Poetry: Lucas Birtles
Compromise
And so I told her I can bear it no more, and no longer can I fake the hand squeezed love or bear hearing that slow shutting door; the consistent reminder of passionless breathing taking its final steps to the landing where it sighs and says, once again, I am tired.
Days pass.
I love you. But in these words I hear don't touch me. You're my home. But in these words I hear the metal twisting in the lock, the shackles tight around my wrists and this time the intention is to throw away the key. Our whole, our everything discarded in a slow march to a rocky cliff edge with no ropes, nor harness to prevent the inevitable fall and subsequent death of what was you and I.
Compromise. No.
So with my words I take the blunt scissors and cut myself out of the picture of us she's worn so loosely around her heart. She sighs. Agrees. The picture had lost its colour anyway. What have we been wasting our time for.
Days pass.
I miss you. But when she says those words they do not mean she misses me. It's nothing but an easy way for her to love someone from a distance. From a place without their flaws. Without your laziness, lack of confidence, your thin arms or long hair.
Compromise. Why?
The Giant
But there he stands, a giant, a mountain range, canyons and crevices, fields and greying plains, lines and cracks act as freeways and lanes: transporting dread, despair across the ragged cliffs face.
A breath, stop, a moment without pain, it’s a moment too short, a moment with no gain. His hands bruised with the memory of loss, the scars from thorns of stories once taught.
Against the walls in his mind, he broke his own bones, the shadows of his ego ate their own words, laughter haunting the halls of his world, causing collapse from the cliff, in this moment he froze.
Time slowed and now this giant, alone, falls, he once was a man but treads the mind field at war. Hot are the bullets, the metal and claws that tear at his sanity and faces on walls.
Spoken word, poetry and photography by Lucas Birtles.