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.

I’ve been walking this road for hours now,
heat from the dark sun burning the back of my neck.
I don’t know how or why I survived, but I did,
the universe perhaps playing a little joke on me,
let them all **** themselves but keep this one alive,
let me see what he does all on his own.

People always seemed alien to me,
especially the ones in power, the ones who controlled the triggers
and all the buttons that could send missiles halfway around the world.
What must that feel like, all that power?
However it felt, it wasn’t good for the rest of us.
As far as I’m concerned, I am the last one alive,
trying to tune radios on to different channels proved fruitless,
the entire electrical grid was damaged beyond repair.
Whoever else may be alive, they had no way of communicating.

I reach a diner and gather up food and other supplies.
I have no idea how long it’s been since the wars ended,
there’s been little way in being able to count the days,
but I reckon it’s been a few years now,
my beard has grown from stubble to now reaching my chest.
That’s my calendar, a beard that rarely gets washed.
I had read lots of books and seen lots of films
about how the future might pan out if everyone went mental,
and Cormac McCarthy came closest, I think.

It’s incredibly lonely here, haven’t seen another live person
since the wars ended, everyone panicked and fled to higher ground
but the world didn’t get flooded by water,
it was nuclear pollution that did everyone in
and hiding on a mountaintop wouldn’t protect you from the toxic air.
Every day, I walk past dozens of bodies, mostly skeletons,
some still have vestiges of flesh clinging on,
what’s left of the crows picking away at the last morsels.

My backpack is filled mostly with bottled water,
food I only really eat when I visit diners or motels.
What I didn’t get in those post-apocalyptic stories
was why all the survivors seemed to sleep outside
when all the hotels and houses had perfectly good beds.
I stayed at the Ritz in New York a while ago,
spent a few days living like a king ruling over
some small country that only existed in a history book.
I had no subjects to rule dominion over,
just myself role-playing a fantasy in my head.

But I have freedom now like no one else has ever had,
I can truly do whatever I want to do, no repercussions
except for an occasional nagging voice in my head
reminding me that I should feel guilty for taking that skeleton’s shoes.
Yeah, I have freedom, but it seems like an illusion,
having to write my story down in a little girl’s diary
that I found in a bedroom a few weeks or so ago.
I tore out all the pages that she had written in
because it was so difficult seeing her writing,
trying in her own way to come to terms with what was happening.
She didn’t have a clue, just like billions of others.

Right now, I’m heading into Pittsburgh,
somewhere I haven’t been before and probably won’t return to.
The blue of the sky is a lot darker than before the wars,
all the clouds are orange and brown, and fog smells like death.
Thankfully, it’s nice just now, and the heat has died down.
I pick a large suburban house with a big yard
and gather some paper and card from around the house
and build a little bonfire in the garden to cook with.
Everything I eat now comes in a can,
except for the odd berry I spy when I travel,
but because of the radiation, I can’t eat too many.

My cough is bad tonight, but there’s still no blood.
I’m sitting at a desk by a window in the master bedroom,
watching the last of my fire die away,
flying embers like tiny angels, the briefest of lives.
Some nights like this, I wonder why I don’t just give up too,
I’m fighting a losing battle here; I know how it will end.

I’ve just seen smoke, coming from another neighborhood,
snaking up into the dark sky.
It’s no more than a mile away, but I can’t go tonight,
I’m too tired from the walk today.
I need to sleep.
I need to investigate.
I need to sleep.

This old house, made of the bones of memories,
sits on top of a dark hill
overlooking a river that runs black.
The lawn is yellow, patchy,
even the weeds don’t grow well.
I’ve heard of the stories about this house,
that it’s inhabited by the ghosts
of bitter words and the starvation of hope.
I used to live in this old house
on top of the dark hill.
I’m the only one who escaped.

The kitchen is fully stocked,
boxes of cereal on the counter
covered in several years’ worth of dust,
cobwebs crowding the top of the windows.
My brother died in this room when he was six,
choked to death on a sweet,
I having left the packet unattended.
Don’t know if he’s still running around
in the memory of this place anymore,
I can’t feel him here causing mischief.

