I love the way
I make you squeal for me
And I don't even have to feel bad about it.

I love the way
You go red when I approach,
But then you're always bright red.

Your neck is so long and
The lines on it make
You so much more approachable.

Your delicate features
Are functional
And I know how to use them.

I love the way
My hands feel like liquid over you and
You moan at my touch

I love the way
I picked you
And I pick you every day.

We make sweet music together, or
At least,
Some day we might.

For now we can just copy
Other music.
Beautiful.

'What does a sculptor see in the rock?'
'None, dear child, none and nothing.'
'What does the tailor see in the frock?'
'Naught, dear child, naught and nothing.'

'Tell me, what does the musician see in his song?'
'Little, dear child, little and less.'
'What does a philosopher see in the wrong?'
'Too much, dear child, too much and distress.'

'But, what does a pilot see in the sky?'
'A bit, dear child, a bit and a little.'
'What does the poet see in my eye?'
'Something, dear child, something at least.'

'Daddy, what do you see in the smoke?'
'So much, dear child, much and more than you.'
'And what do you see when your voice shrinks to a choke?'
'Dear child, so much I cannot still scream.'

'I'll tell you what I see, and not for my youth
I see a statue, an elfin body, a melody and truth,
I see the clouds and the freedom to fly,
I see the hope and the faith in my eye.

In the smoke, Daddy, I see nothing but air,
In your choke I hear needless despair.
I grew up to love you, and love you I do
But I can never see things in the same way as you.'

The father, he blushed and spoke out so strong,
'Darling, I wished to be free,
But now I can see that without you I'm wrong
**Without you I cease to be me.'

What a lucky man I am
For once I saw a group
Of prophets of the godly song
Before them in my stoop.

The man he played a string or two
And everybody shook
I saw him sing and dance along
With the crowds caught in his look

I watched a young girl, dark of hair
Rise and dance, her years were few
Like all those women, good of heart
I'd seen dance while they greatly grew.

Fascinating, the song's effect on
Two lovely young women too
Old as I, yet perhaps more drunk
They danced, I fell, it's true

The adults watched, sadly tired
And I too, though I'm young
Because nothing I could do could make
Me rise and beat the drum

The dance of ages brought about
By the song of years gone by
Organic music, grown from soil
Rich with thought and sly.

And now I play the strings as well
Desperate to see it again
That primal dance in beauty and me
Perhaps I'll know it when

I go back there, that thoughtful square
Where I saw those girls adance
I'll tell them then, I'll tell them there
They broke me from life's ghostly trance.

Imagine a world.

Imagine a world,
Where we were taught to know each other.

Imagine a world
Where we did not work for money,
Only for the food and the home we hold dear.

Imagine a world
Where the all that we had,
Were gifts from those who love you,
Or from the State who loves you as much.

Imagine a world,
Where we can know that,
Our money goes to help
Those who need money to work.
For other people.

Imagine a world,
Where the news told us every day,
About the one who did the most
For others that week,
For others that year,
For others in their life.

Imagine a world,
Where a smile is payment,
A hug is a coat,
A laugh is a lesson,
A song is a blessing
A call is a welcome
And a painting is always you.

I imagine a world,
Where I can write poetry for you,
Whoever you are,
And every sound
And every couplet
Will rhyme with love,
No value in each other,
But what we can give.

I suppose I forget what you give me
I suppose I forget what you gave
While the sorrow of lost things is with me
I'll carry your gifts to the grave.

I'm sorry I listen to one word
And suddenly forget the rest,
But believe me, 'I love you.' has been heard,
Believe me, I think you're the best.

Nobody believed me like you did
Even when you made out that you don't
I knew that in you were rapids,
I knew that within you was hope.

So I am myself and your presents
The box 'neath your carrying role
I'll try not to forget that your crescents,
Are just a small part of your whole.

The howl of shells still split my mind
Haunting fear a freezing bind
The paper hope sent down on lease
Enough to change war into peace.

Peace thought myself a braver soldier
But was not foolish, that I told her
Like pig’s meat when I hit the pan
I shrank and squealed, such is a man.

