hands at ears hair splayed screaming
the baby copying her tears snot streaming
is how I remember her always have always will
gripped with need for some small pill
or syringe or---

I'm holding her mother's hand, and -- lying --
Say that I loved her more as she was dying.
Ignoring the cause, ignoring my guilt
Boarding up the windows with the view I built.
We're crazy paving, joined together.
Hands all linked in forgetting whether
We were the cause of the start, the end,
Or the middle, where she showed that she would tend--
Maybe our actions sped her up, catalysed?
We do not ask.
                Our mouths all lie that we are surprised.

---she is pregnant hands encircling
rich and fertile with a hidden promise
boy or girl?
We know now so
we celebrate
even though we had made a promise not to
was that the start?

The hardest question comes last,
At last,
"Will the baby remember her past?
Yes, I say, from far away,
We'll say a prayer on Mother's day.
There will be a picture (blown-up huge), I'll ask who's that?
She'll look up brightly from her activity mat--

I float away, mouth using persuasive platitudes,
Telling them she will know her mother's multitudes,
Wondering whether my memories can be falsified.
Wondering whether I will remember that I lied.

--I'm holding her mother's hand, and - lying -
Say that I love her most now she is dead.
I have fooled her, she looks down, sighing,
But her father's red-rimmed eyes hold steady on my head.

It’s funny, you know you shouldn’t do it.
But then, when you lay there at the end of the day,
With your head spinning,
You know that you blew it.

Tin after tin assisting the spin,
Memories within kept under your skin,
Revolving and turning and wearing you thin,
Those long lost has-beens,
Inducing your sin.

You see, for me, I’m an ideas man, my brain constantly thinking,
Amplified and catalysed by the substance I’m drinking,
But it’s the thinking that’s linking my drinking to ink in,
These words,
While you sit there mistaking my wincing for winking,
...absurd.

Excuses excuses,
While abusing the juices,
Cause mere minor muses,
To produce abstruse bruises,
Your conduct confuses,
Peering, peers peruses,
Refusing acceptance induces,
Further misuses of boozes.

The taste is wasted,
On the embracing flavours,
As without haste you lay your,
Minimum pay wages down,
On the bar for more inebriation,
You try but you fail to
Waiver your behaviour,
But instead pave your way,
To your bottled slave labour.

It didn’t start out this way, it provided fun out of the blue,
To the problem I was blind as the issue grew and grew,
One turns to two,
Three increased to more,
Upon fixed shoulders heads askew,
Same face, different man, I assure.

Down the hatch they say, bottoms up, cheers!
As the liquor disappears it descends and it sears,
Wipe away the tears from the boozey souvenir,
And await that blissful place with no anxiety, no fears.

I understand why some find it bizarre,
How a soul can solely seek only for the jar,
My own experience has brought me in this far,
So now, this time,  it’s time for me to start...

...Raising the bar,
By erasing the bar!!

Now I’ve admitted I have a problem,
I’m committed to drawing a line at the bottom,
Of my past I can’t be acquitted but of my future I can blossom,
No truth dismissive in reality this autumn.

So that’s it for now, I’m wagon bound,
I’m on off this big adventure,
I’ve been a clown, to let it get me down,
Too long in this game I’ve been a contender,
Feet on the ground, I’ll no longer frown,
From the pleasure faked, with measure after measure,
Sorrows no longer drowned, I’ll be around,
And my life, from now, will get better.

If engrossed in oneself
Life is one dimensional
Without emotion, catalysed by relations
And connections fortifying ones place
Life is meaningless.

I had to hear the sound of the zip on that dress
I asked her back to mine for cold coffee and cigarettes
She said she doesn't smoke but she'd have one to impress
and she isn't one for coffee
So sorry, I digress

Before she sat down all these lines coalesced
with secrets and lies, I try to confess
she catalysed a crystal convalescence
her garnet eyes sparking wildfires in my chest
my lungs are so tight they could rival her dress
Stung in the heart for kicking the nest
took a shot in the dark
Again, I digress

A small crowded room - as small rooms tend to be
but for everyone there, she was all I could see
the picture of perfection, framed perfectly
in a dress designed to buckle my knees
Crowded c'rod'd quickly becomes we
and I was trying to get her on my settee
Is it a metaphor if I meant it literally?
Excuse me, once more it seems
I digress

I just had to get her out of that dress
mess up her make up
make her hair a mess
kiss her when she wakes up
and watch her get dressed
to undress her again
exalted by the scent
bask in the sound
of the zip on that dress
while I sip on cold coffee
and smoke cigarettes

Valentine's Day giddiness
catalysed by the semi hand-holding
and the nervous kisses that
hallow the romantic amateurity
of junior high

Then high school,
the brick-walled hell of september's
The pressure
The hormones
The naked need
for warmth and
an unkillable desire
to lose the one thing
to gain another

But in the end
It's all the same
We want love
(need it)
to survive

Those who live without it
are the poor skeletons
without the fellow heart
to bleed with, side by side

And for those of us who find it,
find that wondrous facet of existence,
the indescribable absolute, love

Our pulses race and minds helplessly
spiral into oblivion to the others
when the one is there

-cj

the idea
that it would never end
scared me immensely
but the idea
that it would
also catalysed a fear in me

-cj

Hocus pocus
Rescind the locusts
Contact was made
Through an American waif

Pardon the lawlessness
Wait out the immorality
A seed has been sprouted
A soul has been saved

The tears of an angel
Have catalysed a connection
Have given momentum
To a new wave of change

We see it now spreading
With steady undulations
Exponentially growing
Reverentially laid

With trespasses forgiven
And atonements amassed
That old apocalyptic
Execution is stayed

petrify your fallen leaves
what i said and left unsaid
all at last you kept, not without the rest
seasons change songs that never end

speak with secrecy my myth
what remains that chance can offer
who lost and left closed the door to themselves
i'm caught in creases of your palm

too much for me to untangle
wasn't sure what being heard was
we catalysed the grace of this strange place
i can see the shore fading glad

the pink dawn greeting the sea
cumulus range billowing
a softness to all that was and would be
this was the light of your smile

i'm flying towards your sky now
and i keep with me his defeats
and i pretend to soar to forget the fall
but i know i'll keep on the way

to walk beside your welcome
i'm a refrain in your song
i'll set among suns, your treasures joyful
unbroken and beseeching