Flowers in the window
Seek sunlight, but the glass
Lets little through and the wind blows
Mighty out of their reach.
The furnace burns without
I'm hearing spring again,
But flowers in the window
Stay dying every season.
Winter
Summer
And the others
Make no difference
To a flower in the window.
To a petal left to wilt.

Never be the Joker
For the Joker never wins
The weakest card oft seeks to guard
Its non-existant sins.

Its folly is in mockery
Because it's well protected
By all the laughs it got from halfs
Of love it ne'er detected.

It thought itself the King of Hearts,
But it couldn't find its Queen
And though the Jack may fail and lack
It did not find its truth obscene.

For many cards may tell their truths
And be beaten from the deck,
But the Joker speaks of lover freaks
He is the stormbeat wreck.

Never lie through jokes or jest
Always tell the truth to poker
For though its sides are mirrored lies
They're truer than the Joker.

You're like spiderwebs,
Like thick wind entangling,
Every single **** one of you I ever met
Is wrapping around my memory as I struggle.
    I obsessively map out
      Every time I made you smile
         With a twitch of my leg,
I needlessly outline
   The dances we did with
        Every tug of my wrists against the silk.
As I twist deeper into your clutches
     I remember when we were happy
        And spinning in soulkissed sinews.
Without you I'd be free
But you're worth the OCD.

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

Grow. Chest, grow.
Swallow more hearts
I’ve pumped enough syrup
Sick and sweet
Swallow all the hearts

Show a little show
Fold your walls like wings
Chambers are as chambers bare
Taste of tale
Fold your walls to wings.

White figure on me
Heavy like clouded panes
Smudged by me
But self-cleaning

White ghost sinking into
My muddy chest
The night takes the sun
The cloud is now black

But still it is so wet
Soaking my skin in a deep
In a deep you
Cloudy white is my favourite white

My pallet is now white
Dipping my brush
It’s wet
And now it’s white too

Drift off
Slower than the tide
And these hazy buttercups
On this Sunday morning
Drift off
And let your fears
Spill into the current
That passes you gently along.

Melodies take me
And light guitar strings murmur
Giving flow to my stiff bones
As they sigh in the sunlight
Staring lovingly into the bluest sky
Bluer than the green water
That sings its own harmony.

Hear the birds chant
Sparks into the air
Hear the water hush
The wind that will never come today
And the chug chug chug
Of that faithful riverboat
Keeping me steadily onwards
On its warm wooden deck.

Don't let me swirl
Old thing, help
Me stay within
This tomb of myself

I'm falling away
Don't you know
Freely gliding with no wings
Down into something darker

I should shatter
Wouldn't you think
Like paintings might
Were they made with dagger eyes

A toast!
To falling ill
To being swallowed
To never seeing light again!

Cheers!

Let me have this
And I can face tomorrow
Forget I'm here
And I'll cuddle your honesty.

Tell me no one cares
And there's no point in wanting
Tell me holes picked in all things
Grow.

For now
I'll curl up alone
Because at least I'm not
Without in the face of nothing.

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

What is different about your trunk?
Said the Cedar to the Ash.
It's rotten, ere forgotten,
And its branches have long gone.

What is different about your leaves?
Asked the Oak to the Holly.
They're pointed and disjointed
And their colour has gone dark.

What is different about your boughs?
Asked the Poplar to the Yew.
They're leveled and disheveled.
Do you like them? Oh I do.

The sunlight is fanned by your boughs, dear Yew,
Rain makes night seem longer on your leaves, my Holly
Your trunk may be rotten, dear Ash, but it is terribly untrue
To say that it does worse than any other.

The forest lights with sunly sprights
And I will walk among the trees
And hear the sounds and see the sights
Of a nature much more at ease.

'Do you want to go to a club?' he asked her.
She nodded and might even have smiled
He couldn't tell from
The gloom of her smartphone.

