the children dont get to play in the woods,
the elders forbid it.
there are monsters in those trees,
devils in the roots, former-men in the caves.
children die here like nowhere else,
crucified for punishment
and entertainment in the cold days.

the elder women make clothes
from the skin of dead children
and everyone has a full wardrobe.

they used to
hurt but now
they keep
us warm

today is the sacrifice.
the gods demand it.
all the village is here as witness,
praying and screaming.
they talk in tongues
and the elders speak
in an ancient language
brought to them by the gods.

they take the girl,
crying and afraid,
place her on the sacrificing stone
and cut her throat,
the blood collected in bowls,
passed around and drunk from.

the tanner skins the body
while everyone becomes delirious,
caught up in the customs
of imaginary beings.

her backbone will be
reinforced and given
to the boy with
the broken legs
so he may walk again.

they will feast on the flesh
once the perverts
are satiated.
nothing
ever
goes
to
waste

The highway here runs to a point
on the horizon that looks so far away
it almost seems pointless in going after it.
The sky is monstrous, deep blue leviathan,
mouth agape, ready to swallow the world.

Thunderheads gather in the distance
ready to battle newer dawns.
The creeping shadows of yesteryear
still cling to the barren soil,
where blood was spilled in the name of nothing,
where land was lost in the spoils of something.
The thunderbird hasn’t been spotted for centuries.

Extinction seems to be a euphemism for life here,
where death imagines paradise,
she who draws pictures in the sand,
summoning a creature long forgotten,
burned up in the curse of the desert.
Somewhere in the thinly-defined contours
of the pale black distant hills,
an old man with a pipe might still dream.

I thought I saw you floating above the asphalt,
but you faded as I approached.
Your form gave way to air,
the mythology of your mirage
believed and prayed to by one.
That’s all your mythology needs,
I wouldn’t share my vision with others,
I’d want to all for my own.

Still the road goes on,
a coiled snake swallowing its tail.
I heard mention of the Ouroboros Trail,
somewhere not too far from here.
Maybe this is it, traveling in circles
far too big to feel, far too big to realise.
The thunderheads are in front of me.
Am I approaching the mouth of the snake?

The clouds grumble displeasure.
A forked-tongue bolt of lightning
bores a hole in the ground by my feet.
The light doesn’t blind, it caresses,
and memories regress to mythologies
as the snake opens up her mouth,
death draws one final symbol,
the old man takes one more draw of his pipe.

Here the mythologies never gave way completely.
Here is where the forgotten gods,
the forgotten stories, the forgotten realms,
all clash for the minds of the few who remember.
Was it the sound of thunder that shook my bones
or the sounds of angry gods reclaiming my soul?

The birds stopped singing a long time ago,
long before I ended up at the shore of the lake.
The water is a single shade of blue from black,
trees hanging limp and mournful around it,
drooping branches of dead bark and dying leaves
skimming the surface, debating whether or not to fall in.

I swear the silence is so loud, the voice of the universe
reverberating through the molecules of the atmosphere.
I can feel the vibrations through my feet,
rising like the creeping ivy on a dead house,
long ago forgotten by the hands of its creator.

I’ve heard tell that the lake goes down forever,
that it fills a void of limitless proportions.
If I threw myself like a stone into that wet darkness,
where would I sink if the lake has no bottom?
Maybe it flows down into the sky of another world,
my darkness their vacuum of space and light.
Further I sink, the blue begins to brighten
and I fall into another world where I am important.

I take a step into the cold dark water of the lake.
It wraps around my foot like the gripping hug of death,
that feeling you get when you close your eyes at night
and focus on your heartbeat slowing down as you rest,
and the panic you feel when you think it will keep slowing down,
sinking into your mattress and saying goodbye to nothing at all.

I’ll find out where I will sink to,
there is so little left to explore in this vast world
but I have found one more place to go.
The water envelops me and down I swim,
and the current moves around me in a circle.
I take a deep breath and my heart fills with heaviness.
So this is how it feels to finally let go.

The first time Juliet stood on the balcony,
she leaned too far over the railing
and fell to her death.
Romeo never loved her, just another girl
who fell hopelessly in love with a boy
instead of a man.

