#paperdurre

[paperdurre]

Star Chaser

In the blank dark stare of night

You are the only thing that is light


You misery parade of memories too fragile


Alternate realities of alternate versions


You hold in your mouth words that taste like


Flesh bitten off your tongue


Stitched to the floor of your mouth


Like an infection spreading to your lungs


Let's take the night apart


Every hour a different emotion


A dissection of make belief


You clear eyed crier


Wide eyed dreamer


Of all the things I've seen


I've seen you clearer than your reflection


Hold on to the stars in your teeth


They've travelled light years just to lodge


Piece by piece in your eyes


Your galaxies are colliding and it feels


Like the end of all the things you held as true


Look that rage in the eye


You were always a supernova


You swallowed a shooting star as it fell to its feet


Wishes lying on your tongue


Like the last bit of wasabi


Your Bento box of dreams


Another heart ache away from burning at the seams


Stitch yourself up


There's so much more to live for


Than runaway stars


[paperdurre]

Lay me down on an alter Hang a dream catcher over my head before you put me to sleep Permanent and forever Keep the demons away that have haunted me all my life I'm not saying I'll dream when I'm dead But being with you was losing all the things that made me who I am It was beautiful when I didn't exist anymore So maybe you were my dream catcher Set me up in a glass case Four sides to a transparent cage Set me down in the busiest squares in the world Let's give the passers by a chance to look At a body so eaten and disfigured It isn't recognizable as something that could have been beautiful That could have been something to love Let us make caricatures of our deepest fears And hope laughter washes them away Sing me a song of heart ache Sad poetry and sadder prose Of loving the unlovable and forgiving the unforgivable Let us string together lyrics and melody from the archives of our letters Bookmarked reminders of better times and sudden endings Decorate a tombstone with words unspoken Beautiful like the day you realised I was worth forgetting Put it on the remnants of where I buried all I wish I had never birthed A corpse of a future envisioned and a side of myself I refuse to be again Write with me one last time An epilogue we never got to decide Give it a turn of your silver tongue, let the words fall out of your mouth like lava spitting out The head of a volcano long dormant I know what that feels like Like hibernation, waking up after an entire season Of youth you should never have been asleep for Emaciated and weak and so unready to face The troubles you so deftly avoided only to have them catch up with you again Hang as many talismans, wind chimes, and dream catchers Redesign your life, feng shui for the soul Accept that all things end, but you were alive before

Dream Catchers

[paperdurre]

And do you always travel on the days you're not supposed to be at work And how much time have you spent in the company of strangers And do all your favourite cities feel like home to you when you're there And do you miss us when foreign tongues taste bitter sometimes somewhere And do you laugh out loud in the quiet of trains between the mountains And do you still look at beautiful people and think you're better Or have you felt less than you are in the cruelty of survival And why do we still wish we could swap the places we are at And did you meet him by the bridge and did you like him when you met I've been reading stories of your life like the headlines at ten And I'm in love with where you are and you're in love with where I've been

Leaving

[paperdurre]

Sad girl ended up in the ER tonight,
Something to do with no being able to
Breathe, just right
It's happened before but this times longer
Beat it last Sunday but
This ones stronger
Sad girl is surround
By her sad co-workers
They think she needs help
Make sure she gets hers
"What's happened?" ask a pair of scrubs
At the triage counter
"She's having trouble breathing 
Can you fix her?"
Two ours and an oxygen mask later
They've called psych for help
What else can they save her
"Do you know why this happens?"
"I don't," she says brightly
But in her mind sad girl has theory
"When was the last time you ate?"
"This afternoon," wasn't too long ago
"How do you feel when it happens?"
"Just a tightness in my chest."
There's only so much room in there
Against which her heart can press
I know how to fix myself, sad girl
Says to herself
It takes a knife to the heart
Release and compress
Sad girl can shrug it off
Everyone here has panic attacks
A prescription of triazolam
We've all lost people we love
Those are the facts


Sad girl can’t breathe again

[paperdurre]

Zindagi jaisi bhi ho, muskurahat rehti hai mun per, Hansi ki awaaz phir bhi dil ko nadaan lagti hai Na koi mehboob na koi dost, na qusoor koi mera, Iss haal ki wajah phir bhi anjaan lagti hai Banay phirtay hain itnon kay ghum khuaar jo hum, Har kisi ki parchayee hii pareshaan lagti hai Bhulanay ki koshish mei likhay qaseeday itnay, Apni halat azeem fakiraan lagti hai Jo alfaz bol kar ab behlatay hain khud ko, Iss talaffuz par zaban bhi hairaan lagti hai Ghoomay mulk jitnay, sunein itnay falsafay, Teri kahanian phir bhi apna sara jahaan lagti hain Teray janay ka ghum bohat kam hai ab toh phir bhi, Teray Shehr ki har basti veeraan lagti hai.

