Taliesin

Taliesin Dec 2018

See them go..
A million suicidal shamblers, staring out
Hatred and beauty and dilated eyes
And long hair punks waiting for a revolution that will save them. United in disunity, calmed by deaths and shocked by wonders of medicine
Cool and collected, lost and dyslexic
They wonder at the halogen lights and stare at extinguished candles
Catching at the edge of their sight a whiff of angel-smoke
How many were cast out and how many ran
To this mecca, this eden, this dying heaven
Filled with the dead? Who knows
They are the ones who wander in daylight through the city square
Swigging red wine and chanting obscene hymns
Naked millennial drag kings of all they survey
living in art deco flats, old factories and empty rooms
they lie awake and listening to the shunting streets outside
and the symphony of buskers on the corner.
They love each other in wild ******
Dancing to rhythms stolen from slave songs
Screaming, bellies full of claret
And brassic basic dysphoric cravings they writhe and fall
And hum against each others’ bodies
Drawing knives along each others’ veins
And hope,
Frozen,
Waiting for the revolution.

That will save them.

#people #drinking #poverty #artists #lgbt

Taliesin Dec 2018

The Welcome News

The night is still and the house is bathed in silence
Warm orange glow glides from lamp to lamp
She has set there on the couch, hugging her knees
For days now
The sun, as it passed, saw her there
At least twice now
Immobile, she breathes
And the house breathes with her
A letter sits, envelope jaggedly ripped open
A letter she knows so well
She could trace every one of the paper’s fibres
Plot each one of them to their end,
and read from the ridges of ink that dart its tundra
And yet
she could not tell you every word
“We regret to inform you”
“In his sleep”
And the rest is sand on a desert wind.
The words, though few, leave their mark
Purple bruises that blush each cheek
And a churning sickness in her gut.
Soon the flies will descend,
He will rot on the paper in front of her
Turn into an idle thought
Castrated by the healing wounds
But now she weeps for her defeat.
He knew you see,
It was nothing but one last last word
One last fight
One last calculated tear
All before she had the chance
To finally see him die

#abuse #death #parents

Taliesin Dec 2018

Tribute To The Beats

I’m obsessed with a guy.
He’d pay for a chance to sing the blues.
Just a taste of that weary hard-bitten life.
Just a taste of the pain and heartbreak and grief.
Just a taste mind you.

Nothing more.

I’m obsessed with the martyrs
that strut to and fro fearing only death,
and taxes,
and those ****…
What do you call them?
Vagrants,
that’s it
that strut to and fro fearing only death.

I’m obsessed with the vagrants.
Going into the world with so much honesty.
With mad religions screeching, seeing Doom and Death and Capital.
With mad songs of ****** and Sunlight, Rain and Drink and ******.
And mad poems, pages long, that howl into the darkness.
I heard them sing electric carols at the railway station,
and concrete O’ Fortunas on the bridge.
I heard them play on their leaf-spring guitars the mocking rhythm
of the groaning streets
that echoes in the mind for all of its humour.
For all of its tragedy.

And I’m obsessed with the poets that dreamt
and dared to stop dreaming.
And laid themselves down into spiral notebooks
and were cast in stone above their alma maters
silent forevermore.

#time #death #remembrance #people #lies #poetry

— The End —