Quiet

The world in blue, a study in lines,

Byzantium forged, fearless, fallowed;

In the space of a single moment, forgotten,

Rotting like the hand that gave it life.

If you could only hear the silence

You would see,

If you could only close your eyes

You might have been a part of it.

This dream was not the product of sleep,

Not the half-remembered

Excrement of bullshit REMs.

Awake, aware of all the motions,

A mass of conscious flesh and blood,

Serving only as the path on which

The vision stakes its claim.

Roughly splayed in sweeping strokes,

The page becomes electric,

From dust to dust an eager age

Peaks out around the curtain,

Ready to expand and fill the world;

The moment passes unaware,

And in the quiet, dies.

Villains

They called it, “Yes,”

Watching imbecilic children

Rise and fall, spewing

Every damnation ever let to

Ministers and Ministries,

Preaching to the iron bars

Of this crooked, travelling

Menagerie. Corner into corner

Sweeping dust from

Each and every corner,

Then cornered, left unnamed,

Unplaced, even worsted,

Understood.

Underestimate the praise,

The chorus of souls,

The trembling of the masses.

Underestimate the scorn,

The villainous flow.

No space left for symmetry

In the balance of things,

No space for want.

Frivolous constraints

Imposed and recomposed

And again, waiting,

Now the fall and the laughter

That precedes it

From the belly,

Esophagus littered with bile

Composition laying waste

To the water and air.

Remember what you saw,

Friend, the smile,

Contempt to every edge.

Smile, friend,

Remember the dead.

Pragmatism Failed

I hate this place and God

Myself

And all the artefacts of rage

Suppressed and rearranged

To look like smiles

Genuinely forced across my face

And thrust into the world

Of eyes and lips

With their endless perceptive

Thirst for fiction.

Pleasure was evicted

With a promise

And regret.

Self-containment

Reawakens every shard

Of broken spirit

Every scar and

Every mask I built to

Hide them.

And for what?

This mobility is static

Stuck in one direction:

Down.

Assembly Required

Pop another Tic-Tac and salivate,

Wait until the taste is gone and kiss it on the cheek,

Betrayal of the inside,

Smiles spilling out profusely

Just to crush them underfoot

When I am finally alone.

There’s a minty fresh odour in the voice,

Critical pressures in the air

Trudging through the mud

In the space between,

This transformative zone is where it happens,

Where You and I is You and it,

Where once there was a face,

Now a mask.

Often subject to erosion

And a family of other metaphoric geology,

Like fault lines and quakes,

Not eruptions.

Buried just below the surface

He survives,

In this self-made cinematic prison cell

Oxygen is not the breath’s foundation,

Inhalation thrives on freedom,

Expression,

But with every desperate gulp

He’s one step closer to repression,

And he knows it.

Zero

I remember the isolation,

Crushed, claustrophobic

Pressed up against the walls

Of invitation—

Grey and plush

So as not to bruise or maim

Just embrace a body thrown

Against

This desolation

Like the routine arms of

Lovers lost in ceremony,

Never really thinking anymore

Just doing,

Lovers more like strangers and

Less like the strangers from

Their aphrodisiac youth.

Deflate...

Repossess the strength to look strong.

Reach in and

Pull out a response from your mental filing cabinet,

Memorized and automatic after so many years,

So many repetitions and retrievals,

Throw or place it in the space between

Yourself and the Other

Step back and wait,

And smile (if exposed).

I remember the aftermath,

Subtle changes and behaviours

Reproduce and coalesce

Become this monstrous thing

With a prettier face.

The phenotype’s the same

But the clockwork slows to a rusted halt.

And what is the sum of these subtractions?

Habitual answers predestined to fail

Allow this dense mutilation of the soul

These scars and historicity

And an unfulfilled desire to balance this equation.

Six

If I inhale just above the belly button

The ribcage is seen to emerge

Or rather, the abdomen retreats,

Falls inward

So much that I can get a decent

Solid grip on either side

With my four fingers curled beneath

And my thumb resting flat against my skin

In perpendicular,

Even from my bird’s-eye vantage

This is grotesque and irreverent

So I exhale

Flood my missing middle once again

With air and life and

All those things I know should count for

More than what they do

But they don’t

And still I’m on the floor

Every night

Up and down and up and down

And stop to breathe

And do it all again despite the pain

And stretch

And now I’m at the point

Where I can’t quite reach that

Zenith breath, that deepest inhalation,

First thing I do is close my eyes

Second is the mirror

Third is to open them again

And fourth is to look away,

But I tend to forget that last part and

Stare at my reflection instead,

It’s really just a photon reversal but

That’s precisely why it’s malevolent

From top to toe this crude

Defective

(self-awareness)

Flesh and bone

At once like all the rest

And nothing like them.

