The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
“The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

I use technology to take me to a time when it only half-existed. In a blue-shell room of mega-pixel photographs and rolling news feeds, I can put on my headphones and disappear into an instrumental Sunday.

There are stamp collectors making their lazy way over beaten roads and disused railways. 'Surrender' only means to fall asleep and to leave your book as a hut on your bedside table. Where war may still go on and on,

but at least you don't have to hear about it. Show me the place where pine-cones fall and women stare across the river. Where coffee is for taste, and not self-medication. I want to walk bare-foot and feel thorns

toughen my heels, infect my blood with Earth or God or Any Other Name. We will **** in the bushes, singing those fragments of Leonard Cohen lyrics that we can still remember from times spent smoking in my room.

I can almost feel that pointless happiness. That location in a canopy to retreat when the bills are due, when the walls needs re-painting. When the neighbour strangles puppies and all you do is complain about the time.

I use new music set to old sounds: freed slaves living in the cross-hairs of tradition. White lovers breaking their hearts over guitar strings and harmonies, always a semi-tone apart. I find your hair on my pillow.
There is no technology in the world to distract me from that.

Katie Price
Had a collection
Of last season's
Brassieres
Which she indexed
With the help
Of a sincere
Bilingual reindeer
Dressed in spandex
Who for some reason
Was single.

Taxonomy
Is so important to me
Said Katie.

So they were labelled
And kept in taxis
At disused angle grinder factories
Near the Tower of Babel
So posterity
Would be able
To analyse
The finer points
Of her physiognomy.

Quite an unusual praxis
And something of an anomaly
For someone like me
Wouldn't you agree?

Cross my heart
And hope to die
I agree.

.
In disused field is a blooming temple.
An ancient apple tree waiting eternal,
This stone bold sculpture was forged
With nimbus hands and windy eyes.
In hushed airs, Shiva dances to light,
Waves, sacred arms without swaying.

Bearded ones come to pay homage,
The solemn chickadees, the ranging
Sparrows, red robed robins— priestly                                                         ­   
Doves, all who see are one enveloped
In graces of the New World Bodhi tree,
Waiting for blossoms so dearly come.

Edge of boughs brim under heavens
Landing with mystic verges of spirit
Into the mind of the eyes of nature—
Kali-flowered ears of lichen are pale
Green in their devotions, pummeled
By seas of seasons, foggy to the fray.

Finches, yellow, reflecting in a star,
Devout wee lamas golden with halo,
Are kneeling above berm, this nobby
Trunk, stave, inside bodacious stupa
Bell who sings clear, without ringing,
Body of elder grace, wisdoms, ages.

In cast irreverence, seldom do crows
Visit, when they do there is menace
Of the Jinn, dark giants in the levels,
Mercifully, out of shame, they do not
Stay, black wings due, die in luminous
Day moon, rain soak sun, balmy mist.

On pilgrim journeys, whirlings, prayer
Wheels, guide shy flocks riding gnarl,
Indie goddess, to overreaching love,
By sores of hollow in the steps, open
To being, brindles of myriad meadow
In temple blossoms— numinous suns.

Of both earth and sky, shines a beauty,
Whose form is written in blistering bark,
The ciphers of tongue to Sanskrit leaves
And lost fruits, given over, unforbiddens,
Within old apple tree a great wilderness
And all the branch of wings are knowing.

In disused field is a blooming temple.
An ancient apple tree waits eternal,
This stone bold sculpture was forged
With nimbus hands and windy eyes.
In hushed airs, Shiva dances to light,
Waves, sacred arms without swaying.

Bearded ones come to pay homage,
The solemn chickadees, the ranging
Sparrows, red robed robins— priestly                                                         ­    
Doves, all who see are one enveloped
In graces of the New World Bodhi tree,
Waiting for blossoms so dearly come.

Edge of boughs brim under heavens
Landing with mystic verges of spirit
Into the mind of the eyes of nature—
Kali-flowered ears of lichen are pale
Green in their devotions, pummeled
By seas of seasons, foggy to the fray.

Finches, yellow, reflecting in a star,
Devout wee lamas golden with halo,
Are kneeling above berm, this nobby
Trunk, stave, inside bodacious stupa
Bell who sings clear, without ringing,
Body of elder grace, wisdoms, ages.

In cast irreverence, seldom do crows
Visit, when they do there is menace
Of the Jinn, dark giants in the levels,
Mercifully, out of shame, they do not
Stay, black wings due, die in luminous
Day moon, rain soak sun, balmy mist.

On pilgrim journeys, whirlings, prayer
Wheels, guide shy flocks riding gnarl,
Indie goddess, to overreaching love,
By sores of hollow in the steps, open
To being, brindles of myriad meadow
In temple blossoms— numinous suns.

Of both earth and sky, shines a beauty,
Whose form is written in blistering bark,
The ciphers of tongue to Sanskrit leaves
And lost fruits, given over, unforbiddens,
Within old apple tree a great wilderness
And all the branch of wings are knowing.

I

I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
Leaning across the water, I and he;
Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell:
Only our mirrored eyes met silently
In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
He swept the spring that watered my heart’s drouth.
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.


II

And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
As souls disused in death’s sterility
May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
And I was made aware of a dumb throng
That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
While fast together, alive from the abyss,
Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
And pity of self through all made broken moan
Which said, ‘For once, for once, for once alone!’
And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—


III

‘O ye, all ye that walk in Willow-wood,
That walk with hollow faces burning white;
What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!

Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
Alas! if ever such a pillow could
Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,—
Better all life forget her than this thing,
That Willowwood should hold her wandering!’


IV

So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
Together cling through the wind’s wellaway
Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,—
So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

Only I know that I leaned low and drank
A long draught from the water where she sank,
Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
And as I leaned, I know I felt Love’s face
Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
Till both our heads were in his aureole.

It was a summer afternoon in Wester Ross. Two moments: one near, on tide-swept sands, with glorious and gloriously blue amalgams of sky and water; the other far, on a distant shore, a vista of sweeping rain and a gang of clouds marauding the hills. Near abouts: a meeting of warm land and cool sea over a deserted beach. There were midges of course, but on that day a lithe breeze kept them at bay. As she was discovering the chaotic delights of the disused Fishing Station, I was Charles Darwin standing on a deserted shore looking across to Tierra del Fuego. Not a sign of a dwelling, a boat, or even a person on the coastal footpath. A vast panorama spread beyond the edges of my unturning vision. Out on the grey blue water, I became Captain Vancouver sailing up the Inner Channel exploring and mapping every indent, nook and cranny of the double coast. Suddenly, five indians in their log canoe appeared paddling around the point, navigating by the feel of depth and the thrum of the current inches under their bare feet and bottoms.
 
This place, the larger vicinity, the region driven through, on and onwards, into and out towards landscapes vaster than anything I’d previously known in this small island; it had already staked its claim on my consciousness. I was transfixed. On my own, decent progress during a walk was almost impossible. I would stop every few moments aware that something new and different was going on. To miss anything seemed an affront to the sublime. I would walk early in the morning whilst she lay peacefully in bed, her arms stretched out on the blue-striped cover, her hands and fingers gently curved, at rest. This morning time was alive with a colourscape of silences, different shades of low-level noise. There is no camera able to catch the play of real all-surrounding images with those extensions of fantasy the imagination blends and stirs. No microphone can be sensitive enough to the surround sound in air and landscape, the faint breath of the sea, and the incessant conversation and playback of her tender evening voice in my thoughts. Here the past was invading the present, speculating on the future, our future.
 
I ventured inside the hut at the Fishing Station. Curious to see what she was up to. She was arranging, like children do, her found objects. Along the few shelves fixed to the corrugated iron walls her quiet hands placed and replaced, shifted and turned; then, the click of the camera, again click, adjust the focus, click. Ropes lay at her feet snake-like, hemp and nylon, that urgent orange, that too smooth blue, mounds of old fishing gear mostly unidentifiable, not an idea where the floor might be found, so completely covered. If there had been a door it was no more; just a gap in the wall, seaward.
 
These objects she arranged: screws, bolts, nails, strange keys, boltless nuts and nutless bolts, small bottles, a can or two. Everything hand-size, tarnished, rusted, some oiled, stained oil-black. I felt an intruder witnessing her preparations for a secret game, a ceremony of recording and removal. A kindly ‘do not disturb’ sign hung about her face; a blankness, a dream-like visage of the initiated, as though she held some premonition of this material’s importance, a treasure found in a shack of a shed, a ‘find’ she would collectively decode. Already this visit took on the character of a preliminary investigation. She began wrapping and tying some of the more unusual items in cloth, making mummies that in a few days she would return to and unwrap to find their imprint and press marked on the cloth.
 
We lost time in this place. Only the incoming tide was a clue to how the afternoon had advanced. The beach, at whose far end the station had been built, held a gentle new moon’s curve. The water’s encroachment of the beach became mesmeric; it was difficult to leave the looking until its tide journey had been completed. But we did, and wandering through the dune meadows, between the diffident cattle, past the remote farm at the end of the track, gate after gate, then the proper road, the twice a day post box, two houses set well back from the road, a woman leading a boy on a horse, up a rise, a lay-by with a camper van, walking backwards to keep the view to the red sand beach in our sights as the afternoon light began to turn from gold into auburn, then with fingers threaded into fingers down to the wooden cottage. And there, later, after love’s welcome and its celebration, stillness.

I have been singing for forgotten things,
beer bottles hidden in the hedgerows.
The opera singer, the strangled vibrato,
ash-filled cokes cans; the afterparty sunrise.

This recovery has been long, fickle.
Reckless optimism and the science of failure
collide into the colour
of a Daniel Johnston cartoon,
or a songwriter's sense of humour.

Disused pencils stand as monuments
to old dreams of grass-roots art,
the fragility of neurotic *******
drawn with innumerable straight lines
that composite a woman's naked body.

I have been drawing on memories
and hoping for a brand-new image;
dissolution of old borders - a strangled voice
in a room full of opened tongues.

The Hawaiian shirt made light of depression
in darkened hours and wax smiles.
Plastic cocktails, the pending brides;
desperate men - the post-work demise.
I have learned a lie ever since.

This recovery has been imperfect, a fraud.
Swollen truths to satisfy the concerned,
only myself left to fool.
I have found the early morning
but cannot reach a sober conclusion.

Redundant habits mildew my mind
with the backwater of yesterday,
familiar street names to mourn
those who became strangers,
the negative bias of my mind's eye.

I have been writing words of action
from the safety of my desk;
all that the desk-lamp can illuminate,
all of which words can make sense.

This half-lived recovery is bunk, irretrievable.
Working poverty and untied knots
are co-morbid in meaninglessness;
chains to hold me in Plato's Cave
whilst her skin freckles in the sun.

