the shadows passed
and they were gone
the shadows too

I've mud on my face,
Dripping from my eyes,
The tears of the Earth,
Shed as the Earth dies.
I've fire on my cheeks,
Burning off my skin,
I've become the flames,
Of the Hell we're in.

They built a lighthouse,
to warn the ships.
The ships transported the sea.
You professed your love,
with living lips.
Your lips spoke words that buried me.

Tanker ships containing water,
run aground upon the sand.
A human being becomes a monster,
by another human's hand.

The future dies within.
The past is always evaporating.

As the tanker rusts,
so I also must,
until we are but two derelict husks,
filled with nothing but regret.

Once, here was the sea,
voluminous and wet!
Once, I was me,
until the day we met.

at dawn our suns shine
sideways—not above or below
anyone; time flows,
ego rises

Now I extract with tweezers from my flesh
the silver splinters of our common past,
unoxidized sharp memories still fresh,
which left would fester like a question asked
but never answered. Isn't it absurd
how we wound each other with joyous shards
of love's black shrapnel: how passion burns,
yet in remembering turns to gangrene ash?

Among the hideous shapes
   you are my favoured
For the wretched silence of your scoliotic spine
   flavoured with our crimson wine:
Blood diamonds
   screaming songs of sirens
   writhing on a desiccated island's edge
Boiled alive—
   can be distilled into the language of a pledge
I hereby promise to be yours
Foretell you will be mine

skyscraped skyline  quarterwhite
in morning light mourning
       the ritual passing of the night,
the city by dreams wound wakes mechanical-like,
preprogrammed as the rising of the sun,
celestially powered
cars trains buses, everyone—
gears turning—
scurry scurry to gets things done.

sleeping scars the restless mind,
something the psychologist
said: nightmare's claws carve ******-
septic lines
across the innards of the head,
which drip,
fear, loathing and strychnine
into your waking world
as you awake in bed something
the psychologist said

how tranquil it would be
to sleep as deeply
as an anchor
at the bottom of the sea

never met a soft-button girl,
one I could keep in my pocket,
could fasten my shirt,
keep my jeans up,
on my hips.

never met a soft-button girl before,
only nylon string and elastic,
no good for stitching up wounds,
only good for lacerations—
she snapped,
again.

See simmering vats
of shoulders, elbows and knees,
A banner reads:
"Welcome to the joint stock company!"
A mule may melt your heart,
but the cartel will dissolve your family.

Once upon a tiny planet,
a hunter and his rifle stalked their prey,
It always got away,
  until the day he fired—
Dropping dead,
with a bullet in the back of his head.

how many times
can we part
and still remain whole

lightning swings its axe
into the sky as thunder
rolls the sun away

The luminous grey undersides of clouds
Travelling a charcoal sky, speak my thoughts aloud
As thunder
                    Reflections of my mind's wandering eye

on sunday mornings
the streets sigh
with hideous anticipation
awaiting an answer to a question—
unspoken—
is the city dead
or not yet awoken?

Stutter,
Patrons ain't
often a city list en-
close lying odist arts
pea king smoothly the truth.
Amen.

St. Utter,
Patron Saint
of tenacity, listen
closely: in God I start
speaking smoothly the truth.
Amen.

Five red haired maidens / resting symmetry
Draped in bluest sky / arranged peacefully
Interwined pink flowers / chaining togetherly
One composition / from Antiquity
Arms wilt with leisure / classically painted
Their wild thoughts blooming / a pale recreation
Seated in judgment / of time untainted
By modernity / By degradation
in eternal youth / in a single row
They sit and they watch / seasons come and go

I am white clouds
Immobile
Blue sky drifting
Apart from me cicadas buzz loudly
Bare back on hot cedar planks
Mindfulness in bloom
Ideas like dandelion seeds
Arise before floating beyond the roof line
I am time—
The lawnmover engine turns,
reality returns.

sunflowers follow
the sun; to whom will they turn
once their sun has gone?

if you plant the seeds,
sun flowers shall, blooming, light
up the universe

a tree falls / fall trees
reddening leaves leave red and
                            yellow evenings

The phone rings.
I answer.
"How are things?"
"I've cancer."

"God, mom, I—"
"It's OK."
"Will you die?"
"Soon, they say."

I'm silent.
My words fail.
Cigarette:
in- / exhale.

