On Cabbage Mound the birds tweet gold,
So says the porridge eating man,
The spontaneous trek up that grassy reserve
(To see the flocks and frolics of finches conversing)
It’s a matter of season he said,
In joyous spring they produce song of glitter, but
Catch them under the wave of a solemn winter
And you shall only hear a dull twitter.

Often he leaves bowls of porridge upon that place,
Abandoned to absorb the view,
Wilting amoungst the bush and flora,
Like a planted trap for the lurking fauna,
Their ceramic bodies sit unnoticed and unaware,
Soaking in the sunrises and
Mourning the day’s ending
When the sun crawls under the horizon.

Early dawn conversations leak
From the finches’ rookeries,
Where they dwell cooped up
Amoungst feather and trinket,
Their endless nattering awakens the sun,
Coercing it to rise, and
Bleaching the ground in tints of orange.

A breakfast awaits them
Outside their homes
Of woven branches and loose fur;
Berries and scattered delicacies
(From the Sunday morning ramblers),
And perhaps a touch of porridge too.
They bury their beaks into the thick pools
Of weathered oatmeal,
And perpetually pick at plastic wrappings
Until their brandished beaks begin to go blunt and sore,
A monotonous task even for an eager flock,
But they never end their labour without reward.

After breakfast,
The porridge eating man
(With porridge in hand) arrives,
He approaches with a staggered limp,
Perhaps a scar from some late night disagreement,
He approaches holding his lower left limb,
The finches have come to learn his routine.

First he stops (whether to take in the view
Or to rest from the trudge up Cabbage Mound,
The birds have not yet asked),
Second he takes out a package
From his right pocket,
He undresses the wrapping
And produces a small pad of paper,
A pen follows, signifying
The start of settled concentration:
Strings of ink,
Intertwining lines and shapes,
Letters touching letters,
Forming meaning and breeding words,
A sharp coo startles the man,
Breaking his focus, and anchoring
Him back to sobriety,
Finally he disembarks from Cabbage Mound,
Turning his back to feathered insight
And slowly sinking behind the hill,
A bowl of porridge takes his place,
And so, it shall stay
Until the finches start to natter
And their hunger begins to ache.

Through the drawn kitchen blind lurks a hand
Resting upon the island mantelpiece
Where a deserted ham resides.
The hand extends from the crippled man’s gaze
And he simply seizes the ham, traversing the kitchen maze.
He takes the ham to the second stair.
Here is where he retires - the second stair
Is where the deserted ham and crippled man shall expire.
Where man becomes ham but retains his crippling attire, and
Ham becomes man staying lost and yet still desired.

Heaven would be naive to willingly believe that this,
This strange analogy, is indeed about a ham and a mere man.
Rather, a man is nothing but a mere ham.
His life begins as someone else, perhaps a pink perfumed piglet.
Born into mud and stuffed to the brim with dirt laced love.
A ham, like man, comes from a humble and simple dawn but is
Swiftly thrown into a larger lie or a shortcrust pie.
A lie of paradise and quiet, a pie of mustard and thyme.
We, like the ham, are ripped from our genesis
And forced to be something sublime.
Something needed,
And something that never gets the time to bleed.

Man is to be consumed just like the solemn ham.
We are sold as ideas and ideals. And never separated
From those very same stale ideals and ideas.
We are what we conceive and we conceive what others
Wish us to be; never do we truly conceive our own reality.
And often we will wait aimlessly, not at the kitchen side,
But by the side of our lovers and others.
The resting ham sits in its juices, taking in the rosemary
And amber, sticky honey.
Man also sits in an array of flavour; tastes of dark thoughts,
Fleeting romance and persistent boredom.
We soak up our own shortcomings and we leak out all and any
Chances to not be eaten.

Man is devoured not by others but by reason.
The very tool we use to debate, learn and
Understand the ever changing seasons.
But what of the ham? The deserted tasty ham.
Well, it like man, is either shovelled into a waiting gut or
Left out to rot, and befriend dust.
Never to decide when they cease, but both
Are destined for the grave nonetheless.
What has left the man crippled and the ham deserted?
The realisation that man and ham are the same.
Man leaves the ham to rot
On the kitchen counter top, sending it to be removed
From the world. Never to be consumed. Never to be consumed.
Man’s neglect of the ham is a neglect of connection,
Man has crippled himself in hopes to remove association.

And so, the crippled man
Extends his hand in hopes
To regain the deserted ham.

You wear this crown of miseries
  not on your head
  but deep inside your memories

soon,  

  it will find you again
  in a bleak coronation
  to welcome your reign.

All-knowing am I
Of the privilege that comes
With being a son, entangled
In his Mother’s love,

And that, (He wishes
You to know)

Is more than enough.

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.

