It will be summer soon,
just another week or so
where you will rise each morning
brighter than the sun
and you will smile at the wide blue sky
as it keeps you calm and safe.
Your stress will vanish
as the world offers itself once more,
letting you explore her hidden treasures.

It will be summer soon,
just another week or so
where you will sing to the wind,
a song only you can hear,
where the words don’t matter
because you’re too relaxed to care.
In another week or so,
things will be pretty good from then.

I ran down the stairs faster than the laws of nature allowed
and ended up tumbling down most of them,
but when you come face to face with a demon such as that
you cannot help but propel yourself full force in the opposite direction.
Limping from a sore knee, I ventured into the jungle once more,
branches scratching at my face and snagging my ankles
as I tried to run beneath the giant limbs of ancient trees
and the antiquity and vastness of a starless black sky.
There were sounds behind me but I did not if they were echoes
calling back for me to tread along the same path
or that creature fed up of his game, baying for my blood.

I wonder then if the natives knew of this creature,
if the beast had promised to leave them alone for a while
so he could ravage these peculiar animals from beyond the sea.
The natives could not speak my language and me theirs,
but some rudimentary picture drawn in the white sand
would have been enough to get back on that ship and find somewhere new.
Dimly lit, the faint shape of the path had all but vanished,
leaving me to run blind through a land I had never explored,
thoroughly alone with nothing but a nightmare for company.

It appeared in front of me, a mirage at first but suddenly solid,
taking me by surprise as I veered right, though the undergrowth,
foreign plants with giant leaves swatting at my bare legs.
I could feel welts rise up on the skin of my calves
but panic had taken over, steering me betwixt trees,
lianas trying to grab my throat and choke the life from me.
Instinct grabbed a hold my reins and forced me to stop,
not a second too soon, the ground giving way to a steep drop,
hundreds of feet down, to a new kind of landscape, utter darkness.
I could feel its breath tickle the hairs on my nape,
could feel its teeth cleave the clammy air in two,
could feel its tongue lick my scent from the moisture.

I ju   m        p              e                      d
and lay in mid-air in the foetal position, motionless,
with just the vague sensation of pain in my neck,
holes along each side making the air whistle as I flew.
Another sensation became apparent, one where
it felt
             l

                     i



          k

          e





I




                        ­                                            w








           ­                                        a






                                                         ­              s






                                                    f



­
                                                           a


                                                             ­      l
                                                           l


                                               i

                                                  n


        ­                                  g


I opened my eyes but there was nothing, no trees or earth
speeding past me to give me closure that I was indeed falling.
I spun round to where I presumed was down and an orange glow
began to materialise slowly from that great void.
Still falling, I thought, as the glow began to brighten more and more
and soon I was tumbling through deep orange clouds of smoke and ash
and as I broke through them, I saw a landscape of red rock
and molten rivers of volcanic origin flowing into steaming dark seas.
A city in the distance loomed large, covered in a thick smog,
the chimney of a factory poking out of the top,
pumping more dark smoke into the atmosphere.
Then I fell into a trance where I stood within that factory,
opening my arms wide like a Messiah praying eternal thanks.

There is nothing here
but the haunting silence
your absence provides,
the indeterminably
long days the memory
of you offers me.

Shadows of yesterdays
cling to every surface
like the tar of black rain.
Every doubt I ever had
flows down the drains
and blocks every sink.

You are still around,
caught in the folds of
this origami universe.
Sometimes I see you,
peering out of the dark,
looking for a way home.

{Holograms and oracles; separate times, same structure}

Slippity tippity toe-scraping up the trunk,
hands finding owls’ hollows, no hoots,
just a dark eye staring at nothing at all.
They hung a God here, didn’t you hear?
They say he lived but lost most of his power;
you ever hear a sadder story than that?

                   {A cell-phone capturing a photo of an ash tree}

The insects buzz weird here, kinda metallic,
like little dust-mote-sized robots hanging
in the air like a million shards of that God;
but that’s silly, I mean, come on,
7th-century nanorobots?, and what’s a robot?
That’s not one of our words but are ours ours?

