seething, as the sour fruit
bleeds its poison along my tongue.
leaden with the weight of memory the heart--
but twice too much.
a day? an error? a mood? the regret of--
but twice too late.

t'was not mine own tongue what spake those words. I know not why from me they rode. but while I may not know the origin the result; still mine to bear. the responsibility still mine to own. The regret--
but twice too much.

As alone I walk these emptied streets
the only rhythms heart and feet
I all around am sure I see
myself amidst the trees.
But no it cannot be, says me,
I am no scarecrowed bag of bones
whose clothes hang slack
and innards seep with leaves.
I am a man, methinks I say,
a human living breathing man
with no such predilections wrought
for suicidal sentiment.
It cannot is not mustn’t be me,
that body hanging limp in-tree,
that bullet ridden slumping form,
that sorry teenage lover-boy.

watch them dance.
see the way the blood trails behind?
vivid footprints, declarations of madness,
a history lain in red paint and black ink
a story, seeping from an open palm
to pool with indifference across the college-ruled stage.
watch them dance.
the impacts, do you feel them?
those collisions of thought and language
wherein reason is sought through brutal force,
berating the ears as they skate and
sprint across the plastic tiled minefield
of truth and bludgeoned metaphor.
watch them dance.

Called back after years away
a voyage once more to the fray
to live amongst forgotten days
to few and far between.

To anxious, nervous, brave that door
re-enter worlds ‘akin’ to yours
to take the plunge to reach the side
of friends you left behind.

To be greeted there by sleeping eyes
and busy hands and nothing “hi”s
but for the girlfriend of a friend
and a kid you never knew.

Bereft of meaning, course, or rhythm
floating lost in my little corner
struck by how great the divide
has grown through intervening years

Triple-eyed,
The mind divine
stumbles o'er its
fetid feet

seeing but not
knowing, what
thoughts there
must be growing, but

ever downwards
does it mumble.
Blinded, that
marble face.