The crew of ****** all hide their own secret loneliness. At every port the deserted dance halls beckon, and there they dance with familiar ghosts. At twelve midnight sharp the spirits disappear along with the tuxedoed band and the music dies leaving red white and blue tinsel, miniature plastic flags, and balloons that glide and bounce to a solitary, prolonged note.
The sailors cease spinning and their arms drop to their sides. They drown in bottles of *** in search of solace. They rarely find barely a taste. And so, in frustration they fight and draw first and last bloods. Now, in scuffed shoes and torn clothes, with damaged pride, they stagger arm in arm back to ship.
The water laps and licks it’s tongue like a cat at cream and the crew whisper breath rings in the chilly air.
Master Chief Petty matron mother waits on deck, rolling pin in hand, kicking backsides into cabins.
The ship bobs and dips in rhythm to sailors heaving snoring chests, and there they sleep, fly catching open mouthed, hugging their pillows in desert island dreams.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2009

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

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

CURRICULUM

Blood seeps
It curtains their eyes
Rendering them
Temporarily blind
Semi-scalped
Skin folded back
Exposing of skull
Ready to crack

Holes drilled
An access to the mind
Pumped with liquid knowledge
Which then solidifies
Conventional learning
Soft subjects barred entry
Too fluid to be controlled
Deep fear of creativity

Kicked into touch
With confined education
Sent into life
Into great expectations
3R certificates
Irrelevant to some
Force fed on dictates
From the seed to the crumb

For some who think outside the box
Of the language of academia
Why have knowledge forced upon
When it’s free on Wikipedia?
Stifling ideas
Kettling free thinking
Those and more values
Lined up for the shrinking

You will think in the ways
That we want you to think
You’ll sink into rules
And you’ll fall into sync
You will follow the norm
You’ll adhere to the rules
Of stagnated teachings
In stagnated schools

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.

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.

That lonesome,
Long distance
Kind of love.
Shared through
The microwaves,
Images he will treasure
In the darkness
Of his motel room.
They will be his only
Flicker of light
For the next 5 days,
His own solitary pleasure.
He will gaze into that full
Bright handheld moon
And imagine
Floating gently into
It’s haze, losing himself
Slowly, bit by bit,
Measure by measure
While she waits
Patiently on the other
Side of the world,
Assisting,
Offering,
Pleasing
At his leisure

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

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 came to me
In a morphine haze,
All mousy hair
And summer dress,
The fresh smell of air,
Her smile radiating out,
Magnetic eyes
Drawing me in.
No sinister love
Around here to be found.
I float three feet off the ground,
Hospital mattress
My monkey cloud
On which I drift.

And I drift
Into gentle vision,
Into peaceful sound.
She touches heart,
Warm hands
On ice cold block,
And she thaws me
Through this state
Of unknown fortune,
Tempts me back
Into the land of the living
Whilst leaving me,
With no uncertainty,
That when I awake
She will be gone.
She denies me the choice
Of staying here with her,
Semi-comatose
But happy, at last

Now, I have no
Recollection of her face
Though I know
She was beautiful,
I have no sense
Of her touch
Though I know
It kept me alive.
I am left with
A deep sense of love,
And that, at times,
Is enough

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

Colonial history will still dictate how the men around here
Practice love through hate
For aesthetic purposes; an ethnic marker,
Gender controlled by husband...son...father
Against my will.

I can let nature take its course, the uneasiness in how I pass
Bears nothing to your immoral force with which you open me up.
Your gateway to a selfish pleasure,
And I once believed that being loved
Was close to being treasured.
I am as trapped as a bird in a cage,
Modified and made ugly by your commission.
Disfigured by tradition and religion and holy wars,
And chained by the fear  that renders me yours
Against my will.

My sisterhood grows from northeast Africa
To the sub-Sahara.
Young and joyless and bound by doctrines.
No pursuit of happiness. No pleasure to come
No great expectations. Nothing foretold
Nothing that has been or gone.
Objects more of control than desire;
My eyes that once shone with innocent love
Now burn with hate fuelled fire…and all because...
You denied me a fall from grace, you denied me self discovery,
No different to putting scars on my face
Or is that too much a public recovery?
You denied me womanhood, you denied me choice.
I censor my thoughts and silence my voice
And I think of our mothers and their mothers
And of the honour and pride they felt
When this exact same fate to them was dealt.
And why did they not feel humiliated? Abused?
Mutilated? Used?
Maybe when we live in a world without light
We relinquish our strengths and fall prey to our plights.
Enlightenment and knowledge, I was lead to believe,
Are the roads to freedom.
Our mothers learned nothing other than to serve and to please,
And here am I, enlightened but sedated,
Imprisoned, captive, segregated.
Dysmorphic now, a victim still,
And all of this against my will.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2013