                                                               {Chewing}

Sweepy-sliding all the way to a heavy root,
and all suddenly so very very misty,
like a dragon with a tobacco addiction,
but we don’t know what tobacco is either,
it hasn’t been brought over from the New World,
wherever that is, and besides, no Boncalo yet,
another few centuries, another few plagues.

       {And the world is destroyed, and they had not a clue}
                                       {Such a shame}

Summer storms brewed a darkness above our heads,
swelling our egos with the rains of a thousand nights.
The bright lights of the distant city
seemed to breathe in the downpour
as the fire I set in your heart died a cold death.

They say the past generations danced naked
amongst the old stones of the ancients
but you and I stood cold and grave
between the markers of the dead without name.
As lilies floated solemn on a still pond,
the fire you set in my heart died a cold death.

I looked at you and you looked at me,
countless years slipping away in a blink.
All of my hopes extinguished when your gaze lands elsewhere.
Despite all of my longing and wanting,
I still find it difficult to leave this land of dreams,
where the fires we set in each other’s hearts never died a cold death.

Singing songs in the car with the roof down,
hands up in the air pushing against the wind,
Bon Jovi on the radio and you don’t care anymore,
lost in the moment as your brain creates another memory,
one you’ll remember for years to come.
You will smile like you are just now,
not a care in the world, enjoying life as it is,
going nowhere fast with your heart calling shotgun.
The wind dances in your hair and you look wild
and that is why I love you,
because you will never be tamed and I never want you to be,
in this fleeting moment you are perfect
and our memories of this day will be the same,
we were happy and content and we still are,
living forever like the stars that align in your eyes.

I’m swimming in the
Darkness of your undertow
And I can’t escape the
Pull of your gravity.

People ask how it
Feels existing in
Someone else’s
Shadow. It’s cold

And wet down
Here in the hole
Of a heart beating
To another rhythm.

Can’t come up for
Air, just get dragged
Back down to that
Immutable darkness

Where I spend the
Best hours of my
Days, the best years
Of my short life.

You just drag me
Along, another shadow
Cast out behind
You, luring others

Towards a sad,
Lonely little existence.
The trick is to stop
Kicking and smile.

We know how the universe will end now,
black holes swallowing up all matter
until darkness reigns and time slows down.
The black holes will evaporate
once every particle in the universe is swallowed up
and ejected as radiation,
then the universe will freeze and time stops forever.
That is why I have the urge to hold your hand sometimes,
when we look up at midnight and see the stars,
twinkling silently completely oblivious to their fate.
It’s good to feel loved now and again,
knowing how everything will one day be gone,
feeling the warmth of your palm in mine,
battling the universe in a war we cannot hope to win.
We can win this battle though,
a snapshot of the moment where we didn’t care.
These little pieces of time never fade away,
no black hole could ever overcome fragments like these.

I want to feel the wind in my hair one last time,
wave my hand in the currents,
recite all the words to all the songs I know.
I want you there by my side
to share the experience,
share the journey,
racing the sun for the horizon
one last time.

I want to tell you all the things I never could,
kiss the breath from your mouth
and touch you in a way I never had the courage to do.
We’d drive forever and a day,
running from nothing,
chasing everything,
all the dreams we had
that we never asked the universe for.

How I wish you were here allaying my fears.
Instead, you’re somewhere just out of reach,
beyond the limits of my eyes,
dancing to a song stuck in your heart.
I must drive without you,
listening to every song but yours,
as that mantra keeps playing in my ears.

Nothing like the open road.
Nothing like the open road.
Nothing like the open road.

Look at the stars, pinholes into another universe
where you aren’t so afraid to be who you want to be,
where you chase all your dreams with unabashed glory.
“I’m made of them; if only I could shine as bright.”

Where do you hide in the forest of your mind?
Is the sky full of light or does the weight of nothing bring you down?
I can hear your crying somewhere in the pines and ash,
throwing wishes into the dark like whispers meaning **** all,
falling down in the forest and no one can hear the sound.
And as I wandered, I found you in the dark;
I never saw your face; I never saw your face.

