Two people, faces on
A screen, and two
Voices telling us how we should be
What’s new in the world, why we should
Avoid doing this, avoid doing that
What’s in, what’s not, what we should all do best

I see some nods
I see disapproval, approval
I see shifty glances in eyes
I see mouths start to move and talk
I see phones, many phones
I see the consumerism kicking in
I see unwavering doubt

I see lies, a mirage
I see the contours of deception
I see material eyes and material hearts
I see heavy minds and empty heads
I see people wondering about how they should look instead
I see people dreaming of a better life
I see people forgetting their own beautiful life
I see insecurity, stinging idiosyncrasy
I see flaming ******* media hypocrisy
I see romanticization of all things ugly
I see faces that look so young and glossy
I see big lights that cancel out all the imperfections
I see makeup that covers all the unwanted
I see ivory and I see bone
I see a curated life that I’ve never known
I see this image stitched up
And I never see it become unsewn

You still exist in every room and space.
I still feel your presence, I feel it always.
In the power, and in all the helplessness it holds,
in the silence, and in the loudest of noise.

But now all I imagine is your
grief as a river, deep as my own
weightless, though you are sinking,
falling deep once more.
I never thought that
I would have to let you go.

And on this blurry june evening, everything
unfolds out in front of me
heavens collapsing, a fever dream
I sit in a state of confusion, here

I am mindless:
do not confuse it with
any kind of absence.
because the only absence in this
planetary void, growing always,
is you.

sometimes, i feel so infinite
until i remember all the times
i felt a nagging sense of shame
and the times

that i thought were so carefree
manifested into burdens
of resentment
of misery.

let me find my fate,
let me love somehow
lift me up, carry me
in your loving hands
when i'm falling down

i see a glimmer
a hope of reconciliation
help me pave my way
to this final destination

but i've rendered it all invisible
patience, invisible
trust, invisible
everything, invisible.

Isn't it beautiful how we know what is right for us after too much of the wrong energy, after too much time spent with the wrong soul?

Admittedly, I sometimes think that if I  had persevered, everything would have been 'love'. But I was blindsided. And I was trying to pass this denial off as a form of 'love' - but it was absolutely far from it.

A spiritless kind of love.

sometimes i think
of the million lives
i could have led

before the heat, lust
and sweet nectar
came shimmering
out of my head

i swam through caves
of black salt and ether
i explored dreaming valleys
and cavernous skies

i melted with the prophets
ruled with the pharaohs
drifted with the angels
all in a lavender-lust fever

smile sigh walk away
still roaming all the hotels and cabarets
wallowing in sophistry and idle banter
as love and retribution fade

hearing feverish words from a parallel universe
where attention is hell and ignorance is bliss
and all the emerald cities and vast molten plains
disappear into the nothingness
of your jaded gaze
lost

do you ever just realise you are going to miss people? miss their words, their advice; miss their support and their love and their presence?

and all they have done for you, you try to describe it in terms that you cannot just simply define; in words that have an intangible meaning but simultaneously hold the weight of the world.

and then you have that realisation, that epiphany that burns cold and clear. it isn't until near our end when we truly start to value all the passing people in our little lives.

and you realise that nothing matches the exact mood and time; whether you feel utterly amazing or utterly ****, whether your mind is all over the place or you are completely sane. let that dawn on you, let it seep in and let it
wash, wash, wash
back over you.
you can't ever get that moment back.

please, it is important to let others know how much they have inspired you. how much they have guided you. don't hold back. tell others how you feel, in the midst of all madness and meaning.

and if you are lucky to see them again, all these memories will come flooding back; everything and anything and everything.
it all will.
and it will all be glorious.

and you will find it to be an emotional release in the beautiful swirling catharsis of it all, fluidity and freedom, all meandering within and throughout the ripples of time.

it is a release, a pure release.
rendering all things equal.

If I saw you again, I wouldn’t care about things that were so petty, like whose plates and cutlery lay idle in the sink...who didn’t take out the *******...who forgot to water the plants, or who forgot to do this or that.

The only sounds I hear now are our splintered voices down the phone. Every night. They grow. They break. They hover, they drift ever-so, and they try to fade. But somehow, they are always there. Lingering. Over and over again.

And as I look out at the morning’s rusty dream of dawn, a thin film of moisture condensing on the windscreen, I pause.

It isn’t the first time I’ve tried to take a film noir journey through my subconscious.

It isn’t the first time I’ve tried to pull moments and memories together to make some utter sense of what’s happening. My thoughts seem to always unravel themselves. And I struggle with them. They don’t effortlessly slot together anymore.

I often think to myself: isn't it funny how our impression of time changes? God, reflecting back on a fading memory now seems livelier than life itself.