Down on the sun-bleached ground, treads a white wolf. Prowling
At the river bank, and seizing the land in which
He has left a deep dent. There is nothing left
In the streams, for they are no longer flowing
Like before. Destined by the bark and branch blockade
Perched at the river’s start. The water has fled, taking
The greenery and mirth away, bleeding out in dread.
The white wolf stares longingly now, hoping
Life forgives his abhorrent and
Disgraced growls.
But he forgets in this moment, that
His great biting jaw is to blame for the depressed landscape
Torn at the base of his grand griping paws.
His scent lurks in the hollow openings of trees, and loose fur
Lingers atop of sullen bushes like a covering
Of thin March snow. He has no say in what should be done now.
And like his distressed whimpering howl, he
Is thrown into the endless nights
Of this soon dying world.
Alas!
When white wolves walk, the skies
Sell their freedom.
When white wolves walk, trees sink
Into their soiled beds.
When white wolves walk, rivers
Stitch their mouths shut.
When the white wolf runs, the world
Is blinked into chaos.
And we
Must answer.
And we must answer.
They have left the earth asunder.
And we -
We must be better.

Old man Oxford, plump
and merry in shape
and glee, a professor
of all things written
and green, his friends,
wooden and tall,
endowed him a pipe
of oaken skin, gilded
in bark and mirth, and
with this gift, he
smoked their leaves
and painted tales
of wondrous things,
each puff and ember
smithed his words,
carrying his thoughts
up high, where they
ventured in the golden
glitter of the sky, and
onto pages, forever,
in our minds, so,
thank you kind Tollers,
for you are the treasure
at the start of this
adventure.

Oh Ikelos, thief of my dreams
Steal from me not the night
For I hope of loving schemes
And an all so beauteous sight,

Long have you napped
Under the blanket of the moon,
Until the curtains cracked
Reprising the mournful noon,

So forfeit this draining rise:
An all avenging burden
Upon your somber eyes
That linger amoung the curtain,

Oh, sink into the muse
Of Nyx’s design
So that your waking blues
May surrender, and resign.

“Bountiful
            Beauty”
broken
         beaten
burnt
         by
badly
          behaved
  boys
           bearing
  burly
               bodies
brusquely
                  built
             by
                “Boisterous  
      Benevolence”.

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 noise of the cavalry was muffled by the rhythm of the crows
Cawing, they bellowed their demands, until silence
Betray the gathered armies, and the men began towing
The foreign rocks, heavy they were, scrapping the last of the lavender
From the earth. Those in protest formed a crust
That lined the crown of the castle walls, there will be no violence

Today, nor tomorrow or the next for the wives have had enough of violence
And the birdsongs have never sounded so bitter, these crows
That perch in the woven branches of the castle woods eat nothing but the crust
From shattered honeypots. Often they screech out in pain, but it is all silence
Lately for they have been soothed by the refugees of lavender
That squat in their nests. But it won’t last, for the men have started towing

Again; great metal ladders in hopes to infect their havens, men towing
Their aggression like a mere pebble in their pockets. They are cemented in violence
Like the calf to the ******, and the wife who lathers the scent of lavender
Into her hair. But not all things are so natural and sweet. The crows
Have had their heritage destroyed, they no longer follow the universe, silence
Has become permanence, just like how their rookeries have formed the crust

Upon their enemy’s world. So damp and hollow their homes have become like a crust
Of saliva upon the bathroom sink, alas there is no time to repair, for the men are towing
Again; rocks, ladders and now fallen oaks - dragging earth up as they trudge. There is silence
Before the breach, a moment of purgatory before the deafening violence
Ensues. There are no caws from the guarded rookeries, the crows
Have decided to sleep through revolution, huddled among their lavender

That will soon be found in the knotted hair of widows, the stench of lavender
Shall waft through the winds of grief, as the priest gives counsel to the fresh crust
Of tears found under the eyes of thousands. It is over now and the crows
Have come to pay their respects, they caw at the men who are towing
The tombstones of lives that never blossomed, each one reads: “there will be no more violence
Today, nor tomorrow or the next.”. And life shall proceed only with silence.

For awhile it may all persist, silence
Is king and the woods that hug the castle walls are growing lavender
Again. The treaty is kept and the cloak of violence
Is hung up neatly next to the crown, waiting for the crust
Of peace to be vanquished. It is the wives now who spend their days towing
The labour of the land; weaving seeds and chatting to the crows.

Alas, it does not take long for violence to mature, and for the silence
To pitter off. The crows have buried themselves, taking all the lavender
With them. The men are towing again and all that is left is a broken crust.

Lately i’ve been enjoying the eastside
Of the beach, to the left of the pier,
A mile or two down
Where the people are sparse and
The stones seem plentier, it’s
All so much prettier there.

Dotted about
The seagulls are at rest, cooped up
Into a nest of equilibrium
Between earth and sea, I
Have found myself mimicking
These coastal fiends, as I too perch
Onto the world and wait
But unlike these natives I do not
Know what I wait for.

