

Knew nothing but me

I made them blind

And now my servants

Made sure they never realise

He considered having their ears chopped off

But watched their behaviour

They lived in a prison

But were still loyal to him

Without the senses to understand

They directed their anger toward the servants. 

Speaking to mirrors

Shouts come back as if in an echo chamber

Blinded to the fact we are speaking to mirrors

What we say, the replies we receive 

Mere reflections and copies

All these screams make silence

apathy, indifference

No coercion needed

No words stifled 

No voices stilted 

No word left in minds 'individual' 

No sounds found in crowds digital 

Taught not to speak 

Not cause we can't 

Cause opinion is invisible 

Saying it for the first time

The thing is with some words,
Some sentences, some memory
Avoid the word fact because
You're not certain
The thing is some
Declarations once said,
Said for the first time
Are so heavy,
They make sound become 3-D
They come out and inhabit
They sit in that space in between
Seem to take on a life of their own
Those words, they sit between
They don't look frightened
They look confident
That makes you hate them
Gives you a burst of instant repulsion
Because you seem to have given birth to them
But now you can't relate to them at all
As if they sprung from nothing
They have none of you in them
You squirm under their calm almost accepting gaze

Listen

Can you hear me?
Of you course you can't
You can hear YOU
They're my words though,
Missing something aren't they?
My tone, my accent,
The rise and fall and stresses of sound
You'll make it up - won't you?
Please?
Listen?
It might take a while
A couple of seconds
Minutes
The full read
Your fourth read
(although no idea why you'd read it that many times)
But you'll never get it
RIGHT
What you will get though,
Is a little further from you and
A little closer to me
See it's not all about you
Did that sentence make you uncomfortable?
Is it something you pretend to know?
Or really know?
Or maybe you don't even pretend?
Maybe you just never thought about it?
Or maybe you just don't care?
Anyway maybe it doesn't matter
I just wanted you to listen to me
For just a little while




Did you hear anything?

Eric loved school.

Eric loved school. Of course every kid says that but Eric really really loved school. Every day Eric would get up bang on time and well-prepared and walk to the school. Hardly any one was ever there when he arrived and the teacher was generally asleep. Once about half the class stumbled in late, the teacher might begin to teach. The other children would all stare ahead blankly, mindlessly doodle on their paper or even onto the desk, some of them would get up with the pretense of going to the bathroom and actually have a wander around. The teacher knew this and it was actually encouraged if needed. The other kids always laughed at Eric, every-time the teacher asked him a question whether the answer was right or wrong he would reply immediately, he never paused or stared ahead as if unable to hear. This really annoyed his teacher. 'Please stop being so attentive' and 'Why can't you be like everyone else?' were the most common things his teacher would say to him, when he wasn't able to lose concentration like the other kids. This made Eric really sad and he wanted to try to be just like them. Soon he figured out that if he applied himself to lots of other work like equations and essays whilst the teacher was teaching, he would lose concentration and would not be able to listen to the lesson. It also really calmed him down and made him feel good. While the other kids repetitively and compulsively drew the same pictures over and over to get graded, Eric tried to complete this work and hand it in like them but he always did some equations in the corner of the page which annoyed his teacher. The other kids always bullied each other and made fun of individuals, rotating it around so everyone got bullied but they always respected Eric and tried to include him. Eric couldn't understand why they wouldn't treat him in the same way.

When Eric went to secondary school, the equation habit became even more annoying to his teachers. 'Grow down, you're not an adult anymore' they would say. Eric found exams too easy to complete. The other students worked twice as hard, often didn't answer the exam questions going off on irrelevant tangents and sometimes they just stared blankly ahead even when they knew the answer and had studied the question before. Most of them seemed to get extremely changeable grades which the teachers always praised. To make matters worse Eric's mood was drastically changing and he noticed the moods of his classmates were becoming more out of control swinging from depression to states of elation compared to this Eric found he was only becoming a calmer and more diligent person with a consistent work ethic which meant his grades were generally the same and did not jump and down. Eric's classmates didn't understand why he was always so calm and attentive and they said things to him like 'what's right with you?'.  Eric always found his emotions were proportionate to the circumstances at hand and got really worried and scared when he saw the people around him acting in different ways to him. At this time many of Eric's friends began to self-harm out of frustration and confusion. The teachers in the school always accepted this and secretly they worried why Eric wasn't engaging in this activity occasionally. Sometimes Eric would come home from school and found his family were so loving and caring that he could not bear to be around them so he locked himself in his room and carefully completed his homework. Sometimes Eric would say to his family 'I think there is something wrong with me, I'm different', they would always say 'you'll grow into it' or 'you are under-exaggerating'. Even when some of Eric's teachers mentioned that Eric might need extra help, his parents dismissed it believing that Eric was looking for an excuse for his consistently good grades.