A Norwegian girl, made of snow, looks up
and catches the beauty of the aurora
in her lonely eyes.
She listens to the small waves on the fjord
as the lights dazzle and dance up high,
her hand reaching nowhere.

I fell in love with a wayward heart,
a fluttering butterfly travelling
anywhere but home.
I fell for the siren call of a dark love,
a song penned at midnight,
poetry never written.

This is how the hopeless romantics die,
they don’t leave a body behind,
just sombre emotions.
They don’t mean much to anyone
except to those who can’t
take them with them.

This is where we first met, on a blank page slowly filled with ink.
I wrote my words with you on my mind
and you read them with a peculiar style and grace,
as if reading were some soporific artform,
elbow on table, hand on temple, hunched forward,
leaning towards the paper as if the words
somehow became smaller the more you concentrated.
The first time I watched you read, you looked like a painting,
my hand slowly drawing brushstrokes in the air,
swiping your hair, blotting your cheeks, unfolding your eyes.

This is where we last met, an inked sheet washed clean with holy water.
Like shaking a Polaroid, you slowly appeared
but your image faded until just the outline remained.
I was only ever interested in what lay within that line,
the shape of your heart, the light in your eyes,
the soft glint of dew on your eyelashes when you were in pain.
A prophet came to me and told me he could resurrect you
but I saw there was no ink left in his pen,
his pencil blunt and his image of you was blurry,
seeing you through the cataracts of someone else’s memories.

This is not the time in history to be raising the dead,
they belong where they belong because that’s where they need to be.
My words would mean nothing if you were here,
reading in that manner I wrote about so much.
This is the table where I write your name out of nothing.
This is where we first met, a blank page slowly filled with ink.

We came roaring out of hell
in a black Cadillac with gold rims,
red leather interior and diamonds on the dash.
The speedometer didn’t work
but we didn’t need the numbers to tell us
we were just shy of the speed of light
with the universe quick on our heels.

We had four horsemen on either flank,
flames of fire for their tails
and ash bellowing from their mouths,
pyroclastic flows our road to nowhere in particular.
We were travelling where maps didn’t go,
where not even monsters lurked in the shadows,
the edge passed a long time ago.

We dreamed with composure, poise, and elegance,
the humming of the engine our soundtrack,
and the frontier of the universe right before us.
Pushing past the speed of light,
we broke through that last great boundary
and drove straight into a new universe,
where immortality controls all the clocks.

Throw up your hands and feel
the cosmic wind ripple in your fingers.
Touch the face of oblivion and laugh
in the knowledge death holds no domain here,
where we can have the lives we wanted,
Growing old and staying young,
be kind, be brave, be strong.

Those precious locks that glow like firelight,
they lighten up the brightest of days,
shine my world in darkest night.
Those eyes so blue like drops of ocean hue,
I could get lost in those constellations,
they are the prettiest of views.

Your soul is a mixture of burgundy and cinnamon,
a golden red so intoxicating,
what a lethal combination.
That smile you wear that shows so wide,
gleaming white pearls ‘tween lips,
from the crimson you sighed.

That fire within you dances so well with mine
that I can hardly take the breathlessness,
calm myself with a glass of wine.
Share a glass with me and give a toast to the universe
for bringing you and I together,
I hope our life isn’t terse.

You love good love and our love is true,
it effervesces with beauty,
our lives are born anew.
I left my heart open and you made yourself at home,
and brought with you perfection,
I swear I will never roam.

I give you all the love I could ever give,
you gave me hope in darkness,
a life I could finally live.
Our sorrows have now given way to delight,
I could tell you I love you every day,
I could show you every night.

All those I Love Yous would never ever come close
to how much you mean to me,
your love is a lethal dose.
“Find what you love and let it **** you,”
said Bukowski and I swear
it is all coming true.

I bathe in your light and your angelic radiance,
and I want to recite the poems you like,
and in your arms I’d dance.
Let’s create the finest art the world has ever seen,
they say your home is your castle,
will you be my Queen?

