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 Oct 2016 Kenn Rushworth
Andy
Microspasmic and ethereal heavenly chords flow inside the avenues and walk ways walled in by different expanses of grey, a monochrome city.
If you have time to stand on the escalator I envy you; dread your existence and pity you on a Friday morning when everything is more quiet.
Hot sweat growing on my back, my fear and financial disparity exploding on my skin. Fresh roasted coffee beans and legs that prove endless and soft descending from a pink comforter.
I walk through the streets in the uncomfortable light of a September morning when the world struggles and it's health declines, but the light of winter is more pure - a planet bathed in cathartic light.
I never forgot how you looked on those mornings when it was colder - your face a faded navy in a morning still wrapped in night. The fire escape and scaffolding like bones that hold up our bodies and the life that applies pressure to the structure.
Akin to the city you are beautiful in the morning, alive in the day, joyous and free in twilight; restless in sleep. I've found a deep rhapsody in the smile that accompanies your perfume; stepping over a single crushed flower and someone's children sleeping on the street.

A sugary leak in and a vengeful glance his way, thirty-eight hour torment. Sitting upright in the bath with your phone resting on the edge waiting for a response, conversation boiled down to a pictorial exchange of genitals: horror that your **** isn't big enough, trepidation that your ****** isn't neat enough.
Tuesday saw you take that leap into forever, you come back up once you've drowned. Skin to match your nails. A train derails inside you; a man is stabbed to death. I'm awake and it's real and my bones are filled with molten fire which spits out of compound fractures to my ego.

A cup of water.
Nitroglycerin collar.
Notes on the city and people.
A peaceful morning
snuggling within myself
piecing together feelings
of well-being - inner cleaning.

The day viewed from a telescope's
objective lens suppressed at length.
Multi-screen imagination
until incursions grey the frame
mediating reality.
I think I'll populate this land
with menacing creatures,
others making mistakes,
vital dramas.
Perhaps there'll be a happy end.
 Sep 2016 Kenn Rushworth
Andy
Today I spotted
a disfigured man
by the lake.
His right hand
in a soiled
bandage loosely tied.
Left eye missing -
I dared not
uproot his repose.
I feared for
him so frail,
Beside black water.

Today I spotted
a disfigured man
aboard a train.
Earphone hung from
melted plastic ear,
does he listen?
He smells foul
and looks unblinking -
a commuting ghoul.
What station can
such a man
find his home?

Today I spotted
a disfigured man
at dinner alone.
His teeth rotten
with gums bleeding -
drinking soup slowly.
Waxy red blood
staining cheap napkins
He doesn't care.
An omnipresent reminder
that no man
survived a week.
 Aug 2016 Kenn Rushworth
Andy
Vines
 Aug 2016 Kenn Rushworth
Andy
Forget about glass that holds out the
world
Imagine the bone that bares a mind,
Can a room harbour its own universe –
Or contain a flowing galaxy of despair
drifting
Endless because of tremendous torment
Liquidity of the walls, floor, contents; it.
Green vines cling to consciousness and
tighten
At the slightest inclination of anything –
-
Less than a sickening sense of sublime
divinity
Which is unattainable to it; it is not what it deserves.
Originally appeared in: One of Which Forgets to Remember - an ebook I published on Amazon in 2014.
 Aug 2016 Kenn Rushworth
Andy
Red tongues lap at the black expanse above
With such a solemn viciousness the embers dance skyward
Tiny blazing bodies fleeing to the Heavens
From molten veins through charred crusts crumbling
Dark smoke glows before the sky stumbling plumes and intricate ballet spirals
Engulfing more and more the flames and smoke
Choking the blackened skeleton dancing through the beams like bones
The body of the house
The innards reduced to dust
The scene is captured in unblinking eyes, two great fire filled suns
A sombre popping sound emits past the roaring heat static
Expensive couch, cheap cushions, hours wasted choosing
Burning and shrivelling items that they had afforded so much time
Destroyed and gone forever
Singed leaves drift from their life giver’s arms and crackle into the inferno -
High above the scorched earth
A grassless ash pile growing slowly
The blaze radiates an orange glow over the surrounding domiciles
Visible from a far, the smoke more absolute than the night sky.

Without bricks, wood, plaster, concrete
Out alone – self ejected into the world
Heavy feet dragging across the street with light steps
Creaking beams collapsing behind the way wolves bay from the trees
And from the end of the street the flames appear blood red
As if terra firma had been lashed open
Arteries of molten fire
Festering scabs of ash
Torched from under the flesh of air casting coal colour veins
Further and further the slowly diminishing frame fades
And the streets open up to dark distant sentinels
Flanking the road and watching densely and unflinching  
There are flames in the night air
History burning with a bonfire smell
Sirens wailing a crescendo of blaring blue light to meet the hellish glow
Composed in 2015 at my desk at a job which I hated.
It's just long wave light, airborne
dust. But even long wave makes me
shudder - emotional partings
'Brief Encounter'
Sign of age.

Buck up. There may be bad weather,
but if I hadn't seen it, would that
still apply? Pretend it didn't
happen - illusion - bloodshot eyes.
It's just long wave light, airborne
dust. But even long wave makes me
shudder - emotional partings
'Brief Encounter'
Sign of age.

Buck up. There may be bad weather,
but if I hadn't seen it, would that
still apply? Pretend it didn't
happen - illusion - bloodshot eyes.
A shadow on next door's shed.
A life class in nature's art.
A starling's perfect form, no
human hand could imitate.

One quick dart and she has gone,
leaving my life as others have,
and I must contemplate my losses,
like stars crossing a silent gravestone.
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