I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

       II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

       III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

       IV
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?-"
There is not any haunt of prophesy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

       V
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.-"
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

       VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river banks
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning ***** we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

       VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in **** on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

       VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.-"
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

By dumb luck our toes have kicked the dust from remnants, mysteries of the Ancients.
Sandblasting time has reduced their instructions for miracles down to perplexing sketches,
Littering a roofless sun-baked labyrinth of echoes.

Science in Genesis?  To be brief, just one example:   Turn the pages to
God broke off Adam's rib and created Eve.
Crowded centuries' have defected over this one in utter disbelief, perhaps you as well.

But analyzing the ancient Hebrew hieroglyph, by letter, by word, by connotation:
within a circumferential envelope, an exterior covering, protecting, shelter
to break off one of the involutions of him
the fixed form, configuration, exterior appearance, animal substance
in repetition, or doubled    (thus a spiraling winding)
into the action of shaping, and the other the object of this action.

Did Moses learn about cellular DNA from his Egyptian royalty pharaoh-teachers?
or was this observation divinely bestowed, a vision in the burning bush?
To describe God's breaking and altering part of Adam's spiral blueprint,
Moses tried to steal electric fire for his goat-herding brethren.
Either way, translators scratched their collective heads and wrote "Rib."

Then, so that humanity would not be alone, God created "Eve"
(But btw, her word actually writes out as Aisha )
Which does not translate to universal woman, Moses repeats that several times.
It translates to a companion, auxillary force, the intellectual woman of universal man,  
The Power and the Act in Will.
Now unique among animals to imagine complexities and bring them about.

With this Creative Volition, Adam becomes a shadow of and a companion for God the Creator.
Moses gave this creative ability a feminine aspect, paired with logic's masculine.
(Not only did he describe our very cells, he understood our minds' anima and animus.)

Does this restore faith, or shake it?  
Sweet on the tongue, but how to digest it all?
And what about the snake?
A serpentine looking hieroglyph, one meaning among many is leaving God's Will.
And if one does, life become difficult, hard labor.

So how do translators pack so many meanings which they don't even fully comprehend,
into a smaller language?   pick one, maybe two meanings:
adapt pictorial and symbolical highlights into an Allegory,
populated with Ribs, Apples, and Snakes...discarding the literal.
The organic sphere of activity = a garden
sentient and temporal  =  basic sensual desire
anteriority of time  = morning      
matter in travail  =  a tree.
Feminine Creativity paired with Masculine Logic  =  "she" is a helpmate.

History will have to apologize,
The new patriarchs couldn't accept Woman with such an equal trait,
Interpreting Allegory literally for use in a power struggle,
Blaming "Her" for their own ignorance,
Bestowing only on her the wayward's punishment of difficult labor. (childbirth).
and having already edited out Yahweh's wife.....
(oh, gratefully a different poem.)

I've barely explained   four   words,   but what do I know, this amateur philosopher?  
Fabre D'Olivet said it best:
"language, the ineffable language.
Those whose dull glance, falling upon these pictures, these symbols, these holy allegories,
saw nothing beyond,
were sunk, it is true, in ignorance;
but their ignorance was voluntary.
From the moment that they wished to leave it, they had only to speak."

Old paneled walls, worn and weathered
Infinite grains of sand littering my wood floors
The mud that dirties my pant legs on a rainy day
Slimy, soggy, mold-ridden bananas
Rot, Rotten, Rotted
All lead to the essence of brown.

And yet, here I am
Modern day Hera
Betrayed
And still standing.

Like the ruins of an abandoned civilization
Still strong, still beautiful,
If I may be so immodest.
Limestone having crumbled from fortified walls.
Columns having fallen and tumbled down hills
Caked with dry mud.

Like Chrysanthemum petals manipulated
By the clammy fingers
Of bored flower girls.
Dried flakes littering
Lacey white dresses.

Oh, what it could be like
To take vengeance on my
Zeus
The destruction around me
The broken bouquets.
Would I feel power?
Strength?

Or would I still be standing,
Beautiful, and
Alone?

