The Red Drenched Hill

This is....

The Red Drenched Hill

Lit by low-slung sun, 

This is the red drenched hill, 

I am going to die on.

 Like a moth 

in a trial of fire. 

Until all love and hurt is gone. 

Because 

Everything ends up used. 

Scattered and ever abused.

 And you keep on coming 

Round to play. 

As if you’ve not got the news: 

I feel nothing for you

still. 

You see I see you from way up here, 

Wonder if you can climb high, 

Now I’ve cut my hair short 

Let the stormy clouds rot. 

I’ve no need of them 

in my eyeliner sky. 

When you cannot reach me. 

Gravestones sewn beneath me. 

And the weakening sun ray.

 By the weary sigh on 

sigh. 

If you want some advice. 

If there’s any left to give. 

Dismount from your high horse. 

It’s dying in pain of your loss. 

It doesn’t make any odds. 

When all sunlight leaves us 

Don’t think darkness frees us 

We intertwine like lover’s brides

 And call out

 To our gods. 

Even while Hell is in our eyes. 

You know, 

We’re too busy feeding robots 

Because we’re all just robots 

Programmed to eat donuts 

And self-destruct a wish that we die. 

Make no mistake 

I feel nothing for you 

On this hill. 

Time heals nothing around me 

No cure has yet come found me.

Loss is never found. 

It is never more healed. 

Alone, watching all down below. 

I realise the carnage 

See the tragic damage 

Smell the smoke of Carthage 

And there’s one truth that I know: 

When everything is on fire 

That can catch on fire 

My love lies still beside me, 

Burning. 

Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said: 

A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish, And Priam and his people shall be slain. 

And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human.

You Stole My Heart, by Jeanie Laub

I'm honoured my friend and artist @laubjean has found inspiration in my words of Your Thieving Hands for this piece of her art.

I love her interpretations of my words. I am so happy our artforms suit our styles so well. I hope we we collaborate more together.

I'm delighted to share this with the wider world.

This is:
You Stole My Heart, by Jeanie Laub

LIFEFORCE

This is the B-side to:
To be treated like an author discovered off the prescribed student reading list 

It was not meant to be, but it quickly developed into something which had a voice and something to say, so why not let it breathe now? It seems an apt negative to the A-side.

This is... LIFEFORCE

I’m torn apart nightly. 

My love. 

Pull pieces together each and every day. 

All sound and contact and light and motion 

hurts me in a different way. 

All seems useless acts of attrition. 

And to what end… does it flatter. 

To live. 

More hours to kill and with a flourish scatter.

I’ve a life-force in a jar. 

I’ve a life-force from a star. 

At the bottom of the wept green sea. 

Shells for teeth. Coral for hair. 

Rocks in shoes to keep me underneath. 

People on the shoreline talk on behalf of me. 

But I don’t trust their laughter there. 

Sounds of tides crashing over pebble and shale on the beach. 

I’ll be dug, 

dug deep underground. 

The horror. 

Trinkets for archaeologists will be left to be found. 

And I know 

I’ll lose all I ever had. 

Is what is 

God’s plan to make me unbearably sad. 

I’ve a life-force in a jar. 

I’ve a life-force from a star. 

I’m the House of Usher. 

Foundations cracking up. 

Fuck your struggle and bluster. 

It’s ludicrous to think about 

just how insignificant but all consuming that you are. 

I’ve a life-force in a jar. 

I’ve a life-force from a star. 

I’ve a life-force in a jar. 

I’ve a life-force from a star.

To be treated like an author discovered off the prescribed student reading list

In this summertime, I appear to have written a gothic love song.

It came from first trying to describe the feeling of the first discovery of a book no one else is reading and falling in head over heels with it. Becoming obsessed with it. Wanting more of it. Hiding it away from others. Protecting it from others.

This is... To be treated like an author discovered off the prescribed student reading list

Hold me as you do a book.

Suck on these new found wounds

As you do on words of lust.

Forbidden, now tasted first.

Read me as bones up at the church,

An outlier with your youth.

A connection to something other.

Grip me as I grip you.

Attached by our unreliable truth.

Part of the Altogether.

Turn pages like lips in pulse.

They draw a guilt from paper

Kisses like a poultice

On the body.

An unremarkable body nonetheless

Beats and writhes - ugly thing -

on pulped, bloody sadness.

The way we like a sadness.

Take slow licks up my skin.

The salty spit reveal papercuts.

From sharpness written.

In your blessed annotation.

Letters bladed as birds' beaks.

Peaks scratched into the surface.

Untie the ribbon which you have me bound.

Crack my spine to lay me down.

 Then open me as you do a book.

One outside the prescribed reading list.

Guest poem: A cold wind will blow

While Greville and the Tombstones are in the studio (#thereisnomixing), this blog has been a little quiet.

Let me bring the noise back with this rock guest poem.

This is A cold wind will blow, by @peej.

I am - was - grief

This is the final hymn from the Hymnary of the Church of Crows.

It is grief: living with grief, becoming grief everlasting. Grief is all that we leave on this mortal coil. Grief is what we become. This is the belief. This is the belief of the congregation of the Church of Crows.

This is.... I am - was - grief

The feeling is now artificial.

Needs concocted and mixed.

No longer muscle memory.

A veteran of what was ever seen.

“That must have been awful”

It truly must have been.

You shall be the same.

Great fish bowl tears for ------,

turn aquariums for blue fish.

Budding hanging clouds:

listless and nowhere near inclined.

“I wander drenched, I’m lost”

You’ll find a path, in time.

On ash crackled lines

disconsolate creatures call:

wail out over raw grey lands.

Concerto of night sea inconsolate.

“Do these creatures fly?”

In murmurations inchoate.

These spirits move around.