The club had a band and they played all the night
While she was playing Zombie Fight
The crowd got too crazy, and soon went to rush
While she was playing Candy Crush.

Her boyfriend got bored and went for a look
While she was checking her Facebook
He met a girl and he did the deed
While she was checking her Twitter feed.

She went to find him, looked up at the band
Wanted a member to hold by the hand
But they were all taken by girls who could try
While this girl just looked down and checked Spotify.

On the way home she saw a lady
On a Youtube vid' called 'What you've all  paid me.'
The people who watch her all make her life good
Be like her? The girl wished that she could.

I love the hills
Patted soft by time and feet
Of so many off for walks.

I love the cold
Strange, I know,
But when I'm shivering

I love the rain.
The second skin of
My land telling me I'm clean now.

I love the grass
The carpet of the thick ground
A sponge to all my anger.

I love the solitude
Because it's always just
You and me,

My world.

I stuck on the label
My shirt capped with snow
I smiled as I was able
My voice my words could show

All who came to me
Read quickly and ran more
My label was not picky
Of who should fear my tooth and claw

I looked down unto its face
And it looked back into mine.
Not one who found themself in place
Could speak quite like my label's whine.

'Not you, not me, not anyone
Is free to be themself
While I am here you're already gone
For words make rich those ones with wealth.'

I clung to him and ripped him forth,
But horror thudded and with it, tied
My heart stuck to the paper and its morph
Was into a label as I died.

And die I did, but still the words
Stayed until I faded free,
Though I sleep the men in herds
Will speak the mind they have of me.

I can't stop drawing her
Though the ink stutters from my pen
Are no form of the lines of her face
She humbly takes them anyway.

She has no place in my eyes
But for the gentle push of her petal hands
On my page, while I sit and
Let my mind take the toll.

The still morning is pulled in
Or the night claiming the light
But I am still here
Drawing her,

Her poise
Her smile
Her attentive eyes
And the knowing, the truth

It's with her every time.

The broken clouds and cluttered mounds
Of the castle dark and grim
The straying woes of bootstruck hounds
Flew fast from deep within
And though the trees shed leaves and weep
While winter takes its grip
Still the grounds will never sleep
On those sullen earthly strips.

When came a knocking hard and fast
Urgency and haste
A figure tolling on the door
Tall and wooden, chaste
The simple portal opened to
A simple hallway bare
But of paintings, deep and clean
'Is your master there?'

Within the shadows of the night
The man spoke to the dark,
But saw no person, now he might
Perplexion left its mark
Peering through and searching in
The figure broke his tact
He took himself out from the wind
Door closing in the act

He called out soft and gently
Silent came the reply
The man looked in and then he
Searched down and up and by and by
The hallway stared in harder
The lounge looked on and dealt
A whisper to the larder
His footsteps on the boards were felt

The man, nonplussed, but guaranteed
His pay upon the meeting
Of the lord of the castle's deed
But he was paid no greeting
Not a soul to meet him there,
Though he searched the room
Of men he found no hide nor hair
Save the marks of a duster broom

And the spot of ***** pots in the kitchen
The soot at the foot of the chimney
The sound of hounds from about the grounds
And a meal to steal out on the table

The man looked from the window
And saw to his surprise
Some beast awalk without its tow
Of a master's watchful eyes
The wind blew strangely heavy
On a door that swung ajar
The man went down there, ready
To greet the host, but from afar

He saw the empty darkness fell
And heard the moan of the floor
He smelt the musk of rain as well
Pass by him from the door
The dining room mumbled to the hall
And it passed its message down
The cellar murmured through its wall
Creaks and groans from all around

The lamps behind him all were lit
The house was bathed in light
The fire took life within its pit
The man grew cold with fright
He shut the door and heard the roar
Of the wind break 'gainst the knocker
Thump, thump it spoke up more
Keys firmly in the locker