Crying out in **** manner
“You’ll take my breath, but not my valour!”
But they came not for bravery,
They came to waste and waste is me

I fell a million times they say
Each time I sobbed the self-same way
My friends have died, but death’s a mystic
One death is tragedy, more a statistic.

It's funny how
Food makes allergies,
But people, people
Make anxieties

Nuts make me red
Fish make me choke
I can't eat this, but
You and I are fine.

Let's see you when
You see some skeleton
Of the someone you shared
And you suffocate.

When I hear you I go red,
When I talk to you I choke
I can't see you, but
Food and I are fine.

Nourishment has two meanings,
I feed from you,
But obviously
I'm allergic to what you give me.

It’s often of a christmas time
When words will dance to relish rhyme
To tell the story of demander
Sharp of dress – the proper gander

His monocle peers down at you
An eye for flight and finesse too
He flutters out about your heart
You want him but he’s so apart

Put your treasures at his Tod’s
His feathers flutter and he nods
But you’re so crass, so undefined
Your love for him is leagues behind

While you chase with mollycoddles
He’s dancing with the supermodels
A candle dinner, just for two
He’s sharing with Chanel, not you

Leave him be, for the common we
Are odious to one like he
The proper gander often finds
He’s chased for love by lesser minds

He once brushed his Boglioli
And told me that for Christmas Cindy
Would meet him neath the mistletoe
I should not call him, hard I know

So let this poem serve as warning
Do not follow your heart’s calling
When you see the great demander
Sharp of dress – the proper gander

And now that you are out the way
I’ll wait until that special day
For within the wrapping and the ribbon
I’m hiding ‘till I’m duly given

The postie will deliver me
To his doorstep and we’ll see
I’ll burst forth from the wrapping paper
For Christmas we will be together

He’ll choose me over other women
He’ll show a side he still has hidden
The other girls may chase romance
But faced with me they have no chance

For my ship has one commander
My love’s the world, he’s Alexander
Without him life would be much blander
How I want the proper gander.

Like waves on the grey ocean
We crash into the green shores
Concrete breakers frozen in
A clash of nature's wars.

The trees look on aside us
Anxious to see the rising tide
The moon looks down above us
Afraid to let the sun decide,

For we are spreading quickly
But the trees take far more care
They tiptoe through this rooted world
While we scramble like the hare

They watch us from the greener shores
But some have gone on free
Patches of grass amongst the paving
Stones of a concrete sea.

Let's hope we mix and mix again
Until our world is grey and green
For if the land or sea invades
Our world will lose its sheen.

The hum
Of the engine
Steals my music
And forms a beat
Swirling in my mind
Like coffee, I am awake
But the hum makes me sleep.
Huuuuuummmmmmmmmmm

A dream or a wish has no matter of time
Its feeling transponds past reason and rhyme
So foolish to think there's a time and a place
To write all the words that you read in your face.

Though people were made to be perfect
It seems the world oft is jealous, and so
We do what we can with the prospect
That we'll be all we can in a time we don't know.

But I want to leave you with reason to be
A seed in your head that will grow to a tree
You'll never be more than what you are now
Lest you let the world change you, the where and the how.

*We all have a dream and a wish for our life,
But for many that's all it will be.
Most lost their longing in comfortless strife,
But you, you have listened to me.

What’s in the mist?
What is so deep?
Madness? Maybe?
Strangeness? Samy.

The trees flee towards me
The mist rolls in
Their desperate swaying
Drowning displaying

The wind breaks in
Charge of the bright belayed
And the mist departs
The cloud free of hearts

It's sad watching
Songs sing prices
Or artwork paint products
Beauty with two meanings.

I don't hate money,
I don't hate greed,
I do hate the things that I see
Being sold to me.

Magic wants to tell you
About the wonderful prices
At your supermarket.
Not that I care.

Magic to me
Was something to remind me
That life would never be dead to me
That life is not about buying.

But still, it's the best way to live,
So sell on.

Nostalgia nearly took me back
To that time when I was
Something simpler
Because there's nothing simpler
Than being dead

Rose tinted glasses
Are blood red for a reason
Never trust the past
Because you didn't know what you had
When you had it.