You are an aurora, a dazzling display of colour on the black,
and I wish you could see it for yourself.
I could take a photograph but my breath in the chilly air
clouds your lightshow and mists your brilliance.
Even if I could show you it, you’d say your thanks
then ******* to show someone with brighter eyes.

I still love you, and look at you the way you look at those stars,
burning all those billions of miles away,
and my love gets lost somewhere in those light years,
swallowed up by the dark, blown away by your tempest.
One day you’ll find me wrapped up in my winding sheet, I’m sure,
hearing me whisper your name when the storms should drown it out,
and the touch of my hand as I reach out to yours,
the kiss of starlight on your forehead,
you’ll realise true love has never felt so ******* far away.

Let’s create our own paths,
go where neither of us has gone before,
find love on the rocks of a foreign shore,
find life in the places struck off the maps,
plan major plot points and fill in the gaps.
Let’s walk hand in hand through a forest of pines,
travel the world in parallel lines,
gaze at the moon on a midwinter night,
make love in the grass in her pale light.

Our eyes no longer see black,
colours abound in our wanderlust.
Exploring our love with the stars on our back,
forever moving in our own little universe.

The streets are cold, filled with icy caricatures
of empty bodies longing for soullight.
They walk hard, as if they just learned yesterday,
their heavy gaits trespassing on the freezing stones,
leaving shallow footprints embedded in the frost.

An orb of bright light appears and moves through the crowd,
darting here and there, and I can hear it call my name.
The orb hurries past me and I turn to chase after it,
but my feet are frozen to the pavement and I cannot move,
the orb zipping away as I my name disappears on the air.
And there, as I stand in the biting wind clawing at my bones,
the heaviness I feel of a life I could have lived,
I realise with growing horror that that was it,
that was my one chance of having my own soullight
and it passed me by and it was tantalisingly close,
and they say that your soullight only ever visits you once
and it sticks inside you and lights your path forever.
Forever yours, it would say to me in the dreams I had,
can’t wait for us to be together it would say to me.

I guess I’m going to be an icy caricature forever,
walking hard like I just learned yesterday,
no longer longing for my soullight to find me.
Heavy steps in the frost of a cold and lonely world.

To be calm again in a world so chaotic,
to live slow amongst lives so hectic,
to kiss a girl under mistletoe,
but still I have some years to go.

Dance beneath captivating starlight,
with a soul not afraid of night,
a face that shines like a desert sun,
but still my life has not begun.

An hour to pass like a fleeting moment,
to live each day without atonement,
and feel the wind beneath these wings,
but still my voice has yet to sing.

Mountains crumble in our presence,
new meanings form from your eloquence,
the world transfixed by your hypnosis,
but still the pain from my neurosis.

To dream in colour and latent scents,
to predict the outcomes of love’s events,
to pluck a star from the sky for you,
but still that is much too hard to do.

To lie with you ‘neath azure sky,
to make you laugh until you cry,
and be the best man I can be,
but still I cannot overcome me.

A hand to hold in my time of dying,
a voice to forgive my chronic lying,
a heart to guide me when I falter,
but still I cannot wait to meet her.

This
is my
bane, my
dear, lover.
Restless night
syndrome, dark
and pitiless sleep
as the blood rushes
through my ears like
cascades, torrents of
floodwater crushing my
eardrums and deafening
me as I try to dream a
little dream to find
some solace and
comfort in an
old world I
used to
know.

Fall
into a
void of
my own
making, I
clamber up
the stairs to
my dreamland
and dance with
your heart among
stars that refuse to
let their shine diminish,
and I will see you in
that void, the dark
and lonely rooms
that sit between
my happiness
and the love
that you
provide.

I am
yours
and you
are mine and
mine alone and
together we will
conquer all that we
see, every speck of land
in every single dream we
dream, universes dancing
together, minds melded
as one, and even they
who cannot be but
jealous may look
on with those
green eyes,
we will be
strong.

But the
alcohol dims
the effect and I
find myself talking
to the walls as if they
really did have ears, but
we all know they are dead
things, dead as you are in my
head. Someday I might find
the talent to create some
creature as beautiful
as you look in my
dreams, but I am
unable to find
appropriate
words to
describe
you.

