I see the darkness of the world
in my reflection
a devil in each iris, fire in each pupil
and every intention
I have had in my possession
has been cruel
has been kind
has been fuel
to burn and bind
and every breath of mine
gives to take
takes to live
lives to ache
for twenty years i have hung upon the stake
asking heaven why my creation
is
Perhaps it is His infatuation
with watching unbuilt castles slide
off cliffs into the sea,
swallowed by the tide
of what I'll never be

Dedicated to the Steelers who do their hard work so well.

The Pier five superstructure
Looms above the turgid waves,
Gothic cranes do hover close
To service needs of orange knaves
Who swarm to manufacture,
Who work to make complete
This massive bridging edifice,
This mighty engineering feat.

Cathedral like in grey austerity
Freezing zephyrs howl and blow,
Through the maintenance shaft tunnels,
Through the bridge's bowels go.
The catacombs are echoing,
Stark light's reflection deep
In corridors of baleful concrete
Through which angled cause ways sweep.

A forest of reinforcing rods
Stand starkly high and straight,
Atop adjacent pylons
Which arise from deep mud's gate.
Hazard lights are flashing
Amber, green and blue
As north east gales bring pelting rain
To obliterate the view

The tattooed hands of black skinned steeler
Twitch the wire to make the loom,
Lattice works of reinforcing
Blackened mesh of iron entombed.
Hard to fathom steeler's chatter
Bending low to twitch by feel,
Working fast in noisy unison
Twitching reinforcing steel.
Pliers flash in rapid movement
Wrist's convulse in rapid slap
Unintelligible chatter flows
But the job is finished, just like that.

Skill saw screams in echoed silence
Booming blows of hammers pound,
Pipe work's resonance percussion
Tempered by a sad song's sound.
Great concussions pound the air
As towering cranes do drive,
Enormous pylons into mud
And bedrock's solid hide

The mighty form travellers moving
High above cold estuary waves,
Reaching forth for unbuilt mana
It's red extension arm enclaves
Providing for the next poured section,
Providing for the next steel work,
Reaching out for firm embrace
Where Pier four's form travellers lurk.

The pungency of solvents spread
Across the steel plate, made to last;
Barrier to adherence of
The sticky concrete's surface cast.
The form work archway's wooden shell
Adopts a high cathedral stance,
This bride in waiting nervous for
The concrete pumps lithe serpent dance.

An unyielding environment
A hard surfaced place to be
Where materials of venom
Are handled casually.
Where massive superstructures
Unforgiving in their stance
Lead the busy, ant like steelers
In their lofty, hard days prance.

To look across Pier Five's expanse
And view the surface cant,
And visualize the future motorway
With it's headlong traffic rant;
And look again at what is spread
Across it's surface now,
At the jumbled reinforcing steel,
The cables, tools and how,
Organizationally chaotic
The whole affair appears ???
Whilst in actuality, my friends,
This clockwork sequence has no peers.

With the roar of passing traffic
As the headlights flash on by,
And the Pier's massive cantilever
Looms impossibly to sky.
One must praise the skilled designers
And those engineers of skill
Who summount vast odds of nature
To scale this monumental hill.
As this mostrous concrete edifice
Claws inexorably from tide,
To loom in towering sillouhette
Where estuary mists abide.

Marshalg
onsite@Pier5
Manukau Harbour Crossing
29 June 2009

In Memoriam

What's missing is the eyeballs
in each of us, but it doesn't matter
because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
You let me touch them, ****** the green faces
lick at their numbers and it lets you be
my "Daddy!" "Daddy!" and though I fought all alone
with molesters and crooks, I knew your money
would save me, your courage, your "I've had
considerable experience as a soldier...
fighting to win millions for myself, it's true.
But I did win," and me praying for "our men out there"
just made it okay to be an orphan whose blood was no one's,
whose curls were hung up on a wire machine and electrified,
while you built and unbuilt intrigues called nations,
and did in the bad ones, always, always,
and always came at my perils, the black Christs of childhood,
always came when my heart stood naked in the street
and they threw apples at it or twelve-day-old-dead-fish.

