In the business
Of Ending Worlds
I grant
mankind and his children
the curse of
Greed
Envy
Sloth
and,
Guilt.

In the business
Of Preserving Misery
I grant
all who heed me
all who hear me
all who fear me
the singular
inability
of an individual
to change the
tide.

Trust
that soon these feelings will end
Hope
that my fears are only self-esteem
Fear
that I'm right about everything
Fury
that I am not strong enough to lift myself out

the pull is strong tonight
i do not know the fullness of the moon
but there is a bleak, waning, reflective light
within me
i have not been outside myself in days
flush with memory
with repeated history
i close my eyes and absorb the yearning tide
that goes over me

cacophony of thought
avalanche of
miss you
sorry
didn't mean to
maybe
sorry

my past self
looks back
at the orbs
I've shelved
he remarks
that of all the ways
I could've
disappeared
he didn't think
I would do it
brazenly

an unpigmented sun
blasting into
the Stygian stable
of the dark horse
called expectation
makes his way
delicately
stepping into old feet
nursing the
ails of
growing up
grey

quit
leave
abandon
your job
your uni
your family
follow me, feral child
into the wilder paces
a life unbuttoned
deedless
into a place where
rest is not
a rationed substance
sleep under the willow tree
with half-lidded precarity
until a sheet of wool-tipped leaves
dress you in slow
beguiling
serenity

Often mistaken
As a neighbour
To the roofed cliffage
Of a thousand speckled
Imaginings

There is no beauty
In the dark friends
That rip and thunder
In our shared
Night sky

Despite all our efforts
We are trapped
By the spectacle
Of sadness
In denial

dear intractable self,
do forgive me
for all the times
i spent your love
without chasing
consent

dear faultless self,
do forgive me
for all the pillars
i built
sightless
and infinite

dear moving self,
i forgive you
for when
you ran away
and left me
with my
dearest emotions

tense and well met
bitter sweet
like dark chocolate
and old friendly
enemies

i am grateful
for this
winding wending
second path

a clamped hold
as if
to let go
is to fall
indefinitely

this pressure
this hearty pulse
reminds me
of
how it feels
to be alive

i close my eyes
i pay my debts
i sleep until
all is returned
and
tomorrow, we feast
on the rewards
of carefully articulated
self care

the metal strainer fizzles
as it comes in contact
with the flighty liquid of
adventurous spirits

muzzy and discontent
not so insincere
not so friendly
to make amends
just yet

beautiful friend,
I hold memories in hand
a sunshine filtered emotionality
place to land
a sharing, a made peace
wishfulness and longing
hope, future fieldtrips
gifts abound
haplessly spiritual

the sadness succubus
leeches on my shoulder
hissing gruesome fickle things

i crawl across the floor
lift my head
to speak

a visage of a family
painted in the door
outstretched like a moment of reprieve

held by
contemporaneous emotion
a shrieked laugh wets my face

leech to boy
boy to leech
a man's only companion

you can't outrun your mind
but you can escape in dreams
i'm tearfully wakeful
because i am afraid of
pleasant feelings
and undeserved
memories

static spacial raindrops
interspersed in my gloomsome mind
listen to the press of gravity
feel the natural release
i make music of these moments
and give my best
to my weekday beast

effortless
I fall into my
empty trap

bait set
widowed wills
I release the catch
and lock myself
in

mucky plucky hardy souls
perfect puckered people without goals
mothers giving birth to gangling foals
daring doleful dancers with no roles
i am walking damnedly on hot coals.

lyrics from half-cherished poems
a pet who owns you half the time
a half-boy half-thing who ignores his omens
a life, a lie, a reach, a rhyme.

morbidly
i let my teeth fall out
and my hair frizz
and my life disintegrate
because
we all need a muse
and if you're not tortured
you're not creative

I've heard these words sung
in every life
I've ever touched
and this
quarrelsome
touch
of the love we need
of the warmth we crave
shunned
shivered
pruned, and carved, and withered
a skull made in my own name
staring to
this pearl of dreams
this orb of truth
I see my face
and I,
happy-shrunk
hung from
tethers
I'd never name
to long for the touch of
a hungry man's wish
and I curl my fists
the words etched in stone
plaqued on my wall
dirges of a future haul
and my mind flicks back
and screams in blood
because there is
numbers written
on my grave
and I fear
the day
that I forget
my name

