Sour, my attempt to write –
the flavour lost in every bite.
Undecided words, unheard,
but seeping out, expelled,
disturbed; a self-invaded,
cornered bird, un-winged
and clipped from flight,
while

I rumble with poetic temper,
my bleeding soul,
in part, dismembered;
blank, un-whole, alone
and undefended.
My belly full of passion,
yet, my appetite untended,
and

expression jailed and flawed,
dissolving quicker than it pours;
a vat of garbled, bubbling
troubled thought
that rivals typed impression
sought to pillage mind
and spill from core.

Scored, the days it takes between,
in floor and wall,
to key the lock that binds
this isolation door,
ancient finds arising
in my lust for seeking more
and more;
buried words upended
with surprise, and unintended,
for,

from I, the Jailor,
baseless accusations rise,
lashing, fast, acidic wind
that primes the rhymes I tongue within.
Never one to coat my words
too thin, too dry, too weak,
it seems (by definition) I resist
to drown (at best) or leak,
while anchored here, existing,
in unblinking frozen speech,
but

the accidental draining of my
purpose-tended bed of prose,
is waiting hand on foot
with sweetened
suicidal pensive throes,
as I,
with mocking rows
and rows of written doubt,
release, in lines,
my stomach
churning through and out
demands to hasten
one true last and final shout,
so,

this filtered care
that stains my lungs with ghostly stare
and soaks my throat
as vomitous
as stinging air
that leaves me rendered,
flailed and flared and wounded,
brooding, undeclared –
through THIS
the words escape,
an icing on the freedom cake
all cherry-topped, and cut, and baked:
a timeless meal to share
without the food to waste,
the friend to taste,
the key to exit,
smitten,
from this solitary mind-induced
persisting empty prison space.

This night carries me,
blinded,
in the back pocket
of ***** minds and
shabby dreams where I
flat,
and molded,
press against this folded denim,
warm and splayed with
arms outstretched,
longing,
for another day; but

what if I turn my head
to over-peek the top
of these fraying jeans,
instead,
grasping threads
to keep me still within its seams
– will the exhilaration
of watching where I’ve
just this moment been
allow me inspiration
asleep awake, to boldly look,
clinging to the back end of
these thoughts that write me,
penned in ink,
like a pre-determined book?

Perhaps I should just
– winded –
forward face,
ignoring the sour stench
of this unmoving,
walking,
waking race,
stalking through the darkness
in a covered veil
at quiet pace,
destabilising future steps,
accepting this acquired taste,
processing my obsessive needs
and bathing clean my crumpled face
in chafing tears that fear progression,
awash, alone,
in one more nightly session.

Devoid of light,
here, ye, the theme:
this narrow, stunted, ****** depression,
the fabric of a self made bed –
this
bottomless pit of expression
unstitching dreams of fortune
as I swelter, melting hope
again,
apathetic,
white of noise,
inside my broken head.

Bear witness
for in this river of flesh
I carry souls ashore
where countless numbers of
babes become men
become monsters and then
become thrustly
and greedy
and desperately famished
of reason but too fat with ease, and
too brittle and fractured
of heart and of sense
and, thus, absent of care
to repent or ascend
but instead,
so depend on their
wafer-thin skin to protect
their descent
into watery storms,
– into tangles of nets –
– into womanly curves –
and the blue, blue eyes of breasted streams,
ungodly fresh sin,
and purposeless dreams

Bear witness

as I birth these farmers of filth
as they strangle the earth
while I patiently wade in
the knee-high abuse
and the ocean of seed
to stand watch by their graves
where the no-longer-babes
– the sailors and cowards
and ******* that dribble –
are caught in a wave
of stone and soil ripple,
– are anchored and drowned –
without sight, nor intent,
but the passage of life
for a time
– once less lived –
due the freedom
I selflessly lost
but to generously
give

Bear witness:
I swell with the waters of life
– the mother and wife –
for an endless such blight;
yet, still, I exist, swept aside,
and, despite.

It slips,
this new surrender,
past the rusted locks
and caution signs
and crumbling roads
of cul-de-sacs
and vacant lots
and open tracks
to freedom;
where conundrums play
and secrets huddle
and bodies lie
and youth decays,
retired past expired days

Engraved in time,
cocoons and shells
and nests are hung
and quartered for a chance at love;
the way ahead,
receding,
half behind
and part enslaved
(a mask of promise worn from birth to lucid grave)

And,
like an avalanche,
it falls in quick pursuit,
this multiverse of
filthy guise
– of liquid paths and dangerous eyes –
and ruby coloured blushing cheeks;
where every lover’s
heart of sponge or stone
descends to meet . . .
heating,
for another touch
beneath the fraying sheets

And all the while
in rush and glory,
time,
******* moments
as it passes, flies away –
manifest instead as flesh,
(again)
with wings that only beat
to re-transcend
and scar
and mend in
pounding,
swollen,
rhythms,
c
l
a
w
i
n
g
for the warmth of smothered distance:
roaring
for a welcome end

So,

spaced between
the tics
and tocs
of darting pain
and thrusting *****,
of ***** aroused, abused, and shamed,
a silence, near, deploys again
the ever caged
and emptied song
and lusting shame
of mouths and tongues,
inclining, fast at last
to go
from whence it came
to soak the mind
and strip the soul
and blur the lines
of time and toll,
buried,
in surrender, whole

sometimes
mistakes are forever
and regret is the undercoat
that primes your life

perhaps foolishly
it might seem calmer
(karma)
on the surface
to forget the original dream
than to colour it over with
shades of new intention
when all you want to do
is bleed the red out of your eyes
until the copper rusts your face
and runs finally clear;
a dried salty ash,
the only pock-marked
stain on your ****** canvas

the minimalist collector
your highest bidder

If I starved myself of food
I would never feel empty
because someone
with a taste for beauty
made you delicious.

my fingers
trace your outline;
every
hardened wave
and liquid curve
the perfect shape
to precisely enclose
my rapturous heart