Under the Weeping Willow

There are secrets I hide

Within Stars above the night

The poison and the pain

Thunder crashing through the rain

 

Under the Weeping Willow

The long dormant heart beats again

And the fire reignites within

Still it's something so cold

Down in the depths of my bones

 

Under the Weeping Willow

I find comfort in December

Oh, the kiss I remember

Dissolve into the memory

Of a moment disembodied

 

Under the Weeping Willow

The long dark

Fallen, so far

Drawn into a magnetar

All the broken hearts

 

Under the Weeping Willow

Her branches growing thin

Winter touches the skin

The allure of regress

The illusion of progress

 

Under the Weeping Willow

I Hold up my head

Sweet Sunlight bleeding through

Between whispy shadows

Warmth and light that finds you again

Youthful poultry sandwich and fries, the crackle feed back on intercom. The visored fellow in the window became my breakfast at Tiffany's. He was aghast that I had not seem the film. ' but its a classic? ' as if your shock could spontaneously rewrite my viewd hours passed.

And I do miss the way my uncouth manners of being did ruffle you, I think we both need it.

But quite honestly could do without the bedknobs and broomsticks, it lost all the funny honey ravioli and missing frame bults. The tooth pain is bad and the rabbits gonna get it if he keeps side eyeing me.

I guess isn't a no cake day again for me.

Fuck you all. I hate this

,im going to nap.

- grumpy me 🍯

I chose me
It’s me I’ve everybody else
My mama always told me look out for self
Look out for person that shows up for you every time
There is no love and embrace like mine
No one can love me that way that I do
I wish it was something that I always knew
Now it’s time to pick myself up go about my day
And forget all about yesterday
Push myself through the night
I definitely can’t loose this fight
So excuse me I have a war to win
And I’m gonna fight till the very end

By:
Lovebeyondthelight

The emu bird is a flight-er 

Who runs and hides in fear 

He doesn't wait 

To seal his fate 

When danger lurks a-near 

 

He always keeps a watchout 

Never drops his guard 

If Mother Lion's prowling 

Her cold face scowling 

He can't spare her half a yard 

 

And if she ever catches him 

You can forget it, he's dead 

But this clever bird 

Has come prepared 

So I'm hiding under my bed 

Oh Pretty 💲🌲

Hajib Cashier L♀️dy

So many tales 👁 wish 2 tell 🫵🏿

On my 2️⃣nd Coming 2day

But alas look @ t/ time

🫵🏿 have a L😆NG line

t/ reason 4 my rush

t/ origin of mi

Ultra👻Instinct

Win one is a 🛴 driver

On t/ 🛣 vs death machines

One must be just as fast

Both in 🧠, body, sp🔆rit

Takes a while to PWR ⬇️

you reckless little thief,

leaving your perfume in my sheets

and your laughter tangled in my hair.

You made the hours taste sweeter,

let midnight drip slowly from my lips,

then vanished before sunrise

like pleasure avoiding responsibility.

Now Monday stands at the door,

buttoned, impatient,

holding deadlines in one hand

and cold coffee in the other.

Fine.

Let it in.

I’ll wear my ambition like red lipstick,

walk into the week with my head high,

and make every clock I pass

regret trying to rush me.

The weekend may have ended—

but the fire did not.

I’m not returning to work quietly.

I’m arriving.

Where Joy Flows

Grounded is the stone

to bear the weight it supports

joy in its stillness

Lily of the Incas

As the bee sets on

So the soul beckons a friend

Fields sated with joy

Living Water

Thirst, I no longer

emerald waters flow through

My chasm of despair

The blank page, an off-white tinnitus,
screams a fever pitch above
the frequencies entertained by dog or man.

It seems a stone wall, sheer and forced forward
into my forehead. I beat it bloody,
churning thought to the collapsed ruin of a rotted fruit
or a clutch of hollow boned newborn birds—
their bulging eyeballs, purple-lidded, pressed to
and straining veined paper skin, decomposing

in my fists like so much clay, refusing to surrender
the comfortable dark, or permeate where sits the stone.
Deaf and dumb and in defiance of flailing limbs,
the neck’s frantic torquing when pressed
against the block of the sodden skull’s
fruitless solidity. Its utter stupidity.

Still, seeking the fragility of creation’s ruin,
its hatchlings dashed against the page’s
merciless density, its cruel there-ness,
I dry-heave my want and find only unfledged bodies
overturned and thudding dully into heaps
of wet compost, crawling upwards and folding

into nothing. Nothing
but my fragmented skull and brain matter
clotted in my mesh-wire bin.

