I can still hear you,
words of an old truth,
fading sounds of prophecies trickle off an archaic tongue
through lips of decaying youth.

I am still here for you,
for me, wavering, fading
but my shadow stays again.
Alive and morphing in pain
from innocence to what?
Changing is existence and existence is changing.

And I still dream of you.
Whispers of a prelapsarian idea
slither into today from the womb of yesterday
and I cling to it,
the dream,
the boy,
if only to stop him dying,
stop him fading into silence.
So his words echo into the attic of my heart
and do not bounce into oblivion - whisperless.

Standing in the drizzle on my way to work,
a man collapsed and died,
his life began to fizzle and his heart didn't work,
paramedics came, a woman cried,
and all I could think was
'who the hell dies at 8.15 on a Monday morning?'

Then I went to work and fried meat for 12 hours
because it was Monday morning
the week was just beginning
and you need money to live.

There was a time when rabbits were lions,
when I was a child,
I had a rabbit called Lion.
I left the hutch open and went to bed,
off he flopped into the dark cold night.
I mean, you can't discover much from a hutch
but Lion took one turn too many,
Lion got lost,
he couldn't find his way back,
Lion lost his bearings as jumped through the unknown world.
I can empathise with Lion now,
I think I'm one turn away from not being able to get back.
Anyway, Lion never came home
and now rabbits are just rabbits
- not lions.

(Pause)

Yes.

It was all in the pause

Everything that wasn’t said,

Everything that was going to be said,

Everything.

A messy universe hidden in a vacuum,

In one big bang a new chaotic reality was born

But before that

There was the pause.

The ‘yes’ that followed the silence

Was nothing more than a cork in a wave

Unable to stop the city of love drowning in violence.

The pause was there before,

The silence was trapped in my throat before,

Within it was all that needed to be said

Released in an explosion

The spark offered by your question

‘Are we alright?’

Boom.

At least, I thought, we’ve erased the silence

The pause is over.

Kicking the debris with your toe

You said ‘I wish you’d tried’

(Pause)

The old man drives
Round a bend in the road
Headlights light
With a dim milky glow

Wind rushes through
A crack in the glass
Cutting across
Eyes broken in the past

Cigarette ash
Jumps from the tip
Of the cigarette dangling
From dry still lips

Lines in his face
Where his life seeps away
Were etched by the talons
Of birds of prey

Eyes suspended
In loose wrinkles of skin
Like babies unwrapped
And left by the wind

Stay locked and not looking
At the passenger seat
Where sits the kid
With clean bare feet

The old man and the kid
Look the same but changed
The old man is the kid
With age and pain

The car moves through
A dark ***** town
And comes to a stop
As the old man frowns

The kid looks up
With bright wide eyes
The old man blinks
Starting to cry

The tear drops down
The grooves of his face
The dirt pushed aside
A clean line in its place


“Get out” he whispers
To the kid in the car
“GET OUT” he screams
“Get out of the car”

Clinging to the seat
With white fingers
He clings to himself
Then the old man lingers

“It will be alright”
The kid tries to speak
But the old man is out
And on to the street

He walks round the car
To the passenger door
And flings it open
With a rotting core

He grabs the kid
By the scruff of his shirt
And throws him out
Into the litter and dirt

“It won’t be alright”
The old man said
“We won’t be alright”
Then held his head

He looked in his young eyes
For the first time in years
And both were crying
Identical tears

The kid held him tight
And he held him back tighter
Then pushed him down
Like a lost fighter

“I have nowhere to go
And neither do you
We won’t get far
But you’re on your own”

As the old man walked
Back to the car
Wiping his tears
In the cover of dark


He got in his seat
As the kid got up
Starting the car
He slammed down his foot

The kid moved to run
But was left behind
The old man had left him
In a place he can’t find

Bags, and leaves
And litter and wind
Rolled round the kids feet
As the headlights dimmed

He wanted to wait
For lights to come back
But he knew they would not
He knew that was that

He turned and stepped
With his clean bare feet
His first steps on his own
In the dark ***** street

As dust and *******
Licked at his toes
His clean bare feet
Became ***** and froze

The kid had never
Felt any pain
He knew no words
So he could not explain

He took a few steps
And collapsed on the ground
When he heard voices
And thought he was found

He looked up from the floor
Dirt blew in his face
But he could see figures
And knew he was saved

