Swan Vesta

This is... Swan Vesta

Lying between your legs.

Head on your hip while you read Brecht.

Doing anything else would be a waste of time.

This inclement June.

I nuzzle into your cotton.

My rib-cage slips under my skin from my breath.

My fingers sliding underneath the elasticated band

Of your ankle sock.

I might as well try to stop the birds in the trees

From singing as here and now stopping wanting you

"The curse of reincarnation

Is growing pains"

No more than a growl.

You say:

"Your monsters are like

 all you have read are medieval texts.

Flowers grow crooked in angled sunsets"

I say: "Leave me to preying wolves"

You say: "Even when your empty skull is found,

I'll put my middle finger into your eye-socket and

 I'll know you again."

"Writing is eroticism."

"Intimacy of writing in the ink I gave you"

I say: "I run a finger to a smear of wet ink

letters across the paper so I might place each 

word on my tongue."

Your reclining whisper:

"It's like an indie girl taught you how to kiss"

Quote "One's freedom fighter, is another's terrorist"

I spat a lot of blood out

in the bathroom sink.

You say:

"When time turns flesh,

You can twist a knife in, really mean it,

And twine ourselves between its naked warmth"

I feel every moment

When you enter my head.

I say:

"Spending time with you is a fetish you sell.

Quote "What isn't Heaven is Hell, can't you tell?"

Our rib-cages slip under blood and flesh

When we breathe.

They're coming to get you, Barbara

I don't rightly know when, but I've found myself fascinated by the very personal micro-history one creates.

This is... They're coming to get you, Barbara

Those wild floral hours.

That morning complexion of a first kiss.

Bird song, tart as berries.

Now the late bloom buds never were as red.

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

Pressed meadow flowers laid along slender forearms

and dirty upturned palms.

As the sun loves the shine.

Sweat clings to this scent like a dress.

Smudged mascara, smoked breath.

How many nights has it wore on until dawn?

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

Clawing out. Ancient. Ruin. Fossil. Contorting, sleekit.

Midwinter creepit.

They are always coming to get you, Barbara.

And they're growing in number.

Trying to consume you with their crimes.

The lives you led trying to wipe out.

You've wondered lately.

How easy it can be to fall off the horizon.

How a round world has straight edges.

Are they gaining now, is the trail ahead ledges?

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

With wet church glass eyes blinking at you existing

Don't look behind, keep running.

They are always coming to get you, Barbara.

And they're growing in number.

Rising from earth of your half remembered form.

They are the harvest and the swarm.

They are always coming to get you, Barbara.

And they're growing in number.

You can't replant a tree as a seed, only chop them down.

The woodland  you're in is your own.

William Blake, Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Munroe.

Vonnegut, Brecht, Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe.

Sharon Tate, Bach, Plath, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

It's the weather for it

 

This is... It's the weather for it.

It feels like I could successfully contact the dead.

It's the end of November and fallen leaves on the ground

are easily read.

Winter season brings a haunting to resilience. Or resilience to a haunting.

I'm not meaning through a performative medium.

Guests unconvinced by a knock, cloth or breath on neck.

I've got laudanum.

The house has sharp, cold, air in it. My father died in this room.

It feels like I could successfully contact the dead.

By myself, I don't intend to converse because it's memories

 I've come to resurrect.

 

Acid rain

This feels very much like a B-side. Not actually saying anything in particular.

This is... Acid rain

I don't want to go out in this change of weather.

I'm not having any fun in it no more.

Watching you become acid rain.

Don't want to walk under it.

Step to not slip on its shadow,

spilled thickly on the ground.

I don't want to get soaked through.

Laid there.

Cutting sheets off from my body.

In a shower of wire barbs.

Things grow on us.

Rushes.

Thorns.

Trailing vines.

Day's eyes.

They weave and they push apart.

They save and they hurt the heart.

It's a shame how it went down.

I tired of whistling for it.

Out twisted lips, always sucked instead of blew.