Moulding, taking misshapes.

Them: I venture through

what’s drawn as easy from a quill.

“If they lose shape entirely?”

They cannot; never will.

Priest, Mortis-infinite,

perched among the gods.

Appreciates performances,

proffers down thorny roses.

Cheers and jeers our little show.

“Is that the sound above?”

Yes. Cawing of the crow.

Scythe reaper of our harvest.

Warm in the August dry wheat sun.

Laid and aired as stickling sheaf,

Creatures for other’s grief.

We’ll pour our ink to the inkwell.

Swoop in dusk-lit-batic feats.

In life’s rafters we’ll take a bearing beam.

“Has this always been our purpose?”

It has truly always been.

Death Knell

After the beauty comes Greville and the Tombstones. This started out a little bleak, but lightened up as it went on.

Death Knell

There is no hope.

But it’s the hope which kills.

So that’s alright then.

The shock is always unforgiving.

No matter that what is known is certain.

It was all for all this nothingness.

It was all for all this nothingness.

Never so alive than near death,

so that's OK then.

I suppose,
I guess.
Because that's what they say.
Because that's what they say.

Real death cuts off the fuel pipe:

tragic humiliation;

creation of mess.

Leaves everyone lonely, feeling alone.

Leaves everyone lonely, feeling alone.

The sunrise is aflame,

winter will be soon.

And cold will be less.

Tried to convey my eyes to other human beings:

it’s a chaotic emptiness.

A chaotic emptiness through me.

A chaotic emptiness through me.

Why does my body keep on operating when my life keeps on killing me?

I won't see all history

and what might do for me

is a failing single infinitesimal artery.

Pre-programmed to go involuntary.

Pre-programmed to go involuntary.

Intravenous me, hydrate me.

Strip the enamel from my teeth.

Wheels, cords and sticks is all I am.

Bless me as I run.

Moon up-lights rain from underneath.

Rain like silver razor blades.

Razor blades slice like this rain.

I read and I read and bleed until lines

sink deep through the pages.

I write and I write

and I write and writhe until

lines are thick bars of cages.

We are standing on the death knell.

We are standing on the death knell.

The flowers I picked for your hand hold the scent of other days.

I wish there were other flowers for other days

There will be other days.

There will be other days.

There will be other days.

There will be other days.

A meditation on wonder whilst knowing the end. Or: Johann Bartholomeus Adam Beringer is dead!

I've tried to write something beautiful. It just about caused me go mad with the headaches. I'm not cut out to write beautifully.

This is...
A meditation on wonder whilst knowing the end.
Or: Johann Bartholomeus Adam Beringer is dead!

Narrowest morning:

Paint blot moon in the cyan.

Sun blazed rising on a razor.

Swept pastel ribbons of cloud

gently compelled to flutter.

Storm line settles some distance away.

The cemetery always

in the grip of some chill.

It might be how it’s exposed:

On the hillside; trees far off.

Nylon flowers serve better here.

Concern glowers from oblong dull stones.

Bones lay evenly for all.

Lay flat a hand: see it.

Restful peace: a harmony.

Never lift another book.

Not another desirous grasp.

Let me pass without a touched wonder!

Lace of theories

do gather in the cemetery.

Colour of snakes’ skin.

Sharpness of citrus.

With chisel cuts to the day.

The truth: “No happiness before death”

There: a moment where,

wishing failure on despair,

dreamt stood on dust plane.

No soul shone round fair.

Compassion was my Hell

Birds left in massed shrieking squalls.

Bridge arched in wood.

Creeper branches arborescent.

Red berries dropping

like notes from piano keys.

Onto deadening wires.

Their music ruining everything.

Blood pouring out.

On paper, blood-slipping,

words shifting as they soak.

Dropping like red berries.

Gloominess of thought.

Not particularly caring for this beauty.

Romantic Masochist (Valentine mix)

Photography by @tellthee

Love Truth Love.

Poet's desk

I like this. It's how I want to be sometimes, writing for Greville and the Tombstones.

Many thanks to Jeanie Laub for finding and sharing this with me.

The Glorious Verse sleeve art

@tellthee created this appropriate sleeve art should a CD of The Glorious Verse be released. Which it wont because #thereisnoCD #thereisnoband

All the same, this is wonderful.

The glorious verse

This started out as a series of unconnected lines I wrote.
This is as close to a philosophical tract as I may muster.
I imbued it with malice.

The Glorious Verse...  

If I can’t get a muse,

An archenemy will do for me just as well.

I walk beside the river,

Through the membrane, fingers reach for me.

I’m a collection of atoms.

Put together to witness astrophysics and cruelty.

There's a crack in my ribcage

To put a cassette in, to playback my same position.

Like a pinned moth on a board

I’m uncomfortable and in need of a physician.

[Break]  

In this lecture theatre

We are both the studious and the studied.

A flash of the Pale Cutter's needle,

Neat stitching transforms us into what we are. 

A last exhale

slipping its mooring rope, roadkill, a cadaver.

[Break]  

If I require a reason,

I am surrounded by a past so have to not seek any further. 

I know, I know, I know, but you
and your woe can go right on ahead and fuck one another.

I try to claw at time.

Tremble as she shapes her legs along her parallel universe.

[the glorious verse]

I'm well aware.
I'm only too well aware of this.
After love there is loss and God only knows what we miss out on.

I’ve found no redeeming qualities in moral redemption:

They place a jar, ring a salt circle, make a flame small.

I've discovered no hopes in falsehoods masking desperation:

A world of physical tenderness
is the most mournful gift to the lonesome of all.

And I know about it,
I know only too well all about it.
Won't expect your mercy in your all enduring judgment.

And I know all about it.
How people shift into better; into worse.

When she steals my gaze in amber, I hear the glorious verse.