The figures came closer
The kid heard them laugh
It was cutting icy
Like the wind on his back

They spoke for a while
As they stood around
The kid thought of the old man
As he lay on the ground

The voices grew louder
And with a shout
They ran to the kid
His eyes glistened with doubt

He choked on his tears
And tried to speak
But the figures grabbed
His hand and his feet

They dragged him away
And down a dark alley
They gripped him tight
As the kid shivered with panic

“I don’t understand”
The kid screamed and cried
For he hadn’t the words
To understand this life

In the shadows he felt
His **** on his legs
He was thrown to the floor
And he begged and begged

The figures just laughed
And pulled out a gun
The kid did not know
What it was but he ran

The kid was grabbed
And hit to the floor
In the dark there was something
Something that gnawed

The one with the gun
Pointed it at the kid
Then seemed to start crying
And closed his eye lids

He turned the gun
Towards his own head
With a ****** bang
The figure fell dead



The kid screamed
And covered his eyes
But the world had got in
It was in his insides

In tears and pain
The kid grabbed the gun
Firing into the dark
His life had begun

With the death of the figures
He began to moan
The dark that he feared
Was in his own bones

“There is no way to live through this”
The kid thought as he tore at his face

In the dark blowy shadows his face looked changed
Like an old man the kid knew but couldn’t remember his face

“We won’t get far”
Said the kid in the dark all alone

“We won’t get far
And I’m on my own”

Two maggots in an apple
chew from opposite sides
both think themselves alone in the apple
and fulfil their biological programmes.
As they wiggle closer to the core
they begin to feel the fruitless reality
of slipping from nothing
to existence to a memory in solitude;
of squirming in silence from the skin
to the core and out of the apple
As they draw closer still to the centre
this sense of an underlying
futility moves from an inarticulate feeling
to a logical, painful truth
and as they both bite into the core they are crying and desperate
for their string of experience
to be batted by the cat
of meaning.

In this state they felt each other
in the dark of the core of the apple.
Nothing needs to be said
as they writhe and roll together;
as the wriggle and wrap in unison.

Coming to rest in a loose knot,
lightly gripping the seed of the apple
they feel each other feel each other
they feel the apple rot around them
and the rotting of their bodies.
In the dark of the core of the apple,
wrapped around the seed,
they learn to be satisfied with
the pointless
journey through the apple.

There are too many segments in this orange,
I tore away the rind and pulled at the pith with my thumb,
exposed the flesh that fell apart,
but there are too many segments in this orange,
it won't fit back together.
Ill fitting fruit, mutated citrus genes.
You were bigger than yourself.
What freaky secrets your cratered, sunset skin
hid beneath its thick, fragrant glow.

What else is there?
As we stand and watch water boil away leaving bloated rice,
and we look at cracks in the floor that have trapped the dust and grime of life.
The clock ticks... ticks... ticks... Snapped Back. Where is the tock?
Blood pools in the kitchen bin, cools amongst the packets and discarded food,
congealed petals torn from the dying rose,
saved and disposed.
Settled in purgatory for the things that time strips...
squeezing through a narrowing tunnel
shed, reject and flee for the end
or lie and fail, bloated.
Don't take it from me...
the greatest liberty
is choosing when to throw
your own life away.

Years and years of page after
page,
sscratching, smudging, flicking the pen
putting off disappointment...
nothing looks like how it looks in my head.
Poor world, poor me.
Suddenly I look down
at my hands on the page,
My hands did it for my head,
not really, my head merely agrees and possesses the
arrogance to think
itself in charge.
Charcoal resembling my
insides, finally there on
the outside.
Fruit fly lands on the
fruits of my hearty hands.
Both drunk on wine but
unprepared I flatten in
on the page,
poor world, poor fly...
My perfect picture,
punctuated with the smudge
of life.

You can feel it,
In the voices of men on
phones in bars
Spitting apologies turned
recriminations.
You can feel it,
In the scratching of strings
on the guitar
of an inmate and the eyes that
stare in the face of disinheritance.
You can feel it,
In the clasp of the couple
at the beginning or the end
In bed in the dark
in a fleshy shell.
You can feel it,
In  the ink on a page
scribbled in rage
that goes nowhere
but leaves you different.
You can feel it,
In screams of a soldier
turned human through pain
calling 'mum!' or 'god!'
dying abandoned .
You can feel it,
In the cries of a child
who's met unfairness
and not learned to swallow the blades
so throws them out in tears.
You can feel it,
In goodbyes that are
lost for words
but language cannot express.
You can feel it,
In the the stretched out fingers
of those trying to reach
a hand or hate or love or life.
You can feel it,
In watching another slip
and slide away
and flail their useless limbs.
You can feel it,
As the morning rain
hits your hand
and cleanses the skin on your knuckle.

