Category: Poetry

An Isolated Incident


It was an isolated incident
There is no pattern of any kind here
Woven in the fabric of everything.
–
Tortured and murdered for simply
But don’t worry at all – I present
It was an isolated incident.
–
Caved in with a baseball bat is nothing
These things happen; the single event
Woven in the fabric of everything.
–
Brown, Mcbride, Garner attacked and dying.
Diallo, Dorismund, Zongo. Don’t dissent
It was an isolated incident.
–
Nine black people dead at white hands killing
That almost stopped it’s trigger but didn’t
Woven in the fabric of everything.
–
The legacy of horror is clinging
To that cacophonous endless lament;
“It was an isolated incident.”,
Woven in the fabric of everything.

u cld die 2morrow.


Why not write at least one sentence?

Go on, it can’t hurt can it?

We both know that you’re afraid that it will happen.

Don’t die with so many unfinished stories.

Just try and finish one, one sentence.

Use that cold clawing fear in your stomach to drive you on.

Don’t have another drink

Just yet.

A is for Anhedonia.


A is for Anhedonia
B is for Boredom
C is for Collapse
D is for Doldrum
E is for Energy
F is for Fear
G is for Guilt
H is for Happiness
I is for Indecision
J is for Jump
K is for Knowledge
L is for Loss
M is for Morbid
N is for Nothing
O is for Other
P is for Paranoia
Q is for Quit
R is for Razor
S is for Stranger
T is for Terrors
U is for Undulating
V is for Violence
X is for X
Y is for Youth
Z is for Zero

Dripping in the Ectoplasm of White Privilege


I am normal.

I am kind,

Don’t see colour

Or ever find

The police treat me bad.

They are kind.

No special treatment

I once got fined

For driving drunk

They didn’t mind.

Sent me on my way

So I’m inclined

To love those cops

Who didn’t grind

My bones to paste

Or shoot me in my exposed back

Or kill me for talking back

Or cuff me for speaking out

Or night stuck me for a single shout

That war is for the battlefield

And not for those with badge and shield

Who hate the poor they guard all night

When really if they knew what’s right

They’d turn their eyes from the pitch

They’d join the horde and eat the rich.

A Visit to the Salt Pit.


I wake up every morning with a smile.

Not letting them sleep is okay with me.

Torture kept our country safe, for a while.

—

These are terrorists, mostly, they are vile

So we can treat them as we wish, you see?

I wake up every morning with a smile.

—

Stress positions were a reasonable style

Of persuasion, not unlike yoga, see?

Torture kept our country safe, for a while.

—

There was no need to offer them a trial

If they were innocent then they’d  be free.

I wake up every morning with a smile

—

Yes, rectal feeding was very worthwhile.

There was no real damage, if you ask me.

I wake up every morning with a smile.

Torture kept our country safe, for a while.

Hand Prints


Palm prints dusted on a dark cavern wall

Tiny stencilled hands forgotten for years.

Large shiny missiles and thuggish bombs fall

Leaders wipe away expedient tears

Until cameras turn their dead lidless eyes

To the next shiny seratonin hit.

Seizures shadowed by paperwork towers

As crowds stumble toward the glowing pit

Of welcoming screams that steams a greeting

To the exhausted the hopeless the doomed.

Nearby blank faced operatives meeting

For one last time before straightening ties

Join the lines of misery add their cries

Waiting.


A train speeds past
Whetting it’s wheels on the track.
Faces sag in unison.
The day has taken a little more
From us
Than we wanted to give.
Yet still someone whistles
Show tunes from Annie.
Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.

The Watermeloning – Halloween Special Redux


I posted this before but it’s Halloween so I thought the world was ready to re-experience the horror….

Oh Dripping maw of meaty red
Do not look in that cave of dread
We Ope’d the Fruit
And so it bled.
Oh Dreaded Fruit of Rotten Red.

Sleep with the light on tonight…

Mwahahahahahahaha. etc.

Poetry Pot – An Apology, in Advance, to the Memory of Emma Lazarus.


I never like to explain poems but here I am explaining a poem.

