I am thinking of moving,
from this country,
from this house,
from this couch,
At least,
At very least, I am a clichéd empty coffee cup,
A lesion on the bone of my own life,
Stopping under Ferris wheel lights,
As it all falls into the Mersey,
And resurfaces, maybe, elsewhere
I think of moving,
In yellow patches of sun,
In marked skin,
In between atomic level emptiness,
At peace,
At ephemeral peace, I am the clichéd busted wheel,
A tyre mark or pock mark on the surface,
Slicing the move East in two,
Drowning in meltwater
Bobbing up through a hole in the ice,
And resurfacing, maybe, elsewhere
I am moving,
through time (or it through me)
through faded dayglo
through a burnt filament,
At last,
At dreaded “and dear last”, I am roots and canopy, clichéd,
A fluttering of fingers in thorns and air,
Stuttering sentences on an empty stage,
Skirting the edge of newly lost continents,
While licking salt from faces and cliff faces,
Moving another ghost somewhere west,
To resurface, elsewhere
maybe
Sep 10, 2020
Sep 10, 2020 at 8:15 AM UTC
They’re putting bread on string
Out of reach of anything
Chandeliers in a Salt mine
Turning wine into whine into figments of what was mine
What was ours in the bastions of love
Which left us behind in the pushes and the shoves
Oblivion to oblivion in Lunar zodiac years
Turning tears to tears in barrels full of fear
Precious be thy emptiness in lost & broken trust
But our broken alloy hearts will likely never rust
Held to account in dingy basement dwellings
Turning your cells into cells when it’s more than salts you’re smelling
Hearts become holograms, there’s interference in the tube amps
Our bodies become vehicles and this locus is the on-ramp
Desire lines in darkness punctuate the screaming night
Turning wander to wonder far from halcyon light
Feb 24, 2020
Feb 24, 2020 at 3:27 PM UTC
I wake from a dream,
A dream in which I can sing,
My voice gritty yet powerful,
My chest full as the lights come in,
I go to speak in the waking world
Just a shiver of my sleeping sound falls out.
I am weak,
I am empty,
I am confused,
I am quiet,
My voice carries no further than the ring in my ears,
A chorus of noise crashes through me, unfiltered,
My walk and sound fades in rhythm and meaning,
I imagine my tired voice using the right words at the right pitch, tone, and timbre.
I lay down,
I do not sleep,
I do not cry,
I do not sing.
Oct 28, 2019
Oct 28, 2019 at 6:13 PM UTC
I breathe and I tire,
Whilst all mouths and memories begin to conspire,
I see Odin weep outside the window,
I wander backstage where the humans can’t go,
One-eyed Wednesdays install beats in my heart and cracks in my teeth,
Show me a heartland with an ocean beneath,
Let me sleep, let me sleep, let me sleep.
Sep 7, 2019
Sep 7, 2019 at 2:34 AM UTC
Nights
when hot evening in lemonade and canal water gives way to cold breeze dusk through white cotton shirts seeking jackets,
As last light leaves the party behind nameless hills and the pollution masks the stars,
Slow moons creep to the edge of eyes in monochrome film-light, distant rain, and drunken big-bands play
through speakers in dead venues, layers of dust, and layers of dust,
And from radios, lost on the dial,
In American cars, front seats the size of living rooms,
But no comfort to journeys of ammonia and neck pain,
Lost nights of Earth
Accepting warm drizzle through hats and shoes, and occasional ceilings,
Sirens paint and dapple scenes streets away from latest whiskey or whisky melodramas,
Before returning to curtains, decades of regret in floral patterns, chipped cups, and solar flares at the strained dawn,
Piercing blinds and migraines
In a successive run of
Mornings
Apr 18, 2019
Apr 18, 2019 at 4:21 PM UTC
There was a noise downstairs
Heard it creep into what we read
Whilst in my ears it starts to shout
A sound that slowly sows its seeds
Then in the knees it wins the bout
I hear it growing closer
To the threshold of doors long shut
Before clawing into the room
Through our bodies
And the windows too
Hear it repeatedly speaking of
Mother’s sons born blue
All polluted in utero
Cold water and yellow fog
While others hawked their morals above
Hear holy words said to us
Proverbs two one two three
Do not move our mouths too much
But never mention
That more than holy spirits touch
Hear that change comes
When the North Atlantic
Nears our lungs
But sadness when we only get
To remember him while he was young
Hear it ring out between
What all the emptied pens believe
That parts of us have contravened
When our hearts fester from scene to scene
Betwixt the Romans and the Pharisees
Hear it in words of grace
In the void where your spine should place
When stood between tectonic plates
nor time nor stasis emancipates
The silence of our delegates
Then hear it in atomic air
The souvenirs of yesteryear
That spill and mix into our despair
The thoughts our hammers won’t repair
There is still a noise downstairs
Mar 8, 2019
Mar 8, 2019 at 2:41 PM UTC
He had a cacophony of seabirds,
In the attic of his mind,
In the loft of his skull,
Telling him:
What not to do,
What not to do,
What not to do.
Jan 27, 2019
Jan 27, 2019 at 3:22 PM UTC
He, she, they,
Called out but once
Into red flowers, gravel paths, and steam,
then resurfaced somewhere in ****
Without stepping on the sea
Lost, drinking in a bath of silence,
bleached under fingernails,
and left
The eye at the centre of the city,
where we all have names
but no address
Jan 27, 2019
Jan 27, 2019 at 3:15 PM UTC
Elderly skin
Bull elephant
Number
Of the sea
Marbles
Heavenward
Flowerbed
Babies
And his teeth
Pinpricks
For deities
Between words
Between words
Between words
Mar 11, 2018
Mar 11, 2018 at 9:14 PM UTC
She sat by me, in her skirt, hand grenade green,
And an off-white blouse obscured by a jacket with dust in its seams,
Like leather, like elderly skin, like a crossword puzzle with half the letters filled in,
She sat by me and spilt her sentences and her tea:
She claimed her husband had been killed by a cabal of spiritualists,
Killed by a bull elephant in the streets of Nepal,
Killed by the seven plagues,
And never killed at all,
That he was once a number
Somehow both perfect and prime,
That he was Prime minister of the sea,
And independent of time,
That his bones were cracked marbles
Bought from a widow in Tennessee,
That his name continued to escape her,
But that he looked something like me,
Leaving I saw her wings drag her heavenward,
I saw her terrible wings,
As I stumbled and veered from concrete to tarmac
I heard the pavements start to sing:
“I was once a flowerbed,
My father was a field,
My mother was a source of light,
Before which all the people kneeled.”
Then lost in the eye of daytime and night,
Drawn to the moustache of a Spanish racketeer,
He was once abandoned by his books and his babies
In the boot of a broke-down cavalier,
His pasts and ideas caught up to him,
And gripped him by his belt and his teeth,
His pasts gripped him in quiet of his nightmares,
And slashed his arms in the street,
Visions shook me by the bleeding palm,
Her terrible wings now pinpricks for the moon,
Visions shook me as deities died,
With eyes like a card-trick and fingers like doom,
Then stuck in the endless space between words;
She sat by me, in her skirt, hand grenade green;
Stuck in the endless space between words;
And an off white blouse obscured by a jacket with dust in its seams...
Mar 11, 2018
Mar 11, 2018 at 9:11 PM UTC