In a still boat on a calm sea,
A kite flying high above me.
In a summer breeze the kite will lift
Causing the boat to drift.
This is life as I know it, a life to be lived,
My eternal quest to taste fulfilment
At the very least self forgiveness.
It's an easy concept
When you know who you are,
I can soar like a comet, I can shoot like a star.
But let the clouds be your ceiling,
Try to suppress those niggling feelings,
Avoid soaring away on some pointless notion,
Return to the comfort of that still ocean.
Return to the craft, to that life saving raft.
Safe. Calm. Normal

In a still boat on a calm sea
An anchor weighs heavy
In the depths below me.
In an insular place,
In the darkness of night
The chain of the anchor
Pulls heavy and tight.
This is death as I see it.
This is anti-flight.
As I am dragged to the morbid bed,
Nowhere to hide from the fearful dread,
The black ink ocean floods my head
And I writhe and I wriggle
Until the chain, through rot and rust
Crumbles and, like I, falls to dust.

Free, I swim towards the boat.
I float to the surface.
I climb on the vessel, I take in the light,
I bathe in the glory of a no win fight,
Re-chained to the anchor, retied to the kite,
Momentarily
Safe. Calm. Normal.
Momentarily
Kind of alright

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2015

Words spoken plainly
Now ignored.
After thirty years of habit
He stirs at 5.15 every AM…
Regimental.
After thirty years of habit
She does not stir
But sleeps through.
Words spoken, no longer plainly
But forced with effort,
Patience used.
Him, blind to her frustrations.
A broken necklace,
A torn handkerchief .
A housewife’s muzzled huzza
To husband ignored -
Her way of pretending
Everything is ok,
The only effort from either
To just get on with it,
To get by,
To wait it out.
But still…
Life goes on.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2007

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

Illuminated in the mist
By streetlight glow,
Her whole enveloped
In halo,
His hand
Reaching through
And touching her
Mist damp cheek.
She rests into his palm
Then straightens
And stares outwards,
Eyes drawn to the edge
Of the lit canopy
Where light meets dark,
Where uncertainty awaits.
Closed eyes, memories dance,
Tears well and fall.
All that they were
Has ended here…
The culmination
Of a love lived
With cloaks and daggers,
Secret trysts and alibi lists
And, now, fatally lost.
One last kiss,
Him turning,
She, closed eyes,
Can bear no witness.
No words spoken,
Just silent gestures,
Only fading footsteps heard.
Deep breath,
One last look
As temptation strikes,
His shadow becoming one
With darkness.

She, left alone
Turns and walks away
Knowing that come sunrise
This umbrella of light,
This cold grave of dead affection,
Will be engulfed by the day
Rendering it invisible,
Taking their impression with it

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

A thousand reasons to remain in bed
And avoid the coming day
A thousand reasons to bury my head
And keep out of harms way
A thousand voices shout aloud
All to sway my thinking
A thousand wisdoms calling out
Just as I am sinking
A thousand ideologies
Beliefs enforced through system
A thousand refugees to roam
From those who would forsake them
A thousand dreams or nightmares seen
To counter or to chase
A thousand strains of new disease
To cull the human race
A thousand prophets chanting out
Their lore’s sent from above
A thousand children left to die
Outside the realms of love
A thousand homes of worship and prayer
To celebrate our saviours
A thousand faded works of art
To document our failures
A thousand ****** up truths be told
Not met with protestation
A thousand TV gods are borne
And bathed in admiration
A thousand tears these eyes have cried
To wash away the stinging
A thousand choral soft refrains
Peace be found through singing
A thousand floods and droughts to come
Before the world stops turning
A thousand thunderbolts crash down
To keep the whole world burning
A thousand screams my ears have heard
Of tormented siren’s wail
A thousand raging seas to crash
Before it’s safe to sail
A thousand cities sprawling out
Of cold and grey construction
A thousand cities blown apart
Collateral mass destruction
A thousand throngs of humankind
Scattered during war
A thousand hardships to endure
Until they roam no more
A thousand lies to be told
By those in high positions
Thousands living food bank lives
In poverty conditions
A thousand pounds for the 98
To feed their family nest
A million dollars meted out
Just to feed the rest

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

The cave, a discovered diary.
Rock walls, pages of history.
Etchings and markings
A social commentary,
Buried for an eternity.