I was irritated, this morning, as with most mornings, at what Twitter had vomited out to the world after the announcement of the new Miss USA contest. Now I am not particular fan nor enemy of the Miss USA competition. It is a particularly American form of demeaning women by making them bark facts and do tricks but everyone enters into it with as much of a freewill as any one can ever enter into anything and it is, even though oppressive in the subtle ways that our patriarchy oppresses all women, not the worst thing that a woman can, in this day and age, experience. I am not a woman so I cannot say this for sure but that is the basis upon which I have feelings regarding the Miss USA competition. From Twitter there came various hateful comments regarding the Indian American winner. They are widely available on the internet. I shall not repeat them here. So in response to a comment made by a friend about how awful this was I appropriated a line from The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus and adapted it for my needs. It is, I believe, the most famous of all the lines and is rendered below:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

Later, as I pondered my changed version I decided to change the whole poem to reflect my views, at the very present moment on social media. The irony of me transmitting this through social media is not lost on me. What can one say other than that I am a hippocrit. So be it – I find myself guilty as charged.

So here, without further ado, and a lengthy introduction which does not deserve my brutalisation, or your time, I present you with An Apology, in Advance, to the Memory of Emma Lazarus:

Not like the eyeless spawn of silicate shame,
With writhing limbs lumbering from gland to gland;
Here at our broken toothed, fiery gates shall stand
A soiled beacon with a stump, whose flame
Is the searing lie, and it’s name
Moloch’s Minion. From it’s bloodied-hand
Burns world-wide fury; her wild sockets command
The air-thick with rage that prejudices frame.
“Keep, ancient tomes, your  words!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your racist, your sexist,
Your homophobic masses yearning to speak hate,
The wretched moral refuse of your inner world.
Send these, the bankrupt, lunatics to me,
I lift my stump beside the flaming maw!”

Culture of Illusion – Don’t Worry, We’re Watching Everything You Do.


all seeing eye

All seeing eye

Low slung

Up High

Blinkless hive-mind

Panopticon Watching.

Poetry Pot – National Poetry Writing Month.


So National Poetry Writing Month is over and I think I only actually wrote one poem.

I did read all of these poems though.

I don’t expect anyone to want to listen to all of them at once but here they all are, just in case:

Enjoy.

Remember The Victims.


Remember the victims
As they crossed the line.
Do not forget the victims.
-
The happy childish faces
Waving for their parents.
Remember the victims
-
Who walked past exploding
Cars and were spread like paste.
Do not forget the victims
-
As they crossed the line
Exhausted and triumphant.
Remember the victims
-
Who herded their sheep
Unaware of the hovering eye.
Do not forget the victims
-
Who sat in the classroom
Hands thick with paint.
Remember the victims
-
Sluicing on the ground -
Incredulous as they evaporate.
Do not forget the Victims.
Remember The Victims.

Poetry Pot – Sunday Lunch Audio


I hear it’s Poetry Month so, because I have nothing better to do, I’m going to add a scratchy recording every day of a poem that I have written.

Here is the first one.

It is mercifully short.

Text HERE.

Sonnet 3


I want to know how far we have to run

Before we reach that mountain top of Myth.

What jungles, deserts must be overcome?

What trials to come to reach that monolith?

There must be ways to simplify the task

To smooth the path and ease the climb to it.

I feel, within, my lips upon the cask

Of ancient scribes who dwell within the pit.

My knot-tight hand grips tightly to the pen,

I sit awake and stare down at the page.

I crease my brow and summon inner zen

Then scratch across the pulpy sheet with rage.

To balance both on bloodied tightrope here,

The painful task of lonely mountain seer.

Crustal Deformation.


1.

Summer sky thick with clotted clouds

As the drip down sweat curves along the valley

Unfolding into the yielding moment of a swollen harvest.

Sluggish slowing streams slip together in sweet embrace.

Roiling in tumbling turbulence they slice hard rocks

Opening thunderous wounds in thick granite.

2.

With welling waters flowing through thick granite

Bursting forth in tremendous steaming clouds

Overlapping skin of variegated ancient rocks

With piston powered pluvial spears gouge the valley

Singing with cacophonous choral delight. Embrace

Wholly the driven plunge into the wholesome harvest.

3.

Welcome then, with open arms, the shrinkwrapped harvest

Of their back-breaking labour. Render Endless your granite

Pity unto every squat leathered servant that Freedom fails to embrace.

Do not think on the gouging and scraping they endure as clouds

Overhead scudding by twist out their last moisture on your produce in their valley;

In the valley below the clouds where your servants are broken on hard rocks.