I see you running through a forest,
every tree you pass withers and dies.
I know you’re being chased by something
but gone are the days where I actually cared.
Even though those trees are right before my eyes,
nothing’s quite as dead to me as you.

Even though you seem to be a dream within a dream,
an apparition of a ghost hunting my sanity,
I cannot seem to go a night without dreaming of your heart.
The days are getting colder and the birds all turn to rust,
all we can muster to say is that everything returns to dust,
yet through all this rain and fog and misery something remains true,
nothing’s quite as dead to me as you.

When all the world is quiet
and everyone’s fast asleep,
my heart still sings
a little lullaby for you.
*******.
*******.
*******.

Forgotten, gathering dust at the back of a shelf,
my autobiography, folded pages and spine battered.
All the pages are empty,
the ink long ago dried up and vanished.
Who needs enemies when you have friends like these?

Two starlings in love, flying between the raindrops,
swooping down from the clouds into the mist
of the downpour but they don’t feel the rain,
too caught up in the fleeting moment of the dance,
lost forever in an eternity that never lasts long,
the expectation of the suspension of time gone
in the wreckage of tomorrow’s memories.

But today they fly and dance and sing and twirl,
with no thought of tomorrow and the loss that may come,
living in a singularity, a lifetime in a few minutes.
Rain washes away any residue of what used to be,
but how beautiful it is to watch the process unfold.

I am a corpse when I sleep,
and rotten vines grow from my forelimbs,
reaching for an indeterminate point
somewhere in the atmosphere above me.

Nightmares reign in my dreamscapes,
green apples dripping with red poison,
my bed aflame with hellfire
and why will I not awaken?

Something dark breathes hot and heavy on my neck.
Who are you to call upon me at this godforsaken hour?

Mountains of dark speckled with the starlight of tiny villages
just trying to keep a foothold on the steep slopes.
If it wasn’t for the howling wind, I’d swear I was floating
through a galaxy with the stars so close I could almost hold them,
make wishes to them and sit there with their soft glow on my face.
I could easily believe that the constellations on the mountainsides
were not just streetlights but the sad glow of forgotten history,
the light taking long enough that they burn in the past,
now gone thanks to time and distance and leaving behind ghosts
that refuse to vacate the place they once considered to be their home.
Maybe an avalanche will happen and these lights will disappear,
and no one but me will ever know they had even been there,
the erasing of an entire galaxy with a single witness who will say nothing,
but will just carry on sliding down his own ***** and forget
all about the little lights that for a moment filled him with wonder.
No marker saying what once was here, no memorial to potential lives lost,
just an echo of the damage done, a gravitational wave with no apparent source,
a destructive blast of gamma rays that seem to materialise from nothing,
no great flash of light that alerts everything within a million light years,
no warning beacon flashing in the dark, telling everyone to take shelter.
There is no avalanche though, and the soft glow of the lights keeps shining,
and I can be thankful that tonight offers no destruction for a change.

There is a constellation in your eye
and no stargazer knows about it.
It has no name, no profound meaning
and no adjective exists to describe it.
Only I know it’s there
and I won’t tell my secret to anyone.

Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly died? I was young, at that age where all my memories blend into one entity, never knowing where one memory ends and another begins. I was in the living room watching cartoons, eating Maltesers. I inhaled one by accident and it stuck in my throat. A perfect time-pausing fear overcame me and I sat frozen in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I just sat there, terrified to move. I don’t know how long I sat there for before running into the hallway, thirty seconds maybe, up to a minute, but it felt like a lifetime.

My mum was in the kitchen with her back to me. I couldn’t scream so I just stood there, waving my arms. She never turned around. So I stamped my feet, jumped up and down, then she turned, assuming I was messing about and trying to annoy her. I think she was about to shout at me but she saw the blue of my lips and ran over, turned me around and started trying to dislodge the sweet.

