I can still hear you,
words of an old truth,
fading sounds of prophecies trickle off an archaic tongue
through lips of decaying youth.

I am still here for you,
for me, wavering, fading
but my shadow stays again.
Alive and morphing in pain
from innocence to what?
Changing is existence and existence is changing.

And I still dream of you.
Whispers of a prelapsarian idea
slither into today from the womb of yesterday
and I cling to it,
the dream,
the boy,
if only to stop him dying,
stop him fading into silence.
So his words echo into the attic of my heart
and do not bounce into oblivion - whisperless.

Standing in the drizzle on my way to work,
a man collapsed and died,
his life began to fizzle and his heart didn't work,
paramedics came, a woman cried,
and all I could think was
'who the hell dies at 8.15 on a Monday morning?'

Then I went to work and fried meat for 12 hours
because it was Monday morning
the week was just beginning
and you need money to live.

There was a time when rabbits were lions,
when I was a child,
I had a rabbit called Lion.
I left the hutch open and went to bed,
off he flopped into the dark cold night.
I mean, you can't discover much from a hutch
but Lion took one turn too many,
Lion got lost,
he couldn't find his way back,
Lion lost his bearings as jumped through the unknown world.
I can empathise with Lion now,
I think I'm one turn away from not being able to get back.
Anyway, Lion never came home
and now rabbits are just rabbits
- not lions.

(Pause)

Yes.

It was all in the pause

Everything that wasn’t said,

Everything that was going to be said,

Everything.

A messy universe hidden in a vacuum,

In one big bang a new chaotic reality was born

But before that

There was the pause.

The ‘yes’ that followed the silence

Was nothing more than a cork in a wave

Unable to stop the city of love drowning in violence.

The pause was there before,

The silence was trapped in my throat before,

Within it was all that needed to be said

Released in an explosion

The spark offered by your question

‘Are we alright?’

Boom.

At least, I thought, we’ve erased the silence

The pause is over.

Kicking the debris with your toe

You said ‘I wish you’d tried’

(Pause)

The old man drives
Round a bend in the road
Headlights light
With a dim milky glow

Wind rushes through
A crack in the glass
Cutting across
Eyes broken in the past

Cigarette ash
Jumps from the tip
Of the cigarette dangling
From dry still lips

Lines in his face
Where his life seeps away
Were etched by the talons
Of birds of prey

Eyes suspended
In loose wrinkles of skin
Like babies unwrapped
And left by the wind

Stay locked and not looking
At the passenger seat
Where sits the kid
With clean bare feet

The old man and the kid
Look the same but changed
The old man is the kid
With age and pain

The car moves through
A dark ***** town
And comes to a stop
As the old man frowns

The kid looks up
With bright wide eyes
The old man blinks
Starting to cry

The tear drops down
The grooves of his face
The dirt pushed aside
A clean line in its place


“Get out” he whispers
To the kid in the car
“GET OUT” he screams
“Get out of the car”

Clinging to the seat
With white fingers
He clings to himself
Then the old man lingers

“It will be alright”
The kid tries to speak
But the old man is out
And on to the street

He walks round the car
To the passenger door
And flings it open
With a rotting core

He grabs the kid
By the scruff of his shirt
And throws him out
Into the litter and dirt

“It won’t be alright”
The old man said
“We won’t be alright”
Then held his head

He looked in his young eyes
For the first time in years
And both were crying
Identical tears

The kid held him tight
And he held him back tighter
Then pushed him down
Like a lost fighter

“I have nowhere to go
And neither do you
We won’t get far
But you’re on your own”

As the old man walked
Back to the car
Wiping his tears
In the cover of dark


He got in his seat
As the kid got up
Starting the car
He slammed down his foot

The kid moved to run
But was left behind
The old man had left him
In a place he can’t find

Bags, and leaves
And litter and wind
Rolled round the kids feet
As the headlights dimmed

He wanted to wait
For lights to come back
But he knew they would not
He knew that was that

He turned and stepped
With his clean bare feet
His first steps on his own
In the dark ***** street

As dust and *******
Licked at his toes
His clean bare feet
Became ***** and froze

The kid had never
Felt any pain
He knew no words
So he could not explain

He took a few steps
And collapsed on the ground
When he heard voices
And thought he was found

He looked up from the floor
Dirt blew in his face
But he could see figures
And knew he was saved

The figures came closer
The kid heard them laugh
It was cutting icy
Like the wind on his back

They spoke for a while
As they stood around
The kid thought of the old man
As he lay on the ground

The voices grew louder
And with a shout
They ran to the kid
His eyes glistened with doubt

He choked on his tears
And tried to speak
But the figures grabbed
His hand and his feet

They dragged him away
And down a dark alley
They gripped him tight
As the kid shivered with panic

“I don’t understand”
The kid screamed and cried
For he hadn’t the words
To understand this life

In the shadows he felt
His **** on his legs
He was thrown to the floor
And he begged and begged

The figures just laughed
And pulled out a gun
The kid did not know
What it was but he ran

The kid was grabbed
And hit to the floor
In the dark there was something
Something that gnawed

The one with the gun
Pointed it at the kid
Then seemed to start crying
And closed his eye lids

He turned the gun
Towards his own head
With a ****** bang
The figure fell dead



The kid screamed
And covered his eyes
But the world had got in
It was in his insides

In tears and pain
The kid grabbed the gun
Firing into the dark
His life had begun

With the death of the figures
He began to moan
The dark that he feared
Was in his own bones

“There is no way to live through this”
The kid thought as he tore at his face

In the dark blowy shadows his face looked changed
Like an old man the kid knew but couldn’t remember his face

“We won’t get far”
Said the kid in the dark all alone

“We won’t get far
And I’m on my own”

Two maggots in an apple
chew from opposite sides
both think themselves alone in the apple
and fulfil their biological programmes.
As they wiggle closer to the core
they begin to feel the fruitless reality
of slipping from nothing
to existence to a memory in solitude;
of squirming in silence from the skin
to the core and out of the apple
As they draw closer still to the centre
this sense of an underlying
futility moves from an inarticulate feeling
to a logical, painful truth
and as they both bite into the core they are crying and desperate
for their string of experience
to be batted by the cat
of meaning.

In this state they felt each other
in the dark of the core of the apple.
Nothing needs to be said
as they writhe and roll together;
as the wriggle and wrap in unison.

Coming to rest in a loose knot,
lightly gripping the seed of the apple
they feel each other feel each other
they feel the apple rot around them
and the rotting of their bodies.
In the dark of the core of the apple,
wrapped around the seed,
they learn to be satisfied with
the pointless
journey through the apple.

There are too many segments in this orange,
I tore away the rind and pulled at the pith with my thumb,
exposed the flesh that fell apart,
but there are too many segments in this orange,
it won't fit back together.
Ill fitting fruit, mutated citrus genes.
You were bigger than yourself.
What freaky secrets your cratered, sunset skin
hid beneath its thick, fragrant glow.