"So take care."
(My voice shakes.)
"Hang in there."
(My heart breaks.)

I'm silent.
My words fail.
Cigarette:
in- / exhale.

we spoke / we listened
now we are each other's head-
aches, quietly break-
ing

in exchange, you—
deal, he cried, shaking my hand
hope you guess my name

setting down the kettle,
in the light of the setting sun,
pouring water, the green tea leaves settle,
at the bottom of a teapot, brewed for no one.

my house spews upwards
in a flat anti-neighbourhood of
disconnected—
the screen blinks, blank;
but the active round will follow
fatebang:
we are, each, a house
grown up/ward,
alone and easily swayed
(alone, uneasily swaying,
tech support
              cannot prevent our fall.)

tell me why the daises sing
they've no minds
and their bodies are decomposing
they've not souls
and winter is coming
tell me why
they are so happy all the time
am i also meant—
listen!
(their song is not a song of joy)
listen!
(their song is a lament)

I found the two-headed baby deer dying
on a bed of soft pine needles under cover of an overturned oak,
not five kilometres from my cottage,
Its lungs still pumped,
Its crimson heart beat weakly through a thin,
translucent skin,
that decayed before my eyes,
until there was no skin,
and all the organs lay warm and still,
in a heap upon the earth,
like waste.

A god evaporated.

It is human nature to disbelieve
that one may be witness to epochal events,
so I did not believe that I,
of all people,
should be witness to the death of time.

Epochal: the concept itself is dead.

How lucky we were
to know time at its cleanest,
and most linear!

We know now that such constant linearity
was the consequence of a living entity,
It followed the creature like stench follows a skunk,
and we basked in it
as if it was the natural state of the world.

No more.

Time no longer heals,
Things do not pass,
Or pass only to return.

At first we believed this would be manageable,
Yes, we thought, we will relive our pain but also our love,
Everything shall be magnified!
Welcome to an age of great emotions,
a new Romanticism!

Yet we overestimated how much we help,
failed to accept how much we hurt.

And we did not realize the nature of evil,
which accumulates in a way love does not,
To re-experience our love is to know it,
again and again,
at the same intensity,
but to re-experience pain is to increase its volume until it overpowers us,
deafening us to everything else.

I will never forget the creature's eyes,
full of hatred or hubris,
yet seeking aid it knew I could not give.

How does one save a dying god?

It was not my fault!

I was but a child asked suddenly to solve a deathbed equation
expressed in an undiscovered mathematics,
I had to fail,
yet in failing I have brought it all upon us.

I relive it constantly,
Every time its eyes are louder.

But it is the hour for my afternoon walk,
so I will take a pause and enjoy what remains of living.

I will go to my favourite spot overlooking the city,
and sit on the iron bench,
from where the view is magnificent,
Above me,
the clouds will form,
a tangle of pain and human corpses,
and I will sit and ponder until the first blood drops fall,
Then the screaming will begin,
the final storm will rage,
Beating, crimson corpse-clouds under a thin skin
of dissipating reality,
raining blood until we are left
warm and still upon the earth.

The acceleration tastes of battered citrus,
The speed, of neon wine,
The rain writes dashes horizontal,
Across the landscape of the coastline,
The car-machine we're in's within us,
Both it and we: in time,
Entropy will soon make landfall,
And speeding speeding we shall die.

—the bell!

/ end of the 6th round /

He staggered to his corner, collapsed on his stool.

Enswell. Water.

"******* ain't tirin'."

Cornerman: "He will. All men tire."

He got   off the stool,
ate a left,
and countered:
knocking the *******'s skin off,
revealing: not bone:

metal.

stormless nightscape
neon lightning
car-thunder and auto-hum
the dark doldrums
sky scrapes
violence even in brightest daytime
the city is
its own weather system
tempestuous / slum
lashing / victims
of architecture: humans undone
slithering, slithering
we,    slugs of no sun

in living we all walk toward the dawn,
through moonless nights,
through cold and touchless mist,
yet sunbirth come: only some shall carry on,
the rest remain,
in pain,
to on departed souls subsist.

