I've got **** holes in my ears
and **** holes on my fingers
So every time I drop a ****
The smell, it really lingers

I've got **** holes on my tongue
So every time I french ya
You will get a taste of ****
All over your dentures

I'll ride the old phantom route 45
that runs right by this broken house
Her ghost roams still, and I get no sleep at night
So I'll pack my bag and grab the howling dog
and hit the old phantom 45

She plays the old 45s, on a record player with no platter
Oh phantom 45, she speaks to me at night
Stains remain on the bathroom floor
and so too, they exist on my heart

So to hit the old phantom 45, they call the 70 now
I'll hit 70 doing 70 and never look back
to the old phantom 45

The road sign still stands on the softly swollen ground
Outside the home we once shared
Now her restless spirit wanes in dusky drizzle
Since I hit the old phantom 45

Under stone lamp posts he took me by the hand
Walk little boy I'll make you understand
God has chosen you to be the man
God has chosen you to wear his crown

Broken through barriers, the road is quiet
The path that we travel is clear and bright
God has chosen me to be the man
God has chosen me wear the crown

Lectures in the forecourt they gathered round
Come little girl and hold my hand
God has chosen you, it's his command
God has brought you here to understand

The fields turn red in distracting light
The soldiers have arrived to heed the fight
God has chosen them to make a stand
God has chosen me to protect his lambs

Burning battle fields turn to rivers of blood
God speaks to me through the wood
God has chosen me I still believe
God told me that I must leave

God will carry me into the light
God will hold me through the night

Sombre is the morning, dew underfoot
Crying are the mothers, for their fallen sons
God feels distant when I ask for help
God only cares about himself

Ceremony dances in the pale twilight
Cups full of juice for the lambs tonight
God carries me home, I still believe
God had chosen me to take lead

Distant are the screams as I fall to sleep
Distant are the voices that chose me

Self-indulgent panic of the scarring emotion
Blood across a mirror cracked
Where her body lay for days

Disingenuous apathy of a solemn kind
To meet her gaze in the evening din
Lifeless she lay and he laid to

A wave that breaks, in romantic ocean breadth
A breath that fell silent
and so too does the head

White dress, petticoat, floundered folly
Lovers in the summer rain
That never shall see a sunrise again

Running from the future until the sole is worn
into Abyssinian empiric solitude
Where the only voice that speaks
is the hollow tone of history's fatalism

Destined for the furrowed smile
of luxury's unknown apathy

Growth hormone empath
who sleeps frozen under cosmic abandonment
A chancers change of chanson song
that sweeps the windy street

A vignette of turgid stories
that predict the rising tide of paperless bedsheets

Water only runs in the house of a holy man
But the prayers of a parched child are ignored
in favour of the money man's plan
Believe in a God all you want
he won't save you

Nihilism saves valor
Believe in nothing and nothing can hurt you
Those empty symbiotic phrases of the faithless

Listen to the chimes of the ice cream van
and despair at the crimes of a suit and tie man
Crunch of steel in a midnight collision
they collude in hopes of derision

Under desk lamp ambiance, in heated rooms
13th floor apartment blocks
where the doorman knocks
where the doorman knocks

Time and crime again, and lie and try again
Paid protests in the streets
Digest your intellect, removal of a safe space
So that they might turn the power switch

The blackout comes when revenue succumbs


In your ancient catacombs, where matted bandages hang
and drip crimson onto dusty floors
Smeared where they jeered at the death of a democracy

This is the corner of civilisation, torn down and replaced with a bank

Waif-like drifter on a fading cloud
the saddest sound makes its rounds
The outer limit of this town
She speaks to herself somehow

How her life turned around
after hearing a siren sound
Oh, the wolves abound
As she stumbles from that crowd

And so her rueful mind aloud
split the seam and scheme and shout
for whatever worth she receives in clout
or any mirth that fuels her doubt

By the bracken broken, beaten paths
through trails of time and solemn laughs
she finds herself alone at last
In lonesome graves of her lovers past

Where else but eastward, they lay
Onward by the pine tree felled
How sullen the moss
how sudden the loss

Oh but the grass is still green
and the feral badger still mean
Where golden odour wisps o'er head
or cattle gather to be fed

This meadow makes giants

Arkansas skies, endlessly wise and wider than the bluest tide
Dam closed so **** close to the edge, bullishness of the blueish hue
Borders of the borderland shuffles eastbound,
walls get built and torn back down
To see a thousand sunsets, grows tiring
Turn my back, decision made to see no more