The sound of authenticity
Hurries along the downtime,
Of late Lennon has found
Himself in my ear
But I do not think he knows
Why he arrived here, and
I do not think I have the
Means to tell him.

This place where I sit, this
Man-made beast wedged
Between two crowds
Of pebbles and weeds, this
Place is where i’ve found
Resonance with time
And all her happenings,
Where I go to watch the
World function as she should.

Middle aged men find
Themselves stripped down and
Engrossed in the cold waters, I
Am in awe of the freedom
They exhibit and
I wonder if they know
Their limits ? There
Is beauty in their playfulness,
For a brief moment
They revert to innocence,
I do not think they came
To impress me but alas
They make me laugh,
Something even the waves
Have failed in recently.

And in these waves,
Waves on the brink of winter
That foam the edges
Of my shoes and spit
Salt and purity at my face,
These waves carry
The sound of a girl
Who cried wolf, I fear
This is only my reflection,
Fragmented between
The ripples, alas
The sea does not stop
For me to ask questions.

Time dances along, maybe it
Is her I see in the ebb and flow
Of the emerging tide ? Or maybe
She lingers in the man
Who owns the red kayak, he’s
Only a few metres from where I sit
But his mind is far off, I wonder
Where he wishes he could be, I
Do not think it is France, for that
Place is much too far, and
I do not wish him to stay in his
Kayak for much longer, but
That does not seem to be
An option.

And the girl will cry wolf, perhaps
This fact of life is why
I find myself glued to
The beach on the eastside and
Not with the free minds
To the right of the pier, perhaps
This is why I grow older
With each visit and why
The middle aged men
Have found their
Youth again.

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.

Will you sit with me in March?
And wait for the haze to pass. Let us sit
By
The abandoned bandstand and upon the
Trimmed patch of grass
Where you once bravely
Asked,

‘Where ought we stare when the postman
Stands by the door and
Lingers there for far too long?’

I digress.
And I digress.
Conversations are empty lately, they
Have taken the form of the streets;
Empty but filled with crass souls, wandering
For a place to buy sea shells.
Seemingly an innocent task and yet so pointless
To ordinary folk.
I hope.
And I hope
That these men, these hollow skulled men, find
Delight in the barren streets,
Like a treat
After a numb month’s labour.
I speak.
And I speak.
‘Hold me to these streets, where men once worked
By the arching lamp post and the
Abandoned home of the
Holy ghost.’

Will you come and walk in May?
When the birds
Scramble on the park floor
As if to bluntly say
We are rather dull and
Dire in the way
We walk and
Play.

I am aching and grey.
And I am aching and grey.
Do a man a favour, and
Refrain - please
Do not stay.

Let my hair turn dry and grey, and
Let my
Age fade away. Please
Do not stay.
I have talked with the doctor, and they
Often say
That I will be
Okay for today and perhaps
Tomorrow I will not. Alas!
All people will
Decay. And
Minds never stay
The same type of sane.
Hearts
Will often sway and sway.
And death yields no delay, it comes
When it ends, and starts
When it comes. Whether
Young or almost done.
The fun will cease, often
On that empty street
Where crass men wander, or
By the postman who
Happily lingers.

Will you embrace me in November?
Where my limbs are weak, and limber.
Where the bandstand singer has
Moved on to some place bigger.
Will you let me go in December?
Say yes, and please
Remember, that we both surrendered.
Let us spend this time
In slumber, so we can find some kind
Of splendour once the streets
Begin to busy again.

Trapped now are we,
Encaged behind the curtains
Like rogue hares traversing
The winding canyons
Of travellers’ dreams,

Hares that beat the dust
Beneath their tired feet
And hares who do not lust
For grass beyond their reach,

Hares beating dust
Into the slits
Of sabbatic sheets,

Dust that sits
And dust that seeps
Into the wilted corpses
Of knackered beasts,

And now, those hares,
They look upon me -
A silence lost
In our final dreams.

I have yet to face the mirror
And ask to grow old
So, how should I begin?

Begin wilting into a vintage skin:
Gaunt, creased and thin
Like the last sinking snow
Of a hushed winter.

And what of my hair?
Whiskers that once
Gathered as a forest:
Wild, viscous
And well-nourished
But now snipped
To the skin,

So, should I now begin?

Shall I face the staring mirror
And sing in a whisper;

“Can I yet grow old? Oh,
Let me shrink into the earth
As I exhaust and go bald,
And let me age into a smile
That no longer holds mirth.”,

So, should I offer
My permission?

And throw my voice
Into the reflection
And patiently listen.

She dances in the dark spots
Between the street lights, like
A patient drunkenly twitching
Before an operation,  

There is but a lick of anxiety
In her performance, deprived
Is she by her cruel audience, but
To their defence
They are merely the empty foliage
That sit on each side of the city lane,
Like shadowed guards
Who gleefully imprison her in chains,

Where will she go
After the moon retires and
The trees offer her the key ?

