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

The gloom of night gives naught but green
In trees that gather closely in
Their leaves and fruit fall in their lean
At their feet my cheap gifts of tin.

I motion for them to take back
Human plunder
They wash back their green seas and
Make clear that some roots don't grow back.

I met her on the road
Exhausted just like me.
I asked her why she's walking
She told me she is free.

I told her I'm a pilgrim.
She warned me, don't forget,
You may be tired of walking,
But your end is 'lejos' yet.

I told her Santiago
Was now my Xanadu.
She laughed and said the Khan awaits.
I laughed and said I knew.

I've seen his horse on hills afar,
He canters while I walk
And Kublai champs his teeth and shouts
His sword spits while we talk.

He wears the forest as a cloak
And chains the wind as breath.
I see him chase me further on
He tracks me to my death.

I asked her where she's going.
To Santiago too,
But I don't seek the spires and peaks
I'm hunting one like you.

He's running as his boots get worn
And I champ my teeth and shout.
He's keeping eyes out to the hills
While my sword point seeks him out.

Her deep black eyes and strong disguise
Bled from her and she stood.
Kublai Khan afore me spoke.
I ran but 'twas no good

She spoke out strong and in a blur,
'You are not my prey.
For many men along the road
Flee demons every day.'

And she roared and drew her breath,
The wind took up her gait.
She took the time to smile before
Her horse flew fast and straight.

I watched her go, still for so long,
The road behind ignored.
I heard the wind blow on before
I turned and saw He roared.

The hill was crowned with forest
Drawn around his back.
He spurred his horse on and the steed
Cantered down the track.

I turned and walked, slow and calm
For I am used to demons.
Though on the road I keep him towed.
The Khan is still the freeman.

A man spoke to me, not my friend, but still
His words were gilded and I listened
And as he raved, his brutal demeanor
Surprised me, and two more voices came.

They had no wings nor halos
Their hands were free of pitchforks,
But they spoke as we have seen, and said,
This This man man is is precious insane.

My head vibrated like the drum they took it for
And my ears cleaved in two
I tried to listen to the man before me
But I was too deep in my own beliefs.

For he seemed bad and good
Fun and frightening
I could not decide where I stood
And the man leapt on me

With one hand he shook mine
With the other he teared at my eyelids
I did not know what to do
For he was acting according to my plan

He left me warm and cold
Unsure of myself
And I slept there
Until I knew what he was

He was the voices
The terrible decision to make
For neither he nor I could decide
If he was a killer or a gem,

For we were both men.

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.

There is a place I think of last
Before each night and day,
Where night is green and never black
When all else turns to grey.

Here the river flows as if
Each gurgle were its first
And bamble sleepy insects might
Adance, alight, athirst.

The moss-hugged giants curl their toes
And lead them down to shore.
Ta-woo, Ta-woo, the tawny goes
Before he hunts for more.

The fullest moon, or thinnest yet,
Contented with its fill,
Grows fat on sight of river night
And lets its bounty spill.

And, lo! Take care! Don't scare it so...
The pearl of heaven falls
And leaps about the laps and waves
While the 'hopper calls.

Sparkling droplets take their rests
By friends lost in the day.
Chatter, chuckle, laugh they will;
Happy, oh so gay!

They wind around my feet, aflare,
Carrying their gifts.
Given all to waterfall
As my mind becomes the drifts

As my breath becomes the wind,
As my eyes become the deep.
As shadows o'er the shallows skip
I shall live and never sleep.

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.

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

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.

Try to see one man
On the street
While the other
Is warmed by the fire he sets in others

Try to see people
Ignored
Because of where
They are from.

Try to watch as
Your life slips away
Under some minute decision
Of a man miles away

And not do anything.

The state is above us all
And we cannot pretend
That it is "made of oak or iron
Instead of the human spirits who make it."

Don't call politicians evil
Don't call them men of spite
I know some are hollow trees
But the forest remains green

Don't call all of them greedy
When most would sooner
Take death than a bribe
Don't confuse the few for the many

For they are the few
And we are the many
And we are getting in the way
Let's stop.

Lance in hand to seek the land
Where he may do some good.
Lost his mind, but fate divined
He'd meet the life he should.

Horse at foot he rides to put
His lance in giant's hearts
But no one's said that they're all dead
They leave him from the start.

