Who bloats and bereaves,
Who cunningly deceives,
From beneath the cloak of western deception.
We, safe in our tombs,
Enfolded in pleasures,
Blind to the images
That threaten our leisures.
But stand like trophies
Which embellish our lairs.
For the distant we grieve,
Yet shed no tears.
We grieve in numbers,
Twist in our slumbers
As our consciences ripple.
Care? How we dare!
Conscience a consequence.
Avoid, for if we look too long
Our hearts might beat.
So we retreat to cold shrouds,
There uncrossing ourselves,
Close our coffin lids and die.
For ourselves.
Our sanities at stake.
Here we lick worn incisors,
And close down our visors,
Displaying the crowns
That shone in the sun of imperial pasts.
But now retreating,
Afraid of reflections,
That reveal and condemn.
Epitaphs
Fascination,
Empty rooms, corridors, halls,
Warehouses and workshops,
All echoing with the sound of my dusty feet.
Fear,
All engulfing, spectral, ghostly.
Fear that I wait in vain,
Ignorant of joy and its trail of pain; J
ust like them lost here in circumstance,
Another time,
Another place,
And all that’s left is memory,
Partial, clouded faces in the minds eye.
A faded newspaper of a bygone age,
Caught in the sunlight on a grey wall, Tragedy in print like
The graffiti scratched on toilet doors
By those who passed before, Empty rooms,
People once lived here,
Empty rooms,
People once loved here.
Fascination,
Unfulfilled in empty rooms,
Full of the ghosts of memory and more,
Lives incomplete and unresolved;
Their pain is all that remains,
In the mortal, manic scratchings,
The simple poetry,
Of a bygone age.
.
Jogging
The beat Of feet
On earthy turf,
Stake out Time
In the rise
And fall of ragged
Breaths,
And
They all Beat on
In desperation,
They all Beat on
In vain,
To escape
The rhythm Of epitaphs
Always
Pounding,
In their
Brains
Hammers
We become,
When aware
Not of the clocks ticking
But the spaces in between.
In these Infernal intervals
Contemplation Gnaws
At the very heart of
Being.
Now,
Punctuation Seems a manic
Necessity of sense,
For if the breathing spaces
Become like Distant friends
We find ourselves suffocating
Between the beats
Of our own hearts.
But the clocks Tick on,
Always with time To spare
For spaces,
Their hammers beating,
On the
Nothing In
Ourselves.
Vacuum
A fortress of British granite
Formidable, soaring arches support
A venerated interior.
Concepts in transepts,
Aisles
And altars.
Protective holy shrines
Of all engulfing
Nothingness,
Built on divine promises,
Immortality that fails
In ignorance of what we seek and fear.
Self pitying indulgence
Of finite terrors,
Supporting,
Carrying,
And transcending
The void from which we come
And toward which we hurtle.
Alone, embodied in the velvet cloaks of fear
We decline our heads to processions of
Birth,
Marriage
Death.
Dulling diamonds, tarnishing gold,
The sparkle of life is lost
Somewhere in time,
A slow evaporation,
Now,
Forever,
Amen.
In birth we scream The password to death From within an empty shell, That fills with a fantasy, Condensed from Fear.
Reptilian Dreams
There is no design,
Only the timeless chaos
Of accident,
The slowly advancing tides
Of chance.
There is no order,
Only the anarchic maelstrom
Of coincidence,
The insubstantial,
Fleetingly entangled,
Yet fruitful.
We are the godless ripple
Stranded on the sand Of an ebbing tide,
Rejoicing bellies down
In a moment of genetic confusion,
So seeking an architect
Who fashions in his image.
This work, some say,
This Cathedral of Creation
Resonates with his form In every niche
In every shadowy pew,
Evidence
The instilling of faith
As we wallow in the shadow of His Benign countenance
In awe of his mysterious ways
And we revel in this paradise Like the frog,
Who contemplates the exquisite beauty
Of mirror steel blades,
When lost, in the bowl of a blender.
