Against testing animal fighting.

 

This is... Against testing animal fighting.

Nothing. Nothing.

No thing. No thing. No thing.

Not a thing.

Empty. Empty.

Empty me.

I'm slipping. Detaching. Moving to Heaven or Hell.

Ethereal. No, no:

Ephemeral.

I might be a different person.

From the one who I let imagine

I might be in a different place.

From where my body has been laying.

Below honeysuckle and bees.

Sugar cubes stirred into my cup of tea.

Effect from cause.

Against testing animal fighting.

Placebo cube pill stirred into my cup of tea.

As long as we're taking something

We can be artificial.

Guilt is the only thing left for certain.

Feels like the only thing left that's real.

Only thing that's not an equation.

That's the gospel of travelling Preacher Johnny Fishbone.

I heard on the telephone he's setting up his folding church

Just out of town under beams of broadcast static.

I want to believe. Just not believe in that much.

I heard on the commercial he's handing out tickets to the Rapture.

Offering those who go a legacy software patch.

I heard on the grapevine he's wearing a pastel blue suit

With a golden tie and boots.

I heard on the Ouija board.

About what he's feeding his congregation.

He's talking in computer beeps and bops.

He regards them as data that's corrupt and lost.

Accept the Jesus cookies.

We are damned as predator and blessed as prey.

Servants of God and Kings of home.

Let me put a counterpoint like a driven pickaxe into bone.

Your existence is proof enough for me of no Divinity.

On the thatch ground.

Wildflower of the scrub.

Far from indoctrinations hanging on the wire.

I was led to the reflecting pool.

Led to the colour, led to the prose.

No telling how deep it goes.

I was shown Pan. Not for the prospecting of gold.

But to discover shimmering desire, between the gleaming stones.

To find something to behold.

Stings bite differently once you are submerged.

Bodies strain differently once you put your head under.

Meanings falter differently once you dissolve them.

Then no one taught me how to swim.

Compelled and repelled at falling in

The cubed water disturbed by a tail and fin.

Birdsong echoing like church bells in a thundering sky, above.

Someone take me in.

It's not a baptism.

It's a splash of shock of the sublime.

Your existence is proof enough of no Divinity.

Neither of yours nor of mine.

I can show you the horror of mankind:

God visits whether we are present or not:

We are only witnesses of time.

A eyeball sun rolling, shade in lashes, iris alien botanica flowering,

That's what I'm offering.

Protect yourself, there are people

 

Protect yourself, there are people

There is a she wolf howling at the moon.

Howling at anything looking like the moon.

In her teeth she's tossing about the body.

Tearing insides from out of the body.

Jolting the body into motion.

It doesn't matter who's blood she's drawing,

Doesn't matter the black crow cawing.

Instinct and wolf spit only.

I can smoke pensively, if it helps you.

There is a soul worn thread thin.

Tattered knot bloodshot insane bone saw.

Bone instrument.

In it for the love of the game, not the win.

Litheness stiffened and voice rottened long ago.

It's a snake wearing my skin.

Forcing reanimation.

Jolting the body into ritual.

I lurch and I growl.

Instinct and wolf spit only.

I can do more or less, if it helps you.

I want to lay perfectly still, flat as moonlight.

I want the impression in flesh from fallen pines.

I want damp dirt squeezed between my fingers.

I want the slick storm to pass over, nothing to

Jolt my body into earthly communion.

I want to hoist my flag in omnipotent surrenders.

But it's not unstained, barely white now.

Instinct and wolf spit only.

After the minute's silence comes the encore

 

This is... After the minute's silence comes the encore

When I was young I struggled to express my fate.

Well, today my insides are still out of tune to

articulate

Just how I'm feeling about it.

Nothing gets in or out.

Zeus smoked a large cigar

at my rocking cradle

He gifted me an iron key.

It unlocks all meaning but won't fit a safe answer.

A fable

but I see:

A sky above that will never be 

the same again.

A sky up there and that won't ever change.

I am a universe: no more, no less what I can contain.

