He gave us free will
and made obedience the key to his kingdom.
Offered unconditional love
with a caveat of repentance
Trust in his plan
is why your prayers go unanswered
Asked that you bear the guilt
for a martyred son he had forsaken
Using our free will
to chase the love of an abandoner
Naming faith an act of love
  in the absence of reciprocity
His act of love, to give us life
robbing worship from our mothers.

These feelings we malign as demons
And the ones we revere as gods

Have us clawing at our ears
to mute a painful crucible
And grasping for a lofty comfort which inevitably rots

Painted a devil on every face
Lest he find me unaware
Looked for him in everyone
Looked for him everywhere

Turned every saint into a sinner
In the hell scape of my mind
And on a breath of ambiguity
I’d leave them all behind

But here’s some grace my timid heart:
When trust had only met despair  
Of course you saw a devil
In everyone and everywhere

And now you know with a wiser heart
We are neither gods nor ghouls
but a clumsy dance between the two
We’re all wise men and all fools

Fixed star Alphecca
Shines down on a Shepherd,
leading his thousand fat sheep
The sheep are indifferent
To Alphecca’s position
Eyes on the grass at their feet

Stillness took his rain-soaked boots
off at the door
And entered my house

I made him tea
In an old coffee -stained mug
With a bag.

He holds no pretension
‘Whatever you have right now,
is enough’. He said

He can’t stay. He tells me,
There are dishes to do.
But he will be back

‘When it’s raining’ he says
‘And there is no laundry to do.’
‘We’ll have tea.’

Stoic pines are uprooting,
Careless rage
of an indifferent wind.
And when the nerves are exposed
It dies in spent shudder, to our stupefied awe and vulnerable repose.

My heart is a broken metronome
A gift by saboteur
Wayward in her rhythm
though birthing Gods of Beauty
Like the Tree of Myrrh

My heart is a broken metronome
Reckless in her proffer
Too hasty in her measure
Yet for those adroit to dive her depth
A sunken Royal Coffer

It’s a cowards world
Punching out a bravado beat on our apish chests
And a child’s vulnerability inspires only pity
A projectile repulsion of the weaknesses we hide
We’re all at war with ourselves.
Cutting the throats of whole stories, dragging their corpses to the grave and burying our personal hatred there.
Our lives become cemeteries of all the faces carved from us
We ***** elaborate digital monuments to decorate the rotting beneath.
And plant fragrant flowers of borrowed clichés to cover the stench.
And one day we whither, our cells begin their decay
We will meet our exiles in the graveyard of our collective cowardice

While the bridges are all burning the *** is spilling muck
Theatre for the lemmings as the critics pass the buck
A histrionic kingdom, we’re ruled by feeble mind
While we line up for our trophy, at the killing-line

The pendulum swung again
vertigo is taking hold
The pendulum swung again
The people do as they’re told

You say you hold the keys
To the higher plane
But as the hologram glitches
The goal post shifts again

The pendulum swung again
vertigo is taking hold
The pendulum swung again
People do as they’re told

And the people do as they’re told
And the people do as they’re told

She was safe
on the days she gave the panacea of invisibility for her mothers nostalgic melancholy
and her fathers scalding vitriol.
They were happy
on days that she pushed her abrasively cheerful spirit all the way down
to the place in herself where the too loud things were sent to be ignored.
She was respected
In the moments she feigned premature maturity,
played dress up as the defeated adult version of herself
and sat quietly joyless at the table of the honoured sombre.

Survival for the girl
Became defeat for the woman

The love she sought by becoming the elixir for the woes of those she loved, became the guillotine where reciprocity went to die.

She was the arms he took up
when the viper robbed his lyre of its muse

She was the devotion he carried underground to bring her home again

She was the mourning sonata that caused Hades to weep

She was the echos of longing that made him turn back

She was the immortal whisper in the dark of his guilt
That said
Orpheus
Don't forget about us

My hands stretch before me
Fingers Lagging, drawing light
Watching me
curiously watching them,
with their ten knowing eyes.
A thousand snakes
with oil-slick skin
Writhe peaceably together
in omnipotent melody
They do not worry,
about their radiator,
Or taxes, or time.
Passers-by:
Their voices float to me
through layers of sticky amber
Warming their tones
to a psychedelic dance.
The leaves whisper as I breathe,
A symbiotic flamenco
My mother has done well,
I'm told
My son is kind.
My daughter is afraid,
But brave.