Lost in a melee
Of storms and hurricanes
And earthquakes shaking.
Depictions of life,
Of civilization in the making.
Messages chiseled
With muscle and blood,
Signs of existence
Where communities once stood
And thrived on the need
Of food through labours,
The skies, the trees
Their pagan saviours.
Dark rains that poured
Before the construction of Zion,
The shifting of contours,
The shaping of horizons.

Art: the first form
Of true communication.
The observing of omens
Through pictorial narration.
Lessons unlearned,
Warnings unheeded
From a time when the promise
Of future was seeded.
Histories left to benefit man
Before possession was borne
And conflict began.

A legacy left, designed by tribes
From an ancient time
For narrators and scribes.
Their duty to record
An ever-changing world
Through parchment and pigment
And the spoken word,
For future species
Of woman and man
To strategise survival,
To project and to plan.
Knowledge more likely
To be buried, interred,
Then discovered too late
For lessons to be learned

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

From somewhere way beyond midnight
a breeze sifts gentle but true
through an open window.
A candle blows a fatal last kiss
before plunging the room into darkness.
The breeze, lively now and Jack Frost cold,
hugs him like a spoilt child.
It kisses him from numb lips to frozen toes
and skips a tormenting dance along his spine.
His heart – an igloo, a derelict furnace –
beats no more than four in four.
Death march. Dirge.

Once strong now weak.
Muscles decayed, now hangs sinewy flesh,
Red-sore, purple veined.
Hairless and airless.
In the darkness, pain has an image.
You didn’t get the chance to kiss her goodbye.
You could only watch from the window
As she dissolved in the light,
Like an aspirin into water she went.
Matter into purity, dissolving and concentrated.
Both matter and purity.

In the distance the sound of a crying baby dies
And gone is the occasional bark of a worried dog.
The wind picks up again – audible - and blows
Fragmented memories through the open window.
Do you swear you can smell her perfume on the breeze?
Of course. She is the breeze now.
She is all and all is she.
Have I gone? Is this what it is like to be gone?
How painlessly boring is death,
with nothing to do but wait to be born again?
Born again into space
Or dissolve and become like she
A fragmented memory

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2008

Don’t ask me where my mind is
It has sworn me to secrecy,
Instructed that I shut it in a case
And hide it away from view.
All I am left is a dark expanse -
Blind nothingness
Stretching on and on.
I am a fish never to be landed,
Hooked on a line and pulled
As if drifting to far galaxies.
A pointless mission on a loop
With nothing in between,
No planets or stars
No life
No light.
Situational dormancy.

I think I see a light in the distance,
Or a spark
That flickers for a second
Then recedes again into the dark.
A flame where no fire exists
Snuffed and suffocated
Within clenched fists.

The sheets soak up the sweat
And in the morning it is always cold.
I am alone.
I go to the case and try its lock
But my mind is adamant,
It is not ready for me yet,
I am an annoyance to it.
I am left to self administer,
To self heal -
A lesser seen form of self harm.
I am a fish that has slipped its hook
But not one that is free,
One that is lost, a dead planet
No light
No life.
The nighttime is always cold.

The light flickers again
But I am too late to see it.
A moment of heat, I feel its presence
Then return to inspirational vacancy
Where time in space is ever missed,
A beginning where beginnings end,
An end where no beginning exists

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2016

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

Everything that follows
Is determined by the past,
Futures un-commissioned
Not designed yet cast,
A distance diminished
That once was vast,
Aspirations unfinished
From the first to the last.

Lovers in the midst
A new kind of sense,
Never faked or hidden
Within secret pretence,
Ne’er refused or forbidden
Or there to condense,
Rigid as oak
With  power immense.

A love then discovered
With truth, given free,
Unabashed and unhidden
For who cares to see,
Horizons and futures
Imagined and believed,
Zirconia stones given
In the search for eternity.

A time of wondrous spirit,
A time of young innocence
When flowers then growing
Combined indiscernible scents.
Torn from root by rough hewn hands
As drama’s conflict appeared in essence.
And there, in the dim light of the dance hall,
Her scent leaves a vague, unattainable presence.