It's oft' like this for those dismissed
From societal norms or wishes
We lead them on and watch them don
The spear that's not for fishes.

Perhaps we should try to do good
Like the madman we egg on
For though good books bring laughs and looks
There's a sad tale with each Don.

I hammer down the iron blue
And feel the stone in hills I threw
A giant's tome in slate is wrought
The dragon's breath is surely sought

And with the flame and grey hill soul
I toil to make my body whole
To giants time may not take lives
But our body falls in loose demise

I build myself an arm of slate
A slated cage will separate
My slate heart and my slate lungs
My life will lead from where begun.

These hills are home to more than me
Bees and deer and wolves at times
I look down at my forgèd limbs
And see the grass has grown there too.

I roam the fields, but find my feet
Are reluctant to leave the soil they meet
I sink to my knees and find that I
Am now the hill beneath the sky.

Millenia pass, my sleep is long
Until some years when something's wrong
Strange beasts have come with clever paws
To take my slate for homes and wars.

I slumber still, giants are slow to rise
But count my word true, and count it wise
'Fore long I'll rise and take it back
And your slate beast world will fade to black.

I held my hand out to the dark
And scooped a black from air
I held it hard, a beating heart
'Tell me all, hostage fair,'

'I slink and sleek,
Cramp and creep,
Hustle hiss
I foe your sleep.'

Rumble, bumble, tumble so,
taken over by hand-held heart,
I crumble when I see it hold me,
It shakes me shakes me till I part.

Let it free, I said to me,
And go it did, fly on scales like music,
Clunking, chunking out the door,
I felt a little mad that day.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The man was truly strange
Hiding cards behind his clever fingers
Cleverer than me.

He winked down my hood
And laughed
Who he was was not important

In the circus tent
Nothing held power like the cards
And he said

'I deal in cream and grey,
Put a cross in my hand and
I am what you say I am.'

And now he has a roguish smile
His feet turned up and
The bell rang

I put down the pencil
And he froze
Never to move again

He dealt in cream and grey
He delved in graphite and imprints
Nobody told him otherwise.

There's nothing we could have said
No reason to arm ourselves with
No common purpose to bleed them dry, we
Couldn't call them wrong, for that which
We know by the word has meaning only in sensitive minds.
There was no way to tell them
They hurt us, for they knew and
No way to push them back for
Rage was on their side, fear
Ignorance and the gnawing of doubt a terrible wealth of battle for them and
A cotton shield for us, such knowledge cushioning only the shears
We could not stop them with the knowledge that we were right
With the hope of forgetting what tomorrow seemed certain,
They were poised to defend
What little they saw through red lenses what
Crimes they saw committed in the name of justice
Our thorn bush burnt out and
Our knowledge of fresh kindling in seeds of the morrow
Was no use to us, we
Could not stop them.

I once drew a woman
Destined to be strange
Her eyebrows flipped over
Her lips in her brain

An ear on her nose
And one on her chin
It's strange to think, but for all my effort
Her strangeness came out more beautiful than all my other drawings.

So I kept drawing her,
Years on when I couldn't stop
Addicted to seeing her on the pages
Addicted to her simple strange ways.

She became my muse
And I thought of her in all my work
Every word written down
Was a new name I gave to her

Every picture I carved out of ink and paper
Was another strange change of her face
She took me over and
She's the kind of girl who can't leave me.

That strange make believe girl.

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

He laughed a little, but
His eyes left
Already forgotten
What I'd said
As I slipped from the room.

Waved, gingering hair, it did,
Likely to miss me on
That busy head.
Surrounded by the thick dark
That feels like swimming.

In truth, I enjoyed our chat,
However short he made it,
But I couldn't forget
Those quivering eyes
And the way they settled
As I left.

It wasn't only me,
Many others try
Miners all the lot of us
But sculptors carve the rock better
And by now

All he is is stone.

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

There's going to be a phone call in the night
A well of whispers and worries opened
It'll trill once, twice, cease
For my hand will cool its plastic brow.

I'll cradle that phone call in the night
Cup it to my ear, like shell washed with memoirs,
Anxious to hear an answer as clearly
As the water to which my mind will take me.