I once met this girl with dark brown hair and tanned skin. her smile was so bright it could blind you if you looked too close. when she laughed you could see the sparkle in her big brown eyes. despite her harsh and slightly mean personality, she radiated a welcoming feeling that so many of us need. she was fearless and never cared what others had to say. so long as she felt happy, she didn't feel the need to prove anything to anyone. from time to time the sleeves of her jacket would slide up and countless lines of dried blood could be seen littering them, when anyone pointed it out she said it wasn't any of their business what she did to keep happy so everyone let it be for the most part. I once met this girl who's hair was dyed half blonde. her skin had paled considerably and the dark circles under her eyes couldn't be missed. her smile was so big that anyone could of been fooled by it, everyone was. when she laughed there was no sparkle in her eyes and her sense of humor had changed. alongside her slightly rough personality came a cold feeling of distance toward anyone who tried getting close, something most of us never wish to experience. she seemed fearless and tried her best to make sure people thought she was unique and that she really didn't care. from time to time the sleeves of her sweater would roll up and small, barely visible marks covered the surface of her wrists, very rarely could the dry blood be seen, but she didn't care if it was. when people pointed it out she simply shrugged. I once met this girl who had dyed dark red hair and pale skin. her smile looked forced upon her tired face. when she laughed it sounded like it physically hurt for her to force it out of her. her mean personality had disappeared and was instead replaced by complete indifference and this feeling of carelessness which a lot of us fear. she had completely given up on caring what others thought. from time to time the sleeves of her sweater would slide up and nothing could be seen covering her wrists, except the quickly fading scars. I once met this girl with dark black hair and pale skin. her smile was enough to fool anyone who didn't pay attention. her laugh became a faint shaking of her shoulders and a strange sound that resembled a real laugh. there was no sparkle in her eyes, which were baggy and dark at the bottom. she didn't notice what people said or thought about her because she was too busy trying to calm her racing thoughts. when her sleeves rolled up there was nothing to be seen. when she walked she faltered a few steps because her thighs were so so sore from the multiple deep cuts covering them. when asked about it she simply said she liked it and that it really didn't matter. I once met this girl who took so many pills her stomach didn't sit right for weeks, in hopes she wouldn't wake up in the morning. I once met this girl who told me that there was nothing she wanted to live for, that the people worth fighting for would be better off without her. I once met this girl with a haunted look in her eyes and demons in her head. In four years the girl with the bright smile and happy eyes became a haunting memory of a time that seems almost impossible now.

Looking out of the window;
a ribbon of duck-egg-blue sky,
fringed by the sun's late light,
is sandwiched by grey cumulus.

It frames Sycamore tree tops,
red tiled pyramids with their expectant aerials
pointing West, littering clean lines.

It is a mute view;
serried bins wait for the mornings collection,
cars sit dumb, curbed,
their daily commute completed.

Two starlings flit, silent,
and in the far distance a high contrail is picked out
in gold as a thread in blue silk.

For five years this view remains changeably the same;
unspoilt by the entropy of new perspectives.
This is the summer of un-broadcast malcontents,
pacified in Brazilian spectacle. Days simmer here and there.

Soap operas filter through,
made to massage the message
of consume and discard, of holidays and pistons.

And in the mornings, that never come,
we abandon the cars that cannot diverge
from work-honed routes,
taking to the air from Sycamores as Starlings.

June 2014

i.
last week you were sitting by your window watching the sun melt into a thousand shades of darkness and you thought of her. you still remember how she always smelled like lavender and roses and peonies and freshly mowed grass and rain - a living breathing walking talking singing dancing growing but ever so slowly dying garden. you suppose she must've smelled like cigarettes as well, since she went through a pack a week, and the whiskey she laced her coffee with and the teabags she used as toothbrushes, but all you can remember is the garden of her mind and the green of her thumbs that planted flowers in-between your ribs and turned your blood to a breeding ground for aphids. a single lotus flower can live for a thousand years. a single memory can live even longer.

ii.
on the train ride to paris she didn't think of you, instead she counted all the prime numbers from one to one thousand and kissed a boy with oceans for eyes. you came home to an empty house in february, a receipt for valentine's day roses still fresh in your wallet. all of your belongings were still there, tainted with the memory of her - the set of calligraphy pens she got you for hanukkah, the sweater of yours she would always wear in the mornings after *** while drinking coffee and filling out the crossword. the endless number of bobby pins she'd left in your bedroom were still there, littering your floor like land mines. you found the flowers she planted in your veins tossed in the trash, and you spent hours pulling each petal from its receptacle and deciding that if she'd ever loved you she would have chosen something gentler than forget-me-nots to sew into your veins. the seeds of a lotus flower must be cracked before they can be planted, must be broken to allow the water to seep into them and breathe possibility into their veins. your heart is cracked, have you blossomed yet?

Stars of tragedy.
Stories of their untimely demise
Told soberly in newsprint.

Stretching from Africa to Mexico,
Victims of natural disasters, crime,
And of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What was here is lost.
What was warm is forever gone.
These envelopes that remain can be stamped with anyone’s address.

In the end, it’s all the same
Dust
That settles in the melting ***:

Empty shells littering beaches,
Dried-out husks,
Vacant houses.

How to cook a gourmet (whatever the hell that means) dinner:

Step 1: Send your boyfriend a text inviting him over for a romantic, candlelit home-cooked gourmet dinner.

Step 2: Remember that you are forever alone and don’t have a boyfriend.

Step 3: Go buy mass amounts of chocolate and cry about it.

Step 4: Get over it and invite over your grandmother instead.

Step 5: Preheat the oven to 975 degrees

Step 6: Freak out about the fire in your oven and turn it off.

Step 7: Open all your doors to let the smoke out.

Step 8: Get out all the ingredients you need for the recipe you are
following.

Step 9: End up eating most of the ingredients before you even get to
use them.

Step 10: Spill oil and wine all over your recipe book (umm pffft the
wine is TOTALLY one of the ingredients, that’s why you had it out… heh heh… yeah…)

Step 11: Panic and try to dry it off by taking the book outside and waving it around.

Step 12: Watch in horror as all the pages in your book tear and fly off
into the wind.

Step 13: Chase hopelessly after the pages down the block screaming
swear words and having a heart attack.

Step 14: Politely smile and wave awkwardly at your neighbour who
hates you.