The living room floor is covered in old books,
Dostoevsky, Dickens, Bierce and Wilde.
The Devil’s Dictionary sits proudly on the coffee table
but I doubt even the Devil has a word for what happened here.
My father hanged himself from the ceiling fan,
after work, his tie round his neck.
I had caused the death of my brother a few weeks before
and I don’t think my father could take it anymore.
He never left a note, never attempted to absolve me
of any guilt I may have felt, he just threw his hands up in defeat.

Up the old staircase, creaking like it always used to do,
so out of breath for something so stationary,
exerting tremendous energy keeping us upright and upward bound.
The bathroom door is still open, the light not working.
No window in here, feels more like a prison now.
This is where my mother, after drinking a glass of wine
to wash down a few too many antidepressants,
drowned as she listened to my father’s favourite song.
I could hear the music through the door
and heard her submerge beneath the gentle waves of her swaying foot,
but I made no attempt to stop her.
You fight a losing battle if you try to halt the passage of time.

Into what may have once been my bedroom.
The Batman sheets still on my bed,
the smell of night terrors still clinging on
to the musty thick air of fear and tragedy.
This is where I knew I would die, beside my family,
at peace with all the universe could ever throw at me.
This is where it should all come full circle,
where I caused so much pain and grief through a minor mistake.
I have heard the rumours about this old house
on top of the dark hill, ghosts of memories,
flocks of dead birds swarming overhead.
The crying heard during the night in a room no one can find.
The splashing of water in an empty bathtub.
The man on the bed staring down infinity.

Don’t come to this old house,
there is nothing here.

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.

Dreams str e  t   c  h  in  g      a  h  e   ad     o   f    t  i   me  
Ebbing and f  l  o  w  i  n  g like darker tides,
set adrift, off the shores of Nightmare,
where clouds grow fierce and

C      O      V      E     R      T     H      E       W    H     O     L     E        S    K     Y

I don’t know the way home,
I’m not sure it even existed,
just a p  a    s     s      i       n     g            m    e    m    o      r       y
that moves like the water,
w     a         s            h         i           n      g           a     w   a      y  
the sand;
dry land;
lost to time     i   m    m     e     m         o           r               i            a                l

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.

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.

My soul has a spark that ignites a flame inside,
the engine room of my mind machinates a response,
and all the world’s a stage, they say, on a trembling tide,
ebbing and flowing like the metaphors of a beautifully-constructed sentence.

I act out a scene no one cared enough to write,
the other players reacting to the shadows of silent words.
Still life painted in gold, no movement in the moonlight,
dreaming of evolution and the voices of other worlds.

Was it love of life that shimmered in that ethereal glow,
or the faces of angels in the gloom that made me heart beat fast?
Never mind the silly stories I was always told,
those who live with their heads in the clouds don’t always finish last.

It’s a cold comfort knowing I’m not the only one there,
feeling the breath of a gentle wind against my reddening cheek.
The voice of a love carried from beyond the sea somewhere,
colours the dark with a splash of light and the night seems so less bleak.

The tide rushes out and the moon rides high in the dark underbelly of the sky,
and the audience has dispersed into the cold still of the night.
You and I are the only two remaining, singing songs that get us high,
hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the first crack of morning light.

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 ****.

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.

We’re all scared,
fear of the unknown
or something like that.
Not knowing what’s coming,
not understanding what’s been,
standing on the beach,
feet sinking into the hot sand,
wondering why the sunsets
don’t make you marvel any more.
Can’t see forests for trees,
can’t see constellations for stars,
can’t see fear for love,
can’t see love for fear.
Round and around we go,
playing and replaying,
time and time again,
what does it mean to hope?
A new future,
a light to cast the past in shadows,
or just an ember to light
a small speck of the path we’re on?
We’re all afraid of something,
all scared of nothing,
we’re strong and weak-willed,
heads held high and shoulders slumped,
ghosts in the architecture
of our mind palaces
we’ve built on past experiences.
The foundations are shaky
and the walls are close to collapse,
but this is our home, **** it!
Spread some joy,
speak to strangers,
learn about everyone,
question everything
and good heavens be kind to yourself.
This is your universe,
it cares about you.