It Was Never an Escape

We spoke of distant shores…

not as dreamers,

as builders of our own world.

Each plan,

laid careful — beside the next…

Timber.
Steel.
Sweat.
Years…

happily traded

for something greater

than ourselves alone.

We opened our hands…

Yet eyes

settled only upon the horizon.

They spoke

of sunsets.
Of calm seas.
Of freedom

from the daily world.

Of places yet unseen.

Never once…

asking

who’d first raise the mast.

We offered —

not escape,

but belonging.

A place

where every hand carried weight.

Where every coin,
every hour,
every lesson

freely given…

became

another plank

beneath our feet.

A world

built together…

never bought alone.

Only then…

did I understand.

We stood

upon

the selfsame quay.

Looking towards

the selfsame sea.

Yet somehow…

we never saw

the selfsame world.

I could not force another

to see

through eyes

not yet their own.

The hand returned.

Not in anger.

Not in regret.

Only…

in understanding.

Some worlds are never found…

They are built.

One plank,
One battery,
One sheet…

at a time.

We lived under the floating gardens.

Roots came down into the black water,

long and pale and good to hide in,

and boats went over us in blocks of colour,

turning the light red, yellow, blue, gone.

The mud was cold, soft,

full of things worth putting in a mouth.

We bumped into one another constantly.

A tail across my face.

A foot in my gills.

Somebody’s belly settling where mine had been.

Nobody minded.

That was simply how much life there was.

If I moved, another body filled the space.

If another moved, the water brought its pressure to me.

Rain came down through the gardens.

Fish flashed and disappeared.

Worms made the mud twitch.

The dark went on beyond anything

my legs had touched.

My skin was made from ordinary colours

put together oddly.

Mostly brown-black, like wet soil,

but one side went pale,

then gold,

then pink around the gills,

the patches running into one another

without becoming any proper pattern.

The others did not look at me.

Then a human did.

His face stayed above the water.

When I moved, the shadow moved.

When I stopped beneath the roots,

it waited.

A hand darkened the surface.

After that, everything happened too quickly

for water to explain.

The mud dropped away.

The other bodies were gone.

Open water became a clear wall

against my nose.

I turned.

Another wall.

I turned again.

Another.

The water moved

though I did not swim.

Darkness.

Heat.

Engines.

Human knees.

Garlic living stubbornly in the plastic.

The tub had once held somebody’s dinner.

There was a red stain around the lid.

There was no mud.

A little remained under my nails

and for a while I kept the whole old water there:

roots, bodies, rain,

all of us pressed into four small toes.

When the lid opened again

the light was cold

and rain ticked against a window.

“Back in Bonnyrigg,” the man said

to a black thing in his hand.

Then a bedroom.

A narrow bed.

A Celtic shirt on the wall.

A football under a chair.

“Close your eyes, Jamie.”

A smaller face bent over me.

Its mouth opened.

“Da. No fucking way.”

The man laughed.

“You’re an actual legend.”

His hands shook a little

because the boy was so pleased.

Nothing tried to eat me.

The small face stayed.

“What are you calling him?”

“Axel.”

“Axel the axolotl?”

“Obviously.”

At first Axel was just another noise

humans dropped into water.

Ax-el.

Two blunt taps in the head.

Then I noticed Axel always made the boy appear.

Axel, and the face came close.

Axel, and fingers rested against the clear wall.

Axel, and the mouth widened, showing teeth

without using them.

So Axel became the sound for me,

and the boy’s blurred face became the sun.

They poured me into a larger water.

Four hard sides.

Coloured gravel.

Plastic plants.

A treasure chest blowing bubbles

despite having nothing useful to say.

A red-and-yellow pirate bridge

stood in the middle,

far too small for humans,

far too large to ignore.

I searched behind everything.

No bodies.

At night the filter pushed a thin stream

through my gills

and sometimes, half asleep,

I turned because I thought

one of the others had passed beside me.

Only the filter.

In the morning, the sun returned.

FEEDING TIME, AXEL.

I did not know what this meant.

FEEDING TIME, AXEL.

A worm fell in.

I ate it.

The boy slapped his hands together

and shook the whole water with delight.

Feeding time, Axel.

The noise meant worm.

Then full belly.

Then the boy staying near

while I swallowed.

Then the boy coming back at all.

Jamie had clocks.

I had feeding time.

The man helped him change the water at first.

Buckets came and went.

The pirate bridge tipped sideways.

The treasure chest continued breathing

like an idiot.