Disused and living outside of love,
morning curtains open to a sheet of light
that obliterates loneliness
in the presence of shared heat,
only for it to return again, come night.

We stalked hawthorn hedgerows,
Backyards our battlefields,
Wielding wooden swords,
Dustbin-lids, for our shields.

We scouted railway cuttings,
Long abandoned and disused,
Where friendship’s blended alloys,
Were cast, forged and fused.

We patrolled village streets,
Marched along muddied lanes,
Proudly defending ‘our land’,
From raiding, heathen, Danes’.

We boldly challenged Vikings’,
Beneath a Sixties-summer-sun,
Bonding loyalty, faith and trust,
That will never, come undone.

Those days will not return,
Memories-mismatched-truth,
Recalling the fallen heroes,
Fighting follies of our youth.

Protecting imagined Kingdoms,
Lost in time, for evermore,
Boy soldiers standing guard,
In Castles built from straw.

Hey there, you, driving the lawnmower,
sitting atop your shiny red toy--
state of the art, the best of the best
in lawn technology.

My meager fields are no longer in disarray
since you came around;

Tell me, Mr. Lawnmower,
Do the aspiring clovers and rogue dandelions irritate you?

Is their determination to survive a mere inconvenience,
Or is that the slight trickle of fear running down your back?

What about the bird's nest perched perilously in the gutter
and the rusted horseshoes nesting in my flower bed?
The disused swing set, now eroding in my backyard?

I rather like my own personal jungle!

Still, I suppose someone has to trim the branches
that hang over the power lines.

The poison ivy sneaking its way toward the roof
needs an occasional reminder
of the terms of our uneasy truce.

Perhaps I need you after all.

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
  And left no trace but the cellar walls,
  And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
  The orchard tree has grown one copse
  Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
  On that disused and forgotten road
  That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
  I hear him begin far enough away
  Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
  Who share the unlit place with me—
  Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
  With none among them that ever sings,
  And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

This is the church which Pisa, great and free,
Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls,
That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear
To shiver in the deep and voluble tones
Rolled from the *****! Underneath my feet
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.
The image of an armed knight is graven
Upon it, clad in perfect panoply--
Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm,
Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield.
Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim
By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,
And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.
Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb,
This effigy, the strange disused form
Of this inscription, eloquently show
His history. Let me clothe in fitting words
The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph.

  "He whose forgotten dust for centuries
Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom
Adventure, and endurance, and emprise
Exalted the mind's faculties and strung
The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,
And bountiful, and cruel, and devout,
And quick to draw the sword in private feud.
He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed
The saints as fervently on bended knees
As ever shaven cenobite. He loved
As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne
The maid that pleased him from her bower by night,
To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears
His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks
On his pursuers. He aspired to see
His native Pisa queen and arbitress
Of cities: earnestly for her he raised
His voice in council, and affronted death
In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck,
And brought the captured flag of Genoa back,
Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay
The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen.
He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke,
But would have joined the exiles that withdrew
For ever, when the Florentine broke in
The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts
For trophies--but he died before that day.

  "He lived, the impersonation of an age
That never shall return. His soul of fire
Was kindled by the breath of the rude time
He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds,
Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier,
Turning his eyes from the reproachful past,
And from the hopeless future, gives to ease,
And love, and music, his inglorious life."

The decaying mansions of English language
Rot and recede
into teenage grasses
with each unspoken year

The hired help have left their hair unmown and surrendered their uniform dress
Content with the neglect of nature
taking its timely course

When the architects and master masons of linguistics
Survey their forgotten plans in the heaven of English literature
They are not dismayed
but patiently sit and sit

The pristine edifices of the classics
Once grand and clad in deferential brick
Stand scaffolded and unread
The doors unlocked, ajar and hopelessly inviting
Into the library of the English canon
The dusty cloak on the carpets of grammar
Sheets thrown over the disused armchairs of archaic words
Echoing the plink of the out-of-tune pianoforte of the perfectly crafted short story
Bathrooms of formal poetry
With the rusty plumbing of metre and rhyme

Whereas the temporary outhouses,
hastily arranged huts of slang and idiom
are adorned by the living grasses of new forms,
creepers  of half remembered dreams
mulching leaves of half formed thoughts
forests of half forgotten loves
writhing in living incompleteness
Which will in turn harden and fossilize

And we can then rue the passing of our once organic lingo

A cider and a minder
Passing time as a reminder
Pink glow and songs flow
A waxy time erodes the mow

Renegades and perspiration responds
Swimming in winded seas of  Jordan
Heated in space, evicted in their pace
Libido fails as the liquor dilutes in taste

Catch an esse as the moonlight smite
Hold another to fake a romantic right
Filter to the cards of ace as the one winks
Emotive intruders farm in fields of pastures

Imbued with alcoholic waterfalls
Molehills of termites condense lose soil
A lack of connection a taunt that apes
Future anthems triumph in hungered strums

Amused by the music erupting volcanoes
A morrow blows as the candle slows
To tow the tall grassed disused straw
A spring to summer that promises sun rays

A resolve to moderation to preserve modesty
A kiss stored forever peeping the awing stars
To guard a heart and hatch uniformity
Trembles justly forgotten in termed premises