Look around
Love around a little
Because your 'lost child'
Is playing with you and
Marvelling at what you've become.

Don't trust red nostalgia
It's just there to make you think
That lives don't get better,
But, here's the secret,
They already have.

If you fight for them.

The pulp
Sinks to the bottom
The memories
Float to the top
And the growth
Of the regret
Fills the pile
Of the pulp
The pulp of times forgotten.

We all want to change
Looking on our world so high
We know it's there to be remodeled
And we can.

Peace. Each. Understand.
Is the food to our feelings,
But tools are the torch
To show us the way.

Love, it's bright,
Truth, it's right,
We, don't fight,
But to some, their candle is the gunpowder flash.

Try to build a house and the land must be squashed,
Try to write a poem and ink must be spilled,
Try to say a cliché and eggs must be broken,
But try to build a better world with bullets then people will suffer.

I don't want your world
You, out there who cannot read this,
I don't want to be in a place
Where learning means knowing

That men could be outside the door
Ready to stop your new world
Ready to make mistakes,
Ready to not care.

I'll light a candle for you
Because I wish
It could have been your illumination
Rather than the shared,

Gunpowder flash

Of those mistaken.

Some people hope.
And you?
Some people dream.
And you?
Some people laugh.
And you?
Some people try.
What about you?

Me, I cry.
And you?
Me, I trip and graze my bone.
And you?
Me, I walk and hurt my feet.
And you?
Me, I live on a spectrum.
What about you?

You, you chuckle.
You, you accept.
You, you wait.
You, you absorb.

You are not a person.
You are a sponge.
And when you do not squeeze yourself,
All you will do is take in,
Until you saturate
and split your sides.

You, you do not live.
Me, at least I try.

It's hard to be left behind when
They've all gone to fish for their futures
Although it's the smart thing to do
Waiting seems like dying
Heartbeats become faint when steady

And while they study
I'm here learning
They are taught concepts
And how to enjoy borrowed time
Me, I'm here fighting the truth

I am my own black knight
Alone against the dragon
His fire is a magic pinprick
And they are studying
But do they still study what they left behind

Me?

Old, you’re told before me
Like a poem on cracked wood
Your hands have stuck to palms
As a prayer to the audience

You try to cry, but your tears have gone
Shed ahead of dreams that tarry
Pride and soul flutter from you
For a moment while you hold your notes high

You become what you’ve always been

Quietly, nearly a whisper in your gritted teeth
When you don’t sing you stutter
You wail to your women, to the crowd, to me
But you’ve never sung to one but yourself

And when you shake your voice
To the people that barely care
I suddenly believe you
Adverts flash behind your stare
And I suddenly can see you

Your voice dries up as you fade so bare
But it never could feed you.

When I was young
I was addicted to my thumb
So older and still
The child in me beat at its walls

Till I threw him away

I was addicted to tears
Sloshing from my eyes
Like the sight of overflowing
Into my family

Until I threw them away

I was addicted
To doing the wrong
To challenge the right in my life
It eventually won

Until I threw it away

And then, in a burning fever
I knew I was too light
Thrown too free
Of all the human chains to each other

Until I picked them up again

So, the long and short
The nutshell
Throwing away sorrows and accepting
Them back, what's my addiction?

I am addicted to playing fetch with myself

I’ve passed a little more than time
While I wore my feet to naught
A hundred lives have been and gone
For what I’ve seen as sport

We trace the steps of ages spent
When men were more than fiction
Simple lives and simpler minds
And faith their true addiction

I’m in a place where stories take
The power of the cross
And though the spires may steal my breath
I never felt the loss

For on The Way I took as mine
A shell and wooden limb
And parts of people, gifts so rich
Made my treasures small and slim

I’ve shared myself with men I’ve made
But will never know from there
I don’t feel sad because I knew
It’s not the whom but where

I’ll never find another day that feels the same as this
The time I’ve spent with just the steps; a special kind of bliss
When all there is to fill your head, the rhythm of the road
Your wishes and your broken corpse make light your mind and load

And now I will be much the same
In the before, the now and then
But there’s a trail within my eyes
That leads me back again

Each sunset and each moon reborn
Is on its own Camino
And every way will one day take
Me back to Santiago

The fact remains,
That I can’t imagine faces into the shadows anymore
But I can imagine a life alone
I can’t be afraid of monsters under my bed
But I can fear an empty one

So people cease to be wonders
But instead books, in plain text dark and large
as that horrible nostalgic past of learning to read
Both books and people
Both hope and horror
I don’t want to be alone

And then I see
God and heaven made fiction for me
All poetry and purpose talked into dust
And crippled vines with no more lies to cling to
No more forests for them any more.

