Hands clawing outward from a mass grave
Mouth gasping for air,
Lungs filled with invisible smog
Mind too indoctrinated to care

Pressed in against the walking dead
Face to face, toe to toe –
Clammy fingers entwining by seeing
Unseeing eyes staring into a blank void you well know

Drifting with the metal cage
Jerking back, coasting sideways, never flinch
Some escape, more cram in –
Nearing hellish Purgatory inch by inch

A screeching halt, your turn to flee –
Into the glass maze obediently file
Skinner's rats – jolted by punishment
Yet tomorrow you’ll do it again – another card on the pile.

O these tender,
delicate,
intimate
moments
with her!

I lie face deep
in her beauty,
frolicking through
her lovely-petals,
kissing her wantonly
inside her open
receptical.

I am a witness
to her glory,
such sweet swollenness
unfolding in raw splendor.
And with a mouthful of her pistil
& my eyes fixated,
I tenderly swirl her style,
gently nibble her stigma
around her white filaments,
taste magnificent anthers
loaded with
her sweet
delicious pollen,
I feel her explode
into the wind.

O thank you
Dear Lord,
I swallow Heaven,
which quite simply,
is sublime.

Music in my soul, in my veins, in my ear,
Rhythmic hunting, a low pulse that only I can hear.

Separate seats, separate lives,
A brushing meet, competing prides.

The force pushes, always peering,
The pressure mocks, its grin is leering.

Crawling upwards, invading the interior
Onwards it claws, I’m nearing hysteria

My stomach churns, my throat is tight,
My chest burns, my mind alight

Souls all around, but souls are worth dust,
Empty and worthless, ****** dry as a husk

Eyes averted, pointed blank gaze
Still my mind flames, calm in its rage

The stations flicker by, spiralling down the hatch
The names pass too quickly, too quickly for me to catch

Closer to home, a new home I’ve built,
Borne out of upheaval, decorated with guilt

Stepping towards a future, try to shoot from the hip,
But it’s all a façade – loneliness has me in its grip.

You have the hands of a pianist,
she said.

I disagreed.

For mine are fingers
that articulate not fluid
nocturnes,
or comatose melodies,
but speak instead
         with intermittent,

desultory                     sighssss,

wrought upon leaden keys
in the dead of night.

Words hook like a noose around my soul,
hungering to take it
somewhere forsaken,



somewhere unknown.

For every poem I write
starts
           and ends
in a different place.

This one for instance,
was supposed to be about

                                                 Cats.

The land was veiled
and silence exultant -
                p e r m e a t e d only by
sporadic
bird
calls
resonating from deep within the frozen forest
where life had retreated,
aghast by the glacial wind.


Cowering together,
               dwellings shivered
                             ephemeral oak structures
                             bowed beneath
the freshly shorn lamb’s wool that enveloped all,
hastening,
the shearer continued.


You left this night,
                   without a whisper
of regret
across the interminable,

     n     u      a     i     g      furrows
u     d      l      t    n

that ridicule your lifeless,
even features - pitiless,
your sodden soles penetrated the ****** snow.


Impervious to such inclemency
                       I traipse deep into the thicket,
reminded of how earlier
I collected from this q u i v e r i n g coppice,
                no more, no less
than my meagre allowance dictates.


Your stride is familiar,
for it was once mine
with metronomic ease I trace you,

further
further
further

traversing a promontory, I see you,
stood on a limestone plinth
                     overlooking
        shimmering pasture below.


You turn; we face,
        unwavering symmetry|
as stained crystals fall red with affliction
caressing the firmament I lace your name with my finger
                                   indomitable,
no more.





©*Thomas Gabriel