When I came to see, the light was blue.

When I came to talk, the temperature was blue.

When I came to touch, the hand was blue

We don't talk about the cold weather no more.

Hourglass figures

 This is... Hourglass figures

We have always lived in a sandcastle.

You and your past self would not be friends.

We drift out to one another's obscurity.

We have hourglass figures.

At the end of the World.

There will be calm to count.

 Individual collateral accumulation.

Blue teddy bear, dog toy, fast food wrapper.

Foxes' hidden treasures in suburbia glade.

We have hourglass figures.

Finding faith in séance.

Playback birds from yesterday.

Sing us something we know in tremolo.

What had no weight is too heavy to lift today.

A river is only water in cupped hands.

We have hourglass figures.

Sedimented allegory.

Chroniclers are unreliable narrators.

Cassandra knew she'd be unfairly written down.

Cleopatra was shaped of the right stuff.

We have hourglass figures.

Sleazier than a misused religious metaphor

I've tried to write something hot. I'm not sure a graveyard poet with an imaginary gothic band can "do" hot. But here's my go.

This is...

Sleazier than a misused religious metaphor

Across the sticky floor, stepping out a Fujifilm

"Give me a Quick Fuck"

Teasing the F out of a lower lip bite.

Bartender pours a shot of something like

Green cough syrup.

Neck exposed in the swallow.

Maneki-neko 

 Clinging to a white-T

Under, cartoon words:

"I purr if you stroke me"

Shoes that never take themselves off.

Desirous fingers always to unclasp the buckles.

Unthread the straps.

Bare footed walk into the last call black cab.

Across sticky lips, over Jesus and Mary Chain tape:

"Give me little deaths"

Smoke mixed with your breath blows

slow into my mouth on the beat of the vowels.

Try to look like I don't care for it.

Nylon to cotton.

Merlin to Morgan le Fay.

"My tongue will weave you to incantation as it takes little lives away"

Nothing more religious

Than truth telling when we consecrate the grave.

Flesh to flesh.

Across your body wearing Chanel number six. 

"Unclip me from my crucifix"

Sleazier than a misused religious metaphor.

Slithering down and round and lower.

Untied snake gold chains slip loose ends.

Let's dig our bones

Up from the soil of Eden

Let's smear each others' make-up and get to it.

In the greased embrace

Arches and eyerolls collide into energy lit

as anti-matter.

Because nothing matters.

Across a night clutching you tighter than shrink-wrap

"I love fucking darkness"

I imagine the words dripping off your shoulder.

In air thicker than smouldering fume diesel, hair touches

Sweat of the night

Glistening in the ambient light.

We can see the shapes of you and me through the nebula

As it settles on spent things.

And discarded clothing.

Like a polished adder stone

Falling through a hole in a pocket

Into a black stream.

 

Go-go sunrays (pool party mix)

 

This is... Go-go sunrays (pool party mix)

Flesh starved.

I'm ready to rip out throats with my teeth.

This is only painless if I couldn't care less
that it fuckin hurts.

That's how it fuckin is.

Touch deprived.

Let's get down to it and compare depravity.

Nails run over like vice and I swear to Christ

They cover me like sunrays.

That's how it fuckin is.

What's the point of building bridges

if I don't use matchsticks?

What's the point of living in a castle

if villagers don't wear crucifix against the blowing wind?

Tongue tied.

You didn't like my handwriting so I changed it.

I draw letters blotted out on sky-less days

now shaped into sunrays.

That's how it fuckin is.

Hard wired.

Drink me. Eat me. I taste exactly as you want. 

Snip the countdown wire, it won't stop the fire

It wasn't connected anyway

That's how it fuckin is.

What's the point of building bridges

if I don't use matchsticks?

What's the point of loving you now

if it's isn't for the suffering?

What's the point of where my spirit lays 

if it can't be dried by sunrays?

Light sensitive.

I keep losing you again and again in the maelstrom.