Step 15: Yell an apology across the street to that other neighbour who
REALLY doesn’t like you with the little five year old daughter who is
now repeating all of your colorful vocabulary words you just yelled.

Step 16: Reluctantly accept the fact that your recipes are gone. And also
that you have just contributed to the global problem of littering the
streets.

Step 17: Walk back to your smoke-scented house in shame.

Step 18: Look through pictures of scrumptious-looking meals on
Pinterest.

Step 19: Get inspired and decide to put your brilliant idea of creating your own recipe into action.

Step 20: Get out your frying pan and throw a bunch of random ingredients in.

Step 21: Put out yet another fire and realize that marshmallows, sprinkles, raisins, baking soda, orange peels and liquid gasoline probably wouldn’t have tasted very good together anyway.

Step 22: Wonder what the hell is wrong with you.

Step 23: Get distracted by the television for half an hour.

Step 24: Try to microwave 2 week old mac and cheese you forgot to
throw out.

Step 25: Watch as your microwave malfunctions and spontaneously
combusts.

Step 26: Decide to clean it up later because you just cannot even deal
with it right now.

Step 27: Fill a *** with water to make pasta and try to boil the water.

Step 28: Somehow manage to burn the water.

Step 29: Wonder how that even happened?!!!!

Step 30: Give up and call the pizza delivery guy.

Step 31: When you grandmother arrives have her take a seat in the
kitchen.

Step 32: Call an ambulance when she has a heart attack seeing the mess
in your kitchen.

Step 33: Get ready to leave and drive after the ambulance to the
hospital with your grandmother once the pizza arrives so you can
bring it with you. Get a call from the pizza place.

Step 34: Listen to the manager explain that your pizza spontaneously
burst into flames in the oven and they are terribly sorry there will be a
delay in the delivery due to this.

Step 35: Pass out.

White is the promise of purity revoked.

Red is the stain of lipstick on your fifth cup of coffee.

Orange is the succession of sunset to sunrise without an ounce of sleep.

The color yellow peeks through the blinds and dances across his skin.

Green is the color that burns your lungs until you're in a haze of numb.

Blue are the eyes that haunt your consciousness and tears that stream silently down.

Purple is the Galaxy pattern of hickies and bruises littering the skin he touched.

Black is the static you hear in the moments after, when you lay panting in his arms

...just before all the color fades again in his absence.

I asked the love inside me
to sleep but not to die.
To fly like swallows at sea,
give me peace,
but please,
be homesick.

I asked the love inside me
to relent it’s doping up
like an Indian Luna
discarding the moon
for daylight.

I asked would it be stoic,
Drown the sun for just a day
and hang dark over street-signs
that have anagrams of her name
or point to wherever she sleeps.

I asked the love inside me
to keep the love-bites
in my capillaries
lest they phosphoresce
like the backs of cuttlefish.

I asked would it be patient
to shine them later,
as inkblots, reminding me
of what the softness
of her lips can do.

I asked the love inside me
to remember and not to hope.
Keep our room everlasting
alight with music,
and like my love,
my own.

there’s lipstick kissed filter tips
and roaches made from textbooks
littering the ash-hardened carpet.
The lift of bra strings over collarbone
tracing a mole
meeting like the Saone and Rhone there.
Hungover afternoons
where the heat stays asleep in the air
circulating with our radiance
as if our hearts fill the whole space.
The time moves glacially
like we’re children
having nothing to compare it with
but the length of hair
and the states of cliff faces.
Two stillborns
meeting in the afterlife.

The first time
and the last time
and all the love in between
is alive.

The thing is Boy,
Yes, YES! I did need a shower this morning, and ****** lovely it was.
Aye cracking........
Let me tell you three things I got just right with my shower this morning.
First of it was HOT.
Not warm, definitely not lukers, as you said when you where a lad, but ****** lovely and hot.
Like the shower after a shift in The Pit.
Now, notice the capitals there, on The Pit.
Not to make it a loud word, I am simply showing due respect to The Pit.
I spent enough years down that colliery to show it that due respect.
The Pit indeed.

Secondly, there was enough water.
In my shower, not the mine now, pay attention!
It can be hard for folk to hang on to my words, I digress so much, hanging on to my words is like trying to grab a slimy mackerel on a sunny day at Porthcawl Pier.
Now that is a ditry pier, due to littering.
And fishing.
Speaking as a fisherman, with you will notice, a  SMALL f, as I do not profess a great degree of skill in that area, but speaking as a fisherman, I will admit that there is an occasional tendency towards the dropping of litter.
On the pier, that is.
Quite likely elsewhere as well, but then I only fish the pier, see.

Anyway, yes, water.
Enough of it.
Not a ****** half-hearted trickle, an apologetic drip, but a deluge!
Fair flooded me out, it did.
****** marvellous.
Smashing.

Now, there was a third good thing.....
Ahh. THAT was it..
Someone to scrub my back.
Very important indeed.
You see, in The Pit, or at least, in the colliery shower, after a shift, we had good showers.
Hot, they were. Hot and wet, and we would stand there, warming ourselves under the water.
By Christ, my arms were sore after a day on my side with a pick.
And the soap was hard too, like a ruddy brick.
But the water helped see, took the pain away, it did.
Aye, and all the Boys, we would wash each others backs.
That was the way then.
In the showers.
Aye.
I new my mate's backs better than my missus'
Thirty years scrubbing them.
"Whiter than white" I would say.
When they asked me.
"How is my back Bryn?"
"Whiter than white".
Aye
Good days.

