I come home smelling of someone elses sweat
Crawl into bed next to wife
Knives of guilt
Bleeding the bed.

Maybe I have done heroic things in past lives,
Defended outer galaxies from daemonic risings,
Villages under my protection,
Medicines made and distributed.

But for now I am forty
And I smell of someone else’s sweat
And I am next to my wife
In my bed
In my house

And it doesn’t feel all that heroic.

This is the place where people come to forget that they will die one day.

They let their conscience build up on the linoleum floor in puddles,
deep and dark
And follow the crowd to the next store
And the next
And the next.

This place will bleed you.
It will tear your pockets out of your clothing
And your children’s hands from yours.

A new shirt.
A new TV.
Well done.
You’ve done well.

But when you leave the white walls
The music tinny and dim
Escalators and litter
You still won’t feel free.

There have been numerous,
endless,
beginnings,

yet only one
finale,

one send off to them all.

hats off boys,
that's a big one

there go the stars
oh boy oh boy.

paired off into an infinite sunset
swan lake dozing at noon

sweat and bugs
comfortable
neat alcohol,
sweet.

fingers are touching lips
saliva like desert dust,
like streams trickling dry.

wink out.
turn it on.

fill out the space;
forever and ever and
(don't let go.)

the beginning was optional,
the ending uncontrollable.

each beginning was
written and read,

but none of us could
stay up late enough

to see how it all ends

Tell us more, Old one-eye,
Spiller of darkness
Bringer of hope,
Builder of men.

What could I tell you,
Young and agile,
Dark dreams and light smiles

About the pits
So deep
We lost their names

Or the towers
That rose so high
We forgot about them

Or the fire
Intensely hot;
We forgot how to feel the cold,

How to embrace the night
And the morning.

There are tales of stars of battles
And heroes of blood.

There are no tales of makers of stone,
Iron and wood.
You are all those things, youths.
You are the knot in the rope,
The hand that tied it,

And the mind that knew how.

What would you like for dinner, Honey?
Pork? Beef? Human?

Ah, I’m never sure about human.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a free range or organic human ever,
Which has always surprised me, seeing as they choose the environment they live in.
Haha, they have the most ridiculous hierarchy of alpha males and leaders,

The psychopathic lead the docile.
I find it hard to eat this animal,
Always in the back of my head are the rumours
That they have a conscience
Somewhere underneath their thin skulls.

And all the controversies,
About it not being quite human meat,
Or being diseased,
Or the weirdoes, with their
“where did humans come from anyway?”

They barely have any meat in them anyway,
Useless animal really.
Sometimes it’s just fat, sometimes just bone.
I don’t like the chances.
Too much risk.

I think I’ll have some foie gras, or maybe some veal.

It is simple, and yet sublime;
Incapturable.

You need not go in,
Take away the man, destabilising the economy
That you so love
Letting them die

You need not assassinate and collaborate,
Scheme and puncture
Spheres of influence that stretch and bubble
In Latin America and Southern Asia,

You need not sign secrets away
Safe and deep
In silos and bunkers
Where Armageddon sleeps.

You need not supply, buy and axchange
Implements of violence and rage,
Picking sides in civil war, tribal conlflict
And bigger,
In lands you do not understand
Lands where the mountains resonate with holiness,
Lands of spiritual awakening awaiting for the young;
Concepts you can’t grasp, that don’t sit well

You need leave them be.
Enough has been done,
Not always with bad intention
But rarely for the greater good
Enough has been said and bought and replaced
Captured, shot at, disgraced,
Caricatured into funny cartoons
Taken over, the masters’ role assumed.

For all the radars and sonar
It seems impossible to listen;
Simple, yet sublime.
Incapturable.
Irreplaceable.

The angels are picking people up and leaving the horizon
out there in the distance
I see them

I suppose it’s supposed to be quite beautiful.
Perhaps poignant.

They could be dropping them in the sea
Or onto rocks
But we’ll assume it’s to heaven they go.

I really hope they do get there
I hope I get there

Because it’s been tiring
And lonely
It has been a long time since someone’s eyes have met mine
And even longer since winter began
There is happiness awakening in Berlin, Prague, New York,
Only it is a very static form
It takes short breaths before it is put down
And when it is its eyes swivel around in its hollow head
We all stroke it as it passes on

It is tiring. Too tiring.
There are no beds anymore
Not a feather

I scrunch up the membrane of my eyes and tell myself
Forget all the little loves
The summers that were so eternal
That autumn and winter became calm and just
Forget it all
All the people on buses and trains and pavements and in shops
Forget it
Forget it
Forget it

And now, here is my angel.