And thus she went
Leaving behind her the many kind words
And lingering hopes that make all good things seamless,
But which fade like her perfume in places she slept.

When I saw her face disappear
Behind mirroring train reflections
I saw those who stared when we waved
Caught in the crossfire of our connection.

They should know, as all should, how
Our iron-clad love is feather armour
Marking a true knight of the cloth
The world's spasms worn about our backs with many gold brooches.

Such it is to be anointed, to filter all out
With your inestimable standards
Held high for those to see
How much she loves me.

The bright moments of the past do not die
They do not lie idly in the earth, buried beneath unpassable tombs
Their beauty does not fester or languish
Their times come again

They are reborn, are the bright things that come
Those jewels dug up by autonomous spades
They do not die, they are reborn
Our excitement like an old friend reunited

Do not mourn the past, it did not fall
Left to rot, mummified in worms
As a child when we picked it up, as an adult when we carry it
Those moments live on with us

Again

I found a pool, small
Of tepid waters, shallow
Left imprinted by the things
That long since grew big, climbed and,
Sought the ocean

I know the pool, I grew tall in it,
Know it for what it was, once
It seemed deep as the seas, wide as the horizon
Brimmed with life a thousand-led
By all the verdure of many beasts

Each began as tadpoles, swam from their sacs and
Knew magnitude, kept to the shallows
Looked on at the lurching fish with,
Fear. Met a generation in those
Huddled beside them, scared.

Growing, their arms and legs,
Uniform in formlessness, ill-defined but
Excited. Each learned to swim and laughed at
Each other. Spiralling, gangling, twisting games
Were played on shallow borders.

Our bellies touched the silt, our eyes turned out
And we flicked our feet to find the open air, and
It wasn't so scary, terrible not, look at me! Look
At me! I can go see those dark holes, hiding
Nothing, I'm sure. Let's go.

As we lost ourselves in the growing dark, we
Lost sight of the other tadpoles, and
Grew faces, eyes, mouths, antennae, or
Unsure, we grew and each became streamline, in
a thousand different ways, we swam to the centre of the pool.

And met each other, as if for the first time, but
Saw no similarity, saw only our differences, we
Smiled and looked about, and each, in our own way,
Discovered the light. We did not stop growing, did not think to,
Knew no fear, saw no dark corners, scalps touched the open air.

And we went, each found the same certainty at the same time.
We must leave, a fish, a salamander, a boatman, a snake.
Shed the oily waters and explored the fresh air. Some,
Found they could not breathe, some found themselves prey to
Unknown evils. None stayed, none I knew.

I am back now, face weathered by winds I knew not were
Out there, hands pricked by something called thorns, the
Waters so small, tepid, stagnant, shallow from all the
Absence, those things that now walk, or lie, or fly, I
Know not why I came back, or why I look now into the puddle

I see only frogs. I hear only croaks. Old things living in a drying world.
Leathery, cold blooded, oily,
Speaking only of the times when they were tadpoles,
Thinking only of the time when they were new. I
walk away, and shed the thoughts that link my path to them.

I face the wind, I face the thorns. I feel my neck and
Hold closed my gills with thumb and forefinger
Forgetting...

Croak.

I felt her on my belly
A well fed boa
Squatting for the day

She writhed as my heart beat
Drawing tighter to my
Pinched breaths

I saw wild eyes, glancing, prancing
Sprites, friends of the serpent,
Laughed, for I had fallen mute

To the forest floor, and lay poisoned
Shrinking before a gleeful crowd
In love with an animal.

What's the point of the stars if they only fly to mock us
To tell of a world beyond that thick blanket of night
A moon victory above them all tells of coliseums of the cosmos
A giant in a game we were never asked to play

The sun burns itself to nothing
And we catch the ashes, plant fields with its offcuts
Never tasting banquet, never knowing super nova
Alone in the dirt beneath life

Currents blow overhead, pushing ice and rock
As balloons let adrift, finding freedom in emptiness
While our feet only know tracks and fields, grass and mud
Life with food and sleep, not soul or poetry.

