I cringe like coiled springs
Taste ways of knowing only fogs let me see
I binge on water
And find it turns my stomach

Sitting at a table,
I write, I draw, I scratch ink into my patience
Scratch, scratch
I hear the radio, like voices biting on my earlobes
Laugh, laugh
Oh must make them stop

My frustration buckles in my fist,
Holds tight, hot coals I clutch and wrestle
My burnt palm lets them free
Tumbling to the floor and scorching my senses.

Work comes back, lashing forked tongues like leather
My skin, they invade my skin
And sink into pores like second homes,
I can't ignore them.

People can't know what it's like
To have someone ask you a question and walk away with your ears
To hug you and walk away with your attention
TO SLIDE INTO YOUR BRAIN LIKE A SHIP BREAKING ICE
And leave you falling apart.

What I ask
Is a world simply softly
Is a world organised to what I need
Simply.
What I need
Is to stop feeling tomorrow
Will be better
When I get so angry I want to scream
But can't find the words
Because I've been told I lost them.

It's a struggle, reading really.

Loving is strong but hate is all knowing,
Ripping a heart is much quicker than sewing,
It's harder to see what is painful is growing
When you know what you find home has skeletons showing.

Keep enemies strong and all your friends weaker,
He who sees gunshots sees candles the meeker.
It's not those who drink blood from marvels and beakers
It's what we may find when we call ourselves seekers.

Tell me your secrets but keep hidden your dreams
For what I may say may speak not what it seems.
I live you, I love you but we are the gleams
In the truth of all things when you find what each means.

Don't wait 'till the end for the lock and the key
For dying is nicer than living as me,
Break out the ice and watch it freeze free
Too quickly you'll see that there never was we.

Some might die
For the chance to forget
The abusive beating of
Her heart

Their stony skin their
Gravest stone
But I
Have that power
To die now
Every day, forgotten,
But I don't.

The amusement
Of a tickling tongue
And a sparkling eye -
Fire
To my tinderous smile.

Let a little
Pain slip through
For it is with the cracks that form
That words are written.
Those words?
Live in love
Die when you've found it,
Together

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.

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

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.

It must be lonely
To be the pearl of the ocean
To be the gaping mouth of the sea
For
Only drowning men may meet you.

Jokes aside, what we're waiting for,
Is a penny promise, so cheap to take
And for you to stop ignoring us,

All jigs downstairs, falling
From my stilness
Ah, I remember
What you told me

Pounds of likeness, oozing from your
Oaths
I just remembered
We have somewhere else to be

Paradise

The boy came back from school
'My head hurts, I think I'm ill!'
He said, clutching his knowledge.

'Not so,' said his father
Bearing his own like a banner
'You're just learning.'

'Every book read is a weight on the soul
Every word spoken is a scar on the heart
Each pencil held is a sword broken.'

The boy stood taller, but faltered still,
'I can't bear this curse, take it away, please.'
And the father looked down.

'If I could I would try a thousand times more than I have,
If I could I would spare you the pain,
Knowledge is a tunnel and,
There is no turning back.

Feel the crushing certainty of
Our hidden world in flames
And weep
You're a martyr to the truth my boy.'

From that day on
Books bore poisoned pages
Words were as vinegar
Pencils were heavier than the lead within them.

But the boy kept going
For, his head held high,
He knew he would die with the truth,
Rather than live with the lies.

When I write words
On a dead page
I come alive
More than we ever could.
Quality stuff
Only appears to me
While I gargle
Something worse than spite.

Fear
Loneliness
Solitude
Misunderstanding
And the me
That makes all else
That.

What am I?
I'm a man who writes stuff down.
I'm a boy
When I look in your eyes.
Don't make me feel sane;
How can you?
I am poor for
Understanding.

So I will sit next to you
And pass poems under the table
To see if you

wretch,
Like the muse of the sea
Wailing wind while
The tide takes all love away.

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

I don't remember
Having an answer
For this buried
Putrid in me
Grey that I feel

I don't believe
In what's special
About me my
Melancholic attention to
All I disagree
Exists, furrowed relationships
Between cells in
My mind, exist

If I move
Towards what I'm
Afraid of, I
Can forget it's
My guiding star
And smell flowers
And talk conversations
But all I
Work for is
Still hopeless. Word.

We're all nervous
We're all scared
We don't move our limbs
Like ribcage tabletops, hearts like coasters
We cry
Varnish tears
And prop
Fists
On our brazen wood.

We're all anxious
We all need breath
To twist our tongues to words
And our lips to a grimace
Fooling no one,
But the ones who don't care.

And we all shine
Like carbon diamonds
Under the pack of a thousand years of dirt
We're not normal
But,
We,
We so are.