When Eric went to university things seemed to get worse. Eric began to engage in very expected and predictable behavior and he felt in complete control of his actions. Eric felt so confused about his behavior that he turned to eating and drinking healthily to make himself feel better. The people Eric lived with worried about these habits of Erics. Whilst everyone else rarely attended lectures and found it difficult to leave the house, Eric turned up every day and always on time. While Eric's housemates often returned to the house several times a day because they had forgotten something and would often cry with frustration, Eric was always prepared. His housemates found this behavior infuriating and asked him why he couldn't just 'try less'. Eric didn't want to annoy people and so he tried less but try to try less as he might his sleeping patterns were always regular and he always remembered to switch off lights and that he was cooking something and not to leave it unattended. At one time Eric really believed that things would get better when he got older but things were getting worse, despite this Eric seemed blind to reality believing the world was ultimately a good place. Eric felt confident and self-assured as people continually told him to 'grow down'. One day Eric asked his friends for help and they brought him to a hospital. Eric told the doctor that he had thoughts of hope and that he believed things would get better and that he was feeling resilient, the doctor said this was much too 'normal' and Eric had to stay in the hospital instead of attending university. The doctor started him on tablets. Eric loved the idea that he needed tablets to make him the same and remembered to take them every day. Things began to get better then, Eric started experiencing mood swings that were highly irrational and rarely experienced hope. Eric sat in a room and did not talk only to mention trivial pleasantries to a counselor. Eventually Eric returned to university.

But something was still wrong. Even though Eric's moods were now extreme like everyone else's he still couldn't help concentrating. When people were talking to him he often responded or nodded. This greatly irritated everyone and he still got accused of 'caring too much'. Again and again he was told to 'try less'. He found complicated tasks really easily and never needed to repeat actions in order to learn them. Eric told his doctor that things were still difficult and his doctor told him he was 'normal' and that he would not get cured but things will get better when he learned to cope. The doctor recommended things like setting his diary and calender on fire so he didn't know what was going on and to throw his alarm clock at a wall if he ever mistakenly remembered to set it. The doctor recommended Eric learn to drive and to do so everywhere as his concentration was so good.

Still Eric worried, he worried on the road that he would be on time for things and people would give out as they all were walking. Often he turned up extra extra late just in case.  He always wanted to get a job managing a business but this disappointed his family and he was told there was too much money in it so instead he worked writing. Eric worried about having too many practical skills and a linear method of thinking and thought that if his other novel went unpublished again, he would never make money. He still planned and did things in an organized fashion much to his and others disgust. Eric worried about falling in love thinking that no one would see him as an equal. Still he recognized that there were people in much more difficulty than him, people who were so focused they were called 'very productive' and people who compulsively jumped everywhere through windows and could not access the ground floors of buildings. He worried about kids like him having too much extra support at school and getting respected by the other kids. He worried that he should never have children because he might teach them the right things instead of the wrong and they would be brought up in a world where they would never fit in. Sometimes he tried to imagine the type of world where he himself would fit in but he couldn't. Still it was better to imagine a world where everyone fitted in, not just people like him but 'ill and disabled' people too.

Box

I keep you in my mind

It acts like a box

I keep you there

Because you seem perfect

Like some nerdish figurine collector

I want you in original packaging

Sponge

I absorbed everyone in the room
And then I lost myself

In their examination
I can't see how they see me

In judging them,
I feel blank

Fireworks and Rivers

An explosion from nowhere

Eyes following the blaze as it streaks across the sky

We ooh and aah from a distance

Yet if we were any closer

We’d scream

That’s how detached I feel sometimes,

Like I’m watching a firework show

I don't want to touch but I have to watch

Aware of the danger,

Aware that I’m saved by distance

Other times they creep in like the rivers through cracks

I gasp and choke 

Patchwork and Rubble

Not a river but a patch work

Which I wrap myself up in

Not natural but crafted

Part reality but stitched with my own desires

Threaded with seeds of intent

Obscured, disjointed, fragmented

Shards and rubble which

I pick up loose and plaster together with deception

Constructing monuments to the past

I stand in their shadow

And pretend like they sprung from the ground like flowers

But what are lies only a memories made false by coincidence? 