Crooked grow our limbs and we think ourselves mighty
Gangly forms dancing tiny
While great domes of landscapes given face
Smile at each other and speak

Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Hades
All principles in the sky, too graceful to be understood
And not wanting our foul tentacles of knowledge
To grip them, happy to keep away from

Us oily things.
No, I don't like being human
I don't like being
greasy

Sorry said the merry man, adjacent on his way,

I've gone and ticked you off while I've been out tramping today

And in my careless frolic I seem to have stole your heart

What brutal lust you blow towards me, gushing like a ****


But I'm not la-da-dee-da-dee, a manly bearded sprite

Jingle though my stirrups do like dormice held too tight

I'm a serious enterprise, a man deeply invested

In stacking stocks and picking prices, if you're interested?


She danced reluctantly to him, unnatured to the rhythm

But with a wink she start'd to slink and jim-jam along with him

The two then picked their sandals up and shuffled down the street

And drank and laughed amerrily at all they chanced to meet


To the bank they wandered, legislating they did go

In government, in finance, in high station to and fro

Each day they yawned and gargled on a fresh new tonic smell

And went on down the street to make a fresh mismanaged hell


Soon agiggling and adultering they fell down in a mess

Holes and tears ashaming his and her once modest dress

There they lay and blocked the road till bobby picked them up

And once they'd laughed their fill of him they bribed the greasy pup


He took them to the city square and let them borrow his hat

They gave out fines and sentences for being thin or fat

They stood on boxes, had ideas for rent for half a pence

And sat gracefully cross-eyed on the splintering picket fence


Then donned a mitre, did a dance, their pageantry displayed,

They became gods, just for a laugh, the vicarage dismayed

When down from heaven lightning bolts, shot with a holy hum

Came buzzing like a hornets' nest and shocked them on the ***


A **** of smoke, a whiff of cheese, the townsfolk breathed release

Gone at last those terrors past, they could return to peace

Then up from high a saintly sigh two angels billowed down

Golden halos greasy and no pants beneath their gown


The townsfolk wept and cried aloud, their stomachs plopped and churned

To see the pair of villains there, so gracefully returned

Blessed be the kingmakers the two of them agreed

Until next weekend, Duw my dear, and until then, God's speed.

My tongue sharpened today

Angles fell off it like classroom fancies

Rationalised to a point, its first act

Was to knock out my fangs from behind.


I stumbled about the house

Slopped through the bathroom door

And foamed at the toilet seat, a

Wave broken over a rim of briny coral.


My salt winked about the walls, around the tap, between the wiped tiles

In the shower head of porous sponge

The seaweed in the pipes crawled up

And drowned me in the sickly sweet.


Downstairs smelt the same, logically the sea dumped down

Underwater fish glided past my window, all with the same

Grim face against the mirrors, aping the ocean

With me trapped inside.


I turned on the same song, fifteen times,

The sound tried to reach me with such ambition

But it floated to the top, belly up in its bubbles

Ridiculous, I scratched the date on the seafloor and entered the kitchen.


Drips everywhere, grease stalactites, from the tiles, the yawning oven, the spatulas

A Cretaceous museum where savagery is kept

In little plastic boxes, with clear peelable lids

A fresh, messy ****.


In the hall the grey light descends through slit windows

Colour settling at the bottom like grit, all the greys so tall

Give the narrow rectangle an aftertaste of dust

Just one keeper before me


It devours my key, hacking as it gobbles

But it does not anticipate my twist

I gut it from inside, it spits its meal back at me

And I swing its limp, dead frame 90 degrees.


Stepping out feels like a moonwalk, with Houston's neutral formulas

Unheeded in my ear, finally I can greet the clouds, that probably escaped,

Like me, fumes from the chimney

Pale and fading away from lack of auspicious sun.

At night the stars seem far away,
But through the dark is light and day.

My poem's salt comes from the sea
Awash with flailing kelp
And absorbed light, hidden and sweet
Like me.

It rakes the gravel with its fingers
Cooly rushing over its skin
Absorbed and intended back again
When the sun blushes ruby red.

