Behold! The agony of love,
Hidden through receipts
In the leather folds of
Pocketed wallets, and
Phantom habits exposed
In ordinary scenes,
Perhaps
On the beachside street
Where
The wind took lead
And all bare witness
To blossoms in Spring.

Do I let the praying man wither?
His eyes so eager in
A holy begging manner.
Strapped
To the streets, afraid
To dare ask the pretend
Upper class for
A passing favour. On and on
He gives his lecture: ‘Behold!
The agony of woe, hold
Her from toe to toe, and
Let her know. Let her
Know’. A lesson
As hollow as his cheeks for
He knows not love, but
Alas he tells truth
Of life perhaps.

Behold! The agony of life,
Begging me to ponder:
‘Do I waver?’
and ‘Do I waver?’
In the face of love.
Do I seek equity
From up above? Or
Shall I trudge ever on
With my naive heart, and
Veteran laugh? Oh,
Shall I linger?

No! For
Life and love
Lay dormant
At
The edge of every smile
And in the canyons
Between stale fingers
Where lovers
Once rest, or perhaps
In the words
That come knocking
When we fail to see the door
Momentarily ahead.  

A door hidden on every street,
Packed away beside
The royal garden gate, guarding
The statue of Victoria Royal.
(That statue. That statue.)
She gathers gazing looks,
And men stumble upon her
Shouting profanities, and
Lurking behind her
Great shadow.
To us, she is a mere
Conversation
On our walk home from
The old Gladstone, where
You plead me
To think, and
On I sink,
And on I sink.

(And on, and on.)

And on I waver, and on
I waver; but the
Face is anew, and we
Trudge forward -
Ever braver.

Grass grows occasionally in
These stone-ladened
City streets, crawling
Out of the laboured pavements, and
Residing for a mere
Moment before we point our gluttonous claws, and
Take on
The role of accuser; shaming nature
For their abstinence.
We no longer want their verdant wealth, now
We favour more precious things; an array of
False saviours, endless labour and
Self-diagnosed health.
When the natural order of things
Crept away, we were mistaken.
Alas, the world
Was ready to forgive.
Persistent
To grow, and live.
But we failed the world, when
We blamed the world. When
We blamed the world. When
We blamed the world.
(The world has turned rough)

A grey existence with an
Absent landscape, removed
Of the abstract and joy that once
Mothered life and love.

What have you become in this hollow space,
You were once somebody,
Once something
But now,
Your words are nothing,
And your face yields nobody.
A sunken man, a man so grated
He has abandoned the joys
Of
Wandering, and
Instead taken sweeter to whining; “why me”
And “why me”.
But these concerns
Never slip from his flakey slim lips, rather
They tumble and tumble
In his heavy limbered skull,
Rattling into one another
Like cheap cream chinos upon a white apron,
Resting and soaked
At the street corner laundrette. Never to dry.
Never to dry.
Emptier
than his pockets. And
Looser than the screws clasped to his spectacle frames.
The lenses are slipping. Vision is ending.
Words are nothing.
And so, passion ceases
As
The walls
Squeeze the last wonder from his
Breath; “why me” and “why us” - “Why do the stars
Dare to shine”.
Alas,
The universe lays gormless, and
Relishes in its own undisputed silence.

Behold! The agony of love,
Hidden through receipts
In the leather folds of
Pocketed wallets, and
Phantom habits exposed
In ordinary scenes,
Perhaps
On the beachside street
Where
The wind took lead
And all bare witness
To blossoms in Spring.

Behold! The agony of life,
Begging me to ponder:
Do I waver?
and do I waver?
In the face of love.
Do I seek equity
From up above? Or
Shall I trudge ever on
With my naive heart, and
Veteran laugh? Oh,
Shall I linger?

No -
Life and love
Lay dormant
At
The edge of every smile
And in the canyons
Between stale fingers
Where lovers
Once rest, or perhaps
In the words
That come knocking
When we fail to see the door
Momentarily ahead.  

And on I waver, and on
I waver; but the
Face is anew, and we
Trudge forward -
Ever braver.

Behold! The agony of love,
Relished through receipts
Hidden
In the leather folds of
Pocketed wallets, and
Phantom habits exposed
In ordinary scenes,
Perhaps
On the beachside street
Where
The wind took control
And all witnessed
Blossoms in Spring.

Behold! The agony of love,
Laying dormant
At
The edge of every smile, and
In the gaps
Between stationery fingers
Where others
Once lay, or perhaps
In the words
That come knocking
When we fail to see the door
Ourselves.  

Behold! The agony of love,
Leaving you at a ponder,
Do I waver?
Do I waver?
In the face of love. Or
Shall I trudge ever on
With my naive heart, and
Veteran grasp?

And so I waver, and so
I waver; but the
Face is anew, and we
Trudge on.

And now come the other men,
The figurines, the foragers
And those who marched
Onward
By the failed evergreen. They
Speak of war grown days,
And times before the land
Was tore. Their voices
Shrouded
By one anothers’ patience, and
Each man carried his scars,
Cradled,
In their shadowed
Limblike arms, they bore
Tear marks
Printed
On their gormless
Salty cheeks, and
Under their heavy
Sullen eyes
Paraded gashes
And stains
Of crimson and bleak.

And now come the other men,
Out of the ovens, rushing
For some safer housing.
It’s all a conundrum, this
Waiting and wavering, an
Uncertainty
Mounted across a ditch
Of slightly burnt
Flesh, men mashed
Into one.

And now come the other men,
An identity shared
Between friends, who bask
In the untimely forgery
Of their postured
end.

The half-moon approaches
and mounts the great
charcoal sky,
showing the distant
town’s men
why she rules
the day’s end, she
silences the tide,  
allowing
the boat keeper
to reel in the line,
dragging
his weight closer
to
the land’s edge,
straining
his heavy worked
limbs, he catches
the wooden
sea-scarred masses,
stretched out
across the rim
of the
empty bay.