I like my poetry
Like I like my coffee
Unlike most,
I prefer it strong
And heavy

I don’t mind it rushed,
What I really want it to empower
Is the sweet bitterness
That’ll keep me up for hours

How’re you to live
Without a little contemplation
A bitter drink
To match how you think
About the world and its desperation

Its desire to acquire
A meaning higher than is truthful
Since the only rectifier
For all of the gunfire
Is that we remain faithful…

“Faithful”

Faithful to shadows
That we hope to be
More than more than just a domino
From long ago
Toppling into tomorrow

But even so
Truly, we know
We cannot hope to be
More than the smallest
Ripple in the sea

There’s nothing more than what we see
Despite what we wish would be
There for us now and when we
Leave this place

In all of space
We’re merely dust
Upon dust
No conceited reason
Behind every season

No, that’s just the world’s childish desperation
To see more behind each rotation
Of God’s “divine” creation

Since, truly, there can be no rectifier
For all of the gunfire
And despite how I think I may desire
This blessed ignorance of faithfulness
What I value more is truthfulness

And what it’s telling me
(Thanks somewhat, perhaps, to the coffee)
Is that our best intentions
Will not result in intervention
But in blind destruction
Thanks to humanity’s corruption.

…A bitter drink
To match how I think
About the world and its desperation.

We were put on this earth to suffer,
And that is what we're gonna do.

You were always rotting
I never noticed
They remind me of you
Skin wrapped around ankle bones
Wearing through their soles
It’s different here
Guess some just rot faster
I peeled back the covers and found only the lacuna
The blue orange fuzz
Delineating the shadow from the concrete
You grew apart and dissipated
Smoke settling into cloth
The back of my sleeve
How come?
How come?
Everyone is always leaving
Warping through their bodies
Did you ever finish your story?
Soft knuckles rapping on your door
Knobbly knees
I know it’s selfish
Perpetuating the fabric of your existence
Like a categorical imperative
A crumpled head filled with spirits
Is carried to the tip
It happens every Monday morning
Hollow men run the streets
But they leave the rot
They always leave the rot

Dead bee
The moss grows round it
Water spray
Purify it
Pest is relative
Coming from where?
The cat stretches
Common sense
Rock bottom
Delve deeper, come on
There’s no soul here
Empty it out
Start again
Transcend yourself
Transcend transcendence
So yeah, there was a gardener
Wielding a pressure blaster
Which ripped the moss from its roots
The sun peaked
And the moss turned dust
Because the aesthetics of the pavement
Supersede existence
Who the **** cares?
Dead bee on the pavement
Blast it into the bushes
It depresses the school children
A hedgehog rots in the gutter
Flies lay eggs in its flesh
And create a home
Isn’t that beautiful?
What the **** did the moss get?
“China would have done this in a day”
My father says
Watching road workers rip apart asphalt
“It’s quite nice, though”
Looking into the concrete river
As mayflies hatch deformed
Due to the heat from the channel
Half the students stare at their toes
Wishing they were cuter
Stronger
Smarter
Because narcissism has become the new desire
Things are rotting everywhere
But we pretend they’re normal
**** man, rock bottom
The children pick up the bees
And stick them in their mouths
Until the moss completely coats their hearts

I wonder what it’d be like to stand on a human face
Would my foot sink right through their flesh
Leave a hole circled with broken teeth
Gnawing the empty air?
Seems no different
Someone writhes on the floor in a club
Is pronounced dead the next day
Exorcised *******
It’s where they go to get ****** up right?
Tequila and lime
Body shot
Set it on fire
A worm died so some middle-aged manager
Could fail at recapturing her youth
****** up, let’s get ****** up
Bones bleeding through the sleeves
Stuffing flesh into mouths
The river overflows with fast food wrappers
And rotting couches
Sit on the pavement and ***** in your lap
It’s what you came here for
Is she going to jump?
Take a picture
Hope the whole roof collapses
We’re trying to ******* sleep, a neighbour yells before slamming the door
Feels awkward and steps off the roof
Lies on the floor of her room
Slits her wrists instead
He’d been angry since he moved in
Kept finding apple cores in his yard
Sometimes it’s Christmas here
And the entire city decides to take part in a ritual
Where the vacuity of existence is concentrated in the shopping districts, so everyone can feel awful together
It’s really something
A black heat descends on Dunedin
And smothers all the children in their cribs
Teenagers light up and skate through the throngs of blank-faced adults
Too deeply enamoured with percentage discounts to even notice their bags filling with the blood of foreigners
Did you know one million Chinese children die a year from vitamin A deficiency?
Good thing we’re buying all these Chinese made goods
Sometimes the smog is so strong
And the water so red
That everyone begins to think the clear days are the strange ones
Sometimes the power poles collapse and generations of children are born sterile and genderless
The fathers all choke their wives with plastic bags
And no one questions them
This existence is nauseating
No wonder your mother hung herself
No wonder your uncle ***** your sister then hacked his own head off
None of this is real
A guy was hospitalised because someone mistook him for a child molester
Smashed his face up so much he lost seven teeth and got brain damage
He’d been a famous writer before
And now he can’t speak
Isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?
Doesn’t this existence make you want to breakdown into laughter and throw your head against the wall until there’s nothing left?