So fresh the pain
The words clog my fingertips
So new the wound
I can barely stomach anything
A challenge, fine reader
For a knight like you
To find the words, to express
Your deepest pool of loneliness
I can't, but feel, the words that flow
So brutish in their relentless fury
Today is not the day to speak them
All I feel is untapped power

My suspicious brain is counting faults again
Like time, that ticks, so thick and true
I can count on my silly brain, and you
The twisted truth that haunts my glow
I am the oldest antidote
That lingers in my own flesh and blood
Litter lips, frittered love

she's crawled back through the thin film of my skull
the fleshy thoughts made from home
and once
back when sun was smiles
when history writ itself for miles
and I could sing like divine treatises
I'd held her hand, our fingertips like petal lips
and now
all black, and blue, and cold
my shivered heart
my hungry wolfish brain
it starves for that from whence it came
and I picture, my beauty, my oldest soul
the moon burrowed beneath my skin
the sun, bright, and silken, and harsh
that had told me words I'd feared so oft
I remember my last year's love
and now
the only way we touch
through memory and old sentiments
I'll wait as long as she'll let me
until the pain
consumes
us both

Down in the belly of my beast
I slit my eyes
I key my teeth
Sharp, and thick, and fat, and creep
The walls are gum
Fade, and sluice, and slither on
My shoulders rise in prowling stance
I court the darkness for a dance
And whisper not, the final kin
For words are valueless
To the lost ilks of murk
And their leaded dogs

Body thrums
A housed hive
Fingers climb
Sky's light

Under the moonlit stage
a stagnant rhythm plays
and my tiger hears the call
folding out his teeth
and I luck the words I know
and this pulsing fury grows
until all sound is shouts
all heard and left unremarked
I am the tiger in the dark

I am a reckless writer
I plan no poems
I throw myself
violent
hardy
head-first into the words
as the world roars around me
let them consume me
let my mind run

Poems can't hold the pounds of words I want to spill
It's absorbed all the linguists it can take by now
I've got nothing left, nothing good
My gums hurt, my beds hotly humid,
I'm weighed down, the rage has abandoned me once more,
I can't cope like this, when even my coping tastes like defeat.

I stay home and sty my own attempts to leave
I'm out on a mission to block all the exits
like the opposite of a safety sergeant
and the flames are crawling up the walls
like assassins in their pitch black suits of night
and I can't breathe in this air while I'm burning my own mask.

I swallowed my tongue
but I didn't choke down

Seagulls whispered their prayers
in that funny chip-stealing way of theirs
those opposite eyes
and burning beaks
they flew me down

I took the ocean
one swing, gone
I burned it to the ground
and although that seems fake
everything does these days

I'd wish my life away if I knew how,
just click,
hands poised,
world already spun,
all the hard bits over with.

The story,
imprinted like carved stone.

I've seen this in eyes at school,
in reflected minds,
the symptoms,
the wrongness,
the drowning deaths,
so delicate like bird-bones.

I know all the phrases off by heart,
all the warning signs,
the hair that grows like fields of grass,
the concave skull, the carved out eyes,
the numbers, ticking on and on.

Just because I've read the book doesn't mean I can't stop myself.

I still want to be the protagonist,
and it hurts,
it will hurt more,
but I'm a ****** for making problems
to solve
and I can't quite swallow
how long it'll take to bounce
when I hit the ground
running.

The years we've known together,
they linger on, like words we've held in.

Reality lived up to standards I'd set only in dreams,
That conversation,
So long that we were scared to sleep,
and wake,
and never speak again.

In the hidden cracks that night-time holds,
we held the same secret
in entwined hands
and I knew you too had seen
my own enemy

A startled sensation
that travels,
skates and skimps and scampers
all the way from my bones,
to muscles,
to the freckles of my goosebumps.

What misery it is to be understood,
to finally speak aloud your darkest calling,
to be in that finest, closest embrace,

and then reflect,
a month later,
in the chill of night,

It didn't make a difference, after all.

A lie,
I say,
unwonted.

Iconoclast to
my own
stability.

I wish
I knew
when the
fire
reached my
own
fingers.

I wish
I knew
the smell
of
burnt
flesh.