Then the fear left me, replaced instead by this creeping darkness coming in from the corners of my vision. To this day I still can’t quite describe it adequately, but I will try. The darkness had a form, not like a shadow, but 3-dimensionality. It came from behind my then started to cover the carpet beneath my feet then creep up the walls and down the hallway. I was not afraid of it. It was so warm, so inviting, like silk wrapped around your shoulders, the velvety hug of a soulmate after you’ve suffered a devastating loss. The darkness drew me in when I had no fight left in me. I was ready.

The Malteser flew out of my mouth and bounced down the hallway. The darkness fled immediately, the fear rushing back in and I ran to the toilet and threw up, crying like I’d lost everything. I’ve heard people say that depression feels like you’ve lost someone, then realising it is yourself. That feels about right, I think. I still think of that darkness now and again, when the nights are cold and I’m by myself. I think of all the people terrified of dying, but they don’t know. You are embraced by the universe, as if time itself will mourn your passing. It feels good.

cut out my heart and feed it
to the wolves howling
for the blood of the
lost boys. sweat out death
and glazed eyes feed
families for eternity.

tick…tock…goes the clock

i am the conjurer of
my own magick, the
spoils of my own war,
the monster
of my own nightmare,
the penitence of my own
sins.

tick…tock…goes the clock

devils in my head and death
chokes my heart, ain’t beating
for you no more.
killed it with silence,
neglect took the soul
from my bones.
c’est la vie, i suppose.

tick…tock…goes the clock

this is my doomsday,
how the sky caves in
more and more, the clouds
look orange like ***** fire.
this is the end
of all ends,
this is my darkness,
******* all.

tick…tock…goes the clock

I can tell how you will live your life
by the way the wind scatters the leaves.
If the wind scatters the leaves in disarray,
your life will be as tumultuous
as the way the wind scatters the leaves.
If the wind scatters the leaves in pretty patterns,
your life will be as beautiful and elegant
as the way the wind scatters the leaves.
Here are the leaves that will show you your life,
a pile soaked with rain and clumped together.
The wind comes in and those leaves do not move,
stuck to the ground and matted with rainwater.
This is how I know you will never change
by the way the wind doesn’t scatter the leaves.

The blossoms of the pink cherry tree
fall with a calmness through the air,
landing prettily on your coiled form,
this one on your rose red cheek
as you breathe with the universe.
Lying in prayer like an ammonite,
waiting for me to straighten you out,
and I am here, my sweetheart.
Coil no more, reach for the sky with me
and graze the great blue ocean
dangling above our beautiful heads.

That was the wind knocking on my door,
passing on the message you won’t be round no more.
The whirlwind lifted me up off my feet
and landed me in the middle of the rain and the sleet.
You said you ain’t gonna be my girl no more,
but that wind just keeps on knocking on my door.

That was a cloud passing by over my head,
sending me a message that to you I’m as good as dead.
It took my light and left me with this shadow
clinging onto my soul and blocking my view of the show.
You told me I was to you as good as dead,
but that cloud just keeps on passing by over my head.

That was a bird whispering in my ear,
that everything will be okay if I cast off the fear.
She sings in my dreams and gives me solace
and sits in my caged heart behind my gladiolus.
You said I will be okay if I cast off the fear,
but that bird just keeps on whispering in my ear.

The bikers
rolled in through
the fog
and smoke
of the cold midwinter
morning,
the revving of
the engines roared
like monsters hiding
in the darkness
of a momentary
nightmare.

One biker flicked
his *** into a
puddle licked by
frost, a quick death
to the fire
that once burned
so **** bright.
A metaphorical
device for life,
perhaps?
I think I’m too
drunk right now
to bother
with words.

One looked at
me with a sneer as
he rode past,
and I stuck my middle
finger up through
my beard and
licked the tip,
and I winked at him.
He growled a *******
as on he rode
and I laughed at my
joke, but no one laughed
with me.

They passed and all
that remained was
the silence and the smell
of burned metal
and the sweet
odour of petrichor
as the rain died a little,
but I was soaked
and alone, wondering
where the **** my
life went, where
all the friends I had
had gone to.

