Unleashed

no more life made of absences // no more waiting

no more trying to find truth in a silence // instead a better kind of quiet

I can hear you in the waves // in the air // like electricity // I can feel you close

can I stick around // just a little longer // I’m sorry // I cannot stay

can I slide into your dms like it’s easy // like it’s casual

like I don’t overthink // every letter // of your name

can I love you quietly // or am I doomed to be the storm

blowing your body away from home // we do so love to be alone

but here I am // trying to cue the interaction // instead of doing it

have you ever just had so much to say // you can’t speak

my eyes full of stars & my mouth full of dust // writing poetry in the ink of my shame

in my name // how it sparkles // do you see it // can you read me

or do I have to hurl myself into honesty // without a page to hide behind

do I have to stop watching the seconds tick by // & live inside them

how do I tell you how I feel from far away // how do I not miss you

how do I be brave // how do I seize the day

NO MORE LIFE MADE OF ABSENCES included in Issue 3 of Dog Teeth Lit ~ about leaving a social event early & regretting it forever

I want to hard-launch you into the atmosphere of sincerity

I want to choke us both with my lovergirl grip

I want to imprint us into the stars & gaze at it for days

our constellation needs a name

I want to get up on stage & be like

HERE IS

ANOTHER FUCKING

LOVE POEM

& everyone will sigh dramatically & be like

here she goes again

like I need to be returned to

the Lover Institution

bitch I am the fucking president

of the Lover Institution

I am the Jack Nicholson of the Lover Institution

I am a threat to all cynics

I am downright cringe

call it in!

when they see us

holding hands on the bus or whatever

your head in my lap at Loosies

we are so all over each other it’s

almost offensive

but sorry I’ve had a

deficit & I’m

catching up!

I am Captain, oh Captain

of the romantics

I am orating the story

of how we met

when anybody asks us

we look at each other & laugh

let me tell it, you missed the best bit!

haha just kidding you don’t miss shit

you, looking at me,

looking at you,

can we stay here in our hall of mirrors forever

everywhere my own reflection

looking beautiful

everywhere, you

on & on like a beginning on loop.

My recent publication in Bus Talk Lit, full sneak peak from their inaugural issue available here: https://bustalklit.wixsite.com/home/post/issue-one-sneak-peek

My poem ‘CONTACT ME’ published in Antler Velvet Mag

‘MAPS’ ~ published by nightshade lit mag, written by me (Devon Webb)

I wrote an essay on the cinematic event of the century! Read here: https://www.eratomagazine.com/post/notes-on-the-barbaissance

New poem up online! It’s about unhealthy situationships lol 💙

New poem up on Bad Apple, it’s about sex & Skyrim 😈

Wrote my first ever fan fic! It’s about Skyrim & I had an excellent time writing it 💕

NERDS ARISE!

Resurrect your darlings!

Give that which you love life again!

Throw yourself into your greatest excesses!

Turn your back on the dead & depressing!

Embrace your ambition with the kind of

manic hope they’d call delusion!

Fuck those dreary days & blank-eyed cynicism!

Sift through your own history for

everything beautiful &

make sure it is not lost

you are never empty,

there’s a future through the fog.

At the end of the day I only ever loved you better

loved you steadier, with clearer resilience

every fucked up thing you ever said

just an echo in my head when I see you full-volume

with your eyes like that & your smile like that

& the way you stand so shy like that

loving you is easy from far away

when our romance is dead we still live

we still flourish, even

I see you here under my city of old & think

thank god our hearts survived this

thank god I still see gold in you

with the rose-tint gone it’s just the real you

golden, but not the kind you can pry from the tarnish

when the love stopped being high & low it just got

…still, & always here somewhere

when I sit down & choose to look at it instead of

swept up in a storm

distance is our blessing darling when we don’t

burn each other to ash

just a little warmth, a little flickering, a little moment of remembering

remember when I saw you (I still see you)

remember when we kept coming back even though it killed us

remember when we kissed our daggers before digging them in

shit! we were fucking shakespearean

but now there’s a calm after the tragedy

like if Romeo & Juliet didn’t die

but walked away separately from the scene of their double suicide

maybe in a thousand years in some other legend

we’d be grown & weathered enough to be together

when the two flames kiss instead of eating each other alive

but I see you when the smoke has cleared &

god, you’re still my twin

more than my friend or my favourite enemy

the other side of me

an intimacy even though our lips barely touched

outlasting what we unmade when I wasn’t quite your lover

we were so many things to each other I couldn’t choose just one

but to tell it through metaphor we traded blood

& there’ll always be a bit of me in you & you in me

there’ll always be a meeting between our two kindred souls

there’ll always be stories that know they were never quite told.

Hello, I wrote an article about the overlap between autism & the arts if anyone would like to check it out! Very proud of it 💛

I haven’t written any poems

about you in a while

but I still tell the story

that’s all I really got from you:

the stories

memories so vivid they ache in the telling

fairy tales turning black at the edges

dreams turning to dust

in the unforgiving crush of the truth

you were no prince, no hero

just a cowardly half-lover

with flaws endearing enough

to beg my forgiveness

oh, what rich & classic lore

the man afraid to love

the boy with his guitar

the girl who played his mother

the trauma he didn’t transmute

ah! what a timeless tale

always meant to outlive our doomed romance

more beautiful than what you couldn’t give me

the poetry I took for myself.

Making peace with my loneliness has been an extended process

I have always been a romantic & there has always been a yearning

for the kind of understanding that runs deep

the kind of companionship that doesn’t diminish or detract

but alas, it has been my place to know solitude

& what of the peace in that

what of the great kinship I feel with my own soul

what of the time, the investments I have made into my indestructible self-adoration

what of when I was drowning & held my own hand & found land again

what of my stubborn survival

what of the way I find such beauty in a dream & such

freedom to go out & seek it

what if I build it inside me like a

fantasy in my own name

what if all these years I was looking for a lover

there’s one who never left me.

It’s fitting

the mystery of the way you faded

it’s poetic

this small significant tragedy

& the way it changed me for the better

the way it led me to your door

& out into an unknown city

You were the catalyst for my

eager unravelling

my patient pulling back together

I do not want to look for love

if it does not look like you

not you, per say

but the same kind of man

the same sensation of a mending touch

god knows it wasn’t enough god

knows I wanted more

but it was magic

it was an ephemeral flash

it was a bright explosion leaving me open

for change

taking me away from these sad sad boys

with their selfish lack of good humour

& beckoning me towards a hope

that maybe I can be held in a way that

heals instead of hurts

maybe I can find another miracle

maybe I can get lost in a rich gold humanity

& smile & feel real

knowing so superstitious somewhere

this city is majestically haunted

by the loveliest ghost.