"Daddy!" "Daddy," we all won that war,
when you sang me the money songs
Annie, Annie you sang
and I knew you drove a pure gold car
and put diamonds in you coke
for the crunchy sound, the adorable sound
and the moon too was in your portfolio,
as well as the ocean with its sleepy dead.
And I was always brave, wasn't I?
I never bled?
I never saw a man expose himself.
No. No.
I never saw a drunkard in his blubber.
I never let lightning go in one car and out the other.
And all the men out there were never to come.
Never, like a deluge, to swim over my *******
and lay their lamps in my insides.
No. No.
Just me and my "Daddy"
and his tempestuous bucks
rolling in them like corn flakes
and only the bad ones died.

But I died yesterday,
"Daddy," I died,
swallowing the ****-*** animal
and it won't get out
it keeps knocking at my eyes,
my big orphan eyes,
kicking! Until eyeballs pop out
and even my dog puts up his four feet
and lets go
of his military secret
with his big red tongue
flying up and down
like yours should have

as we board our velvet train.

The Knitting Needles Museum
has a prudish name
that frightens the schoolchildren
and obscures the oppression
of desperate and ***** women

The torture museum
and the war museum also
lack the inspiration
from a muse
They are monuments

and should be called that
With the unbuilt museums
of destroyed art and
ancient cultures, they can
fill a street in any city

'Ecce ****', behold man
the noble beast, the master
of things and nothings -
virtual and vanished
worlds that are unlivable

Light the torches.
Burn it to the ground.
Let the flames dance until the ashes flee this plot of land upon the back of the wind.
This patriarchal house that father built has been stained with the blood of past victims.
The blood of enemies dots the floor while whats left of friends streaks the walls, marking the spot where they leaned for one last moment of respite prior to life escaping them.
We stand here with the warm blood dripping from our hanging fingertips.
Clothing streaked red.
Clearly we all had a part to play.
Whether part of the execution or part of the clean up, we all took part in the slaughter.
Fathers swung blades.
Mothers bandaged the wounded so they may **** again.
Children carried the buckets of blood to be disposed of.
Yet no one wept.
Not a tear was shed in the name of this great nation.
No one wailed during the systematic destruction of our resources.

Roads are crumbling.
Water is poisoned.
Politics are a circus.
The police have become a military force.
And lives have been destroyed.
Fathers are still wielding the blade
While mothers take up the blood buckets of their children who have been slain.
When does it end?
Does it end when we run out of weapons?
When we run out of people?
When we run out of love?
Weapons are only an extention of the wielder.
The bomb unbuilt cannot explode.
Our mother's words should be ringing in all of our ears.
Be good.
Treat people right.
Love.
Instead we jam fingers in ears, scream and stamp feet until even our thoughts are nothing but static.
The hiss and squeal of gunshots and speeding tires continually drown out the sounds of children's laughter and those Marvin Gaye records that Mrs. Jenkins plays on Sunday nights.
This isn't just a story of the inner city blues.
The suburban warriors are also witness to the carnage.
It's time to stay the blade.
Allow mothers to mourn.
And children to play.
Peace is a choice.
Choose wisely.

Touching is not a sin
Within these pillars
The temple of my body, I call home.
There are no prayers to be found
Between the dryness of my lips
And where you left me
With the wetness of my eyes
Singing its hymn to the martyrs before

Their hands have gone cold
In the silence of my secrets
These martyrs knock their bones together
As if trying to make fire
Could turn back time
As if their ivory stamina
Could voice its plea
There is blood on the walls in their temples

I hear the foolish cry out
With a voice that has never known lack
That condemned buildings are only meant to be torn down
That the bricks of my house were meant to return to dust
Buried in the mortar of my memories, blown in the wind
Unbuilt with no remorse
Leaving mortar scars in the earth

If the walls of my temple could speak
Her concrete lips would part
Revealing timber teeth
If her tongue was not sewn shut with shame
She would begin with a whisper
For she has never brought her voice up from the basement before

Her breath, stumbling over the threshold finds its footing
A guttural cry makes its way forth
A voice that blows doors off its hinges
A voice that only does cosmetic damage
As it attempts to touch your heart
Where it has never been reached

The cornerstones
Begin to talk
You were told even the stones cry out
It is too late for them now and too dark
The sky was almost crying
The heavens on the verge of tears

