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.

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.

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.

Sermon from the Priest Of Crows' Beady Eyed Pulpit

 

This is... Sermon from the Priest Of Crows' Beady Eyed Pulpit

Come and suffer.

Come where there is no lyrical dealing in faith.

Come where there is no offering of uplifting hope.

Come where there is no lesson, no matter you need to be taught.

Come where there you are seen: glorious and tragic.

 

The beady eye from the pulpit sees you: tied to the stake.

When ideologue flames meet you, let them know you'd rather burn through

Crucifixions, auto-eroticisms.

Only you can ever be you.

Wherever you are travelled.

You're going to get travelsick.

 

The beady eye from the pulpit watches you: message in a sea-glass.

Wishing letters could be bottled up, tossed into colourless tumult.

But the current always pushes back to shore.

Only you can ever contain you.

Always near sinking below

horizon's sight.

 

The beady eye from the pulpit views you: beautiful as liminal space.

Sighs emptiness between words not more than uttered.

Lovers, saucer-eyed, under the same moon phase in a countryside

A mass of land between.

Raspings of the rushes

A reminder of the distance.

 

The beady eye from the pulpit recognises you: duality of man.

Uncanny out of body sensation: the feeling of magic before you knew the trick of it,

yet present as steel between a hammer and an anvil.

Only you can ever be you.

On instamatic film: it was once all real.

Layers of flesh, Ruby gemstone, bone-shells, crushed hormonal states of mind.

 

The beady eye from the pulpit waters for you: demigod.

Mankind worships only what it sees itself in.

Acts for a purpose it can't say what it believes in.

In the atomic light a steady beady eye can make out self-destruction.

Even on Sundays meant for heads to shake at sin in.

 

The beady eye from the pulpit stares at you: wild with your bounty.

Foaming and dissolving clouds, texture of time.

All the while taking liberties with your crops and berries,

You are taking up the prognosis with the doctor at the bedside.

Discussing costs of being turned on by pump and valve machine.

Eating warm peaches out the bowl.

 

The beady eye from the pulpit sees you: as you intended.

In pursuit of relativity: mixture of passion and vulnerability.

Existing to push molecules around. 

Only you can ever move you.

A beautiful curiosity; Flowering like a galaxy.

A spectrum of consequence in fuck-up-ability.

Hallucinogenic sister

This is... Hallucinogenic sister

Hallucinogenic sister.

The Beatles got a ticket to ride the helter-skelter.

But it was you who sent me spiraling.

We sat on a mushroom together.

It's where you did all my rewiring.

I never 

knew I wasn't free.

Until you turned the key.

Look what you made me do.

Got me talking in cliche.

Created with a lyrical intensity

To survive in the spite of oceans of pressure.

Gears cranked by great cogs in the bleak whatever.

You were right: diamonds are more than density.

Look what you made me do.

Got me believing 

Got me believing talking people could be dead.

Got me believing they could be alien abducted.

Got me believing I could be wanted.

Got me believing not all madness is insane.

Got me believing not everything comes with pain.

Where have you gone?

I went to watch the wood-chip walls fall.

You were right: there was no physics behind it all.

The knocking was in my head, all along.

Look what you made me do.

Got me talking cosmic mundanity.

Where have you gone?

I went to see Venus on the half-shell.

You were right: it was not the painting, but a novel.

The devil is always in the detail.

Look what you made me do.

Got  me questioning my reality.

You screwed me apart, you screwed me back together.

Transfused neon gas for my bloodstream so I'd be modern-noir.

Showed my heaven is hell: 

Showed a curtain call to an actor in a theatre of war.

Showed in this hotel there is always a caretaker.

Where have you gone?

The fading light is the same.

But the oncoming night is not quite the same.

My typewriter still licks out one letter at a time

But the ink from the ribbon is not quite the same.

Gravity strings hold our places, still somewhat entwined

Just the stars are not quite so aligned.