Now this shower.
A ****** good one too, It was today.
The Girl who comes in got it just right.
Halfway between five and five and a quarter.
Bang on.
And she washed my back.
Not as hard as the boys would have done,
but good enough for a youngster.
Not bad at all.

All in all, a good shower.
And that means a good day.
I can wheel my chair to look out the front later.

You'll pardon me for going now,
but I have to go to the bathroom see.
A big ****** task for me now.
Still, no-one in till teatime, and I can manage,
if I take it slow.

And thursday I get another shower.
And I will tell you about the days in The Pit again.

Olive branches smother and dismember
in the mud giggling in time
with the squish emanating from
my alternating huff and puff
footprints

I trudge in Winter's sweat of
schizophrenic rain
My old defence, sheepish stolidity,
got tweaked in a twist-up
tight as a candy cane
with a modest gasp
of underground success

That shadowy hush of acknowledgement
ballooned in my ear like a blow fish
amplifying the environmental inertia
that never made me happier
nor this sad

I may have been mad
walking from informed opinions
like a failed Orpheus
but defence shouted in silence
and I returned home
to the unconditional support
of a pet art

Acknowledgement's shadowy hush
tore a blister trail down my back
The ointment of Winter will soothe and
release me before billing me
with a scar and littering in the recycle bin
of who I want to be

Today I wanted to be accepted
Night has arrived with reinforced snowflakes
and the chill on my hot back
has me wondering if I would rather be feared

tonight i am
a tourist
in your bedroom
my party dress
is like hawaiian shirts and khakis
compared to the t-shirts and jeans
littering your carpet
like fallen brown leaves
during autumn
i sit on your duvet
because you said
wait here-
i’ll be back in a minute
but it’s been ten
so my eyes wander
like a wayward wren
your books are not mine
there’s no poetry
there are pictures of memories
on your wall
none of them me
after tonight, that’s all i’ll be-
a note is on your board:
i love you
was it her?
it’s hard to see
oh wait, it was me
it’s bent and folded
like my insides
the writing is fading
like the makeup on my face
what’s taking you so long?
maybe you didn’t want me
and all this time i was wrong
and you’re hiding in the bathroom
waiting for me to take the hint
and leave
of course that’s it
i can’t believe
i thought you
actually wanted me
i’m so silly
of course
i do not belong here
my purse looks wrong
laying next to your guitar
but i can fix that quick
i will simply
thank you
for the ride
nurse my wounded pride
then i’ll be gone
and you will forget me
before long
so i get up
and the door opens
and you’re there
and you smile
and you touch my shoulder
and you say
i’m sorry
i took so long
i wanted to find
the perfect record
with the perfect song
you know that one
about a sunset in waterloo?
it always reminds me of you
but i’m here now
and i’m so silly
this whole night
is a mess
like my lipstick
on your lips
oh this anxiety i detest
your clothes are funny
compared to my dress
your books are not mine
besides the one on the end
(my brilliant friend)
the memories on the wall
are not of me
but they could be
i do not belong here
that is for sure
but then again-
all these things
were chosen by you
and i was too
so maybe i do belong
after all

She calls.
She waves at me.
Her French manicure frothing
Come she whispers.
Come with me to adventure.
Come with me to danger.  

Eventually I’ll go.
Despite all the corpses littering her depths
I wait for my hair to be pulled in and tied.
My sails to be hoisted and set
And my nose to be pointed
Towards the next port.

Of man’s creations there are many,
A well cared for mature orchard
Is certainly one.
Be it generator of fruit or nuts,
Their perfect symmetry is bless,
Row upon row, standing tall,
Branches almost touching one,
Tree unto another,
Filled out and lushly dense,
As to block out the sun,
Ever striking the earth.
The ground beneath, around the trees,
Swept and manicured clean as a
Empty Billiard Table, awaiting the harvest.

Walk among these umbrella like trees
A tranquil quite abounds,
Recalling the peaceful interior of a church,
The songs of nesting birds the heavenly chorus.
A cool and shaded location, to be alone,
Well suited to meditation,
Or even composing a Poem.

Yet, oh how sad it truly is,
When an orchard goes abandoned,
Becoming the embodiment of apathetic neglect,
A bombed out city ruin of good intentions,
**** choked and cluttered,
Rotted Harvest and blackened branches,
Littering the unkempt ground.
Gone now from tranquil perfection,
To a dead and dying blight upon the land.

With no human hands to tend it,
Its glory is gone and the end is near.
Similar now to a spooky Cemetery,
No longer a space of serene splendor,
Or a place one might desire to undertake,
A meandering reflective stroll.

it’s the roar
of airplanes,
littering the sky,
that silences
a bird's song.

Old paneled walls, worn and weathered
Infinite grains of sand littering my wood floors
The mud that dirties my pant legs on a rainy day
Slimy, soggy, mold-ridden bananas
Rot, Rotten, Rotted
All lead to the essence of brown.