I am
watching myself
tied to this
vengeful stake
and clapping,
slowly,
almost realising,
that I am
the
match.

It is a sad realisation
when you remember
that you are perfectly capable
of extraordinary talents

I ring this bell
today, and forever
and I come to the door
but I do not let myself in

It is a sharp pain
stab-like
intense and
unaccountable

The boiling bubbles over
A crow taunts from silken skies
I SCREAM outwards
shockwaves trembling at their own forces

But it is a pithy pain
an instant retreat
the anger fizzles like steam smothered by rain
I smell the indolent petrichor
this after-taste of after-rain
and the doleful waking death returns
a smooth decent to sleep beneath the flames
the choked-throat ash

I am the biblioklept of my own diary
and as I scour the stolen words,
I cry,
because I do not recognise their meanings
the one limpid fury has dimmed
to such dolour and that all colour is sapped
and the world, painted in shades of grey
in its own dilatory helpfulness
does not bother to weep for me, either

I reify this idea of living
as if life is actually a moving form
but in these bewitched static seconds
of frightened rage to doused sorrow
I see the blackness between the stars
and the finite that lingers in the infiinite's wings
like a shard between ribs of steel

and I recall
in my words of fulsome wisdom
that even steel one day melts
and only but rubble can remain

Stoke the fire,
Fan the flames,
Our burning souls,
Should never dim,
If those who heard,
Did see their Grim.

Fellow warriors,
I hope to see you here,
in breath,
and pulse,
once more,
before I see you in Valhalla.

The prize,
you see,
could be merriment,
could be sanity,
is a worthy banquet,
and I do pray,
that you do fight,
to live,
another day.

Carmine
a flash flood of liquor
hacking coughs
and haunted head injuries

Let me sleep
honey
honey
saccharine, I don't care
just let my eyes close
and mind click down to a dull din

I can hear your thoughts
the walls
the clock
ants, running, running
I am the centre of a hivemind
buzz, buzz

I pour the contents of my heart's whim onto paper
it shrivels with fear
beating like the chittering teeth of a freezing Eskimo
I poke it,
ever cautious,
with a long pointed stick
It shudders
flinches
jumps five whole feet
as if struck by lightning
I decide to replace the poor hairy beast
opening up my chest,
reconnecting all the loose wires,
and closing the whiny mechanical door.
The hinges squeal like hungry piglets
I burp, and say, "Ah, s'just heartburn."

Jammed
like the last clean place in the dishwasher
like the ugly foot on your war-paint totem pole
like the mollusc meets mantelpiece decoration stuck on your windowsill
Snow drifts
as fine as the combed hair on your head
sweeter than sugar
more damning than dandruff
as hard as the head of a coconut which you
hit, again and again, with the **** end of a hammer
Bang. Bang. Bang.

The sound jars
on the off beat
sounds like mars
meets
penguin feet
but you dance
caught
in the headlights
in the sway
you're your own one man James Bond villain
and you love to watch the spotlight flicker to dusk
and the end credits to roll
with that tune,
stuck
jammed
twisted like the rusty end of a bagel knife
into the rusty end of your brain case

Ba dum dum, ba dum dum
feel it
in your feet

ba dum dum, ba dum dum
we'll never know
when we might again
meet.

indefatigable
they say there is a wall
tall and strong
with thrall and throng
and every single being
who breathes and beats the breast of Mother Earth
will hit this wall
and they say
voices reaching crescendo
strangling clinging notes
of condensation
that the wall is just a pounding fist away
that your hand, bleeding and bruised,
black and blue and all the colours of the rainbow
needs
NEEDS
to pass through this wall
and emerge
in genesis
a new born being
from the slippery tunnel of a brick womb
hair crusted with clay
eyes closed with brimstone
mouth choked with dust

what they never told me
was how many bones
were broken in building that wall
how many bodies we buried
beneath the gravestone of our wall
how many bonfires lashed out
how many beatings we took
clambering over
digging under
pounding through
how many fingers I cracked in my wrist
a shattered screaming withered skeleton
begging soundlessly for the wall to let me in

and what was past the wall?