The night is immense tonight,
the dark stretching further than I’ve ever seen it stretch.
The gaps between the stars I named for you
are bigger than I ever realised.
And I know all those stars are slowly drifting away,
all those beautiful little points of light will soon be gone,
and one of those stars has gone tonight,
evaporated away because I longed for it too much.
That was the most beautiful star I had ever lain my eyes upon,
but it was always out of reach, no matter how hard I tried
to reach up and pluck her from the night sky
so I could hold her close to my heart and say I love you,
the universe will never let you disappear from my view,
I will protect you and keep you safe in this dangerous place.
But I couldn’t, I left it too late,
and now all the other stars are following suit.
I try with all my strength just to grab one,
but they twinkle and flicker and vanish too quickly.
Soon, the sky will be fat with darkness,
and even the moon will leave,
trailing off into the void of a universe
that never cared for its inhabitants.

Facing northward
Expecting eastward
Suspecting southward
Wishing westward

Pining for a soft impression of a beautiful description,
wanting to let you in but you need the inscription
lying in the abstract of my mind’s hurried construction.

But the rivers keep flowing,
and pretending I’m healed
doesn’t really solve anything.
Finding more excuses to lie
when the evening draws near,
but no one’s here to disagree.

Gothic spires scratching the sky,
stained-glass windows opening
in the dark jaws of eternity.
People gathering at the doors
expecting the light inside
to shine each path they lead.

To shine each path they lead,
expecting the light inside,
people gathering at the doors.
In the dark jaws of eternity,
stained-glass windows opening,
gothic spires scratching the sky.

But no one’s here to disagree
when the evening draws near,
finding more excuses to lie.
Doesn’t really solve anything;
and pretending I’m healed…
but the rivers keep flowing.

Lying in the abstract of my mind’s hurried construction,
wanting to let you in but you need the inscription,
pining for a soft impression of a beautiful description.

You might act like you own the world,
stick that nose up in the air
and force a wry smile speaking
to the lower classes,
but you will die one day,
hopefully really very soon indeed
and I will dig your grave,
lower your coffin into the ground
and jump on it a few times.
Open it up and jump on you a couple times,
just to make sure.

You were born into the working classes
and just look at you now.
You have forgotten where you came from
and where you will end up.
There is no god waiting for you, darling.
You’ll be with the brimstone
and the fire and the sulphur and the devils.
You traipse through your ******* existence like a princess
but you will rot like everyone else.

Are you up there, Marian?
I don’t believe in heaven or hell
but I believe you’re in a parallel
universe that knows nothing of the conceit of death,
and in that universe, I got to know you
in the way that a grandson and grandmother should know each other.
All I have are the cigarettes, the agoraphobia, and your books,
ghosts and fantasies, the latter allowing you
to leave the little flat you lived in
the last time I saw you.

I see everyone talking about Thanksgiving,
how family is so important this time of year.
All coming together and talking into the night.
My mum said if you were alive today,
you’d be so proud of me, so proud of my writing,
and that you’d read every word I wrote
and you’d soak them up and feel every letter,
close your eyes at the cadence of the words,
the rhythms and the harmonics.
No one has ever said they were proud of me;
you’re the closest I have and you’re a dead stranger,
done away by the cigarettes
(ten years ago today)
that I now smoke in your honour.

I hope you find a way to read these words, Marian,
whether you can see this **** little poem of mine
from your everlasting parallel universe,
or if I’m wrong and you are here,
sitting on the edge of the bed beside me,
watching as my fingers conjure words on the screen like magic.

I love you, my beautiful stranger.
I miss you, grandmother gone.

Bartz Field in the July heat,
pretty girls in their summer dresses
singing songs of Woodstock and American dreams.
My dream lay beneath a sycamore,
motionless in her island of shadow.
I left her there to dream of cold beer
and headed up to Red Hill.
The sun shone with less ferocity up there,
a slight breeze cooling the air,
and from my vantage point,
I could make her out, sleeping gently,
the calm point in the hustle-bustle
of the students playing games
and chatting over cold drinks.

On the horizon, a thunderstorm was brewing,
promising the relief of cool rain
to wash the heat from the city,
for at least an hour or so.
I scanned the city, the McDonald’s
directly across the road from
the Museum of Natural History.
I wonder if there was some irony in that placement,
or sheer luck that made me smile to myself.
The distant brontide of thunder applauded
and I looked back to the sycamore tree.
She was sitting up, looking around,
and when her head turned towards me,
I waved my arms above my head
like I was signalling a helicopter for my rescue.
She didn’t see me and she stood up,
confusion written in her body language.

