Wasted

I have committed the worst of sins

one can commit. I have not been

Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion

take and engulf me, mercilessly.

I applied my mind to the symmetric

arguments of art, its web of trivia,

when my parents bore me for

a much grander purpose in this

Life. It never leaves me. Always at my side,

that shadow of a melancholy man.

Rooted

The crowds that linger in desolate spaces are bound by nothing,

and yet are as rooted as the trees that whisper in autumn.

The merciless soil grants no escape to those without a sense of self,

They construct cells to hold the sacred and unwilling,

Square and rectangular blocks housing all their frivolities.

Burdened by burdens masquerading as necessary joys.

Still

People are a distraction

both from ennui

and motivation

which is why

I feel so distracted

from the motivation

of a useful attraction.

Inhaling Summer

A half-bloomed hydrangea 

swaying in the balmy air —

I close my eyes

and let the scent linger.

Dregs

You left this morning

a strand of hair, the door

half a cup of black coffee, on the floor

a note

singing nothing you hadn't sung before

already, as the pitch black of night simmered down

I was drinking up your dregs for more.

Clouds and Cliffs

A landscape of clouds and cliffs

lurid in luscious green,

and sandstone rolls and lifts

into the twisted perception of dream.

...

A                             r                               t

both compliments and compromises 

the condition of the human soul

——mine——

lies waiting for a muse to perfect it

and so too does my soul.

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.

Yonderly Shores

The susurrus brush of sinuous waves,

systatic with the siccaneous sand,

is soft in her sun-clad syzygy

guided by the virason's weathered hand.

The fusillade of over-turned fossils

foraminate the fool's merry frescade—

a farraginous flânerie falls short

of foaming footprints he's now forced to wade.

And so the shore laps up the shingled kiss,

an insatiable disregard for man;

insidiating with the sea to spoil

his own lecanoscopic day-dreamed plan.

And so the shore stops his saccharine kiss,

the velleites of man in ignorant bliss.

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.

Silence and Sirens

There's little difference in the susurrus spoken sound

of 'silence' and 'sirens'

yet within their substance

is considerable distance

That is how I feel

about the sigh of you and I.

I've spent an ephemeral eternity

trying to establish

which of us, despite apparent semblance,

is guilty of the din.

I've started to surmise that it is me—

the bashful banshee.

Searching for the Sun

I wake with the aching beauty

of the world. The sunlight shines a

sparrow's silhouette through my window ajar,

but it is gone before

the morning's melody is heard.

The fact that every thing is profound

takes nothing from the unique, singular

profundity of every moment, fragment

and splinter of our being.

The path is full of gravel.

I shovel the stones because

I like to hear them clatter.

I don't remember which way

the sun comes up.

I hunt for it in the mornings

then I just sit among the rocks

and pick at the weeds, thirsting

their way up, hoping for rain.

The weeds get their wish,

and I wade back in wet and worn

sighs.

The storm clears and

I'm left

still searching for the sun.

...Of our Time

Do not mistake what is being said for what has been said,

for even though time transcends the fragments in a spasmodic puzzle,

there is weight in each word

(repeated or not)

and with each imbrication

our individual actions implicate,

we are each of us

essentially the sum of our parts.

Plummet

Children sitting on the cliff edge, examining

the ebbing tide,

tossed pebbles first, then flowers.

The flowers floated;

the children sank.

Wade

Wave-licked

with thigh-rolled jeans he had strode

out to where the sea catches its breath,

forgetting the electronical device in his pocket.

And in that wind-plucked foam, 

made a father-pose,

though no sandal'd tussock bug rolled the dunes

waving the prize of a perfect wooden pistol,

and the shore was repeatedly planed clean,

clear of all gust battered figures.

The Noise That You'll Hear...

The hollow crash of waves on sand

is behind me.

now the sun, through sand,

sears my feet callused.

from sand to stone,

from stone to grass,

and home.

My skin glows like a coal.

I can still hear the water

as sleep slowly follows.

Sequestration at Sea

My aimless heart dances atop a tide-free ocean

with no pull to bring him to shore.

I know that he does not mind being at sea

but my mind's not as sure anymore.

I can't decide if I'm more frightened at getting stranded

or that it's what I hold deep within my will.

You see, at heart I am still a buoy

who is destined to stay innocently still.

With luck, I will be led to safety by a lighthouse

and arrive at your body of land.

A life spent avoiding being on the rocks

might prevent me caressing the sand.

So I will concentrate on making my life a speck

barely seen by hostile telescopes.

I will sail as far away as I can

then drop the anchor and cut the ropes.

Spun

The spider hung grotesque

upon his palace made of string.

My palace shuts out all the light

his trembles in the wind.

The maxim goes that I am strong

and he is weak and thin.

Yet here he sits, an emperor. And I am yet to spin.

Masquerade

Insincerity is society's greatest hypocrisy

and I cannot stomach the illusion.

A plethora of prepared pleasantries

to choke on in calculated confusion.

So spare me the sycophantic simpering,

complimented with a soap opera smile.

Remove the mechanical masquerade that custom has made

and display your human hatred without guile.

Estuary and the Ebbing Light

Forget my thoughts floating down the river,

let the bank pick up stray reeds and algae

like an unrestrained dog owner with boundless and bundling

love. Let there be darkness,

allow the mouth to open up and pour brackish water

into a grey pool of jagged generations.

Clasp the sky's air, wiggle your dirty toes,

splash your knees, sing to the birds, tell my thoughts

to stop swimming upstream, where they might

find the source to be furiously underwhelming.

Night Shames

Composing conversations

in my head

with the ideal conclusions

to relieve dread.

But what I can construct

within a thought

is never completely construed

the way it ought.

And so I must recompose

with blushing shame

a peripheral panicked past

penned to my name.

Routine

Tiptoes traverse the muddy trail,

heeding not the heavy heels

which hinder their tender tread.

Rhythmic rapid repetition

through foliage fair and frail,

each steely sinew anneals

to a thorough structured thread.

Rhythmic rapid repetition

must eventually derail

from the salubrious appeals

of the constant path ahead...

Helicoid

Sunday's splintered sunlight

punctures panicked moments

that the mind construes as truth.

A subconscious retelling

of Monday's mundane memory

that manifested in my youth.

The authentic narrative

from a nebulous night

in a morphinic stream

is surrendered seconds

of a worn-out waking life

wound up in last year's dream.