Time passes
And takes it’s course,
Unknowingly directed
From unforgotten source
From where lives intertwined,
Then untangled and forked,
The bright sun giving way
As a bitter rain poured

A mile extends into miles
And the years roll blindly on
Offering maps of nostalgia
Of an era now gone,
But one that remains,
By will or by none,
Within the structures we made
To hang our souls upon.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

Did you remember to breathe in your sleep?
Did you, upon awakening,
Look to the ceiling and, in doing so,
Was greeted by the image of your own face
Descending toward you?
Pausing when close enough
To be face to face,
Nose to nose,
Eye to eye,
Breath to breath.
Then falling into you
Like water into a pond.
Indiscernible as you become one…
A mirrored image absorbed by you,
For gain or for loss,
For the greater good
Or the despicably bad

Do you have eyes in the back of your head?
Empowered by your future vision
Which they have stolen and twisted in reverse position,
Watching a trail left behind
That should have been lost
In the blaze of things to come,
Of promise and ambition
And the journey to success.
Do you have a contrary voice?
If so, which speaks clearest?
Which do you believe?
The angel or the devil?
Which overtakes the other?
When the words become intertwined
And in-separate
Like an image falling into the real,
Which sound do you follow?
Which turn do you take?

Somewhere at some time
A mirror cracks.
The image passes through
And is lost within the fabric of your pillow.
Lost in feathery down.
Choking on its guts.
A black gloved hand reaches down
And sweeps your eyelids shut.
Like the image reflected in the shards of mirror
You become fragmented
Before sinking into the numb relief
Of nothingness.
Lost for a time in the suspension
Of temporary death,
Hoping, upon awakening,
To find reconciliation.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

The thought of what is left behind
Thwarts my plans
And provides a light so dim,
But a light nonetheless
That flickers along an eerie path
In a darkening tunnel;
Faking a route to salvation.
Teasing me with muffled laughter
And joy and things of the past:
Homely things, like comfort,
Peace, love, care.
The chance to love and care in return.
The chance to lift the muzzle from joy
And laughter,
To let it roar, to let it spin and swirl
In pleasurable mayhem,
In improvised rhythm.

But in the background
The voice calls this a lie.
My mind held in clenched fists,
Hands that are no longer mine
Shaking the images to nothing
Without me moving an inch.
Lying still in the fetal position -
The most versatile of all.
Depictions of birth, light and life
And of darkness, dread and death.
The shadows gain territory
Engulfing me and swallowing me whole
Until I no longer exist.
I am recognized only by
The residue of myself
Yet still a stranger who descends
Unannounced, uninvited
To re-establish my atrocious plans
And numb the thought
Of what is left behind.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2016

Today I contemplated suicide.
Today I succumbed to the shadows
And pondered the unthinkable.
My muse of late takes the form of death,
Assuring me that my next
Will be my final breath.

To the uninitiated this may seem
An easy route out,
But my convictions far outweigh
Their self assuming doubt.

(The bugs crawl
across my shoulders
scaling my neck
navigating my ear
entering my head)

Today, I begged for there to be a God
And for that God to be fair in judgment
And for that God to look down and
Witness me…motionless…startled…
Disoriented…solitary…
…scared;
To take pity on my micro-concerns,
Maggot-like in my manifestation;
And to arc down a single clap of thunder
Which pierces the water
And drags me asunder,
To depths way down
Past my own experience,
Down past the devil
And his pitiful allegiance,
Lower than the time
When he invited me in
Only for him to realize
He’d never met real sin.
There is comfort to be found
In self loathing.

(The bugs crawl
across my shoulders
scaling my neck
navigating my ear
entering my head)

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2015

She told me she was sailing
To a place called ‘karma’.
She told me I had
Drained her of life
And in return she would
Empty me of mine.
She claimed I had prevented her
From being who she really was
And she would now cast me
As something I am not.
She said I had held her back
And that it was me who now
Would be left standing in the past.

She lowered the davit,
Cut the manila rope
And the distance between us
Became wider than I can remember.
Slowly (although in no time at all)
We fell away
Fell out of reach
Fell out of sight
Then out of range,
Until it became unclear
Who was leaving who
And it made me wonder…
Did we ever sail
In the same sea at all?

Copyright Marc Hawkins

Like time
And the surety
Of the ocean tides,
The solar heat
Fades to evening’s
Chilly air,
And the approaching
Night’s early dusk
Signifies the arrival
Of autumn months,
Noted by
Changeable skies
Of sun and rain,
From blue to grey
Then blue again,
Shadows cast long
As if leading the way.

The sea lies mill pond still
Reflecting like tinted glass,
The lull before
The inevitable storm.
In this, a coastal town,
The sea will crash
And hooligans dash
Hurling skiffs
From sea to dry land,
Disturbing
Moveable sands,
Carrying it
To winter retreats.
Dredged and churned,
The rattled seabed
Throws up plankton and urchin
On which fish will be fed.

