A Day

Rose-fingered dawn, lay your warm cloth upon me.

Awaken them, deep down the cold billowy sea.

Helios, you shall rise and run over the land;

may your slow movement turn us all back to sand

Now unveil fallow pastures and rivers of gold;

dieing trees soon to be covered in greenish mold

Will this last long enough for me to walk away

and will anyone ever remember that day?

Endless fields unfurl before my eyes;

as a burning sunset slowly dies

Realms of life start falling out of sight;

seas of stars unfold through the night

Across the meadow, now turned to grey,

alone the pallid moonlights lay.

Wanly disclosing the rippling wheat

lying in quickly vanishing heat.

Skull

Fleshy smile,

more hideous

than the skull

that skulks behind.

Please, No Happiness. Just Sleep.

How long

until

I turn it off,

and save those well wishes

for next year's bleary eyes?

PLEASE,

there's NO need to check,

or include me in your HAPPINESS.

I don't want to hear your fireworks

or dance to vapid songs

that will be forgotten

JUST as soon as we all will.

Just let me SLEEP.

The Second Storm

There was a storm in heaven.

The clouds were rearranged.

The sinners blew through open gates,

whilst the angels were scattered and estranged.

The lord could not recall

which souls he intended to keep.
So he handed the nearest man a brush
and in trust told him to sweep.

It was Satan who took the tool

and he did exactly as God had asked.

He swept away all signs of sin,

took his thanks and then unmasked.

The lord was irascible in his wrath

that he had let the devil deceive,

but Satan said "It is you who lied-

I repent and you reward no reprieve!".

And so it was, heaven dared no more clouds

to bring a storm again.

But the fallen angel has righteous reason

to return with flames of rain.

More or Less

I am happy

Less

Than

I am not.

                                                                           (          H          a          p          p           y          ).

Praying for Morning

The weekend has come again.

Bitter words and liquor are loosely

rationed throughout the room in unison,

both equally influencing the other to release their potent sting.

I sit among them, indulging in both conversation and consumption

yet experiencing a great dread of their interactions and the respective responses.

Hours pass,

conversation and consumption has surpassed ration and rationalisation

and the rolled up notes are as spent as the sins they secured.

I cast a nervous glance at the clock on the wall.

It's almost time.

Is it my turn to speak?

Another mouthful to avoid such discomfiture.

Another hour passes and plans are picking up pace.

People reach for their coats,

shoes,

bottles,

making a raucous racket 

as they make their way to the door. 

I also make for the door,

coat and bottle

in trembling hand.

Retired

to a reticent and reluctant

cacophony of error.

And so we disappear into the night, 

Their noise polluting the air, I grip my bottle tight.

Looking down at the threshold at my feet,

I just want to turn and retreat.

I wish I could return to a bed less exciting.

The cold night suddenly does not seem so inviting.

But Satan's serpents circle the room

and I cannot make my excuses.

I take solace, knowing that as long as I do not kick out

I will not be bit.

Besides, morning must surely come soon.

December's Dream

The scent of your gossamer locks

distilled by the December deluge

infuses with the damp fabrics

which cover your soft winter skin,

it reaches my nose at the exact moment-

your red wine breath whispers

in tired susurrant tongue with chapped

cherry lips, biting back the

lullabies to lure away sleep

and I don't know where to rest

my eyes, ears, or nose,

so settle for your shoulder

and shelter from the cold.

Clouds In the Dark

If I catch you in the dark

I'm so sorry that I didn't wear my reflective lights.

Maybe if we found a spark to ignite

we wouldn't have to lift our eyes.

If I leapt out from my shoes

explore the city from a hundred feet above you,

is it worth it in the long run?

Waiting for the day

and losing sights of setting suns.

Firelight

Ethereal phosphorescence in the ether

of a blanket beneath the stars.

Sparks waltz from the glowing flames

pedalled from choruses and cars.

And as the day's dimuendo is forgotten,

the bled-out sun as distant as my gaze

I match my black pupils to the white moon,

wide and wonderful in my contented daze.

Finding Warmth

Incandescent candle light, 

emitting emollient pine.

Triple layers leave the night

wrapped in wool and wine.

Condensation fills the panes

when morning comes around

from a warmth that never wanes

with four bare feet off the ground.

Yet the frost gathers outside

dissipating the dewy day,

so we let our breath escape inside;

(once more) you'll keep the cold at bay.

On the Shore

Pressing through the unmitigated chaos

to come upon the calm shoreline-

a border to the ocean of my thoughts

whose waves are sleepily directed

by the whispers of my mind.

Lone as I am, standing on the grains

of my imagination's beach,

I cannot help but enjoy the humbling pressure

of discovering it all myself.

Yet I will not deny

that discovery is greater shared.

I keep looking for myself along the sand,

secretly hoping

that you will discover me instead.

Absent Cirrus

I rediscovered an old sin-stained notebook

containing your name and old phone number

written in the dark, distracted

curl of your cursive.

I was standing outside a café

watching a cirrus cloud in the cerulean sky

float by like foam on a pint of beer

(meanwhile, the absent-minded cigarette smokers outside

watch their fleeting exhalations

coalesce with the clouds),

and thinking about how 

the memory of our meeting has ebbed,

it too ascending and merging with the sky.