Perhaps, she will follow the stray cat
Down the dimly painted alley, will
She give in to the ***** feline, who  
Beckons her with a fickle whine
And who stares obtusely
With such precise baby-doll eyes,

Or will she simply sink
Into the leaf smothered ground,
Face anchored and stitched
To the pavement, her beauty
Famished and her heart envious
Of the four-pawed beast
Who now dances on her corpse.

The trenches are callin’ again, trenches
That run alongside the country roads
Like disgruntled pups trackin’
The stench of desertin’ fowls,

These roads are now scuppered,
Littered with wailin’ canyons
Where rodents linger
To escape the gammy claws
That stir our last supper,

A supper that rudely stiffens
Like the mud upon a boot: brittle
And forgotten, uneven
And absolute,

And what of the smell?
The smell that comes
With the mud upon our boots:
It wafts into the trenches
Lickin’ our cracked irises, and
Stainin’ our grubby suits,

A stingin’ smell that paints
Our stomachs black, and
Sends boys to the dummy Saints
Who are teased at the plaque,

And yet, this abhorrent stench
Is only a pungent memory,
Much more dire stains
Await us over the rim, a rim
Emblazoned with thicket chains
And a bramble corpse, warnin’
The juveniles not to rush
The country walk.

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.

I was young,
I was young
And now I do not remember
The fear that was sung;
Anthems of war
And anthems of youth,

Whispers of the guns
And laughter in the shells;
The duty of the young
Pierces our lungs
And sovereignty leaks out.

Oh, what is youth?
What come before the worm
When all that surrounds
Is a castle of dirt
And the stench of empire,

Empire dying
Not in the flame
But in its own dense mould,

And what of pain?
The instant clench of the stomach
As foreign clouds
Pollute our frowning muzzles.

What then of youth?
What then of youth?

It is as fragile
As the blue blooded truth.

Beyond the violet and violence, through the hole in the heap
Dwells men of fierce histories and stone conditionings, there
They sit in circle and misery, holding guilt close
To their ears and parting with their own ditch-dipped words.
Collections of tragedies and schools of morose mentalities
Dance in the middle of the room, speaking down on eachother;
Most likely an attempt to impress Mother and to scold Father.
They don’t get very far, these talks, rather
They end further down the ladder than when they commenced -
Two rungs down and the heavy tattooed butcher man
Sinks two quarter-full whiskies to help him find his bed.
Five rungs down and the spanner wielding skinny man
Calls up a number to haunt unpaid listeners with what he said.
Nine rungs down and the privileged uni boy
Smokes batons of magic leaf until his eyes are painted red.
This is where the stories end,
Those Who fell past rung nine
Are no longer falling and alive.
One rung up and the naive boat keeping man
Tells his wife he’s feeling better but out of luck.
One rung down and the naive boat keeping man
Tells his wife he’s feeling worse but rather proud.
The ladder stands tall and overarching
At the ‘dried out men’ meetings,
It’s the only one that keeps its posture
And never falls under -  
Perhaps one day it will falter
And the men will see
That they are more than just
A rusting rung on a ladder.

The cobbled roads
Are bestowed with toppled leaves,
A verdant dressing that lathers the lanes
Of old Warfield, a warning
To you and me, that these
Estranged lanes are fragments
Of a greater majesty;
The venerable body
Of old Warfield, and

Are you one who rambles?
One who marches
In the bitter spit
Of frozen streams, and
One who claws at the hedges
For famished berries
That wither into dreams,

And are you the one
That I shall take with me?

Oh, are you what
He so eloquently spoke of?  
(The song that Eliot sought)

No, you are the liberal feather
Flailing in the breeze, and
The one who
Tethers to the seeds, oh

I should have been woeful Prufrock
Confessing on the fiendish walk
Of old Warfield’s lanes.

Buskers line the lanes of Dublin
Mirroring the beer taps in the city pubs,
One by one the tourists bustle in
Like grains of rice flowing into cups,

There is a ****** out on these streets
And the marching Garda are in pursuit,
Muffling the young kestrel’s tweets
And the boys who wear butcher suits,

Bodies line the lanes of Dublin,
Cutthroat lanes brushed with blood
Where the brownnoses come rushing in -  
The watershed has burst from the flood,

For, death is sown into these streets
And life has turned quaint in defeat.

Twin doves endure the naked rookeries
Of Whitechapel, a breached stronghold
Tangled in the roots of blurred obituaries,

These birds are forerunners of old
Heartbreak. And the frosty window panes
Conceal the words that have been rolled

Into spears that pierce our seeping pains.
Oh do not speak of her: the solemn widow
Who perches drenched, staring at drains  

Wishing to ride the golden echo
Of a love she forgot to let go.