But I won't stop reaching for you to get it on.

That's how it is fuckin is.

It ain't snowing over seas

This is really a b-side.

This is... It Ain't Snowing Over Seas

It ain't snowing over seas,

It's cold pink petals floating on the shore.

What's a rise and fall narrative for,

Only to miss ebb and flow behind every one?

All the while trying to figure out how to navigate

A way through this undertow state.

I'm a plan 9 survivalist.

Left with resilience to last out whatever this is.

Can't be everything it seems, immersion in a deep dream.

But then I got the feeling I'm awake and wired to a socket,

And why do I have blossom in my jacket pocket?

It ain't snowing over me,

It's cold letters settling unwritten, never sent.

The book on the shelf: poetry of Brecht,

In one of these years I'll open it up, I suspect,

When no one I trust is calling on the phone

I want all this living to leave me alone.

I'm a plan 9 spiritualist.

Left with fallow faith to grow with what I'm faced.

Demons exorcised slow notice we're the ebb and flow,

Perished, weakly moaning, they vomit stories to the floor,

Looking much like snow, floating on the shore.

Stripping away what's beautiful

Greville and the Tombstones tries to write beautiful things. But #thereisnobeauty sometimes and this is my attempt to write something that has no beauty at all.

This is... Stripping away what's beautiful

The clouds are gathering.

The crows are gathering.

The day is autumnal because it is spiritual,

the air hangs with natsukashii.

The leaves are gathering, the teeth are gathering

Don't plug me back in, don't reconnect my limbs,

they broke in the season of summer.

Did the sun ever shine like you said it did that time?

I don't think it even shone once.

Rain in glass shoals as it swirls, splinters and falls.

My weakling eyes can't raise because they've 

only witnessed sunsets.

Souls scraping to escape their little black holes.

Coagulating around blood-wet introspective ground,

I've never been so lonely.

Medical experiments and philosophise treatments.

I don't fear these masks no more, they fetishize.

Nurses need the bodies.

Then what will you write, knowing it'll outlast you?

Whatever it is, write it out neatly.

The act of vandalism was not what was pulled from you.

Here admit deviations, recognise you were a

Dead symbol to begin with.

The nights are gathering.

The lines are gathering.

The heartless don't use a key to set the cruel beast free 

from the basement.

They leave it to crawl, pretending it's not them at all.

They thread a needle, call it transparency: 

that's where they hide in.

Does it matter if the saviour invites me to her chambers

So long as she saves me?

Goddess iconography, wood incense of her presence.

No telling after what position she'll chain me

because I'm still agnostic.

Confused at a life that won't love you back.

Now the murder is no longer nesting

in the bell tower.

Memories huddled, the birds' chests are bloodied.

You say sentiment of the missed don't haunt you

then find books with bookmarks.

It's not really so much, it's not really so much

feeling for a pulse.

Check gently for my own, it's here or there I know.

It might be feint as a word sung on skin

But I'd like it to be felt.

The candles are gathering.

The animals are gathering.

Scatter flowers anywhere, they don't matter. 

Inertia Pareidolia

My attempt at writing in britpop.

This is... Inertia Pareidolia:

Sitting at a window. 

Rewinding and forwarding the view. 

Even while it's bleeding out. 

Still life creaking, high rising, falling hard at you. 

Missing what it's all about. 

Sea-glass forget-me-nots wash into the picture, 

From the eternal, uncharted wave, 

Her driftwood voice, slow quotes scripture. 

Jesus would come again for the head she gave. 

I'm seeing faces in the time that passes by the door 

oh-oh-oh 

Are they from a future I will never see anymore? 

Sliding the abacus. 

Counting out bad dreams. 

Taking register when they return home. 

Horizons narrow, hands reach cold walls as she leaves. 

Lost eyes will always be burnt holes. 

Man way up in his moon puts down songs of sorrow. 

They're limited and out of tune. 

Morbidly listening in to heartbeats in the afterglow 

of love long since abandoning the room. 

