Life and Death

IN CROWDS OF PANTOMIME

When it burns, the inferno
turns you into something not
quite finished and not yet
transformed and only
you
know your limits while the world
sits by and waits for its
‘pièce de résistance’ to rise from the
rebirth it gave you
like it had handed you first prize
when you had not yet picked
the numbers.

Your monster wears its party fangs
without asking first:
the current climate
calling for partial nudity and
cluster fucks with strangers who
somehow
drop their unweaned smiles
like crumbs inside the dirty of your lap –
and on and on it goes,
slave
to martyr
to fall upon
deafened eyes and those blind
of learning.

It burns, this puppetry,
in crowds of pantomime,
grappling
for the melting of your heart;
its wax upon the crutches of
every
mistake
you have
chiselled from your chest to bury alone.
It burns, and
you know only how to self-combust and welcome death
for you fear it will one day leave without you –
and where would you run to
without those karmic ties to reign you in
or pull you back
or weave themselves inside to commandeer you.

Beneath this sweltering burst of oppression,
soiled and seeded, and
planted by the ankles in concrete shoes;
beneath the heatwave that rides you like you need an awakening;
beneath you – the hotplate – the hot knife – the hotel
embellished with red-black highways,
and roads of bloodshot weariness
raining from your eyes,

you, in party fangs
and crawling upon dusty knees
sear
all over,
in and out
– Karma’s glove –
for anywhere else
but the squalor of this doomed acceptance.

ASTEROID

I expect too much of time
in the little I have left.
I am a dinosaur,
and it,
the pummeling to come.

I wait for its whoosh to confound me;
the bending skyward of my neck;
the brevity of my innocence;
my un-vocal surrender.

A wounded animal,
contorted by such clarity,
confronted
by my lack of ease
as I awkwardly live to expire.

TREASURERS, WE

There we were
for a moment
awash with candy’d rainbows that shed
spun-sugar silk
to dress this call for change

It’s a pity
this entree tasted like a sundae of fever and fable

Treasurers, we, to nought, now
but wingless poetry;
of letters, silent
and honest
we’d declined to share

NO EXIT

I fight rough
– healing you –
to turn truth
into your new home

Sharp edges
for the smoky silence
of a rear-view mirror

RELINQUISH

By and by,
the past, it passes –
date–raping purpose
through peering glasses:
pregnant pauses never lasting

Every vanished thrill
restarting futures
on a windowed sill,
shadows casting mimes
in stills
as long will live the passion
– hungry –
fuelling moments full to brim

Just as quick, another morning
dawning – time to pass
and kill; murder
just another constant,
one more loss on
sudden whim as
whereupon man solders on
to play the night another song
for day by day we carry on
to pass another past
along.

HOSTILE

Your heart is a no-man’s land, and
you have fornicated, battle-ready,
with countless minds, The Art of War
alive in your apathetic stare;
a ghostly Sun Tzu in your shadow, and
its pages falling in chapters from your face

Yet, like a Viking, you roar,
axe in hand to slaughter dreams and cut ties;
no art, no honour, and just half the warrior
you claim to be – the septic engraver of
bloody runes and headstone eulogies

Norse winds carrying the poetry I write of you,
it’s pages never to reach your crimson eyes

PURPLE HEART

My posthumous heart
declares no life without you
yet
the holding of my breath
to mark your absence beats it louder

and as I listen to every bloody word
it whispers in my ears
I wrap the sound around me
like your missing arms
and
count
each
pulse
until my vitals fade

wondering
if you will ever rush
like this intimate moment
to tend to my starving needs again

HUMAN BOOKENDS

It is here
in this bottle-necked existence, locked
into days captioned by ticks and tocks
where time resides in each of us
until it stops,
rotating the same hands
inside the same third dimensional clock.

It is here
where every breath exhaled is a universal kiss –
it is simply one moment and
the space in between this
that binds together our journeys, which,
as uniquely defined as we feel each is,
are all chapters of the same book
we write to reminisce,
primed and painted with the same theme we
create to self-exist,
scrawled by the same pencil, held
by the same hands as we persist . . .
each of us artists
with the same precise and leather-bound twist.