The stairs creaked under the feet
Which ne'er were seen to move
The man still followed achance to meet
The house's master so to prove
His duty done, his quest relieved
He followed up the stair
But a shout he passed, you'll soon reprieve,
For what he glanced on there

The doors aswing to beds and baths
With moanings and low crashes
The house alive with joyous laughs
At this venturer who passes
He looked in after shrieking
And saw a bedroom bare
But for the snores of the man he's seeking
His body lying there

The man asked not of his health
As he saw the stiffened white
Of the skin of the face apart from self
Aghast and dead from fright
The venturer looked 'round
And heard the cellar speak
It's booming sound from underground
Bade him leave below his shriek

The man abed had moved and walked
His taught face moved not, still
His teeth slid and their rotting talked
Breathed gas as his breath came shrill
Our frozen friend did not contend
With his meeting of the master
The castle changed him by the end
He fled there all the faster

He was not found till late that fall
By boys who played in the grounds
They'd crossed a wall and found him all
Near pawprints of the hounds
They saw his hand clasp round a sheet
Of paper, the castle's deed
On the page he'd told his meet
Of the lord of the castle and he'd agreed

By his signed name on the dotted line
To give to all who claimed it
'This castle which I have called mine
For a thousand years.' for he saw fit
To give to the man who spent a night
The castle they'd keep company
But for the men who died of fright
The castle is still empty.

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

I had a lighter given to me,
A face engraved on its metal case.
And its inner heat
And flame hidden
Terrify me.

It whispers to me,
To that blistered skin in my lungs
Where I breathed too deeply of the flame
And the burning hearts about me.
I crack it open.

Its metal is bright
And the wick stands tall
Upright and seeking my breath.
I hold it fast and hard
And it whispers.

'Where is she now?'

I close it up
And hide it away
Because sometimes
Hidden flames
Should be just that.

She slipped me a wasp
While she slipped me a kiss
The wings on her lips
Beat the air of my bliss

The dream of her hair
Of her mock as she fled
I jolted awake
But the wasp was not dead

It stabbed in my throat
Though broken by nature
I loved her, but that
I said not stings later

Pick a note
Any note
Watch it tremble
Shiver like a songbird’s wings

Wailing through your fingers
An echo of your pick
Crashing through the realms
Of the different notes to choose

Take it down
Pull it up
And sing
Sing like a shivering string

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.

She never spoke of sanity
Normal never lost her lips
She thought not much of clarity
Preferring to speak with hips.

She never thought to tell me
How memory was in her hair
It curled and fell like weeping willows
But never felt so fair.

She never wanted to explain
How her footprints left the ground
How she walked the clouds and drank the rain
Why she still looked at me when the sun was with her.

Though she left quietly I still recall
She told me why in her hands
She held me like she was about to fall
And fall she did to lower lands.

The night is dark against your fair fur feathers
And your wingspan holds true against the glass.
Legs splayed against the pane, hard and fast pressed against the portal to my world.
You'll do anything to touch the light.

I cannot blame you, I have been there,
Outside in the cold warming yourself with the thought of a light bulb
Feeling the phosphorus of that explosion with your eyes and ears
Longing to be a part of what is good.

No, I cannot let you in, for
I am ready to selfishly bathe in this illumination
The moonlight will do for you
So I suppose I'm just as bad as the others were when

They kept me out.

Window panes and light refrains
From being yours, but mine.
All you shall do is hang there and wish
You had a light switch of your own

Ready to make your own world bright
Ready to lift you from the darkness
Ready to help you spread your wings
And fly in the day like all the other successes.
With just a flick.

Poor moth, it must be
Cold out there.

Breath to breath
Our winds, our mixing
I don't know if I'll handle
This hurricane.

But don't let me tell you
It's immoral,
We both know
That holds no water.

Skin to skin,
Ashes to ashes
The earth comes up
To meet our confusion.

Smoke, oh god, smoke.
My mind's become kindling
I burn for you
Fire is an evening well spent.