Now I sit here, thinking all these sad and strange thoughts – that everything – time, work, effort, money, affection – are moments that will, one day, crumble and fade – that they won’t be there forever in the physical world.

Because everything we had once cherished with such love, I still remember. Still.

dawn hangs low today, its
golden whisper faint, breath
harboured deep in thought,
its drowsy light drips
down onto the armchair

where, in his worn hands, he holds
silk-sheets and a bottle of wine, flickering
and grainy around the edges

and sitting on his bed, a woman from forever-ago
is dressed in her finest sepia, glass in hand
everyone is placid, frozen, still
for laughter will not escape this room

for this is purely a memory etched in celluloid,
a memory captured in time-withered skin
a memory that burns cold under naked-tongue,
spurred by a primal thirst and a nagging revere
for love, which has trickled away
and buried itself under lashings of trickery

and this place once dripped
with decadence, persian rugs
floating on currents of
fine champagne and amethyst

now, bottles pile up, mirrors flicker
money ebbs and flows
and he lights another pipe,
lungs heaving under
***** and avarice
and lust

love
...its final fleeting moments...
are etched only on film
blanched and faded of colour
laying parched under the oblong sun

rioting crowd in the east-village squire,
crowds part in a brooding haze,
and a dice rolls across the years, stumbling
oh he painted himself a fool, luck hangs blasé

brush and crayon trace over lush ruin as etruscan love
pierces this thin veil of civilisation,
once coloured in imprisoned
years of ambition

and irony is warm and it glows 'cause
time is a conundrum, a fate, a paradox – and thoughts
are irrelevant in this oak-veiled cage,
for when the unimpressionist sings,
dreams start to sway

in a vaulted room, basalt
vases hold flowers,
****** bare of fruitful love
by the unimpressionist,
who holds pride and flattery high above

and outside the cage, the artist lifts his paintbrush
oh he dreams all too aimlessly, alight with naïveté

and as he pulls down jewelled ashtrays and the night-sky of tangier, he takes another smoke,
little artist doesn't paint for himself
statued replicator of somebody else

"ignorance is always so selfless and so kind"

his words form an echo at the end of his time
disapproval lingers in this great artful lie,
he's been played sideways, been handled and pawned
now the unimpressionist hangs
trapped, feeble
warned

yesterday, the universe seemed as if it was a mirage; I saw planets beyond planets, a moon beyond moons; oh the minutes were soft and golden; they melted to liquid, into a million, into manifold, into one...

~perhaps this was what nobody told me: perhaps I am
more than the mass of resentment and regret that I had so greatly condemned, then became...~

and as I fell asleep; folded and cradled in the warm arms of the universe, I understood, I truly understood...

~that it was forgiveness that made everything beautiful once more...~

In this fraying society, I wonder,
that if perhaps we were not so entangled
in the blur that is life, we would take more time
to think of others and our actions.

Society is far from idealistic, for it is stitched with
jealousy and greed, anger and lust —
haphazard emotions that we must live with.

But we cannot simply teach the meaning of 'emotion' —
how to read faces, tease sense from heart and eyes,
how to form a connection, how to empathise —
how to notice dissatisfaction jubilantly concealed
in the lines of a stranger's face,
or how to piece together goals drifting under
unraveling patience and lost sleep.

It is said that actions
speak louder than words,
but in truth, words
speak directly to actions — prompting us
to pray and reflect, coax sympathy from deepest hollow;
to think and read, to ask and respect;
to stitch together another's broken dream,
to tend to the fraying, and to dissolve
the screaming hum of everyday life
into a soft-spoken lilt, in which
calls for guidance are finally audible.

To those whose lover has slipped away, offer a heart;
a heart heavy with reverence and fabric to mend gaping tears —
and to those whose hope has worn dire and thin,
offer needled ambition so they can
thread themselves together once again.

Spin unity into thread
to weave together
our fraying society;
one that silently asks to be loved as they love,
one that asks to be remembered as they remember.

The sun, it strays in
Although
It doesn't stay in
Pooling in little dapples
Of invisible white

Pauses
Cavorts in candlelight
Slips under an
Angular promise
A coveted whisper

Then melts to mauve
Drips out of blackened-skies

Oh Love, she's arrived
Once at last
She's lying by your side
You turn over to face her

Only you're dreaming
For she's gone
It's like she was
Never There

She whispers in flattery
She's fluent in heartache
A soothing bite of regret
Raw-edged and untwined

You're sure she's called something else
'Cause she drives you insane
How you wish she wasn't nameless
How you wish you knew her name