Little seals dot the waves
Mirroring the clouds
Chuckling through their whiskers, beckoning
At the dogs on shore, faithful cousins
To these rotund sprites.

The dried up fields are far away
They gasp for the rain that's closing in
With the prettiest grey clouds
Crickets jump from the Terra Cotta
And spill the Summer air, little breaths.

While ores seep into the mass of blue
Rather than be claimed, and turn the bottom muddy
In pinks and oranges dulled by the jealous green.
The fish enriched begin to talk
And their blessings pip pop upwards.

I think it's beautiful that air goes down down deep
and finds the things that need to breathe.
If only I could follow it
And be consumed by some crease
And become the ocean too.

Kiss me with deflating lips
Beach body beached on my mind
Fated errors in our minds rejoice
At distance confirmed and hammered in

To lift a veil and see the wolf
Corrugated eyes blend with the sea
Of unthought masses watching TV
Of the dark road, the foreign path

It's hopeless when your sleep
Loses its pull, its fire to be
What happens when legends draw their maps
And don't mark the road you knew they'd make?

I know I'm too young to feel this desperate
Never found the days that would keep the nights warm
Never saw the glint to the Tigers bite
Never saw the moon above the wave

Too old is an expression lost on eyes
Glassy for timebomb putty
Artists weary become manufacturers
When ignored, when declined

Beach body, that's what I had, a belief in clicky thoughts
Understanding caved in to knowing
And knowing fell to fact,

I've built my way, carved in gritty stone
That as sand my footstep knows
I'll crawl forward, step by slip
And follow the path up till the ahead.

Sitting in bony wood
A seat to watch the prickly world stand still
Poised.
Reservations in iron clashing
Gong waves that drown

I can sit here silently
Smooth and clear as the varnish beneath me
This room has white walls
With ***** streaks like vapour trails
Across it, instead of human faces
In little square coffins
Nicely decorated, by, shaking, hands.

Questions don't need answers, I reckon
If my silence gives grey thoughts their place
Neat little rubix cubes make
Cult parodies
Of me, ironically bad.
Hee hee.

What a curious question
Whether instinct wants what is useful
And to trust it
Or shut up and simper
With the strength of women long jobless by
Liberty

In all things
Agency's just a mask
Worn by actors whose plays
Use up the muscles

My words can be recycled before me
Repurposed, simplified to fit new slots
Hard, to be a useless orifice
That wins nothing scarlet when it is ******.

An honourable account
Of sympathy 1, 2, 3, 4, deferred
Finally something contained but
Lastly nothing.

I fortify puddles night and day...
That ***** grass grows by
And willow trees that twist and knead
Into crisp faces that
Pose for me.

Oh! Wood Coven!
Questions 345
What unknowing awareness they show, what membership
My cobbed old feet can't follow.

A successful heart with fearful veins
Taken lore-y blood for bishop doubts
From chambers of marbling fat
On a ****** run.

I found online that
People were scared of me
But in person they didn't care
I wonder if they dream so hesitantly
Or if they sleep just to wake up
On a pillow that smells like their wife's arm
Neutered, like feathers clipped short

Perhaps with that I'll choke
On a wishbone of some bird
Or my bones, brown like civilised wheat
Will nourish some fat lip
I'm not sure of that

O, an honourable account.

That's not who I am
I'm built of burning wood
And hacked off pieces of granite deemed
Too coarse for cobble stones

That's not who I am
I'm nobody's child
I built myself through a muddled
Community of moth wings

We never tasted sugar, never felt the rosy clothes'
Crushing flesh, blushing chosen lyrics
******* swallows and cheating sucklers
Cold, sunken, green with no choice

That's who I am - my own monster
Stitched from what I liked, stuck with our greasy wick
I blended myself, found my backbone
In the granite sifted and spat away

You can't name me, I get that right
To bore myself in your thick skull
You gave me over to the frost the day I forgot what
Stupid people said I should love

When grease turns, kettles scale over
Rusted innards show, red in the ground
T, TB, AA, PSA
What can I do?

