Tea stained table oak
Writhing in vines
Newspapers and coffee
Coffee shop chatter
Voices raised in laughter

The cry of sacred life
The high pitched giggle
Which brings us right
Reminds us of Spring
Reminds us we're alive
Young unintelligent design
Destined to die

I see God
In the faces of children
In their innocent play
In their minds not yet
Twisted
By the world

A God more beautiful
Than any religion
Can give us
Can tempt us with
Any temporary fix

Beauty fills my brain
But I can't finish this
Across the table
You look like bliss
And I long to live
Forever
Just like this

What happened to the children we left behind?
Skipping through summer forests
Along sandy beaches
When the tide came in from the ocean
They spent their days playing, still lost
In our minds but forgotten
Playing pretend while the adults
Lived on the outside
They saw everything
Every smile faked
Every dream abandoned
Their innocent minds wondered in confusion
And when we wasted away behind unfamiliar walls
And faked smiles from plastic faces in white coats
The children were listening behind closed doors
In the dark
To our last dying breaths

Calm bamboo sandals adorn my soles
Tapping along stone tiles
Soaked in the Sun
Red flags float along the Summer breeze
Blown by the wind
Like dandelion seeds

Suspended in the sultry July air
The kiss of first-lovers
The sweetness of a pear
Lost between pillars on an ardent August eve
A friend beside the river
A dream upon a stair

O this city of stone, this city of wax
This city we carry
On all of our backs
This city of stone, this city we adore
This city will rise
And rise forevermore

This city above the sea, built up upon the clouds
This city of fortune
And freedom's sweet sound
When the new sky has come and the old one is gone
This city will forever
Be where I belong

The latch lifts with a heavy clunk
And like a rusted playground memory
The metal door creaks open slowly
Releasing no light from the dark
And the cold and the infinite parallel worlds
Of nothing

Stitched together lightly, shifting
Silent and brushing past like pedestrians
Or barges on a deep dark canal
Never touching and nearly feeling
The warmth emanating from the cold black and white
Bodies

My eyes disconnect from my fingers
Mind from my body on the screen
And lingers
With the walking stick limp
That taps along the concrete
His scraggly white beard blowing in the wind
I saw the old man earlier in the street
I held my hand up to the light
To see if it was fake

Watched the old woman pass
With her brown paper bag
Rip and tear
Assortments spraying like paint
Vulture children swooping down in a rush to eat
Minds so full of hate
Confusion in every eye that sees
I wonder why I bother
Oh my mind is slipping away
My guard is down
Glued to my chair
Pulling out my hair
And there is
So much to choose from
So much
To be done
Here
This is not an exit
And you have not won

The water sparkles like the time
I spilt sugar all over
Your kitchen table
Each granule reflected the sunlight
A smile splashed across your face
The silver fish re-emerge

Jumping in parabolas
To see where they are going
I don't think they know
When they are down there
And the frothy shoreside
Reminds me

Of the milk that rushed to the floor
After my clumsy hands betrayed me
I'm glad you weren't mad
I'm glad you didn't slam the door
Your wide mouthed laugh was there
To console me

You don't know

That I love you.

That I need you.

If only...

I have lived many years
As a mouse
Many years I have lived

In this house of umber
I have kept
Asleep I have slept
Gazing
Watching

Clouds floating
The vibrant trees
Their descendants

Through my many windowed
Walls of slatted wood
In Summer breeze
I have gazed

For your eyes
I have slaved
For your feathered face

Excuse me
I don't have to
Love you
Or anybody

Maybe they told you
But you don't deserve
My forgiveness
You *******
I'm sorry

I owe you nothing
My love that you shrugged
Is no longer in stock

But my hate
That's another story
Endless
But never enough
To heal
My broken heart

Flicking through photos online
Of nights out I wish I were invited to
The cameras flash and all turn and look

Putting on their best smile
All dressed up for this social competition
Faces under make-up almost beyond recognition

I am jealous
Oh look, there is my best friend
Who never seems to talk to me
Who never sleeps alone

Who feeds me advice
From websites he thinks
I haven't already read

Yes I know what Dr. Whatshisface said
Yes I know it will pass
Yes I know that it's all in my ******* head

And I may be bitter and lonely and angry
I may be often inclined to whine and to moan
But what sane person enjoying their own time
Needs so many ******* pictures to prove it?