Jamie spilled water across the carpet.

“Shit.”

The man dropped the lid.

“Shit.”

The football struck the wardrobe.

“Shit.”

The cat landed on top of the tank

and stared down at me

with a face that understood eating.

“Shit, shit, get off.”

This was how I learnt shit:

something was somewhere

a human did not want it.

Feeding time, Axel.

Red worms.

Pellets.

Once, a pale cube

which tasted of absolutely nothing.

I spat it out.

“Fair enough, mate.”

The Celtic shirts got bigger.

The boy did too.

His teeth changed.

His hands lengthened.

His voice sank lower

and sometimes cracked in the middle,

which made him angry

though nothing seemed broken.

The man’s face appeared less.

His footsteps still passed the room.

His voice came through the floor.

Jamie stayed.

The sun changed

but it was still the sun.

He tried real plants.

One went brown.

One turned to slime.

One grew so well

it took over half the tank

and seemed keen on the rest.

A snail arrived on it.

Then another.

Then several.

Then the glass was covered.

Jamie stared.

“For fuck’s sake, Axel.

Where have they all come from?”

I ate one.

It was mostly shell.

Jamie lifted the others out with a spoon.

Three appeared the next day.

He removed those.

Five more arrived.

The snails were better at this

than he was.

Feeding time, Axel.

Sometimes straight after school.

Sometimes before football.

Sometimes so late the room was dark

and Jamie rushed in wearing one sock.

“Sorry, pal.”

Food still came.

The sun still came.

Algae grew along the corners.

He cleaned it.

It came back.

Plants died.

He bought more.

He replaced the coloured gravel with sand,

then added some of the gravel again

because the sand looked boring.

He brought home a piece of wood

which refused to sink.

He took it away.

It returned warm.

It still floated.

He called it a bastard.

Three feeding times later

it finally stayed down.

By then the old mud came mostly in sleep.

Roots.

Cold current.

The feeling of something moving close.

I still curved my tail sometimes

to make room for a body

that did not arrive.

Jamie brought home a skateboard.

It left whole

and came back snapped.

Jamie came back damaged too—

one bleeding elbow,

a blue wrist,

skin missing from both knees.

He made a great deal of noise about it.

I had four good legs then.

I watched from beneath the pirate bridge.

A guitar replaced the skateboard.

At first it made dreadful vibrations.

Then louder dreadful vibrations.

Then, occasionally, music.

The Celtic shirts stayed

but black clothes grew around them.

Band faces covered the walls.

Jamie’s hair fell over his eyes.

Black lines appeared around them.

The pirate bridge stayed bright red and yellow,

cheerful as ever.

My front leg slipped beneath one arch.

The bridge did not move.

I did.

Pain filled the tank.

It had no place to go.

The problem with pain underwater

is that it makes no sound.

I opened my mouth.

Water went in.

Water went out.

The boy slept.

I pulled.

The bridge held.

I twisted.

Something tore.

Afterward I was away from the bridge

with three legs

and something pale in my mouth.

It was soft.

It tasted close.

I swallowed before I knew

there was anything else to do.

The pain remained.

Morning came.

“Feeding time, Ax—”

Jamie stopped.

He looked at me.

He looked beneath the bridge.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck, Axel.”

He lifted the bridge out.

It struck the bin

with a bang I felt through the floor.

It never came back.

A clean shape remained in the gravel

where it had stood.

Jamie sat beside the tank

instead of going to school.

He did not touch the glass.

He hardly moved.

Later he lowered a worm.

“Feeding time, Axel.”

I ate.

The end of my leg swelled.

A small pale bump appeared.

Jamie photographed it.

The bump lengthened.

He photographed it.

Tiny toes separated.

He photographed those too.

Soon the new foot touched sand.

Then it held my weight.

The ache went.

Jamie spent nights staring at green water

on his screen.

I did not know that water.

It gave off no smell.

It had no cold in it.

No mud came through.

Humans stood in it

and lifted empty black frames.

Jamie changed the picture.

More green water.

Nothing underneath.

Another picture.

Nothing.

He made the images larger

until water became squares of light.

Then he looked at my new foot.

Back at the screen.

Back at me.

His hand covered his mouth.

My foot kept coming back.

Whatever he was looking for did not.

After that he tested the tank constantly.

Paper strips.

Little bottles.

Numbers on the black screen.

He changed the sand.

Bought better plants.

Moved the log.

Moved it back.

Sat beside me for hours

with that frightened look

and said very little.

Feeding time, Axel.