Artist
In the midst of the still night, I twist and turn
Restless,
Then arise and tear back the curtains.
The crooked smile
Of a new moon
Sneers at me.
I cannot tell the day from night,
For the sun is black and cold,
The cruel moon
Is the eye of a Cyclops god
Who would devour my mortal soul,
Leaving a void inside.
Who will fill it?
I cannot be at one with myself,
I cannot choose for
I am a chained, shackled
An emotional masochist,
Afraid of the warmth,
The Sun.
I cannot reach out
Lest my armour melts
In the searing furnaces
Of vulnerability,
And I die rejected,
In the light that divides,
The day’s distinction.
Estelle
A chance, Opportunity unplanned,
Yet greeted with zeal.
You begin unbidden,
I follow hypnotized and respond,
Following your road of vital trivia,
So far from my destination.
Yet entranced I follow In control yet confined
Ensnared in a
Vicious cage of politeness.
My nature an unadventurous Zodiac paradox.
A hunter haunted, by contradiction.
But now
A sparkling eye, Subtle body language, Circles complete, Hair in fingers, Laughter.
This sweet spell where time Becomes timeless, Minutes too precious to pass.
Meetings agreed , but forgotten.
You never came.
<
br /> Au Revior, you recede,
Leaving a threatening glow
Forbidden.
A tragic, delusion.
Now confusion reigns supreme,
In my mixed up world of fact and fantasy.
Love’s Wake Dog.
Your visions of England;
Fresh, green windy towers of wisdom.
High rise blocks caked with ice. Autumn, Winter and fateful summer.
You,
Far away and estranged,
Pursued by dark eyed wardrobes
That open doors
To release the scent Of love in mothballs.
Lost, fragile alone,
Tenuous links with a familiar world
Strained perhaps,
To breaking point.
So a strange retreat.
Doors close,
No more translations of Nasal dialects.
What did you see?
Now he shrinks to save himself
And fuels the only fire
He can warm to,
A simple numbing solitude,
Alone in the dark,
Blinded by what he always knew.
A sightless moth
That refuses the lure Of the Summer moon,
And the porch lamps lit over open doors,
Blind and deluded,
The wraith retreats,
No longer shall he trail
Like a witless Wake Dog.
Unseasonable Embrace
It is Spring,
High upon a wind whipped hill I watch for signs out in the valley, Which sprawls before me
Like the long lost Mother of a million dreams.
I watch for signs.
New Leaf,
The flash of rabbits tails,
The call of the cuckoo.
Yet the horns of winter Impale my senses.
As the clouds drag themselves
Wearily across my horizons
Their sleet strangled showers
Cooling fires that long to erupt in my heart.
I watch for signs.
Wary of the sentence of death
They will pronounce on me In a Summer execution.
I see you barbed and baited with all I desire, and fear.
I am pushed and I am pulled,
Between the anguished heat of Winter
And the frosty numbing void of June.
The seasons stand on their heads
Somersaulting inside,
With the prospect of blossoming joy.
I could reach out and attempt to touch you
Like the Summer sun I avoid and desire,
Fly close in worthless, waxen feathers,
Until all dissolves in certainty,
Just as the seasons will turn.
Spring to Summer, your barb in my heart,
I would be dragged across continents to a final resting place,
In the arctic cool of Springs cruel dreams.
Yes we could die together
In an impossible, unseasonable, embrace.
Tomb
Our reality is hollow
There is nothing out there
To touch
But we ourselves are touched
And tormented
To seek the sensory
And call it rock
Blind men feeling the light
And calling it blue
Gaping at rainbows Inside our heads
Groping for gold.
Handless clocks still
Pound out the hours
Each second a toothed blade
Annihilating the flesh
Sending ripples through tortured souls
And unstable places
Building worlds out of
Human fragments.