It is too late
I came undone
Because you can't tether fingers
As much as I wanted to tie ropes
To the nerve endings of my extremities and pull with all my strength
Pull them back to my heart
So they could be safe
Feel safe
Carry to the grave
Words I could not whisper to you in the dark

What prayers could I offer
To a temple torn down in anger
What words would I give
To the grave of my being
Whose hymns still ring out
Into the night, crying
Dust to dust
Ashes to ashes

Most of my life has been spent painting pictures in a song
though I was never good at Art&Design;,
so I resign myself to drawing words and colouring phrases with a ball point pen and
a weary head, that never should've got out of bed.

And I don't care what you want to be,
in the centre of the circle everybody wanted something from you; like an old teddybear
being ripped at the seams- no buttons to keep you together, only being torn apart like
a philosophical discussion about the creation of man. Pining for cosmic resolution and a reason to be.
You said you wanted that reason to be me.

I'll make you see the world tonight, make sense of the unknown. Learn how to grow old and be satisfied. How to grow, just grow. Know right from left to wrong and sing a different song.

'cause this city was built on fear and testimonies of the ignorant plaguing stubborn minds.
Manipulators lead the gullible ashtray, the weak remain same. No ones left to suffer the blame.
Hands clap as people riot in the street, echoes of the innocent stuck on repeat.

Yet you speak of harmonies and riches. You talk and your voice it's beautiful sound travels through the channels of my eager ears, wanders like a river with subtle grace and ripples of intonation, the mid-range pitch keep it from rising out of the banks of my thoughtless mouth.
And I count myself lucky as I gaze at the aimless faces rather there than here,
their body language gives nothing away, let's nothing in as if they're standing in a windless orchard in their minds. Whereas yours in perfection of a kind.
The poetry of your face is enigmatic yet I feel if I look closer I could easily understand.

The aimless faces try to draw you near but you ignore their cries;
for bribery is vain to try against incorruptible eyes. Although they were trying to warn you.
Their wires went unanswered. The bridges remain unbuilt. Now trouble is coming!
'cause you rested all your hopes on my thoughtless mouth and mishapened heart.

Your words- the beauty of your voice flows through the channels of my ears, wandering like a river, bubbling with your wishes and pain. My mouth is buckled, is buckled with fear.
Can I give you everything you're after?
Give you myself and more? Oh how I want to.

I want to .  .  .  .

'Cause this life was built out of rejection. Humour as a mechanism
of defence, a pretence that I'm strong, able. In fact quite capable of not destroying
everything in my path. My successes came out of needing to prove to them and myself that
I wasn't beaten down.
I have substance and I'm beginning to feel free,
like a bird in an unlocked cage.

LOVE comes from all sources and I don't care what you want to be, as long as you're good to me.
Try to understand where I'm coming from and keep surprising me , like you do.
We can sing the same old song, so long as my pictures colour in your heart.

Colour you in.

If I come
to rule a small kingdom
and should be so picky as
to have you live inside
you’d only have to knit
for me a pair
of socks and hold
my heels
In your soft cloth.
I'll give you money and keys,
ensure
you won't be killed.
Or hurt.
I’ll learn what you need
when you are shy
or expect something in kind
for your time.
My ringed fingers fancy
walking up your legs. My tongue,
running between your thighs,
delighted.
But, when your toes curl, I don’t
know.
And you've removed yourself
by inches, from the ground which,
like me, bounds after you
desperate
to replace itself beneath your
lovely form.
I’d fall out of exhaustion
onto that throne, imagining your face
and your thin ankles midair.
But you’d soar on
past Evening
making the moon your own,
me your last planet
you my new star.
Take cash,
for these socks
which warm my mind.
These thoughts
climb into open doors
in my kingdom's only car
then drive away with you
on unbuilt roads
with plans appropriated
from taxes
on socks you knit.

Vacant lot
Cement dust & foundations
Left unbuilt on
When the bubble burst

You're the fairest of all damsels my eyes have reflected,
Your beauty sings a million love songs.
The world stands to watch you fall asleep.
Kings desire you by their thrones.
But look me not straight in the eyes,
With the flame gaze of love,
I might follow shadows, I might fall into oblivion.
Whisper not in my ears with sweet sounds that weaken the heart,
I might smoulder,I might fall into listless pieces,
For I am not strong I have no hold over myself.