We are so alone,
Together.

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

I caught a glance of a fashion
Out from a face of hands
Its crime its greatest passion
It tuts in its demands

It speaks garish and fast
When I listen in intent
Its first word is its last
Its message often bent

When I look away he creeps
Slow and on the prowl
Often when I turn he sleeps
And hides all 'neath his cowl

He knew me back when I was young
He'll know me when I'm old
He's let me off and he has stung
He knows all things grow cold.

So when I saw him glancing
I turned and gave my thanks
And also reprimanding
His insistence on his ranks

I told him life is more
Than numbers on your face
For moments you can't store
On your hands or any place.

Leave me, I told him
I have no need of you
My life is not your whim
I tell you it's not true

I closed my eyes and held them tight
To let him heed my call,
But as they came back, took the light
The clock was still there on the wall.

Deliciously intricate,
The ways of the world, no?
No?!

Think of the droplet in the surf
Flung far from its mountain basin,
But a roaring speck of an army of being
United in washing me clean.

Think of the dust blown high in the breeze
Wanderer of the spectral footplains
Going forth in a tumbling dance to
Brush my cheek.

Think of the people in their two step music
Soloing their own sorrows, but finding
That when they find another
Their solos become harmonies.

Deliciously intricate,
The ways of the world, no?
Yes.

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.

I'm busy waiting for the day
When locking cages of red metal
Will feel natural
When a spring shoot
Will be a daffodil between us,
Yellow,
My favourite colour.

In bed
Casting glances likes hooks across me
Pulling at skin, my
Ill fitting armour
What is this mess, this brutal growth
Of you and I, this and that?
Who knew, but something natural
That it is not.

We roll
Cheek to cheek
Mixing spiced air
With charcoal smudging hair

Vertically
The air closes in
Transfixed by staring from you
Not thinking, not able to

Dressed tall, floating
Breathless, wordless, unlike myself
In your arms, time slows
The spiced air flows

Warm ice washes numbness
I'm not aware I'm breathing
I suspend myself to the night
Moonlit, lamplit limelight

The song may end,
I rush thoughts in, swelling me
I thank you
I won't forget you

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

A poet's not the one who shouts the loudest, no
Not the one with flowers in their hair, she who declares
Her wishes to those who cross their heart
And write about dying, listening to her
A poet's not one with a crystal ball, Tory Taurus,
Nor one who speaks to glass caverns, taking themselves in
Reflected light, a poet
Is not one who paints themselves green to be seen

Listen, and you're the poet,
Stunt light's tracing fluid in your growth room
And you're the poet
Grow to hate crowds and you're
Write in the silence of apathy and you're
Put your collapses into verses
And you're the poet
You gorgeous night petal, you
Misplaced word
Thank you.

Take me on a little trip
Down the dawn road
Hold my hand gentle, softly
Beckoning with sparks in your eyes
And all familiar things
Down the dawn road...

Laugh with me a moment,
Sat by a road we know not the name or direction of
Sugary pointless nothing
Sip vitamin C with me, vital nature
Pointlessly, aimlessly
Shroud us in each other

And complete that tapestry begun together, don't think
Like before, certain of the second time, we're
Not going to meet again, never forever friends
Feel my hand and hold my heart
Squeeze it tightly, as I yours will
And let's walk together
Down the dawn road

His red shirt lingered on him
Drawn across his back, casual as he liked
In a sense his dark jeans and red shoes,
Gently tossed his image to my eyes
Where he lay in my imagination, etched into a rhythm that stayed still
Peaked features pointed in all directions, ears
Perked to listen, eyes
Sharp and facing anywhere but me, face
It, his hair seemed to say, we're not meant for each other
With a casual wave of a parting

But I kept staring, though my attention almost slipped
And I regretted it, though not the tale he threatened to tell,
But the sense he could have said more
Never moving from his corner
With red drawn about him,
Like a poisonous warning to all
Who might see more
Led me to such feeling.
No more.

I see myself through the mirrors of others
I paint myself with the hairs from your thought
And though the colours run, they
May not as fast as me.

I skate, with lack of traction
Ago on hoops of skin
Let me be, let me be,
To dance a little less today.

Well together,
Ill apart
You are my disease
For refusing to be with me.

Could you hear me
If I shouted?
Would you look up, even a little,
If I cried out for you in the night?

I don't think so, dear
I don't think, anymore.

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.

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.