I: Hypocritical Accusations of a Jealous Knave
I could have sworn the Queen winked at me as
I laid my Royal Flush on the table
Clubs
She was always the prettiest
Hers is my suit:
I imagine myself as the Jack
Who turns her from Monarchess to
Adulteress in the Royal Garden
Maybe slip her a stolen **** or two
To spite the King for he always
Outranked me
The chances of being dealt it are
Sixty four thousand, nine hundred and seventy (ish) to
One,
If my luck is running out,
Why must it be wasted
In the gaining of ethereal money?
Why not conserved for the selling of my soul to
A queen who is not ink on laminate
Card?
Or at least not here in an
Imagined Vegas or Montecarlo where
Neon, though colourless in nature,
Forms a blinding parody of a hell, hooded
In green and pink and orange and yellow or more
To pass as a heaven for
The wannabe vagrants of brat nations
Who may weep pennies for a disaster,
Remove the split onion, retake the shining knife
And bleed brass, nickel, copper and
Slaughtered tree (more ink) into
An impossible lottery
Hoping for a transfusion with
Monetary hepatitis and all from
The blind benefactors
Apply a plaster and
Reabsorb oneself into the mirror
I too am guilty of all this

II: Inside the Dreams of a Madman to Be
Checkmate.
Oh how the intellectuals do duel
Yet spill not one drop of blood;
Like the bishops of old before they were
Confined to diagonals
Who would carry clubs instead
Of blades to preserve their
Sanctity:
Keep it white, not stain it red
Or brown, dotted with congealed black;
It is a wonder to paint
But not to see or to feel
This was before the days when
Bleach could hide one’s
Breaking of the LORD’s commandments
And before the harnessed
Lightning strike
Killed the LORD himself in his creation’s (Midnight)
Eyes
And so the bleach was not needed
Yet still it sold because
Grass stained trousers:
The fruits of a hard summer afternoon’s
Labour in the sun
An atom of wasted
Childhood well spent
Could not be called a sin

III: Nonsensical Ramblings of the Recently Awakened**
The eyes of an ivory cubic
Snake in two parts leer up at me
Does this mean defeat at the hands of fate?
Nonsense! I am the hand of fate
The left, disused one to be exact;
It is not chivalrous to use me
Yet I am the hand of many things
I know nothing of hands or of dice
I tell lies instead

.eh, the general misconception (katy b - i like you): am i "hung-up" over exes? let's just say, i could have loved the way i loved without having loved the ex... the ex isn't the problem, nor a nostalgia piece... well... it is a variant of nostalgia, but not of the opposite, the canvas of my affection... a nostalgia of the affection disused, disorientated on the wrong person... it's never about the ex, it's about you, and me, and the ex that experienced, but destroyed, and about the me i wish you could experienced without an ex... the ex is, the ugly momentum that furthers "me" to disengage with my equal, "you", and your exes... the fact that a drag effect exists in relationships, the fact that Heraclitus was right: it's a river, but hardly a sea... relationships are rivers, and the generalized social interaction as the sea... oh, i'm not keeping artifacts of my exes with me... they're the me, exhausted having had them... there is no ex... there's only me forever lodged in an inanimate past... with the animate potential future, and the animate present, which is expressed thus: i can't tell you about the person i dated, but i can & at the same time not tell you about the person i was... shrapnel psyche... the same thought then, a similar thought now... but when it comes to the complete individual? ex, what?! i hate being given over to Rubens... the ex-girlfriend is not much more than the more that is an ex-self... and, my god... isn't it such an ugly picture?!

eh... she was Russian...
   eh... she was rich...
em... this is a tricky one...
she called me kakashka
(little ****)...
and she invariably
wanted me to call her
crumpet...
   apparently i acquired
this tongue to the point
whereby
i would say the word
crumpet... and she'd giggle...
oddly enough,
for me...
i visited an Ukrainian
*******, and asked:
am i a hunchback?
to which she replied:
do you not think
women have little,
or no, confidence in
approaching you?
what?! oh right...
the Casanova bit,
has to come from me...
rather than from,
them...
well... i wasn't born
with that sort of a natural
impetus...
guess this is me not
becoming a Casanova!
but my my...
if anyone is to become
jealous...
traditional Turkish
barbers?
hair is one thing,
beard another...
and only Turks can
do a decent trim of the beard...
eyes closed...
**** me...
better than oral ***...
as i once suggested...
so... manhood is taught...
with a pair of boxing gloves...
and a punching bag?!
seriously?!
how about you begin
your lesson into the realm
of manhood,
beginning with...
a good barber?
next? if i am rich enough...
a good tailor...
but... since i have
a background in chemistry...
i'm still bewildered
by the genius of
polyester translated
into clothing...
so for the moment?
no, no...
forget boxing...
you will not lose weight
by going to the gym
expecting a non-existence
of stretch marks
as if you just gave birth
to an anorexic...
bicycle... 50+ kilometers
a day, for a month...
legs do not succumb to
stretch marks...
no major organs in the legs...
and no... forget the boxing gloves,
and the punching bag...
find yourself a traditional
Turkish barber...
you're not a real man
without a trustworthy
barber...
proof:
you walk down a darkened
street,
two girls are walking a dog...
by the body shape:
teenagers...
they turn their heads
and look at you...
what?!
           such a pithy
stance... to force men to
box... how about you teach
how to groom, prior,
or how not to groom,
extend the lack of grooming for up
to 6 months...
  and then force them to groom...

i went to martial arts classes...
the student of the teacher
who became the teacher for
the evening... kicked me in the *****...
did he apologize?
i was curled up in fetal position...
so i stopped learning martial arts...
apparently i didn't
make the HA! sound while
walking forward making chop-sticks
out of martial arts' moves...
the student of the teacher
that wasn't there who acted
as the teacher: learned jack-****!
me?
     i learned something...

she really did call me kakashka
   (little ****)...
i said the word crumpet...
but never called her that...
   turns out... she wasn't even
a muffin!

            ah... all the love's lost...
hence my favorite indie cinema...
my memory.