rocked world
closed eyes
battle beat
broken sigh
mountainous drop
lady luck

capriciously switching the channel
left, right
right, right
left, right,
left, right,

the dull din of an ache we cannot suppress
it isn't hunger - that's already solved
we are all listless idle beings in the vacuum of excess
No, it tastes like fury
rising up like a single cloying voice in a night of thin breath
the lungs rattle like maracas
it sounds like music, a single note, a dull thud
sing, says the rising tension
dance, it taunts, even though it knows you've left your land legs behind
you can't walk in a world so uneven, all you've learnt is stumbling in the guise of fluid steps
it's a tango, truly
play the part
fake it 'til you make it

You like this switching,
left, right,
foot, wrist
sleep, death
an open sea, a dusty field
production and consumption,
the pinwheel rattles like your skeleton's breath and you howl at the moon,
it wanes now, but you know it longs to grow fat and plump once more
it can never decide, just like you, always growing, shrinking, gasping, inhaling, sleeping... sleeping...
Not sleeping never wins, for you always sleep in the end,
your time awake just waits for your eyes to blacken
asleep, you dream without limit, time slips away

left, right
open, shut

butterfly shells
clipped wings
the ocean curls and crashes
beyond the reef
I umbrella-shade my eyes
cast shadows over overhead sunlight
the glimmer blinds
so prettily
and I swallow all contention
like sand-crusted fried food
It's a kind day at the beach
the clouds grace us with their presence
and I spit out my insurrection, my envy
of such shrouded calm
wafts of cloud, like pink bubbly fairy floss
so sweetly
like a wind-cuffed boat
choked by destiny
we watch the sun bathe down into the ocean
submerged bleeding orange into an obsidian eye, a pearl of blue
don't say I didn't warn you, says the storm
rumbling, grumbling,
toiling and boiling
I've been on this horizon all my life, it growls
little more than petulant lightning
I've never trusted thunder
all bark and no bite
but I believe in this shark-storm if only for the palate of streaked colour
the sky is a wanting canvas
my eyes are needy spectators
the soggy chips are artesian entrees
and the butterfly clips refuse to mount and swoon
So
the recipe is baked; a perfect storm
a pointed knife, carved cataclysm
a catchechism of the repentant earth
we only see the sun sleep
when it knows it's been bad.

a whisker of tinsel
the smoked pine of Christmas
old uncle Noel is knocking on our door
so we
hop
skip
and
high jump
out the window
we are the grinches of our own celebration
burn the tree to ashen cinders
douse the smoulders in old egg nog
shout obscenery over the joyous celebration
family removal day
boxing day, ever a day early

It is the double skipped heart beat on the record player,
I repeat (repeat)
the stutter of life,
the chitter of teeth,
we're cold but the burn is so heavenly.

A fall from grace,
big wide plastic lenses
that frame the face 360 degrees
angelic, is one name for it
dweeby, another
I love the mathematician hidden in your briefcase
I like to open it up at inopportune moments
and let myself bathe in the light

You're a 'yes' man,
an optimistic optometrist,
helps me see who I want to be,
(yes man, yes, man)
Long lion's mane that plummets
and tugs on heart strings
I always was an accompaniment
to your instrumental
I long for the day that
your stiff collared ape-father
lets you palm the pulsating heart beat of
an electric guitar once more

Take the strings out of the boy
he's no longer a puppet
but the song plays on
(yes, man, harmony)

halt your magic wiles
I am easily forgotten in your smiles
every time we speak I lose capacity
but I cannot forgo such electricity
I wish we were forever
and I wish I had a chance
I know anything is possible
at a hidden glance
But we live not in a fairytale
and I am not your prince
so maybe it's impossible
to hold your heart through since

the precarious paper pile
builds up
I see the precipice shudder
in uncertainty
my gut lurches
pulled by gravity and
terror
will I drown
in my
mountain
of work?

I am the swamp
viscous and visceral
my mind flooded with clogged thought
slow, I walk
slower, I change
this curled vine ever slow in its
strangulation
the swamp, a table mat of a face
dinner on my bones
breakfast at my fate
I kiss you, swamp-like
the frog's poisoned lips taste potent
and your smile, so green
it reminds me of my own flesh.

je suis venue au bout de ma rue,
et ce n'etait pas ce que je voudrais
n'etait pas ce que je voudrais etre

tous le monde,
ou sont-ils?
sur la rue de la vie
pour tojours