It is here
where we long for real purpose or true faith –
to believe that something
‘other’/ external / majestic
awaits . . .
but in nothing we trust
yet, cry blame for our fate –
each a different monologue of the same hate;
the same distracting soul state;
the same periodic and prolific bait.
God would not want us, at any rate

It is here
in darkness, arms around each other’s back
that war hangs overhead in stasis,
circling, cycling on a track and
wearing thin our patience
while it leaks like yolk from all our cracks
(we watch it drip indifferently as we huddle tight within our pack)
S
I
L
E
N
T
L
Y
preparing
for the next surprise attack:
we, like wolves, insane
and seeing red with every flash –
our lonely pain inciting hunger,
our deep abyss as black.

It is here
in this cosmic explosion
and it is now just as it was then,
that peace is nought but a tragic parody
of the dreams of passing men –
and nothing changes but the theatre of stars
in lines, in queues, end to end,
enemy to friend to
ENEMY
for decades once again,
consuming pain like greed as our bellies, full, distend,
living every angle of the lie like it is money we MUST spend,
the broken tales of each of us
portending, true, our end;
dangling one more burden
like a dog-tag for a past we’ve penned,
at rest beneath a headstone
in a yard of human bookends.

BOOK OF LIVING DREAMS

In waking sleep we all expire,
remote organics built to tire –
searching lusts for something more
to fill our souls beyond our core

We lay awake inside a dream,
asleep within a constant stream,
alone, in part, to wander, lost,
with passing time our only cost

We play as shadows holding hands
with eyes wide closed and few demands,
our every moment briefly clashing;
fast forgotten memories flashing

Here, we count down from our birth
with time a thief upon this earth –
purpose teased at every corner,
Chinese Whispers our informer

But all will realise when we’re gone
that we were dreaming every song –
that death becomes another story;
a painless world of allegory

It’s clear we write this book forever
as single pages bound together
to lay inside our reader’s minds
in passing paragraphs of time

WHERE THE MAPS WON’T

Journey across time with calendar wings
moments packed like spare t-shirts
and extra socks
passport in one hand and an
empty notebook pencilled by thought

its white void the clouds
that fuel your glorious lungs

Honeymoon with more sky and fewer limits
bound at the ankles by freedom
and gift-wrapped in chance
the fresh juice of destiny
your north in every glass of south

and a stomach full of butterflies
to take you to places the maps won’t

WEED, THE PEOPLE

Led by foreign madness, we
– to long expected sleepless graves –
will swim to sink and drown in numbers
weighted down beneath the waves
with nothing left inside but shadows;
no–one left of worth to save

In one end and out the other
warring with psychotic pride, then
born again and made to suffer
– karmic purpose ill–forgotten –
each new chance at life, a buffer:
“Next time: change…” we chant inside

Cycles written, history leaking,
sorely weeping through the pores
of growing wombs and offspring born
– another child of soulless form –
to breastfeed lies, imprisoned, shrieking
time again: disease repeating

Sin ingested (soup for poor)
– the bile of shame and burden lost –
as people starve and lives are sold
and terrors planned to mind control…
and all the while our sickened bodies
hover, rotting, rank with worry

Toll the bells – it’s time to breathe
and weed this horror from our conscience,
steer ourselves towards a pardon,
pave the way, resume our garden
seeding spirit, heart, and mind
with growth to bloom for one last time
or we, the people, incarnating,
won’t survive beyond our mating

SINKING

this moment will
without you
slip away from me

drowning
as I feared, alone
in a raft made for two

oars afloat
beyond my cramping fingers

and nothing but my shadow-self
will be revived

WRITE ME BACK TO LIFE

Piece by formless piece of me
compose of new desires –
write me back to life before my hope
deterred
retires

