Testimony

More words dedicated to someone that will never dedicate anything to me

[candelabrah]

you told me love was war

and i clung to every word

never knowing that each passing moment

i was falling further behind enemy lines.

told mom about my troubles

and all she did was cry

asking how i could be so fooled

by two sapphire studded eyes.

but she doesn’t know i lied

she doesn’t know the reason why

i was so lonely all the time

diving headfirst into bed

and chasing whiskey with pink wine.

It’s you and all your demons,

you’re all stuck on my back

saying words so sweet to tired ears

lighting the fire in my heart shaped shack.

You made me see what love could be

even though i burned through all those years

time slowed to a stop when i saw you here

but now i can’t see through all the tears.

I know you know what’s going on here

you saw i wasn’t happy and

you just rolled to the other side

of the bed we shared when things were still

on civil terms, eye to eye.

Eye for an eye, heart for a heart,

give me your all and we’ll call it a start.

[candelabrah]

sometimes sorry isn’t enough

and “i love you” is just a band aid

on a festering wound.

Bad blood runs deep,

it’s thicker than water,

and we’re thicker than thieves.

weary hearts on the same tattered sleeve.

sometimes we’re wrong too,

so are the people you look up to.

honesty is the most vulnerable face,

the least worn of all masks.

and oh, how honest I’d be with you

if you had the courage to ask.

I’d tell you i loved you

if it didn’t sound like a threat,

and i know that you’d say it back

if your mind wasn’t so set

on seeing what happens

behind ocean eyes, so shining and wet.

Are we happy yet?

Are we happy yet?

[candelabrah]

After a day so long

i’m just killing myself for fun

in a million careless ways

so much quicker than a gun.

Pills and potions and trouble making;

anything to glaze over the aching,

you love to laugh and play along

but can’t you see the mess i’m making?

I might be a runway train

but aren’t you in the drivers seat,

singing all the good songs

Just along for the ride,

at least it’s him not me

right?

You jump Rose, but Jack’s just gonna watch,

as you bounce off the icebergs

in a bottle of scotch.

I’m headfirst through windows and i’m

playing in traffic,

crying over pictures

in my grandmothers attic.

Ocean eyes breaking on the rocks of the soul

burning so fiercely it’s making me old.

Are you burning with me?

Oh you’re like the low light filtering through windows

just enough to see by, not quite enough to

read by

my oh my oh my oh my

the enchanting way your tongue forms lies,

Can’t you see you’re bleeding me dry?

[candelabrah]

Aimless affection begets harmless rejection, wanderer, oh wanderer. seeking starlight in the eyes of black holes, seek me here, in the hidden space find me where i can't be found. keep looking, magnify the petty lies, dig deeper and bury yourself where the bitter red glows. split my beautiful bones and consume the youth within, leave me hollow with only the ageless cruelty without. Hold me, oh hold me, cracked fingertips that brush busted lips, and breathless sighs staring into broken vinyl eyes. This heatwave will be the death of me, but here you come, the savior breeze. Capital crimes you will face with your heart in your throat, of loving, of feeling, of being down to earth. Tongue in cheek, blood behind the eyes this is how you live your life.

[candelabrah]

Daydreaming now, of a way to survive,

and finding joy that there is none.

Keep the good times rolling,

til the director calls cut,

even though the good times were stolen

by your family, and friends,

by the boy from 310.

Can you look back fondly

with nothing to look back on?

Can you die for a concept

that you don't have a grasp on?

Unlove is better, unlove keeps you going.

Unlove is the void that keeps your heart fleeting.

Live with the crimes that true love begets,

and dance on the grave of the friends you just met.

Dance and dance and dance away,

all the chances you had to finally be brave.

Bury your hatchets and write out a map,

you'll need them back one day,

you'll need them back.

Your family, your friends the boy from 310

they took from you freedom.

Take it back.

[candelabrah]

Am i growing? Am i changing? How many times must my bones break before they become stronger? Two decades living and the white hot wrath of fifteen still burns bright within me. They say that the children are the ones truly suffering from authority. Nobody is born innocent. The crimes of our predecessors will weigh down on our infantile shoulders as the heavens upon Atlas. Does infernal blood flow in me, to beget the venom flowing from my mouth? Risen up, only to be struck back down; but who are you to be handing out crowns? Fifteen was rage, and sixteen freedom, but by seventeen you had finally taught me what it means to be made unclean and how to keep up playing at dignity. I grew out of seeing red, but all my inner windows are stained. Am I a fighter? Or just fighting in vain?

[candelabrah]

this is a sword dance

the game between you and i.

hand in hand, but tongues intertwined

you show me yours and i'll show you mine.

Eager to please but more eager to burn,

i always liked the way you made my heart hurt.

"you never did know how to say when" you

said, but then you twisted my arm back

and somehow i learned.

[candelabrah]

wouldn’t it be sweet
to never get tired or sick,
or weak in the knees?




wouldn’t it be nice,
if i never met you 
and you never met me?




i’m bones in the desert now
bleached by relentless sky,
can’t you see you’re bleeding me dry?