And that's OK, it's alright, it's fine that you got me sad.

I didn't know it until I looked at the receipt, but I've been living in a mass extinction event for a while

 

This is... I didn't know it until I looked at the receipt, but I've been living in a mass extinction event for a while

Steal myself against a 

mass extinction event.

Saucer eyes, 

Rung out cold war mornings.

Space rockets pierce the city-scape.

Glinting silver panels shaped into a future.

I wait for a Queen's thawing opinion.

I don't need forgiveness, just release.

Before I get used to this.

The past often repeats on me.

Oh no, I've used up another of my lifes.

I'm dealing with it pretty well, actually.

Reminding myself time is a pristine stream

Running over names like sun blanched seagrasses in the shallow bed.

Carving and wearing out second chances.

Like my meandering filthy tongue in my bird brained head.

I toss a rock in.

In attempt to some permanence.

Shimmering silver splashes up, like spooked bleak fish.

Then swim by as if it's nothing worth happening.

That's how I learnt it's not rocks; it's driftwoods carry on the current.

I found a folded receipt

of a moment spent.

Lying on the bed,

Rung out nightmare sweat.

The moment hit like a rock; receipt floated like driftwood.

Listening to the texture of constant falling acid rain.

I wait for a dream Queen fever to break.

I don't need mercy, just release.

Before I really get used to this.

Satanic panic attack.

I'm at ground zero percent.

Emotion spilling all over the place.

Slithering guts.

Rung out rags of blood.

Dropping grief like stones but the water is too shallow.

Creating reefs instead of sinking deep below.

I wait for a Queen's ship to sail.

I don't need saved, just release

Before I get much too used to this.

I don't need absolution.

I own everything I am.

I was created as perfect as only possible by man.

The reason I broke is because I'm brittle.

It's my poor language, not on you to understand.

It doesn't mean I'm not broken.

It doesn't mean I can't make you understand.

"I'm sorry. Sorry for whatever happened"

Doesn't cover the sadness of realisation.

It feels like a mass extinction.

It feels so lonely to be living in it.

This is not symbolic

 

This is not symbolic

[Sample of The End by The Doors]

This is not my bread. This is not my blood.

This yogurt is not pro-biotic.

This is not symbolic.

All that's high, is up. All that's down, is low.

Melancholy strokes a slow arpeggio.

Runs a bow across my body and listens for a sound.

Laments in last and wretched testaments, and other things it found.

Mercury in retrograde, I've used up all my lives.

I don't need a penny arcade to tell my luck is out.

All suffered. All endless.

All is tenuous which holds together beyond all science.

Cannot say I know not what I have done.

The results are all to see of what I've become.

All pulp. All writhing.

My mind, A captain's quarters on a Man of War.

All ebony wood. All creaks and groans.

Candle flames casting quivering shadows.

The scent of oxblood leather straps like a red rose.

Ink blot scraps of hidden treasure maps.

Memories rolled into scrolls, books with broken spinal words.

Gun barrel grey skull on writing desk.

Thoughts skulk in the domed recess.

Regrets and missteps slide across the drunken ground.

The crew say this ship is cursed.

"It'll never see land" "The waves come as fever"

"The captain has gone insane"

They don't know. Finding shore line is sometimes worse.

I navigate and set course for another seizure.

All shifting. All needless.

My flesh, soft for talons to sink in of the morbid bird.

Happily pecking at my sweet gloom.

I have plenty it can consume.

All instinct. All hunger.

I'm of nature.

Only sickly hearts flutter. Wolves lay down in packs.

A woodcutter just means they possess an axe.

A sky above is to cry under.

Once a rasping rage at the anxious, industrial grind

I find glorious ennui lit peachy sunshine.

All juice. All fibre.

My two-vices.

When a nun comes numb from faith,

She finds colour with devices to feel her anatomy.

When a necromancer needs to be central to disassociation.

She throws herself into occult occupation.

Incense burning to feel her mortality.

