writing

SOMETIMES IT TOUCHES

They all write of love.

But true adventure lay between a
frozen boundary of stony words;
between a synchronism
of dishonest friendship
and the cowardice of being alone.

Poetry is animal without tongue or limb
and it bellows wildly in dormant pursuit.
It flowers only to write of
hand grenades that fall like alphabet stars;
pollen, like acid rain.
It flourishes in drama of silent depth
as wound commits to scar.

Sometimes it touches
and perhaps we might call it rape
but all it ever seeks is our forgiveness,
an atoned pardon for not arriving
– for not stampeding us –
any sooner than it had.

WHIP

You are my story
and I escape within these pages
of your unmapped strength
through pauses
and the violence
that collects each letter:
another lash I want
and need
but don’t deserve

NON-SENSICAL (HAIKU)

Alphabet pain, this.
Loops, lines, and curls without form:
writer’s block puzzles.

KEYBOARD ASSASSIN

I have
once more
jailed my vision
splicing diamond-cut thoughts with this
cross-bred and violently bleeding doubt that
feeds from the stomach and shreds the sanest of minds

It is here this rampant indecision
squawks in wordless tongue, lashing
its disposable fancies
(arrow-tipped precision)
at my shaking core

bowels emptying
alongside any creative thoughts of semblance

Now all that is left to bear witness: a sweaty palm or two
– and silence –
as the webbing of my fingers um and ah
hovering like midnight fireflies
over the speech-impeded womb
of my QWERTY keys

And, inside, I hear laughter

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

UNTITLED (HAIKU)

I have lost myself:
too many words left to write.
My void grows timeless.

THE MOUTH OF SILENCE

Fluid,
the mouth of silence
while the drowning poet
writes to starve the
mind of words

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.