I want to run my fingers through your hair,
breathe in your thick mountain air,
and love is love, I do declare,
my heart lives in your doleful stare.

Your sweet voice I have yet to hear,
imagining it’s tinged with hope and fear,
but I will hear it by the end of the year,
sweet and sultry distant and near.

It’s your face I dream in darkest night,
when all is lost, this blinded sight,
but soon will come the dawn’s fire light
and illuminate again my world so bright.

I have never felt this content before,
even reading those mythologies and lore,
for no longer am I begging for more,
I hear you knocking at my door.

Money money money money money ******* money. You think you’ll find happiness there. Happiness doesn’t buy you things, doesn’t take you out to dinner. Happiness doesn’t sit prettily on your finger or hang from your earlobes or rest around your neck. Happiness doesn’t have an engine and four wheels that takes you wherever you want to go. Happiness doesn’t add an extra comma or two to your bank account. Happiness doesn’t buy things to make you look beautiful or feel special.
               Happiness holds your hand when you feel down. Happiness cooks for you when you can’t be bothered. Happiness tells you jokes and laughs at yours and when you make eye-contact, happiness keeps it and smiles back. Happiness tells you you’ll pull through. Happiness walks hand-in-hand into the darkness with you without any apprehension.
               Happiness is a seed. You plant it and water it, watch as its roots take hold and the sapling breaks the surface. You nurture the fledgling stem as it grows over time into a huge and beautiful tree. It shelters you from the sun during summer and offers refuge from the snow in winter. It protects you from all the bad things. It gives and gives and gives unconditionally, asking nothing in return. It does not wander off to better climes. You will always find it exactly where you left it. It is your companion in an otherwise barren landscape.
               But I am a dead tree, useless and ugly. I haven’t produced leaves in years. I offer no shelter, just shadows of possibilities on the ground. I harbour no birds. No deer eat my bark. I will fall and all around no ears shall hear. I am not your happiness nor anyone else’s. Just a mess of sticks, not even any use for firewood.

There’s this fly buzzing
around in my
apartment, divebombing
my head and
generally annoying me.
He swoops and flits
and bounces off
my cheek but
he never flies into
my rolled-up
newspaper.

He seems to be
enjoying himself,
the cheeky little
******
making faces at me.
What do you have
to smile about?
A hundred eyes
and **** on grass
still looks sweet
to you.

What is his purpose?
To annoy everything
else on this
planet?
If so, he’s doing
a **** fine job
of it, better
than anything else
wallowing around
in this hell.
Better than me,
that’s for sure,
shown up by
a ******* fly!

Later on, I find
him dead on the
windowsill, his little
legs sticking up
in the air,
his wings spread out,
ready to fly off
into the afterlife,
heaven-bound, if such
a heaven exists.
I hope not,
I don’t want an afterlife
that I have to
share with
him.

I flick him out
the window
and wonder if there’s
someone up there
with his thumb
and *******
in a circle
ready to give me
the same treatment.

Bring
it
on,
old
man,
bring
it
on.

It’s hard to let
go when you
forget what
it was you
were holding
on to.
Was it a dream
that captivated
my heart or
was there something
greater at
play?

I’ve forgotten
all the names
of the characters
that have graced
my stage over
the years but
I never forget
how each one
made me feel.

Forgetting is
the
only
journey worth
taking
now.

I’m old,
stuck in my
ways and I
won’t be
making
friends
anymore,
too long in
the tooth
to let new
eyes see the
fire still
burning in my soul.
That is
for me alone,
it might come
out to
play sometimes,
when it’s dark
and no other
fires are visible,
I’ll let out a
little spark and smile
in the way only
someone who has
lost everything can.