I am not the world you dream to live.
I am not the garden you long to plant,
I am not the treasure you long to plunder,

I am a man lost in my own world,
A man of different Creed, different city, from a different world.
Sing me not lullaby, I may not fall asleep,
I may not dream of you.

I am the land untapped,
A world unknown,
A city unbuilt.
Do not write to me the love poems,
I may not read them,
I may not understand.
My heart is tender and soft full of passion,
But not for your love to hold.

Look me not in the eyes with with the flame gaze of love,
Write me not the love poems,
Sing me not the love songs,
I may not return them, they might break your heart.

So you ask the difference
Between prose and poetry

Prose is just... prose

But poetry is a song
An entire universe, coming full circle
Poetry beats with my heartbeat
And it sings, but in a melody
Of words and midnight thoughts
Of strong coffee and dreamy haze
The mix of noise and silence
Poetry matches the rhythm of my feet
Tip-tap-tap, tip-tap-tap, it goes  
It climbs slopes and mountains
Varying in speed and delivery   
And descends, slowly, sliding into a pool of emotions
10,000 degrees of sadness and happiness
In each verse of the poet
Poetry is destruction and creation
Of the old and the new
Of statements and opinions
Of the paradaox of our age
Things built and unbuilt,
Broken and assembled
Like a lego model of complications
Poetry is revolt and revolution at the same time
It is a chant for liberation
That cannot be overcome by dominance
Or by any evil things of these times
Poetry is the hope of the protest
And the push for change
Waiting patiently, just going over the edge
About to burst not into flames but butterflies
And clear skies, Sunday morning sunlight
Like yellowed novel pages
Poetry will turn you inside out
Bare the soul and tear the flesh
Scatter the foundation of bones
Until you wonder and ponder
Over your very existence
Poetry is everywhere
And by everywhere, I mean, especially your toilet
Best thought out on the ***
Poetry is a word search with infinite vocabulary
Hoping to cross out as many as possible
But it never ends
Poetry is in the shade of your backyard tree
Of the things in this world that cannot speak
So we speak for them
It is the shout of the left-out, marginal, never-really-existing people
Poetry is life given to those who would not have had one
It is a Christmas sock for the soul
Comforting and warm, cherished in all forms
Poetry is writing poems for yourself and reading them in front of the mirror
And at the same time
Standing in a bazaar and waving your arms
Among cows and vegetables and chaat
Shouting, "Listen to me! I've got something to say!"
Poetry is getaway
In corners and edges
It is trying to escape everything real
And wanting the surreal
It is the 1 o'clock fantasies
Riding on waves, pirates of my own land
Middle Earth and elves, the adventures of dwarf lads
Poetry is the life-changer, the inspirer
The 'you'll be alright'
And 'next time buddy'
To every exam failed, every heartbreak
The arm on the shoulder, the pat on the back  

Poetry is... A lot of things
But most importantly,
Poetry is you
It's in the whispers of you singing in the shower
It is your ugly, spit flying, gums showing laughter on the terrace
It is how you snuggle right into my emptiness

Poetry is the answer
To my 6 year old adopted kid's question
When he walks in with my 10 adopted dogs
And asks me,
"Mom, what is everything made of?"
I'll first tell him that matter is made up of atoms
Because, of course, he needs to be scientifically correct
But then I'll add that everything is made of poetry too, there's not much difference

See, prose is just prose
But poetry is not 'just poetry'

i travel into the past
and i pick apart the memories
unbuilt to last,
quicksand thoughts
turning
in on me,
laughter on the beach
belittling lover
intoxication stare
one by one collapsing onto me
enticing me to revisit,
as if asking to refill
when my night is all but empty,

I don't dare.
i will stay put in my moment
the present tense is nothing
but a gift from my past you see,
I will only glance in your direction,
sweet memory
I dare not linger
within the depth of
your engulfing nostalgia,
for if I do
i will surely
turn into
a tear.