[candelabrah]

“you’re only a ghost” he spoke to an empty room, with fading pictures on the walls and paper flowers in the vases. “and my how black your feathers are” said the raven to the crow. remnants are everywhere now, the errant shirt or the estranged scent. does that make me a remnant too? just a faint, fading part of the ever present you? the impression in the sand from your feet that once walked, and soon the surf will wash me away. what i wouldn’t give to have you stay. but ghosts don’t choose to haunt, at deaths sweet parting they fade across the veil. ghosts are only shadows of the ever fading whole. “And you’re only the shadow of the ever leaving Him” said the kettle to the pot.

[candelabrah]

Don't stare at the sun, mother always told you.

It will blind you, and then what?

i thought i listened to her,

but the day i met you

i couldn't stop staring

like the sun you were radiant,

and twice as bright

i couldn't help myself but lock eyes

and lose sight

and now look at me,

bleaching your red flags white.

look at skin,

the way it turns pink in your warmth.

But doesn't the cold burn like heat

after a point?

And now with the blazing white of winter

between our hearts,

i think you've had me like a cat in a tree from the start.

i can't help it, i said on the phone

he's all that stands between here,

and the gaping, hungry maw of being alone.

[candelabrah]

oh, my judas iscariot of the heart.

don’t you know better than to trust?

like a slap in the face, where blackness gives way to stars that shine

the only way to truly know betrayal

is to give in first.

once you have given all you have,

then the pain comes creeping in.

learn, and learn, and beg for refuge.

beg to yourself, the implacable glare reflecting from your deepest thoughts.

How can you feel the knife in your back if there’s no one to twist it?

let the arrows pierce you to their fletchings, and tell yourself that if you don’t prick their heads then the blood will not flow.

You cannot hate that which does not exist, and you cannot feel that which isn’t there to be felt.

[candelabrah]

you are the the growing balloons in my chest

too full to move but too still to burst.

How could you know how badly it hurts?

you are the riverbank where i was baptized

breathless and heaving, but still alive.

a tide that crests on beaches high;

louder and louder to a crescendo it breaks,

like a heart that beats for a love that's too late.

i know these walls, i've seen this place.

it feels like home but it's only the pain

of laughing together to secrets our own,

and then laughing to tears, but only alone.

you're leaving me breathless,

and then only leaving, only fighting,

screams that fly like fists to my face.

And oh, how good the blood tastes,

a nectar so sweet what can compare but your lips on mine?

is this how your leaving will feel, then why have you stayed?

[candelabrah]

The hurting kept going long after you had gone, with a bite as sharp and strong as any knife. Love had given me strength, and you had given me love, so what must become of me after you’ve taken love away? How must i keep my blood hot and my hands warm, if the thing that kept my heart beating and my eyes open has vanished in the evening light? Broken and bridled like a wild horse you had me, and what’s to be left when you grow sore of the saddle? It is said that marie antoinette wept as she was marched before all france to her death, it is said the executioner forced her to her knees. That is what you were to me, not the executioner, but you were the guillotine.

[candelabrah]

love and anger are only words but they are red and red and redder, so different in meaning but so alike in aura. lust and wroth and ecstasy and rage, spilling into and out of one another like lovers in sheets on a summer day. words are only wind and this must be a storm, fast and fast and faster, ardor and outrage, a fervency burning so loudly, it can only mean complete devotion. can you feel the heat from my heart beating? exulting in the rays of your infinite glow, a glow so red and bright and terrible it can only be love. years and years and years went by waiting for the needles and pins and points that prick to ebb away and give me back the feeling in my lungs. can you feel the red? does it keep you up? looming over us, eternal as the sky you won't say you love me, but you won't say you hate me either i think i know now why.

[candelabrah]

i love you to pieces i love you to bits i love your eyes your smile and wits

i love you tomorrow i love you today even when you go but way more when you stay

i love every word and every breath intertwined how i can be who i am cause i know you won’t mind

i love you when i hate you even when i’m mad, still i know that i love you always have, always will

[candelabrah]

i loved a boy as bright as the moon with eyes like turned earth born in june a boy like fresh linen a boy like the spring a boy like rain clouds i think he's everything i'm only a whisper until he makes me sing its only a tingle until he makes it sting i love a boy with a smile like the sun if my heart were a game i think that he's won

[candelabrah]

I met my lover in the valley

and I met his mother too

I sold my soul to a desert sunrise

for a bunch of lies, lies, lies

I fell mind over matter

but it never mattered

I gave myself over

to the leaves and the clover

I fell in love with him

over and over and over

his lips were golden

but his tongue was sharp

it cut my mouth

and the blood left me spinning

I think I went and broke my heart

I think I wasn’t thinking clearly

when I told him I loved him

it must have been too early

I told him I loved him

I told him and it hurt

when he said nothing back

but kissed me goodnight

everynight

after that