When you catch the musk of defeat
Bleeding out your crusted dearest
How soon before the years since stutter?
I forgot them already

I can't be what I want to be, without your hateful consent
Tides of cradled love and rotten ****
Wash over me and I
Take it to heart

When it all loses spirit because no whim is trusted
From a signing bearded beast
When you realise it's not going to stop
Until we all fall down the molehills
Fastened and swinging
The only firm hand I ever knew

When it comes back, sweeps your Victorian progress away
Leering, you're not recovering anymore
You get to call yourself it now
You're the addict's child
Slip in that and curdle.

My dreams are painted clean
Tucked and trimmed by a sewing machine
My mother's face is wrinkle free
And smiling for eternity.

My father's voice is soft and kind
My brother's eyes are sparkling blind
My sister's arm is thick and strong
My family line is clean and long.

My pencil fertile, conscious itself
Collecting brilliance without my help
My headache gone, my nostrils clear
Breathing sea air gushing near.

Inspiration well stocked, character for sale
My clothes well spun like a handmaid's tale
Garden promise behind shut doors
This is what my dreams are for.

If we all died before we fell old
Consumed as we blush ripe
What would perish with us
But mold and setting mud?

Life could not be long
Nor sophisticated, for
All that thought never born beyond
The days of cocked feathers.

Our homes the wild trees
Burned or spared by our caprice
Sleep on the moss a groan
Summer in the morning the dawn

Tousled hair a-spring with salt
And the hoary sweat of the night
Eyes sharp and deep
Like pools in frothing rivers unsettled.

Muscles taught in conflict not against the world
But green competition, passion the reward
And pleasure, in sinew pushing, grabbing,
Taking what is Mine.

Our faces our identities
Our bodies our manifestos
Statements simple, ideas cut
To have sharp edges and grate at one another.

Night full of the juicy roars
Of fiery eyes consuming lovers claimed
In battle, ****** conflict
That mean nothing to time, nor for it.

Her smile a sugar suggestion
her ******* her belly her hipsherlips
Her lover at my feet.
Unembarrassed, unrelenting, undefined stones in his dead eyes.

And when lines would start to settle
And sense harden
When certainty dies like an old dog
There is no long goodbye, no sagacity gained

You cry to your last, terrified as you pass
Lost in pure droplets shed from a face
As its teeth grow too far while the mane retreats,
And the soul is killed for it.

Cruel, to let a who live past that
To watch who's spirit
Wash away and see the tide return
Gushing wine in your arms
That's gone dull and bitter from the Autumn left
Too long, too long,
Lived too long.

A bed in an ICU
Is just an electric chair with cushions
Your broken feet charred and inert
Twitch in your sleep, like you're dreaming of getting up
And telling me you're going to stay
For the memories we'll still make together

And when you're awake
I almost wish you wouldn't be
But I smile like breaking glass
Waiting for the after, the endless without
And you talk for me, as I don't

You're scared, but you can't show it
Because my peace always came first for you
But that won't be much longer
Your full stop is my comma
But there won't be a rhyme tomorrow

What you mean to me
Will be broken into a thousand words
That will fade, like the sound of your voice
To mean nothing, the world you still walked in
The soil I can't make grow again

No spring will set in your chest
But I'll have to greet the winds that take you
To think without the dust
And meet the heart that's left behind.

Beautiful woman,
Write yourself in the orchid air
With your flowering hair
And your well matched strides in white trainers.

One-of-a-way woman,
Take your time in the daisy weeds
Or the yellow breeds
You pluck with thumb and four fingers.

Sighing woman,
What did you see in the sycamore creek?
Did the gurgling mold froth pinch your cheek
You stirred with kashmir hand?

Beauteous day, crossed the sky with silver trails
In freckled knots of rebirthed trees
And Summer shown in baréd knees
Of beautiful women in swaying silk dresses.