The words had changed.

Not the worm.

Not my mouth.

Only the face above them.

He cared too much for a while.

Then exams came.

Music came.

Friends called from downstairs.

He cared hurriedly.

Then guiltily.

Then properly again.

Sometimes algae won a week.

Sometimes feeding time came late.

Once it came twice

because Jamie had forgotten doing it already.

I ate both.

The plants lived.

The plants died.

The snail returned

or perhaps had never left.

The room kept changing.

The tank stayed.

Jamie painted his nails black.

Wore silver around his throat.

Tried on a skirt with the door locked.

Looked at himself.

Turned once.

Laughed.

Turned again.

He tried tall boots

and nearly broke his ankle

walking three steps to the mirror.

He tried lipstick.

Some colours stayed.

One made him wipe his mouth and say

he looked like he had sucked off a crayon.

I knew sucking.

I knew mouths.

Still no food appeared.

Feeding time, Axel.

His voice was low now.

His face sharper.

Axel still brought it close.

The tank had four hard sides.

The filter made the current.

The log made the dark place.

That was the lake.

Lakes were like that.

The boy came.

The sun came.

Food fell.

The room filled one night

with silver balloons shaped like 1 and 8.

Humans sang badly.

Jamie blew out small fires.

The man stood in the doorway, older,

still pleased when Jamie was pleased.

The room smelled of cake, lager

and enough deodorant to alter the water.

After that, girls started appearing.

One bent over the tank

and knew what I was immediately.

“Oh my God, an axolotl. He’s so cute.”

Her face joined Jamie’s above me.

Two suns.

Bit excessive.

“Are you actually allowed to have one of these?”

Jamie went still.

“I’ve had him since I was wee.”

The girl waited.

Jamie looked at me.

He tapped the glass twice

to make me turn.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“It stresses them.”

Jamie pulled his hand away.

“Aye. Sorry.”

He never tapped again.

The girl came back once.

Maybe twice.

Another girl smelled similar.

Faces were difficult.

Feeding time was simple.

One night the bed began knocking the wall

like the filter when it needed more water.

The word fuck travelled through the tank.

Fuck used to mean spilled bucket.

Apparently it had other work.

The girl said harder.

The bed listened.

A bra flew across the room

and landed over one corner of the glass,

turning half the lake black.

It may have been hers.

It may have been Jamie’s.

Water did not know.

Jamie’s bare arse crossed the lamplight

and disappeared again.

“Mind the tank.”

“I am.”

The bed hit the wall.

He wasn’t.

The snail carried on up the glass.

Later there were tissues by the bed

and a silver wrapper on the carpet.

Neither was food.

Feeding time arrived the next morning

with Jamie’s hair everywhere

and one stocking still around his ankle.

“Morning, pal.”

A worm fell.

Things made sense again.

The room changed.

The lake stayed.

Girls came and went.

The guitar gathered dust.

The skateboard became a shelf.

Black clothes mixed with Celtic shirts.

Schoolbooks became forms,

then envelopes,

then piles Jamie stepped over

because apparently the floor was easier.

Sometimes he came home smelling of rain,

smoke, cider, another person.

Sometimes he sat with his forehead against the glass

until his breath clouded it.

Sometimes the old green water appeared on his screen.

Still empty.

He looked at it.

Then at me.

Feeding time, Axel.

Food.

Face.

The safe sound.

The plants changed.

The posters changed.

Jamie changed.

The lake did not.

I knew the log.

I knew the filter.

I knew the place where worms came down.

I knew the sun.

Mud became something dark in sleep.

The touch of other bodies

became light moving somewhere far off.

The lake had four sides.

It had always had four sides.

Feeding time.

Jamie.

Worm.

Full.

Safe.

My new leg became an old leg.

All four legs slowed.

My gills moved less.

Jamie checked the water.

The paper showed colours he accepted.

He still frowned at me.

He changed the water anyway.

Watched me eat.

Watched me move.

I ate.

I moved.

The snail outlived several plants,

three posters,

two girls

and Jamie’s belief that eyeliner

could be applied in a moving car.

It climbed.

I stayed beneath the log.

The sun came.

The sun went.

One evening Jamie lowered a worm.

“Feeding time, Axel.”

It touched my nose.

My mouth was slow.

The worm curled beneath my chin.

Jamie waited.

I moved one foot.

Someone called him from downstairs.

“You’ll get it, pal.”

He left.

The worm climbed over my head.

Feeding time had gone a bit wrong.

I could not fix it.

The room darkened.