We drift in the great hollow
Twisted, stretched and tormented
Reaching out for the ungraspable
Hearing the unhearable
Or only echoes
Of something
Lost in the dark.
Dawn of The Dead
On hot Summer days such as these,
the air is sucked from collapsing sewers and stands stagnant over the crumbling estates.
I can almost see it.
It lingers in layers, across the painfully still parks and playgrounds, the foul breath from the arse of this place is a testimonial to its inner decay, its corruption, its degeneration.
This place is forgotten, but not quite, for those who live on the Hill surround themselves with dogs and electric fences. This isn’t Toxteth.
There is nothing to fear from these, until a shift in the breeze wafts their way, but that’ll never happen because they’ll never smell the shit.
On hot Summer days such as these,
I open the windows and appeal to history, to the embryos of epochs stirring in wombs, who twist with a grin to Highgate.
Here on these still fertile estates, dead ideas are yet to germinate, still peculating
in conflict and contradiction.
Wicked Spoons
Once Upon a Time
In a land of white linen
A heart beat slowed
And a mid life mid wife man
Unstowed his wicked spoons
That thrust inside to expose
The mucus drenched membranes
Of a blood matted baby.
Mountains of thigh flesh
Blood bright and breech fresh
Accelerating metal tools
Pain is tube subdued
Un-natural and aided
A bright blue Innocent baby
Coughs and splutters
As un-choking tubes gutter
The first breath Of air
In a
Brave
New
World.
Dream (Part One the Awakening)
Basements
With faceless friends,
Dank darkness
Invades the nostrils,
A candle flutters liquid,
Revealing,
The overwhelming solidity
Of mildewed mausoleums,
Bulging paled plaster
And water threats.
Here I enter sliding fetal Into wombs of endangered light,
Rolling from rooms to room,
Chained by lintel links,
In this a giant downward squirm
Of earth worm architecture
Man cavern becomes water wrought,
Gypsum plasters,
Polished marbled limestone labyrinths,
That cause to stoop and crawl
Toward a fissure terminus,
A grinning abyssal maw,
Then passing through,
Suddenly subdued, and
Crushed in a giant earthworm jaw!
Dream (Part Two the Ascension)
An attic garret long deserted,
Chalky floorboards crumble insubstantial.
Here is uncertainty tangible.
Caged threats,
These white paneled doors deceive,
Touched they would dissolve
Like my mothers hair on that grave diggers spade,
Releasing the weight of fears beyond.
Here I tread softly
On hopeful beams,
Towards a four poster bed
Barring passage to sanctuaries,
Beyond solid unhinged doors ahead.
Ransacking a chest of draws,
Entwined in strangles of
Dead vines which invade
Human frailties,
I find my dead Fathers shirts
Still sealed in cellophane.
I recoil embryonic,
In dialogue with new ghosts,
In numbed
Contemplation.
The Rippled Edge of Time
Change here is lost to human eyes,
Even photographs deny passage
,
Shape and monochrome unchanging,
Etch familiar horizons a hundred years on.
Only the living seasons attempt to refute
In their rhythms of white and grey,
Immortality is almost
Manifest in the monoliths
At Ramshaw rocks
Once at Flash,
I met an ancient man,
At the withered extremity of life.
Old Jim, every inch a part of this place,
Or so I thought,
But his bones ticked like his old bicycle.
He is still a stonewaller
He told me tiredly,
Rebuilding the bridles
Generations have slung across
The rippled edge of time.
But the hills here shrug off
That which seeks to master them,
Or drag them down’
Into the terminal rhythms of human frailty.
They stand in unflourishing defiance,
Rank after rank The Roaches,
Denying frantic finite men like Jim,
The comfort of change,
Forever rolling to horizons,
A frozen rhythmic illusion,
Stretching beyond us all.
Midnight Breathing
Long sighs and the wind in the trees
Sends shivering shafts
Of fractured moonlight
Across my sweating brow,