Ophelia was only remembered for being dead
Floating daintily in a river, surrounded by flowers
A spectacle for all eyes to see and drink up hungrily
But one day she’ll breathe again and rise up from her grave
White dress sodden, makeup askew, long hair soaked and tangled
And she will realize she she is and break free from that image
The one that held her dead for so long, drowned and lifeless
And for once in her life, her short-written life, she will breath with ease

Denmark’s a prison
Where all are guards and all are inmates -
I must be the Queen
For I am held in chains,
Caught by the currents of my own thoughts;
Alas – I never learned to swim.
I am an echo chamber,
A thought is a ball kicked over and over and over and
Can I not pass law to cease this bruisement?
Goal! I speak,
And my thought is no longer contained within me
But in the world, circling the pates of the court.

Sweet, your lover calls you,
Even now;
As the battle with corruption corrupted you.
Justice, you promised me;
I no longer believe in justice.
I loved him, though his love was a leash;
You took from me my cage and now I cage myself.
Scheming and plotting against schemers and plotters –
No longer knowing ourselves as once we did,
No longer viewing the world as what it is –
If only I had seen!
You would not have abandoned me now.

You will not come again?
You will not come again.
The King is fallible,
The usurper of God is not omnipotent;
I see the traces of that which he strives to hide.
His mask is good, true, but –
A mask cannot hide all:
England is the trickster’s smiling blade,
I know so.
I mourn you, as I mourn all that I know:
This ends with the destruction of a nation.

I miss your presence beside me.
Your soft eyes, looking only at my face,
At my face only.
I was safe with you.
Hearts mirrored in forbidden affections;
Switch places with me,
Let us not be ****** for desire.
Marriage is man and wife, man and wife,
You saw the lies.

Kick, quick, pick the flowers,
One for each noble skeleton.
I show their secrets in petals and songs:
The language of the mad, the insane, the crazed fools –
Fool I am, I see all, hear all, know all.
Hang their weeds in the weep of the willow,
Cursed crowns of concealed corruption.

I reach –

A tear breaks –

And I am overwhelmed by swirling thoughts,
Sinking deeper into the abyss of my mind.
Smiling trickster, smiling blade – Pretty Ophelia!
A will not come again.
I will not come again.
No one will mourn me,
There will be no one to remember:
This ends with the destruction of a nation.

And in the morning I awoke,
sleep wearied
and bloated by experience,
to find all just as it had been but nothing the same...

The pale cast of nihilism
hung limp
over the morning's hillside
where an inconspicuous mist
had once resided.

Bless my mother's innocent
attempt to patch up my
Mind's muddied terror
with a strong tea
in her best china
by the bedside.

My boyhood mattress began
a demented laughing
in the face of brothers
with graves for beds
as I was, once again,
swamped with guilty memory
of the unheroic dead.

Those gentle youth
with minds full of
the names of wild flowers
and the rules of garden cricket
wrenched from the safe
musk of mothers
to the mud and
shrill choir of the shells.

The Air she would weep
for the loss of another pair of lungs she'd never inhabit again.
All the while, the Earth rejoiced
at the return of her creation.

That clay that once grew tall.
Outwards from the rib.
All for some fantasy and
trick of the flame.

When I die, I hope it is like my dreams.
In that way, death would not be so fearful,
A remedy for my thoughts when I sleep.
In return, I dream of my death by this
Stuff that so haunts my dreams. To be scorns of
Time and its aching length, calamity
Of so long life. Yet we so dread something
After death, a no-mans land from where no
One shall return – this makes us bear our ills.
We fight. We suffer. We are wounded, all.
So we are cowards that do fear our deaths,
For we fear the unknown, those we know not.
Instead we dream that dying is dreaming,
To sooth our conscience and minds from unreeling.

It’s a fallacy, ‘to be or not to be’
actors strutting and pouting across
a stage, their black shoes burning
holes into the painted wood,

Their words lacking conviction
each action, merely an action,
but it’s what they have to work with
that holds the key, he secret ecstasy,
The escape route from Hell

Knowing that, given the choice,
‘to be’ is not where the scales will
settle. We are wanderers clutching
at straws of adventures, but we will
pick the short one, eventually

Where then do we go? When there is
no ladder made of gold to climb.
no pearly gates nor a wizardly,
kindly face

‘The play’s the thing’
wherein we catch
the conscious of
ourselves

If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet
Because I need you right by my side
If I must face what is to face

If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet
Because if I face what is inside
I might need you to be my brace

If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet
Because if I need someone to hide
All the ghosts I see, it’d be my ace

If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet
Because if I get caught up in the tide
I’d need you to bring me down from space

If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet
Because when my hands are seldom tied
I’d need you to come unlace

If you are Horatio, let me be Hamlet
Because if there is someone to be alongside
You’d be in just the right place

Because if you are Horatio,
let me be Hamlet