Seconds will hold me - no one answers at once;
My chest will heave, rattling those breaths and thoughts impatiently.
I will beckon with a greeting and will despair with a sigh
And hear the trill of the night reply.

'Think. Think. Think.' like a clock tick
That word will alight me, strike me dull blows
And sorrow at...
No, in me.

A thought takes the theatre
A doubt 'dopts the limelight
And I fear not what will
But now what would happen

And like a pool in the dark it takes me.

I would hear what the speaker would say and
Wouldn't be so lucky as to remember, as to understand.
There's going to be a phone call in the night, but
I won't be there.

'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.'

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.

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.

When I was five I learnt that wide eyes weren't wise eyes

When I was seven I learnt that tears are just wasted water

When I was nine I learnt that love is as dead as life

When I was eleven I learnt that rings can be broken

When I was thirteen I learnt that friends can only speak for themselves

When I was fifteen I learnt that death is a holiday

When I was seventeen I learnt that people can be used like tools

Now I'm 19 I realise that nobody is alive like you.

It's easy to leave dead things behind.

All these odd numbers find me loving them, out of empathy, not patterns.

But the sun shines through.

When I was four I learnt that there is no warmth like two arms around you

When I was six I learnt that laughter is mighter than the lie

When I was eight I learnt that it's easy to ignore what hurts you

When I was ten I learnt that everyone wants to smile

When I was twelve I learnt that my solitude was strength

When I was fourteen I learnt that we all will forgive

When I was sixteen I learnt the flush of lipkissed smiles

When I was eighteen I learnt that scars give words more truth
And the dawn came

The sun is beautiful

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

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.

The Robin called
And I looked out
From windows balmed
By a Summer January.
His little flushed chest
And my crimson vest
Went well together, so I thought.

He hopped along a twig
And dug for buds on the barren wood
Mourning that Winter long forgotten
In the cycle of death and movement.
He called out his call
And as the days fall
I try to speak to him, so I do.

The slow little bird isn't
Some prophet of the new dawn
But a straggler, slow with the weight
Of his heavy, fateful wings.
He flies to the sky
Follows my eye
To the sunlight I'm watching, so I am.

Sad to see, the true spirit of Spring
So misunderstood, so anticipated
Like the robin, Spring is not happy.
Spring is an epitaph of the lost days.
I wish he'd come back
And he will when the track
Of the year's memories lead him to me, mourning once more,
So they do.

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.

Skies stretch sparks to light the damp ground
And I watch, chuckling by the lambs
Lapping the waves that smack tastily at their feet
And bring in the harvest for the day.

The sun bows its head
And sea makes its sleep
For it to hide amongst the bubbles
Until the Night claps it awake.

Footprints stretch up the beach made
Of arrowheads and other cobbled things
You're there, you're there
Pulling me to your place.

Warm, shivering houses, of
Wooden overcoats and salty lashings
Made wind by fervent tides
Desperate to huddle in and hear stories

Of your uncle, your father, your brother's ruddy cheeks,
But you have eyes with me
And we lend them together to the fire
To hear of orcs, of brochs and angry kings, far away.

The howling streets meet no one,
And pirates prowl their decks to see
A glimpse of my island girl
As she holds my arm cased in wool

Blond hair crying to the floor.

For I am a story, you see, I know what I have when I have it
And salt, quiet lamp-lit salty living
Make ancient ages while keeping,
The mainland for themselves.

Good thing I have her,
So I can share in what she calls home
So I can lie in the lavender in Summer
And cry with the Winter rain when she's gone.

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.

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.

'Do you understand the incredible godliness of a straight line?!' my madman said to me.
'Not quite,' I said, 'But I am not beyond hope to instruction."

'We cannot see a straight line in our world,' he said, 'But we thought of one nonetheless. Something came from nothing, ex nhilo, ex nhilo.' he said.

I watched his logic at work from my place at his right hand.

'Have you ever tried to draw? Straight lines are hard, try drawing a sunset. Try to draw your hand.'

I did, though I'm not sure it was his intention.
It came out wrong.

'Look! LOOK. You see? The heart of the world is but a skewed imprint when we draw it. You cannot see the world, but the lines and shadows of the world are there, and it would take a lifetime to truly draw them.'

My madman took the pen and drew a perfect sunset, with my hand clasped around it, as one would grip something so fragile, so quick to vanish.