The cobbled roads
Are bestowed with toppled leaves,
A verdant dressing upon the lanes
Of old Warfield,

Perhaps a warning
To you and me, not
To follow the estranged lanes
Like the lone tractor
Teasing the outskirts
Of the wooden curtain,

Devil woods that drape  
Over her buried majesty;
The venerable body
Of old Warfield, and

Are you one who rambles?
One who marches
In the bitter spit
Of frozen streams, and
One who claws at the hedges
For famished berries
That wither into dreams,

And are you the one
That I shall take with me?

One who seeks
The bustling labour
Of vanishing bees, and
One who gawps at the larks
Who dive from
The roving rookeries,

No, you are the liberal feather
Flailing in the breeze, and
The one who
Tethers to the curves
Of falling seeds, oh

I should have been woeful Prufrock
Confessing on the fiendish walk
Until I am anchored by the knees.

Down on the green county
I tread the ramblers way

Behind the marked gate
Yes, over there
An overgrown sanctuary
Hidden from the open air

This is where I shall step
Where the sun greets the leaves
And the cows seek away
A certain quiet, found with ease

A bridge sits at either end
No water lurks beneath
Only greenery
Masked by the rotting heath

And on these trodden paths
These proven grounds
I emerge in solitude
Away from the crowds

No one can find me here
Not the farmer, nor the cows
They don't understand
They're not allowed

Often they approach
In their passive strides
Intrigued as to what
But never why

It doesn't last
This glimmer of peace
Interrupted
By foreign feet

Again, I am alone
Engulfed by it all.

Duty is a dynamic affair.
Often it is a hurricane, storming in unannounced
And breaking
Your habitual customs. Causing terror to your previously calm
Demeanor. Flying in abandoned tasks
Longing for completion, and
Trivial ordeals
Nagging for deletion.
It reminds you in its booming tone
What should have already been done, long ago.
It’s breeze carries guilt and distress, forcing
A haze of sickness upon your chest.

Duty is a dynamic affair.
Showing itself, on the occasion, through
A mere stomach ache.
A constant weight on your body, a perpetual reminder
Of what must be done.
What others demand from you.
What you demand from yourself. It will
Cry and cry into
Your fragile ladened
Insides.
Overbearing all other burdens, tearing
Away at your exhausted heavy eyes.
Bursting your gut, convincing you to bleed out
In rivers of remorse. Wishing
You paid attention sooner
To the looming business
You were too eager
To neglect.

Duty is a dynamic affair.
Waiting patiently like a
Biting snake. Hidden in the
Long tasks tangled, and grasped
Around your tilted feet.
It camouflages in shades of doubt, becoming
More and more invisible to your
Lazy fleeting sight.
It will strike when your
Mind is practicing indecision and your tongue,
Poor diction. Piercing
Your relaxed skin, numbing the rush
Of the draining venom injected
Into your blood flow. It will sit
There until you are entirely drenched
In the stench of duty satisfied.

Moonlight covers the pebbles gathered,
Soaking the shore in shade and fog, walk along
This beachfront, in sandals and white socks.
Take your toes and your feet, and embark
In the shallows of the sea, splash
And splash at the sand’s edge, until ***** and fish
Swim towards your disturbing intent,
Forgo their cares, send fish and crab skipping,
And splish and splish at the water’s end.

The mermaids are in wake, grieving their friends,
And pouring tears into the waves, they cry in song
Wallowing out loud the ocean’s fables, and
Stirring the great waters with their lurking tails,
Bubbles form where their tears have dwelled,
Carrying their grief to the surface, and popping
Once they touch where night is held, releasing
The weight from their sullen faces, and
Now the mermaids may smile again,
Their songs shift from misery to mirth, and
The moon smiles back, kissing new light
Upon the cheeks of the emerald earth.

The chain is brought back to you,
You distrbued the *****, and you disturbed
The fish, you distubured the waters.
The mermaids, they never bothered
To gaze upon your crimes, they never even
Bothered to give you their time, they sang
Not to you, but they sang for your sins, healing
What you could not, and sending
Your demons back, back to the rot and rock.

Resume your normal day, walk your dog
Along the paved waterway, and sing
Your songs of joy and hope, and hope
To settle near pebble and boat. Most things
Now make you smile, crack a smirk
To the ramblers on their Sunday travels,
Teach the postman and teach the milkman
What the mermaids have taught, show
Them the meaning of the mermaids’ song.

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.

How do I play with this
Devil-dealt hand. When
Each card ignites at the touch,
My hands have become callous
And rough
But still they are clean, indeed
They are clean. I do not care
To mend them but I admit
I worry who shall
Comfort them, if they shall
Receive comfort at all.

How then, do I proceed
Through hell, through
This brittle landscape
Forged from badluck
And prescribed
Mistakes.

Perhaps, I shall
Laugh as Dante did
When he painted
That world.