- ever envision yourself becoming
so bitter,
that, paradoxically,
you turn out to be, the embodiment of
being:
sickly sweet?
welcome to the club;
sinister bitter...
       like most English people...
they're sorry over the most trivial
social grievances...
but never imply the grievance
upon stressing an apology.

The bullet was made by an expert
discovered when removed.
At the autopsy of a young guy
one of several just arrived.
Not a gang war it was known
but a ****** working alone.

The public scared out of their wits
the police under pressure.
Three dead this boy the latest victim
attacks in varied locations.
Was it by somebody from the military
an expert with a unique ability.

No clues was not good to hear
the public afraid to be here.
Tall buildings made them easy targets
when would the next strike be.
Though summer the temperature cold
through information they trolled.

As another victim was gunned down
more evidence was found.
Two teenagers saw a man with a case
get into a city works van.
Contacting with what they had seen
a new image came on the screen!

Every law officer was instantly alerted
a face found to fit description.
An ex soldier with traumatic stress
caution the critical word.
Quickly a sighting was received
the entire force relieved.

A gun battle ensued policemen hurt
not killed in the line of duty.
A swat team eventually shot him dead
in a disused ammunition factory.
News soon spread of the snipers demise
the gloom factor began to rise.

You can never argue with a bullet!

The Foureyed Poet.

A chilling solemn breeze sweeps thru the town,
Down empty streets where children used to play;
The crumbled buildings, many falling down,
A monument to history's darkest day.
The rusted hulks of burned out motor cars,
Discarded bicycles against a wall,
The roads that carry disused tram-line scars,
The poignant remnants of the old church hall.
No more, the children laughing in the street;
No more, the parents in their Sunday best;
No more, the echoes of jack booted feet;
Forever shall ye martyrs lay in rest.
        The town will always stand as testament,
        To sons and daughters France will e'er lament.

Of the five senses, touch was the first to go
When the rot set in.
Necrotic from disinterest; disused and numb,
A disconnected *****, a colony of one.
.
Then sound; your messages left unheard.
Just the tap tap tap of some manic mind.
No pause...just repeat; the eternal rewind.
Sleep starved, all words stick frozen in time.
.
For leading me into temptation; my gluttonous sins,
Taste and smell succumbed, then withered and died.
Staunch as a deacon, control finally mine.
The harvest ignored, bloated  on the vine.
.
Only sight eludes my metal fatigue.
The mirror much stronger, it haunts and it taunts.
Its warped funhouse images all I can see.
The bully I made...this cruel double of me.

The familiar complaints, the cozy ones.
Ambling through the hedges of grievance.
I never know what I'm feeling at any one time.
Usually more of the same. Bragging my inadequacies.

Winter is coughed from the addled coalsmoke sky.
Chimneys chugging ash. Clumps of duress.
Blake's choir of children lying in a heap.
Noontime streetlamps regaled in holly and poinsettia.

A ***** moss enters from the vacant lot, cautiously.
The homeless have been scraped from under the bridge.
Geese call and flee. The snow is flakes of ash,
the sun finally burnt itself down.

Disused meanings are flushed. A carefully wrought
vocabulary we have disabused ourselves of.
Crumbling monologue.
A new grammar forms. Light and Motion dances

from the screen. A panoptican of laughs and serenades.
Sometimes there is a magazine no one has a
subscription to. It is the digest of a human heart
dressed to the nines in thorns and flame.

If love is a garden, growing green,
And lock'd away, to be ne'er seen,
Then mine is dead and abused,
Neglected and disused.
For while you toil and labor,
I seek only favour.

For Love is only cruel;
Life's unpleasant gruel
And pleasure should reign,
As forthwith we gain
And stride to endeavor
Ourselves to find pleasure.

The three of us sat on the disused, plastic patio chairs. Their white facade had faded into a malformed sort of grey, with grazes of mud and collected rainwater erosion further condemning them. We were blind drunk after three-and-a-half beers that were tempered with lemonade. The dreary five a.m. dawn threatens daylight, bringing an end to the party. In a few years’ time we’d be here again; coming down off drugs and talking about missed chances.

Tom and Amy are in my parent’s room, as we whisper conspiracy theories about his impotence, in the light of our lonely morning vigil. I barely remember what else was said, after we spoke of *** and love, and of our life beyond home. “There has to be something more, somewhere…” we would all insist. Yet, one by one, we have turned to shrugs, and those left to insist, do not.

What I do recall is the coffee (I never drank the stuff then) and dry crackers. As the sun came to rise and patterned the skies, we had seen one day slide into the next; we aged brilliantly in a moment. I stared out at the Rugby field just beyond the overgrown allotments; you could only make it out by the floodlights that towered over the trees. I knew then, of where I had always been, yet knew not where I needed to go.