I stumbled down the trail and when I reached the park,
she was back under the tree,
fingers of one hand wrestling with those on the other.
I called her name and she spun her head around
and leaped off the ground and embraced me,
then chastised me for leaving her
without telling her where I had gone.
I laughed and she laughed
and I kissed her and she kissed me back.
We sat down on the burned-out grass,
her head on my shoulder
and my arm around her waist,
as we watched and waited
for the thunderstorm to wash away
the heat of a glorious day.

There is heartbreak on every corner,
a worn-out poet in every home,
a fairytale seamstress in every room
and they are all decidedly human.

Every busker sings songs for glass hearts,
every street magician infuses some magic
through the pain and hardship of another day
and we all appreciate the little things.

What meaning is there to life
other than the meaning you give it?
Show me the proof of a master plan
and I will show you how wrong it is.

Rise up to each day’s new challenges
and laugh when everything wants you to cry.
Live the life you want the world to know,
not the life the world expects you to live.

Confined in a cage with no marker
to tell people walking past who I am.
They live their lives without me,
too caught up in their own games
to worry about those desperate to be seen.
I sit here, alone, in the company of nothing,
not even dreams offer to show themselves here.

Everyone is out having fun,
I not allowed an invite to the show.
They show what they were up to
not realising they are rubbing my face in it.
"Look how much fun we had. You should have been there."
I could have been there if only you asked.

I feel worn out now, like my bones
have been sanded down with disappointment
and the shavings swept under the rug.
One or two might notice the lump
but before long, enough people walk over it
and it soon disappears until the next one.

Wave upon wave of euphoria miss me.
I’m starting to get tired of being missed out,
friends out dancing under the moonlight
while I sit in shadows by my silent phone,
waiting to hear about how someone else’s night went.
They never ask about mine because they already know,
they left me behind with my broken brain
and ******* hatred for everything they are.

My armour’s off, love,
I have no fight left in me,
I’m too broken to raise arms
and battle my honour.

Pierce my chest, love,
stab me through my heart,
I am done with loving you
and not loving myself.

Take my soul, love,
the colour of lavender,
its glow has dimmed lately
and it wants to leave.

I can’t win, love,
I never could with you,
so claim another victory
and just let me rest.

on my ivory mantelpiece
it is perched like a broken hourglass.
day and night, unmoving,
whispering unspeakable things.
it sits watching,
no eyes.

are you my god?

it has no mouth
and yet it speaks.

                  no, i am not
                  i am more than you will ever know
            i am the aggregate of all your sorrow
                     i am your creator
                              your destructor
                                    i am all your fears
                             and all your loves
                     i am your soul
                                    and your darkness
                            your light in the dark
             and the dark that extinguishes your flame
                                     i am all that you are
                             and i am nothing at all
                                             i am a very terrible thing


darkness responds
taking my vision from me
and i bleed from my eyes
some catastrophe
afflicts my psyche
an aphrodite
my almighty
razes me like her own

You slipped at the beach yesterday
and today you’re waiting for death to come
in that ******* hearse with your name
written in flowers and wreaths.
Make him fight
Make him fight
Make him fight

You slipped at the beach yesterday
and now you could leave at any moment,
leaving me alone in this cold grey world
to fight both our battles.
I’ll do you right
I’ll do you right
I’ll do you right

You slipped at the beach yesterday
and now the beach doesn’t seem like such a lovely place,
the laughter of children now sounds derisory
as it melts with the roar of the waves.
Sweetheart goodnight
Sweetheart goodnight
Sweetheart goodnight

You slipped at the beach yesterday
and seeing my queen unresponsive and calm
with wires in your arms, part of the machine,
the sounds of beasts in my head.
Follow the light
Follow the light
Follow the light

This is my song, this is my plight,
I need your warm touch on this cold autumn night.
This is my soul, this is my voice,
I need to serenade you and hear you rejoice.

I built a wall so high, no one could see in,
the loneliness protected others
from the man I am.
I fail to love because love fails me,
good **** doesn’t happen
to those I care for the most.
I am a machine who feels rejected,
cast away from the light.
I push people away
because I can’t stand who I am,
what I have done with my life,
the people I have hurt.
I refused to let anyone in,
but then you hold my hand
and in you came, too late.
At least I can say
this is what it feels like.