If paradise had a name
A prism of the tongue
I would speak it to you, and hear
The tinkling laughter that bless'd the air

And clouds would hear my poem
And spread it through the rain
And eager faces turned to the spring
Would feel my words also

Chuckles showered 'cross the green

Sunny minds would face each other
And grinning, speak the words of meaning
What charmed thoughts would dot the village squares,
And sighing fields of this land

You'd bring that be
A conduit of mercy
A funnel of good will
What wonderful eyes you have that
Look into the skies with me

I question what I know
and know I do not much
but maybe know not nobody
how know they suchy such

What stuttered whimsy
denies the morrow
and leaves its perfume in its wake?
What cloven promise
corrects wonder
that crude and muddy shows mistakes?

Lonely pillows petrify
Mine becomes a plastic sheath
To television inspiration
I hid my dreams beneath

And whole my sleep will stutter
My feet won't walk the floor
I'll take any chance at dawn's return
Murmuring 'once more'

There's a tolling depth to me,
A rebounding chasm
Space a hopeful quantity
Tuned instruments ignore

Where broken column qualities
Lie naked in the unkempt stubble
Undisturbed, those civilised peaks
Mountains for heavens bored smooth by soft hands

Champing teeth abound the wind,
Old sounds of dun legs taking flight
And leaving the knotted trees
That died in the clotted soil

Be warned, beasts have left this barren
Sharp corners have been smoothed for
Once this land was deep and green
And gushed with florid indecencies

Now its depth tolls
With the charter of the wind
Scattering what few collected rocks remain
As bricks for walls built far beyond.

In the midnight blue
Night air pinches corners in
Soft sounds seem louder

Dark claiming the day
Shadows new faces grow long
The non-time's soft hum

Rooms close small spaces
Dust fills the room, holding time
Dawn will not break soon

I walked among fire
And felt the heat,
The hearth the life,
The world a barren canvas

I took those steps
And found white light my pure feeling
Shared smiling lips amongst ourselves and took on lovers
In feelings we took for each other, bundled
Like reeds so thin

We walked together, arm in arm
Pebbles scattered at our feet in the red dirt,
And thought blood, blood
blood can be our cry from now

We took those days in hand
And led them on
Dried their succulence in the sun
Tasted never
Not for their promise.

And that promise wilted, like so many flowers
Those white lights grew dimmer
As we walked towards them through rushes, our fingers
Spider-like on the veil of what we wanted.

We got there, and saw the light was out
The candle never burned, the feeling never lived
Our eyes for what could be
Wetted with what was
And we lived on in the world of short, long days.

I feel it still
That cold, beckoning wind
In the shutters of the leaves and
The spiral ice of puddles

The yellowing leaves
Ochre metal pots to Autumn
Shallowly answer me
Reluctant forms of wishes.

My hopes defy corners
Spring upped from mountain earth
Bristles of naked grass
Iron grey like the wreaths of the North

What I longed to feel attached to
The winds buried
And broke into a million pieces
To call my name in the morning glitter

Little trickle of delight
Dews morning games
Calligraphic nonsense adorns
My chess-board smile

Hope is made resilient
By proud eyes, puffed out-chests
Full of hot air stoked by flushes
At other people's stares

Knowing what you want is putting a price on peace
A candle out for tomorrow
A loss in the books for someone's father
Grinning tobacco teeth

Hello, hello, it's hard to shout
From a grassy hill on a street corner
Traffic crashing, mouths yawning arguments
Cities bending in to listen

Truthfully engaging means
Rings around ankle joints
Joints around palms
Joints

Furrowed brows may tell me
Brail hips give me hope
But candle-light won't tell me
You'll feel like tomorrow.

To be alone
A flower without a stem
A cloud without the rain
An eye without the lid
Light in through all to see

To be myself
An ox without a yolk
A wish without a future
A word without a lip to speak it
Flying away from deaf ears

To be lightning
Bright and dangerous in the dark
Ears to hear beyond sound
Mind unfettered by company
Hope uniquely free, uniquely so

Mask left on my dressing table
Chest left in my drawers
No ear at the door,
Oh to be alone

Lacquer metal, finest degree
Eggshell maiden dancing, skirts turned free
Tossed leaf nestle, a glory in a hidden theatre
Dark privileged passions creep in and listen.