At times I do feel new, I confess.

I can't help what I'm feeling all this particular evening.

It's in my DNA to believe in souls and black holes and 

Shooters on grassy knolls.

This is something to break the minute's silence.

Like a thunder storm is something to break the minute's silence.

Like my confession is something to break the minute's silence.

The silence will always be here.

The breaks will always be here.

Nothing is lost, nothing is gained.

You and me and every songbird forever the breaking silence.

Mendicine

To me - and what I tried to do - in this poem is write exactly what my teenage self would have wanted to write. It has all that teenage cool hormonal angst I had to it. It feels confessional, which I wanted. It feels like it is trying to break out of as yet undeveloped way of expressing something, anything. And that came easy as I still struggle to articulate. It's a poem that wishes it could be better, but realises it maybe just needs to be there at all.

It has that grunge to it.

This is... Mendicine

My timing's slightly off.

Plead with a squall:

A little more time over there.

Voice cracks into a beg:

A little less time over here.

Not grief enough for the living.

Comfort myself by consoling the dead.

I'm sickly when I'm sweet.

Watching myself pass right on by me.

Are my convictions based on muscle memory?

A conscientious voice on a whim

I'm no longer

Invested in?

Don't conflate politeness for my acceptances.

Take another bitter pill.

Take another happy pill.

Take another pill

to stop being ill.

Watching my language whenever I can.

"A sensitive boy" is some euphemism to a man.

Well you know I perfectly am.

Sensitive to motherfuckers

Spending beautiful days.

Sensitive superpower at locating our differences.

Take another calming pill.

Take another caffeine pill.

Take another pill

to stop being ill.

Waiting for the mendicine to kick in.

Watching the needle of the record player.

Played B side so much its flipped the A side grooves over.

Spinning reasons to be beside the living.

Some are bloody minded.

Some are forgiving.

Sometimes the bride, sometimes monstrosity.

Take another patchwork pill.

Take another tailormade pill.

Take another pill

To stop being ill.

Watching the surrounding walls closing in.

Knowing they are paper dry and just as paper thin.

I pretend in the room when I said

That the walls are built

of solid lead.

To stop them stopping me torching them with flamethrowers.

Take another paranoia pill.

Take another mind expanding pill.

Take another pill

to stop being ill.

Watching corkscrew chain reactions spiral.

In a fuzzy summer afternoon suburban smog roll.

I threw them out like sickly sweets.

Don't think I don't hear these

Under floorboard heartbeats.

Hands shielding eyes from the blinding flash of consequences.

Take another ten dreams per hour pill.

Take another anti-nightmare pill.

Take another pill

to stop being ill.

Take another pill to get down.

Take another pill to swallow.

Take another pill to endure the collateral. 

Take another pill to be unconditional.

Who made whom; it doesn't matter at all

We won't always be able to

touch the way we want to.

Take another pill to numb all the pain.

Take another pill to feel it all again.

Take another pill to be unreliable

narrators.

Take another pill to be uncompromisingly

put on this earth for.

Take another pill

To be what we always will be

To the other.

I don't need to take another pill.

I don't mind being ill.

It's not the getting better but the scarring.

It's not about the healing but the mending.

Not a rapier blade, but a hickory bow bending.

I hear the sound of arrows whistling.

It's the sound of the mendicine kicking in.

Long Jolly Crossbones

 
This is... 

Long Jolly Crossbones

Breaking light over flowing on your high seas.

Playful shines upon them quick silver.

And you told me this was treasure.

Under colours hoisted into vaulted skies.

We hanged our enemies to the yardarm.

And you told me this was freedom.

A crow's nest sighting of the world's edge.

The old charts declared: "bad omen!"

And you told me this was living.

So you set course by canon grey clouds.

And sashay between opium puffs.

And you told me this was the true compass.

And I sailed on your high seas!

Felt your body writhe in swelling waves.

And I sailed on your high seas!

You held me with a thousand fathoms.

And you told me this is ritual.

We floated on backs out in the vast and formless maths.

In the iron caldron, huge shadows in torus stirred the depths.