I still don’t.

some claim it's an aesthetic, others claim it's the mystery of lawlessness, because in all honesty: upper-case Q could be written in lower-case as ǫ, rather than q, all too familiar is ρ (rho) - and there is no law suggesting any convention should be kept to a model of standardisation... hence the dichotomy experienced by dyslexics to the familiar argument: why the disparaging phoneticism from optical aesthetic, why write that and then only say 'y'? much of modern English borrows from the seemingly unnecessary h insertion borrowed from Hindu... dhal... the aesthetic insertion of a surd-letter into an otherwise convenient phonetic-encoding... although either an umlaut or a macron is missing above the a to prolong it; and depending on your aesthetic palette... i'm already advocating a change to sz & cz by stressing the replacement using the caron: š / č... in English the equivalent is bound to words like shrapnel and chatter.

as anyone would say *idiot, i'd say tuman,
that's because:
                          when syllables are inconvenient
i'd stress that, and write túman...
if i were saying swamp, i'd be right
in also saying bägno - obviously
there are distinctions, akin to punctuation
marks, diacritical marks are effectually
"punctuation" marks, well... inccissions
embedded in words;
these aren't rhetorical assertions, they're
biased on the basis of optometry.
then i might add: with a straw
                      alternatively słomką...
otherwise the noun słomka, i.e. straw,
wheat shaft... a shaft hollowed out
and as Polish girls know all too well:
snakebite (at English universities,
half beer, half cider, a head of
                            blackcurrant juice),
but back east it's just beer and raspberry juice
concentrate: funny... where's the rhapsody?
if the ą is used at the end of the word
then there's an intended action involving
the stated thing... but it's not a universal
statement, just this particular instance...
it's odd, i wake up from my Alaskan vigil
and realise i didn't take my sleep-synthetic
requirements to go to sleep during the night
and wake up during the night...
  that means i'm annoyed, putting it mildly.
words that shoot into my head like sunrise...
newspapers are the bearable versions of Proust,
   bypassing publishing houses can allow
for diarrhoea talent, and no to constipated
critically acclaimed blah blah...
    it's 8:36 in the morning and i don't know why
it's ****** beautiful... everyone's so content
with being busy, doing something, anything,
everything... it's that critical moment in autumn
when the leaves on trees have lost the stalemate
with ******-twisting winter frosts,
   and fall into the ***** of death and rot...
and then these random words enter my head,
words i either forgotten to use or are too obscure
to use in the first place, polish slang...
e.g. kumam, i understand -
     p'stro, a condescending consideration
     for explaining something worth contempt
to the other, but not the self, i.e. the magpie attitude.
   i can't help myself, seeing English *******
on by lazy ***** with :) and :( and acronym talk
i feel i have to provide an antidote...
  the ' in p'stro?         bulging / building up,
there's no p in any language with a syllable
distinction worth a diacritical mark...
   and now it's 8:42 in the morning, and i have half
a litre of whiskey to sniff... should i?
what's Copernican west to Copernican a.m.?
   gentlemen only drink in the afternoon...
yep, and Ben Hur drank in the morning for
the calories awaiting the chariot races...
ha ha... i'd love to see a drunk goldfish...
    but it's fun like that... so many serious people out
there who learned the Pink Floyd march of
the hammers... i don't think i can take a bishop
with a bishop's attire seriously...
                   or a skinhead Buddhist monk...
they're all baldy baldy vaseline hoping for the sheen...
can any authority be taken seriously?
       now i'm truly bullshiting...
i lost this one word in my head... sieve:
motyl, butterfly,
           ćmá, moth (that's a slingshot need
          for acuteness on the a, slingshot is the stress on
the c, and the stress on the a is the actual missile,
   oh, by no means is this orthodox),
  język, tongue / language,
  ozór, edible cow tongue: very tender
in creamy horseradish sauce accompanied with
Silesian gnocchi...
            Q is the acute version of K & C,
i.e. what would otherwise be deemed é to an e.
   wolny, a penalty kick / someone who's free,
  wapń, calcium...
                  what i'm basically saying is that we encounter
so much vocal poverty in this world,
so many words are disused or underused or simply
abandoned...
                        someone weeps over a disused building
weathered by the elements...
   i see an opportunity to engage squatters,
or in the case of words: poets.

Ten years in a fenced cage under the Nile
restrained from the dense of the fish
raided in eventful motions and constraints*
disused from the beautiful living existence
miles of glories and hails of mysteries
the waters swallowed and the hollows
borrowed cries and ails of gloomy sails
green flashes, trances minced and hissed
transpiring the intuitive caskets of energy
the fanning rotor roared harder and wider
further down beyond the extension of being
colluding, protruding deeper and within
cutting lateral slices of time and space
matting the unknown on disused walls
where illegible and delible oaths lays
hidden on rocks and cracks by crooks
As we sat invisible, affixed... telling tales
*Ten years now unfenced, flying over the Nile

Here take my picture; though I bid farewell,
Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.
’Tis like me now, but I dead, ’twill be more
When we are shadows both than ’twas before.
When weather-beaten I come back, my hand
Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sunbeams tanned,
My face and breast of haircloth, and my head
With cares rash sudden storms being o’erspread,
My body a sack of bones, broken within,
And powder’s blue stains scattered on my skin;
If rival fools tax thee t’ have loved a man
So foul and course as, Oh, I may seem then,
This shall say what I was: and thou shalt say,
Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay?
Or do they reach his judging mind, that he
Should now love less what he did love to see?
That which in him was fair and delicate
Was but the milk, which in love’s childish state
Did nurse it: who now is grown strong enough
To feed on that, which to disused tastes seems tough.