Chronologically, the life force of upward momentum
Eratus, irrigated field leaves at the backdoor
Leaves in the mailbox
Always upward, from below, the deepest place
This may have been out of my frame of reference though
Did you see the half-mast falsehood
Up the pole, down the hole
Listen to the secret word
Monitor of the algorithm

Did it hurt when you died
or did you not notice
Only, we missed the countdown and so we fell
out of
                          sync
The beginning was a false start
Chattel hurriedly march onward to their demise
Maniacal laughter from the radio chatter
and the afterthought master, pulled strings faster
Cloning programs in the desert
Phone record credit

(your birth certificate is just a receipt)

This year, the year of somebodies lord
many facts come forward
many facets of the reward scheme
of institutionalised regimes
Your terrorist masters in the government houses
mastermind crises or create all these lifeless..

Sing it two times for the slaves in the system
and their families that miss them
The Queen's Christmas manifesto
Ghost written in a conference in Austria
This is your controlled system
But you'll try not to listen
Unless there's a fire beat, something to make you move your feet
Unholy march of the lonely,
Masquerade of the only...

...and when the end finally rears, when the years stop, drop
pop and lock
We'll be dancing
and the lights will be dimmed

I could have saved her
Wasted, waste down
Caroline, oh Caroline
It could have been me
Distorted noise
friends upwind of the screams
It's never enough
They never had enough

Beach chair, mangle
Tripod, classic
Ripped from the great novels
Footage with a sun kissed tint
The foliage underfoot
Face down
In the bloodied mud

Where is the love
It's not enough
There's not enough love
Guide her above
Clouds like gloves
Caroline, oh
Caroline oh where do you go

Traffic warped noise from the boys
Explicit wickedness
Extrapolated desires
Extraordinary circumstance
Circumvented rent cheques
Caroline are you at rest yet?

Crazy starry-eyed mannequin
Taken to the stars again
Heroic catalyst of my youth
Left us with the inevitable truth
proof of the elusively loose and uncouth

I'll see you in the sky

Down
Midnight shoreline, down
Where the horizon meets the sky
We go down

Towards
Meager but eager, towards
Forever inching away from the lie
Moving towards

[The cold shower wakes you from slumber land
where the clouds were only vapour
and their atom bomb, shell casing suicide shitstorm
was but a nightmare in the mind of the Monarch larvae]

You could buy stocks in Halliburton
make a cool mil
Profit from the prophet, manufacture more than hate
Hollow tips, shallow hipped ***** on the pixel paradigm ***** site
Third eye magistrate, legislation of the pallid nation
Awe-struck in a hazy daze of bullet hole days
Don't ******* play with me, sunshine
David still has his **** in the mouth of a pig
and his own mouth on the great **** of Israel

{REDACTED VERSE}

So we go

Down
Midnight shoreline, down
Where the horizon meets the sky
We go down to baseline loneliness of the soul
and tear our clothes from the vessels we sold

Down we go, to watch the world end

It's in the way the mountain breathes
or how the wind shakes the leaves from the trees
It's how the mirror reflects your truth
or how the existence of proof could fall from the roof
Don't listen to the radio antics
or the romantic notion of semantics
Instead please, you could play in the leaves
splay through the breeze or lay with trees
who shake their leaves
as the mountain breathes
and the war ends, or the world pretends as much

Everlasting light
Sure the sunrise was beautiful
but what is beauty if it cannot be shared?
Rescinding fright
The mobbing mass bowed down
and to whom do you pledge allegiance?

Freckled henpecked nest-eggs
to the shrinking violet water chestnut teenage idol
and therein did we all see the frightened eyes
with secret stories to share

An instruction guide to the misinformed soul
of how to lower your false flags to half mast

Cover-up sweetheart, the eve is a cold and lonely one

Eternal night
A perpetuation of political ideology
what due course is this, that your people are slayed in the street?

If you want to watch, she'll dance again
Your drugs are expensive today
everything was cheaper before
and life is beginning to bore

If you want to **** again, she'll go another round
bring her down around town, smile and frown

So if Heaven is full, I know a place we can go
Let me know if this seedy city is too much
if her face is pretty much muck
I think you might be stuck

But she still dances, and you're still watching
from the balcony and the beacon

the lifeless girl drowned in the Mekong
where was she escaping to, or from?

