For a time,
Nova bright,
I burned.

Now, glanced back
'Cross a shoulder sloped,
Smiled over self
At what was learned.

Friends,
Think not of terror in the night
Of wayward wandering careless fright.
Think not of hatred in the morn,
Of owness lost and past left scorn.
Think not of guilts
Dead to the wind,
Think not of ills
You've beaten still.
Think not of the spectres of your mind,
Of days destroyed, of thought decline.
Think not of angels
Escort the dead.
Think not of challenges, haunt ahead.
Think not of blanket
Bleaching sorrow.
Think not of heartache soared tomorrow.
Think not of panic in the dark,
Of where your friends and foes reside,
Of what they say or what they mind,
Or whether they think you cruel or kind.
Think instead,
Of all you are.
Of where you've come from,
Crawled this far.
Think of your talents,
Of your shine,
Think of the world in terms of rhyme.
Think not of fear, of mindless dread, of panic ransacked
Quaking head.
Think all too clear of love itself.
Of simple life in raging health.
Never question what you are,
But freely count the fading scars.
Question malice, idle, stubborn, judging hearts,
Question tired cynics,
Mouthing barbs to better grow into themselves,
Question injustice, and condemn to swell
All those who'd dare
To make you shrink into a lesser, hardened shell.
Never wind your steps back over tread,
Already stepped.
Hold firm and fast
White knuckle raging burning grasp
Your fingers to the rail
And grimace menace
To all that failed


To break you.

As I age,
I grow more and more convinced
That the human experience is little more,
Than a narrative of questions.
Regardless...
Of whether or not there is indeed a narrative,
Or if indeed there are any answers.

Let this poem take you
Back a while.
To a snow stabbed track,
Along stretching road.
Past a field of barbs,
Herding starving souls.

There seems to be an attitude, regarding rhyme,
That suggests free verse
A better way to waste your time.
Problem is, with meter lost
And structure sent away at cost
What's left is but a soup of sound
That works for some
But for others, hounds.
To me the art lies in the rules, to know the code and sift the pools
And once or twice to bend a straight...
Throw out a line that doesn't scan.
If you make it the point of the whole piece, however,
You can easily **** the whole endeavour.
But that's just me and, taste is taste,
Yet, don't rub free verse in my face
And claim it the right over the wrong.
A dying style or old timed song
Can have a strong effect, I find
Amid the rolling buzz of contemporary lines.

I sat out in the burst half-light,
Atop the cliffs of Zennor.

At times -

I’d lift the navy sky
And bark a cry;

Heart severed.

I can't describe -
How the yearning hides.

How it waits
Until the dead of night,
To wear upon the mind.

To short-sighted eyes;

Tetris -

               to
Springs      mind.

I suppose now,
The time has come -

In spite of all,
At last;

To tread towards
The nearest sign,

To sojourn from
The past.

I stare
at the stack.
Stood tall,
And bold;
Of sweat,
And grit,
And sheer
Resolve.

Even a scrooge,
In his castle keep,
A lone fire burning
While he drifts out to sleep,

Once wondered
In fright,
Amid the sundering night,
If he was worthy
Of either judgement or bribe.

I have but only
Finite lights,
And each cruel word
Breaks bulbs.

My joys are but
The hung-wax tears,
Of a candle
Once burnt down.

The wall of slate,
Once thought too high -
To gaze beyond;
As all things, dies.

(Meter and Rhyme structure taken from 'Invictus' - by William Ernest Henley.)

Under the shade of dying trees,
Rooted in grit, wet sand and coal,
I crouch then curl in apathy
And begin to dig a hole.

Knowing the dark whims of random chance,
I have once struggled to put down
A wavering and anxious glance
That ends firmly on the ground.

In youth this world felt all too near,
Too close to comprehend, let’s say,
And as I weaved about my fears,
I learned to stop, take pause - and say:

It is in my mind I make the shade,
It is then I that digs the hole.
Thus when the time of fear pervades,
It is I that must take control.

Through mist I wander slowly;
A mist of six odd years.
Of misdeed, dreams, wearing seams,
Of trial, thought and tears.
In this forest bleak, lonely -
Blank, damp and bare,
I stretch a hand to high above
And call out: "Is no one there?"  
A ghost of brick, dust and rot:
Amidst wind, the structure groans.
The space contracts to shaded grins
And at once
I'm all alone.

Her eyes, redolent of a river’s tremor,
Startled me from sleep.

For years he strived,
Worked hard, and blind,
To the reach the place
That promised a mind.

And once arrived
He fell, struck, to find,
That there are no answers,

Only lies.

Clouds,
Quietly framed, aflame.

The Earth,
Speckled damp, with rain.

As it falls, clad in shadow,
Their hurried heels abhor
The spectre,
A spring petrichor.

At sixteen, he set about the task
In which he sat himself and asked,
When time is up, when stood alone,
How best scratch his years on stone?

For fear of nearing tragedy he worked
To find the words that freely said the best of worst

And so penned the lines
That in his mind,
Justified his selfish crimes:

“I sought to be a man of leisure,
But then leisure met the better of me.’