Begging by a million names,
A fix for the cost of dignity

In the wearing of a thousand faces,
True north gets lost by tide

To be oneself requires discernment
Through madness and through mood

A staying of course beyond the currents
That pull us to and fro.

A white sheet hung on the wall,
to reflect back scenes,
from a projection of your choosing.

A canvas
for the drama, war, or comedy
of your inner world.

My form, my purpose
is inconsequential
in your bleeding need.

A public screen
A fantasy machine

And when your fiction is over,
I am as I've always been.

That savoury love,
That familiar comfort, a home cooked meal.
The reliable morning texts and midday calls
My warm, rounded, sleepy belly.
That sweet love,
That longed for joyful treat, my childlike excitement
The tender kiss on my forehead
My wonderment, my gentle hope for more
That sour love,
That acrid seizure, my face contorted in shock The lingering invisible betrayal
My confused tastebuds, their longing for dissipation
That bitter love,
Those biting words, our requited animosity
The weaponising of our failings
My aggrieved mouth and her repugnant venom.
That hot love,
The picnic of your mouth by the ocean
The heated liminality before each kiss
Our frenetic and impermanent fire.

The birds were telling me something about freedom and danger today.

I tried to understand.

Something about how a bird without a home may feel lost, not free.

That freedom needs a place to go to ground, to rest.

Otherwise freedom may feel like flying circles over an ocean with no land in sight.

Gently, my love
When you stay up late combing your mind for pieces of rot
Gently
When you stare into ***** mirrors and scrub yourself raw
Gently
In a brash sea with your periscope on danger
Gently
Riding the crowd in the nose bleeds of opinion
Gently, my love,
Lean into the frisson
Gently with grace
Gently,
My love.
Gently with grace

Paint:
me in tar, dredged from your judas soul
Where you once stored my love:
a devotion-less hole

Truth:
A shame-bound train and you’re tied to its track
Hypocrisy:
A thrown boomerang always finds its way back

Pray:
with your queen in your false praise of god
Bury:
your guilt in her sanctimonious nod

“How loud must it scream
Before I will hear?”
Craft your hollow platitudes
Into your pious veneer

See,
I know

the putrid self-loathing
That screams from within
How loud must it scream
For you to accept your chagrin?

If our hearts will abdicate their thrones of fear
And our ruminating minds find rail to guide their runaway trains
Union flows through, life-blood in our ephemeral veins
A communion between our heart and mind, they meet in time
Neither raising fist for the subjugation of the contrary kind.
Herein lies the star-gate
to our liberated state,
Illuminating our eternal fate,
Love.

You carried;
my cold silver moon on your spine
To repair;
the bridge between your love and mine

Ephemeral winter
Dead grass & springs flowers at her feet.
The bees are making honey while the rot gets ate by flies.
No betterment of heart in a body full of lies.

Giant golden orb, primed,
the Scorpions tail delivers her blow
And I, in futile preparedness,
crushed between her barb and the centaurs insecure rage.
Unabashed love the second casualty
as Mars raised his sword 3 times and struck with Aries force,
a tsunami into gentle waters.
Later the fish, the fish in the whirlpool,
he chewed mercilessly,
he was not hungry for flesh but for innocence
and he feasted to corruption.
And I, with bitter hopefulness,
purged the fish through one way inverse fury.
Adrift at sea, the second god of war,
carried to lucent quartz shores,
captured the tsunami for his salvation, dragging her to the desert.
And I, all watery doggedness, laboured for her a thorny oasis
from which the second god of war was banished.
Whence fair daughter of Gaia in refined tenderness,
delivered the gift between life and language,
Blushing song of refuge.

And if they asked;
What does success mean to you?
I would say;
Communion,
The demons and the deities.
Anything less is to deny our proprium

If I stay a nervous bud
my full bloom will not encroach upon the grandeur of another
& I will invite no retribution
Though the artist in me knows
that a whole field in bloom
Pollinates the world.
Bloom with the artists.

If I stay silent
my words cannot be smithed into a weapon of censure,
and be used to cut me into smaller pieces.
Though the poet takes my words
& alchemises them
into an elixir for healing.
Speak with the poets.

If I smother my fire
I inspire no ire from neighbouring Suns
for whom my shine is a punishable theft of thunder.
Though a sister moon mirrors my light and illuminates the next.
Shine regardless.