But I suppose
that’s just the way
it goes sometimes,
once you were on
top of the world,
king of the kings of
Kintore, and the next,
you’re lying in the gutter
staring up at the
stars with the back
of your head in
a puddle as a
*** end floats past.

let me taste your skin,
i want to eat your sin,
give me your ivory bones,
your eyeballs like moonstones.
                                 let me taste your skin,
                                 i want to eat your sin,
                                 give me your ivory bones,
                                 your eyeballs like moonstones.
                                                         let me taste your skin,
                                                         i want to eat your sin,
                                                         give me your ivory bones,
                                                         your eyeballs like moonstones.

i am a kolossus
i am your superfluous
are you my star?
je ne sais pas

Get rid of the deadwood,
they say, these self-help books
ripping me off
and every other sucker out there.
We need all the friends
we can get in this
**** world we’re in.
Forget those books,
marketed for idiots
who can’t think for themselves.
Need help getting far
in this world?
A bit of advice?
Two words to make all those
books obsolete:
be lucky.
Van Gogh, Poe, Galileo,
Kafka and Darger.
Five right there who worked
their ***** off and were left
with nothing but disdain
or poverty or loneliness.
They weren’t lucky enough in this
**** world we’re in.

We met up for coffee
as the snow started falling,
warmth in our hearts
and a morning just talking.
I reached for your hand
and you opened it up to mine.
The shivers of outside
found their way to our spines.

We left them behind,
anonymous strangers in shelter,
we found our way home
with our names in red letters.
We kissed so so softly,
kicked off our shoes by the door,
and we found our ecstasy
lying entwined on the floor.

I woke up the next day,
you weren’t there beside me,
and I looked everywhere
but just your shadow I could see.
The snow started falling,
piling up outside my window,
and the coldness came in
when I wondered where did you go?

And I’m still searching for this lost part of me,
this art of me, this masterpiece that was and will always be you.
Come back to me and prove you were not just a vision,
not just a dream one night, a lonely little night I shrunk instead of grew.
My hand’s wide open ready for yours to hold,
come back from the cold, appearing and vanishing in the still of the blue.

I want to know where you retreat when life gets tough
so I can show you where light lives when all you see is dark.
Dream what you wish to dream, impossible is just a state of mind,
the doubts and fears nothing more than monsters under the bed.

All these big houses
with the lights off,
empty of life
empty of love
empty of hope
and dreams
and laughter
and delight.

Where do these houses end
and I begin?

I am not the one you dream of each night,
coming in on the wind through the open window,
brushing the hair from your face and kissing your forehead,
soothing you, whispering it’s going to be okay now,
there’s no more worry and fear left in the world for you.
Don’t sing songs of rain when the monsoons arrive,
don’t stand by the banks knowing the river’s about to burst,
the river that flows somewhere else your eyes don’t see,
maybe an ocean like the blues of your eyes,
maybe a dark sky that paints violet on the dawn.
I hope for you it’s a Nile that laps at your feet,
so you can sail away on the shining firmament of a new day,
but if you happen to be washing your feet in an Okavango,
know that I will walk with you across the swamp and sand.


I saw your parable play out on mountaintops like beacons,
glowing in the aftermath of another avoidable forest fire,
and all the animals stayed as the flames kicked up at their tails,
and I couldn’t figure out quite why they didn’t run.
When I saw their eyes, there was acceptance when I expected fear,
as if they knew running was futile, as if they knew they were already dead.
Is that why I stayed there in the trees as they burned to ash?
I walked through the burnt wreckage and white sticks blew away to dust,
and I swear in one brief fleeting moment, your face appeared in the air,
thin and wistful, whispering wishfully of a dream that never bore fruit.
You need to go on a limb to pick the best ones but none could support you,
and down to fell, to the grey ashen ground, and made angels like you do in snow,
but when you stood up, instead of an angel, an outline of your mirage in chalk.