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?

Depression is a horrible little creature
that sits in your brains and eats away
all the bits of you that make you feel good.
It ***** out all the colours of your memories
and even turns your most beautiful dreams greyscale.
When you are alone and all about you is dark,
that is where it comes knocking at your door,
inviting itself in and sharing horrible stories with you,
about how you aren’t worth anything in this world,
about everything you love will leave you in time,
about how you don’t know yourself anymore.

You can fight it though, but it will drain you,
you just need to find someone who will listen
and not judge you for being broken and afraid.
I don’t have anyone who does that for me
so I just write, and I keep writing **** down,
to the point where it will annoy people
but I don’t care because this is my outlet,
my therapy, my paltry little coping mechanism.
I’m drowning, but no one can see me struggle.

Depression is feeling like you’ve lost someone
then realizing that you lost yourself,
but there are people out there who can help find it.
Maybe you are one of them, drawn to these words,
suddenly realising you are not the only one,
because that’s why you read poetry, isn’t it?
To connect to the words of another human being,
being able to tell friends it isn’t just you,
there are millions just like you, but you don’t realise,
depression doesn’t allow you to connect.

I don’t write because I can, I write because I need to,
to let things out into the open and hope I help someone,
and when they reply and tell me they feel the same,
whether they realise it or not, they help me, too.
Acknowledgment that my writing is not in vain
is the greatest feeling in the world right now,
and even if you don’t realise, it is probably yours, too.
Why else would you open up so much
if not to have people tell you how good you are at something?
So, this one is for you, my readers, whoever you are,
wherever you call home, whatever you do to cope.
I am not here just as a writer,
I am here also as counsel, I want to help,
to dance amongst your verbs and adjectives,
to let you know, even if you don’t entirely believe it,
that you are not the only one with a cross to bear.

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

She had always wanted to let go,
to feel the fading of her tired heart,
lie down and just accept the inevitable.
Some called it an unhealthy obsession
to think about mortality regularly,
but she accepted the fact and she was happy,
under no delusions that she would live forever.
Just.
Let.
Go.
Three words that could devastate a mind.

She philosophised about the beyond,
contemplated an afterlife or nothing.
There seemed to have been no beforelife
that she or anyone else could recall,
so what chance was there of something after?
Life wasn’t a circle, it was a spiral,
and we were always spiralling down,
and when we reached the bottom,
well, you slide right off the end into non-existence.
No fanfare of trumpets, no felicitating light,
just the cold termination of time.

Her spiral was shorter than it should have been,
some cosmic joke that always gets played
on the smart and not the dumb.
This universe doesn’t seem to do balance,
more stupid people than clever,
more dark matter than physical,
more space out there and not enough here.
So the universe had to set her free
and not a day goes by I don’t miss her.
I asked her where I was on my spiral
but she never gave me an answer,
instead, a little look of knowing
that could never be read.

I hope she was wrong
and she waits at the foot of my spiral
to catch me when I slip and slide away.

The night holds no surprises
for the darkness-embracers,
the captains of ships of fools.
They cast away light
as they seek to find themselves
in the mangled branches
of a fig tree
as it envelops them.
They find holes in the bark
and dare to reach inside,
fearless of the serrated teeth
they hope to find within.

The trees devour them.






Their dead hands reach for dirt,
clawing themselves from the roots.
They scream from stitched mouths,
muffled and agonising.
Rigor mortis of the eyelids




seeing you for what you are.




I can feel your hand creep into mine.
Your grip is tight
and palms sweaty,
a shaky embrace,
fear rising in goosebumps
or is it the cold?,
or the fear of growing old
that terrifies you so.


I am here for you,

treading wearily
into the gaping maw
of a

very dark place.

This is it, the end of the line
and I didn’t realise it when we got here.
Ups and downs, good times and bad,
but you are not a friend to me
and I am not a friend for you,
perfect strangers living separate lives.
Saying hello every couple of days was enough
to push you away on the current.
Offering to help you when you needed it was enough.
We said hurtful things to each other
and the scars they left have gone
but the memories are still fresh.
This is goodbye, the hardest word to say,
so I won’t say it out loud.
We’ll meet again.

