Shepherd Tones

Chairs have been sitting on me

with jumping beans flashing green,

just sleep and you will see

I can only live what we can dream.

I'm not sorry for my smile

but my bleary eyes say otherwise,

let us rest for just a while

and we can sing to the sunrise.

Tip

I keep my desperate delights locked away

in an airtight sealed bag

until long nights of longing,

hedonistic heart and aching feet,

disparate dissonance in decrescendo

and rapid crescendo returning.

I am saved for another day

as my suspect aspects widen

and I am short of breadth.

A City Skyline Through Closed Blinds

Fractured moonlight through the window

caught your figure like a net

and framed the city's skyline

with your body's silhouette.

The stars provided lighting
to your radiant, vibrant heart
which I regard not only as my home
but the greatest work of art.

— In Silence —

Alone, under the gargantuan balls of gas

that punctuate the pitch black sky in pulchritude

with their puissant burning — in silence — 

as I walk along the centre of the empty roads

arms outstretched, tiptoes touching

the painted white markings that demark contraflow,

and the tinted bulbs of traffic lights

flash and flicker from green to amber to red — in silence —

signalling to the empty roads that nothing in particular

must stop. I take no heed, rushing through

in half-drunken delight, head polluted by rum

and thoughts of a blissful moment spent with you,

and my brain screams in ecstasy — in silence —

for your presence, as though I could rouse you from your silent sleep,

just as your labial lullaby lacerated my eyes; laconic

— in silence —

Cans

Home is where the heart is

or so I have been told

but it isn't the ones out on the streets

whose hearts are empty and cold.

Hungry and not heartless

not harmful, but hurting;

so their heinous criminalisation

is more than disconcerting.

And yet they're swept away

like empty cider cans,

dropped by ones not labelled for addictions;

dropped by privileged hands.

No-one's there to pick them up,

 they all just walk straight past

for they degrade this depressing city

and are looked upon as trash.

But don't throw them away,

recycling needs some sorting;

for every sorry state we find a use

with the right supporting.

See a can? Pick it up!

Put it where it belongs -

we should be looking for the good we can do,

not ignoring all that's wrong.

Night Light

Shocking synapse barrage

weans a wary glance out the soul's windows

apple of the beholder's eye;

heart palpitations, away it goes.

Scalding black drink

innervate the weary soma

stimulate neither skull nor organs

Blind to dreams and desire, mental glaucoma.

Sweet synesthesia needle,

holy skin, mind wholly in trance

gnaw on God's flesh

and falter in his dance.

Rising lumen reflexes

further subdue subterranean sorrow.

Sensory blaze, pneuma to ash

vagrant drift to vapid tomorrow.

Renovations

Paint the low flying ceiling

to cover the smoke jaundiced cracks.

Anaesthetise all feeling

to forget the faux forged facts

Melt with me in the house of glass

with an espresso shot of oil.

Cackling so crude and crass

as the landscaper tears up the soil

We need more wood for the decking—

sure, just add it to the list!

Pretend this isn't our home that we're wrecking;

pretend that our children don't exist.

Infected Light

Fragmented amber light

regurgitated by the lout loitered lamps

sprinkles down through the frame

of a plastic window

[off -white and cold;

yet retaining no cooling comfort]

and brittle leafs, tired and defecated

by the smoggy air.

The light spills up to the sky

and rebounds through the shook-up Earth

- as if a glitter globe -

covering any mystique that celestial sphere could draw

so that even stars and the moon

are just emergency exit lights

of a broken bed-sit.

Invalid

Mild-mannered and morose; close to comatose.

 The only thing I could convey 

was a lack of confidence; and you your dismay.

Und wieder werden es nicht am gehen 

wenn nichts ab mein will konnte geschehen. 

So muss es sein; dieses worten mein nur sorgen.

Warm Wires in Winter

Alcohol, narcotics and prayers flavour the falling of night.

Our talk of games a game too, of a sort,

smirking dance swirling inwards,

skilled balance and mirroring of feet's skittish friction.

Your hair descends in waves I long to twirl and surf.

Your soul glows warm and woozy in my orbit.

Your pouty lips and gleaming bright eyes beckon

to realms purely sumptuous and light,

full of intangible glows and stampeding butterflies.

As our lips meet, sweet confidence decimates regrets

that could have been, grasped like tattered rags

by those too blind or quivering to act.

