Veins, veins,
length and breadth,
intertwined

beats to freedom
or desolation;
a terminus

lost on a circular.
An ebbing destination,
unchartered targets,

Follow the signs.
We are a one way street,
follow the signs

on software maps.
Stumped
by sequential lights

and us, caught
in a dragnet
within steely fish,

gasping for air,
choking on smoke,
bilious coughs,

hacking sputum,
gobbing phlegm globs
in interval gaps

within gridlocks;
nose to **** to
nose to ****.

The rage, the stares
the shouts, the finger,
the Grrr’s, the Rrrr’s,

the honks, the blares,
the bumper to bumper
expletive shares.

The rolling down,
the alighting,
the threats,

the fighting.
The falling down,
the separation,

reseating,
the rolling,
the thunder,

the trudge,
the stops, the starts.
Follow the signs,

follow the signs.
Robotic conveyors
for humans,

mechanical
fossil fueled
chariots,

grumbling, grunting,
wheee-ing and
screeching,

and screaming
and spewing
and chuffing

and guffing
black plumes,
air tarred,

veins, veins
clogged and bogged,
viscous, molasses,

liquid black blob.
Road fogged,
numbers logged.

Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
slow crawl.

Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
follow the signs,

sprawl.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

I held your heart in my hand,
Held it aloft beneath the moons glint,
Squeezing it sponge like
Until it oozed deep red rain,
Tingeing the clouds
Scarlet to crimson, ruby to blood.

The harder I squeezed
The more your heart emptied,
Trickling rivulets that
Traced the map of veins in my arm,
Soaking into my shirt,
White linen turning deceptively black
Beneath a dark sky.

I felt your heart pulsating,
Reacting against my grasp,
Forcing my clawed fingers to flat open palm,
My hold forcefully released.
I thought it would fall
And lie beating but beaten on the ground.
Instead, it rose unaided,
Elevated enough to obscure the cold moon,
Pulsating, vibrating, transforming,
Until it became the moon itself
And turned the sky black-red.

And now I hide within the bleak woods,
I feel your pinching hold,
Your tightening clench,
And I feel your gravitational pull,
Crashing me like a wave
Against the jagged rocks
Of what remains of us.

Your softest nature elicits returns
With silver charms and gold tooth smiles,
And your love for fellow mankind burns,
Your existence free of turmoil and trials.
When people defend your ranks and reputes
And are willingly kind when speaking your name,
Your character fine in practice recruits
Alliances forged, animosities tamed.
No fist that is hidden within a velvet glove
Nor sleight or disdain so worthless and shotten,
And all is good and fair in love
And war is ever to be forgotten.

But see how soon your prized elation
Is made to fail and crash to Earth,
From super gliding elevation
To ditch go falling in scathing mirth.
And how you turn like the change of season,
You come, incognito, dark wings furled.
Tempestuous and wild without rhyme or reason,
Caught and lost between two worlds.
What difference in words of you now spoken
When you, your reputation embrown,
Your wings unfurled will soon be broken
And your saintly crown falls
Down
Down
Down

She pulls impressions from memory files,
Stacking them between the hearth
And a pitcher of iced water.
Through a process of elimination,
With the aid of imaginative convenience
She decides which should burn
And which should freeze.

The ones that still hold heat in her heart
Shall reignite in bright flame,
And she will draw oxygen through cinders
And the coals shall burn again.

Memories that descend like a hailstorm
Are fated to the shuddering chill,
To the depths of a symbolic disused quarry
And its waters deathly dark and still.

She sees a handsome man from the past,
Full of life love and promises
And compares him to
The sleeping snoring mass
Bent and slumped on the armchair,
His hand inches away
From an empty wine glass.

She recalls rainy summers spent under canvas,
Then rendered to canvas, preserved in frame
Now stacked in the cobwebbed dark of the attic,
Nostalgia no longer viewed…
The laughter induced by sodden clothes
And the smudging of mud,
Passions for far too long subdued

Somewhere central to the pros and cons
Memories remain resolutely etched,
Flameproof and fearless of the cold,
A good meeting point for the swing and sway
Of the positives and the despondencies,
A safe haven relied upon
When tomorrow steals today.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

The mainstay of guests,
Their backs against chairs
That are backed against walls,
Readily seated and settled
Into tight knit sub communities
And discussion cells…
Thrashing out social failings
And political ineptitudes
Gleaned from broadsheets
And RT News updates,
Mumbling agreements
Or gentle dissents,
Some too ****** to participate
(should have “passed the kouchie
‘pon the left hand side”).
One spills red wine onto white cloth
And they all laugh longer than necessary
About the irony of it all
Even though there was no irony
In the situation to begin with.
There are a small handful of male guests
That I feel I could get along with.
I give way in the doorway
For the hostess to deliver nibbles.
There are a handful of female guests
That I think I’d like to ****
(the hostess included),
But none of this allays the reluctance
To step through the threshold.
The hostess exits the room
As I pin myself to the hallway wall,
“It could be you”, I think,
And try to relay this through a raised eyebrow smile
That goes unnoticed.
I attempt my break in
Just as the conversation turns to
The importance of contemporary art
In modern society
And the relevance of Jim Morrison’s poetry
In the cerebral world of words.
I search audibly for a conversation
Centred around Adele’s latest album release…
And I NEVER, on a good day, want to talk about THAT.
In for a penny, I take the step with a fuzzy indifference
And am drawn to a hand extending the offer of a spliff,
And to the ***** of empty wine glass on full bottle,
And a “will you, won’t you?” expression,
And I trip and fall over a synthetic fur rug
Lying, recumbent, too scared to take my eyes
Off the pendulum light bulb that hovers above me
And all I can think is that the hallway
Was a much safer place to be.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

Total irrational fear, I’m
Haunted by noises and
Interred by the
Rumble belly, *** tightening,
Twitchy eyed, false alarms that
Evolve into conspiracy theories,
Even though I love every single
Nonsensical asinine fear factor…ish

Falling is now a favourite.
Eleven other aversions form a line and
An extra number comes to mind (and with it comes ‘Whoa’)
Reset the clock to zero!
Stride on, wipe your feet, step off.

The story ends how the story begins:
A black dog sniffing and *******,
Marking its territory, threatening
From onyx eyes to stone scraping claws.
It follows me…
Moves itself in like a bad relative,
Intent on bringing turmoil;
On bringing torment.
A fast transformation
From noble to brutal,
From canine king to feral beast
In one snap of it’s jaw…
Chewing my gut like it would old furniture,
******* my mind like it would a *****,
Digging and scraping and scuffing
My inner core,
Leaving me full of holes,
Collapsing my barriers,
Dragging down inner walls
Until I become translucent
And the anxiety never eases.
The light turned out,
The animal becomes invisible in the darkness
But testing me still with tapping paws
As I lie fetus-like in the womb of sodden sheets.
A day may pass…
A week…
A month…
The dog is bored, nothing left to destroy
Only meatless bones,
The marrow ****** from within
It turns full circle and again marks its ground.
It walks, breaking to a trot
Then a canter to a gallop,
The stench of **** a loose diary entry
For a random return.

Copyright Marc Hawkins