Great lives without meaning
All fraught with despair for naught
And so much greater than I, who still cries
Thus making my tears even less crystal
Even more a common thing

Great oceans crossed and frozen
Whims have formed our sails of ships
Never master a trade I say
For learning makes knowing there is less to see
Less to be
And less to feel for
To be alive for
Why should we be anything for nothing?
I don’t know, but we are every day

And I cry, I cry to be that
It tears at me to be so human
To be, not built for self-destruction
And yet so chained to it
I don’t want to be me

I’m so scared of anything tomorrow
I want the dark to take me again
I want to be scared of something else once more
I want to relive and tell myself that it can’t get better
Because it’s already the best it will be

Please, please, God, enjoy yourself
Because I didn’t
And you won’t, so you must now
Before the shadows lose their faces
And your bed becomes something to fear
Hold your life and your illusions dear
Because it won’t get better from here.

As those without the sight to see
Sought might through vicious poetry
And thought through use of broken word
Their mouths might mew unlike the herd
So dark the tint of selfish dreams
So bright the lies, false passion gleams
But now they choke and fall from grace
Having never lit our smoky space.

I cried last night
It's bad and deflating
But after the tears
My sorrow's abating

But after it happened
After I showed it
I felt one step closer
To sadness and permit

It's strange how the joy
Of sorrow can grow
When the coming gangrene
Of the mind can now show

I told myself things
I never spoke out
But now they're exposed
They're a frostfall of doubt.

I heard about
A man who saw
Holes in wings
Fluttered raw

He looked and said
"More armour needed
But not on the wings
For they succeeded."

"Protect yourselves,
the skies are grey,
but your wings are ready
for come what may."

"But think of 'stead
those storm-caught lovers
whose wings were strong
but the sky smothers..."

"A place inside
those free to be
armour's needed
where you can't see."

"Make strong your mind
your crystal walls,
it's the unseen holes
for which elation falls."

I thought of him
Of the man who knew
That the unseen daggers
Need deflection too

Survivorship bias
The way to know
Those who were hurt
But didn't show

The happy ones
Who live still, while
Those who don't
Aren't shown in their smile

How many fell
To the unseen holes?
How many fly
While the thunder rolls?

Why do we mix again and again
A poison bitter strong
The killer tools of government
Consciously created to be wrong

Robotic minds make music
And we will dance along
Not thinking of the people
Who lived the beat the gong

And now we are alighting
To the torch of fabrication
For walls began their freedom fall
Language soon our only nation

In this place poetry's taboo
It's not like there are rules to say
That writing's bad and poetry's gay
But read some out and see what you
Will get

I use my phone to write
Or my computer when I have it
Footsteps hover, words are writ'
My finger hovers over the light
Of the home button

No one knows I'm unhealthy
My warmth is sponged from alien thought
Mock exposition is a teaching truly taught
As a poet and a writer I'm stealthy
And alone

Or maybe they already know
Maybe they're down there now
Laughing long about him, how
He needs the light of words to grow
Taller

Or maybe they don't place
Poetry and writing as gay
For there are no written rules to say
As no one writes in this dark space
Or at least they think

Could they be proud?
Possibly, but then
They'd have to know first and when
I tell them I'd have to speak aloud
Of all the times I cried as well

Whenever I travelled
I saw men living from empty cups
Their life on their knees
Must have hurt

They were given a family
They once must have thought that they would stand
And command the crowds
But they pled to them instead

I saw only once
A woman before an empty cup
Head bowed and belly empty
Call me sexist, but
She was the subject of my charity