There is only a now.

We are a mess of contradictions
A million different fictions
Constantly opposing forces
Driving us to different courses
Products of circumstances
From culture induced trances

We say we're this or that
Anything beyond simply human
Merely you or me
Knowledge - power
Uncertainity - insecurity

All these names, all these boxes
All this information, all these causes,
No room for the present tense because of this pretence

We talk like our brains are machines when we are all in one
Well then there's too much oil on these cogs
Cause they turn and turn
We go round and round without reason
It pumps out more and more and does not stop

We can't admire distance that wonderful afar
Because we simply think we are who we are
And that's it
As if a machine does not have a switch

We shop for solutions as if they are put on shelves
We look for leaders without looking to ourselves

We live lives based on timetable
Habit and repetition dictate who's able

But there is only a now, nothing slower or faster
You can't split the truth into a before or after. 

I'm addicted to quitting things

“You know that’s bad for you?”

Relationships are like coffee and cigarettes and chocolate and alcohol ... actually just anything  advisably quittable.

You quit and then you start again and then you quit and then you start again and then you quit and then start again.

After the initial despair, crippling withdrawal and general misery

You remember it as an experience which you overcame, its history

You forget how good it felt

Just a minor jam on the conveyor belt

Look at me I’m so busy  Law di daw

I am just so together, I could guffaw

Now you’re some proper independent type person

Then for no good reason, you find yourself cursin

You feel pissed off and sad and like something is missin

So you start the wishin

And so you start again

And you go

“Wow I forgot how great this was, I really missed this”

Until the point someone goes

“That’s bad for you”

And you go “But I’m happy”

And they say “You’ve had enough”

Where “Enough” is a metaphor for fostering an unhealthy dependency

And also a metaphor to stop sitting in the student restaurant alone

Sobbing into your lasagne and staring at your mobile phone

So you see yourself outside yourself and go ‘shit’

And so then you quit

So maybe suspect men should wear clothes with warning labels

That would really turn the tables

With photo’s of charred rotting hearts

Right across their private parts

Except maybe this would make me temporarily transfixed with morbid curiosity and a sense of unreality

And not awaken me to the lethality

It could even provoke me to start talking, display my geniality

In fact the only difference overall is that it is easier to find somewhere to buy my coffee quickly and when I need it

Than find a person and that thought makes me so sad I think I will eat some chocolate.

I have met some odd people

Yesterday I got in the lift and there was a lift attendant

But I live in a block of flats so I did not know what this meant

The lift attendant said ‘I am your memory’

I said ‘Whatever floor three please’

The lift attendant pressed basement

I said ‘I want to go home’ but off we went

 The lift attendant said ‘We are going deep into your mind to confront your childhood’

I said ‘I’m making a complaint bud’

I said ‘bud’ sarcastically as I was growing angry quite drastically

The lift attendant said ‘I hate this job, the pay is shit and my union; the union of consciousness is ineffective in defence of my rights’

He said ‘I really don’t want to work anymore nights’

I said ‘Let me go home, I’m tired’

But he ignored me and so it transpired

That my flat mate found me the next morning crying in the basement

And she said ‘What happened to you?’

And I said ‘I’m now a murderer and that’s true’

She said ‘Dear god who’d ya kill?’

‘My memory’ I replied

She said ‘Stop drinking so much’.

Yesterday I went to the supermarket to stock up on the weeks supply of noodles

I was considering stealing as I have no scruples

A shop assistant burst out of nowhere and said ‘Can I help you?’

 I said ‘No leave me alone’

She laughed and said ‘I am your self -monitor and I have just what you need’

Just as I was trying my best to recede

She handed me a bag of carrots whilst saying ‘Have some passing pleasantries’.