Tomorrow the storm will subside,
Another day shall pass
Bringing unscheduled
Hues and shades,
Calm ocean
To crashing waves;
As daylight fades
And the line where sea meets sky
Becomes once again vague,
Painting hazy orange to red
To lilac reflections,
Seeping forward
From the new horizon.
Giving way to the song of gulls
The dying sound of windy squalls,
But, now, twilight blankets all around
In October tones as the dark night falls.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

Take a branch,
Snap it and hear it crack.
Take a lie,
Roll it over a hard stone and,
In the sun, let it crisp,
Then crumble it
Into a cold stream of reassurance...
Let it drift.

Cut the wire
Sever the thing that tethers

Take all the truths
That you know to be true
Place them in a box.
Replace each ending
With the ending that follows.
Re-evaluate, redesign
Recreate, realign.

Take all the things that you loved
To be the things that you now hate

Take pleasure when you can,
Take despair as it comes.
Take a miniscule moment in time and
Expand it until the weight becomes unbearable,
Then drop it from the cliff top.
Watch it crash towards the ocean,
Watch your dreams fly north
And become lost in the mist.

Take the things you once loathed
To be the things you now hold dear

Don’t let it wear you out
(It’s nothing personal).
Take it sitting down,
Roll with the punches,
Absorb the force.
Pull away from cold surfaces.
Run your own race in your own time,
Failure seldom comes enforced

Take the pendant
Gently pull at the chord

Simply turn out the light.
Be aware of your breathing -
A two minute meditation
Of ins and outs.
Down into foam and memories.
Down into dead cold then
Into searing heat...
Into blue, then green, then black.
Into familiar confusions
And self doubts.

Take a short cut
Dare to get lost

One foot, then the other,
Then the first then the second.
Arms outstretched -
Radar fingers.
Avoid cold surfaces and blazing furnaces...
Places sure to become places
Where my impression lingers.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2016

The world closes in.
It feels like the unwelcome hug
Of a person you cannot trust,
Whose physical presence
Wanes and fades to invisibility
But whose hug remains,
Stifling, suffocating.

They and others
Stand around you, mocking,
Narrowing the circle
As they step towards you,
Haranguing then jostling in unison,
Leaving no route of escape,
Tight in their cordon.

Heaviness falls,
A solid lid to seal the enclosure,
Negating light and
Squeezing out air
Until you crouch and kneel,
Curl like a ball
And throw sideways glances.

It seems never ending.
It seals your confinement,
It steals your will.
The circle disperses
And they leave you huddled.
And you wait for silence
Before unraveling.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

Marshall been
A naughty boy
He stole away their
Fun and joy

Marshall say
It was not him
But we know where
Bad Marshall been

Marshall caught
With hands of red
They think to quilt
His unmade bed

Marshall seen
By witness four
And from the woodwork
Came four more

Marshall dragged
Before the court
Judgement fair
In there was sought

Marshall faced
With evidence
He soon to serve
Fair recompense

Marshall charges
Brought did read
That Marshall
Stole for selfish greed

Marshall though
Not stole for greed
He stole for babies
Mouth to feed

Marshall stole
For heat and warmth
To protect babies
From the storms

Marshall losing
Liberty
And losing
Precious family

Marshall sees
His big mistake
The thought for he
Too hard to take

Marshall make
A run for door
So swift he
Glide across the floor

Marshall make it
To the beach
The rozzers hands
Him out of reach

Marshall say
“Ok, ‘twas me”
Then Marshall
Threw he self in sea

Marshall then
Get washed away
He not been seen
Not since that day

The slow creak of the house
As the wind blows
Through cracked glass
And keyholes,
Whistling like an
Ancient psalm,
A comforting disruption
To uninspiring calm.
I glance into
The expanse of nothingness,
It seems vast in this unlit room.
I whistle a one note trill
Into the pitch dark womb
And await it’s echo
To return and to spark,
To disrupt the still
Membrane air,
To ignite and to burn,
To flash and to flare,
To define vignette corners
That became lost in the night
Though I have no fear or fright
Of what the night brings.
I am man, I am dog,
I am many things
And by the power invested
In my full beating heart
I shall rank and file
And my musings compart
To dispel
The throws and
Disruptions that
I myself contrived,
That part that likes
To mock and jibe,
That undesirable,
Unwelcome side

Copyright Marc Hawkins

She is a hologram
That flickers between
Light and dark
Offering glimpses of
Her form
Of her beauty stark
Teasing me
With cool invitation
That summons
The strongest
Of temptation

My heart
Like a burning mass
Bursting through my chest
Igniting and
Scorching all in its path
Leaving behind
A cindered trail
To follow
To lead
To her image pale

But on arrival
To discover the vision
Now dissolved
Leaving possibilities
Unresolved
And that she
In reality
Was never there
Just a reflection
Through the rainfall
Of a full moons glare

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017