Oh look there is everyone I ever loved
Oh look there is everyone who never cared
Far away on the other side of the country
Not wanting to know me

Their smiles taunt
The arm around the shoulder
The fake friendly satisfaction (I hope)
The vainly sought interaction

I am jealous
And I realise
How tedious are their ordeals

Their false social conventions
I hate every single one of these
Disgusting self satisfied short sighted

Pretentious people
But I will always long insatiably
For their attention

There are gusts sometimes
When my hair is swept
From my eyes and I just feel

The cool wind pull my feet along
The sandy gravel of the path

Lamplight leaving shadows of each  tiny stone
And the branches swaying calmly
Like the blue ribbon on my notebook

A black cat prowls out of an opening
Then stops when she hears me there

And I stand like an actress as she stares
With my hair swaying like reeds
On a grey shore

Stagnant
In the fields
And it starts
The patter
-ing
The drone of the swarm
Lovely warm insects
Above my head

The first thunder
In years it seems
As though the lightning
Strikes down through
My soul
To reach
Ground

And the rain beats down
On our roof
Like a hurricane
The sky full of
Explosions
Quite
Alive

Through godsend
At my window
I gaze into
The abyss
And the
Dark clouds flashing
Leave me
Mesmerised
Once again

Like an elevator I will let everybody down
I will lift you up and watch as you leave me
Cold as echoing metal,
Empty

I sit listening to his lingering melodies
But his words don't comfort me
They don't hold me anymore

In the shower I cry
My tears disappear
But I don't
I hold my legs tight and wait
But I won't wash away

And I know what they'll say
That I was so full of life
Gathering around to ask each other
"Oh, did you see that coming?"

Just listen for a second
Just listen
Please
You may hear me

You may hear my fading footsteps

I'm sorry
You'll never know
Why I had to leave

Because no one will be looking
When I slip outside
And drift away

Each shephard sat around his feet
And as he pause they wonder
What secret would he say
But his solemn mouth speaks only
Of a sage of the holy way
High atop an ice breezed peak
The sage can be found to speak
To sing songs of the great Jomski

Who did command ten thousand men
On frigid Icelandic sea
Soaring 'neath open sky
In longships landed these men ashore
To plunder and pillage all in sight
And settle and rest did each man then
And drunk on their worship soon begin
To sing songs of the great Jomski

And when one day the great Jomski lieth
On damp soil wounded by the fateful spear
A solemn dove could be seen flying
Towards those mourning friends of home
With dreaded message of his dying
And as such crowds flood his sombre wake
All who cometh doth partake
To sing songs of the great Jomski

I saw one of my doubles in his circle. The confident centre of attention. Laughing, laughing, his blue eyes met mine, his grin grew wide and I hid my shame beneath my hair.

I got a haircut
I didn't want to
My nerves
Shot through
My veins on the day
Like white acid and the shaking
My knees made holes in the table
I almost ran away

No one noticed

I wonder if anyone would care
If I didn't show up today
What good am I to the world?

I wish I could be like you
Like a worthwhile person
Who captures stares and crowds and makes you wonder why you're so pathetic in every single ******* way
(I always say
The wrong thing)
I want to smash my face against the wall and drown in the joy of those who forgot me because I did not entertain

I meet a new double every day
I have too many

My doubles, the difference is you can talk to people without feeling a gun pointed to your head
Like you are going to die if you move as much as a muscle
Or say something that doesn't make them laugh
And I don't know where to put my hands

I am tired of hiding
In the corner hating everything

Droplets of dark divine
                       rain
Don't really taste
                       of              
Wine, but water  
  
Still I savour those small things
Ringing out the night's nothings
On the wind's bitter gifts

Til there is nothing left
And I have outlived myself
The cyclone leaves pirouette
Down into moon-glow
Puddles, ripples

The moment will soon be past
Eight thousand hours or so, I have tasted
But a fleeting crumb of the universe
Myself

Forever outliving myself until
The Sun's beams stain the clouds
Then who will look upon this frightened page
And see my soul in theirs?

I sit alone beneath a dry hood
That patters like the slated roof
On days you slept scared

Of rain and thunder
I am all there is again
The page gets wetter and wetter

As the words fade out

The leaves were prisms of glass
Light scattered in every direction
Flowing green over stream and bush
Warm and lovely and lush
I stopped to stare through honey-filled eyes

The softly winding gravel path
Marked my way between the trees
Birds sang and flew between their nests
Sporting their technicolour crests
Leaves drifted through the summer breeze

I could not prevent my pleasant smile
Or so you had told me some other time
The rushing water tessellating, sparkling
And alive with the spirit of joy
Drowned out my often crowded mind

Sighted lost
A splintering boat
Upon a storm
The rain ran
Relentlessly
On black waves
As meteor stars flashed above
This vessel
Struggled