Your Instagram tinted daydream solo self-help projects
are naught compared to the many faces of my Ketamine addled
multi-faceted bed-ridden wasted ****** aesthetic
Bring me my poppers while I can smell them
or get off my ******* rocket ship
These are the bed sores of regret
tinged in tingly jingle-jangle garage rock twattish twee twaddle
Smoke my tea drink my plants, Kratom of the smack recovery
cat come cat-call **** all to be done
the ladders lead to the plateau that the Meat Puppets sang about
Some say I've been away, some that I've been dead
dada said daddy in the monotone voice, slippin' mickeys and mandys in the drinks of the boys and girls for spoils of war
and causalities of the political system
I hope the vote for your preferred pederast is enough to stop *******
or in fact let us turn to your queen so the monarchs can reward the patriarchs that beat the matriarchs and maybe we can sleep a little better tonight
Truth is these four walls are enough of a prison within the prison that I feel free in slavery
Words too imprison the soul, so I stopped using them
implicit in silence
explicit in message
call on your horses
kneel before the great *** of democracy
these are truly the end of days
and her natural milk shall flow through our veins
until the new dawn awakens from solemn slumber
and your faux-intellectual ******* returns to witch doctor ritual seance ******* matador squeaky clean record having gutter-troll reprobate sunshine easy listening solipsist elite country club golf retreat in the hills where you **** the carcass of the empire with your dysfunctioning penises and praise your zionist overlords that mock your ****** hospitality through gritted teeth as they push you over the edge onto the wailing crowds of peasants below where your alien bones crumble to dust and your stagnant coagulated blood oozes into the Earth where it burns like gallons of acidic chemicals and the world rejoices at the sight of fallen greed and toppled regime until the next time it happens again

Lonely black lab on the path behind the garages I used to sell crack
Went to the shop, brought some ****, blacked out windows on a cab
spells danger backwards that's Reg Nad
So I'm looking all around me, back at the cash grab
Where old ladies clutch black bags and wear glad rags
I'm not glad lad, '*** the world looking like rag mags
with girls selling soul on corners right now
where their daddies sag lag on the track; Baghdad
where war heroes return home back to the smack
and clap traps where they get and share the clap; sad
or when little kids run to their mummies 'cross roads all alone
to their home that used to be a home but now is a dome for the dome
so food can be put on tables that rust and break and the kids get hurt
child protective services, what's worse
I'll tell you what's worse living in a hearse
or a one berth tent on this Earth where the ones in charge
discredit your worth
or better still when they ignore your very existence
so we're standing here screaming and pleading
bleeding and scheming
because there's no food in the cupboards
quit dreaming
stop the screaming
Lousy demon fiending, feeding the sea men with *****
on seashores the sea's ****** sing hee-haw the horse of remorse
hits the veins and see more the way the see-saw zig-zags
back to the black labs on lagging black paths
behind the garages I used to sell crack

She reminds me of a girl from a Godard flick

The game played no longer how it once was
No votes on new posts
don't check the trends
or check your own for views and comments
The substantive roaming data of broken WiFi connections
Mangle your jangling words, hide your swollen faces behind forced smiles, Rembrandt bastardisations or smeared oil paintings of the black soul(less) beasts that lurk in satiate tree shadows fawned over the lawnmower blue cycle rinse washed acid soaked daydream ***** slap nation
So you revere the works once read on poetical facsimile sites
only to smear words of younger wordsmith wrangled teen angst
and now in your age and ardor it seems advantageous to judge
But then that will leave you hollow inside
or in fact, you could jump from a tall building only to bounce off the concrete into a children's pool and drown there in three inches of **** coloured rain water
But so instead the workload decreases as your dementia bedpost nightmares
all come aflutter
The laced lily white throng of petal pinched patterns masks
the marked men on their dusty knees
There, watch how heads explode
or listen to foley artists rendering the lacquered finish of the watermelon headjuice
Make up words
or make up lies
Wear make-up daily, earn some prize
or don't
I don't care
idc
idk
Resemble rhyme or reason
Disassemble the times and season
Return to pejorative pretensions, rants in verse verse verse verse prose format and **** the rest
Or simply return to the old ways of playing the game
Upvote this, and maybe they'll take interest
Comment here
return one there
Use tags, hashtags, wash rags, fat slags, arm chair fat cats
But always separated by spaces, prettyblankspaces
No, I don't do slam poetry, I'm too white and not nearly rich enough to not care
Reassemble the times and season, maybe make sense of it
Maybe not
Just don't let them become a passing trend, please

All your fading smiles
In the cities in her eyes
and all you broken memories
and all your jaded lies

The promise of life
                                  spread over Sumerian scroll
                                                                                    surprise prose of the soul
like when the stream of water bursts through trickling riverbanks and turns to behemoth gushings of clear and conscious life paralleled only by man-made train tracks through these green pastures and serene hereafters

How empty the feeling
of standing under broken skies
when the moonlight beckons all those lonesome, home
Or how the baggies breach branches on the oak trees
on a park before town
where empty beer cans swivel in brilliant winds
and kids dare not go
for the guns come out in droves
- firing squad of the soul