I want to explore each and every contour of your body,
drive your thousands of roads and meet every face,
take kindness from every city and beautiful stranger,
dine in your hospitality and live like a king again.
I want to colour the map with my own stories,
the names and faces of those I shared them with,
hike a mountain trail and watch a Crescent City sunrise,
get lost in the Idaho forests and kayak the Colorado River,
walk down Broadway at midnight with Miss America by my side,
take her to Great Basin and watch the stars for a night,
go to Vegas and make a fortune at the tables.
People say the American Dream died long ago,
but my dream is as vivid as it has ever been.

death is my paramour, opening up my agèd door
the fish are upside down, a portent for what’s to come
she takes my hand so slightly, takes my soul most nightly
drink up my darling girl, its not just gin or ***

my body lies in mourning, the day is still just dawning
all the eyes are crying, no one shows what’s real
spinning ever faster, life is one disaster
after another one, i dont know what to feel

splinters beneath my nails, this coffin never fails
to keep my body from decomposing every time
eyelids rigor mortised, all i have accomplished
flashes ‘fore my eyes and doesnt even rhyme

say hello to my sadness, my wholehearted medley madness
lying in the dark with no light to show my way
death is my one love, sent from those heavens above
this is out it pans out, my lonely passion play

Look up, that’s where you’ll find yourself,
holding hands with the stars and breathing with eternity,
the moon haloing your head and comets in your hair.
You are the dust of this earth, the fire of suns,
a gift of a universe unique, starlight your reflection.
Here is where you were born, a song on your breath
and words to your voice, fire in your heart
and whimsy in your head, dreams of a good life
and the reality of one, the best prophesy fulfilled.
Look up, that’s where you’ll find yourself,
holding hands with the stars and dancing in the darkness.

Sometimes, you find yourself standing on the battlements,
bows drawn, arrow ready, waiting for the enemy to appear.
You can sense the presence, hidden within the fog of war
that creeps its way, serpentine, across the battlefield,
but you wait and you wait and no monster comes forth,
no harbinger of death and evil assaults your position.
The enemy, your greatest foe, is inside you.
The fog of war is a smokescreen, a green screen,
that can allow you to project anything at all.
The realisation that the monsters aren’t out there,
that your greatest foe is actually in here,
that’s true fear,
that’s true horror.

All that is lost will be returned
on white waters a storm has churned.
Carried away on a river of hope,
finding comfort at the end of a rope.

Blinded by the sudden rush of decibels hanging on expletives,
lost in a labyrinth of your own making, your own Minos, your own Minotaur,
and where is your Pasiphaë? With Prometheus on the rocks?
She cries out your name but you only hear the shredded echo,
a solitary syllable full of emotion but the meaning is gone,
carried away on another zephyr, entering the useless canal of a deaf ear.
Unsung heroes climbing mountains to find the source of a myth.
Erstwhile, your devils dance in your heart, beating their own tattoo,
leaving bruises and clots where those things should never call home,
and the realisation that they are too severe to ever be repaired,
that’s true fear,
that’s true horror.

An echo reverberates across every land
                                                    And?
Searching for your heart in the clutches of Calypso
               So?

Once more, the world spins again in this dark night,
my eyes battling to find some spark of light,
but dreams of you slowly coalesce in my tired head
and suddenly this night doesn’t make me feel quite so dead.

The smell of the lavender guides me along this path
and though they and I both know little of any possible aftermath,
I will travel across the globe to see your face finally,
to watch your smile curve up your cheeks beautifully.

Until that day comes, I stare up at my dark little sky,
the weight bearing down as I now ask how instead of why.
Is this the night I finally bow down to the stars,
pray in the light that has travelled through so much dark?

Angels in the filaments,
cracks in the ornaments,
flies in the liniments,
gossamer in the parchments,
devils in the parliaments,
and love on the rocks with no ice.

Someday, this beautiful world of ours will be no more,
love is a drug I want to overdose on.

Outside, the snow falls slowly,
shards of angels’ wings as they’re shed
ready for their colourful summer foliage.
The wind breathes freezing whispers
and they caress our ears,
reddening them and our cheeks.