The wild cats
howl
and mew in
the forest,
and you’re in the
trees dreaming
you’re the tallest.
This is the
sound of your
heart’s love
and affection.
This is the
view from your
soul’s deepest
connection.

On the way to Hell, I met a man
who sold counterfeit tickets to Heaven.
He was ***-bellied, bald and hunchbacked,
mothballs in his mouth and flames in his eyes.
He mumbled through consonants,
slipped over vowels and destroyed syntax,
pointing at the tickets frustratingly
at the comprehension of my confused expression.
I shook my head and moved on
as he coated the air with broken expletives.

By a bridge over a magma river,
a bird-headed demigod held a set of scales,
but he waved me through,
seeing by the weight in my eyes
that my soul’s mass had already been determined.
He whistled a tune vaguely familiar,
a desert swansong of a dying missionary.

The road rose slightly, and at the apex
I saw the city in a foul-smelling valley.
Blanketed by smog, I couldn’t discern much,
a factory chimney billowing smoke and ash,
screams forcing their way through the cloud.
A giant man with skin like fresh, glistening blood
greeted me as I began my descent.
He informed me he was a demon
and he would be giving me a tour.
Asking him how long it would take
he said it was entirely up to me,
all the time in the world was waiting for us.

I asked him why he had no horns
and he laughed with a noise of horse death,
one he had baptised himself with an aeon ago.
He dutifully informed me that this particular misconception
came about due to a similarity between invading warriors
and their certain bloodthirstiness and vitriol
held in much akin to the view of demons at the time.
He assured me that demons weren’t that bad,
friendly enough but with a temper fitting
a location as unearthly foreboding as this place.

As we walked through the ***** streets,
I couldn’t help but notice they were busy with people
rushing about and selling things and generally
much like people did on the mortal plain.
The demon said Hell was much like Earth,
just with greater punishments if you didn’t pull your weight.
An abominably long and disjointed finger
pointed in the direction of the chimney I saw earlier.
That was where the worst of the worst end up,
the rapists and abusers of child and woman,
all the filth humanity had to offer,
always churning, he said, always smoking away.

We stood by the door for some time,
an awkward silence descending between us,
rattling the synapses in my brain
as I tried to comprehend my past life
and the fate that awaited me.

After an insurmountable time, the demon knocked on the door.
I heard scraping on the door, a set of keys fall to the floor,
a curse put upon those keys then the clinking of a lock.
The door opened and a massive fire raged within,
conveyor belts from several directions leading towards it,
naked people, statues to the Heavens, falling off the end
and making the fire grow and glow like no fire I had ever seen.
The demon in charge of this awful place looked me up and down,
asking me what I had done to ever deserve to end up like this.
I attempted an excuse but couldn’t muster the right words,
so I just told him the truth without hint of any repentance.
He shook his head and genuinely looked shocked at what he had learned
and grabbed my shoulders and hauled me towards my piteous soul-death.
I was stripped naked as I became more aware of the intense heat,
flames of scarlets and oranges reached out to my broken body,
all skin and bones and nerves vibrating to an otherworldly chill.
I floated up to a conveyor belt which felt unduly cold beneath my feet,
and as I looked back on the life I lived and the one I dreamed when I was young,
I realised that this was a fitting ending to a life lived fully sans regret.
I opened my arms wide like a Messiah and began to pray eternal thanks.

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.

I want to fly somewhere,
a Mediterranean beach, an ancient village with a plaza.
I want to watch the seabirds dive for fish
and scuba dive through a coral reef.
I want to sit in a hut on an atoll
and relax in front of a calm blue sea.
A Greek island with bright white houses
or a Cypriot villa on a barren hill.
There is a world out there undiscovered;
a map only shows the outlines,
I want to see what lies within.
I want a holiday and share the experience
with the only person in the world I love.