)Together unbuilt, the gathering dust breaks the air, to only and subtly release the tensions motivated uproar from the shine of a specktor to the graveyard reasons why we play so close to fire. His curtail overthrows me, and like a wave begins the ocean  I am unturned and ruthless. Scattered and bare my heart like wreckage. canvas of love and sour paint

Follow twig runes

To the unbuilt nest

How can you teach Poetry,
  or breathe for someone else

Sharing what your soul has freed,
  deep within yourself

Can you cross a bridge unbuilt,
  its toll not yours to pay
  
Squeezing blood from wounds long healed,
—transfusion’s masquerade

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2017)

The only companion of loneliness is silence.
Theirs is an unceremonious marriage like -
Couples in the middle of their middle age,
That mutually run out of things to explore.

One tries to find meaning in keeping a book,
That tells the same story a million times over-
Hoping to find white pages in the yellowed mess.
But that hope too, soon becomes a relic.

But lately I've come to love a poem,
That unites loneliness with silence-
It's the twisted compromise made-
By water when it settles in a container.
It is written on the faces of mothers-
Whose husbands are away at work.

A verse in the wind that all men hear,
To an effect that it stitches broken hearts.
It is a call for worship in an unbuilt temple
And the belief that enshrines love in trust.

I question good
I question bad
I'm very good
Then very sad
Thoughts of love
Thoughts of hate
Always uneasy
An unopened gate
l need a woman
To crack this nut
I'm the nearly man
Singing but but but
A ****** I be sitting
On a unbuilt wall
Smiling happily
waiting .

We are fragments
who do not fit in a whole world.
If we say we know,
we lie.
If we know we lie,
we are true.
If we know the truth,
we are mistaken.
In mistakes we know.

The faults reveal the existence.
What we write
exposes everything not written.
Our creations show our limitations .

My words are the boundaries
of communication,
the fragmentation of a message,
for we are unable to read the whole.

My house is the demolition
of a ****** space,
of a space unbuilt,
the containment of the wind,
the separation of light,
a splinter of a world.

Everything is happening
Causes cause effect to be cause,
endlessly.

What is the land
but dust
but mountains
but forrest
but mud
but lost sorrow

What is sorrow
but torn soul
but wounded skin
but a trail of tears.

This day
the Chickasaw
Choctaw
Creek
Seminole
Cherokee

wipe the
white mans dirt
off their right foot
with their left foot

wipe the buffalo’s blood
off their right hand
with their left hand

walk ******
bare right foot
to wounded left foot  
on the dust
of their ancestors
their sacred hills

walk away from
The Great Spirit
to the not greater
white man’s God
slow sad right foot
to slower left foot.

Walk dragging their
dead still right foot
to still left foot
far away from the sun
of their monumental land

to this country
of bullets and blood
marching, running
blue right foot
towards gray left foot
in a frenzy to *****
bronze monuments
to all their dead

And when they cry it’s
the prayer of the white man
buried in Indian pain

May the wind
that is blowing
now and always
the dust of our memory
blow beyond your
fear of us
and all different
colored spirits

May the wind
turn from you
and only return
until you love not
the scars you
put on our backs

May you open your
eyes to unbuilt land
and see finally
The Great Spirit
calling every one
to share the
sacred hills
even the dust
with all that
have always walked
right foot to left foot

Reality is circling around, all sharp with spiky thorns,
For another go at my fragile little mind
That floats like an over-inflated balloon
At the end of a long and fraying cord

Fantasy comes like a hand-knit velvet shawl
To wrap my heart in peaceful comfort,
Protecting it from barbs and slashes
That would prove the dream unreal.

Uncertainty in the form of wind begins to howl
And drowns the etude in cacophony,
Whipping up the desiccated leaves of Autumn
And stirring thoughts of grave endeavors.

Resignation gradually lays down the scimitar
That once set out to rearrange the world
And now is full of nicks and scratches,
So much heavier to carry than before.

Acceptance like a gentle winter snowfall
Settles on the jagged shards of effort
And the broken bits of unbuilt mansions,
Making it all calm and smooth and peaceful.
ljm

unbuilt cathedrals

are cropping up,

their doors blown open

by flying scissor cuts

of night.

ringing round a rosie.

a gathering of ungracious

hosts.

bird-beaked hustlers

selling custom t shirts,

of selfies plagued by

black outs.