Inflate my heart until it finds itself
in soothing flight –
sprout for me the wings I need
to beat its rhythm right

Expand my lungs to fill with life
and bleed this void no more –
to breathe ambition in until
it seeps from every pore

Expression-fill my written words
in storms to self-empower –
for in this silent wash of time
perspective leaves me sour

Find within my shadows
proof of flawless, lustrous light –
elucidate my purpose
forming day from cloudy night

Write of peace, a balm
to heal my bleakly fractured power –
a vision
rich
to seed and plant
and soon – I hope – to flower

Inspire my eroding soul
with passion to ignite –
a reason to awaken
fresh
with fervour to incite

Harmonise expression
to unlock what I admire –
write me back to life before I
sadly
might expire

MOTHER AND WIFE

Bear witness
for in this river of flesh
I carry souls ashore
where countless numbers of
babes become men
become monsters, and then
become thrustly
and greedy
and desperately famished of reason
but too fat with ease, and
too brittle and fractured
of heart and of sense and, thus
absent of care
to repent or ascend
but instead
so depend on their
wafer–thin skin to protect
their descent
into watery storms
– into tangles of nets –
– into womanly curves –
and the blue, blue eyes of
breasted streams,
ungodly fresh sin,
and purposeless dreams.

Bear witness
as I birth these farmers of filth
who strangle the earth while
I patiently wade in the knee–high abuse
and the ocean of seed
to stand watch by their graves in,
where the no–longer–babes
(the sailors and cowards and bastards that dribble)
are caught in a wave
made of stone and soil (crippled)
and anchored and drowned
without sight, nor intent, but just
passage of life
for a time once less lived
due the freedom I
selflessly lost
but to generously give.

Bear witness:
I swell with the waters of life
– the mother and wife –
for an endless such blight
yet, still, I exist
swept aside
and, despite.

INCEPTION

Inception

Time: a purpose
built for frolic and fancy;
an infinite seduction
so exquisite
that it’s yet to be considered to exist;
a burden so nameless
that life abandons it
almost upon inception.

MY PASSING

My Passing

Come lay with me
so that I
with any luck at all
pass into the night
– yours, being the last face
I shall ever desire to see.

EVENTUALLY

every second we touch
leads us closer
to separation:

i would rather watch
for there is no end
in sight
to this vision

FROZEN

if i were the ice and
you were the sun
i would

drip

til

there was nothing left of me
but a reflection of you
in my puddle
.

SOCIETY

We
rush recklessly forward
in awkward sentient colonies
blinded
by self-preservation
and fragility
consumed
by regret
and indecision and
burdened by lust
(shadowy voyeurs that we are)
and
in unreasonable haste
by misunderstanding.

We awaken

sleeping
powered
(faultlessly)
by emotion and media:
desperate
to get ahead of change
before change changes.

We push
almost silently alone
– forgivably selfish –
and factory bred to be unaware
of what to ignore
drowning ourselves in excuses
and reasons to find them
and
searching for peace
but harbouring nothing
– absolutely nothing –
of the sort.

We survive
possessed by impression
and ruined by greed.

We launch
propelled onward
and up
finding any description that fits
to fit
calling it ‘destiny’
(the time we have left)
oblivious
that time exists
nowhere
but in the moments that we hurry
now
(society, that is)
in droves
to pass on by.

SOLDIER

The Man who never brought hell home
was wise beyond his years.
He suffered long
but lived it loud
imprisoned by his fears –
and those were thus:
that those before him
came and went
with nothing left but
pain and name
and more of same
who went and came
from seed in soil
to root and stem,
to fallen branches, time again:
a family tree to fuel the flames
on cold and lonely nights.

Embodied by the coat of arms he wore,
this Last to hold his name,
he swore,
– in vain, perhaps –
to stand at ease no more.

The Man who never brought hell home
encased himself in spite and spirits:
ghosts of generations gone,
encroaching deep within.
He sought for answers,
fought for reasons,
questioned why his bloodline grew
to fall and rise
and curse and kill
with secret lies
and stolen rights
and ties he could not sight.