Considering I was a murderer I did not want any more enemies

So I ignored her and started gathering noodles

 She said ‘No you can’t have any more blunt honesty’

 I said ‘Fuck off, I don’t like you’.

The other day I was sitting by a stream when a man rowed by on a boat

 He said ‘Would you like to take a trip with me?’

As he was attractive I could not help but agree

So I drifted down the stream listening to his hilarious stories

Of his interesting past and all his former glories

I said ‘I’m not sure what’s happening but I think I’m falling in love with you’

 I thought about it for a moment whilst he was silent, I had déjà vu

So I said ‘Well who are you anyway?’

 He said ‘I am your ego’

I said ‘Shit’. 

Conversation clusters.

In the supermarket where we buy our words*, I idly stroll wondering how much money I can afford to spend and what is the best value**. I mean I worked hard to be able to spend so I want to carefully select the words I am going to use for the next while. Making my way through the aisles alphabetically I notice a flashing sign proclaiming a new product 'Take part in any conversation' it reads. Intrigued I make my way into a new aisle where laid out before me is packages of words grouped together termed 'Conversation Clusters'. A shop assistant bursts out of nowhere. 

-Hello how are you?' she inquires 

-I'm not sure' I stammer in surprise. 

She breaks into a peal of laughter. 

- I have just the thing for you she replies and motions at a particular pile of 'Conversation clusters' with the titles 'Small talk', 'Idle chit chat' and 'Passing pleasantries and casual greetings'. 

Together they take up the most shelf space in the aisle. 

-Our new conversation clusters save money and time, instead of wasting time actually thinking about considering and choosing your words, you can select your words for the coming week in one or two neat packages, She replies while beaming at me. 

-What's the difference between these particular clusters? I ask.

She looks slightly flustered before composing herself.

-These clusters will all essentially say the same thing but with different words that depend on the context.

- If they all say the same thing, then how am I meant to choose between them?

- Well your not choosing at all, its not about what you want to say, its about what situation you may find yourself in, in the future, so you save loads of time browsing because instead you can predict to whom and how much you may run into certain types of people. We also have clusters based on common personality types so you can equip yourself with the words appropriate if you are prepared to run into such a person in the next week or so. 

- But what if I want to respond to something I didn't expect? 

- We have a high success rate and our clusters especially these types are selling extremely well, we find that people partaking in a cluster such as 'Small talk' are rarely faced with anything unexpected that they have to respond to. 

- Do you provide clusters for 'Perspective altering discussion' or 'Inspiring dialogue'? 

- We do not deal in this nature of conversation. You will have to spend more money and time selecting your words from the shelves if you wish to undertake this type of conversation. 

- But what if I'm extremely anxious about the nature of time because of my over-bearing awareness of my own mortality in combination with.... 

Interrupting me the shop assistant now visibly frustrated snapped 

- I don't know how to deal with this, I only buy clusters, I don't browse the aisles.   

*The supermarket is a metaphor for your mind. 

**Spending money is a metaphor for learning. 

Flash Fiction

The art closet is always locked at lunch but one day they find it open. They spill the glitter from tubs onto pages. It’s an avalanche, scree from magical mountains.  They blow it off the tops of their thumbs and watch it mushroom, suspended temporarily; it drifts through the air as if there was fairy warfare. They spread it out on the page and drag their fingers through it until it’s a whorl, the thumb print of a giant. Their teacher calls. Panicked, stumbling into the closet. So this is how it feels to be in a snow globe.

There’s not a lot of places to go in this town. There’s an industrial estate, warehouses blotting the horizon.  We went drinking there as teenagers, joked about climbing the cranes. During the day it held none of the same appeal. During the day it was just ugly, not dangerous. Dangerous. I can’t go back. Danger used to excite me, not frighten me, not remind me. We always drank too much. My mam wheels me by on the foot path, we can’t avoid going by that way as there’s not a lot of places to go in this town.

You sewed a button onto your coat, one which didn't match the others. I imagine you could have imagined a button falling off when it didn't. Maybe a button had fallen off another coat and you forgot which one. We laughed at first. It was funny, nothing to worry about. Then you tried to boil milk in the kettle, you picked up the remote control like the telephone, you went into the Garda station to buy your bread.  A soft grey round button among shiny black ones, you pull at it now as if it reminds you of something. 

She Lied To You

She lied to you.