O Sweet Edna, how can I forget thee!
So beautifully named after the daughter of Count Telfener,
Promoter of the Macaroni railroad,
Home of the monumental Edna Theater (SEE NOTE # BELOW).

I recall a chilly Christmas spent there:
Unfortunately Edna was closed for the day
But I met a nice girl in the one bar that was open
And for only twenty five bucks she went all the way.

By purest chance her name was Edna too,
And she gave me a real Christmas treat;
I could so easily have fallen for her bigtime
Had it not been for the smell of her size twelve feet.

O how your architectural marvels will live in my memory
Dear principal "city" of Jackson County, O Edna divine!
Home to six thousand Texan souls
Of whom only one in five lives below the poverty line.

NOTE:-

(#) Actually a cinema and disused anyway. Paste this link for a photo: http://media1.picsearch.com/is?hWN6taRELewhHHMx-FMVpQOXSK4aNdmtABXGB-ZxEyA&height;=257 (if it doesn't work, don't blame me).

Finding a living is so hard,
so difficult to sustain
without a reason to sustain it.
Beyond personal dreams
and a need for greed.

An ocean of eyes follow me
through the working day
until I crave isolation.
Only to stumble into
my blank-walled retreat
and realise what isolation really means.

What happened to our potential love?
I cannot read your last letter,
too scared to hear
that you hold a happiness
that bears absolutely
no reliance on me.

You found our distance
lost its charm. You have him,
with his immediacy
and a history to draw upon,
to justify.
I am a teenage folly,
left in the scrap of old photographs
and even older emotion.

A disused, defunct muscle
left to atrophy
as you find your comfort
and your way in life.
But you are a stray, a stray
with the desire
to be led astray;
with the want for a longing.

You know I can fill your days with poetry,
your bed with flame,
your winters with heat.

… On a bustling street,
              she shuffles her feet,
                     her eyes hold a desperate heat,
                               eyes darting, discretely charting
                                    a line through the crowds that are parting for her.


In a world of abundancy,
         she sees redundancy.
Where waste is rife,
          her life breathes new life into the rubble
                       from a fickle society’s burst bubble.

Her world otherwise grey,
         she colours her day,
                 collecting, affecting
                         what the world has thrown away.

Single-mindedly transfixed, her target mixed; decayed, disused, no longer affixed.
Refused, unused,
        discarded, unguarded;
              all detected, all collected, all recycled, all respected.

Debris she chases, through a sea of down-turned faces she paces.
Those faces think she disgraces their spaces
           but she shows no emotional traces.
She just fills her cases.

She kneels on a cold floor, search no more, search no more. Through a broken window comes dim light, from an oncoming night, passers-by dare not look in from disgust or from fright or sorrow for her plight. Her face covered in feeling but not for the walls peeling nor the ceiling that leaks, nor the floor that squeaks under a carpet that reeks and is torn and frayed in pieces arrayed in front of her.

She kneels on a cold floor, surrounded by more of the same she collected before. Old cushions: tattered. Plates and platters: shattered. Curtains in shreds, ripped clothes, parts of beds. A massacred lounge, wallpaper scrounged. A casual glance at the floor shows a junk-yard and no more. To her it’s ethereal, much more than material.

Her eyes focussed, near to lust as she begins to adjust her treasure, saved from the dust. Within it she trusts.

In her eyes pieces glow to her, in her eyes pieces show to her, a beauty known just to her.

She kneels on a cold floor with a purpose like none before. Within her scrapheap dominion she needs no opinion she fears no ones minion. She knows the beauty she seeks, the beauty that peeks through the grime as she tweaks, the beauty that speaks to her. As she sews it grows and shows and she knows what was once dispose is becoming her rose.

She loses no pace as the last piece of lace delicately takes its place; a tear of pride slides down her face. Her complexion ashen, knowing her passion has brought fashion from a discarded ration she lays down on a cold floor, search no more, work no more.

Daylight breaks, sunlight that shakes and awakes her. Her eyes fill with elation as she clothes herself in last night’s creation. What she wore before goes on the floor where lay more creations from nights before. She heads out toward the sunlight.

On a bustling street, she shuffles her feet, her eyes hold a desperate heat, eyes darting, discretely charting a line through the crowds that are parting for her …

There's a dragon in the garden.
Huffing, puffing, billowing smoke.
Trees recoil in abject horror.
Dragon's noisy.
Hissing and sparking.
Dragon melts in to the atmosphere.
High-flown brazen.
Hideously beautiful.
He puts forth his strike.
Striking out at dried out leaves.

A stupendous bang.
An explosion of long dead transmitters spray across the lawn.
Popping loudly as they fly.
Spawned from dragons guts.
Someone fed him a disused T.V.
From his belly sparked kaleidoscope of coloured lights.
Children should not feed the bonfire.
(C) LIvvi 2014

Out of deep sorrow for the loss of my muse
The machine stops to recapture its stasis
Stolen by the unrequited idea of this mirage,
The scarlet tic toc craves pristine amuse

The pump of the sweet amorous concoction
Tastes **** to the disused forlorn tongue
Maybe the machine leeks this viscous fluid
To purchase desire at the body’s auction

This nature’s request for the suitable mate
While the soul of the failure still remains,
Cranks the contraption most vital gears
As a mismatched tic toc at hearts gate

The betrayal of knowing the truth and never
Ever leaving the past wholly shatters me
The Sunlover wants to bloom when the light
Shines darker than the doubt of forever