4.

Watch and smile in glazed indolence as the foundation of your happiness rocks

Under the slowly increasing inevitable momentum of the seeds of your harvest.

The hammering and the murmuring bubble up like milk through granite

Until you can no longer remember the whispering wind of the valley.

Until you can no longer remember the relief brought by the clouds.

Until you can no longer remember the feeling of that once complacent embrace.

5.

Engage with the torture wrought with the gnawing certainty that you did it. Embrace

The rotten truth that you are a leech, that we are engorged on others. Let the rocks

Of this reality crush you, pound you to dust, smash your bones into clouds.

It’s okay, isn’t it, that every little button pressed is another reckless harvest

Of people never acknowledged as people? It is okay; even carvings on granite

Eventually erode. Your transgression will evaporate. Even the valley

6.

Will wear away. Just the upthrust bones of buildings strewn over the desolate valley.

Yet in dotted patches – here and there; sprouting shoots. Embrace

Now the hope that comes after terrible failure. Cease your easy weakness. Be granite

In the face of what you have done and rebuild, regrow, rebirth even as the rocks

Supple and slow, stretch their muscles, one epoch at a time, awaiting their harvest.

Don’t dismiss the possibility that happiness, not just pain, can come with the clouds.

7.

Roiling in tumbling turbulence they slice hard rocks

Unfolding into the yielding moment of a swollen harvest.

Summer sky; thick with clotted clouds.

The Vagabond.


There is a restaurant over yonder
On top of that lonely old hill.
It is owned by a ragged vagabond
Who the System could not kill.

The moment he could wander
He left his employer's estate
He wandered up the pathway
He wandered out the gate.

The first time the system attacked him,
He was standing by a tree.
The System cut that tree down
And nearly squashed him like a flea.

Then he was minding his own business
Right by a railroad track.
The System saw him sitting there 
And, without warning, launched a sneak attack.

But his reflexes were like lightning
Honed from years of being free.
So he turned that attack back at them
And the System let him be.

But the System it remembered
It knew how to hold a grudge
And when that man opened his restaurant,
The system hired a judge.

The judge he came a'calling
But the vagabond knew the score.
He won that judge with pie and wine
And showed the System the open door.

Now the vagabond is older
He lies awake at night
He sleeps with one eye open
Waiting for the System to strike.

So take a lesson from the vagabond
If you want to be truly free
The System will try to own you,
It will never let you be.

And yet he lived his life
The way that he saw fit.
When the System came a'calling.
He never gave way to it.

Sonnet 2


The key is sitting under the small clock.
It is not the key I am looking for.
The key I need unseals the heavy lock
That keeps shut that ancient massive door
Of the room that I left long, long ago.
I can’t remember what is behind it.
Whether bad, good or neutral I don’t know.
Yes, I am puzzled, yet I must submit
To whatever may pour forth
Into whoever it is I am now.
Without this ability of rebirth
I won’t be able to ride the Great Scow.
The key is sitting under the small clock
But it’s not the key to unseal that lock.

Culture of Illusion – This and That.


this and that black and white

This and That.

The rain fell in haunted lines,
Straight separations between this and that.

Lonely neon screens glowed in empty toy strewn rooms;
Witnesses to this and that.

Cattled commuters wedged in tight
On pilgrimage to this and that.

A single figure ran round the track
Yearning quietly for this and that.

Stale coffee poured in styrofoam
Is brief respite from this and that.

From out the gloom a clot of light
In recompense for this and that.

Be.


Careful what you wish for
Because it might come true.
Beware of what you hope for
It might leave you feeling blue.

Careful what you wish for
Because nothing comes without a price.
Beware of what you hope for
On the roll of the Dice.

Careful what you wish for
With your final breath
Beware of what you hope for
Because a mystery follows Death.

Sonnet 1


I woke up today and I thought of you.

The sheets were cold and the sky was full of snow.

I dressed but I could not find my left shoe.

If you were here it would not be lost now.

Memories of slow dancing by the lake

Feel fleeting like the sleet I see outside.

I try to hold onto them but the wake

Of the slow boat of Time seems to divide

You from I. Me from We. Myself alone,

Shuffling in a small circle of distress,

Dancing a solo waltz as the cold dawn

Shudders the marrow from my bones. No less

Than a flake on my nose snaps me awake.