I drove dad’s Chevy for the first time one morning
In a storm.
His old, blue, dented, beat-up, ninety-seven Chevy,
Worn tires tractionless on wet asphalt,
Raindrops veiling the windshield like the comforter
That keeps me warm and safe during the nights I
Spend at home, thick and grey with a glint of silver, and
Pintucked stitching littering the middle.
The lines on the road, like the seams of the comforter,
Break evenly and cleanly, stretch on forever.
My knuckles, like little snow-capped mountains,
Gripped the steering wheel as I did the covers during a nightmare.
Dad, on the other hand,
Was as calm as the breeze curling around the trees on
Any day but today;
Relaxed as if the forecast were fine as the
Silk of the duvet.

Black/White

Life isn’t just…
Black or White, Up or down, Wrong or Right
But shades of gray, on a rainy day
When a family cries, ‘*** another member died
While religion lies, and the churches are fake
And you’ll find better salvation by getting baked
All this aggression bursting at my seams
All from figuring out what it finally means
I look into a mirror and it makes me want to scream
But insides my head plays a silver screen

Life isn’t just black or white, but shades of gray
Just like a cloudy sky, on a rainy day

Fight or Flight, War or Peace, Life or Death
But shades of gray brought on by decay
Of bodies littering streets to close to home
Blood and guts and exposed bone
Ash soot and cinders on houses stone
Cities growing corrupt, bankrupt, ingrown
But these great graveyards still hold hope
People live, fighting through all the smoke
Hope for future still unknown evoked

Do or Die, Love or Hate, Day or night
But shades gray found only at twilight
That binds the two, combines the two
Just like commonalties that ties us to
Everyone on earth, both old and new
Does matter what race, creed, or view
We’re all stuck together in the same boat
So don’t try to sink it, make it float
All while singing out this very note

Life isn’t just black or white, but shades of gray
Just like a cloudy sky, on a rainy day



Left or Right, Better or Worse, boy or girl
Doesn’t matter how you came to this world
What matters isn’t what you take from it
But what you make of it, Create from it
What you awake in it, and remake in it
There are no shortcuts you can take in this
And resist the temptation to not coexist
Try to remember my rhyme deep in your mind
And remember the lines are never defined

Life isn’t just black or white, but shades of gray
Just like a cloudy sky, on a rainy day

Life isn’t just black or white…

Life isn’t just black or white…

Life isn’t just black or white…

Disappointment drips from our eyes
Littering our faces and chests with ash
and traces of broken dreams
Collecting at our feet in pools of heartbreak
and puddles of unplayed versions
of the life we envisioned.
Wading through the pain we find
a rescue boat in each other's arms
I whisper
" They say it gets easier with time"
You wince
" I wish it were today"

A chair in the corner sits huddled with the shadows,
while a second chair lowers itself by the door.
A window between the chairs hangs silently on wall,
as the curtains whisper with the wind outside.

Towards the left of the window is a shrunken bed,
with bedposts like redwoods and the body of a willow.
On the bed is a bundle of fabrics and tweed,
twisting and spinning amongst eachother.

Joining the first chair is a spindly wooden table,
with wobbly fingers and with only three legs.
The top of the table is clustered with trinkets,
pinecones from Alaska and feathers from Pompeii.

Littering the floor are denims and glass,
clothing and pieces of vases strewn under the door.
Thrown under the second chair is a pair of old shoes,
weathered and worn and left to die.

On the walls with the window is doodles and sheets,
drawings of childhood tapped in the space.
Paintings on the plaster are dusted with flakes,
burdens of memories of past and future.

In the center of the room stands a coat stand of mahogany,
standing tall and strong in the ruins of its lost kingdom.
Unaware of what goes on outside of his window,
all he knows is the dust and objects trapped with him in the room.