I was fourteen when she first when into hospital. It’s funny how you can normalize what is initially so shocking just with time. As if by sheer virtue of things going on long enough, they develop outside the bounds of your own mind and become something else entirely.

So of course she visited the hospital regularly then after, she lost her hair and she got free make up from support groups, which made her laugh because she never wore make up. “

“A scarf or a wig or does it matter?”

“Be a blonde for a while” I said.

“They’re meant to have more fun or something right?”

“Cut the crusts off the bread, I read it in a health magazine in the waiting room, this smooth rock, I got in the holistic shop, rub it every now and then its meant to have healing properties”

“You can fuck off, if a two euro rock and not eating bread crusts cured you, I wouldn’t be here in the first place”

We both laughed, I was so young, I looked at every option then and then one day I didn’t have to, one day it was all over, one day we said the ‘C’ word out loud, we said it ‘Cured’. I was fifteen.

“It won’t come back will it?” I said.

“Not if I have anything to do with it”

She lied to you. 

I grew up. It seems strange to say that. Past tense. Part of me still feels like I’ll always be a teenager, like teenager is attached to me after all my teenage self made the self who is writing this. My teenage self is as attached to myself as if it were part of my physical make up, as if it were a tumour.

One thing we loved her for was that ability to weave a story, everything could be anything and anything could be everything in her mind, of course generally these stories was to raise herself in higher esteem or to terrify us into doing what we were told but there were other types of stories, the ones that thrilled and tingled at what seemed like the very inside of our imaginations. Circuses under mushroom heads and fairies following the ventricles of the leaves like maps. Now they seemed marred, blemished. They were lies too.

She lied to you.

She had to keep going to hospital regularly of course like I said so regularly it was normalized so one day when she came back she looked a little more worn, a little more tired than usual but she smiled a weak smile and made a joke that she didn’t want to make dinner so much that night, she would rather eat my brother’s food, we laughed. I was twenty-one, I had just graduated, the next day I booked my tickets, globe trotting for a year, working in between, my dream in life, at my fingertips on my keyboard, I smiled to myself.

That night she came into my room like I was child to say goodnight except she said something else.

“You should do what your able to, what you want when you can”

“Are you alright ma?”

“Bitta food poisoning due to your brothers shit but nothing a good rest won’t cure”

We laughed.

An hour to go until the plane leaves. Bags packed, I sit alone with the nervous reminders of my mother at security echoing in my head. Did I have this, did I have that? It was her nerves that left me sitting in the airport with an hour to spare and nothing to do. I wondered about waiting, the space between now and then. I hated it, time emptied of occurrence. Empty time. I wondered if I could gather up all the time spent waiting, spent without happening and just allocate it to something else. If I could I would give that time to my ma. If I could do that, I would be on that plane now, if I could do that, I would not be thinking about time, I would not feel overcome with guilt, the guilt of leaving someone dying. If I did that, she would live longer.

Eighteen months the doctor had said.

“Are you alright ma?”

She lied to you.

Some photos in a cafe.

In art class, you learn how to draw, you learn about perspective, composition, shading, the color wheel etc etc. They are things you need but its not actually what really matters because what matters and speaks the word art is that which is new and not mere skill or technical capability but something else entirely. Not something which is only admired but something which also makes you question why you admire it.

It's like sitting in a cafe (where I was when I wrote this) and wondering who the people in the photographs are but not wondering who the people sitting around you are (exactly what I was doing). As if the people in the photos are somehow more important because they will be there after you leave. As if for some unjustifiable reason, permanence dictates more gravitas. As if what matters does not have the capacity to die, as if beauty does not move or change but sits atop a pedestal simply waiting to be admired. Pedestals do nothing for beauty, art and culture should grant accessibility and speak to us not above us. Culture should be a dialogue not a set of instructions.

Maybe that which is truly important is that which has the potential to surprise us and maybe ultimately to change rather than remain a permanent feature, to drink coffee and leave and let new people (aka; ideas) sit down. This shouldn't be confined to the idea of art, why is the same freedom not bestowed upon thought?