I hold you close, your charms now tangible, in grasp,

your lilting laughs and deftly wicked winks pepper the wind,

gusting across rusty heartstrings,

stirring from slumber groggy half-dreaming sentiment.

I feel a melting, melding into intimacies unmapped.

Yet each moment of contact must end.

Banter and power remain,

and yet I long again for that glowing coal of you, you,

a true you to warm tingling fingertips,

that secret soulful sphere of self you keep so safe, so guarded,

yet shines through like a jewel in your smile.

Alone in Kyoto

I saw the city pavement

— a whirl of activity

I saw the glamour and movement

— a swirl of anonymity 

Sharp faces, sharp clothes.

Bright streets, dark woe.

Lost Network

I like to wake
before the tinny jingle
of my phone's alarm,

when

I can get good and lost

in the vast countryside

where

it's like I'm the only human on earth,

but only as long as

the network signal is strong enough

that I can be assured my isolation

is a temporary fantasy.

Accounts

I've tried deleting your number out of my phone to convince myself that

I won't contact you again. And I don't, yet I still can't help but

scroll through your social media accounts,

[on which I have unfriended you and

erased every trace of our virtual contact

or sentimental photos, as though it would rid me

of what had occurred]

Yet I smile at some things you say

and at others get a little bewildered what I ever saw in you.

Still, the smallest mention of another loser's name

or any implied intimacies

and I still get a warm bubbling sensation in my stomach

and a tightness in my chest.

I probably don't care. 

I'm pretty sure

I don't care.

It's nothing.

Share a Life with...

I've been looking for someone to complete me,

but the search is like

hunting for a Coca-Cola bottle

with my name on,

and finding any name but mine,

or with a different spelling variation.

My unloveable heart matches

the obscurity of letters,

but then again I suppose

love is just a intelligently marketed drink

that I have no real desire for

when its flavours fizz out

long before sell-by date.

Train Carriage Confessions

I find it no coincidence that you seat yourself here,

beside me,

when there are empty rows available.

Equally apparent, is that I am caught by the same instinctive attraction—

my attentive gaze greeting your curious glance

towards my pen

then

into my eyes.

Neither of us, with our timid temperaments,

have the intrepidity to initiate a decisive action of discourse, and so

I sit here

half-wishing your peregrine eyes

would pass over my obstructive shoulder

and read these confessions,

knowing them to be as true

as the light I can perceive inside of you.

The Mystique has been Lost

The mystique has been lost—

paper print-outs replace

the palpable ticket of card complete with a shiny seal,

now scanned lazily and discarded,

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

seen through a plethora

of phone screens capturing the same pixelated images,

to share to more indifferent, unseeing eyes,

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

a predetermined set

readily available to be previewed on the Internet,

playing only the most $ucce$$ful hits,

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

and through the sea

of vexatious tropes from a diluted, stagnating scene

that the Internet age has brought

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

and yet the music has not.

Crossed Paths

There is a saccharine romance,

a scenario spoiled by chance

when passing by a stranger

known only by a smile and glance.

And so the sweetness is subdued

to its lonely circumstance,

in a crossing of dreamy eyes

which can both beguile and entrance.

Both parties go separate ways

whilst their minds skip, hand in hand

both pondering what could have been

if confidence had more command...

The Breadth that Breathes Between Strangers

There is a breadth that breathes

between strangers,

it is what predicates them.

Born in the bloom of hostility

in a dewy-eyed spring,

it bears no rational prejudice.

Yet we send our souls to slaughter

of stuffy summer petulance;

even a breadth can be confining.

Above the Motorway

I see vehicles parked on bridges over motorways.

I wonder if it's an unmarked police car

measuring the velocity of careless crimes

or a lost soul contemplating their final act.

I'm sickened at which my instincts would prefer.

Sawdust on the Wire

Here it is, that feeling.

Starting at the centre of my sternum,

where I keep store my solemn secrets.

The same scene floods back.

Starting at the centre of my sternum

and, working their way up to my brain,

the same scene floods back;

sawdust on the wire.

Working their way up to my brain,

the new pills soon take effect.

Sawdust on the wire

dissolves in the synapse.

The new pills soon take effect.

Here it is. That feeling

dissolves in the synapse,

where I keep store my solemn secrets.