I carry you along the path,
and I nearly slip
and you definitely laugh.
Your laugh melts winter’s heart.
You shiver, delicate and fragile,
how bad the cold saps your strength.

I lay you down by the fire,
but you don’t unhook your
hands from behind my neck.
You pull my face to yours
and kiss me softly on frozen lips.
Our noses barely touch,
our eyes closed within the moment,
and I can feel your heart
skip and leap as the heat returns.

I will keep you warm all winter,
as the snow continues to fall,
as the air grows ever colder.
I will keep you warm
until summer breaks through.
I will keep you warm.
I will keep you warm.

Every evening offers
me three
choices; get drunk,
watch old westerns,
or get drunk
and watch
old westerns.

I always
choose the
best
of
both worlds.

Eastwood narrating
my world,
Morricone
supplying my
soundtrack
as I travel
from Nowhere A
to Nowhere B
on a palomino
that just
runs
runs
runs
through desert
heat and raging
rapids, imagining
the Indians behind us
and having to duck
their arrows as we
try to reach
the hills and
safety.

All from
the comfort
of
my
sofa.

It’s snowing
outside, but
not
in my
world.
In my world,
there is sunlight
and kisses
and beautiful women
who just so happen
not to be
******* gals
spreading their legs
for a coupla bucks.
These are refined
ladies, champagne
drinkers in cocktail
dresses that hug their
***** and hips.
They wear high heels,
elegant ones,
all black, none
of that garish red.

All from
the comfort
of
my
sofa.

I fall asleep,
drunk,
dreaming of revolving
circles where
parallel universes
collide and mix
together to form
a brand new
state of
consciousness.

I am the person you know who is plagued by bad luck,
the one whose universe fights to make him miserable,
the down-on-his-luck altar to an unknown god.
I don’t know who you are or what you do
but I know you don’t care about what happens to me,
we are strangers clinging on to foreign ideals,
writing words that have lost all meaning.

You thought you invited me over out of your own volition
but I was just drawn by the light of a happier place.
Every time I go past your home, nothing but darkness,
barely a memory has lingered since you left,
too busy chasing comets through the cosmos
to worry about a silly little creature like me.
I might invite myself to your eternity,
drawn by the light of your supernova soul.

Let me lie
here on
my bench
while you
all rush to
wherever it
is you need
to be.
I have good
whisky
in my head
and the
stories I
tell are
better than
yours.

I do nothing,
and time is
much
slower for me
than it is
for you.
That annoys
me sometimes,
when you
are old you
wonder where
all the time
went.
I know
exactly where
all mine went,

every
dragging
second
of it.

I watch
you people
but I
am not
jealous.
What horrors
sit ashamed
in the hallways
of your
mind,
begging to
be released,
growing
bigger each day.
One day
you will
unleash
all of it
in one
****** go.
Here’s the
trick I
learned.

You gotta
release
it a little
bit at
a
time
so no
one gets
hurt and
you get
to
relax
afterwards.

This is
how I see
the world,
full of
powder kegs
waiting
for a
light.
Let me
lie here on
my bench,
I have no
fight in
me
today.

He looked around the trail, trees stretching into darkness on all sides.
He was bored of it all, hiking endlessly, going nowhere,
people vacant like he was on another planet,
ruled by things that were alive but did nothing worth looking at.
At least the sacrifice was over,
she’s been left for dead, covered in goats’ blood,
pentagram carved with precision into her chest.
A thousand years ago, he would have needed a ******
but nowadays they’re as rare as blue moons,
so what did it matter if she was one further away from virginity?

Blame it on the devil’s lies
Blame it on the word of God
Tell me what the difference is, babe
I’ll crucify myself in your stead.

He heard rushing feet, snapping branches, panicked breath.
Out of the trees fifty yards in front of him
she came bounding out into the middle of the path,
covered in something else’s blood.
Their eyes met.
He stood still.
She stood still.
He began to slowly walk towards her
but she was frozen in place,
a monument to slavery.
He stopped when his toes touched hers,
their noses almost touching at the tips.

