You were an acid
Destroying others
Making them nothing
And hungry for more

I was a base
An innocent mind
Eager for adventure
Reactive to a select few

We were neutralised
With me, you were tamed and docile
With you, I was someone new
Our beaker fell off the counter top

And
                                                        ­  s ha  t  t   e   r  e      *d

Unzip,
new skin quick
neutralised Freudian slips
A spy game
so slick
well placed mortars sinking battleships

new suit
cover skin ill-suited to do business with life

find a life that suits your business
before you cover your life with a business suit.

In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.

Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor

as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
  
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring

hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea,  boils an amnion  
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships

of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs

labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away

to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such

alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely

neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of  limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,

an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley

your fingers would tiptoe across my palms, and it made me feel alive.

the first time you touched me, i figured out what the purpose of butterflies really were.
the first time you touched me, i almost believed you were trying to create an army of them,
    that they were going to break down the maze inside my head
    that i would become some disgustingly lovesick drone

i don’t know why i ever doubted myself

the butterflies don’t visit me anymore,
they’ve done their job.

my feelings are neutralised.
my body is numb.
and you hold me like the touch of another would contaminate me.
your embrace is a cage,
but one i have built myself.

My depression is a transgression
against me, and mine.
I never asked to be contaminated
with this strife.

My depression is a possession
of evil, of illness.
I never thought I would be
rife with highs and lows.

My depression is a progression
of good and bad thoughts.
I never wanted to be
violated with cries and lies.

My depression is a weapon
against all who suffer its woes.
I hope the afterlife takes this repression
and nullifies it's effects.

My depression is mine but
suffered by many. We are pulverised,
neutralised and modified by our own
minds and medicated to keep sated.

My depression is Legion
a wickedness to the self.
A circle unending, unbending,
curving toward suppression of oneself.

Zoom
In to my face.
Closer.
See the colours on my skin
The mingled hues so diverse that form the tone of my complexion
From a distance.
My complexities are neutralised by the distance from which they are viewed.
Zoom in
Closer.
See the fine pores and pale hairs
That lie on the surface of the ***** that is
Skin.
Just so today
And tomorrow
Metamorphosised by new cells that multiply and those that die.
Zoom in
Closer yet
And that surface now
Is unrecognisable
That picture now
A poster
One hundred feet in height and paper thin.
A surface with no depth.
Walk through it
To the night beyond
With all its stars
The ones you see and strain to see and those beyond
And know who
And what
We are.

her brown hair was like
non-insulated
stranded copper wires
of high current carrying capacity,

her dark-black eyes were like voltage,
and my resistance was very low

her hips were like power supply
with two step-up transformers

the dulcet words she whispered
were like electrons flowing
in my ears

when she approached me,her gait
was like magnetic attraction,
and we had unlike poles

her hands on mine were like
magnetic sparks,like that
of a short-circuited contactor

the magnetic field was the
dark-grey carpet we were standing
on

and her red sappy lips
were like ground wire
as she kissed my cheeks
and the shock was neutralised

Grim weather workday
Co-workers tower and storm
Frustration wind gusts
Colleague’s deep weeping deluge
Workwear, my only shelter

Hi-tech coveralls
Cold tin pressed over concrete
Full-body shielding
Spikes guarding critical zones
Early threat sensor system

-------

--Tricky meeting one---
Sensors detect unstable air
Towering cumulus,
   imposing updraft,
     condensing vapour,
       supercooled drops,
       colliding particles,
       electric charge,
       energy below 100 Hertz,
       below 20 - infrasonic range,
       cloudburst impacts,
       downdraft wedge,
       gusts at 90 km/h,
     winds slowing,
   anvil passing,
dissipating feeder air

-Coffee break-
Systems check
Minor damage
Vibrations neutralised
Commence shield repair

-Tricky meeting two-
Scans register earlier storm damage
Key infrastructure stressed,
  dam failure,
    imminent water surge,
       significant hydrologic activity,
       evacuate downstream,
       clay soil,
       infiltration below 2 mm/h,
       gage data above action stage,
       avoid low spots, streams, and rivers,
     sandbags in place,
     wall seals holding,
    precipitation easing,
  infiltration nominal,
subsiding flood water

-Coffee break-
Systems overload
Unable to assess damage
Full reboot required
Commence systems reset

-------

Home brings fine sunshine
Joy-filled fluffy puppy front
Gentle joy breezes
Clear skies, household index high
Soft clothes, it’s cuddle weather

Target acquired
We got him on the thermal imaging
Yet he neutralised the threat
We could not launch against him
He walks twixst the raindrops
He hides in plain sight
All attempts to bring the hammer down
Just end up in *****
He seems so protected
Just what has he done?
To have the machine and the earth
Pressed under his thumb

I considered life as a game of strategies.

I used strategies to achieve
my goals in life.

For me, using  strategies  to get ahead in life, was a strategy.

I used strategies to beat off competition, to protect my riches, to out-manouvre my rivals, to wreck my perceived enemies.

I used strategies to elevate my status, to increase my popularity, to hoodwink law agencies, to retain power.

I used strategies to keep everyone guessing, to gain ascendancy over my rivals.

Everyone called me a master strategist.
  
My strategies were succesful, it paid huge dividends to me, I reigned supreme over others.

But luck did not last long,  my strategies began to fall apart, they lost their earlier deception, and were easily decoded and neutralised by my rivals.

It was game over for me!