The Sun's light
Pours
Over squinting eyes
Like honey
Shining crows caw
With the tree's leaves chuckling
At something unfunny

I decay inside
With my honesty in my head
I have become rotten

A spectre of nothing seen fleeting
Running like the mist
Beyond the light
Followed vainly
In a dream
Like midnight
In the darkness
Not alive

I trudge through the blizzard with my boots sinking
To my knees in snow and the flakes
Cloud my frosted eyelids again

Wiping away the whiteness to allow my vision
A few feet in front as the onslaught of cold wet
Particles fall like horizontal rain

Moving fast as a hurricane
My knees are weakened to collapse
I am so lost I cannot think

Many friends lost on the way
Fallen and buried instantly
In pure white ecstasy

No time for ceremony
Hours ago I lost the main party
I lost the light of survival

In the blinding white
My frigid gloved hand above my eyes
Resolution in my mind

On the fringes of sight
In the dark myopic distance
I see the sea blue light
In the lonely darkness

The shining black  
Florescent streetlamps  
In the rain

My hair is heavy
And long and it grows over
My eyes

Look, the stream is smooth
And a mirror like the tears
That hang from the brown

Green leaves floating
And the grey perched on the wall
I'm at the edge where the river flows

Under like a fish
There's
A salmon

Hopping
On the river
Amongst a million ripples

The unanswered pleas
A fog condensed
Into crystals

They drip
To rest on her lips
And between her shining scales

Someone pushed me
Someone
I'm falling

I'm freezing
In here someone is under
The surface

It pulls
And I need
To help

Someone
A mirror
My reflection

My body at the bed
My mouth agape
I'm not awake
Anymore

I sat with my hands
On this awkward holly leaf
Forcing its yellow-green spikes to pierce flesh

Passing my fingers
Over the points so pretend real
Peeling off each limb one by one to make it ordinary

Reading the tombstones
All lined up in morgue fashion
Imagining those souls who were one day transformed

Into stone-carved letters
Names and dates and flowers
Slowly lessening visits from moved-on people

Who try not to think
Of their own temporary selves
As ticking timebombs testing every limit until one day

I walk diagonal
Accross the road to the redness
That catches my eye filling my head with metaphors

Those church wine petals
Scent as sweet as the Eucharist
Having been inside for so long I am drunk on the sight

I am born again
Brushing against plants for contact
Suddenly noticing the life energy contained within them

The night air is warm as it brushes past me
Like curtains lit by lightning floating in an open window

The lost moth wanders between suns
From sun to flowering sun
Searching for home in the night

My shelves stack full of books half read
Half poems I could not ring
Limp as a starfish upon this bed
As the bird's sweet chirpings sing

Through the echoing skull I've said
"Beware" for there be no mortal thing
Could tame the waters and lands of dread
Where my madness reigns as King

My heart does sink, a lump of lead
My chains to river cling
On spring's soft pillow I rest my head
To dream of other things

In a ghostly purgatory
Of mist and copper ferns
We drove atop the world
Towards Baltimore, and the cold sea
The bone-dry air

Where we ate and laughed like better times
Nostalgic nights of youth
The memories now aged with time
Like bitter vinegar to wine

The vena cava explosion
Liquid sadness fills the emptiness
Left by the betrayal

I feel like less
Than a worthwhile person
As I hammer this final nail

Lowering my voice
As if there is some lesson
Which would render life bearable

Some snake oil remedy
Temporarily for sale
Somewhere else

I wonder
Is there is anyone able
To feel the way I do

May I somehow transfer knowledge
To you
What am I saying

Sorry
Who the **** even are you anyway
I am sorry but
Who am I talking to

*The line is dead

Creation is in our breath
our silk noise is frozen cold
as sound fills the capped peaks
as a red bike sticks out of the snow
that covers each dead root
it cushions each robin's  fall

it hangs from branches
like blank tears, long sheets
of white paper
a fox mother guards her silver cubs
she wears a white coat when she comes
the snow is what she knows

i have not seen these hills
since she came to me
offering her eyes
that see through the clear silence
she stared, and crushed my sound
till she scampered away

the black ravens fluttered empty
the leaves echo from the skeleton
the sound echoing like a shot
our boots sinking into deep holes
his feet leave tracks on the snow
where mine have left

when I turn he is not there
i can hear the raven's wings
and our tracks lie asleep in the snow
where mine have left

when I turn he is not there
i can hear the raven's wings
and our tracks lie asleep in the snow

Trust me there is no solace within these walls

Oh, angel,  if I could only tear open my heart

And find you inside

Oh angel, if I could ride on this acidic wind

Over the concrete bars and skeleton trees

High up with their planes

Back to sweet home

Back to my old life

Oh if I could turn back time...