Don’t cry from those eyes that glisten like the waters of two tiny planet Earths;
don’t speak the words that took centuries to form if they don’t mean what you intend;
instead, listen to the nightingale whistling her song as the sun rests her head for the night;
dream of the harbour that offers you sanctuary when the gales come low and loud.
There is a new dawn forming in the swirls of the blacks that hang above your head,
in the starlight songs, in the planetary movements, in the cosmic danse macabre.
You will find me lying supine looking back at you from the Pillars of Creation,
with the burning white light of a million new stars that will die to give birth to new life,
and as their explosive echoes penetrate the dark of a soundless universe,
I will ride the waves that rise and fall invisible, plotting a course to your heart.
Leave a little space in your soul, that burns with crimson, with gold, with pink,
and follow the sounds the little raindrops make on the needles of the pine trees;
hear how the water splits, the light’s refracted, reflected, and deflected,
see a billion minuscule rainbows blossom in the rage of a storm.
Find me in the glowing rays of a beautiful sunrise, not in the dark folds of the sunset.

These dark woods are mine alone.
The trails that snake between the trunks
travel in circles and meet up with themselves again.
There’s no way out of these woods of mine,
no friend nor foe to aide my quest,
no fair maiden in a castle keep,
just my lonely old heart begging to die.

These deep woods are mine alone.
The night air is cold and full of water,
its thick blanket allowing me no sleep any more.
There’s no rest in these woods of mine,
no bed nor couch to lay upon,
no young belle to kiss goodnight,
just my tired old head begging to die.

Lord help me, I fell in love,
now I own these deep dark woods.
Lord above, I fell in love,
all alone in these deep dark woods.

There was an idiot a long time ago who said
it’s better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.
These are the words of a man who didn’t love fully,
who didn’t wake up in the morning
and spend the next eighteen hours
in a kind of stupor as thought after thought
of a woman he loved soul-deep
kept running through his head like a slideshow.
These are the ramblings of a man who had
never lost that kind of love,
never had that slideshow on repeat every waking moment,
never saw himself in all the love songs
that suddenly were all about him.

That quote has done a great disservice to those of us
who have loved so deeply and lost that love even deeper,
the soul turned into a bottomless well of limitless proportions.
Light never travels very far down there,
the thick tarry blackness snuffs out all illuminations.
And the echoes of the memories you created
rebound and recoil in the dark, the great voice
of a forgotten earth god trembling all who fall too close,
a hungry, vindictive, spiteful creature
who devours the souls of the dead-but-still-just-barely-alive.
If that’s worse than having never been loved at all,
I’m sorry, but that is a crock of ****.

I’m not sure exactly where I found you,
but you carried the pieces of you you still had.
You never told me what happened to you,
never said a word in response to the questions,
too busy cradling all the things you had lost.

Maybe I found you in the wreckage of a previous disaster,
a 747 with the engines blown, coming down like heavy clouds,
streaking the sky like a meteorite, shooting star inbound,
make a wish, and I did, and here you showed up,
walking through the smoke on the night the world went up in flames.

You couldn’t tell the difference between heaven and hell,
synonyms for the same kind of pain that comes
when you’ve lost all hope you had in this world.
I think deep down it was you piloting that plane,
and you just happened to crash land on the path I was taking.

I don’t know what caused you to nosedive,
but I know that I tried to catch you and, in the destruction,
the strange blood in your veins added more layers to my skin.
The impact you made caused the world to stop spinning,
picking up the pieces on the night the world went up in flames.

The hotel sits just off Main Street,
between the hospital and the *******.
It’s walls covered in ivy and the front gates
held together by rust and century-old bolts.
The wind whistles through the broken windows
when it travels north from the cemetery.
The old folks in the town tell tales
of curses, witchcraft, devil-worship and ******.
The young folks don’t believe in any of that any more,
old gods forgotten in time, but none venture inside,
the building giving off a sickening feeling.


The grand foyer is overgrown with nature,
the slick walls nurturing the flora.
Rain drips in from the holes in the ceiling,
neglect and time exposing the beams and rafters,
a man-made cave unexplored for decades,
wiped off the map and replaced with a blank space.
It’s dark in here despite the valiant attempt
of an early afternoon sun bursting with light.
A grand staircase rises into darkness
and seems to split in two directions,
to the east wing and the west.
Most stories told about this place were set in room 77,
follow the hallway into the east wing,
at the end take another staircase on your right,
into another hallway, sixteenth door on the left.