it is february, and outside it is twelve degrees.
in winters past,
you dragged me to the shore every day to see if this time,
the ocean froze, and we could
walk away from here together.
sometimes you stood in the water for hours.
[but that was long ago.
thats in the past, waiting to be forgotten.]
it is february, and this morning you asked when it would end.
it's been seven thousand days,
you told me it gets better in time. how much time do i have to give?
you threw out every lock in your home.
you bent to kiss the bonfire goodbye and your hair caught the flame like
a hand catching a moth, and now
every room is full of candles pressed wick-to-wick,
melted wax hardening on the floor like cooling lava,
or congealing blood.
aren’t you sick of being somewhere between a natural disaster
and an emergency room tragedy?
aren't you tired of being sad all the time?
arent you sick of wearing the scent of burnt hair like perfume?
aren't you tired of crushed wings in your fist and careless,
accidental strength?
[or perhaps this is your dream, god knows
i've had stranger.]
maybe you always wanted to be a terribly sad monster,
a giant with the blood of a thousand bulls,
a titan preparing to birth
the gods.
picking at the skin 'round your nails till you bleed. broken teeth
embedded in the wood of the stairs.
you wanted to be zeus,
wisdom bursting from your skull like a bullet,
daughters like grey matter,
but you're just a labyrinth.
you're nothing but a prison,
a maze with a monster in the middle,
swallowing children and thread.
were you made for the minotaur or was it born for you?
you've been gathering sickness like moss on cave walls.
you've been pulling up the tiles from the bathroom floor.
last night's dew froze and clothed the stairs in ice.
there's a body floating in the bathtub and you promise it isnt mine
[i don’t know if i believe you].
you are undoing every knot i tied to keep myself together,
you are looking for anything in me to prove that i care. i do, i love you,
i love you like an ox, i love you like a child,
i am bursting with the lymph of every mother in my bloodline and i care for you like my own, but
in your mouth,
"loving" and "mother" don't fit together right.
a mother is someone who has too many monsters in her bed to fight the ones under yours,
"motherhood" is a synonym for "natural disaster,"
and all you can do is try to survive.
at this point i'm inclined to agree.
you make me feel like my womb is full of crude oil
and the distal phalanges of both your hands.
ive been sleeping with statues and dreaming about metal bones.
the only love you know is the kind where your clothes crumple on the floor.
you're always finding someone new to be the minotaur in your heart.
you don’t want theseus to find his way,
trailing thread as he traces mossy walls,
kicking bones aside.
when the minotaur dies,
you'll be nothing but a cave.
you already feel hollow when it sleeps, you say i don’t know if if you’re my minotaur
or another sacrifice.
i say [i don’t know if i’m your friend or
the closest thing to a mother
you’ve ever had.]
you have broken every tile.
you have cleaned the mirror countless times but your reflection still shows.
drink some water. wash your passageways with floods,
you don't need the bones of every failed theseus
littering your veins.
i can teach you to live with a minotaur like
a bezoar in your stomach.

Christmas Wish Lists
Littering the beautiful cloudless sky
Where Santa and his reindeer will soon fill the gaps between the stars
And every candle will remember the generations gone

I'm scared to make my list this year
For I want things that I shouldn't.
And I'm scared to open the door.
So Santa, if you read this.
You won't need to land on my roof.
Because life is the best gift.

By the time he got out of the front door the morning sun had fully risen. Surrounding it lay a sea of blue sky, light coloured and peppered here and there with trails of white left from distant airplanes. The birds sang in the trees, all in harmony, and a light breeze whispered, left over from the night before.

As he jumped into his car, a dusty red little Citroën, he realised that in his rushed efforts to get ready he'd put his shoes on the wrong feet. A little while ago he'd seen a documentary based on people with abnormal deformities, and there had been an American 30-something year old with two right feet. Right now, looking at his shoes, he looked a little like him; all he needed now was a group of cameras and a well-spoken, polished presenter pretending to care but really just thinking about the paycheck at the end of night. He figured all TV presenters were pretentious, fixated on climbing up the great showbiz ladder rather than helping those in need.

He grabbed them off, scuffed black business shoes to match his tattered jeans and faded blue shirt, and swapped them over. Once both shoes were on correct, he lit up a smoke and set off down the road.

Ahead of him was Lancaster Road, a sprawling stretch of asphalt tarmac that served as the primary mode of navigation through Manchester. If you were to turn left it would take you all the way into the main city, and also a stodge of backed-up traffic, and, if you chose right, to the quiet town of Penitence which was where his works was based. Going right would technically be quicker, as the road to the left led to a series of zig zag-like curves where the road layout had been forced to compensate for the huge cliff several miles to the north. That being said, Will almost always chose left, as the dual carriageway that branched off Lancaster Road was always jammed up with traffic, comprising mainly of angry motorists and haulage lorries driving in from the east. Choosing right would easily add three quarters of an hour onto his journey, and quite frankly he'd rather stare at a wall than be surrounded by blaspheming mouths and ugly red faces.

This time however he went right, joining the steady stream of cars that were already beginning to slow down. There was no apparent reason for this, for over 4 years he must have consistently turned left every morning, but today his mind had thrown a curveball - albeit a stupid one. Already running late, it had chosen to go on the longest route possible.

Good work there mate, brilliant.


50mph - 45mph - 40mph

The speedometer slowly crept down, the shudder of the lower gears gradually increasing. Clouds had now gathered in the sky, not quite bloated nor dark enough to threaten rain but it was enough to dull the sunshine into a pale, white, glow. He was now going slow enough to see the bits of clutter and ******* - discarded newspapers, cans, broken bottles - littering the pavement. Then it suddenly gave way to a rudimentary dirt road and steel crash barriers as he approached the dual carriageway.

35mph - 30mph - 25mph

Sighing, he fumbled for the radio and flicked it on, momentarily averting his gaze from the road to the numbered buttons, tuning for a station.

--- Ssssshhhh ---

Nothing but static.

**** radio! If only I could -

When he glanced up his heart nearly stopped - directly ahead of him, on the highway, stood a man. He stood with his back toward Wills car, shoulders slumped, stock still.

What-?!

Will froze as the car lurched on, the distance between the bonnet and the mans body rapidly closing. No thought came into his brain, his legs distant from his body as if untethered.

Nothing but numbness.

The future series of events played like a stop motion video inside his mind; finding the brakes and jamming them down - only too little, too late. The old man would first lean as the bumper pressed into his lower back, then snap sickeningly in half, the momentum of the car causing his body to jackhammer up the bonnet and roll over the back of the car. There he would fall once again onto the road, spine splintered and blood soaking through his shirt into a puddle on the tarmac.

