Very little helps

 

This supermarket life,

cellophane wrapped feelings

to protect from

the dirty hands outside.

Your own brand thoughts

no longer allowed,

only

mass produced emotions

printed on boxes

stacked ceiling high.

 

Shiny packaging

conceals an overpriced

chemistry set

of regret and

over produced lies.

Full of sugar

to hide the bitterness

and the tang of rot,

that gets caught

in your throat.

Meanwhile the

misshapen produce sits

neglected in a pile,

ready to be incinerated

in the ceremonial funeral pyre.

 

Live well for less,

they contest,

whilst pushing

overpriced bags

of emptiness.

Prices that pop,

the slogans never stop,

do your weekly shop,

and fill your bins

with our rancid microwaved slop.

That Asda be a con,

and when you wonder

where all your money has gone,

you can use the boxes to keep warm.

 

Colourful and bright,

easily distracting at

eye level to get attention,

in spite of containing

no nutrition.

Just cardboard and sawdust,

repackaged

as food and consumed 

by the bucket full.

Easily distracted eyes

sigh in delight at the cartons

printed in bold lettering,

every little helps they smile,

as they buy another lie.

Walking into a sunset

 

It’s like a piece of me dies

every time I put on that smile

and say goodbye.

A graveyard

I’ve come to despise.

When all I want is to say how you

light up my life,

but the words just fail

and I just walk away

into the sunset,

whilst you walk

the other way

into the sunrise.

 

When I’m with you

I feel a tingle inside,

flapping like

those clichéd butterflies

that live within,

but when I walk away

I feel a swarm of wasps

stinging me until I’m blue

and I want to scream

those words,

the truth that I hold in.

For when love climbs inside

I want to smile wide

but I lose control of my lips

and the words become confused.

 

And I never knew that I

was so good at lying.

But every time I say goodbye

it feels like dying,

it feels like

the sun burning itself out

leaving just

a blackhole in the sky.

where all the hope

gets sucked in,

like the way I pull in

the words before they

come tumbling from my lips.

I feel my mind crumbling

until I’m left searching

through the rubble

for the only smile

I have left that fits.

 

I feel like I only

ever want to say hello,

because every welcome

is time spent in your company,

but then goodbye always

comes and slaps me

to wake me from a dream

I was so peacefully embracing.

And when I bite my lip

I taste the blood of every regret.

Every word I never said,

every moment never shared,

Every kiss that could never exist,

because our ships

were never set to sail

on the same waters,

our feet never to stretch

over the same sandy beaches.

Undone

 

Sometimes it all comes undone.

The moment of realisation

always dawns too late,

and the comedown

starts to take hold

when your own love

walks out of the gate

into the realms beyond.

 

When you realise you've spent

more time holding onto hate

than the remnants of hope

that once clung on.

Because what they showed was

just a fiction,

a blurted word of love

a story that was never true.

A story that never included you.

 

Sometimes it’s just too late,

and your own love leaves

in the wake of a bad dream.

No words can save something

that is beyond repair, those words

can’t navigate through the despair

that lives when love never really lived there.

 

Sometimes it all comes undone.

Every strand of twine is left just straggled

across the floor and your

heart pours acid blood

into your now sour stomach.

 

The distance between

breaths

are endless it seems,

The gaping chasms

between minutes

on a clock face.

The gasps as tears are pulled back,

before they have a chance to race down cheeks.

The screams that live in the chest,

bursting to get free

become only a pitiful whimper

when they touch the cold air.

 

Sometimes it all comes undone

and it can feel unfair,

when you've given your whole heart

and they never seemed to care.