'There are sketch lines in all we see, the world is creating a drawing in every microsecond, every heartbeat creates universes.'

His hand shook and the pen fell, ink at his feet and his hands. He looked upon them.

He rubbed the ink on his palms.

'The world is the greatest artist... And we?'
He lay his hands on the page before him, and the truest image of a hand he could ever draw was in front of me. I saw many sunsets in his fingerprints.
'We are the imitators.'

I smiled, and my madman smiled back.
Or at least as close as he could come.

There's a glitter in my eyes
When I've caught a kind of sleep,
A star who's come to earth to rise
Each morning from the deep.

And for a celestial second
I won't groan or creak
Old ship will slip through water beckoned;
Bare the world a bidden streak.

I can leave this sandpit
If only for a day
And look at all above the wit
That sleep has granted on my way.

I feel a better person
I feel a better son
For more important things may worsen
Moods of those who slower run.

For now I'll ring my jester bell,
I'll jump and dance and cheer.
I'm happy now for I do well
With all the sleep that's granted, dear.

And morning peach shall find me spent
Exhausted by this rocket jet
But I will smile for days that went
And glitters I have not held yet.

It is a strange tide now that takes me,
Blank and floating like so much sea foam,
And all I can be is quite scary
A drop in the seas that make up this grey dome

And walking away is so hard
Feet don't find water but land and deep space.
It's not worth it to keep up your guard
When you trip between gaps poorly patched in their place

I don't want to sink or be broken,
I'm happy to float and feel sea and the sky,
For both have their gifts and their tokens,
But both too are cold and their glory a lie

For now I'll just be on my back here,
There are no waves all is still and replete,
But the storm's not too far, nor are you dear.
We are the clay and the storm is the heat.

If I twist my form I'll be safer.
The light will not reach what the water may take,
But the depths are no place for adventure,
Though the storm clouds are dark they are dark for my sake.

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

I leapt from the breach
And found cold the fire
Alive in the creep
Of haunted desire

And there I would see
The pillars of hope
From those who could not try
To relish or cope

Imagine my horror
When, looking on their faces
I saw not their moments,
But dark, empty spaces

Their mouths curled down
In the strangest of sneers
And shivers and aches
And horrors and fears

They told me their name
They showed me their ways
But I won't live longer
Than their empty days

And their mouths turned up
Weak muscles unused
To frowns turning over
And mind laugh bemused

I came home, but I
Found my mirror's deceit
Shown plain to my eyes
The new me to meet.

It's not that I'm new
But maybe you'll see
What I saw out there
Is shown now in me.

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

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

Howl, dread wind,
Howl your dread loss
Of times when ruddy lords danced merry in candlelight
Of low halls strung with the forest's skeleton
Of the high hills holding beast and other wonders of the night
Howl
For that corner of a peak trough
Catching the rain and cupping it
To the thirsty mouth of the beast within
To the sword of the proud beggar
And his honour in the sky
Which he looked upon from a hill
Quiet on his cold brow
And as he listened
He heard the howl
Of the times long passed.
Howl, dread wind.

The world I want to live in,
It's that world
Where your childlike twinkle
Those fumes of pink ignorance behind what you'd call sweetness
Never have to leave

As we'd never have to fear
Men behind closed doors
Women behind them too
We'd never think of prisons

An alley where
Our parent holds our hand to pulls us away
Would be alien to us as the day we were born
And painfully born

A world in which
I'd never have had to learn to lie
Where my smile could be taken seriously
And my brother's eyes

Twinkled in all and out
Full of
Misunderstanding
For that thing we call deception

We'd tilt our heads
And smile
To the tears of stories long gone
We'd be the puzzles the past learnt to fix

In my world

Why does he..?
Why?
Why does he sit at books and read them.
They should sanction him,
Let's go and play football.

Why has he..?
Why?
Why has he not come to the pub?
We're waiting to get drunk.
Let's go get drunk.

Why is he..?
Why?
Why is he the boss?
Did you not hear that he didn't have fun?
Didn't he?

This one knows
Sadness is short,
But so is happiness.
Don't flood your brain with chemicals, he said,
Satisfaction is my drug.

And then they saw him,
Wise to all who were,
Pale skin,
Scarred skin,
Satisfied.