Running From

My thumb picked raw,

My heartbeat slows,

I left my thoughts on the floor

Last night

For no one to find

In the strobe-light

Smoke-screen

Blanket of modern noise

I tried to hide

From myself and everyone else

And needless to say

It worked

(that’s what I tell them).

Intermittent short-term

Accusations

Meet the same response

In repetition,

Shrug and raise my arms

As if they care what I tell them.

All this practice makes it worse

To bear,

Self-contained Atlas in

My own little world

Where I play both

God and Devil

Equally, and they are equal.

Your pity is my shame.

I saw the half-spoken glances

And the nods and gestures,

I was made aware of

Your discussions,

Your judgements,

No different than the

Pointing fingers

Moving lips that said

“Forever lame”

(that’s what she told me).

Once upon a time

It hurt to hear those

Sticks and stones—

Time never healed my wounds

But at least I’m now

Immune to almost

Everyone,

Not myself.

Third stop,

Let go of the rail.

In the cold and dark

At the end

I ran.

Ink

This ballpoint pen cuts

Deeper than a razor could,

Leaves black instead of

Red—just another

Shade of blood.

“...I promise”

If I could take it back

I would.

Lyrics and lines

Leave temporary scars

But still less so than

Scissors,

Never the same satisfaction

As that slow and

Simmering pull.

Head down,

Eyes down,

Sleeve rolled up to

Just above the elbow,

Hoping they’ll see,

Hoping they’ll ask

So he can shrug it off

With a laugh and

Nonchalance.

I’d take it back

If I could.

(I did.)

There was never

A choice, not for him,

Not when she begged

Crying and breathing,

Tears and a

Stuttering breath

Forced his tongue

And his hands

For a time,

Though he still

Keeps a pair on the desk.

Not when he reached

And they were there,

Inevitability because

He planned it.

Not when the words

In careful layers

(one side only)

Started to burn.

Not when he

Picked at his thumb

And fingers, peeling.

Not when he shouted

Whispering to himself.

Not when he broke it.

Head down,

Eyes down,

Stepping over all the

Cracks on the ground

Trying not to fall.

“I promise...”

With a jittery heart

One hand on a shoulder

Head up,

Eyes up, then down,

One hand brushing hers,

Followed by a moment’s

Breath of air—that

Sweet inevitable laughter.

He gave it back and

Disappeared.

Asp

I am Cleopatra, not a woman,

Not a lover,

The dust-clad figure of an age

From the neck up,

Eyes like once upon a time and

Hollow, beating with a

Fainter pulse than seconds on a clock,

Frozen, baited with the promise of inertia,

Gross contestation of an insect bite

That should have forced a movement.

The snake and the Nile are one and the same,

Just as I am wont to be

With a starry night sky,

And if they are out of reach

I might settle for the ghosts

They leave in a midnight pool,

Phantom strokes of light

Brushed across a canvas with a Master’s skill,

A temporary art,

And I cannot grasp the waves or their definition,

Forced to throw a line and reel it in,

Empty as the gaze of a

Hundred billion faces trapped in time.

Sublimation

The Prophet’s in the morgue,

Six feet is a long way up and

Further down,

About as tall as a man can rise

Above his peers in a standing ovation

Of praise and gratitude,

Deafening applause in the sense that

No one hears it anymore,

Not since the red skies and nightfall,

That night when Civilization

Grew up in reverse, or seemed to,

Now scolded in the infantile prose

We all so lovingly fostered

In a playpen holding ones and twos,

“Me” and “You,”

Called brothers and sisters but

Quick to reject such optimistic binaries.

In place of names we chose places,

By choice or by force is

No longer relevant, though once it was—

Why the substitutions?

Does the present tense not stand alone,

Does it bow to the whims of a

By and gone scholar,

Discontented with the world and

Ravishing the memories of a generation

He cannot begin to remember?

Making love to a faceless crowd in a

Passionless, sexual conjecture—

The world is sublimation

To the poet.