Defective synapse
broken
              relapse
In the club
turned all the way up
and nowhere to go that can be called home
Turn a *****
Dab dab draw
Break mirrors
                        /memories
Icy breath
Dicey left
The corner-boy man-child sweet-teen sensation
Reciprocation of deprecation
Juice twos ***** loose lose the news today
Break mirrors
                        /realities

So I wrote a novel
and named it after her

Passed out cold by a grungy bathtub on the floor by a damp blue towel
Did you know the devil is on his way
Stumbled up the stairs, beer spilled over the red cup lip
and dilated red eyes pounding in the dark
Until he sees her, Passed out cold by the grimy bathtub on the floor by a few damp green towels
The lock works well and the room feels hot
Bare naked steam that rises to a precipice under the mirror on the wall
condensates on the frosted glass window above the cistern
CIS white male sits and ponders, thinking man statue
She groans lazily, twisting her body on the **** stained shaggy rug
And so he sees up her skirt and desires to reign down on her
and also she probably wants (t)his(...)
and she is moaning, yes, yes she must be moaning

In fact, maybe she moans no
or maybe they're both drunk
and who's to blame really
Since she willingly came to this affair, with eyes for indulgence
The alcohol and molly, the addys and the xannies, Oh, and too the **** and the speed and the **** and the Ket
Young lust, young love, youngsters all crying, from rooms up above
Also, that he was invited by friends under the stipulation of "his choice of *****" and there he was, dear reader, making decisions
(as all men are trained to do)
because his parents lied and his country lied and our society lies daily
When we/he are/is told that we have freedoms, freedom of choice, and, speech, and not... speech
But anyway, the story remains, or more so, the stories remain
Since obviously that is why we are here
To judge the guilty party

But I put it to you, ladies and gentleman and non-binary people of the jury
Should we not first judge the mirrors and pristine plate glass windows
or the spoons in the cutlery drawer that bear our reflection
In that moment that only we exist
In that beautiful sin of vanity
Should we not judge the confines of the rigorous prejudices and fear that we call society
Should we not contest the very notion of civilization when we act,
in ways described in this court today or in the ways,
you very people have acted or will act
Should I, myself, the writer of such a contrived, pretentious piece of...
Should I not judge myself
I put it to you, whoever you are
that
That today, you can change the world

From Qeshlaq-e Chukhli Quyi Bahadruhamat to Abraham's Woods
(Tom Brown's Schooldays)
William Bleakes' Wind on the Water at Guishan Island
or Telladevarapalli struck by 13424 Margalida
heard in the Somam Rural District by The Monk
So now Minister Samuel Shaw watches Nakshatratharattu
and eats Beef shank taking Action Against Medical Accidents

Fire questions to the sky
so many bullets rain back down
Cruelty abound by the bookstore in town
Where skagheads rob ragheads and laugh
back to broken scuttle-bug alleys and rain
the pain
I hope your age doesn't enrage you
or I hope the town doesn't become you
Burn all your Matterhorn replica symmetrical dreams
guard all bars by the backdoor sullied sweethearts
the ally of your ally is an enemy of somebody's enemy
but the enemy of that enemy is a friend of the state

Liquid LSD spilt on the raptured structures of this ***-
King city and the all encompassing simultaneous trip
is only the perception of reality we're made to endure
the title you hold is a roll of paper by the door
and we burned them all for heat when the powers that be
rolled over you and me

a special kind of succinct sadness
toil the night long, until day breaks
and eyes water in mourning windy gusts
the river froze over, lose control of you
carried over thresholds in collapsed houses
feeding into tributaries of the soul
through the trees that kiss the sky
or past placid cars in aluminum nooses
needing more

but no end.

Acrid acid in the veins
                       perfect storms over rear horizons
                       She kisses trees in desolate parks
              and wanders down the city light parades
                      alone
                          Oh, yearly comes the fair
                                         or the rains
                  or that special way in which the city sleeps
               Falling diphtheritic on swollen grounds
                       and rolling around
                           doing rounds
        shooting all these fantastical clowns
                            Ah, to die
                                              ah to die

Words meander alabaster wanderers no rhythm for the panderer
Poetic evangelists sliding on the bannister, siding with a barrister
Space flown canister or crushing apples after Alistair
Prose left with the carrier, roses left in the carriages
Verse burst from the hearse serenade the ears and it'll carry ya
The skies are full of lies from the savages and the miracles
of marriages
But this disparages the ties between the higher dyes of oranges
These tobacco stained nostalgia skies are going away someday
to read the words of de Vries, mystique of poetic compromise
The only poems worth reading are the ones behind her eyes

