Poetry

US LIKE CANDY (HAIKU)

Something greater (pain)
– dangerous to both our hearts –
eats us like candy

ATTACHED (HAIKU)

No strings more attached
smothering fate with kisses
than tasty white lies

PIECE BY PIECE

Bit by bit I’ll build you
until you forget you have no form

Dream by dream I’ll make you
as I pour your cold to warm

I’ll catch you in my blooming petals;
soft, the ground, my arms will be

Piece by piece I’ll fill you
yet, in truth, you’re filling me

Night and day I’ll ripen you
and grow you where you stand

Strong and proud I’ll mould you
while, in truth, it’s by your hand

Time will pass in moments
long in pause, and in-between…

yes…

My thoughts alone might write you
but, in truth, this need writes me

THE JAILED FREEDOM OF WRITING

Sour, my attempt to write –
the flavour lost in every bite.
Undecided words, unheard,
but seeping out, expelled,
disturbed: a self-invaded,
cornered bird, un-winged
and clipped from flight,
while

I rumble with poetic temper,
my bleeding soul,
in part, dismembered,
blank, un-whole, alone,
distended –
my belly full of passion,
yet, my appetite untended,
and

expression jailed and flawed,
dissolving quicker than it pours –
a vat of garbled, bubbling
troubled thought
that rivals typed impression sought
to pillage mind and spill from core.

Scored, the days it takes between,
in floor and wall,
to key the lock that binds
this isolation door,
ancient finds arising
in my lust for seeking more
and more –
buried words upended
with surprise, and unintended,
for,

from I, the Jailor,
baseless accusations rise,
lashing, fast, acidic wind
that primes the rhymes I tongue within,
and
never one to coat my words
too thin/too dry/too weak it seems
(by definition) I resist
to drown (at best)
or leak,
while anchored here, existing,
with unflinching frozen speech,
but

the accidental draining of my
purpose-tended bed of prose,
is waiting hand on foot
with sweetened
suicidal pensive throes,
as I,
with mocking rows
and rows of written doubt,
release, in lines,
my stomach
churning through and out
demands to hasten
one true last and final shout,
so,

this filtered care
that stains my lungs with ghostly stare
and soaks my throat
as vomitus
as stinging air
that leaves me rendered,
flailed and flared and wounded,
brooding, undeclared –

through THIS
the words escape,
an icing on the freedom cake
all cherry-topped, and cut, and baked:
a timeless meal to share
without the food to waste,
the friend to taste,
the key to exit,
smitten,
from this solitary mind-induced
persisting empty prison space.

POSTERIOR SUFFERANCE

This night carries me,
blinded,
in the back pocket
of dirty minds and
shabby dreams where I,
flat, and molded,
press against this folded denim,
warm and splayed with
arms outstretched,
longing,
for another day, but

what if I turn my head
to over-peek the top
of these fraying jeans instead,
grasping threads
to keep me still within its seams
– will the exhilaration
of watching where I’ve
just this moment been
allow me inspiration
– asleep –
– awake –
to boldly look,
clinging to the back end of
these thoughts that write me,
penned in ink:
a pre-determined book?

Perhaps I should just
– winded –
forward face,
ignoring the sour stench
of this unmoving,
walking,
waking race,
stalking through the darkness
in a covered veil
at quiet pace,
destabilising future steps,
accepting this acquired taste,
processing my obsessive needs
and bathing clean my crumpled face
in chafing tears that fear progression,
awash, alone,
in one more nightly session.

Devoid of light,
hear, ye, the theme:
this narrow, stunted, damned depression,
the fabric of a self made bed –
this
bottomless pit without expression
unstitching dreams of fortune
as I swelter, melting hope
again,
apathetic,
white of noise,
inside my broken head.

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.

THE SOLD SOUL

It slips
– this new surrender –
past the rusted locks and caution signs
and crumbling roads of cul–de–sacs
and vacant lots
and open tracks
to freedom:

where conundrums play and secrets huddle
and bodies lie
and youth decays
– retired past expired days –

Engraved in time
cocoons and shells and nests are hung
and quartered for a chance at love:

the way ahead receding,
half behind and part enslaved
(a mask of promise worn from sale of soul to lucid grave)

And
– like an avalanche –
it falls in quick pursuit, this
multiverse of filthy guise
with liquid paths and dangerous eyes
and ruby coloured blushing cheeks
where
every lover’s heart of sponge or stone
descends to meet
while
heating for another touch
beneath the fraying sheets

And all the while
– in haste, not glory –
time, undressing moments as it passes,
flies away,
incarnate instead as flesh (again)
with wings that only beat
to re-transcend and scar
and mend
in pounding, swollen, rhythms
C
L
A
W
I
N
G
for the warmth of distance
**ROARING**
for a hurried end

So,

spaced between the
t i c k s and t o c k s
of darting pain
and thrusting cocks,
of cunts aroused, abused, and shamed,
a silence, near, deploys again:

the ever-caged
and emptied song
of lustful shame
and mouths and tongues
declining, fast at last
to go
from whence it came
to soak the mind
and strip the soul
and blur the lines
of time and toll

buried

in surrender, whole

KARMA

sometimes
mistakes are forever
and regret is the undercoat
that primes your life

perhaps foolishly
on the surface
it might seem calmer
(karma)
to forget the original dream
than to colour it over with
shades of new intention

when all you want to do
is bleed the red out of your eyes
until the copper rusts your face
and runs finally clear –
a dried salty ash
the only pock-marked
stain on your bloody canvas

the minimalist collector
your highest bidder

APEX

In the peak of a moment
– at the very point of desirous recognition –
one exists in the present
only to fade into the stillness of
hungry impression;
to fade into the memory
of what might never be again.