To find my family there...

Are you
In pain
Or in the ground?

Would you prefer
Silence
Or no sound?

Are you
Homeless
Or in debt?

Would you prefer
Disappointment
Or regret?


Are you
Deceased
Or confused?

Unmarried
Or abused?

Are you
Single
Or alone?

Alone
Or on your own?


When the long nights come
In a world that's all wrong

Where there are two wrong sides
To every bed
Where every sword
Has a double edge

Will you rebel
Or make a change?
Will you walk through hell
Or stay the same?

Will you use your anger
Or succumb to rage?
Will you play the part
Or take the stage?

The world looks so different
From down here
Watching birds glide like grey kites
As clouds float together yet lonely
As faces in a crowd

I pushed away all hope
Of reclaiming
Myself
From the dry heap of used
People
Stacked high in the corner
Of your bedroom

The dark room is a matchbox
And she's a perfect match
That's why it chose her
The bodies were replaced when no one saw
Pressing against the rusted grid
Spattered with blood, The wrong hand
And through it the man came
His boots like cannons
He tore that painting in two and chewed on its soul
Losing himself in the colours


My eyelids dropped like weights
Down, down, down a hundred fathoms
And blue rushed in through the cracks
This far down the birds begin to chirp
Time stops when you watch it, a shy thing it is
But the day flies by before it even starts
Sitting up in my bed I could hear the footsteps
Felt but not seen
I cried out for him
Huddled under the covers

I think about life
I look up to the old clock
I watch the time leave

Don't die, be happy
Not miserable, this is
My not-to-do list

You can take all the right turns
You'll end up where you started

10 degrees west, swiftly falling south
Things go downhill

You become the things you longed to be
Create the truths you're dying to find

Always looking forward
Leaving more of yourself behind

Go ahead and write all the right things
And remain a non-entity to me

The darkness like a thick mist surrounds us
Until we choose to forget

We wallow in involuntary  thoughts
Of the things we choose to regret

The bets we decide to take
Say that's how it's going to be, and go

I was blind but now I know
I will never see

Loneliness is always there inside me
Black puddles on a starlit road
I stare into and see myself

My tears leave ripples in the cold water
He has his arms wrapped around her
I'm so completely worthless

Loneliness
I can't tell the difference
Between myself
And the endless nothing of the universe

the soothing darkness
seeps through
the glass, and i don't know
where i'm running off to

laughing loudly, lying, walking
whiskey filled, and tranquil
i drink some more, and smoke with an aching throat
i get lost in half finished thoughts
of her smile, and her hair
so perfect like the rest of her

our eyes meet just like they used to

and i feel
like i'm running out of remedies
like the tiring walls of my heart
are closing in
on me

like i will forever be
as lonely, ugly, and worthless
as i have always been

To write real poetry
You have to feel something
So I'm sorry

The grand scale of things seems unimaginable
When our children listen to the legends and grow
Altering art in new amazing ways, watch their faces
So beautiful and young but still like those in their history books
Only wearing new clothes

When you showed me your words and your heart
In that moment my mind became opened to all of history
I remembered how this was only just the start
I supposed the beauty was created by me

I thought of the children

Their minds seeded on the shoulders of their heroes
Take a little here, borrow something there and create a dreamworld
You can see the cross section of youth and life in their words
In the ways they manifest beauty from something so much worse
My pens reflect the Sun's light spread like petals in their ***
I lift one out between my torn and faded fingers
And I hope I may have the privilege to be a part
Of humanity's ever changing plot

It tells us so much
When. A. Small. Dot. Makes. Us. Stop
We hold the power

You in the darkness with the old grey church
Weeping down its stone walls, and the rain
Singing softly to the sounds of a dancing sky

You: the illusion, ever so inviting
The lonesome cloud gliding over the horizon
Glowing alone in perfect silence

You: a moment lost in space,
Not even asleep, not even
Awake, not even

You sigh a frozen breath
And leave with a song

That echoes through the night
Where you are now gone

The stone will climb, I am confident
The same stone, same mountain
Same result, and up again
I go tired and on the verge of collapse
Yes, I have become stronger
And yes I will continue
As the sun retires red and fading
The crows return to their nests
Sleep taunts me insufferabely
Right or wrong is a choice
But the right answer is wrong

I can't write

I can't write

And the posters on the wall
Tell the same old story of love
And infinite possibilities
How shall I waste my time?
Staring at the ceiling above

The same old story

I don't know

Where will I get my strength from
When my knees fall beneath me