In celestial constellations we saw the sublime.

In Northern Lights saw their minds spill out.

And it was then we made up our minds nothing was Divine.

And I wished upon every shooting star I saw

I'd never feel earth beneath me anymore.

The bite was a natural good. The calluses came 

From holding tight.

The sea sickness was plenty. But the sickness thrilled me.

But all voyages discover shores eventually.

Even when sailing in your high seas.

I said, we are organisms in an organism world

Everything just a conceptual design

Of yours and mine.

We go where the wild wind picks up sails we unfurled.

You told me:

"You wish an undertow will carry you far

Where the only lines left are the straight horizon

And sparkling  tail of a shooting star.

To hold faster yet in a sweeping perfect maelstrom. It breaks

Down, the din, upon you and you push back with all your might.

Like beauty, it will pass by.

Know this:

The most enduring ships are wrecks.

Throw the jetsam, throw the flotsam.

Let them

wash up on someone's heart.

The ocean can be mistress or lover,

Distress or comforter.

It can reflect or refract.

Tentacles sometimes pull wishbones apart.

Spirits sometimes run aground on humanity.

Shipmates sometimes shift into mutiny.

Springboards sometimes are just short planks for longing.

A bow clipping through water can be clipped wings

in fallen tears from a crying shame.

Winds on the tundra can sound like confessional howls,

or the sound of prayer.

And, again, I see you walking on water,

Only the first time I didn't see your ankles wet.

And sea green meadows are green from algae,

Choke-hold with weeds and overgrown ivy.

Nothing matters: Not any ship,

Not the opera singing siren. Not the 

the jagged reef."

And you told me

You knew the melting point of portraits.

And you told me

The length of chain doesn't make it easier to break.

And you told me

This sea chest is full of pulled out gold teeth.

You marooned me.

Left me an X on your map.

What a cruel thing.

Left me lost though left me exactly where I am.

Cast adrift on an island of tidal sands.

And I've named each grain you.

And I look out

At your high seas.

Rolling in an out like your breath.

A monkey on an expedition to circumnavigate the face of God

 

This is only a mood piece.

This is...

A monkey on an expedition to circumnavigate the face of God

You hurt me just the right amount.

Set me up just as a body count.

Surround me in ways so few ever do.

By a Japanese master's brush strokes.

My spine is a needle and its being threaded through the canvas.

When existence is only by texture thickly layered onto texture.

Elementals thrashing into spume.

Like peacock feathers in full bloom.

Lipstick spit; nylon dipped; hot wax dripped; cityscape stripped

To the teeth bared back.

Lens flare headlights and growling exhaust pipes.

Copper eyes glinting out the dark.

Out in these lupine days just bright enough.

Everyone sticking onto everywhere from obsessional sweat.

Shirts peeled from surfaces, shoes fetishised in their purposes.

You hurt me just the right amount.

You know I'm your devout.

Seize me as a relic you possess.

Release is slow; every breath as ghosts.

My spine is a weeping tree: leaves may fall but branches remain.

Where you can't see my ribs for the vines laced good and tight.

Skeleton shows sharpened marks from flint.

Sharpened cutlass to slice through the all of it:

Purging flame; curse blowing hurricane; human detonating pain

Of a nuclear blast.

All consumed bones are getting exhumed.

Rake over ashes to see what's glinting out the dark.

I'm in these lupine days just bright enough. 

Time as Witness metamorphoses its final form of Time as Absence.

When existence is only folding matters into madness.

When my existence feels like texture.

When my existence feels like time running out.

You hurt me just the right amount.

Draw a chalk outline around what I adore.

When rain is passing, knocking on new town doors, 

And softening dirt to get the bodies out.

Ends tend not to be wrapped in bows, but in shrouds.