The dirt around your feet compacted,
The dress around your friends contrived
But you look so natural in those seams of transplacental
Defied by the native over-leaf

What privileged thought found comfort there
What Rubenesqued dresses blushed in joy
At white marble hugging thought
And privileged smells adorning your excitement

The path beyond your feet leads nowhere
For your sight spins where your eyebrows lead
Round and round in close circles
Amongst those eyes who cracked your paint

Cloudy day
Winds that stroke the mud
Flowers' wrinkling faces

What lore did you tell me
About the sun shining on flour skin
The beach adding salt for flavour

Kind words you had
For when we said farewell
I wonder where they were between us then

Don't tell me what names you have
For long cold summers
And wasted days

Pillows are too soft
Mattresses too much like hugs
Lips move between lies

What deep end is this
Found between my eyes
Back again in sketchy lines

And the long grind

What dispirited purpose cups to my ear
Or orifice sufficed at being a sense of the world
What hands can claim to be my lips
Speaking to the world they claim to feel

What broken envy feels
Those scattered ivy fields
Of hopeful grey sent on its way
Of years and months poured into the day?

What gotten fear keeps me
Chained cherish to the time I should
Be walking on to other things
That make me feel the good?

I found a barrow cut by the wheel
And ghoul-hands rotten roots a-reach
From smoothed walls cut to seem rough
And grief for spirits frothing at the ducts.

I found some feeling of myself
Sippy-cup filled with mediate dreams
I made up words to keep myself from gotten
I sank into quicksand on my back

Cross eyes in the moment and shackle the breath
Sleep is a cousin to death
Fall through the warm ice and float to the deep
Death is a cousin to sleep

Live moons in your promise and hope not to be woken
Eyes stuck with stories are eyes shut wide open
Crawl through the chasms, look up the fire fog
And grow through your mind, drink in deep of your grog

Don’t listen to voices that part with their weep
Death is a cousin to sleep
Their freeness will split you and make words of your breath
Sleep is a cousin to death

What orange bosoms

Can you press to yourself

Prised out a candied tube?

What lice make thoughts creep

And hands run down stockings?



What time spent brainless,

Hoping for a life outside riches

Growing into a chair?

What losing streak

Paints your face, sorry?



What can we talk about

That isn't hopeful,

That asks true questions?

What can I say

of big arses on fat girls

and big biceps on vain men?

You who crawl
Who can still feel fascination of the world
The hard taste of wood and cotton wool
Your mouth smiling for the first time
You're so young, so young

You who gains a thought
And thinks it alone
The candyfloss politics you understand
Your hands clenching into first fists
You're still young, still young

You who heaves
Who can still feel burning passion
That incense of obsession
Taking your mind seeing new things
You're young, you're young

You who lost at last
Who can still feel the pain of betrayal
The rot of blind hopelessnes
Letting your brain seep in chemicals
You're not old, you're not old

You who crackles in the fire
Splits lines like old wood
You who gazes out the window more than when you were young
When your eyes film over and lose talk
You've just grown, only just grown

You who looks at pictures
Who never finds nothing new
Who splits hairs as much as infinitives
Sighing at what hope you used to be
You're no longer young, no longer young

A feeling is gone, A theory remains
And what is to come is less still
What happened before was in hope for the life
That came but lost youth's hazy thrill
Lost

You're an almond joy
A smooth stone in soft flesh
A blank stone sparrow
In crooked wire mesh

You looked over your shoulder
And ignored their descriptive hairs
Dancing with compliance
Giving never selling wares

What unbroken ****** skin
Around your eyes, thy
Eyebrows never meeting, stretching
Happy faces to the sky

I hoped richer feelings
Might comply to your dream, yet
It was laid on shallow and
Cracked and poorly set

Still despite your fret dancing
Your shakes and swoons so full
Graceful, hopeful, ruby bright
Fell dirtied, scratched by gravity's pull

Despite your new company,
Jackal grins that never start
Hope, not one can rival
The sweetness of a young heart.

What's driving you on?
What leads you to breathe
Every aching second?
What hope can you hold,
Flossed from behind the fangs you bear
Why wear what clothes you find
****** at you from behind a bland tie?
Why follow on? Without a star?
With the skies cushioned by smog?