You can feel it sting
You can feel it sting
Let it sink in
and feel it.

FINAL SCENE WITH A GIANT AND A WHIP

The last scene of this love flick
Involves a man with stinging eyelids
And a giant woman in leather kit
Straddling a jet and cracking her whip

Before the film fades to black
The man slides some letters to the back
Of a vinyl case, to hide its ink
On the cover is the woman who’s cracking her whip

The case is packed inside a box
The man hides it, with his hurt, up in the loft
He pauses for a moment then tries to forget
The leather clad woman who’s straddling a jet

A close up shot of the vinyl sleeve
The boots, the whip, the plane and cleavage
Would really represent what he put inside
The image of fun turned into a lie

Does a weathered heart yearn to be replenished?
Or is it too broken to tick or be tickled by hope?
Do the tears of time drip drop down,
until drip by drip the drops extinguish the warmth
that is pushed from the inside out
by the crisp glow that curls smooth paper
to a glow red feather?

Why does every second second
Pass faster than the first?
So the thirst for the
third, fourth and fifth to slow
becomes an accelerating threat
to the volume of seconds left to pour.

Why is it
that the steady heart beat momentum of time
is distorted by the fluctuating force of perception?
Fluctuating the feel of the pulsating tick tock
of the clock.

How come while time carries on unaware of the damage it causes
we cause the problems
with our endless trek down a trail for questions and answers
and blame time for not stopping to less us do this

Crying and blind, blinking in the dark
We can’t see a thing, we can’t tell
If we’re flying or falling or sinking in the dark
The only thing that is with us
Is the pulsating, unsteady tick tock
Inside us in the dark.

No Good Ever Came...


No good ever came
From staying up all night

Except when it took all night
To satisfy our thoughts

No good ever came
After the eight pint

Except when we drank too much
And finally said the words

No good ever came
From sleeping for hours all fine

Except in those morning hours
When we were safe from the whole world

No good ever came
From staying sober and bright

Except for the days we remember
When everything was sharp and whole

No good ever came
From standing completely still

Except when we stared at each other
And knew just who we were

No good ever came
From filling up on pills

Except when we hung from the ceiling
And clung to the clouds in mirth

No good ever came
From chasing childish thrills

Until we found that place inside
And laughed at how simple it was

No good ever came
From using power of will

Except when we clung together
Much longer than we should

No good ever came
From constantly pretending

Except when we said it would be fine
And sort of lived our lives

No good ever came
From the act of surrendering

Except when we surrendered
To the currents in our hearts

No good ever came
From being real and raw

Except when we absolved ourselves
By accepting all our scars

No good ever came
From fighting in a war

Except when we fought each other
Instead of face ourselves

Nothing ever good came
From shedding all those tears

Except when it let you know
That I was full of fear

Nothing ever came from me or you or us
Except for the briefest moments

When good came from both our lives.

TWO-FACE

Two-Face faces forwards and back
Holding two conversations
Both mouths spewing crap

One face is bored
and looks down at the floor
The other is scared and wet
Visibly out of its depth

One brain thinking, two mouths moving
Brain trying to filter thoughts
To the right mouth but brains not choosing

Thoughts are falling
Both mouths are still talking
But both mouths say the wrong words
Hoping all the wrong ears haven’t heard

If the wrong mouth
Says the wrong words
Then the wrong people
Could see the wrong face
Two-Face couldn't live with that
He split his face for a reason...
The world is divided
So he made his face fit

But Two-Face has no mouths
No eyes or nose
He split himself, his thoughts and desires
And presented a half empty version
To two sides of the same world

Two-Faces’ two faces’ amount to none
Neither face is him, neither complete or one
To scared to show both faces
But if he did he would see that
The world isn't split
His two faces aren't needed

He will never show a full smile
Until his mouths are one
Or see things clearly
Until his four eyes have gone

Two-Face is really Half-Face
And Half-Face is no one
Until he is one