The bounders are saying that noon is coming early today,
And that we should retire before the sun is at her highest.
They tell us to lock our doors tight, and to throw away
Any desire to open them again, at least until
The bounders’ wives come knocking early the next day.
Strangely, they warn against closing our windows
Instead they state that they ought to be kept feebly ajar.

But I can’t sleep with an open window anymore.
The village doctor, who dresses in suit and tie
But likes to lie and speak rather astue, says it’s due
To some scar I acquired fighting the morally confused.

Every Wednesday, when I go to meet the ‘doc’, he
Assures me that he has some kind of qualification and
Always says not to worry about the specifics (or
His motives) as they would probably go over my head.
He starts our hour asking about the terror in the air
And the echoes of shriek-filled nights, and whether
They still remind me of that summer on the front line,
Without fail, and without remorse I always reply;

“Lovers sleep because we (the
Buoyant folk) gave our souls,
Our limbs and our speech, and
Now we live with these deep
Aches and fake laughs. These
Are what we gladly deserve”.

The words leave my mouth at a crawl, and
Take a miserable five minutes to complete.
The rest of my time at the quackery (this is what
The wife use to call it) is spent ironing
Over my other, less obvious, flaws. The doc
Says they are from much more recent wars,
And that I ought to use his miracle stock
To see if that succeeds in finding the cure.

The wife use to chuckle when I told her of my time
With the quacking man;

“More like barking mad!” she would exclaim,
Always through a snide but warm grin.

Those words always come quickly to mind
When I visit the doc, I shan’t tell him or he’d
Probably prescribe some strange empty remedy.
You see, the wife died a few years ago, not long
After my hate for open windows began. The doc
Thinks i’m over my wife’s permanent leave and
He even believes that i’ve started courting again.
I even told him once of a woman named ‘Claire’
Who would regularly visit my home to cut my hair,
And that on such an occasion we had started an affair.
The doc readily consumed this lie (reminding me
Of why the wife called him a fraud), and I sniggered
Into my elbow crease so he wouldn’t catch on.

The wife sits on the mantelpiece now, watching
Me from above the evening embers that light up
The eerie and solemn nights. I often converse
With myself, pretending the wife still listens but
I know her role was revoked from the world.
Alas, I am forced to play her part but I am afraid
There are few words left now, only mocking
Phrases for the quacking man and the barking mad.

Winter arrived on Tuesday,
She blew upon my door
And delivered a new batch
Of the flu: fit with
Waterfall nostrils, blocked
Up thoughts and
A bag of half-licked lemon
Flavoured strepsils.

I couldn’t believe my luck
When I found a sache
Of nausea too!

The kind hand chased
the loveliness from the
page, carving a path
through his chest and
filling it with rivers
brushed morose,
abstracting his vision -
but through this blur
he builds a bridge,
placing a plank for
each memory that aches
for he intends to cross
this trench in which
the loveliness left.

Down on the green county
I tread the ramblers’ way

Behind the marked gate
Yes, over there
An overgrown sanctuary

This is where I will tread
Where the sun seeps through the leaves
And where the cows hide away
Where I will go to be quiet

A bridge sits at either end
No water lurks beneath
Only greenery
Masked by the rotting wood

And on these travels
I find solitude  
Away from it all

No one can find me here
Not even the farmer
The cows don’t understand
They can’t

Often they approach
Intrigued as to what
Never why
But it doesn’t last

I am alone again
Engulfed by it all

Summer spent her last breath today,
A breath that still lingers on across the hills,
Filling spaces in between the bushes
That run parallel to the rambler’s routes,
She paints a shallow layer of verdant, kissing
Her mark upon the cheeks of the land,
An annual goodbye before she disembarks.

Autumn speaks, his spit fires off and pushes out
The thin remnants of Summer’s song, the colour
Turns flat, greens become murky, and
The shimmering glare that filtered the leaves
Now turns dull, paving the way
For yellow and rust, and joyless lungs.

Winter drowns all in glitter and white flame,
Burning the remnants of Autumn’s change,
She brings comforting dreams
To the sleeping fauna and staples
The grey flora into the tundra-like soil,
She shrinks the trees, the hills
And the grass
But alas she never lasts.

Spring comes quietly, a drastic change
But she is never boastful of the life
She brings, the blessed births
And the reformed prisoners, she
Breaks the chains of Winter, defrosting
The world and allowing colour
To return; the world is now emerald
And shall remain this way
For ninety days or so.

It’s easy to spiral these days
Trapped
In your mind-made maze

Whether error
Or something worse
It won't get better

Oh,

It’s easy to spiral these days
No one to blame
For your current decay.

Now come
Collect my damaged mood
Rid my darkened mind
Find where it aches
And speak to it

Drag it from the deep
Hold it
Let it burn
And poison our feelings
It was sowed long ago
And now ages

It weighs more now
Affects me deeper
Finds my weakness
And doesn't give warning

Does it hurt?
I'm not sure yet

my mind
coloured
cloudy wet

steam
revealed
anxiety set.