I ask, because I'm amazed,
It's not as if I could do it
It's not as if I did it myself
Lucky, listened me
Fortunate followed me
Hopeful happy me
So how, how do you do it?
Lost lessons to be taught from behind a plastic counter.
Those I never hope to gain

Forests flicker
Candles take mass and lower
Tones across our attention
People rattle cages
Cages fall away
People miss the bars
People choke on the open air

Humans, a special species,
Learning to hate the jewelry of simply cropped things
Leaning in, our own self-pity, driving the broad nostrils pumping air
To our big brains
What wheels may turn from human wants
What frames shudder onward, hoping
To be what the dew can be, simple, clean
Part of what it is

How foolish,
To want what you lose by wanting
To fear what you feed by fearing
But that's mankind, the special ape,
See I'm so simple I wrote mankind
As if the women weren't the same
Or all those inbetween.

In itself it's broken, this toothy thing we churn on
Gears wearing stories, cogs telling lies
It's all so simply pointless, all pillows to the philosophy
Which we learnt from birth
Mankind's bane,
Mankind's death
Mankind's success
And ever more

I think I stopped
Grovelling and wallowing in what I didn't have
I think I started
Working hard and not writing about it
Look at me, silly me
I forgot what it was to be
To be that little boy, sat on the toilet writing poems
Because nowhere else was safe to write.

I think my fears have changed,
And thus my need to write
I know who I am now, seen sorrows abate
And taken on those robes I dared not accept
Those names I dared not carry
Who was I then? I was the one who did not know myself.
But at least in that I knew me
Now, I love myself more, but
Is love writing poems for me? No.
Mud's the only ink my pen will take
Mud from my feet sinking slowly.

I think I'm a parody of myself, and
Perhaps I'll take me in new directions,
Or perhaps I'll leave me behind and take on new dreams
The truth is, I had to force myself to write this,
Forced to feel my way down to this level
But, I think, perhaps a cocky thought
Or perhaps acknowledging the new way of things
My old self, my old rusted plate, barely standing,
And my new shining body, pink and dry in the sun's honesty
We make a nice team, perhaps I just need to listen a bit more
To what I tried to block out.

As I sit beside the door,
a broken man; I weep no more.
I feel a wisp, a breath of air.
The taste of flesh is everywhere.
Looking up, the lights are dim,
a greener chalice, with broken rim,
A sumptuous tale with rings of red,
begins to fill my weary head.
Trees reach within a winding path,
they follow man with broken laugh,
They tell him with a swish of death,
that he has suffered his last breath.
Within a beat of punctured heart
they draw him in to be a start,
To join them where they stand and grow,
and tell men what they still should know.
A forest dark is not a place,
to stray within with lighted face,
On hallows eve the day of days
they are keen to capture sunborne rays.
They make the world a blacker void
to make it thus – a world destroyed,
Where life outside is bleak and grim
and fallen hounds, at just a whim,
Descend within a whirl of fog
and make foul the words a hallows dog.
To all the people looking through,
frosted windows, at dead anew.
They tell a tale of broken men,
with greener chalices and then,
A sumptuous tale with rings of red,
begins to fill each weary head ,
And as they look into the eyes
of greenest demon they surmise,
That weeping will not stop the whim,
of foulest bloodhounds dark and grim
Which then descend in whirl of fog
and make foul the words a hallows dog
And on the ground, with twisted  song  
the fog transpires. Each man is gone.