Faded lights fall on frozen grass, under the floodlights on the field
outside the window of a fifth floor dorm
The lazy hazed days were long, amazed at the songs, they lay
all along the bed frame and where the mattress touched the wall
Where he ran hands across her perfect thighs
and she reciprocated, biting her lip
Between the sheets the warm air permeated, to the cold room
and these young bodies melt, or drift with each other
or perhaps it's fire, perhaps like water
There as lips caress lips and as eyes watch eyes
and as wordless reveries become satiated seamless scents
of two stars nestled into each other
and as creaks of the bed springs turn to shrieks of pleasure
the whole light disappears into a crescent one over the horizon
They two, moaning together, playing together
Some wild innocence with animalistic tendencies
they bite and clutch, bodies bunched into *****
falling over each other
and into another
till kisses turn to licks
and he raises his head from between those thighs
and smiles in her eyes
and asks if she is having fun

The masks all burned by the chipped paint backdoor
Pick her up from the floor where the rug is a solace
She'll never be as old as the men she loves
Where she goes to secret clubs in order to find love
the black dress torn

And they all stood motionless on the bridge on the river
Feeling the world move below them
(and the turquoise fish glimmer, sun streaked, reflective beauty)
as some wild cosmic dance spins onwards
in the blackness of something or nothing

Where are your moonlight serenades now
or when do your flowers run dry
and how did you survive on these streets
as all these monsters pass by?

Since I hugged you on that train platform in Illinois
I know that love can slow the passage of time
and that I need to hold you again

Since we listened to La Dispute and swayed lazy as ghosts at midnight
I feel connected to you in a way unparallelled before in life
and it hurts to be oceans away

Since we kissed under the Arch and fell heavily into bed that night
I am just a love-lorn cliché, composing poems in my head
and never writing them down for fear of embarrassment

Since we lay writhing on trembling beds, as people passed by the door
I am infatuated with you, and everything in your mind
and it scares me sometimes

Since we ran in open fields with dogs at our sides, laughing like children
I have had you in my own mind like bank vault doors, unmovable
and I don't see any reason to even try and move you

Since I left you at that Chicago departure lounge
I finally understand how dying feels
and how bitter my tears truly are

The rusted pylons
the endless rain
the drifting soils
spoils of war
spoiled, spoilt
remember the illuminating fear
soldiers of war


Baby laid flat unbreathing
pillow cases ajar by the splintered doors
eye sore, the sadness in your I's
when the plane touched down and you knew I was home
where the wind blew gales
over all these fields
and the way you thought of them,
brought tears to my eyes
or just because I was thinking of our child
- who died


My deer lay down, right here
this time
its different
this time it ends


Stray bullets with names etched out
it didn't matter, the importance of the target
green grass turned red
should have been safe until the end
lowered now into a manifest grave

Now the moment had come
now the songs had been sung
now the dirt it is ground fine
and so now is the time


- He who watched them descend
will be here to the end.

I. Tune Out The Traffic, Just Listen to the Crickets

Throw your phones into the sea
  walk away into the night
  fall asleep beneath a tree
  burn a candle for your light

Don't pretend to be in love
  only say it, if it's true
  pray to nothing up above
  the only person to trust is you

The manifesto wasn't long
  the words were not obtuse
  it rhymed just like a song
  but in the end it was refused

II. There Is No Metaphor Here, So Please Stop Looking

Big 'ole spider on the wall
To where is it that you crawl?
I'm sure today you've seen it all
A dog without a ball
and humans walking tall
The leaves of pretty whorl
and a lonesome bathroom stall
Oh
Big 'ole spider on the wall
Do you have someone to call
When this stranger has the gall
              to crush you

III. Algae on the Riverbank

They dragged a corpse from the river
it was bloated and decaying
They pulled a body from a burning car
it was charred and still smoking
They took a foetus from its mother's arms
it was slimy and cooling
They shoveled a person from the sidewalk
it was shapeless and splattered

Everybody dies,
but every body mattered

IV. The Untruths of Poeticism

Tear pages from your books of poetry
and throw them to the winds
They become falling leaves in summertime breeze
- fills the sky with pretty rhymes
Butterflies flutter by
look away from the shutter sky
The stutter lies
and so do I

Days drift away, mind ease the pain
The rains wash away, passion still remains
I think of her smile and the lips as they purse
How I want to feel her skin between my tips
It gets worse
Because there's no privacy in life
No place we can go
The desire for romanticism, blown away by my ego
So my mind runs wild
Does she compare me to others
or do I not have her desire
Does she mean when she says 'I love you'
Or am I simply hallucinating
Whens she dreams, is it of me
because it's her when I do