The pavements creek down London Road,
Slabs of stone lay uneven, waiting
For a misstep or perhaps a purposeful tumble
So that the day may begin.
A young lad, no older than twenty,
Takes the day’s virginity, and yet
He gains nothing from the exchange,
Left to curl into the floor, strapped
To an overturned slab.

And on this fragile surface, this new
Home of his, he separates the loose
Fragments of pavement into shapes
And size, hoping he might find
Some pattern and rhyme.

But the floor is unforgiving
And misleading, offering
No rhythm and no reason.

All this perpetual solidarity, all
This miserable conformity and lack
Of understanding takes a toll
On his youthful hands as the shards
Pierce his skin and convince blood
To pour out onto the streets.

He is tough but his skin has retired,
His exterior is withered and begins
To smell of a gloomy musk, and yet
His skeleton still dances eagerly on
Behind all the frowning rot.

Passerbys readily move on, dodging
His numb and hopeful soul
As they know it will soon become
A sunken and nameless corpse.
But, until then,
Our street bound friend
Seeks desire and fortune, but luck
Seeks privilege and passion, leaving
Only the welcoming dusk
To bring kindness to the streets.

He is not the only one, the sun rise
Washes dead men ashore, dry
And unloved bodies find themselves
Motionless and dull, glued intimately
To the jagged street floor.

But these bodies once lived!
Their fingers thrived on tobacco dust
And half burnt poorly rolled papers.

Their mouths fed on second hand
Crumbs, leaving a foul aftertaste
Perhaps guilt or malicious tongues.  

Their voices garnered an audience,
Proving uneducated souls could please
Others through word and love.  

Their eyes witnessed
The intricacies of the changing seasons,
They saw autumn wilt and winter born.

Their hearts pumped pure, drugs
And blood rushed through streams
In their arms and powered
Their merry croaking lungs.

And they were once loved.
Indeed, they were loved.

Perhaps not by their mums, or
Unborn sons but by existence.
Life’s brilliance dwells
In the dead men on our streets,
A reminder that merely existing
Is a burden, but also
The greatest responsibility.

When the light has come
And dispersed
To another crack in the universe;
Somewhere shut off from those
Who are so acutely delirious, a place
Where you can mingle with a docile smile
And weary half-shut pupils;

Somewhere shrouded in half-cut peace
And devoured by dwindling creases
In bone-white cheeks,

When the light
Has found this place
I shall roam the foreign streets, crawling
My way through the sleeping bodies
And smokey brick retreats, squeezing
Through huddles of gristly hands
That sit upon embers and
Half-bloated, half-empty stomachs,

I shall ignore all this, and rather
Look upon the sides of buildings
Where pictures may linger
Of children grasping red balloons
And of husbands
Washing up famished teaspoons,

Their imperial chatter of “wake up!
Wake up!” reminds me of my choices,
The choice to wear knitted coats
And button-up sleeves, perhaps
If I wear a hat, the voices shall cease ?

And when I am asked why I stand here,
Balancing on the curb in my puzzled clothes -
I shall profess;

“I am uncrowned but I am dressed, and
They have banished me to the ground, do
They want me to ask their questions now
Or shall we tuck ourselves in and go to bed
Where all that can be said,  

‘Am I dead,
Am I not yet dead ?’ ”

The crowds will reply
In their final utterings
And frayed mutterings;

“We do not know
The queries you seek, or
Why you pace upon
The edge of the street, alas
We do not know what it is
You seek at all”.

And so,
The brick and concrete
Will have to do, it is where
I have made my bed
And where I shall lay too -

Here, my wings are clipped and
My smile is cracked, but
I am not yet dead, it is only my
Hands that appear to bleed
This deceased shade of red,

Here are my belongings:
The rumours that are soaked
And promised - the words
That are often misread
But never misspoke,

And with my tongue dipped in the gutter -  
I natter and I mutter;

“Where does the Morningstar go
When the gates have closed
And the couples have gone to bed
And all that can be said,

‘Am I dead ?
I fear that I am dead.’ ”

But I am not yet dead, my
Pulse still breaths see, it
Marches on without cowardice, it
Rallies my heartbeat
And commands my legs to charge -
  
Down, down, down the crevices
And the isolated paths, the
Uncharted cracks
And the unironed creases
Where ill bachelors linger
And their estranged daughters
Snigger; “my daddy is
Dying, look at him quiver
And squirm, doesn’t he
Remind you of the worm!”,

I do hope they ignore me, if
Only they knew
How fragile I have become
They would bombard me
With lethal profanities,  
Anchoring my ears
To their vile screech, and
I speak, and on I speak;

“Be kind to the gentle man,
Let him speak to the birds
If it pleases him,

Buy him a loaf of fresh bread
So that he may feed them, and
Listen to what he has said;

‘Am I dead ?
Indeed, I am dead.”

