The garden served little purpose
It sprawled across the bored ground, despondent beneath the yawning sun
My mother would wail her annual rage
At the snarling weeds that softly smothered the flowers
How I loved those flowers
Rejected footballs perplexed the lawn
Their obtuse hulks spoiling that ripple of green
I found a four leafed clover there once
He poked his obscure head above his brothers: a suicide mission to bring me luck
They are all dead now
I didn’t waste nearly enough time reclined on that jealous cushion
Watching the lethargic clouds wobble on

But most otiose of all in that seldom wandered paradise was the Wall
That Wall was never high enough
I see it from my back door
Squat, depressed, sighing, each dusty clot of red brick seems so lifeless
Doomed to live out the rest of its days as a failure
All flung ***** that compress their rubbery bodies against it will soon vault over
It crudely bookends the busily neat hedge
Simply because that is where the drunken soil runs out
It fails too at its chief instruction:
Be the purgatory bridge between Our heaven and Their hell
But the Wall was never high enough

I remember the other side of the Wall
How I crouched in filth
Needless to be afraid of a cut from a single blade of grass
Impoverished chickens clucked in the squalor
How they survived such malnourishment awed me
The friends I thought I had there cheated me
And I ran from that disastrous place
Where chaos twisted the agonised branches of the hedge we shared
But it followed me like an age old Gypsy curse
Even today, a writhing, mewing splodge of night will sit on the Wall
Looking too fat for its own fur coat
It will viciously attack the thin air for a while
Perhaps accept a stroke but, seeing no morsel, wander home
But I am not spared
For I can see its wasteland kingdom from my window

It is not an evil place
But the Wall was never high enough

White Man! White Man!
You dare come and conquer this country?
This corner of the continent
Construct your castles with crystal windows
Looking out on a foaming sea
Model your marble walls, polished and pristine
On your porcelain teeth: terrible and tough
Paint clouds on the ceiling with paper fingers
Papyrus skin crumpling with age
Your knights galloped in on young geldings
Castrated to keep them clean
Like the sterile white cloths draped across their clavicles
You’d scar this landscape
With a squat whitewashed town
Matt and peeling
Dishevelled and overgrown

Black Man! Black Man!
You dare come and claim this country?
My corner of the continent
Behind boulders and barren hills
Coalfires choke the burned sky
I’m breathing in your smoke but at night
Your bullet-holes in the firmament glint
As stars glimpse the belching flame
Of your volcanic pride
Your bearded bishops bludgeoning
The bloodied populace of pockets of resistance
Scorched brown eyes smouldering
From here to the horizon
Of mournful ashen mountains, blunt and black
You’d build your walls of black onyx
Cold, hard and brutal

So let the battle-lines be drawn
Let us duel to the death until we mix
Into that emotional grey area between man and man:
Peace

The man who put bullet holes in the fabric of time waiting for you
Who scrawled lunacy all over the pages of history
Who started all the wars, murdered all the prophets, burned down empires
Who laughed “Apocalypse” at a billion futures
But let every opportunity slide by

The man who wrote your name on all the maps for hope of finding you
Who dammed up the rivers he had made so you wouldn’t see his tears
Who peered between saplings in forests he had planted to see if you were hiding there
Who sat by fires in newly opened taverns, telling tales of his search for you
But didn’t cross the road to knock on your door

The man who locked you in a tower to be the princess in his fairytales
Who cast himself as the dragon guarding you forever
Who lived off a diet of slow roasted questing knights, tall handsome features charred at the edges
Who antagonised himself in the kingdom of his own story
But never looked through the window to tell you why

The man who wrote his rulebook with the blood of his closest friends
Who proudly swore never to break Number One
Who even wrote a riddle to protect it from your words
Who drove himself insane with all the times that he stuck to it
But never realised it kept you from him

The man who made himself a crown of thorns from the dozen red roses he tried to send you
Who crucified himself with dreams of you
The man who was content to write you a love poem
But couldn’t tell you he loved you in person

Scattered around are the ashes of all that I ever knew
A light sprinkling of burned snow-cover on the charcoal of my house
My silent friends, skeletons, lie face down in the dust, passively smoking my memories
I can’t remember what happened last night; must’ve been one helluva party

Kicking around in the bones of my past
Looking for a scrap of fresh flesh from my future
Here, in history’s graveyard, where the forgotten rest in greater peace than the loved
Where falling tears don’t spoil the sacred ground, I kneel

I clutch someone’s knucklebones to my ***** for comfort
Who were they? Were they of any significance? Would they offer an arm?
To wrap around my shoulders in my present predicament
Did I love them? I long for them now

Yearning for an excuse with which to sew the tatters together
And trying to remember what started this Hakuna Matata nightmare
I chose to forget about the past
And stride boldly on into a future that wasn’t there

It happens on the banks of Hydaspes
No bird that lives has seen it thus unfold
Except the Vulture: stolen memories
The egg is laid, now upwards as you’re told!
To cliff’s edge flock, and there prepare to die!
Our Master calls us with him to go down
As flames go out the Phoenixes shall cry
All birds of Earth with Lord of theirs shall drown
A vortex made of joyful cawing beaks
They spiral splendidly into the sea
And back where tears of Hydaspes shall leak
A chick is born, a Monarch soon to be
In awe I gaze upon him, so sublime
Alerion! Our King for all of time

Autumnal joy floats on the wind: it blows
A woodwind section through the buzzing leaves,
And gently rattles red arpeggios
That harmonise with mournful semibreves
Of ageing branches creaking in the breeze.
The forest spirits collectively moan.
Without the crunch of thund’rous symphonies
The rain can ****** on a xylophone:
The surface of a hidden woodland pond
Where all the stepping stones are so arranged
As keys of limestone next to keys of slate.
And all around the silence is estranged
And till the snow of winter has to wait.
We wave our sticks at where the air has thinned
And call ourselves composers of the wind.

Imagine Complete Annihilation

Imagine it

First drain the colour from the world
Pour metaphorical bleach on the landscape
The lively green of the foliage
Is now a lethargic grey
The placid blue of the sky an angry black
Each cloud remains unpainted

Next expend the energy
***** its skin with this hypothetical needle
And induce a coma
Watch monochrome bees roll over in bed, unwilling to go to work
Vultures lying down with their dinner; corpse pillows
Sloth is the new God

Then purge the life
Draw your figurative razor across its jugular
Don’t worry, it’s humane: the victim’s already sleeping
And when yours is the only soul still tied down
Burn the pile of non-rotting flesh
(even the saprophytes are gone; death doesn’t revile anymore),
Gnash your teeth and throw yourself atop it

You’re almost done, now expunge your senses
Deaden the sound: halt the airflow through this graveyard
But remember that there is no silence
Dampen the light: pinprick each pixel till it pops
But remember that there is no dark
Cry “Begone!” to the wind and feel no more
But remember that there is no numbness
Cut out your tongue and relax
But remember that there are no memories

Finally call last orders on Time
Find each clock, smash it, don’t worry about the glass
There is no pain anymore
There is finally nothing
Imagine

Now accomplish this horrendous task
In the space & time-frame of a single breath
Learn
That what you godless fools call death
We of faith, however little, call hell