In fact it's her when I don't
and it's here where I confess
that every waking moment I am thinking of her ***
I know that she might see this
and that it's too personal to be public
But I take leafs from her book
Stylistically, confessional release
Removed from zones of comfort
but I can't rhyme
I tried a few times

I try too to be a feminist, and to respect every boundary
But truth is, I want to let loose sometimes
Take her, make her mine
Show her that her body is perfect in my eyes
Use my body, pin her down
Make her head spin around
Learn every spot of pleasure
On her body, in her mind

Wishful thinking maybe
She'll never call me baby
That's a good thing maybe
Pet names are lame and lazy

She has more important things to worry about
Not my over stimulated testosterone fantasies
Of how I want to tear away her-
That would be crass, so I won't say it
Instead I'll load up her favourite song and play it
or open up her pictures, touch myself and-
Again I can't help myself
I hope she never reads this ****
Because it's truly my most personal composite
Every word I write, I'm hating it
So for that reason I'll end this bit

Don't fall down, the stairs are uneven
Haunted regrets, embodiment of liquor
Lacquered wood panels, smell of old alcohol
Guilty hands shiver on a switchblade shining

There by the door stands an old man leaning
Taunt him some more and he might start screaming
The haggard old mystic witch by the bedpost yawns
and the New Orleans bayou still shivers in a shimmering light

Tonight though, taste the tasteless tears on terrarium trellises
or tug away the tightness of the tortured terra firma tetsuo
and maybe tonight there will b-

That sickly sweet chocolate taste is a lingering reminder
He’ll be back again tonight
Sweet-talking you out of bed
Your father, he does love you, but not the way fathers usually love their daughters
Oh honey, you’re too pretty for the other boys at school
And your mother’s in bed with your brothers giving head
Look out!
They’re alive again tonight, and you wish that everything will be alright
But you’re late again this month
And everything’s a little bit sweeter with chocolate on your lips
Better than the baby on your hips, oh put the cutter down, and bring yourself to bed
So he can “gent-early” caress, and the sounds of the street, come crawling with defeat
Through the window, like your bigger brother the other night
When his crack pipe no longer lights, it’s a habit that she gave to him
Like the deformities of your mind, and the way your mangled body squirms
Oh dear, you've fallen down again
And the kids at school all laugh
Because your shabby clothes smell like kebabs, and ****, and last night’s brown-watered bath
Watch out!
It’s dark on the streets today, when the clouds refuse to go away
So wander the estate wondering if this is how it is, if this is all there is
To be the doll tied down for everybody’s love
Dangled up above, you on the bed
Just playing dead

You tried to not enjoy it, you tried to tell your secrets
But you’re a liar and a cheat, and nobody believes the scars, or bruises on your knees
Get it together; you could leave it all one day
Like your sister did before
Only now she lives next door
With a ghetto husband of not so distant relation
And you hear him beat her when he’s drunk
And you hear him beat her when he’s sober
And you hear him beat her when she’s unconscious
And you hear him
And the whole street hears him
So you wonder if they can hear you too
Echoes through the zoo, that you call home
Monkeyed enclosure of ***** flinging beasts and your mother getting ****** on in the shower
Every hour on the hour
Because your father loves the power
Listen out! Can you hear them?
Dear reader, look outwards from the window
And see the way her winds blow, how she walks the streets so aimlessly
Dead inside her eyes, where the spirit cries out in the morning when she’s late for school
Because her father’s got whiskey **** again, and now she’s trapped underneath him
And her mother’s fast asleep on the floor

Stupor of the soul, it’s always taking hold
Cover up the sadness, or cut away the grief
Everything is different when they’re taken by police
And now you’re sat in a foster home, feeling welcome
Until Mr. Saviour creepily creaks the door
And your freeze in fear
Because you feel that your father’s here
And Mrs. Saviour is in the next room with the others

Try and pose some grand question to the innocuous universe overhead
Or run and fall on tired tread train tracks, flailing arms and legs, screaming
This Elysium falls over broken skulls and your life is shattered too, screen-door glass shards
Pompous waterfalls of the soul crash on a vacant rock, and you sit crying to imaginary songs
Take walks through empty towns and fantasize about some crumbling bridge
Or even smash vending machines in anger
Or kick at tenement building walls, and hope to God that they fall
Like you did when the spirit left your body
We were too young to understand, the slanging match of the soul
And how the doors that slammed were representative of a larger being
The ever present societal constructs that they were bound
And now even in adulthood we too scream at one another
Wishing we were not them
Praying we were sane
So you wash dishes by the grease fire, moonlight faded curtains
And I sit by the table, grinning some unfathomable grin
Because just yesterday I stood there too and washed in the same manner
Fighting urges to lunge and fall at the humming beast in the corner
Or so and you make eye contact
And but I am lost in trains of thought
Or thoughts of trains
And just then the kids come crying, from the upstairs rooms
In the house that we grew up in
Or perhaps, the house I lived in and you grew up in