Phir Bhi

[paperdurre]

You would have small hands Too small to be trusted with holding something important Too small to be allowed to touch things so fragile your child like curiosity alone would fracture Every crack running deeper, I would be the box marked untouchable and you would be the child With the small hands too careless to hold the contents you’re being entrusted You would have milky eyes Blue or grey or whichever colour felt the most blind You would have eyes that saw everything, and nothing That glazed over the things you should want to commit to memory but were too weak to try You would see nothing in the expressions of forever and ever and you wouldn’t know what was in front of you until it disappeared Maybe not even then You would be encased in a shell It would run from your ribs to your spine from your mouth to your mind it would protect all the parts of you You’re so afraid of hurting It would constantly remodel itself to achieve diamond like hardness, impenetrable, reinforced with lies and charms And when push came to shove, the worst little barbs and pieces of the truth that impale those weaker than you Your flesh would be a mush of insecurities and rot and decay underneath your shell of glimmering beauty You would be an exoskeleton of sin held together with unearned love and wit Your ears would bleed The ooze would smell of days old corpses and the metallic stench of slashed wrists and hypochlorite Your brain working overtime letting off some steam The byproducts of manipulating the facts and giving up it seems a lot less morbid than it sounds Your feet would be pieces of the earth You would move and the tectonic plates would shift under causing mountains to rise and worlds to collide and all those left in the wake of your disaster would be crippled forever from being in your vicinity You would have wings Wide and majestic and architecturally sound they would take flight the moment you decided you have outlived the last adventure You would fly off to greener pastures and they would carry you so well And wherever you landed you could start all over again I hope something changes within you someday I hope you fall in love with someone who looks nothing like you A person with large hands, strong, steady, those that hold worlds together Bright eyes, dark like black holes that take in everything around them and I hope you feel yourself sucked into their gravity I hope you decide you don’t want to storm around anymore, because you don’t want to destroy the only person in the world you would miss, and I hope you miss her I hope you clip your wings. When you find her, I hope they fall off your back, vestigial organs you don’t need anymore because flying means you aren’t in the same place as her

On the Inside

[paperdurre]

I'm raw, like fresh meat Still bleeding from all the arteries You severed I'm trying to Cauterise my wounds but I'm failing I'm fresh wounds and salt beef I'm 4 a.m insomnia and drunk In the streets I'm lost in the night and Found when I meet I'm throwing up pieces Of you and me I'm still thinking about you While you're asleep next To the thoughts of someone else I am letting go but I'm A pool of deep Deep Red and raw flesh I am decay and a corpse Of bougainvillea wreaths I am overgrown shrubs I am never accepted defeat I am creature of habit I am wolves led to treats I am overworked deduction I am sober addiction I am cutting up myself open For the world to see I am back where I started And you're back on your feet

-Paper-cut

[paperdurre]

I have seen you weave stories of epic adventure The far away look in your eyes when you talk about dragon slayers and demigods The first time I saw you I thought mythology The gods were real not just fantasy not just bed time stories When everyone stopped to stare at your wings all I thought was Gabriel, saviour, the world is ending so why does it feel so eternal You are Ares’ strength, Athena’s wit, In the heat of an argument you are Apollo’s chariot carrying the rage of the sun In the silence of the night you are Persephone in the underworld, you are the God of death and life all in one Like Artemis, I am living off your light source so on the days when you hide out on Olympus, the nights are dark and quiet You are Ithaca, and I am Odysseus making my way home to you Promise me you won’t move before I get there I am praying to Hermes to speed the way When you dance the whole world runs to safety but I run towards you to make sure that when the ground splits it won’t swallow you into the earth A Titan in the dirt When Dionysus smiles at you, you are Homer and your tongue is silver I have tasted the words you speak to know where they come from they taste a lot like the blood in my veins I am compelled to think we were stars in a constellation once before this began Orion, Andromeda, wherever you lived before you came to this land Before you were a god and I was just a spectator to your miracle You are Poseidon’s depth and Zeus’s lightening, Which is probably why standing in the ocean of your sorrows feels like being electrocuted You are thunder, and you’re drowning out all the voices I used to listen to before I heard yours

Olympus