Up on a bright bloom,
a transparent dragon fly.
Live cosmic pulses, this!

Its eyes are starlight,
Its scales are flames,

Its breath is life,
Its claws are death,

Its wings are the wind that blows through the night
Its roar is the thunder whenever it takes flight

It's there for all to see,
And yet none enjoy,

It governs our skies,
Keeps us safe and warm,

It brings us the food
We rely solely upon,

It calms the waves,
It stirs up the air,

It's there for all to see,
Yet none seem to care,


It's growing weaker
With each passing day

Its breath has gone shallow,
It can't lift its head,

Instead of helping
We let it struggle instead

The poor, poor dragon,
Alone till the end,

We cared too little,

And too much,

And now it's dead

Salvador Dali
Rode a Harley-Davidson
All the way from Bali
To Abu Dhabi
With Charley the Cat
Riding pillion.

Said Charley to Dali
All weathered and gnarly

I get quite incensed
By children's lack of road sense.
When I get back to Britain
I think I'll start
A Road Safety Campaign.

Good idea
Said Dali
To Charley
Who replied
Thanks a million.

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.

Sat on a sedan
Spiderman took her hand.

Went down on one knee
And said
Will you marry me?

I cannot face
The rest of eternity
With each generation's
Take on modernity.

It's old fashioned values
I look for and see -

Your confidence,
Common sense,
Your honesty,
Sincerity,
Your quirkiness
And peacableness.

But most of all
Your peerless take on life
Is what does it for me.

Will you be my wife?

Spiderman, Spiderman,
How you do woo!
And you have such qualities
That draw me to you -

Your patience,
Respect,
Your considerable intellect,
Your gentleness,
Strength of mind -

I could go on at length and find
You could  be my cobweb?
I could  be your fly?

Could you  be the man for me
Until the day I die?

What more can I say than
You may have concurred
That I do things my own way.

So can you guess?

Little Miss Muffet Said Yes!

And do you know what?

As they lay there
On that Le Corbusier chair
Without a care in the world -

And you know it's not novel
To be graphic -

They were not afraid at all.

Medusa's juicer
Used to confuse her -
The instructions
She said
Were obtuse.

By the snakes for hair
round my petrifying face
I swear that
This juicer's no use.

Years later
Bathsheba's psychiatrist
Was analysing the tryst
Between King David
And her.


It was no tryst
Said she.
What a slur.
He was a ******
And an opportunist.


An amoeba would concur
Said the psychiatrist
That a shower screen
And being more demure
Would have been
Quite spiritually enterprising.


You cannot expect
Kind David to desist
From objectifying your femurs
And a cracking pair of amethysts.


Don't treat me
Like some calculating
Hormone Exchange Unit
You sexist misogynist.


You are not fit
To analyse me.


You say your name's Freud
But you're wholly devoid
Of any insight
Of what is amiss
Or my troubles might be.


Not one piece of grit
Have you put in my oyster.
You obsequious churl
I'm a girl you don't mess with.


I could have you hung.


But instead she dismissed him
and booked an appointment
With a certain professor
Who went by the name of
Carl Gustav Jung.

I’m sitting in a lawn chair
At the edge of the moon’s well cratered chest
I’m facing a woman whose company is pricy and measured by rounded hours
She sits full lotus
Supple legs twist in a curving swirl
Seated on the glass surface of the coffee table
Young and slight enough to have no rational fear of it shattering beneath her

I ask to ask her something
She simpers
Anything
So I begin my slurred inquiry
If there was a God
And
And it told you that
Today was the day you would die
But it would spare you and let you live on well
Well
Into old age if you could give a good reason why
It should let you live then
What would your reason be
I belch a pig’s roar
What would your reason be

She simpers again
Ooooh **** that’s a good question
She toys with the starched mass of her hair
Flailing to be remembered by me and gain another loyal customer

I guess
I guess I’d say that I had a daughter and
Do
You have a daughter
She’s nineteen at the oldest
Yesss I do
I blink
What’s her name
Her name is Nelly
So
So you’d say you had a daughter and
And that she needs me
She loves me
I love her
I can’t leave her alone

In the center of the dark and lashed ellipses that halo her hazel eyes
I’m finally seeing a woman

She tilts her face
Her bangs silk to her jawbone
What would your reason be

I unscrew my flask

I wouldn’t give one
I deserve to die
However
Luckily for me
This life is unfair and unjust
In reality
You can plead to God all you want but even if it hears you
It won’t stop what it’s already made
And what it’s made is death

We’re both still facing each other
But we’re not looking at each other anymore
We’re both staring at space’s unfathomable darkness
The all consuming black

I know from where she is
She can see the Earth
She can see the spins of white puff
The emerald and umber chunks
The deep sapphire that coats the planet’s skin
Maybe she’s thinking of Nelly

From where I sit
All I can see are the tiny scabs of distant stars
Moth bites
In an all swallowing cloak

I check my watch
My current bill is approximately 1,600USD
I hear her voice
For the first time today
Her voice is genuine and entirely naked
Are you saying that God doesn’t save anyone

The weight of the knife in my pocket
Feels heavier than it should be
Especially here
The craters of the moon are yawning wide
They’ve always made perfect graves

I drink the last gulp of bourbon from my flask

Before I answer her
I wonder if her question is also asked by the others
The high piled and shallow buried
Crisscrossing one another
Overlapped like piles of pottery pieces
Or shards of shale
They lie
Trapped on the sun’s mirror
Lifelessly embracing and lying upon each other
Coincidently kissing each others wounds
Stuffed in the stony rings of the craters of the graying moon

Some I left floating in lakes
Both here
And back on Earth

Are they all wordlessly asking each other
Screaming through sunken faces
Won’t God save us
Doesn’t God save anyone

I toss my flask to the side
It takes forever to fall

Well
Charlotte
As far as I’m concerned
He hasn’t saved anyone yet

The knowledge of her death kills a piece of me.
I sit, light blaring at the page, hoping for her to wake up.
I sit, hoping this is all just some terrible hallucination she is having.
My stomach twists as I see his face in my head.
Him, the one that learned how to love her, then lost her.
Sadness, guilt and pity swirl through my body.
I can only imagine the deep pain and loss he is feeling.
All of it is to savior for me to bear
I laugh whipping away my tears
This is silly.
I have watched them from a far this entire time.
Their faces are made up,
Constructed, sculpted, from the words that burn into my eyes.
Yet I feel this pain,
This pain I feel in my being must be the same pain that he feels now,
Staring at her life less body
Limp,
Gone.
I want to lunge at the paper
I want to scream, cry, and laugh.
This is twisted
I hate it for sending me to this emotional place,
But I can’t help but continue,
Loving the action and thrills it sends along the ride.
Her death kills a piece of me.
-ALC

Maybe we are full of ghosts
And therefore, nothing, but
Data
Patterns in brackets and matrices of Proof
buried in the dunes of our own topography
Where lies
Everything
That gives us shape.