Don't let anyone tell you
You're a Machiavellian lover
For
Severity is its own reward

And I can be yours.

I walked a summer day, warm and fair
Thirst my only burden, and lightly so
For all was light before the sun
I found a rabbit upon the ground

He lay on the soil, shivering
Despite the bright he grew cold
Beside him a hemlock plant was cut
I stayed with him till the end.

I sat in the buttercups and poison leaves
And spoke to him.
'I am sorry, wise friend, for you who knew all
Could not make a gambit of this ****.'

I lay him to rest and walked on, the thirst taking hold
And met a fawn, poison creeping through her too
Her legs shook, I held them tight
And spoke to her.

'Alas, many of you, wise friends have fallen to this evil,
On this wonderful day I feel nothing but remorse
A fear of what has befallen you,
Why did you not run?'

The fawn, sharp of eye and tongue, yet deep of heart
Said nothing, though her eyes were full of words
I lay with her and read her pity
'Til the very end.

Lastly, taking my throat in dry anguish
I walked on, the heat now unbearable,
The path lay ahead
With broken souls of wise thinkers

I heard, in my anguish
A hoot, and looked up
An owl on a branch who did not cry
But could not fly for torment

'Why have all these great beings fallen?'
I asked him, sour of tongue
He could not speak, but pointed
At the old forest, which was no more

In its place, fields of hemlock stood
Before it I could not, and wept.

'You see, dear human, our forest is gone
And with it our world and our souls
Your kind has committed what we would call wrong,
But you would call reaching your goals.

With nothing to eat, they fed on the stalks,
With nothing to drink, they drank of the sap
Great thinkers and knowers these walkers of walks
Are fallen at the claws of your trap.'

And with his words in my mind he flew from his tree
And fled the fields for the sky
Above me the mountains, below me the sea
My thirst was such that my eye

Sought out some water, but such was there none
Just hemlock, and that I did take
I drank of the sap and like them I was done
Like my own kind my life was forsake'.

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

A taste of the future has come to my lips,
Sickly, but then, I asked for it
The droplets forsook me and went to my eyes
But nobody living has taken the sips
Like I have drunk deep of the pit
And the water was refreshing, to my surprise

I fortold the blessing, like a hand to the brow
I carried the scars, like lines on my face,
But ones that aged me more quickly
I heaved at the thought of the then and the now
My make up was dark, but light at the place
Where I applied it more thickly

So tell me the truth, all those from beyond
Explain the shadows under your eyes
I don't understand how you sink to your knees
A cowl of cold on me has been donned
It never could bring me to rise
For me and for life, we do as we please.

Joy, what will you do if there is a heaven?
Love it like a son.
And what will happen if I am not there?
Then the family will be broken.

And what are we?
Going to die.
When?
When we will.

So who should we be?
Heaven.
So who is our father?
**My love, I would have no other, but you.

Wear your heart like a golden brooch
Shine it so all see
Your goodness is as you would be
Your courage is itself beyond reproach.

Darwin knows, some try to say
That the weak should fear the strong
Well this has gone on for so long
Can you honestly say you like this way?

I propose you think on those
Who live in darker minds
Their hatred builds up and then blinds
Them from the hard path each has chose.

I met a man who said to me
Love is like a destiny
I met a man who frowned at me
And he was neither glad nor free.

Love yourselves to love another
Love your sister, love your brother,
Love the man who scowls at you
For in that heaven may be true.

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 heard about a boy
Who read comics to the dead,
His art a ******
Of death in the self.

I saw a man
Stand proud and say it
He misses that boy
Where should he be?

I tell you where he is now,
Being read to
And dancing among the sheen on
An oily smile of those in hardship.

He carries on
Reading his story
And we listen, though
We know not from where.

Thank you, little boy,
For being there on my sundripped morning
Thank you for lighting my day
Without you, well

Without you I would have been much the same,
But that doesn't mean I'd forget you.