If I stay in my armour
my vulnerability cannot become the missile launched at me
by the traitor who begged for my truth
Though an ally reveres my courage
and meets it with the honour of their own open heart.
Open, even though.

We loved the rain for its rebellion on time
The way that heavy skies defied the hour
And the blanket of clouds said rest now
This day is for you
To stay in bed with your lover
Or a book that understands you
The way the sky roiled low and dark
Not to smother or drown us
But to antidote our time poison
And wash us back into that which we are.
Infinite

Rush.
Rush if you must
Rush toward solve-r-ism to a mirage of resolution and fleeting solution.
Rush if you must to evade the friction that gives spark to life.
Rush if you must
to spurious absolution.
To the death of art.

Infamy
An attempt to cheat mortality
And live forever

an effigy
Uranus, his jester privilege
The worm that turns

Infinite streams
An inner world
Which is?

Formless, Limitless
aurelian thread;
Immortality’s proxy.

Tidal Heart.
Not coveting nor conquering
As much grasping a reckless shore as lost to the feral depths.
Tidal heart of mine,
as much bursting light at the seams, as ice cold hubris.
My warm friend
My cold friend
A contradictory lover And an inconsistent foe
My honest and two left footed tidal heart with her syncopated solitude.
This is fate for me.

We are so many things non-expressively.
We hold our most precious truths in our hearts,
knowing that a witnessing makes them no more real.
In not demanding their performance, lies veneration.
This silence.
This solitude.
This conservation.
This honour.
This unity between self and the hearts significance… a maturing, a deepening of reverence, of self knowing and being.

I begin; where
you end, I begin

A sun’s
  Throw; The moons
Catch; A vow
breaths
     rise; Blood’s
    Rush; a return

A mother,
an egg; a crack
A fledgling, became
A mother;
an egg; a birth

A falling seed;
Earth; a crack
The sun’s
Throw; the rains
Catch; A sprout
An obstinance
A giant;
A falling seed

I begin, where
You end; I begin

The wild woman, she is cyclical.
The wild woman, she is seasonal.
The wild woman, she is tidal.
The wild woman honours her seasons of being.
She rests in both body and mind when her bones and spirit command it.
The wild woman yields to the gift of her own emotional wisdom.
She is as mutable and unpredictable as a tropical storm
The wild woman is both hibernating bear and flitting hummingbird.
She is springs flush and she is volcanic eruptions.
She is the crones wisdom after the maidens mistakes
She is all the stories of all the ancestors stored in the library of her bones.
Through her they will be heard
.

For seven months I drank my tea at the window and allowed the sun to cast its rays over my resolution.
I gazed at the space between but never directly into my neighbours house
for I knew the indifference that awaited me in her window of enmity.
During the seventh month my love swelled and pooled at my fingertips, restless with those un-penned words of indignation,
And so I gazed into her window.
Bleeding from my freshest wound,
just rage unfurled into bitter poems,
reruns of us,
of when you offered the belly of my dignity to feed your enemies, revealed a vengeance owed to me,
not of retribution
but of justice.
During the eighth month I wrestled love and grief, rage and memory,
to save you,
to save you from the recklessness my pain threatened to uncage.
I allowed the waves of your betrayal to break over me and pull me back into the sea of childlike grace within myself.
I did not emerge cleansed, pure, or resolved.
Victorious over my animal lust for vengeance,
yet unsatiated in surrendering my desire to deliver you to the same gallows where you made a pariah of me.
And conflicted with answerless questions.
Is vengeance the natural harbinger of karma and therefore my gentleness; justice interrupted?
Is my enduring love my weakness or my courage?
.

Following the white rabbit of curiosity
down every burrow of interest
Curating a collection of experiences
Collating a winter of fulfilment,
with no passion unexplored
A life experimenter.

When you shave life & art down to reductive platitudes you confess an incapacity for complexity.
You confess an ineptitude for depth, nuance, & the metaphorical.
You confess a need to drag that which you do not understand into the emotional and intellectual shallows.

When you bastardise statements of love, strength, and hope into something shameful and weak, you confess your world view with repressed shame at its core.

Weaponise displays of unity & beauty into an ugly war zone of oneupmanship and confess your ache for hierarchy to hold beneath you, those whose experience you cannot fathom, whose strength you fear, and whose mind you cannot comprehend.

The desire to turn love into hate, peace into war, unity into division, strength into weakness, is your confession.