Caught in the rain

As I walk down the pavement rain seeps into my skin I wonder if it will dissolve me if I let it - if only I could take it and dissolve it into myself - because in the cold biting wind I feel the edges of the world - suddenly sharp - at my fingertips my face (the parts of me I feel the most with) and I find myself absorbing soaking in the moment as much as I can before everything is dry again before reality before I find myself standing alone by the side of the road heavy with the weight of compounded tears - the burden the clouds release onto the earth.

A confession

i used to believe in a redemptive quality about honesty
as if the truth itself was true enough to be considered pure
the uncovering of ourselves akin to surrender -

i thought i could save myself if i tried -

so i extended my arms upwards, tensing
the joints in my fingers to achieve the right posture -
but i didn't know where to face my palms,

clueless as the murderer who surrenders
the red stains on his hands
to coarse water from a rusty tap

and trails down the sides of the sink,
down pipes and drains, and finally,
into the sea, where sin is diluted

to a subtler shade by the collective
sympathy of the others who decided to baptise
themselves in the same salt water

(i saw some of them go down, once,
but when they emerged, they were wet
and nothing more).

face value

Criticise my imperfect state of mind, and unwind
the woven world of ideals bound, so tightly, around
my naked naivete; view reality through the painfully
transparent lens of skepticism, discount it with realism -

but don't taint my words -

don't smooth over their rough edges with slippery varnish
so they slide in and out of the mind as seamlessly as a
mantra, or the hauntingly beautiful anthem of the new age;
they are as whole as I am incomplete, closer to me
than the ground beneath my feet.