The pleas of desperate pilgrims
Desperate relics
reverberate day after day ‘cross this grassy plain
I've spent many a decade here
Watching, wasting
Waiting for Bernadette to appear

The world is a jilted love where the harvest always fails
and the moon is never full

Years I've waited for you to carve my name
In some hallowed place in that black forest of yours.

We once gorged on amber gateaux.
You'd stick your tongue in my mouth
And become a carnivore

Abandoned, you left a quill on a pillow
Still fresh with your dent

Now language is my master.

You, I'll trade you this blood diamond
For some magic beans
The one he gave me before he disappeared

But I am not Naomi Campbell
Minerals do not appease me

I turn the television on- Aladdin. Animated crap.
The Arabs chop off thieves' hands
You stole my heart but your hands are in tact

I wonder do you use them-
Carpenter, perhaps. Cartographer of souls.

The world makes me laugh

My lungs ought to have run dry.
Crying as I have done, uninhibited into the night
Undignified

Are you in my orbit? I wonder
Or did you prise me from your atmosphere
He who reduces me to naught but bones and
Turns me into a martyr

I summon Bernadette at the front of the grotto
Waiting for her to appear
To cure me

I know she will never come

End

It was the watermelon diet, he said
That's what killed me

A lie as ripe as the freshest rind

Listen to the man
He was there at my deathbed

Though he never cared for my diet

It was the watermelon diet
not some virus
That consigned me to the Gods

The watermelon diet

Why now do they doubt my exotic pallet?
They've turned a blind eye to everything else
until now

For months, I guzzled nothing but sweet watermelon
Fat mounds of flesh between my greedy cheeks
The sheer volume of water left me bloated
Before I shed an immense amount of baggage

What else could be to blame?

Enough of your questions and on to the cremation
We'll see whether watermelon burns immortal

It began in Africa- no lie there
And comes in seedless varieties
I never planted mine
Though I wasn't want for trying

I can still taste the bitter juices as I lay here in my crypt

An artful coroner smelt a rat
Or a chance- to prove his mettle
Never heard of any watermelon diet
This is Palm Springs not Papa Nu Guinea

A sample of tissue foiled our grand conspiracy
Same thing that got Rock Hudson
But they kept a straight face
Kept to the story, mindful of my legacy

I'm not just any ******
Takes something grand and elaborate to dispose of me

An immigrant farmhand once told me “watermelon cure the AIDS”
And I believed him
At least that's what I'd have you believe

End

Somebody’s sister scratched me sterile this morning
Today being the second Saturday of the first month
When the sun never shone
And with it my enthusiasm flattened and thawed

Dawn was unkind to this infantile as he plunged into the unknown
There was no respite from the **** of the cordial and the sanitised
From the farce that awaited in the timid mid morning

Soup of the day was feigned appreciation
The coronation of a never-known martyr
And placing of a Plasticine halo

The one without frown lines had nothing in her eyes
And Red, I felt, burned with the soft soapy rebellion of a mute fool
A wishy washy revolt of none
As I sat there wilting heresies at the extremities
Calling for the clown car that never come
Daring myself to say “he hated his sister”
To break the mould
And mute the truce
Splash Windermere in their wounds and watch them run for cover

End

Mother thought the world of you
When you were in the womb
You were the charcoal blur that rocked the world
Pride of place on the refrigerator
Seemingly indifferent but people saw different
They looked at you and drew the moon
And from the grey extracted something peach and empty
In the days when it was okay for you to be empty
Before the weight of the world drained the colour from your face
The milky glisten that shrivelled
Diminished
Turned you invisible
Now show them all that you’re not afraid to **** at the sun
Once the door is closed
Let that ultraviolet umbilical cord to the underclass make you golden
Make you glow once more

Life is not a grassy maze
It is a cul de sac
Masked as a labyrinth

A rich tapestry of bitterness that promises Pandora
***** you in and then delivers
Nothing but bones
Misleading, all along

It is a tragedy,
This travesty
An infinite loop that bends you reticent and
Makes-of you- a fool

Nobody sees that I am forced to play monochrome  
I try to make them see
Try to make them hear me
But do they see me?

Do they hear me?
Whichever guise I take
I am debased
My blueprints shrivelled

They tell me I’m no jazz musician and
That my graphic novel is a work of fiction  

But God challenges me to be the best
That’s why he obstructs me
Wraps my voice in barb wire and makes me

Strive

Why he makes me stand on yellow pages
And like Icarus, reach for the sun

The burden of want strangles these lungs
Restricting me
Stapling my wings to the fringes
Forcing me to the less than I ought to be

Oh this omnibus !
I stroke the Queen’s Nose and want for Bernard’s Watch

And It only curdles,
This urge
To grab the map and wrap it in verse
Introduce colour to a puddle
And watch it blunted by the current

As I’m stuck  running semicircles
Whilst the earth does a full turn

End