death

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.

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.

NO AIR

you
are the vastness of space
and i
the lungs
that are empty without you

MOBIUS

He said those words
– I can’t –
and my heart fell out of its pocket
like there was a hole in my
chest and
that very last stitch
heard him speak.
Our mobius strip
lay suddenly flattened
– I on one side and he on the reverse –
like destiny and distance
were the same bridge
too destroyed to cross.

Now I wait for life to end
as I lean down to hold
what’s left in my lungs,
my final breath leaving as
I fall beyond the edge
where
by some miracle
this leap of faith might save me,
felled atop arms that wait beneath
where
the only strip remaining
is the one in which
we remove each other’s clothing.

JEZABEL

My cat just died in my lap.

She was lots of fun when she was young, but then she started to get fat, and then got fatter than that… she got bumpy and her spine curled up and then her bumps got lumpy, and she started to appear weighted down and went less and less on our beds and kept more to the ground when she got too chunky.

She limped and she wobbled and her head bobbled and in her later days her breathing got faster and I didn’t think she’d last much longer, but, nevertheless, she didn’t weaken – it appeared she got stronger.

But clearly I was seeing it wrong. Her breaths became shorter and she stopped eating and kept her eyes open, and all the while she was staring and looking and shaking and no longer interested in the noise we were making as we called her name.

I picked her up many times and she roused from her waking dream but she didn’t seem to want to ‘be’. I desperately wished I could help her, release her, slow her breathing and give her peace and ease her.

And then she got colder, and when I held her it was like I was holding a boulder.

It hurt her to breathe. I could see her pain through her fear and I gently told her over and over that she can pass… I was here… and before long, her breathing slowed and then she spasm’d, and as I held her I knew she was close to the chasm, shaking and numb in my hands.

She tried once more to stand but she spasm’d again and her jaw grew wider and I could almost see right down inside her as she laboured to breathe while her heart gave out.

I cried when I looked through her eyes as she looked back knowing it was her time to die, allowing me to watch her once bright spark in that final moment subside.

I counted to 5 and I told her it’s okay to not be alive.

I’m sure she knew what I’d said as she rested her tired body on my skirt and lay there bravely, blissfully dead; a part of me journeying with her as I stroked her lifeless – but beautiful – feline head.

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

LAST SECOND (HAIKU)

Here, the last moment,
time stealing that now as well . . .
no tock to the tick.

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.