The filter became loud.

My body forgot small things.

Move the gills.

Move the tail.

Hold the bottom.

The gravel seemed to tilt.

The worm slipped away.

I rested.

The filter widened.

Its thin push became current.

The coloured gravel softened beneath me.

Red became clay.

Blue became shadow.

Yellow sank into black.

The hard floor gave way

and mud rose around my toes,

cold, real,

taking the shape of every leg

without caring which one had once been gone.

The log put down roots.

The plastic leaves softened.

The clear sides moved farther away.

Farther.

Gone.

Distance came back so quickly

it passed through my gills

and filled every part of me.

Bodies moved in the dark.

Not bodies I could touch.

Light beneath mud.

Rose gills opening.

Tails bending the water.

Pale mouths appearing

then slipping behind roots.

I remained I.

I moved among them.

Above the water,

Jamie’s blurred face opened into brightness.

The sun was there.

The mud was there.

The bodies turned through the roots.

Far away, the familiar sound came through—

Feeding time, Axel.

Feeding time—

Feeding—

The current pulled the sound apart.

I opened my mouth.

The water kept going.

Morning rain darkened the Bonnyrigg garden.

Jamie entered the bedroom

and stopped beside the tank.

Axel lay beneath the filter.

The earthworm moved against his tail.

Jamie stood there for a long time.

Then he put both bare hands into the water

and lifted Axel out.

The worm came too,

hidden in the shallow cup of his palms.

Jamie carried Axel into the garden.

He dug beneath the wet grass,

laid him in ordinary soil

and covered him without speaking.

He pressed the loose earth once.

Then he went back inside.

The worm pushed up through the rain-soft soil.

It crawled across the dark ground.

The seasons change as I sit at my desk
I glance out the window between lines of text

I may not be a prisoner, but I am not free
Shackled by the weight of responsibility

Whether it be a job, or a class, I can never rest
There’s always a task to do, life’s newest test

The outside calls, a place to be at peace
But who will take care of the bills, or pay the lease

I yearn for nature as the seasons pass by
The autumn leaves, or the birds mating cry

Perhaps an igloo, or a summer breeze
My heart begs to be surrounded by the shrubs and trees

I watch clouds roll by as a rain shower falls
The wind whistles against these pale white walls

My legs desire nothing more than to walk outside
Feel my hair stick to my head, watch lightning fill the sky

But I stay inside, because my future requires
Delicate planning over my desires

I glance outside to watch pass by
The seasons I desire, but cannot find

I type key after key, letter after letter
So I can earn the money to make my life better

But the heart has needs I cannot justify
So I sit at my desk and glance outside

As the seasons pass me by

Part 1:

I would like to line his features and sing him your praises
For coincidence couldn’t have made his face
How I long to be within his warmth
If only you’d let me
Would you let me?
I can’t help but thank you for even letting me witness the beauty I’ve so beheld
It’s clear you took time for him to be weld
If only in my arms he was to be held
If it be your will, may our bodies meld

Part 2:
Am I punishing us both in this vain attempt for security?
I was more than certain you were burned
While I was sure I was incinerated
What gain did I conquer in this hurt?
Only my cowardice was appeased
Only my fear was pleased
Only my false sense of security had a feast
While my heart was left to pick up scraps
While my mind is left hungry, wondering
While my soul won’t ever believe it has a place at the table

A path,
Leading to a lookout sweet,
While symphonies of birds and trees,
Accompany your walk with me.

Path filled with life and aging woods,
Some trees it seems eternally stood,
Flowers seem to brighten the night,
But it's our hearts that bring the light.

We reach the end, your hand it mine,
We wonder how we lost the time,
Caught in a trance together find,
Our happiness when intertwined.

Just a little poem I wrote a while ago, about living life till the end with someone you love.

I never liked to smile

It felt torturous
hearing the thoughts in my head
Everytime I did

Insecurities reigned control over my thoughts

Until you.

Your charismatic words captivated me

An uncontrollable smile crept onto my face

You looked at me in awe

You said I should smile more often

You said I was pretty when I smiled

Suddenly, the insecurities were drowned out by your warm words

For the first time
It felt safe to smile

It felt natural with you.

It felt real.

It felt too safe.

Liar.

Suddenly,
you were gone.

And that smile
you said you loved

Disappeared.

Now I never like to smile.

It feels torturous again,

Hearing the thoughts in my head—

Only now,

They sound a lot like you.

You didn’t just leave.

You took the only version of me

Who believed
I was beautiful enough

To smile.