There’s a body smeared under my finger
Or maybe just dust
Guts pressed into the keyboard
The streetlight across the road is tilted at the top
Wires dangling strangely
They might drop at any moment
And set the neighbour’s flesh on fire
I couldn’t give a ****
Everyone keeps telling me I live in the bourgeois district
There’s a church opposite here
For the past three sundays
I’ve played industrial noise during mass
Hitting my guitar so hard my fingers bleed into the strings
And all along the fretboard
“Sounds like the bowel of a ship”
“Is—is that music?”
Wrists are beginning to collapse in on themselves
Fill the void
Shut shut
Open the windows
Shut shut
Play some Swans
Shut shut
Close the windows
Shut shut
It’s too early
Worthless
It’s too late
Worthless
Look in the mirror
There’s nothing
Look at your father
There’s nothing
Look at your friends
There’s nothing
She’s gone
Far away
She’s gone
Left you
She’s gone
Lost you
She’s gone
Failed you
**** up
Up
Drop out
Out
Take some acid
Acid
Blow your brains out
Out
Emergence:
The philosophy that consciousness arises out of the physical structure of the brain
Scramble it and we’d no longer resemble the same persons
Just vessels hosting multiplicities that alter as they deteriorates
Give me five tabs, then
Spike through the cerebrum
Phineas drunk on the pavement
Gage dead but still walking

maybe a black mouth
opening and closing
usually you can see the gums
the teeth
lips stretching over them
there’s nothing
a gaping entrance to the void
there are two stale muffins on the table
one soaking in milk
it’s been two hours now
the room at the top of the stairs
is growing louder and louder
a piercing bellow
drowning out all thoughts
but it doesn’t
i want to scream
throw myself into it until my entire being is lost
between the teeth
the white black lacuna
corn splitting from the cob
a rotting banana
an empty carton of milk
my god, could life be any more boring?
i caught a cold
sneezed at the floor
achoo achoo
get well soon cards at my funeral
loraclear on my casket
dirt over
grow me like a mushroom
expanding into the root systems
puffing into a bulbous fruit
pick me and slice me
but i trust only supermarket goods
picked by mechanised beings
******* on an industrial conveyor belt
modernity made physical
look into the slaughterpens while you eat your steak
barter your children for another shot of coffee
hah hah hah, doesn’t affect me
strutting your cash like an empty slot machine
rigged to emote only with your colleagues
while the television blares another thousand deaths
**** this ****** world
consume me until there’s nothing left
everyone’s a nihilist
someone brought back a dozen breadloaves from the women’s refuge
eat them before they go off
turning our bodies
pouring soap down the sink
all the fishes scales rot away
they slowly sink into the depths
and line the seabed with teeth and ribs

Blood foams out of Mary’s mouth.
Grass on her skirt.
Grubs shift beneath her, trying to breathe.
Pink foam runs down her chin.
Jeremiah hasn’t moved in an hour.
Lying on the grass with his hair rotting.
Bathtub flesh tangled in senescence.
Jesus, where the **** did the time go?
It’s Autumn approaching Winter.
Little nooses run down tree branches and settle round all the leaves.
Hugging them until their necks sever like Isaiah’s.
Eve shakes his shoulder to wake him but his head just rolls further into the gutter.
A dazed expression of absolute revulsion.
Whatever.
I pick up a stick and pierce Eve’s flesh.
Over and over.
Because I’m bored.
And she’s there.
Barely perceiving her own existence.
Shaking the headless body of Isaiah.
While Mary collapses into a black hole.
And Jeremiah sinks into the ground.

--------------------

When red ran from the sand.

From the depths, rose a creature quite old.
Solemn and slow, not a care to be bold
It anchored itself, and gave no expression
The strength of its shell, shook in depressions
Tall extensions: its lifeblood, its protection.
Found scattered, on its shell, in cert’n sections.

The pride of Madagascar—the creature by name—
Are Rosewood and Ebony now mangled and maimed.

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When red ran from his hand.

Trees are felled, and the humans displace:
Lemurs are losing, they can’t find their space.
Hear the creature wail, its shell echoes with grief—
The sounds of its guests, find little relief.
For its pride is valued, and cut for a price
Hard decisions made—it is life’s device.

Wooden splinters bite back trading flesh to save flesh.
Living masses are caught in our culture’s great mesh.

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When red in hand and land.

Oceans to flood, new depths to behold
Our desires to fill, balk: “Don’t let them fold!”
She tires of our, meandering session;             
Beating-out paths, to varied oppressions.
Laugh at the onslaught, of one great convection!
As humans propel, in that direction…

In all this, Gaia shrugs, naked-apes are to blame.
Fruiting, of hand and land, need-be one and the same!

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