Temptation: one’s new master of control.

DIGITS

Sticky
and sweet
the fingers
of love
that travel down
in tingles:
a liquid storm
in nothing but
a rush of fire

Wet
and discrete
the lips of heaven
that smother
and capture with haste;
a halo so wide
that not even
lust
could quickly retire

OPIATE ONIONS

Opinions
are an
opiate onion:
they sting
they burn
but they taste
oh so
delicious
on your tongue
when you speak them

CHANGE (HAIKU)

You became my goal;
a target for me to reach
Let fly this arrow

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.

WATER INTO WINE

These words
dance
bedded by the flow of interpretation;
a transhuman storm of sound
– rivulets of fancy and frolics –
washing clean the silence
with a bird call
of hidden meaning.

STUNTED

Where, I ask, exhausted, did my creativity go?
Was it shadowed by my many burdens
and finally let go?
Did I forget to save a seat for it
while I rode the highway of life –
carrying every ounce of every day
in a heavy sack by my side?
Did I leave my creativity far behind
and outside of the boundaries
I once hungered to avoid reviving in my mind?
Or has it leapt ahead of me,
light-years away to a time
I could never expect to write or reach?
And will it only greet me again
in the next life
in shoes that another more
worldly and traveled other would wear
better than the ones I, alone, attempt to fit?
Have I,
just a here-and-now speck of dust
that tumbles aimlessly along,
reached the limit I somehow self-inflicted
earlier on
to stop me from rhyming more
about what I might never know,
or perhaps, am never meant to find?
Shall my questions be the soothing pets
that follow me like loyal friends
but somehow stay an arms length away
and whisper secrets I could never
– even with a stethoscope –
allow myself to hear?
Knowing what I know, would I detain them
to keep them near?
Shall I, neither ancient, nor elder,
try to understand the heart-beat silence
that, like a disease,
runs impatiently through these veins?
If it returned, would my creative other
fall like pounding rain into my arms and
dissolve itself of any sin
by becoming,
yet again,
a part of what it once was in?
Would my creativity starve, or feast,
by sinking and syncing deep within?
If I handed it the keys, I am certain
we would both deserve to win;
but neither I can, and neither it will,
because without each other
we simply
– both –
are frozen, less, and still.

TO PAUSE

To Pause

Abandon me
so I may postpone
this satisfaction
and
for an irrelevant time alone
subsist on nothing
but my starving need
for your fulfillment

A CALMING STORM

I watch in retort
as you blunder
over causeways
of stammering lies,
hurtling weathered blows
from your
mournfully
tarnished
mouth.

The sound alone
asphyxiates
and I would rather it hurry
than disable my
regal silence
with the screeching noise
of your
thunderously
garbled
deception.

DRENCHED

I soaked my soul
in your pleasure:
sounds
dripped like images
from your lips.

No sooner had I drained you
to fulfill my need
did your half-expired
body come to life again

and, I,
already bloated,
asked for more.

STEPS

I walked slowly
to spend more of eternity
with you, and

when you turned to
usher me closer
what you didn’t realise
was that I was
already
there

TO HAUNT

These long silences
used to haunt me –
now every ghost
of every memory
comforts me wisely
instead.

IT WAS LIKE

It was like
you were something
I should not permit myself to see
but the voyeur I make no apologies
for becoming
had stripped you down to bare flesh
– fully clothed –
while I peeked between the slats
of fact and fancy.

I HAVE LOST

I Have Lost

I have lost
you: lost myself
in the search
to find us both.

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.

VOCAL

I can be silent
but vocal
if you only had eyes
to listen.

EVENTUALLY

every second we touch
leads us closer
to separation:

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

ENDLESS PATH

concrete emotion
part water – part sand
stiff and retrodden
imprinted by hand

unbroken dazing
obsessive addiction
weathered disfigurement
stolen ambition

frozen with purpose
externally veined
denied all surrender
exhausted terrain

captured in burden
expressionless pain
mindless estrangement
decisively plain

distantly suffering
obsessive beliefs
helpless remorse
escaping relief

painful receding
numbless appeasement
gone now, the bleeding
here, quiet, the easement

THE WORDS ARE

The words are there
wrapped around a tongue
as dream-hungry
as the one I have
of you

SILENT WORDS

Every word you dare not speak
is simply one more
I would wait a lifetime
– in silence –
to hear

KNIT

Knot

You could be made of
the fanciest yarn that
binds forever
your empty space
and you would still
knit me a reason
to love everything
you were actually not