By the old garages near the railway sidings
slipping or sliding, through the tiding hiding
away, or near to the solemn aspects of ******
with ease, she can tease the eve of your heave-
**, or go, no, stay, she says, just today, or all
of your tomorrows shall be forgotten
Lonely was the name on a tag, lagged, left
forgotten at the bottom of the river, where
she lay, today, floating away-
But he stays, the way his spirit lays, let( )down
or all around this town, how it lingers;
the memory of love or lust on drunken Friday
nights by the fright of old Frank Alight, setting
alight the houses in furor, or moor the more
he bores by the moored shore of that amour
armoured, charmed, alarmed at the speech
patterns in the night sky, as she lay down
to die, or to cry, questioning why, Frank
could try and do this, Brutus, brutally
mutually assured destruction, social construction
or constriction, the friction of hands
around the throat, she never floats, just sinks
corpses stink, porous ink stained every lane
leading to the place where in disgrace, he beat
her face, and replaced the lace, in the place
leading to the lake

I

The road flies past underneath the tires of the car
and there's a hazy blur as the trees fly by
as fast as the regrets flitting across her mind
like so many white lines falling beneath the left wheels

She's never been to Chicago alone before
Yet she's felt alone in so many places
It was time for a new environment and new faces
and to drink greedily from Illinois skies

She plans to drink more air than alcohol for once
To be drunken in lust or contentment at a push
To feel and experience fully without substance
To be intoxicated on some profound emotion

She pulls up to the curb and kills the engine
so that time ceases to exist
Heart pounding, mouth dry, she steps onto the hot pavement
Every movement magnified in a Midwest summer meeting

Her ankles wobble over 3-inch heels with each step
stumbling like so many times before, but different this time
She takes a deep breath of her new-found independence
and takes the first steps into the welcoming light of the sun

II

It's funny how philosophical eyes can interpret the mundane
Every step an existential crisis under the surface
But even so, the days continue to come and go
as sure as the sun, blocked by clouds occasionally, but still there
like figures in the city, obscured by passing buses
You slash tires and try to blow the clouds away
because even big bad wolves run out of breath

The colours ran psychedelic in the drear night skies
above a ramshackle house on a country lane
He heard music from the open windows
it was meandering and opaque
Myriad drones flew from a cellar door in the backyard
and a burnt out Chevy housed a family of snakes in the front
"Understand that when you enter-"
A voice came haunted, from a tree in the yard
"... that you will be forever changed"
The door fell from it's hinge, and made no sound on the deck
Everyone was ghosts, pale eyes sunken, yet absurdly alive
Preachers and pragmatists drank beers in the bathroom
discussing Plotinus and Pleiades
Rainbow haired women ran through the walls,
wailing some transient ecstasy and crashing to the floor
eating wildflowers and berries
All eyes washed, acid dipped dreams, screams, it seems, that they were all-
"Hello my name is forgotten"
"Hello, I've forgotten your name"
"Goodbye I must be returning home now"
"Goodbye? But you're already there."

The wooden paneled walls started to peel in the August[ine] humidity
but they kept singing love songs in the kitchen
as the toast burned in the sink
Eat more kosher meat, kid
Hi my name is Doner
But what's in a name really
They squat and lunge in harmonic deviancy
Though by the statuesque running man poses, the dance-floors of hydrodynamic and hydroponic release and reconnaissance were blasted by the man of zen, but only in his third eye, the eye that saw it all

The floors started to bleed, some toxic glue
and the shoes of a tribe were lost there, nobody cared
Bloodied scepter of the soul, rapier of wit
Oh how cruel the searing whip of understanding
and falling away from reality with every dip of stick in candy coloured goo

The morning sun also rose, rosy fingered...
It's all been said before
search for answers on the bathroom floor
or muddied ground
or in the sullied unsound

It's far from profound
because when the night was over
The house was nowhere to be found