The Grey

On slow-light morns
I meet the grey,
An absent sky,
It’s light, afraid.
It heralds the bleak
The tired, mundane,
Most loathsome, most
Despairing of days.

And yet this day, though bleak,
Though vision frayed
And blue sky strangled
By the 'gulfing grey,
After a shower and an eye-shut shave
The bleakest day,
Is realised.

I am awake.

The night strays
Into a dream,

A retreat:
A wall,
On which I lean
When under throws
Of volleyed wants and drowned woe,

To stolen escapes,
Beneath the wet.
To smoke,
To dwell.
To taste regret.

I will not die regretful,
Nor dissatisfied,
For I raced against the millions
To call this life my prize.

A seagull grooms.
The harbour sleeps.

The sky a-stir,
Responsibility creeps.

I sat there in the rain,
On the cracking pavement.
I watched them walk with apathy,
But a step before enslavement.

A man of age,
Decades rinsed his muddied fingers.
Raises a wet-dog brow in the face of rain,
His life half lived, half lingered.

I fell out of the night
And in to the day.
Got up from the morning,
Struggled into the bathroom of afternoon.
Stared into the mirror of mid-day gone,
And shuffled down the stairwell into evening.

As I found a seat amidst the lonely aisles,

Settled into worry,
A look at the clock,
No sooner to realise,
I had fallen back into the night.

A sign.
Typical of a time, now snatching at its last,
An ebbing breath.
Branded bright with offset colours
Telling of better days,
Sweetshop-styled, screaming all is fine
With the unshaken dignity
Of older ways.

A great wall of slate.
Too tall, too wide -
To climb, to strafe:

A firm divide.

Fear, has worn thin:
And misinformation, therein.

In the middle of the minutes
Between nine and ten,
An unknown walked in,
Grasping a pen.
He scribbled a face on the whiteboard wall,

It was a face from the internet:

So we’re brothers after all.

I am twenty years old today.
I know nothing.
I am thirty years old today.  
I know a bit, but not what I’m doing.

I am forty years old today.
What little I thought I knew… turns out it was wrong.
I am fifty years old today.
I know more than you sonny.

I am sixty years old today.
I’m tired of knowing.
I am seventy years old today.
I never appreciated people.

An envisioned time.
In which thought itself -
Perceived a crime.

A time where rights remain for few,
Where the masses praise
Those our fathers slew.

In murky pleasure, fingers rest.
Cradling a cigarette – hand rolled,
Wrinkled raw.
Smouldering.
Pressed between lip, and the grimace of youth
As gentle licks of grey
Obscure his vision’s corner,
Flickering.

As new born temporary pleasure,
Living short its life
To the car horn muse.
Soon finds itself in a sunken pit
Face down,
Ground in between battlements.

On nicotine fueled days
Where dull, heavy musk hangs malignant.
He sits.

And - raising a cup of crude
To toast the capital ******* passing
Peering over near pressed vessel,
Straining through a blur of steam.

The *** hums a feral anthem
As the light at my window dies.
A candle stagnates on the sill,
The autumn wind cries.

A jackdaw’s calls
Ring out the rusted shells of Tractors.
The grey fog, engulfing, perished to
Cloud.

As shadows, linger
In the twilight.

Birthed from earth-water
Gathered with little hands,
We laboured in the ice-dark dawn
To mould our image of a man,

Modeling our fathers’ clothes.

Lenses, looking out:

At the silent body,
Jostling.

The spiritual hour:
The clock,
Static, stagnant,
Glowers.

When young and stirring from his bed,
Before hopes and days so bright,
He weary lifts a cheek of youth,
And takes to teenage flight.

And when returned in the half of morn,
To shades of amber light,
He scans a home so blankly left:

His prison cell by night.

I was born on a belt
In the factory of man,
Rolled into a home,
Labeled and stamped.

My life was made honest
By ink on a page,
And my future controlled
By a system of wage.

My whole life thus far,
Two decades of lame,
Incompetent bureaucratic,
Institutional reign

Has seen us shuffled down
The educational lane,
Made unified products;
For unified gain.

To recollect
Fluorescent childhood dreams:
A stuffed bear,
Clutched firm in hand
At the love-torn seams.

A shuffle of breath,
Fractured coughs,
A laugh or two,

All brains turned off.

Perhaps,

It is not what you know,
Nor simply, what you can prove.

But what you can prove that you know.

Can you read me that license plate?
On what?
Pull over.

“It’s hard to stop being lazy.
I think it’s because it takes serious effort
To admit to yourself, that you’re lazy.”

Yesternight, I drank much ***.
Suffice to say, it was much fun.
But today I pay the awful price,
Of a dented wallet, and swollen eyes.

I wonder how much
A barrel of blood,

Costs in dollars...

The signs creep,
Although it sounds cliche -
The little things:
The morning shave,
Feel but a blink...

A sigh revives
Any thoughts misplaced,
In memories lost,
To stress, and age.