blackmail press 28
Rebekah Burgess
New Zealand

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Rebekah Burgess is aged 29 and lives in Wellington. She is a journalist and a previous contributor to Blackmail Press.

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Oh come, happiness, come, come
to me, delight me with your
touch, come happiness
come, love come to me,
delight me with your touch,
rip me apart with your transience.

Oh come, hate come, hate come.
Oh come loneliness come,
surround me in your
familiar cloak then at some
point I’ll remember,
through memories’ mists,
that once I had
friends, a pal,
an associate with which
to sip beer/wine/bourbon,
muse about the world.

Oh come loneliness come.
Come, death come, life’s too painful too
transient - but surely,
throwing oneself off a
building is not the way
to be.

Come loneliness come.
Come walls come. Come,
my mask, come. You’ll
try to penetrate. My
lashing tongue will take
you down. You’ll lie
bleeding on the floor
unknown what it is
you did wrong, oh but
for the curse of being human.





True love

Where do I pour my love
if I have no soul to accept?
I’ll pour it into a jar,
save it for special times,
give it one day when it’s
truly needed: save this wastage.

Too much love poured on one
soul makes it bitter,
stale…unimpressed. Too much
love I have – if I were not to
pour it into a jar for another
day, I’d surely rot myself.





The challenge

You’ll always leave people wanting more,
taking more than you can give,
swallow you up into my milky,
deep eyes; eyes that watch,
liquid glass. Soulful; boring
into your soul, into your
mind, daring you to look
back. But what are you staring at?
Why, I’m staring at you, daring you,
daring you to stare back.





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Now our time is wrought with goodbyes,
a straining to ensure each meeting
is not the last. Hopes linger
and stray: please do not leave
and take with you the light you spread.

Why is it so hard to give yourself
to another – why so hard to
trust? Because when a crossroads
comes and your heart is
straining one way, it is not certain theirs
will strain the same way.

How can love be finite: if you water
the garden it will grow and
blossom. If you shut the
door the vines will grow: creeping
through the cracks
BUT STUNTED.

My heart does not yearn to
stray: my heart is closed to
all but you, my desire for you
has faded none but the trust grows
and falls away: and builds
a wall between.

Each time I climb the wall
empowerment spreads and fills
the space, each time the door closes
another trust seedling must grow.
Please water the seedling: 
it will grow again.

If the trust dies there will
be no love, if the certainty of
commitment not be there, so be it.
If the feeling not be there
I’ll die.

Give to me a part of yourself:
in your words I’ll catch you gently:
I WILL. The promise is not uttered in
strain or under duress. It was always
there but unspoken.

I’d like for you to trust me
and me you. I’d like to lie
with you forever never ever
let you go: I’d like to let you
fly away from me with an
unspoken – or spoken – promise
of something more. If the feeling is
not there it’s over. I’m not ready
for the end to come. My heart
won’t mend so quickly
when the trust has grown so tall.







Kitchen - Charles Olsen