You are gone forever – my love. My ache.

Fall.


Balding trees lace the grey sky of Fall.
Soft wet earth clods on meandering shoes.
Tiny feet stumble after a tumbling ball
Over moss caped rock, past thick green spruce.

Soft wet earth clods on meandering shoes
Running further unaware unafraid
Over moss caped rock, past thick green spruce.
The melody of the dimming day frayed.

Running further unaware unafraid
Through briar and bush, down slip and slide
The Melody of the dimming day frayed
By the Sun’s light; a weakened washed out tide.

Through briar and bush, down slip and slide
To find the ball caked in mulch, a spherical ghost
By the Sun’s light; a weakened washed out tide
Pulling back from the grove leaving her lost.

To find the ball caked in mulch, a spherical ghost
Glowing weakly with a fallen moonish pall
Pulling back from the grove leaving her lost.
Balding trees lace the grey sky of Fall.

Memories of Love.


I can now see everything
As the trees de-robe like  strippers,
But is tells me nothing.
–
The birds used to sing
But now their Silence makes the dark days worse.
I can now see everything.
–
Each balcony is waiting for Spring
To come and lift Fall’s cold, bone-hurting curse
But it tells me nothing.
–
The unemployed pool boy is waiting.
The squirrels, now in slumber with hearts barely beating, having collected their stores.
I can now see everything.
–
Beyond the nappy brown branches in the thickening
Air, I nurse my coffee, the world melts, my thoughts disperse,
But it tells me nothing.
–
I am not averse to the worsening chill of the exposing
Nudity of slumbering Nature’s cyclical verse.
I can now see everything
But it tells me nothing.

I remember: REVISED.


I remember

The smell of gas cut grass on a blue summer day.

Trampoling to safety from dog teeth.

Collecting brown cracked leaves with my small niece.

Dancing ‘til the Sun bled through the night sky.

Bug plagues of DC

A crunching carpet on the grey sidewalk

The DC Sniper

Who then killed most victims in Maryland.

DC Sniper had

A better scan than

Maryland Killer.

Appetite for Distraction – Bus Station, Night (2013)


going home
Going Home.

 

Going home.

The weight of the week

Hangs over you.

You deserve your sleep.

It will all begin again soon enough.

Rest. Cleanse. Relax.

Forget.

Experience Falls: REVISED


 

We had icicle bones

Wept petroleum tears

Our tune – trembling trombones

Our skin – branded like steers.

Brains cudgelled with learning

Scoop Gravelled overfill

Our defiance – threaded

Nesting walls dry twigs spill

Ing over Sunrise fat

And Syrup gold. Blind kids

Stumble through each thick wet

Step, mewling for eye lids.

Popcorn teeth, fluffy like

Wind. Entertaining chew

Toy made of puppet string

Slices through everything.

Appetite for Distraction – Fading.


fading away

The hurried ghosts of muddied memory

Appear, without appeal, from ink black blots.

Coalescing in their frozen trajectory

They succumb to untenable thoughts.

 

Appear, without appeal, from ink black blots

To be smeared in the jagged night air.

They succumb to untenable thoughts,

Fighting to be freed from the suspended snare.

 

To be smeared in the jagged night air

With whiskered whispering relentless flow,

Fighting to be freed from the suspended snare,

Stubborn in their refusal to slow.

 

With whiskered whispering relentless flow,

They rage, crack, tear, rail, bellow yet more

Stubborn in their refusal to slow.

No quietly waiting at the shore.

 

They rage, crack, tear, rail, bellow yet more,

One more time. The Final Treachery.

No quietly waiting at the shore.

The hurried ghosts of muddied memory.

A little night music: REVISED


When Time no longer matters

And our space is all used up.

Memory will lie in Tatters

Just like an old, used, paper cup.

Outside will be a blasted heath.

Inside will be a soothing cell.

Yet outside will offer freedom

Inside will be a uterine Hell.

No choice will be the better

No thing either simple or clear

Yet Life is full of choices.

Don’t be afraid of Fear.

Blue Open Sky


What thoughts gash the mind of that

Dropping

Sack

As I look on

Unconcerned?

I am disinterested

Too distant

To be real

To far off

To be happening

To abstract

To be humanized.