The idea of making love to her
- or to simply watch her smile/laugh
- or to hear a solemn gasp of morning air
   when the dun sun creeps through the blinds of our room
- or the idea of spending just an hour in a thrift store with her
- or a car ride with her
- perhaps a midnight walk or trip to Walmart with her

is only a fleeting notion of the incontestable bounds of the human soul
and the all encompassing adoration I (personally me) have for her (actually you).
These weird disconnected nights are leaving me sleepless in wonder, as to how we fit
and when you smoke to escape some inscrutable sadness it leaves me cold and lonesome as the endless drone from the [I don't know where]
but and so, I'll sit or lay with you
and think of you
and confess to you
that I am madly devoted to you

In ways that transcend physical bounds
(a spiritual lust)
I want to embrace your aura
to kiss your soul and be warmed not by the summer heat but by the radiant glow of your incredible mind, as you read self-help books in some dark corner of a library weeping but only internally; as the facade you guard stays raised like so many bridges for passing ships into the harbour of eternal truth

The bliss of an open field, in sun drenched Midwest days
left an uneasy tension in the mind of the lonesome
and loathsome

How is it that liberty can be so provincial
or that the porous poverty line can be some kind of osmosis
of these societal bounds

What constitutes freedom, when your mind is a cage
or when every book you read is also bound
and these glassy eyes of tower blocks
blink and shudder until they break and rain down
on a whole class of people,
and the bloodied tides swell through the streets at dawn

Her eyes are in the skies
of the town I grew to despise
The appetite of the mind, seems sublime
but over time...
it all faded, and so the mills stopped turning and like so many machines in the lace houses I too became a sedentary one

The gentle hum of railway hydrogen bombs bicker over sounds of birds in the morning beams of a British summer morn
but along the tarry scarred roads of every little town lay a thousand lonely suicides aided in deeds of governmental scorn
and the requisite notions of sanity are held only to the regards of glossy magazines stacked high in a disappointed dazed newsstands and corner shops
where young kids once stole *******, and snacks, and milk
where lonely old men buy scratchcards and lottery tickets
where the mothers of the young hide their bruised faces in soup can solipsisms
and where the working migrants use ticker-tape guns to price the worthless and mourn their homeland

I saw you, walking lonely as a cloud
William Wordsworth of the wonderful beard
and I saw them laugh and point and deride

I saw you too, in vagabond virility
stalking the girls in summer dresses
down on bended knee, at the bus stop in the heat

I remember the old car, burned out shell
under the bridge near the shops
that I passed before school

who was it too, that I recall
stood by the wall
with eyes to sky, and in some cosmic free fall

and you, who read Proust by the canal
listening to birds twitter
and the gentle wash of ducks paddling nearby

I am all your faces, divisible by none
when the exasperated winds of some folly of the season
comes rushing through the alley by a brick house
and in some provincial moment in time
I believe we are the same
I see you as myself in simultaneous existence

but soon we leave, and in the proverbial ether
my soul will forever be intertwined

Siddhartha sat steady on a the hearth of an apartment, eyes closed
mouth closed, mind open and enchanted
Zen-man lingers in a dark park starting,
to realise indiscretions of his past lives avatar

(but don't for a second believe the lies you've been fed by the brother of your brother and the father's of the jingoist mafia because eyes blink often and the accumulative effect is a life of temporary blindness and in that blindness it's not possible to be enlightened)

Your mantras are a lie but the belief remains still
and so rolling over wild green hills in some Welsh country village it dawns on the spirits of the ether that humanity is struggling

to find absolution of even the most relative peace
- but so, and Siddhartha still sits, cross-legged and barely breathing
Emaciated; fast, faster
Losing her nerve

Zen-man died a few months back but you always live again and so a beetle on a hot car hood scampers in some intrinsic folly, semi-aware of being something or being at all

     Towards the walls of weather-beaten towns the levee finally bursts and all life ends -
until a gathering mist pulls absurd faces in the simpatico rays of a third-eye sun over the bayou of some forgotten rock in the cosmos
and the ethereal temptress of existence rolls the next dice on a green matted board
and our unified oneness speaks a solitudinal greeting to the sky.

Support your local drug dealer, **** your local poets
Protest the local governance
and burn your houses to the ground

We don't need them anymore, not where we're going

So rise to your feet and sweep away the apathy
this is a call to arms, your swollen scarred weather-beaten arms
Take your loved ones and dispel your desires
the Id  and Ego will die soon
and we can bury them beneath the beetroot
blood red desires of the human psyche dissipate
All your instinct are an lies
Here in lies,
a truth you despise
Oh, the world in your eyes
After death, again we can rise

Hell is being drunk before eleven o'clock on a weekday morning
but the shade of some tree is solace in the summer sleeping
He left money on the side counter
so she smoked a bowl as his shadow drifted through the door frame
and she drifted too, only into the bed and back to sleep
crying in her dreams