While the city's often pretty
It tends to exact a price
For I'm a particular person
With a particular paradise

A country-wound clock, head to toe
Is what I'll always be
A place of solace and wooly fields
Is the promised land to me

So don't be sad, for back I'll be
When months have dribbled past
But before then, I get to see
My homely place, my land at last

I just learnt something
And narrowed my world
Pulling corners of the table
Closer to me

I just learnt something
And my friend did not
So when he speaks, when she comments
On waste on her tongue, elastic in his breath
Wrongs don't decompose and I don't forget the smell
Error, errors in their legend
And a narrower world with less space to breathe

I learnt something today
And burnt one wick of wonder,
And now all I have
Is a certainty
Ahead of an error
As concrete ink
On a page lies ponderous
And I feel my way fall lower
I learnt something

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.

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

He wore a mask
And came to me as I woke
In the small hours,
But indeed he was huge.

Smoke billowed from his skin
And the stick thin branches of
His fingertips reached for me
And he growled.

As he came closer I saw
How dark he was
Of black wood and
A painted grimace on the mask

I found my voice, but he took it
I found my hands, but he took them
I found my legs, but I couldn't run
Under the weight of terror.

And then he tore off his mask
And beneath he bore another
He ****** it on my face
And I felt my body become dark wood

I growled

He spoke to me in talent
He ran along on hope
I asked him if he was the truth,
'Just the shade of some.' he said.

I cannot tell you
What dark flowers grow in the shade
I can only say
What their perfume smells like
What nectar they sweat
When brought out to the light
Unable to bear
Exposure, steep reliance and responsiveness

I cannot tell you
What creatures lurk at night
Were I a child I would say
They surely bear great fangs and
**** the blood of innocents
Were I an adult I could tell you
They bore faces I knew
And hissed like air escaping
The dying kiss of goodbye
But I am not, so I cannot say
What desires take form from light of day

Were  I like you
I could say
What breadths the world asks of us
When we seek to cross it to see one we miss
I could make a guess at
What the ocean sounds like as it sputters in protest
With inconvenient waves slapping sense into our journey
But I'm not
Nor are you
If I were really focused
Perhaps I could ask
Why
But I'm not

I wouldn't call this an anniversary,
But what I have of the old you
Resurged today, and I barely knew its creases,
Barely knew where to buckle when it looked at me
So I suppose that's a waystone, a twist in my gut worth mentioning...
I remember you -

I remember when you came downstairs, naked
And looked at me with bloodshot eyes
Shuffling your swollen feet,
Dripping

I remember when you begged her to come home, touching a clammy hand to my face
Not knowing I wasn't her, but
I was so close to leaving

I recall, when I said I wouldn't care if you died
And thought of what your legacy would be, distant
Shufflings of bald wax and steam
Breathed through a desperate engine
Firing wrong, chugging wrong, wrong
I remember you.
..

Just

But guess what, I know you now,
I know what a glint in your eye means
I know, not remember you tell me you love me
Every day
And I answer back, hesitant
Because I fear
Memory doesn't sleep so well under soil
As feelings, so carefully buried
And locked away
Only sprout stems and
Bloom, without my knowing
Without my permission,
But saving what life left me    anyway

I know you now.

Let a cascade
Feel a little more like dew bubbles
Burst to be with you
On a sunny, lawdy day.

Let the crushed eyes
Be squeezed hands
One in the other
Swinging on the bench.

Let the red face
Be the choke of laughter
At the joke we sewed together
Frankensteined away.

Let the bitter teeth
Bite my lip
And take the inked promises
Into something with a life to lose.

Let the hanging head
Fall asleep on my shoulder.

What is such a pain,
But an ivory sheet
Where we may not sleep,
But lose blood?

What is birthing the new day together,
But another way to say I feel it,
But another way to begin again?
The fall told us to begin again.

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.

On a painting
I know
No white will be as pure
As the page left untouched
And no smudge as dark
As that scribbled in too heavy-handedly
For a need of perfection

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

To be alone is to shed a skin
To sigh as I touch the earth again
And cease this mad
Levitation.

To be alone is to rest                                                                        Finally
To grow out of each day from the tight skin I wove for myself
To view it all from deep compassion
From a sudden intake of self control.

To be alone is to gamble
For each day is a die rolled
Or a bell tolled
And how my ears ring
Depends on how I was under it all all all day

To be alone is to hold my head in my hands
To pull my mind back freely
To think I will never feel that again
Until the next day.

Those scapes
Rock brows with frills of yews, pines
Cloud ruffled about it like a boudoir dancer's hem
I see worlds beneath them
Under the foot time long stamped down, buried
Barrows and dungeons, first glimpses of ebony and gold
Riches piled in mountains, infant
To the soil above
And surrendered to otherworldly hand so,
Minds like mine may see them
And let daydreams grow
Like the yews and the pines
And feed the clouds
With the breath of our sighs
Each time

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

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'