Touch me,
like the quiver of my body
is a lyre that you must strum.
Speak to me,
like my voice is a psalm
you've never heard.
Kiss me,
like you're a desert wanderer
and my lips an oasis.
Love me,
like your heart is a wardrum
that will thunder
        without
                me.

I

To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A **** breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independent shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.

II

And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again

She wore mountains round her neck

           (“No, lower.”)

Peaked with scented minarets

           (Softer and sweeter than strawberries,
           grander than a psalm.)

In the gulch between words
I offered you a prayer
and you wounded me with a poem.

I watched you  move
like a summer night
to disrobe the cover
of your collected works
           -a landscape of fire and blood
            that beats a wardrum
            deep in my hungry river.

Your petals pressed against my lips
           to drown , to drown
                      gladly.

She wore mountains round her neck,
and I wore her ankles with a smile.

Your tenderness spread from the flesh of bitter fruit;
it razed the ground it was born of.
It is the beating of a wardrum and the shadow of death.

And I found myself at the end of a rope
without the aid of drink or dope.
In my hand I held a note:
A confession without a sound
brought me to my knees.

When the day is too hot for coffee
you find the fog wont lift without it.
I am there, groping at the Thames
Without your hand there to guide me.

Her fingers carved a melody
Wrenching it free from the depths of pain,
and the bottom of white horse hooves
sank beneath the waves.

Whilst Lady Godiva sat by the window
and gazed out a heartfelt glance
at the children in the gutterand clothed her naked villainy
In silk and ermine fur.

And under the weeping tree we left each other letters
that cast aside the discarded uniforms of youth.

I sometimes feel my heart burdened with this horrible sadness.
The blood that passes through me a river of tears,
The beat of my pulse a steady, rythmic wardrum.
Can anyone but me hear them?
I look to the heavens and I see the face of my Creator.
I know he hears it, and I know I am not alone.

Fleeting moments pass within the blink of an eye
The more you try to grasp the more time takes and robs you blind
I try to embrace the rapid fire but it burns my chest to ash
Watching as everything I've known drifts past
Out of reach and washed away with bleach
Till there's no color left
Only desperate breaths
and piercing silence
As if I've suffered some tragic death
To gain is to lose and to lose is to gain
But as a creature of routine I strain to maintain
Rythem
But the song is long gone
Now left with fragmented thoughts and a broken wardrum
Undone

Chest tight, hands cold.
Darkness, my friend of old.
Again, I hear her cry, "My baby"
Again, I see death, my enemy.

Breath.

Snap, crackle, pop, as the job goes.
WE NEED TO MOVE as his pulse slows.
His eyes open, blind, no one is home.
He swings, hits, ****. While in Rome.

Breath.

Left, right, left, right.
It wasn't war, I didn't fight.
In my castle on the sand.
I watch the waving hand.

Breath.

He fights to get off the bed.
It's the bleeding in his head.
doesn't hear me, doesn't see me.
******* does he hit me.

Breath.

Long couches, long thoughts.
Life was easier, fighting over tater-tots.
"I didn't sign up for this"
One memory I wouldn't miss.

Breath.

White ceiling, dripping red.
Everything seen, he should be dead.
We'll hide him from the family.
A holiday now in infamy.

Breath.

3 am, the witching hour.
They're close, with power.
My idea, a warm embrace.
Fire can free me from this place.

Breath.

We beat on his chest, like a Wardrum.
I demand we push on, against quorum.
Look, listen, feel. Mine fast, his slow.
Problems solved, it's time to go.

Breath.

NO, YOU LISTEN TO ME!
I would, but I'm full of apathy.
MY DADDY SAID!
Love, you're lucky your not dead.

Breath.

"Good job kid, you did well."
When I heard it I nearly fell.
Yet it isn't easy this cross I bare
whenever you call, I'll be there.

Consciousness overwhelmed
by Astral formed lightning swells

Gamma ray
sent fone alarm
Tone torn to apart

too much light in the well  
Armored up, shoulder helm,  
You hear that music as it swells

In the well worn wardrum  wrecking wrath
In our forlorn eardrums shaking grafts like hell.

The walls turn to lattice-like
Vision tell me prophetic sight

The whole world ; We all together
Wearing our give-a-**** hearts

bright against That neon orange
Trump wall just  tryn-ta-rip-the ***** apart

But No idea based in hatred
can flesh the good

No, Understanding is an art,
Operate clean, never landing
poison darts

But Next
I’m a poison frog to those
who **** Got my bois in the bog
ready to retaliate

But an for an eye makes the whole world blind
Such that cliche points stale rhymes.

I feel each heartbeat like a wardrum
Echoing across empty fields like a
Battle cry sung from the mouths of soldiers
Desperate to come home
I hear each breath like the wind in the willows beside me
Whispering short and shallow in time
With the rise and fall of my chest
I am awake
But I do not wish to be
Oh to fall asleep
To see that endless night cover my eyes
A starless blanket
A moonless darkness
A welcome friend
Who for too long has stayed away
I will welcome you with open arms
Sleep my love why do you allude me so
Like a scorned lover you refuse to come
So I sit and listen to my internal drum