There will be no obituary
In the Sunday paper, nor
Any grieving stones
In the Vicar’s lawn, and
No bereavement cake
On the Baker’s counter,

(Oh, however will they mourn ?)

There will be no joy left
To cure the funeral blues
And no pick-me-ups
In the mornings after news,

There will be no murmurs
From the Sisters
And no whispers
That slither through
The cracks in the doors,
There will be no answers
Of any sorts, there
Will be no answers at all,

Everything is trivial now,
All null and dispersed
And the light
That was diminished
Has up and fled
To a vacant universe,
Where all that can be said;

“Am I dead ?
Is this what it is to be dead ?.”

When I breached the gates of Eden,
The gardens did not sing; and
The crows were naught
But labouring -

A thousand charcoal teeth
Chewing at the rot, until
All appeared cold
As the Kings of Camelot,

When I breached the gates of Eden,
The fountain had run dry
And the men were on fire
Laid down by its side, and

A great wave of white lilies
Had devoured the landscape
Leaving naught but the words
Of unguarded graves,

When I breached the gates of Eden,
The mothers pleaded for a song;
“Will you sing, will you sing”,
They begged for me, all night long,

But I do not know how to silence
The howling of the bereaved
For the gates of Eden
Had been deplorably besieged.

Even the pigeons can see the puddles
That surround the crowds
Of the Old Steine
But i’m not sure they can see the rain
And I do not think they will look at me,

They hop across the swamp-filled curbs,
Dipping talons, and washing
Their wings as they go, ignorant
To the faces that
Ache for their homes,

But I do not think
They will look upon me;
Not in the mirrors
That mask the street floors
And not during this purgatory
Of the bus stop storms.

And yet, I look upon them
In hopes they gaze at me
But they never will and
Nor will they mourn
When I am summoned to leave.

Round and round the four walls,
A clock hand
Comes to a slow crawl,
Eager for time to stop.

(tick tock.)

Winding back and forth, tossing
Lemons and limes over the floor,
Across mother’s caring look
And through the double doors,
Landing at the base of the cat’s paws.

Rewind and wind back the clock,
Pick up a rock
From the naked garden patio
And lock the backdoor, where
You wait for 2 O'Clock.

(tick tock.)

Back inside, go and find
Those lemons and limes,
Stop with the tossing and
Anger, focus now on juggling
Limes and lemons and
Try to answer
Mother’s questions.

Nowadays I find myself
In a landscape dominated
By farmer’s fields, they
Stretch from the country lanes
To the looming walls of oak
Where candidly they sit side-by-side,
All neatly laid out;

Eager for my foreign feet
To parade about, and
To dent the ground
In heavy, deep bruises
That one day
Will be overflowed by rainfall
Or, perhaps, dug further
By another stranger’s affection.

I am anchored to these fields
Of farmers who all look the same
And perhaps they are the same, all
Pushing for bigger harvests
And meatier offsprings, they
All follow the seasons
Like a blind man with his hand
Strapped to a gear stick, they
Are slaves to nature, and yet
I have not seen them comfort a tree
Or kiss their fields in which
They hope to nurture and reap.

But they are not to blame, no
They are not to blame,  

It is my unmoored conscious
That pollutes the soil
And whispers to the birds
And the unmoved snails,

“Go home now
And burrow away, please
Discard all your love
At the hollowed out trunk
On your way out”,

It’s not my fault
They only have
Fallen branches
Mixed with
Dried out leaves
To conceal all this
Unwanted tenderness
And grief, it’s
Not my fault they
Aren’t loved by
The farmers anymore,

So, why do I let them
Ruin my country walk ?

Why do I find myself
Chatting to the berries
That smother my shoes
When I show them
No remorse ?

I should really ask
The farmers what they
Think of all the ******, but
I do not think they shall
Let me walk on their
Fields again, I shall be
Barred from the
Country lanes and
From the homes
Of all my friends, my
Footprints shall be
Covered over
In sheets of ****** grass
And newly-budded flowers
So that my crimes
Are forgotten and masked.

Mother sits downstairs, ear glued to the phone
Chatting eccentrically to faces and voices unknown.
Father stares at a screen filled with numbers and
Names of people and places causing his frustrations.
Sister dwells a few towns over, and brother reeps
In his rewards, often found in splendour
At some foreign resort.
These siblings share many things, fruits and offerings
From fleeting days past, occupied by long nights grafting
At the pen, paper and graphs.
Also a brother, who is younger and half the laugh. He perches in his room,
Strapped to his chair and like his father, stares at screens
Where beaming colours, instead of boring numbers, cause
His frustrations and late slumbers.
Perhaps this is why he has such strange dreams?