The Man who never brought hell home
had died
the moment he arrived
– or so he thought –
he always said,
with eyes in search of something else . . .
perhaps that love that once he’d felt,
despite the years of crime he lead.
And what is left, again, but holes
to fill with buried woes and
broken war-like games and
shattered dreams
and darker still yet, nothing.
Nothing, as it always seems.

Not a sliver shall him by, it pass,
of hope,
of love,
of peace –
not until the very last,
this Man who never brought hell home.

And so, this Man, with blind belief
declared his story would be brief,
atoning for the sins he cast
in other’s lives
in years that passed,
and spent his days in self destruction,
free from want, control, and need,
biding time with bated breath
like men, before, who longed for death,
entrained in mind and soul,
until one day,
the hell that never came,
came whole.

For every man,
and son of man that once there was,
who sharpened knives
and counted tools
and cleaned his guns,
and polished pride, his moral compass
by his side,
who now lives to wake and wakes to die,
repelling faith, repelling truth, and
cussing lies –
this Man has died.

ABOVE

Clouds drift atop the stimulus of life
– mindlessly numb voyeurs –
blindly present
yet
vaporously absent from blame

THE RIDE

Faced again with options,
– I am –
thumb sore,
from hitching a ride
to any direction
I’m taken:
partial nudity
framing the high risk
beneath these threads –
allowing nothing
but neglect
to course through these veins,
closer than a man’s knife.

Nothing but dis-ease
can stain like old graffiti:
stubborn and unwelcome,
and impossible to wash away.

It beckons to take my life
– this weed that chokes me –
but I know better than that:
it’s already gone.
What little of me remains
is always outside searching.

– red lights –

– red eyes –

– bloodied hope –

So I’ll take their word
– these men who stop to ogle –
and their banter,
and I’ll take the seat they offer
while I push their oily hands away,
just to sink back
for a moment
into the stubborn stench
of leathered history –
into the cosy
but broken seats
of the ride I’m taking now
– not the ride of my life,
but the pick-up
to another stop.

And as I sleep with eyes wide
and ears open
I search within

for freedom and peace

– an end to it all –

But it’s their cigarettes and coffee
that keep me breathing.

A TIMELESS WAIT IN MADNESS

Your sweet promise coats me like a varnish
wrapping my sticky desires
in an airless, human
skin-tight vault

Fatally sealed, this
timeless wait in madness, this
paused intent of craftsmanship
–
one un-stepped frozen foot ahead
–
contains me like a parasite and
I, far from drowning
hibernate within

Eons of time bereft of touch
pass me (imprisoned) by
but
wide awake, alone, insane
inside this vacuumed husk, I
quench my heart
– reflection –
while my hunger
(still unfed)
provides the popcorn
and the trailers
to the feature film
that scratches at my
fading, timeless
statuesque, and stunted soul

I wait (believing)
baited and entombed
for the next civilisation to unbury me
and
recreate a reason for my being here
that parallels an excuse
for their own

BRANCH

Each branch
of my life-giving tree
provides a path
my heart can follow

where its direction
and connecting purpose
lead outward (always)
to infinite beauty:

to a scope beyond that
which its blind roots
and captured leaves
might only dream exists

SPAKE

Impale, oh thee, thine words
with burning, slow incisions,
once, and again,
unto death’s
arrival.

BROTHEL SHORE

Falling fast down hovelled stairs,
digesting wealth to ransom cares,
grotesque men who soil and harrow
suspend my dreams from thinning rope.

As discharge weeps from places raw
and blisters burn a molten core,
another phallus, soiled and poisoned
wants for smack and cunny’d whores.

I bleed from wounds so deep within
of pain so stark and crude and sore
that pins me ‘neath the brine of sin
like drowning prey in spunk and piss.

I fail to dim the moving shadows:
those twisting jerks of spewed release –
but coming soon will silent growls
of dripping fat and blistered guilts.