So you call her Love
Floating cadenza
Can't capture her on camer-a
Write about her in prose
Ether-born,
Out of some gorgeous unknown
And forever onwards
You'll wonder why she
Had to leave
Why she
Had to go

the eternal battle between light and dark has been a source of inspiration for artists & musicians & writers since time immemorial

light and dark allow us  

to treasure the artist's glittering painting
to reflect on the author's lyrical words
to swim through the musician's vast symphony

to explore deep ravines of intense emotion
to float on gossamer dreams
to be wonderfully alive
to be wonderfully human

lovers pouring in
traffic ebbs and flows
drowning in this sea
you would never suppose

it all seems like such a waste
one brief life one brief taste
vaporous faces drift on by
float on and upwards
through the wounded sky

oh i remember the caress of time
the crash of the waves
fingers all feathered and divine
glistening oblivion in salty blue caves

and you still look on
from long ago
head full of serpents
heart full of stone

like two lovers entwined,
delicately the night straddles earth
and envelopes it in a warm embrace
it flaunts a huge scarlet moon
and twinkling stars

it is a night dedicated to love
one that begins now
as i turn off this computer
and walk away

warmth
from kisses that were as sweet as wine
kisses of myrrh
kisses of honey-velvet and vermilion

as the ivory twilight glows forlorn
i smoke on the residue of love
under the fleeting light
of a chemical sun

warmth
she ran through my hands
like golden drops on thirsty lands
left me in a vast expanse
of sheer
mercurial
cold

I burn softly tonight: primal, pure, unrefined. I am alight with all that I could have been; with the past, the future, kindled by unspoken dreams.

And my mind whispers, my mind speaks to me:

~Do you remember all the weary souls that once roamed this land beneath your feet? Those who walked around you; the worn faces that weep and sing?~

Oh, for I am too a weary soul, resting my ear against the Earth,
and my smile spills truth and my ambition drifts somber
for all time

rhomboid sky behind me,
violet sea before me,
undulating fields of halcyon
and waving grain

laying down silently beside
someone now long gone

sing to me o muse,
about how we loved one another
through concave nights

about the way the world  
looked with the muted dawn dappled
upon a distant spring reverie

about how we watched our last sunset
together over the ionian,
and how it burned nectarine

now i look at those tears
in the rhomboid sky,
your voice, floating, oh
i remember everything
as it all creeps away...

you breathe in sweet zephyrs
you speak in rosewood and petal-moss
you sing in cascading ultramarine
you smile in gleaming lavender lust
blue
like the ionian sea
or silken-soul river
and momentarily
a lucid
sapphire touch

in this angular evening
all edges and corners  
money
lashings of flattery
and scarlet-dripped trickery
strangle our love

poetry
a universal language
a feeling and a belief
a voice for the voiceless
a mirror for humanity

messages tangled in
silken webs of thoughts
sometimes intangible
sometimes whole
thoughts that mesh with words
lilting soft
sudden deep cut

poetry
a mind heart and soul
a safe escape
in tapestries of messages and words
it is the stuff dreams are made of

i descend into poetic oblivion
relieved as thoughts
once fragmented
are now overflowing
with great vibrancy

s p i l l i n g
without hesitation
onto pages

poignant stanzas and
afternoon poetry-smoke
tethered to dusklight dreams
in charcoal-dark ink

melting, sinking
in the effortless flow
of words
of lyrical musings
trapped for too long

now all is free
now all is whole again

as days slip through your fingers
as we slowly drift off
into the effulgence
we must remember
that life is not solid
we appear and disappear,
flicker and fade

life is liquid time
a sparkling
astral-soul crystal
a turquoise
clawing sea
and an intangible realm
of thoughts
of reflection
of feeling
of acceptance

blue cranes
copper-drizzled lizards
skies of cherry-red
opalite and tangerine

and great forests
that drip honey-jewels

lavender birds
that float on a
sage-dream breeze

summerdaze
wraps us up
in sheets of air  
and pillows of dreams
warm and soft and still...

in white paper scenery,
the mind is ink
so flood pages with your sparkling words
touch glittering minds and hearts
endlessly traverse and explore and ruminate

let words contain truth
or imagined fantasy
bitterness or suffering
opulence or soul decay

and let rawness seep out
from the silver-jeweled elixir  
of experience and imagination,

because words are a ripe and fertile ground for deep and personal expression:
and will always, and forever, be.

days keep slipping through your fingers
light spirals out of the dark sky like glass
love dissolves into something
intangible
and sullen
and cold

you visit the city where nobody lives
you go to the sleep where nobody dreams
you hear the song that nobody sings
you make up things which pull things apart

you hear distant words, but they sound so foreign
their meanings tumble all over the place
whispers are abrasive
and noise drowns sound

maybe this is all a little glitch in continuity
light stretched thin
but your words linger on
enjoined in shadow
burn in song