That is the heart’s betrayal

Viewing the sunrise through my wasted eyes
unfold as the tears of my broken dreams,
I remember the beauty of my dear beloved
The ultimate ambush to my lonely skies

The hangover of rejection lingers for eternity.
The addictive touch of tenderness I want
While the robot engines cannot cope with it,
The tired heart goes for failed shot infinity

What is this web which I was woven into?
Falling for eight, then nine, bonus ten
Tic toc the clock; pump, pumped the blood
Wild need, whispers required to ensue

And whilst I dig the grave where I shall lend
Haunting me is the ever burning question
Will ever the craving for love be truly done?
Hope is said to never falter, to never end

That is the heart’s betrayal

The never ending brush of desire swirls
A portrait of novel passion; her soft
Features, angelic voice, immaculate lips
And this issue prevails with all the girls

In the mind’s museum, they become a bust
Of hard intangible romantic interests
And as a collection vice, the gallery will not
Stop letting in more miscellany of lust

Appreciating the astral beauty, bemusing  
In the details, worshipping personality,
Requiring such unity to expel the loneliness
This hearts motives forever bruising

The interest in a woman thus take shape
To form the most ethereal phantom
A ghost that results in dreams of icy mist
A myth of warmth, fleeting escape

That is the heart’s betrayal

Once betrothed to be my suitable mate,
Wishes my dream fairy granted me
Far and wide we would venture, brave souls
Only in my fantasy, this surreal bate

Thus, the later ultimatum comes unexpected
When company the moment yearns
This muse’s portrait matures into sorrow
We were genuinely never connected

The cold from this epiphany ardently churns
The blood that petrifies the machine
“She is not the right one,” an echo of misery
Even if elusive, she hurts me; it burns

Passion may come and go, a scar of flare
A tempest of feelings of the unruly kind
The spark is a mystery to solve, misguided
The hurt of a hollow kinship and despair

One day the soul its mate will find, the heart
Will have a home to call in the light
But now the frozen pump in darkness lingers
Waiting the mistake of love to depart

It all goes back to the beginning

And that is the heart’s betrayal

My muse diffused
A love abused
The news infused
My dream refused.

Your life deduced
My life reduced
Our lives seduced
In the end confused.

Words effused
Our lines reused
My passion disused
Together, bemused.

Our game overused
Our emotions excused
Our love perused
But really misused.

The Södenberg sisters sing to me tonight,
Their words sending me far from this slightly cold balcony,
To a realm of asphalt and dusty wind.

For my first 10 years there were no roads,
But a plethora of paths,
Criss crossing,
Winding to and fro,
Foot beaten little things in a great forest,
Filled with trees, creeks, waterfalls, and animals,
Birds singing beautiful songs as they sail through the trees,
Squirrels chattering from their perches amongst the great branches,
Whitetails observing my progress of the child .

As a young boy I'd sprint down these paths,
Unheeding of the odd roots that were placed along the paths,
So happy to just be moving forward,
To see what played around the next bend.

The next 10 years were simple things,
A two lane town road,
Buildings of my hometown on lined either side,
Their facades as they were,
Before the place of my forefathers got too big too fast,
Where all it's citizens knew my parents,
And by extention, me,
The birds and squirrels still there,
Although their number greatly diminished.

My pace was greatly diminished,
No longer some great sprint,
But a gentle jog,
Taking in the familiar sites,
But excited to leave this place,
Impatient for a change of scenery and anticipating some great adventure.

The next 3 were a treacherous yet exciting road,
A winding mountain pass,
Steep sloaped and lined with switchbacks,
Giving beautiful mountain vista views,
But with this new road also came the realization,
That the road could be a dangerous thing,
One slip could give way to a great fall,
The once gentle jog gave way to a cautious walk,
Wary of foot placement and step,
No birds here,
No squirrels,
But instead of the rumble of far off thunder,
And the howling of distant wolves.

Then came the next four,
The thunder no longer far off,
The wolf howls no longer distant,
The asphalt cracked and split,
Closed in on both sides by a thick and menacing wood,
And through the darkness of the nearly moonless night the darting shapes of beasts could be seen.

Rain slashing down,
Galing winds battering me,
My body worn down,
My walk but a limp,
Taking my broken self forward,
One dragging step after another,
A constant struggle to find the energy to make it one step further,
To find reason to keep going.

But like some great magic trick the wooding cleared,
The rain stopped,
And the wolves pulled back.

It was here that I found you next to me.

This new road is a bit cracked,
A bit disused,
The desert beautiful with Mesas to either side,
My pace quickened,
No longer a slogging trudging thing,
But also not a run,
A relaxing stride that feels good and steady,
Churning onward to the mountains in the distance.

I look to you and you smile,
You smile back,
And it is here that I see hawks up above,
A fox to the far right,
Observing these travelers passing through it's lands.

No longer an unlined face,
Bearded and festooned with a smattering of scars,
Earned through foolish fights and terrible tumbles,
But gladly won and worn all the same,
Sun kissed skin taking in the pleasant warm arid air.

I know not where this road leads,
But the excitement returns once more,
And that I no longer need to travel it alone,
That traveling is never meant to be done all on one's own,
That it's the company that makes the trip worth it.

With that the duo's song ends,
And I am transported back to this balcony,
The air still clung to with the slipping grasp of winter's last vestiges,
And it's begrudging release so close at hand,
Bring forward new beginnings,
And new roads to be traversed.