Blame it on the devil’s lies
Blame it on the word of God
Tell me what the difference is, babe
I’ll crucify myself in your stead

Oregon had always been quiet this time of year,
midwinter with the chilly mountain air
breathing down towards the sea,
the frost dragon waking from her summer hibernation.
He had always heard voices commanding him to do evil,
stretching back thousands of years,
every wicked sin granting him another decade of life.
He has accumulated quite a few decades,
he’s a slave to his job but he’s very good at it.
In a diner a week later, the local news came on;
three hikers find the mutilated body of a woman,
ankles bound by rope, hanging upside down from a tree limb,
wrists bound my rope to two tree trunks either side of the trail,
inverted crucifixion.
The man who hears voices laughs at a joke no one else heard.

Blame it on the devil’s lies
Blame it on the word of God
Tell me what the difference is, babe
I’ll crucify myself in your stead

A wise man once said nothing
and all the idiots in the world
spent lifetimes decoding his message.

A wise man only ever says
what he needs to say.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.

Her face I see in darkest night,
rising slowly in evening’s silky twilight.
Shining low through high-flying clouds,
burning away love’s labour’s doubts,
and I see you somewhere far away,
this night is mine, yours is day.
This is the same moon lighting my way,
the same breeze caressing my face,
my cheeks red with the chilly night air,
the remnants of a broken nightmare
crunch underfoot and return to the earth.
Tonight’s value is less than its worth.

I stop at the castle and marvel at the centuries of history
consigned to a ruin, the ghost of architecture,
and I realise that I only have decades
and when I go, I will leave no ruin for people to see,
for people to know that so many things happened here,
that I lived and conquered and died the good fight.
There will be no stories written about me,
no poem written by a lost passer-by
who has stories of his own to write
but with no direction in which to travel.

The dungeon is dark and I imagine all the suffering
that took place here, but my suffering has no coordinates,
no determinable point to travel to,
no signpost showing the way.
At least the souls who ended up here had a location
for people in the future to know they were here,
even if their names and faces and lives have been forgotten.
It’s dark and quiet in here, such a difference from long ago.

The castle stands utterly alone as the deep sky
pushes down and chokes what’s left of the life out of it,
leaving behind a construction deconstructed.
It had stories I will never have,
it had bastions and bartizans and brattices
to defend itself from invaders.
I had a broken brain and a ******* pen,
no wonder I suffered,
no wonder no one remembers.

My only ruin is the body I inhabit,
but that will decay and vanish into the earth
long before the castle ever goes.
My monument is my future, what I do from now,
the lives I will connect with,
the hearts I will make whole
and the hearts I will break.
That will be my castle if I so choose,
but a castle is never meant to be lived in alone.

I want to feel love, if only for a little while,
experience all its consequences,
night-time paranoia and daytime dances.
I want to feel real love for a moment or two,
the breath of her words,
hot and heavy on my burning worlds.
I want to feel something different for a change,
a love that never goes too soon,
a broken laugh not blamed on a violent moon.
I want to live like a king for a day,
good morning my people,
no apologies for thinking of evil.
I want to feel love, that rarest of things,
so I can sleep well tonight,
and welcome in the coming daylight.
If only for a little while.
If only for a little while.

The neighbour’s a borderline neurotic
and he waves a gun out his window
claiming it’s the end of days,
but no one pays attention to these people anymore.
There’s a very famous book
full of people like my neighbour
and they were all taken seriously.
I don’t know what’s happened in the intervening years
but there’s no crowd in the street
writing down everything this crackpot says,
no **** of mystics and doomsayers
claiming the judgment is at hand.
No, there’s just an empty street
because it’s 2am and he’s drunk
and I’m trying to get to sleep.

I’m running with the wolves
tonight.
Standing on the rock and howling at the
moonlight.
Wish I had more than
hindsight.
It’s cold and my claws have
frostbite.

I’m chasing after a dream
today.
Might not meet you there but we can meet
halfway.
I saw your silhouette in the
archway.
Smoke still rising from the
ashtray.

I might find time for you
tomorrow.
Today I’m busy chasing after a colourless
rainbow.
A dream offered itself but it was a
no-show.
Finding solace in the sadness of a
willow.

As soon as you go online,
your entire being becomes
nothing but a series of
ones and zeros.
You become inanimate,
you become digidull.