I don't claim,
to have an abundance of accurate knowledge.
I know I've too much yet to learn.
However,
after a bit of experimentation,
after years of trial and error,
I do think I've come to find one truth.
No one is ever what you expect.
Fewer yet,
are what you need.
They key I've come to find,
that one piece that makes the puzzle fall together,
is to find someone who makes your soul quiet,
but your heart scream.

Death you are seen so repugnant.
Death you are sensed so vile.
Death you are deemed so untimely.
“Death can’t you wait for a while?”
But Death, aren’t you Life’s true redeemer?
Making everyone think well of the dead.
Death aren’t you Life’s other half?
Death don’t you tuck us to bed?
When our wanderlust has faded,
your embrace remains unjaded.

Death you are humble in your infamy;
Life the glory claims.
Yet sickness, accidents and war
are all Life’s macabre games.
That which kills you comes from Life.
Life will push to make that sale;
living organs mere currency.
Cannibalistic Life - advertising as a fairy tale.
Death you are left to clear the carnage.
Death – the coloseum’s sand –
innocently soaked in the blood of Life’s cruel hand.

Death you are Life’s psychologist;
motivating each step, each trial.
Making us get up every morning
to make each moment worthwhile.
Death you employ Time’s creation
to set a deadline to Life.
Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring
Death you are a scalpel; Life a butcher’s knife.
Famine, plague, disease, beast,
Without glorious survival, why feast?

Death your work with Time is inspired,
for we created it to understand your course.
With Time we can learn Life’s seasons
and record it’s length before it’s divorce
from our fragile clay.
Death you make us frugal with our Time,
yet generous with our Love.
For to each heartbeat’s rhythm and rhyme,
we fervently dance to give.
To make another grief-stricken Death.

For if Life is filled with meaning,
it is Death’s boon to us all.
Life becomes exhilarating –
A race before the fall!
Death remains a wallflower to the very close.
Death only wants to meet us;
a gentle lover with a rose.

Encouraging, yet terrifying.
But if we fear the Darkness, it is Life we fear not Death.
How often has a blinding Light been reported on a final breath?

October arrived with the force of a hurricane.
I am left with nothing but a cold bed
and the crunch of the first fallen leaf.
No one to give warmth but I,
as 2015 eagerly waits
at the alter
to be given away.

The Empire is built on the soil of a million dead soldiers.
Drug of war, crater covered up by miles of dust and distance;
cameras cut to graves of the fallen 'brave'
as if bravery can only exist in death.
Meanwhile, cameras forgot
to catch the fall of the still-living into poverty-
a life of psychological warfare-
how can you fund for a disaster
when you have no proof that it is there?

The slam poet sings his songs of false hope,
feigning poetry and swinging his hips in time
with his ego. He is patient with his beer, nestling
it into his confidence like sugar in the blood.

I remember him telling me that poetry belonged
to a voice, that silent passions only go so far in
getting you laid. He held a joint between his
fingers, and then drew his name in the air.

It lasted just a moment; a flash in the pan.
He said that this was the essence of poetry,
of music and art: 'You cannot possibly hope
to live forever through printed word alone.'

We sat in the beer garden listening to cover bands
and arranging our set-lists for an upcoming gig.
He crossed out most of my suggestions
in favour of ****-breaks and introductions.

I remember telling him after my fourth whiskey
that I wring my hands in between writing verses,
swallowing pills and jittering my leg in time
with slow jazz tunes and next door's bass-line.

To that he said: 'forget the oldies, forget Christ;
nothing that dies will come back again. Poetry is dead.
We are in love with Frankenstein's monster,
and we'll only kiss each other in electric bursts.'

The slam poet went back to his backlit stage.
I sat at the back and started on my fifth.
There was a blonde girl in a blue dress, mouth open.
Her eyelashes curled. I was persuaded to sing.