I'm seeing faces in the afterlife that walk by everyday 

hey-hey-hey 

Are they ghosts of the usual or have something new to say? 

Watering houseplants.

They keep dying one by one. 

Even while they're blooming. 

Words picked for their beauty of lovers to listen. 

Birth roots dirty and ripped open. 

Is that the sound of rainfall, or is it the typewriter 

stripping petals to their waist? 

"Restlessly pulling at bedclothes, I recognise her. 

In creased sheets: her taste."

I'm seeing faces in the static received by my tv screen 

yeah-yeah-yeah 

Are they reflections, premonitions or moving in-between?

The pre-history of the post-apocalypse

This is... the pre-history of the post-apocalypse

Saturday, twenty-first century.

Let's paint the floorboards red.

With a dress, a dress, a dress.

Philosophers say we must be living.

But I can't hear

One breath, one breath, one breath.

Alchemists write "the World must turn".

But I can't feel

Any breeze, any breeze, any breeze.

The last great voice of rock 'n' roll was

Lana Del-Fucking-Rey Or was it

Nick Cave, Nick Cave, Nick Cave?

This is the pre-history of the post-apocalypse. 

Broken down submarine hits the bottom of 

The sea, the sea, the sea.

In 1989, we knew every line.

"We Didn't Start the Fire"

We were the fuel, the fuel, the fuel.

Rent our bodies from the government.

Tells us the goodwill's spent.

Because we didn't buy it, buy it, buy it.

We all mistake the bad things change,

and the good remain 
the same, the same, the same.

Sitting in a parody of a sunny day.

No one gets to stay in a flash bulb moment.

It burns out, burns out, burns out.

Gluing back how those shredded affairs could have been.
Home recorded cassette tapes, touching lips.

What the nets dredge up when grief goes fishing.

 This is a checklist of the pre-history of the post-apocalypse.

 Seek an explanation by our nature.

Hindsight lies a useless mute.

Foresight blindly reaching out as the grave.

Surrounded by modern saviours.

They lost the power to save.

It's ok if you're not all that brave.

Three weeks until daybreak.

Longer depression breaks.

It's a chain of light and darkness anyway.

Empty opportunities is not to say

I didn't fill them.

It's that they cannot come again; it's always the way.

Life’s ups and downs remind me of

Graceful acrobatics

Back in the pre-history of the post-apocalypse.

Saturday, twenty-first century.

Let's spill a little, warm red.

In a glass, a glass, a glass.

My happy place

I wrote this very quick today. I lay down yesterday to calm the calamites and sundries. I remembered someone saying they go to their happy place in their head. And I thought of what would be my happy place.

This is... My Happy Place

Over the iron filigree fence clutched in ivy,
I’m sitting, quiet, in white cotton pyjamas.

Trees tuned, precise garden.

Wildflowers roll like the ocean.

No, an absorption.

Swallows the sun and the panic.

The nurses are also dressed utterly in white.

White shoes too.

They are quiet.

Go to your happy place, maiden.

Sweet airs scatter ideas like a murmur of birds.

Inside, the library contains writing paper

Finely tuned and furnished.

Silent, like pointless haunting.

No, a heart sickening.

It pleads for an injection to beat.

The nurses take my arm and often guide me in. 

I feel a sting.

They are quiet.

Go to your happy place, mister.

Where I go to. I can't remember ever leaving.

I’m in my happy place with melancholia.

Perfectly precise and tuned.

Hospital hangs moon white.

No, seashell upturned.

Spirals, reflections, part of the body.

Lunatics around me, dressed white as pearls. 

And I am one.

They are quiet.

Go to your happy place, animal.

Six feet apart

This is... Six Feet Apart

Disconnected and senseless

Me in my spacecraft

You in your spacecraft

Only six feet of space between us

It might as well be three hundred years

Might as be as wide as my fears

I try to feel what you're feeling

Me in my spacecraft

You in your spacecraft