STOP! Will stop the **** car!!!

He smashed the brakes down and closed his eyes.

Although the first thing taught in driving lessons is to never close your eyes, particularly during an emergency stop, the overwhelming panic threw his nerves into a spasm, and in that split second everything he was told - brake hard, clutch down, don't let the car stall - was forgotten in an instant. He knew what he should do, knew that if the wheels were even slightly turned he could cause the car to skid, or worse, flip.

Brake down, clutch down, engine off, a mantra his instructor had once sang on one of his first lessons. Will had a feeling that if Ruth Carotene could see him, see this, now she'd have some sort of coronary, or maybe an aneurysm. She'd always been set in her ways of teaching, starting each lesson going through her seemingly endless list of checkpoints, and this right here smashed every single rule she'd taught him.
Break, clutch, engine off -
Eyes, open your eyes
He did, the windscreen before him doubling for a second. His heart was pounding away, nervous sweat lining his forehead and arms. The car had stopped, and in his dumb paralysis he hadn't the faintest idea how much it had skid. Safe to say it hadn't flipped over though, unless he was upside down and didn't realise it.
Nope, the sky is still above me, he observed, and it was then he also saw the fat bald-headed guy rapping his hands against the drivers side window. The world washed back slowly, the sun white and the air filled wit beeps and the Ssssshhhhhh static of the radio. He lowered the window, allowing the honking horns to fully enter and consume the inside of the car.
"What the hell are you playing at? I nearly ran into the back of you!" the bald guy barked at him, his pudgy face both pale and angry. Will glanced in the rear view mirror and saw about a dozen or so more cars behind him, scowling faces and gesturing hands sending out messages far from morning greetings or amicable hello's.
"Sorry... There was someone in the road," he croaked, pointing to the blank space in front. Empty, nothing there.
Can't be, he was right there! Stood right there! For a second he thought the figure had been an apparition, or maybe hadn't been there all along, merely a figment of his tired mind. That's when his gaze shifted to the opposite side of the road and the mis-shapen entity clambering over the crash barrier. Whoever it was, they had crossed the road while Will had been in his daze, and it was now he could fully see it in it's ghastly glory.
"I must be ****** blind 'cause to me there ain't nobody there -"
Grotesque was the only word he could think of to describe it. Under the pallid glow of the sun its skin glistened sick-white, partially covered by a tattered grey t-shirt that billowed in the wind like torn flags. It wore shorts, also grey, it's long stick-like legs poking out like splintered tooth picks. And it's face, oh God that face. He only caught a vague view as it glanced over its shoulder, but what he saw reminded him of the ghouls that would creep out of the crypts, the nightmarish beings that stalked late night TV shows such as the Twilight Zone seeking fresh flesh to feast on. But it was human alright - it's normal, albeit disintegrating, clothing the only sign of its former non-twisted self.
Oh God -
"Hey, are you even listening? There ain't no one there *******!"
Will faced the guy, now stood so close his flabby face nearly poked through the window, and then back to the crash barrier. The fiend was gone, much to his relief.
"Sorry it must have been a bird or something, I'm really really sorry mate I thought it was a man, or a kid."
"Yeah yeah whatever, just get going and get out of my way." With that he stormed off, only stopping briefly to exchange disapproving looks with the car behind him. He drove a black sports-like car, probably a Vauxhall, and Will briefly wondered how such a small car could carry an overweight ******* like that.
*******, he muttered to himself as he restarted the engine. Turns out he'd let the car stall as well.
Back to school I guess, what would dear old Ruth say?
Setting off was easy, the fat guy overtook him almost instantly, slamming his horn as he went, but looking over to where the misfit had been was not. He wanted to look, to check in case it hadn't really gone away and was instead lurking, contorting it's swollen lips into a grin.
Grinning at him.
"Gooood evening listeners, this is RADIO XFM!"
Halfway down the radio finally clicked on, interrupting his line of thought - quite mercifully, if he was being honest. The sight of that thing not only made him feel uneasy, but he also couldn't shake off the feeling of foreboding as well. Like it was some sort of warning, a sign.
Of what?
[smashing glass smashing]
He didn't know, didn't dare to think, and as he cantered down the carriageway in the steady stream of traffic he sat silently, the radio singing out its tunes like an uninvited guest. It was an oldie that was on, maybe Boston or Bowie, he wasn't sure, but as it played on he sat in silence, the shadows in the car cutting harsh lines into his face.

She is the typesetter’s “e”

The once-rounded uncial script,
Unbroken like the solemn vow of a monk,
His whisper, a shepherd of words under the cowl,
Murmurations of the Holy Mother to the lambswool shroud of candlelight.

His candle-flock of dreams to some hill of penitent towers, war-cowed
And broken open like faith-unfended helmets, littering the ground,
With their unspeaking tassels in babbling pagan sound of wind,
That hill too, once-rounded bare under the glittering apostles of twilight.

In the abbeywork of air, calligraphy was a cipher of souls,
He unwrested demons from an inkwell of sunsets, smothered them in blotting paper,
Freed the incarnate whole to the book of hours, nib-pointed in quills and illuminated in gold,
Line by line, in Carolingian winding sheets, he returned the misshapen to the fold,
To the carpet page of home and the warm ligatures of their waiting women.
So the shutters of the heavenly house could blow light in slanted rays to a wilderness in storm.