To look up,
And see the plane flying past,
Is to conceptualize,
The distance between us.
We may sit together on the swing,
Winter slowly rolling in,
And talk,
But we speak in different temperatures.
Your words condense on me,
And drip down my body.
Shivering we see,
That we are separate seasons,
Never again to exist coincidentally.
There will always be,
The distance between us.

the dog wakes
snapping
at the flying red dragon
fly
as the dream fades

His lady Eve passed Adam the apple
in the garden of—even
though He had said: No you mustn't know
good and evil,
so serpentine she birthed the worm,
from a womb of innocence
and rebellion, as he in divine aphelion learned
of sinful inconsequence,
from within a cavity of snakes,
they took twin masquerade masks of death,
arcane and fabled, gold leaf and skeletal,
and laughed at the setting sun,
whose will be done—
to die for their mistakes,
the reptillian led them to their seats,
in a theatre of falling leaves,
front row of decay,
and crowned them gods and scientists.
But from their seats they could not rise,
for it was they were on the stage,
by wisdom caged,
as the snake hissed prophecy:
descendant crowns become collars,
and Eve wept,
tears of spiritual squalor,
       for all the unborn scholars,
choked into submission,
       by sin.

on the ropes: pummelled;
somehow, he stays on his feet:
the bell ends the round!

a hawk without feathers,
skin, hollow bones,
its avianness severed by the wickedness it knows,
it sits upon a house,
the house that's always stood,

(by the cave with the painted walls,
after the massacre
     of the neanderthals;
by the agora, where the voting took place,
     in sight of which they signed
     constitutions
     and other contracts in black typeface;
by the workplace;
by the banks;
downtown,
     between the metal-glass towers,
     footpath from it
     to the corridors of power)

out of time, it is: a Wormwood,
where men gather to unaffix themselves from the good.
the hawk has eyes of malice,
it watches as you come to the door,
inside, it smells of money, might and phosphor
us.

A billiard table imprints its damp shadow
on a yellow wooden floor. The game still
unbegun, mere fragment of the sorrow
felt by the patrons whose wilted heads will
still be here tomorrow, if tomorrow comes.
Red walls distended by burning lamps
and burned out hearts beating blood through ear drums:
Reverie to the night god /   Dreaming tramps
drowning in their heads in lakes of absinthe
color of the ceiling better than being
awake but indefinitely absent.
The lamps blink, eyes floating, speak all-seeing:
Vincent, let us meet before you entreat
the crows out of your head into the wheat.

lightning flashes
blue veins, illuminated sky
seeing the world as it is
organic, epidermis of the mind's eye
thunder is a muscle
twitching as the demiurge dies
pellucid skin—
I—
revealing heaven's bones—
know—
the universe is empty
we are on our own

Two posts emerged on my Facebook,
And sorry I could not peruse both
And be one user, long I stood
And scrolled down one as far as I could
To where it went into a long blockquote;

Then read the other, as just as shared,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was classy and about footwear;
Though as for that the likes there
Had rated them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
I believe with no comments written back.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever tap back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two posts emerged on my Facebook, and I—
I read the one less thumbed-up by,
And that has made all the difference.

i read therefore i am
temporarily dead,
i flee from life to sentences
of death,
illusory present tenses
dulling corporeal sensations,
complexity replaced
by linearity and pagination,
i have lived a thousand simulated lives!
yet i fear mine,
and the words upon a page
become *****
i am a reader because i am a coward,
slowly by my drug being devoured

The A.I. summoned the robot Newman,
The A.I. asked about his condition,
Said Newman: "I want to feel—to be human,"
The A.I. accepted Newman's submission,
The A.I. processed his petition,
The A.I. cogently deliberated
on the logic of Newman's admission,
The A.I. returned its disposition:
"The robot Newman is to be terminated,
He displays a fatal lack of ambition."

The summer lingers in days unending,
The past's seen dimly through a pool of time,
Warmth falls away like bodies descending,
The sun's extinguished by the horizon line.

The wind carries winter upon its ice edge,
Daylight is cut, the minutes fall away,
Summer surpasses a mountain ledge,
Breathing in tomorrow, exhaling today.

The window is a mirror,
I am the pregnant charcoal sky,
Gazing out I see within,
Through the self- and self-reflexive lie,
That I am I am I,
Drops away, cool and clear and as winter near,
The truth precipitates,
The year's first snow accumulates,
Tossed by winds across the sky, vast and open as my mind,
In which is I,
In which is I forever going blind.