A Flailing marionette

With thoughts and dreams and

With each

Slip and slide and bone-

Jarring crack and

Will now be mourned

No doubt.

Loose shale

Or

A push perhaps from

An unseen hand

Of a seeming friend.

It could be in my head

Wafted

Cries of pain

Pleading with God

Weeping

Begging

Forgiveness.

It could be in my head.

The bus stop is empty

The wind ruffles my hair

I push it from my eyes.

I continue to stare.

Gravity is God to this hapless thing.

Fate has decided to finally bring

This one to the end of its pilgrimage

As I smoke this cigarette from my cage

Of disinterest.

It is such a clean summer’s day

Did they brush their teeth this morning?

Did they put on odd socks?

Is their underwear clean?

What was their final meal –

A hearty breakfast

Or an energy bar from their pack?

Who was their final hug?

Is Approaching Death

Peace or

Mind-numbing terror?

The bus arrives.

I look again

But it has gone.

My cigarette

Burns out.

I tell no one what I saw

It doesn’t make the papers.

Life continues.

Distant mountains.

Search the jagged seam where sky meets rocky scar

For another tumbling Angel.

One Slip in a Fall Down a Mountain: REVISED


I am waiting for a bus.

I hear

Echoing

Scribble-scrabble

Rock fall.

The Irregular Parabola

Distant.

Leaping,

Bounding

Down, ever downward Leaping Rag-Doll.

A Million innocuous moments

Shatter

The lives

Of People,

Strangers to me, not present to see.

It gains Control momentarily

Then

Arcing

Crashing

Flipping.

Taking to the air, then meeting scree.

Part of the mountain.

Part of its neighbour

Sky.

I Remember


I MISTILY remember my very first

Plunge. Wrapped close in vodka’s sweet, warm blanket

I stumbled with my giggling Aphrodite.

She was, to me, the entirely beaut-

Iful, but so drunk was I, a moist fruit

–

With cored-nook, more than Heaven (even bru-

Ised) would have been. But her eager wet-

Ness, warmed with woman’s flush, began that night

Of febrile fumblings, synthetic starts and

The weakened will of Desire’s wanton wand.

–

At last, with volcanic idleness, Influ-

Enced by dawn’s golden glimmer, dormant yet

No longer. Life’s spray captured in her tight-

Ness. My vigorous fountain pooled then, in

Nature’s flawless chalice. Then sheath to bin.

Untitled 2.


IMPERFECTIONS yet superior still

To Circe’s substance. An empty fickle

Heart yet more intense still than scorching, brill-

Iant Sol, scalding, past Time’s sickle,

–

My withered shuck; shackled by Memory’s

Insidious, insipid influence.

With a late lapping longing I barely

Breathe without recalling still her sens-

–

Ual soul. I seek oblivion from

This ever flowering, chaotic obses-

Sion. No respite can I detect; no brom-

Ide seclusion from this one weakness.

Life’s Simple Designations.


I am much my own emotion’s victim.

Its smooth sheened sphere helplessly hangs, hover-

Ing expectantly, waiting for some glim-

Mering error. Some glimpsed lapse to take her

Inevitable vengeance for my im-

Possible failing. Sleep seems much better.

Smoothly Blue.


Smoothly blue.

wuntu, wuntuthreephor…                     Aaaaaaaaaaah…                                                                 crazee… diggit down, reelmellow down, yeah;                                                 ooooooohhh                                                                                 sha                                                                                                                 sha sha                                                                                 la la la                                                                    lala ooooooooowwwweeeeeeeeaaaarrrrrrrrr   oh yeah yeah;                                                                                                                      yorragonnaluvvittt, hmmmm.                                                                                 man… gidown                   huh                         gidown                   baby,                                                                                 aaahh                    ahhhh. thankuverymuchladeesngenlemen…                                                                                                                                                     ur2kynd, 2kynd.

Untitled 1.


THE WORDS melted wetly together

Slickly sliding across the page.

I was dubious; unsure whether

I could, should, would control my rage.

–

Confined to this fibrous vehicle

The seeping slowed gracefully like

Honeyed thought. Soothed by the treacle

Glow of newly found delight.

–

Then it’s liquid limitations

Congeal, curdle; all thickened.

Each wet syllable, parched then, shines

With a light, cloyingly hardened.

