bleeding-heart

My father’s demons lap the back of my eyes

Drinking in the dreary sights 

Breathing out fire

They live right here

Most mornings I wake with

A stab wound in my chest

Grave grey gargoyles

Gaggling in the garden I call my body

I am sorry, I think my heart is bleeding

Dozens of days I spend looking 

For threads to stitch me up

The shock of the metal cutting

My flesh is fresh

The edge of the knife is dull

I lost my edge too

A single slow thought you can cull out

Rattling in the depths of my skull

I forget why I was finding the thread 

Stitching a shift out of my shroud

Swaddled in the cloth of dread

I am sorry, I think my heart is bleeding

Watching warped videos 

On television sets in a store

Like a vulture 

Each screen slightly different

I never learnt to see myself

I put on a show for an invisible audience

They laugh, they cry

My blood runs dry

I am sorry, I think my heart is bleeding

w i t c h e s

every neighbourhood houses witches

the last brick house down the lane

wild women with unruly hair

looking out of their windowpane

sharp dagger-like tongues

cutting curses deep in your skin

stay away, you warn little children

and whisper to your next of kin

tornadoes decorate the corners of their house

swirling dark clouds of anger and cries

they'll fight you on rent

the air chilly in their vents

cracks in the elevator shaft

leaking wisps of strength, adding on weights you could never hope to lift

raging thunderclaps sound

when you smoothly ask for the ring to be passed

to the man of the house

in whose blood you think these women are doused

they don't attend your fairs

or your warm bonfires

maybe because they're afraid you'll burn them on the pyre

finally a neighbourhood

where no witches are alive

though i hear their voices

in my own exasperated sighs

i look in the mirror

to find, the witch that was cursed 

now resides inside

the brick melted into smooth blinding silver

like a lake of my 'sins' 

stay away, you warn little children

and whisper to your next of kin