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.

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.

Eastbound sundown on the I-84, the sun in my mirrors.
I imagine standing on the beach in Klamath
watching it say good morning to the other side of the world
with the girl of my dreams cradled in my arms asleep.
But the land here is different, the grass is dead
and that girl doesn’t escape my thoughts.
She stays in there, waiting for me to fall asleep
so I can hold her again in the darkness for a few minutes.

Pocatello to the left, Ogden to the right,
where is it I should go tonight?
I heard of an Aberdeen near here, a home away from home.
Maybe it looks the same as the Aberdeen I know.
I move into the left lane, the fast one if you’d believe,
because here in America everything’s the wrong way around.
Last chance now to change my mind, final call for Ogden.
The slip-road passes by me and joins another highway
that seems to ascend into the horizon and disappear completely.

The landscape here is unbearably flat,
I feel myself longing for just the slightest rise or fall,
let myself feel the curvature of the world ever so slightly.
There is a hill on my right that looks just like my Bennachie,
rising sharply to a peak then slowly flattening out
until it joins the inescapable flatness of this country.
Raft River, American Falls, Pocatello,
fourteen, thirty-seven, fifty-eight.
Many miles to go before I can sleep,
many more miles to go until I am home.
Sixteen miles just to the next rest area.

I wanted to drive around Raft River
but I couldn’t see it from the road
and I didn’t know how far it was to Aberdeen.
What looked like a diner was by the road on the right.
The dust swirled up around the solitary pickup parked outside,
the owner looking like the guy in Nighthawks with his back to me.
There was no fancy couple there,
just him on his lonesome in Idaho alone.

Exit 36 points me in the direction of American Falls and Rockland.
This was where I was told to turn off at.
The slip road rose up towards the next road, and it felt wonderful,
finally feeling like I was actually going somewhere,
The signpost at the top of the rise
shows me the way to go to Aberdeen.
Left I go, to American Falls.

Through the city I drove, trailers and bungalows together.
There were big trees in the front and back yards
but they were not too dense that they looked unseemly,
in fact, they added character and life in this place.
A cat darted across the road, waking me up,
warning me not to keep my eyes off the road too much.

The end of the road, stop sign, no others giving me direction.
To the left, the road went around another corner
to go back in the direction I came from.
I took to the right and followed the road,
trees and houses on my right, wasteland to my left.
I went over a crossroads and stopped at the next,
exasperated at the lack of signposts.
I parked next to a long bungalow
with a red-painted ramp going up to the door.
An old woman wearing an apron covered in flour answered,
and she found my accent pleasing
when I asked her the directions to Aberdeen.
She offered me a cookie, and I accepted,
I hadn’t had food since I left Oregon
even though she said I was not far from Aberdeen.

We said our goodbyes and I turned left,
continuing on a road that curved to the right
and through a well-manicured little park.
It was unusual seeing grass this green,
having been offered greys and yellows
for most of my journey in Idaho.
I turned left at the police station then left again.
A large body of water, Snake River I think it was called.
It’s hard to call it a river, more like a lake,
the water the same shade as the lochs back home.

After a few miles, I make it to Aberdeen,
the signpost informing me the population is just over a thousand.
I have a feeling this Aberdeen will be different to mine.
The houses here are so small, but they have good gardens.
There is a warehouse with potatoes inside it.
I am a long way from home tonight.
I can’t find a motel, so I stop at a bungalow covered in windows.
A ***** gold pickup sits outside.
I knock on the front door, which is on the side,
because this is America and everything’s the wrong way around,
and a middle-aged man wearing a mullet
and a Phish tank top answers.
He invites me in and says I can stay as long as I need,
offering me food and beer and company.
They people here are nice, much friendlier than the old Aberdeen.
I like this new Aberdeen, it feels like a home already.

I dreamed well that night, the girl in my arms,
sitting by Snake River, watching it flow,
carrying away all my troubles.