The Sculptor (AKA: A commercial radio song)

 

This feels like an affinity piece to Hallucinogenic sister 

This is... The Sculptor (AKA: A commercial radio song)

Globules of morbs rolling off my form.
Organ pipes squeal and moan when fingers hit the keys.
Begging me onward: “harder".
Sabre for a spine, so everything en garde!
Sharpening strife from notes and notes from me.
My self-harmer, snake-hipped charmer.
With love of Pan, the sculptor
Gazed upon this work and put down the hammer.
No one could agree on what the shape was meant to be.
For all eyes on it, the shape was different.
For all hands on it, the shape was different
Didn't understand the shape
was too painfully beautiful to behold.

This shape doesn't do this emptiness justice.
Trying to form it from the waste is:
The non-existent past. The dust.
Cotton that grows cold.

Gravity pulls            out in waves.
Months stretch like years to get this way.
Nothing more moths vomiting mulch from decay.
Trying to shape this elemental absence from you.
Feelings poisoning ground wherever Time once grew.
Bloodied mind writhing tied to late summer vines.
Body crackling like crisped, frosted fallen leaves.
Imploding with a pressure of a thousand seas.
Keep centering to a centre that cannot hold.
A shifting shape I cannot mold.
A shape to lay with.
A shape to fall
down
the
cracks with.
An added line.
To slip in between.
A shape to be with, to be there
in the depths of despair of yours and mine.
A shape that fits the puzzle, a piece shaped universally.
A shape that recognises
shapes no one else can see.

A shape that dispels noise with resonating music.
This pipe organ keeps sounding out the notes.
Throwing anything overboard that floats.
The chords, jagged like river rapids.
Heart of meat, the wolves can have it.
It's the plasm spirit that I don't want ripped asunder.
So I hit the resin keys harder to try to hear the echo and wonder
If you are aware I still try to play the harmonics I hear in thunder.

Sweat rolls down off the coffin.
Pallbearers squeal and moan with each step of the carry.
Begging me on: "How much can you take?"
Jaw like a vice, only clenched when awake.
The shape, a shadow from the lashing flame.
What shape is heat and cast-off light?
Some believed the shape must have inner sculpting.
Cogs to be swapped: one for another or another.
Others said the shape was at once each of the four seasons.
Within it there must be moons of orbital gardens.
Flowers in full bloom or withered by shade.
Perfection made an ecosystem in constant imperfection.
Spirits for botanicals.
Such was the sculptor's marvels.
But they couldn't understand.
The shape and them are contortions held in perfect suspension.
Between loss and lost clinched in macabre shaped occasion.

A summer evening's garden

 

This is... A summer evening's garden

A fox in twilight on summer evening prowl.

Moving like a half-light memory I have winding

In an evening summer garden.

Under art nouveau leaves.

Brushing through angel feather willow trees.

And palette popping colour petals.

Rows of can-can skirt dancers.

Embrace of tight go-go-dancers.

Peacocking barroom romancers.

Sliding oil bubbles floating across and bursting like

Prism tear drops scattered.

And compound fractures.

The apple white flesh of a living branch half-snapped

Skin holding on, sinews bent but intact.

Chlorophyl keeps photosynthesising.

You say it's nature but I say it's misery.

Where I lie still as the fox steps over me with its kill.

Nylon flowers

 

This is... Nylon Flowers

Nothing blossoms in this garden.

It's without a cradle into the clouds' bosom.

Lacks lightness of being sparkling above water surface tension.

Under the weight of this dense earth forces evolution.

Stems of wire.

Lace bowed into posed leaves.

Nylon flowers.

So yet we bloom, of course, of sorts.

Torture back garden

This is... Torture back garden

I read in the latest Lady's Flora Gazette

Plant life know when they are being eaten.

"I am being eaten"

Fucking Hell.

They say to the other plants around them:

"I am being eaten"

Fuck Me.

To warn them the latex sheen bug is taking bites.

"Assume the brace position"

My God.

You may still be identifiable by your thorns.

I read in a botanist research paper

Plant life count bees as a concept of time.

"It is time again"

Jesus, yes.

They listen out for the buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz

"It is time again"

Holy fuck.

Recognising the individual style of sting.

"Assume the brace position"

My God.

Count the blessings for the bee and the whip.