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Unleashed

@leatherbounddiaries

Hello I am Devon and I write poetry things
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Resurrect Your Darlings

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.

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Twin

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.

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The Story

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.

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To Know Solitude

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.

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Lovely Ghost

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.

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Quarter-Life Crisis

I’m turning twenty-five & I don’t know what it means

what is the summation of everything I’ve been

why are all the doors behind me closed &

why is the only way to make sense of it to leave

When did the new beginnings get old

why do the dreams keep creeping just an inch further away

even as they’re close enough to hold

when did the colours get so murky why do I have to be so bold

I try to put a hand on my life but it just passes through

I try to process my trauma but it’s stuck like PVA glue

& as I peel it off piece by piece

in my preoccupation I’m not a good enough friend

I am hung up stuck in burnt out

& when I ask for help I just feel too loud

& who is my question directed at anyway

what is the longest anyone has stayed

Or is it not the other people moving & am

I myself the storm that roams the coastline looking for home

& is this wind that everything swirls around in

just my head that aches for calm

Is it external circumstance that keeps me displaced

or is it my destiny to change

must I see everything to know what I need

is it a blessing or a curse to know the world will never shrink

I curse these four walls but they can’t keep me

I am a lonely latent celebrity

one day I will creep back into these holes in the timber

for a quick breath before breaking them all the more

I don’t know where I am right now

but I have a pretty clear sense of where I’m going

I know now that stagnancy is not the place for poets

I know loss only fosters fonder hope

One day I will come home & learn how to stay

these are the lessons they never gave

but as I pass through yet another ephemeral state

I know transparency is the only way this new form can take shape.

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Not To Be Lonely

I have spent my whole womanhood trying not to be lonely but I guess sometimes

what else can you do

oh I am an independent woman & I don’t need no man

except for when the aloneness aches

I tell myself there is no shame

in wanting something

a touch, some attention

a conversation that isn’t all about him

after six months of everything being all about him & me just the therapy

like a subconscious psychiatric sidepiece

It’s a Tuesday & I’m sitting outside JJ’s

wishing there was some equally lonely hot person

who would stop & talk to me even though I’ve got my headphones on

& I’m not soliciting shit

I’m too autistic for this

where do you go when you wanna be picked up

but only by someone interesting

I don’t wanna be easy but I want it to be easy

the um

compatibility

like when you make meaningful eye contact in the crowded thoroughfare of Cuba Street

& just stop

I want to be stopped

in my tracks

like a movie

I want someone who makes me feel effortlessly confident

someone who brings out the inside of me

the fairy princess energy

I want someone who says my name & maintains eye contact till

my heart is sludge or dissolving somewhere in the bottom of a jug of beer

but I am drinking this jug alone & laughing over Greta & Valdin

who say they’re not good at dating but seem to be doing quite well actually

& all these hot people walk past in pairs with other hot people

& it makes me feel left out

like what have I been missing these past seven years

that companionship & dependability & there’s always someone there when you need them

there’s always some sex & healthy masochism & whatever else suits your fancy

there’s always a place to be

a pair of arms

a lack of apathy

but as I throw back my beer & take my leave

here I am, just wandering.

Yes, I love you, deep

enough in the dregs of

new wine -- to drown --you

need only be the manic princess

unreadable ineffable untouchable day

dream fantasy pixie fae energy lover,

love, and is it but a star-cross'd

thing of rancid beauty, that which

Romeo had never known and, in folly,

Juliet, bare- hollowed-boneds, how 'pon

the morrow faced a fate long known but

hers, alone,

but hers, cross'd the gate of safety and

of home, to-- find the found --in sweet-bitter

legacy of captured -killed-forgotten

God-kings and offers

splayed, bound in blood

and tamed in excess

beloved princess

my heart goes-- out

as the little bird--

out to join

the wandering.

Someone wrote a poem in response to my poem & …I love it?? I feel so seen by a stranger on the internet? Some of those lines really got me like… oof

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Not To Be Lonely

I have spent my whole womanhood trying not to be lonely but I guess sometimes

what else can you do

oh I am an independent woman & I don’t need no man

except for when the aloneness aches

I tell myself there is no shame

in wanting something

a touch, some attention

a conversation that isn’t all about him

after six months of everything being all about him & me just the therapy

like a subconscious psychiatric sidepiece

It’s a Tuesday & I’m sitting outside JJ’s

wishing there was some equally lonely hot person

who would stop & talk to me even though I’ve got my headphones on

& I’m not soliciting shit

I’m too autistic for this

where do you go when you wanna be picked up

but only by someone interesting

I don’t wanna be easy but I want it to be easy

the um

compatibility

like when you make meaningful eye contact in the crowded thoroughfare of Cuba Street

& just stop

I want to be stopped

in my tracks

like a movie

I want someone who makes me feel effortlessly confident

someone who brings out the inside of me

the fairy princess energy

I want someone who says my name & maintains eye contact till

my heart is sludge or dissolving somewhere in the bottom of a jug of beer

but I am drinking this jug alone & laughing over Greta & Valdin

who say they’re not good at dating but seem to be doing quite well actually

& all these hot people walk past in pairs with other hot people

& it makes me feel left out

like what have I been missing these past seven years

that companionship & dependability & there’s always someone there when you need them

there’s always some sex & healthy masochism & whatever else suits your fancy

there’s always a place to be

a pair of arms

a lack of apathy

but as I throw back my beer & take my leave

here I am, just wandering.

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Are We Gonna Talk

Are we gonna talk about it?

Our shared trauma?

Or rather, your trauma that has overflowed

like blood I’m forced to handle

hell, I never asked for this

so are we gonna discuss how fucked up it is

or are you gonna run away again

like a coward calling himself a man

like an avoidant spectre of unsaid things

I have been doing your emotional labour for six months

I have been giving you too much

I have been overlooking every red flag

out of a longing that it was easy to love you

But baby I’ve been doing my taxes

& it’s come to my attention that in terms of

emotional stability

this is not an economically viable situation

You’ve gotta pay me if you want me to be your therapist

& honey you need that shit

there’s clearly something a little twisted

with your perception of femininity

You say you don’t exhibit misogyny

but blame women for all your bad takes

it wasn’t his girlfriend ruining your best mate

it was his own narcissism

But I never took you for insecure

I took you for a Leo with an inflated ego

maybe that’s why you’re projecting

maybe that’s why there are some things

on which you struggle to self-reflect

& I don’t know how to say these things to your face

cos you’ve gone ghost on me again

can you dump people in your head

or is that just pussy bullshit

I have become more comfortable with confrontation

but you don’t give me the chance

& that’s why you & I will never last

that’s why I will have a perpetually breaking heart

if I keep it yours

I wish my heart was yours

it has your name on it like I’m a

child with too many crayons

it wants to be yours but it’s not

It can’t be

cos I love myself too much to keep it

in these masochistic cycles of

unbalanced one-sided fantasy relationships

is this twin-flame shit or delusion &

can two truths coexist

I wish you had a heart that was open not

hidden behind a hundred walls &

I wish it was mine

but you have only ever loved yourself

& can I blame you for being one-track minded

are we not the same in so many ways

was I not one-track minded

a little too monogamous in my wanting of you

Maybe I love who you could be

& not who you are

I wish the two things were a

little less far apart

& I can’t keep tryna pull them closer together

cos whether or not I want to know it

it’s not my job to fix you

it’s not my job to undo whatever it is that’s been done

It’s only my job to love

so I will do so from far away where

it doesn’t cause me so much pain

& maybe you will watch

wondering

why my eyes are so soft

behind the unanticipated absence

of tears.

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