Drunken Whinin’.


Oh now help me dear Lord,

What am I gonna do?

I’m so very drunk-tired,

Gotta hole in-ma left shoe.

*

Been wanderin’ since…

Been wanderin’ since…

Been wanderin’ since…

Since you threw me out,

Out of your heart,

Your barbed-wire heart.

*

Temples pulsate with off-

Ended remorse. Whiskey

Guilt’s a-flowin’ and I’m gettin’ me a cough.

Think I’m gonna rest down under that ragged tree;

*

It’s old and twisted, cracked and rough,

Just like me.

I lean back on some creaking bough,

Sinking then into dreams free-

Dom:

*

While the Cocytus flows into Acher-

On’s course; Interlaced in abhorrent em-

Brace, dithered along their fractious borders.

*

Nothing proven remains true.

Time’s initial casu-

Alty, grasping, hopeless love.

*

In her was contained all perfection.

There’s no doubt, she gave me an erection.

Touched.


MANIC depression,

                                                            Anarchic aggression;

                                                                         Deep-felt obsession:

                           Meandering digression,

                                                  (Auto-suppression)

                                                                                        Nullified oppression.

Snap-shot.


*

When the sky, for brief moments, stops.

Leaves no longer rustle as, briefly

Everything ceases. Drops

Of molten reality, unceasingly serene,

Drip, in shimmering uncertainty,

Sluggishly down like some surreal stream.

*

He drinks in that empty moment.

Savouring it as some trans-

Ient truth he knows must melt. Penitent

Yet, despite the gloating ignorance

Of the Hollow Ones, with their tidy, superfluous

Charm. That icicle spear glance

*

Shatters the moon-pool calm,

Like dreams twisting the empty ill-

Usions of a drenched emerald balm.

Now, creaking Time, casually recommence

In your random, untidy precision, kill-

Ing with every division all sense.

Treading Pitch-Black Paths.


Speeding like a freight train,

Running from the great pain,

Ending with a jarring strain,

On Time’s last sand grain.

–

Sticking to the path,

Sticking to the path,

Sticking to the pitch-black path

Of His soul.

–

Tearing at the last Fiend

As the Devil’s scream

Echoes…

–

As it echoes…

As it echoes…

As it echoes…

As He echoes

–

In my head, in my mind

Searching for a freedom;

A freedom I can’t find.

Old Man Bone-bag.


“I live between the cracks of a mountain’s

Soul”, The old man said. His great time-carved arms

Stretched in knotted leather strength; his skin, tan

With Nature’s bruising intensity. Charms

Hung from his gnarled neck in casual

Superstition, shaking with his calm drawl.

“I tread the blanketed paths of your long

Forgotten past” he continued. “I seep

With the Memory’s flow from the Lost Song.”

I left Old Man Bone-bag, for he was mad.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Bitch.


…Creeping                                       septic:                       acid bath

on a first [time] dive… to the end(?)

Of a (hermetic happiness) hearth

That      cannot succour… the rend-

Ing real [dragging insanity]…        garnered from… the crazy. Pointless

Whimpering of; …      God’s worst guess…

Dreaming Peacefully.


She’s Weeping in a piercing hopeless pain

At smiling, sharp boned anorexics cut-

Ting the air with their razor-edge framework.

A treacle leaking wound smears the dark drain

With slick wickedness as you stretch idly. But

For her crouching apathy she would leave lurk-

Ing for a fleshy existence; without this strain.

As it is she remains here, strut-

Ting like a toxic, bobbing cork.

Appetite for Distraction – The Final Moments after the Door to the End has been Opened.


Hear me knocking at the door
Soft shoed footfalls on the floor
Blinding angels distant seen
The sun, through clouds, spears out between.

Me Without You.


A diver without an aqualung,

A paedophile without the young.

A camel with no hump,

A boxer with no thump.

A clown without any fun,

An American without a gun.

Strawberries without cream,

The BFG without a dream.

Communism without Marx,

An underwater adventure without sharks.

Christianity without the philosophy of Greeks,

The Welsh stereotype without leeks.

A monk without a cowl,

An archaeologist without a trowel.

A Catholic without the guilt,

A Scotsman without his kilt.

A gun without a bullet,

An 80’s pop star without a mullet.

Sex without any sweat,

A sick animal without a vet.