What's a slippery sorrow
I asked his memory
Thinking fast he took my past
And gave it back to me

I couldn't think
I couldn't speak
Just clutch my treasures
Warmish peak

He looked a little wretched
But I did not suspect
Picking hard and fast I found
His personality prospect

What little words I said to him
Were sewn into my face
And every time I smile they're there
Confusing musings lost in space

I'm happy so, I'm happy so
Though words are poor projectors
Sorry for this muddle mate
I'm simple simple simple simple

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
Or something less written and more expressed
To something less expressed and more instinct
To what the hopeful oil feels as it burns bright?
What atom makes you? What worker formed you?
What factory sent bone chalk, called it art
Without mentioning it is mere carbon
Tints and inks of filthy purpose, broken shells?
No, I won't compare thee to the words used
To call pomp, genius, hope and meaning
I can't use symbols, smudges have more thought
In what you are, in what nature hopes of you
Only the woven mist can explain clouds
As only the pencil can explain you

At the end
The life is mostly grey
Full of muddy things people never wanted to do

But for those flecks of grace
We'll remember at the end
All we have is a conclusion, a ***** hopelessness

Me, on my way to clock out,
He, croaking wooden breaths, a
Splintering throat, crooked as an oar's overbite
Glinting with some
Unbelievably bared promise.

I looked past him, echoed the anxious knots
Of its hollowed brow, scooped and spotted
From overuse, I frowned past him, though he followed.

I spent as long as I could not talking to him,
But forced to deny myself silence
I heard his two part speech
And paid some token focus
To what he had to say

What little I heard, in his hope filled groans
Had nothing of his contented purpose, for
Varnished words are slippery

When we went to the pub he
Leant on the wooden counter and
His roots set, he
Sprouted drunken fruit and
I don't think he's moved since

When cowards flirt
Sparks don't fly
Arrows don't fly
Birds don't fly
They don't even sing

When cowards flirt
There's no amazement
There's no tomorrow, or when
Drums don't beat

When cowards flirt
Hope takes a pounding
The heart packs up and
Moves to the throat

When cowards flirt
It sounds like sorry
It sounds like the wind blowing through you
They run

When cowards flirt
It sounds like a boring question
Aimed at making conversation
End quicker

When cowards flirt
The touch on your arm
Is wiping away the drink they spilled
And the tension says later

When cowards flirt
The kiss on your cheek
Stays in the head
Stays on their trembling lips

When cowards flirt
Ash is less subtle an indication
Of flame
Of feeling

When cowards flirt
It sounds like see you never
It sounds like running away
It sounds like thinking what I should have done
And never did

I think what we do
Is something like drudgery
It's difficult to define
What takes us to our manners

But I think there is a rhythm,
Even when I know there isn't
And I think thinking makes the thing
Makes our rhythm

I think the world has its beat
And at times I get lost in it
It jumps in at times to change the stage
But even its verse breaks for my chorus

Leaving behind a depression isn't like
Raising the dead
I find it's a lot like
Waking up
To a conductor waving you in

A friend is watching me
I showed him my life last night
I made mistakes and he knows it
I may have done things he knows now

A friend can see me
And now I know what that's like
I know what others feel like
When they know all they do is being watched

A friend knows about me
And I can't decide if that's good or bad,
Whether writing this is another rope at the willow
Pulling its supple roots from the ground

A friend has found me
Dug me up from the ground
An ugly root, but one that makes
A flower bloom quite highly

A friend has shown me the sun
Something I forgot was there
I don't know if he stands me
I wouldn't like him to say

A friend has made me see myself
What a strange thing
What a strange worry
To forget your reflection

A friend has left me in my own hands
A complete little picture
Oil paint, that's the worth I know
That's the way my mind thinks these things

A friend has left me to think
What a valuable little thing
Like gold that's something stronger
Than brittle iron, fragile big steel

A friend has seen me
And now I have to live with that
Strange tides wash my feet
Coral rocks wink at me from the shore

People tell me what I am now
And I suppose that helps me think
Friends have found me on the beach
Putting out the sun again.

This is me
I am male
I am tall
I wear glasses
I have a short beard and hair that's receding slightly
I have a slight face
I am quite broad
I have poor posture
I have a rural accent
I like to laugh
I like to speak
I love to listen
I hate that word
I like your opinion
You gave me a nice drink, thank you
This is nice, isn't it?
I've travelled a bit
Where have you been to?
Ah yeah? I'm at uni too
Cool, nice to meet you.
I have poor posture
I have a slight face
I have a short beard and hair that's receding slightly
I like to smile at strangers leaving
I am tall
And that's it.