It appears I am free
I watched melt the illusions
After sensing the intrusion
Of the momentary mantelpiece
At the corner of my head

I was staring and glaring
All the while tearing
Now the hairs on my head
Are just chuffs of old muck
Form the silt of the stream
I can’t tell you for trying
How long it all took!

Watch the water
It ripples
So when the circles mingle
The core of all life
Finds its way in an instant
Blatancing its way
Under the nose of most folk
At the core of the universe
I saw it and thought
Of this short anecdote

What if you feel nothing?
Or more precisely
Because this one did surprise me
What if your emotions
Are illusions set in motion
By the choice of our experience
That's determined by our notions
I would tell you
What I’d tell me
But I’d be telling
Only if I told you
Not to tell whoever told you
Not to tell the teller’s teller
About the telling

Here it goes:
I would say I have gone mad.
That delusions kick in
When something has gone
So badly wrong
So to ease us into the New World
Its not easy being tomb bound
Curled and crammed in lonesome chest
When I feel the moon on download
I can almost feel the rest!

Blessings to you poets
Who can feel the words come round
Because the sound
Of love is a privilege and
Would be nothing without the doubt
Muttering the opinion
Then dismantling all your dreams
To return to present moment
Where its not too bright to see

I saw that way today
I just thought I’d write it down
For the clown inside me suffers
When he’s drowned out
Bound and muffled
By the sound of life’s sincerity
Along with every tender blow
It brings me back to reality
So I may write like I am free

Don’t seek love
You will learn
To be cold one day
Expect nothing from life
You will be disappointed
Wait for 'verse to deal her hand
That is plenty to get on with

Bold is hope
Its alchemy will mount an army
To lay siege
On stupid cognitive mind
Until you are sick
To the breaking bone
With life itself
Because it will never come

Stay real
Save Heartache
Art will make opaque
Fragile mind
To be given only in glances
From this moment onwards

When I give love freely
It is beautiful treason
To what is actually going on
This blissful unknowing
Corroding my reason to be

Free to exist without savouring
Acrid taste so sweet
Turned displeasing
Through violent epiphany
On the state of affairs

I, the fool
Do confuse progress
With feeling things
Au contraire
To the loneliness
I seem to process

I cannot be trusted
With handing out affection
So I will make it happen
With those I can love
Until the tension
Of this karmic lesson
Is lessened
Releasing these organs
To breathe what man does best

I may then build a mountain
Upon this omen
Move it on
With silent motion
To a fruiting body
For all to see
This is where my love will seep

Out of this copse
The sun shall creak
To drench those
I could have loved twice-fold
By chance, not plan
This way the universe can
Decide in its uncertain cold

To not seek love
One learns
This warmth
When one knows
How love is made
Then love will flow

One hundred poems
one hundred fractured thoughts
spawned by less than one hundred heartbreaks
but I suppose a city hit by a magnitude 8
earthquake
is worse off than one hit by one hundred
at the level of magnitude 2.

One hundred poems
one hundred running narratives
all telling a story that's some truth
some lie
and a whole lot of pain.

One hundred poems
and someday I'll be one hundred years old
and tell a story to a stranger on a park
bench in which I describe how writing
can help the soul mend itself.

I need a friend
with whom
I can talk about
things like
poetry
and the shudder of
the earth when we
write a line that
seems to resonate
with infinity
and with whom
I can discuss
the fear of rejection
and the sneaking suspicion
that maybe none of this
is actually very good
and I've struck
an anomaly
and I need a friend
who will bear with me
during moments of weakness
where i want to burn away all of
my words

Instead of
practicing what we
preach
we should
preach
what we practice
and laugh in the
ensuing chaos

People have ruined so many songs for me,
I hope yours is the one I get to play for the rest of my life.

When we split
it was three days
before my grandmother
died
and the blow was so great that
I couldn't stomach listening
to Andrew Bird
lest I hear the conversation
again
where you talked about how his
music
was for the "higher echelon of people"
and even though I thought this was
absurd
I didn't say anything because
I was so
determined
to make that failing relationship work
because if I couldn't fix the fact
that I heard a piece of my grandmother
dying each and every night
during the month of November
the very least I could do
would be to make the relationship
last so as not to suffer
too much loss all at once.