The second number seven on the door has fallen off,
leaving behind it the memory of the gold,
that missing number not on the floor, long gone,
taken by a brave soul on a dare.
The door is warm to the touch,
the door to room 76 is cold,
as is 75, 74, 73, 72.
The hallway smells of abandonment, that sickly wet smell
that a gravestone gives off after a thunderstorm.
Maybe it’s the lichen and moss growing on the walls
that gives off this horrible smell of not-quite-dead
but it does not drown out the quiet laughter
coming from behind the warm door of room 77.


The door creaks open, silencing the giggling;
it sounded like children, perhaps, or bats disturbed.
The curtains are drawn so everything within
is hidden from the view of the living.
It smells different in here, like a forest
that hasn’t seen rain for weeks.
It is stifling in the room but the radiators are ****-cold.
Water starts running in the bathroom en suite,
the giggling starting up again, definitely children.
Floorboards damp with the moisture in the air
crack underfoot and cause the laughter to stop again.
In the en suite, the hot water tap is running,
water splashing out of the basin and onto the floor.
The water in the toilet bowl is green with algae
and the smell of ozone is burning hot.


Back in the room, an old photograph of a crossroads
hangs above the bed and it feels uneasy,
as if the photo is telling a story of this room,
that deals were done here as they were there,
selling souls for a gift, cheated out of a raw deal.
Dust swirls and spirals in a vortex in the air.
The door to the room slams shut.
There is a dressing gown hanging on to a hook
that barely has any strength left in it,
and just then, the hook falls out of the door,
sending both it and the dressing gown to the floor.
The mood in that room swiftly changes.


Drawn on the door in chalk is a pentagram,
a crude representation of the Sigil of Baphomet.
Beneath that, an inverted cross with Yeshua written beneath it.
From near the window on the other side of the room,
a hot breath materialises and the curtains close.
In that darkness, footsteps heavy and slow approach
as the laughter rises and fills the room with raw terror.
A deep, gravelly voice grinds its way through the air
and speaks in a tongue not heard in millennia.
יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע
The floor opens up into an abyss and the world falls away.


The old folks in the town tell tales
of curses, witchcraft, devil-worship and ******.
The young folks don’t believe in any of that any more.

You know, something always bugged me about love.
I always assumed it was having someone there for you,
someone for you to care for and someone to care for you.
A star in a dark sky to show you the direction you were going,
the moon on your back lighting the way to somewhere warmer.
It was always an ember to me, something small but bright,
how it tricked your eye into being mesmerised by it,
how it danced on invisible winds and flowed like the air was water.
Sometimes it would happen little by little and other times all at once,
and when it was gone, it would make you beg for more,
have you scraping at the burning log to make more little embers.
I suppose there’s a beauty in that somehow, the subtlety of movement,
a staccato as a new breeze entered the ember’s airspace,
and how that little ember would judder in the air but still it would burn.

But years go by as they so often do, without warning or permission,
and you inevitably see things differently from a more mature viewpoint.
You have so much more to look back on, so much more to comprehend,
how everything you’ve ever done up to this point all fits together.
I don’t see love as one of those spritely little embers anymore,
love to me is so much more, a force of magic that binds souls together,
the universe, once thought so unforgiving, actually there to support you,
to guide you through the twilit marsh of existence, to heal the hurt.
I have experienced that magic firsthand, and I know it happens to everyone,
but so often we either look the other way or we can’t fathom what we see,
until it’s too late that is, when memories become cloudy with age,
when all that you had ever hoped to come true has been replaced by nothing,
but that too is magic, my friends, because magic knows nothing of time,
it transcends the very fabric of the universe that binds us.
Magic flows through the connections, seeps through the cracks,
and that is where love resides, not in the intimacy of no distance,
not in the warm embrace of someone who takes you for granted.
It’s in the very fibre of your being, you are composed of love,
of magic and the beautiful light show on display every waking moment.
Dance to the rhythm the universe provides, you are its melody.