Santa without a reindeer,

A pervert without a leer.

A war without deaths,

A tramp without meths.

The Psyche without the Self

A ninja without stealth.

A widow without a shroud,

A mushroom without a cloud.

Four horsemen without an apocalypse,

The Queen Mother without broken hips.

Jack without Daniel,

An aristocrat without a spaniel.

Hercules without tasks,

Balls without masques.

The police without crime,

Coleridge without a Rime.

Muslims without jihad,

Addicts without rehab.

Gaffers without grips,

Fish without chips.

Roman Emperors without insanity,

Fair without the Vanity.

Haunting without a ghost,

Sunday without a roast.

Christmas with no suicide,

A playground without a slide.

Meals with no eating,

The Olympics with no cheating.

Pull without a Force,

Death without a horse.

A storm without the rain,

Fisting without any pain.

Silence without peace,

Pain without release.

An Italian without a scooter,

A six-gun without a shooter.

Depression minus the manic,

Start of the century without the Titanic.

A sniffer without glue,

Is like me without you.

A foot without a shoe,

Is like me without you.

Caged animals without a zoo,

Is like me without you.

Culture of Illusion – Valentine.


Valentine.
Thumb heart in snow.

Thumb print heart pressed in the snow

Bitter memory of prior woe.

Hold them close on this day

Before the snow melts all away.

Subterranean Thoughts.


Prodding dreamily at the space under

My chin. The space where the shotgun would fit

Snugly in. Thoughts that vaguely meander

As I rest under this gnarled tree’s bough. It

–

Seems that it would be no trouble at all

If I was to fall from this place and rest-

Lessly crawl on through. I just need to call

On that one moment’s decision; a guest

–

In no time of neck-snapping Death who yet,

As my host, ushers me beyond.

What remains; a whip lashed marionette,

Shattered and twitching, that will not respond.

Leaves.


The leaves are bronzing over, as umber

Shafts of the Autumn’s sun, tent-

like, shade folly’s of a forced mortal year.

–

Of life’s rich liquor; mulched rot, a blotched smear

On her flawed, lawless cycle of some transient

Phase of decay. A shining veneer

–

On a crafted, sharply piercing, dream spear.

Grinding to the obsequious pause; lanced

Through Nature’s grim drab soul; an empty tear

–

From her nascent eyes drench, with a clear

Banality, the children of a spent

Future with a haggard, wasted fear.

Brevity.


Drifting in the terrible scream

Of a trembling explosion. Neat

Victims seeming to shimmer in the melting heat

Before thudding crisply dead as in some padded dream.

–

Water’s pure rainbow sucked dry into steam

At the elemental border. Manufactured order, Great

Like an old War, its fire squandered from the grate,

Fractures as Nature’s chaotic unfettered seam

–

Is mined in a panoply of rising octaves.

Life craves for it’s own empty, forced continuance

With every dirt soaked breath a horrid struggle

–

Until that essential calm meets and greets us to our graves.

A tidy randomness that not even the web of Science

Can stave off. Just ensure the space in-between isn’t dull.

Sapling


She is standing before me in

Some wretched sharp-boned pose. Dreams shift-

Ing light pierces translucent thin,

shrink-wrapped skin. Her glorious grin

–

Dispossessed by fraught, frightened eyes.

Now, with thoughts obsessions first

Caress, each part of me that dies

Sees another path; the less cursed.

–

Stumbling in my own dark, bleak cor-

Ridors I fiercely hunt in love’s slow,

Impotent style after hope or

Hope’s trailing, tragic shadow.

Conversation.


I don’t know if we can be friends anymore, I said.

Oh, why is that? She said.

Well there’s a problem, I said.

And what is that? She said.

I love you, I said.

Oh, she said.

Oh, I said.

Oh, she said,

Again.

I said oh again, too.

We had both said oh twice.

I have ruined our friendship, I said.

No you haven’t, she said.

Yes I have, I said.

I don’t think you have, she said.

Oh? I said

Do you love me? I said.

Does it matter? she said.

It might be quite important, I said.

Do you want to know now? She said.

If you wouldn’t mind, I said.

I have to go, she said.

Oh, I said.

I took that as a no, I said.

Oh, she said.

I just don’t…, she said.

Are you going to go? I said.

She didn’t say

And then turned and walked away.