Why do not learn to think and reason first and treat it like a craft? The basis of any craft is a firm foundation in the basic principles. If you are going to start to learn any craft, you learn *how* first, then you ask *what* as in what you will create. Except few ask *what* because no one knows *how* to ask *what* in the first place. Instead we are taught *what* first and only, what happened, what is happening, what will happen... So when someone decides to ask what *should* happen, no one knows *how* to answer it. It's like deciding to paint without knowing what a brush is for. If we don't have the freedom of thought to ask what should happen, if we treat knowledge like something that is only to be known instead of to be used, if we keep seeing it as something to be only read, to be only listened to, then who will do the writing, who will do the *doing*?

We need more freedom of thought, we need to see that, that what matters not only does change but should change. Culture should be recycled, be re-newed, and ultimately burst forth with the new, not be re-used and re-used and re-used until it is worn and dies. Knowledge should be recognized with the same capacity of creation and birth that we give to art and culture. Creativity lies not only in our ability to make beauty but to make change. To think *is* an art and it needs to be admired in the same way as a type of beauty and an ideal. 

Internal Landscape

I want a great perhaps

but instead I feel in this time lapse

In my internal landscape I lost the maps

Everything is perfect before existence,

No flaws without execution

I imagine songs never sung

Stories never spun

A spark never lit

I’ll create the most beautiful dream in the world and then never fulfil it

I see it sometimes

See it in things that matter

See it in paint splatter

See it in music, it moves

I can’t see it in this air,

Can’t see it in the eyes of leaders who can not lead and people who do not care

You think I’m slow, there’s a whole universe in here you know,

Planets and stars and places nothing like earth

Black holes that sap self-worth

Mountains that are mood, forests that are feeling

The sights you would see, would have you reeling

Out there in space the words they spin, my words

But when I speak, if I speak

If I muster that courage, it’s a mere leak

No cascading waterfall, more like a drip through a stonewall

I want to construct palaces to the miracle that is languages

Instead there are only shadows of monuments built inside.

And they say it’s easy, well they lied.

Each word a brick carefully laid,

Plaster carefully made

Conversation is a bridge I can’t cross,

Small talk a world where I get lost.

Words must first struggle through fog

Fearless travelers wading through bog

Intrepid adventurers struggling through the elements

No welcome return but a reception of nonsense.

Inching closer and closer till they reach me

Even then like a blinkered carthorse I can’t see properly

Hear the words, hear the sounds

But it’s a mere collection of consonants and vowels.

I want to scream and shout, I want someone to know about

Know about what? Know about what?

That I listen but sometimes it doesn’t make sense

This existence, this present tense.

I just don’t know

And yet I don’t give much credit to the known,

It is a path walked when it could have been flown

More for the could be, the should be.

I don’t care about the real I care about the beautiful

What can be touched can be broken,

What can be thought can’t always be spoken.

It's more than that.

It’s more than that

Or something else entirely

Beyond the reaches of language

Its skims the surface between mind and all else

Its sends ripples expanding

Outwards like a pond

Lapping the shores of reality

Like my thoughts are touching the outside world

Slender fingers, extra sensory, stroking

The fine hair point tips of emotion

Like the crests and peaks of waves

Rising and falling

Every now and then for less than one moment

They barely gently slightly alight

On the edges of all

And then they slip back,

A residue of everything clinging to them,

A speck of all balancing on their corners

And it settles and flows through me

Thoughts rise and fall

And even then words evade me.

Because its more than that. 

My voice

 

I want to give you my voice,

Words crafted

In a meticulous fashion

Somehow simultaneously spontaneous

To give you the urgency of purpose

Do not deny purpose its urgency

It makes it

I want to give you words,

Words not yet invented

If the perfection needed for the intent is absent

Words that encompass intention

That can not but be meant for anything

Than what they are meant

This is my voice

Words in your head

I want to give you my voice

I want it to surpass a mere collection of letters interpreted into sound

This is my voice, can you hear it? 

I gave

I gave you stories never spun,

Wove cloaks never worn

Belief in causes never cared for and

Gods never born

I gave

Composed you songs never played

Laughter never erupted

Idols never worshipped

Tastes that never bursted

I gave

Treasures never discovered

Adventures never taken

Ships never set sail

I gave

Everything I didn’t have

Everything I would never have

Dreams never dreamt in the fold of sleep

Tears never wept in the pit of despair

A heart never won

No masterpieces

I gave you none

For you existed only in my imagination