Voiced within me, vague and distant,
something cries, yet tears withdraw.
Copious unheard pleas are buried:
here lay I, unknown, destroyed.

To burrow past unhuman men
(to further seal a keyless lock)
would ‘splay me in the public eye,
exampled, maimed, defeated: lost.

Phlegm and fur may line my mouth;
engorged, my lips, a whore for more.
But somewhere deep inside myself
I’ve walked away from Brothel Shore.

EVEN BEYOND DEATH

Concurrent sessions of geometric,
(explicitly whimsical)
liquified squares
arose from patterned nether regions
of ‘somewhere else out there’
in smothering particles of
truest radiant flares.

And sat I upon the visible dreamscape space
that existed no-where
but outside of my illusory plan,
and cherished, I, the pictorial preempted
in the moment of my after-life birthing
of which polite demand
again beseeched me ride.

Yet not a one of the graphical displays
(filtered fresh from infinite dimensions)
approached me like a complete whole
– neither a partial whole –
but as a synchronistic sphere
of clouded systemic rumours
made to halt to keen attention
but one light-bodied and mirrored virtual soul
such as the sporadically alter-egoed I.

Flowing from one source to the next,
beyond the simple measure of a single point
a blast of knowing flagged a recognition spark
that folded time and space
betwixt one universal structure
unto the
(not unlike symbiotic)
self instructioned mind –
and so to Mind Exist described another route
for Love to spread It’s fastest cycle;
birthing cells and growing rife,
to yield a fresh creation.

And hereupon I watch/ed with hunger
that which transpired time before,
providing what is harnessed now,
with will to still repeat again,
and so again to knot forever
into chains of new momentum;
weaving,
waving,
slipping through and marking too,
another path to God.

ABSTRUSITY

(meaning: wisdom that is incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge)

Alone, let me dissolve into the stale persistence of repeated memory, where,
to sink, into that moment, long at last, I will;
to time that stained my white and holy life like thick excreted waste,
as lost among the black apostles, self detest infection festered.
My soul did roast my psyche.

Let me watch through wiser eyes as I was suckled dry by rogues and devilled men who
fed me lies and praised degraded hopes in tight knit bondage ropes and
prayed their symbiotic futures whole;
their shackled lives, encased by squalid dwellings, raped to empty, burnt to coals. Then,

let me fear again the death I cheated, let me shy away again from light and love,
as once I did,
and let the drugs inspire hunger, let my ribs admonish friendships;
show me seated on the sharpened iron throne that clawed its way into my life.

Let me remember courage, this, when biting clean the straps
that bent my arms behind my back,
that tied my feet without allowing slack, that stole my mind, that seared my life,
that scarred my flesh and sent me running, set me free at last
from final unforgiving seas that tempted me with futile guarantee
to nurture, care and carry me.

Let me, lastly, naked, stand in stark surrender, found by precious realisation.
Finally human once again! Majestic once again! While
chains of brutal, rusty, rotted steel detach,
and I begin to heal; to patch at last, my puzzled life that, muzzled,
once,
I hanged among
such sordid ruin.
Now a sequined future wheel rotates as I transition
from a past so art surreal,
so damn unreal,
and yet, a history, sad, but passed, that’s mine, alone to boldly feel.

ALIVE

I fear to perish early –
dread my soul be drowned
and led astray.
Deceased
I can’t commit myself
to be the best I can display.
I’d like to grow in wisdom
lest my life be worth its end today.

But with dismay
I grow archaic
resentful of my future fate.
I can’t expire starved and needy –
I want to ‘have’
not live to ‘hate’.

Before the end
I’ll search for more:
another route
a higher state.
Then I can pass
become the past
succumb to death
become sedate.

Desiring this
I’ll set a plan to vanish happy:
die fulfilled.
In a deed
I’ll write these words
consumed with grace –
my burden killed.

I’ll live a life of glory now
enshrined in love
that’s mine to build.
And when my mortal skin is shed
I’ll know it’s something I have willed.