How you

finally broke

like a storm across the sky of everything.

Bed of Roses

Winter brings night by afternoon,

a gloaming sodium vapor lit

ninety-nine metres apart,

but those seemingly obfuscous shadows inbetween

contain the most comfort.

Favourite LP

I've noticed you listening to my favourite LP;

I've often wondered if it conjured thoughts of me.

Honestly, I could not care less if it did or not,

it's just a mild but nagging curiosity.

Do those words hold any meaning to you;

those lyrics which have often defined all that I do,

or are they just some soulless sung sentiments

which I have desperately clinging on to?

I've noticed you listening to my favourite LP;

I've often wondered if it conjured a happy memory.

Do you attach the music to those missing moments

or am I just another meaningless mp3?

I remember the times I used to sing along

and you used to declare that it was our song

but now that we have gone our separate ways

repeating the lyrics just feels wrong.

I've noticed you listening to my favourite LP;

and I wonder how you have the audacity

to ruin something that I used to love so much

and leave its sleeve in our debris.

Beneath the Surface of the Sun's Silence

Phosphenes float in the fleecy clouded sky,

like restive woken walkers, weaving to work.

The withered yellow leaves have all but died;

the worn arms that held them plea for a perk.

The grass-blades shave their early morning frost

as the sun ascends and purifies the night.

The cows complain about the latest milk costs;

the price could not justify the budget's bite.

The wind's peppermint breath conceals its scent

plundered from depths of desperation,

a breakfast of sulfurous sorts, nights spent

ruing the winter's rapid inflation.

And as day swaps shifts with the oscitant moon

the phosphenes know they have arrived too soon.

Gazeless

My words may not mean much to you.

They elicit no response

and they will hang like stars,

which are always there.

You could wait until the night,

maybe then you’d see them

but you would still have to

choose to look up

and I don’t expect that you will.

Vision of a Stream

The fleeting vision of a stream

is stolen by a sunny beam.

I cannot feel the peace that lived

within the context of my dream.

By losing heat I pay the cost 

to walk a world of fog and frost.

There is no cause to stay in bed;

the vision of the stream is lost.

Game Over

My noose has got itself into knots,

nervous about all of its loose ends-

it says it wants me to drop everything

but I can't be beneath when it descends.

My bucket is feeling so empty,

woozy from having its world completely turned-

it says I should kick it into touch

but I can't let go when it is concerned.

The spring in my step is spirited,

bouncy from the thought of a final bound-

and leaping off the pixelated cloud

I fall asleep to the "GAME OVER" sound.

Asylum Skull

Disconnected dissonance drones into my drums,
my lifeless limp body floating above my bed—
the crimson lampshade reaches out to an empty socket
as a seven hour death orbits my hollowed head,
and harrowed though I am, my cerebration can grasp the plug
to spark a glimmering celebration of the dead.

Filth/Fresh

Repulsive layers of hoary skin,

days old on my body

full of sweat and sin,

matched by the lewd grubby stubble on my chin.

Loosely layered filth on my sheets

which grip me like a drug

and fester where the flesh eats

my former self obsolete.

Transcendence,

I ascend.

The dirt from my bristly past descends down the drain,

icy water pours and devours me,

heavenly bites like an angel's unrestrained passion—

a startlingly strong baptism

penetrating my pores.

Resplendent layer of unspoilt skin

I am born;

I am youth.

Smudge

Rust rubbed into the black card-sky.

Bleak streetlights, a child's grubby fingertips

which smudge the silence with sounds soaring by,

joining the dots from thirty second clips.
And so the rhetoric realisation echoes a retrospective cry

but the hand that forms cannot maintain the same grip,

I smudge the anxious smile away from my diminishing dye

and extend the same stroke to my wind-chapped lips.

Escape Route

Something changed that night,

full-beam irradiating gleaming green needles

strewed across the silence and the desolate dust,

cascaded horse-chestnuts crunching on the coarse gravel.

As my droning wheel-bearings startled those intrepid foxes

who had dared to make the white paint their bed,

the black cat's eyes glinted towards the ebonized sky

as if their master was prepared for flight.

Much like the foxes' ill-fortuned sleep,

my small-hour soundtrack was disconnected

by some strange interference suggesting a return to signal;

a tinkering tone I could forgive

for I now find myself back in the civilization I had loved to avoid.

Through all the twists and turns,

and incandescent lunar-lit landscapes

I cannot shake your mind.

Evolution of (a) Man

Minor brushstrokes

on the portrait of my youth,

a springtime collection of sentiments

that no longer hold their truth.

So I sever the cold roots of winter

painting over the love that they had gripped

and find home in my sunny solitude

and the missing pages torn and ripped.

Soon

Surreptitious little ripples spread animus in my mind,

but art ameliorates that sour state.

48:39 to combat those dilapidated disorganised plans,

accompanying acerbic print on off-white

which resembles that resentment to empty words with its flowered obtuseness.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter;

Loveless.

I'm done.

Sleeping Away the Dreaming

Lurid, lucid landscapes in luminous zest and zeal

where majestic magenta melts into the black and gloaming teal,

but materiality could never match this mirage of an ideal

so I bring my body to bed, where everything is real.