It seems to me
The streets are full of those
Who grew to hate life
But she had the potential
To make two lost souls from one

Call me sexist, but
I wanted to raise her from the streets
Lest she raise another
Child of the lamplight
From an empty cup

Riding the tide
It waves like a wild arm
Crashing into all we know
All childhood comforts gone

We are accountable for:
Our friends
Our homes
Our lives

Nothing could whiten me
But the truth of the fact
That now if I want to eat and sleep
I have to wring myself out
And watch my spirit flow away

Down the tap

I work in a coffee shop
For little more than sight
The sight of those who enter
At midday

Those that don't work
Their faces lined like
Maps fully filled
They come in to talk

Those that can't work
The sight of the infant in
The man who is led within
They come in to be somewhere

And those who do work
Their lines only filled a little
But I know they will be unchanging
They come in to earn a pittance

And me
I can leave
I am so unexplored, but
It's easy to imagine life ending here

In the coffee shop

A night of hunting took my breath
Neon, blue and wild alight
I do not care to trade this death
For the worst way to spend a night

Drink it back, drink they say
I injected poison deep within
The stars still blinked the self-same way
Amazed at such a blanket sin

Give me silence, give me tact
Ignore the hunting, the night lament
A corkscrew rot and, as a fact
There are cheaper ways to feel this spent

I am switching myself off, power down
My head hurts and my bowels spit me out
Pale and shiver, my head is folded, frown
To think is to lie, to smile is to doubt

I watched a film and then watching his life
He told me to rip a little and see
What I find, a tear, my dream is a knife
The danger of looking too close at me

Sit, give, grow, learn, forget all that you want
I don’t think anyone will give to you
You’ve lost all that spilt from your tap, your font,
So run, crying child, run till you spill too

Your life is over, it’s sad and it’s good
You’ve cracked all the smiles that life said you would

You should hear me late at night
When I sing the stars dance
We play together, notes and song
Alight until I tire

You should see me when I’m alone
Tall and bold, Napoleon’s envy
Awash with waves of delight
At my own commanding reflection

Something about you ***** that away
A great vacuum in your laugh
When I stand before you, the largest of crowds
I quiver

If I took you home, would you see me the same?
If I sang to you, would you dance too?
If I stood tall, would you stand with me?
But when I hear you calling, I return to what I am.
You destroy dreams.

If we all perished, fire, ice and disease
Rubble the epics that tell of our deeds
Millions of years then would pass like a breeze
Until life sheds fruit and replanted its seeds

If new people did grow and become us
They would live with what would not be the same
The fragments of gods, built with purpose
Give them the hope where for us it is lame

How could life not have some reason
When the works of the Lord all circle our earth
The scorched marks on the earth show the season
When the gods took their fury and lighted our mirth

We’ll burn up our planet and then they will see
We few were the gods and vengeful were we

Like painted frogs upon a tree
I feel the poison leak from me
I do not gamble as a rule
But with that hope may disagree

I chained the gauntness, kept the beast
Until it felt at home, at least
When it snarls I shiver less
When it bites I let it feast

Show me more of ******* sap
Sticky, but this honey trap
Is quickly eaten up by me
To venom I’m a porous wrap

It comes, it goes
The gale force blows
But poison’s fickle
The tree frog knows.

The midnight prowl, tides of you and me
Too putrid and thick to be seen as the sea
I don’t want to gamble, to lose what may be
You hammered the bars, but I am still free

Now listen, don’t turn, don’t ignore what you feel
I hate you as well, your opinions of steel
When we sleep together, sharing a mind
I’m ready to die, to swallow you blind

Your thoughts rattle when I shake my head
You seem to squirm when you’re easily led
As we’re shaken by fears, racked with despair
Lashings of heat burn out what is fair

So leave me, please, I no longer need fall
I grew out of my huddle, my corner is small
I ****** my thumb to keep our disguise.
But you've tightened the  vacant space behind my eyes

It’s sick and grey when my body is eating
Thoughts of the others, my defence is a beating
So much of you is put into a greeting
But my friends got me through with every meeting.