Idaho, above her, mistletoe,
she had to stand up on her tiptoes
to kiss.
The mountains look so far away now
and the lights from the next town
look too dim.

Days and nights are getting longer
as I lay here getting no stronger
to fight.
Can I make one final request?
To feel your heart beat in your chest
one last time?

These old eyes are getting heavy,
this time I know I am ready
to die.
You can wrap me up in paper
and tell me you will see me later
as I die.

Idaho, give me one last something,
words to let this voice sing
one last time.
Idaho and I don’t care
when I saw your jealous glare
as I died.

The only friend who shared your bed
was the one who held your head
as you died.
The only friend you ever had
was the one who held your hand
as you died.

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.

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.

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.

Look in the mirror.
Look at that vacant stare.
Love everlasting.
Currently fasting.
Dream of salvation.
Killed by discretion.
Sing at the moon.
Sunrise too soon.
Swim in the starlight.
Holding you so tight.
Dream of a forest.
Dream you’re the tallest.

Hold me again, love.
Mountains loom high above.
Dance with me now.
Show me again how.
Sleep on the sofa.
Creeping closer.
Night-time desires.
Starting forest fires.
Cry for an hour.
Let it blow over.

Sing with your heart.
Sing us apart.
Hold your notes long.
At the end of the song.
Start it again.
Until the end.
Breathe into me.
Insecurities.
The sparkle shines.
In your precious eyes.

Come lay beside me.
I’ll sing your lullaby.
Hearts everlasting.
Fed up with fasting.
Stare at the stars.
Never too far.
Name one for you.
Call me a fool.
Say it together.
Say it forever.

A different sky unfolds itself,
this one dark and full of stars,
the blue making way to red
making way to black,
and I am still awake,
finding new constellations
that tell new stories.
One I name for you,
whoever you may be,
hoping you name one for me,
whoever I may be,
and I am still awake
as the black makes way for red
that makes way for blue.

Lake Red Rock in the winter,
what look like waves frozen on the shore,
the bare trees look like the old hands of the earth
trying to scratch scars in the heavens.
It’s quiet here, even the water is silent,
not even the whisperings of the dead
can be picked up amongst these trees.
The path cuts through them in a straight line,
but the sun set half an hour ago
and I can’t make out where the path leads.
A good metaphor for life, I think to myself,
noticing I’ve begun tiptoeing for some reason,
maybe the shock of my footfalls will wake
whatever monsters my overactive mind
has created beneath the twisted trunks
of trees that have been dead for years.
There is nothing here for me to fear,
just silence and all its consequences.

It’s the end of the world again but who cares anymore?
We’re too busy enjoying the time we have left.
There’s a war brewing and it’s getting closer
but the bombs don’t **** us, we dance in the shrapnel,
the metal’s already in our blood.

It’s the end of the world again but we’re too busy singing
songs of a time where we were safe in our homes.
We’re drinking beer and laughing at good times,
the ones that have been and gone
and the ones we have yet to have.

It’s the end of the world again but the fighting means nothing.
Bullets sing “Revolution!” in the air
as they buzz like ******* flies by our ears.
Let the idiots **** themselves and rejoice
in the fact that we are better than them,
howling under the watchful eyes of a blood moon.

I wish I didn’t dream of you last night.
My heart cannot stand to dream another day with you.
I just want to rest my head and slip away from the light.

The days grow long and the sun rides high and bright,
crawling slowly through the sky with nothing else to do.
I wish I didn’t dream of you last night.

My eyes grow weary with age and incessant sight,
crying tears of pain under that bright sky so blue.
I just want to rest my head and slip away from the light.

I wish I could sleep soundly but I have no more fight
left in me and although I hope it is not true,
I wish I didn’t dream of you last night.

I try as hard as I can, with all my might,
but each day rises with thoughts of you anew.
I just want to rest my head and slip away from the light.

I have nothing left inside me, because this blight
gave my heart wings and beyond my dreams it flew.
I wish I didn’t dream of you last night,
I just want to rest my head and slip away from the light.

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.

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