But he never tamed the aero-elongated, descender of Troy in a “t,”
He never knew the unholiness of the underscore or fonts as ******,
Or the world unwilling to know itself in serif robes of ancient lore.
His life was a simple rounded-out syllable of one man,
Left in the muddied, unintelligible text of faith and war.

She is the typesetter’s “e” and now belongs to any hand.

I'm assuming
this is my punishment.
Walking around in clothing
you've touched me in
garments
you grabbed and unzipped
and twisted
and threw around your room
I wear them with weeping heartache
and disturbed remorse
I bare them like a mannequin
the clothes merely
mocking me
I can only wonder
if I stood before you again
with clothes littering your floor
if you'd find me a god
hold me as your muse

and if I would feel better because of it.
Doubtful my dear.
Doubtful.

The Love Song of a Struggling Writer

It's strange that words are so inadequate.
Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath,
So the writer must struggle for words.


Let us go then, you and I,
As phrases dance across the sky,
Like a poem scribed upon a table
Let us go, through empty deserted minds
The thoughtless finds
Of restless nights when words have left
A dreamless sleep upon the empty draft:
Debts that hunt through bills and mail
Soon caught, no avail
To lead you to an overwhelming dilemma
Oh, do not think of it, “When will I be in print?”
Let us go on borrowed time lent.

Deadlines often come and go
But do I care? Not really…no

The words that never come to be
And phrases never uttered beautifully
Butchered at the hand of the creator
Lingering on the cusp of success
Never brought to fruition, lest I digress
Many ideas I’ve never said
My fingers haven’t moved in hours
Anger builds till I see red.

And indeed there will be time
To taste tendrils of victory
To kiss the lips of a well written acquaintance
There will be time, there will be time
When publishers knock down your door
And ask for my autograph in store
And time for typewriter keys to bend
To rust and break with age
To break hearts of which I cannot mend
Keeping secrets triumph won’t lend
Reveling in the thought of glistening diction
Before the taking of pictures and Ads


Deadlines often come and go
But do I care? Not really…no

There will be moments
To wonder, “Do I write?” and, “Do I print?”  
Time to turn back and edit my drafts,  
With run on sentences littering the page—        
[They will say: “How his grammar is horrid!”]  
My morning coffee, and scone for fuel
My pajamas wrinkled from late night frustration—  
[They will say: “But how his style has declined!”]  
Do I dare
Disturb the publisher?  
In a day there is time  
For discussion and revisions which a day will reclaim.  

For I have read them all, scanned every line:—  
Have known the evenings, mornings, late night walks,  
I have measured out my life with writers block ;  
I know the diction dies as my drive begins to fail
Between the lines of another story.  
So how should I continue?

And I have known the public already—        
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,  
And when I am on display, such a fickle crowd,
When I am blinded by camera flashes and set lights,  
Then how should I begin  
To spit out all the inspiration for my literary creation?
And how should I continue?

Shall I say, I have visited New York and L.A.
And watched the heels smack and clack the pavement  
Of lonely writers sipping their grown cold tea?…  
  
I should have been a published writer
Pounding the pavement in glittering achievement.

And after work sip cocktails with various big cheese!
Wined and dined with sticky fingers,  
Asleep, awake the thought still lingers,  
Stretched across the printing press; an ocean of you and me.  
Should I, after punctuating and correcting lines,  
Have the creative juice to write another?
I have pondered the many ways to generate fresh material,  
Though I have seen my hands become gnarled and thin,
I am no writer—and here’s no great literary work;  
I have seen the moment of my success pass,  
Having flown out the window with expanded wings,
And in short, I failed.

And would it really have mattered,  
After the pens, the quills, the empty ink,  
Among the typewriters crevices,  
Would it have been worth while,
To have never written in such style,  
To have pondered my very fortune  
To compact it into a simple sentence,  
To write, to be in books and various magazines,
and see my picture on front pages of best seller lists
  I Should say:
“I will never be in print, no prizes or ribbons.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,  
Would it have been worth while,
After the interviews and company meetings,  
After the novels, after the cover art, after the payment plans—  
And this, is there no more?—  
It is impossible to say just what I mean!  
I shall sit in the dark, alone, and brood:
Would it have been worth while?  
If I had ever submitted just one great piece,  
I’m left gazing out the window; still in refrain:  
  “I will never be in print,  
         I will never see my works published.”

No! I am not Stephen King, nor ever will be
Sad excuse for a writer or so they say
I think I’ll end my career today
Placed down my pen and ink,; No thrill,
Cannot say which way I’ll go
Words, Phrases, Plot, will change
Soon as my thoughts cease to flow
The meaning of life could rearrange
Another failed attempt, joy ****

I grow old… I grow old…
My written soul will never be told.

Shall I scrap my stories? Should I burn every page?
I shall write in fantasy, and script my dreams
The chimera call, nothing is as it seems

I do not think they call for me

The fantastic is irrelevant
As my mind does fade with age
Take piece of mind; internal war I wage

I have dared to enter realms unwritten
Have ventured past words unspoke
Which suffocate; against my throat to choke.