Angel and demon both claim self-sacrifices,

when they're always acting in self-destruction.

My two-selves.

Open-minded and paranoid, I perform seances in coffee houses

In attempts to talk to myselves.

God or monster, it doesn't matter.

When each at the same time is sublime and wrecking ball.

They say artists jump. They say fools fall.

I'd be foolish to say I don't know what I am at all.

All beauty. All agony.

All mine. All requiem.

[Sample of Eight Mile High by The Byrds]

The eaten heart

 

This is... The Eaten Heart

I missed you, so I put a Led Zeppelin record on to be reminded of you
Robert missed you, so he fucked God to be reminded of you.
I wanted to see you, so I climbed the mountain peak, then after,
Climbed clouds on compound fractures, to get a better view.
I had to talk to you, so I built a temple from my body's ruin.
Cracked, broken, chewed by desire.
I'm on fire; for you I'm Rizla paper thin.
An outlier; Alice, here's a wilderness to get lost in.
Devastator in chief, hold me tight, like fresh-cut grief.
Eat my heart. Tear off bites like I'm a sugar donut.
Like the Queen of Jam Tarts, let red jus flow from lips apart.
Eat my heart. Without it, I'll be alright.
Wild beasts in cruel lands feast on hearts by electric light.
Eat my heart. Swallow it whole and don't let blood splash your evening gown.
This world is a hole already swallowing me down.

This picture is a storm

 This is.... This picture is a storm

Light running off jaded surfaces.

Low notes tumbling on and on.

Leather rain drops on skin.

Tendu and sculpted silver lined limbs.

This storm a slow ballet, now whips.

Sensual, morbid clouds catch in shock.

Guts spilling.

Oil sleaze spittle drooling.

Moans distorting in twists and turns.

Talking in tongues. 

Portamento slurring 

Dragging contretemps

Bouncing, drenching spray.

Snarling attack dog at prey.

This storm becomes all consolation.

Porcelain ghosts in the cemetery.

A whorl wind of reminders buffet the stones 

In the eye the sublime of the meaningless.

The beauty of the blankness.

Like smudges on the picture of Dorian Grey,

Colour pops from tones of gloom.

Lines stretch way on to far off doom,

Drawn from flesh and bone,

Breathless curses, soaked.

But this onyx portrait is so very still-life, it is a mirror.

Brush strokes weights like a mourner's overcoat.

Lithe leg and heel steps out the frame.

Candle flames all blown out

This storm is a terror!

I am moth, rabbit, and possum

This is: I am moth, rabbit, and possum

Your love bites are hypodermic.

I am a doll for you to dismember.

Dis-articulate me, without resistance.

String me up tightly.

Make me your vision of beauty.

My love is vulnerability.

And it makes me a frightened rabbit.

Sometimes I am so vulnerable.

I need you to put me out of my misery.

Starve me in a Faraday cage.

I no longer want to transmit or receive.

Wants of others are treasures lost in seas.

I can reach them no more

Than the moth can reach the moon.

And believing you to be the celestial being,

Sometimes I am a moth caught by a flame.

I need you to put me out of my misery.

Out draw me at high noon.

Spill my thoughts into the dust.

Put me on my back.

I will play dead like a possum.

And let my imagination take over.

Sometimes I need no future or want no history.

I need you to put me out of my misery.

Something throwaway for teeny-boppers

 It feels like a while since I wrote a love song for the kids to get into.

This is...

Something throwaway for teeny-boppers

Seance wind knocks in the crow feathered night.

Rain drives with the sound of cracking joint bones.

There's an unlocked graveyard, where what is carried in claws back out.

Over dripped tombs; from upstairs bedrooms; mother will be home soon.

We are cells in the body of a being that is trying to understand its purpose.

Surrounded by shapeless sea: shifting points of compass.

Under bleeding edge moon; only landmarks are our wounds; howling in tune.

Let's share in something throwaway.

A sunrise screaming at seven octillion atoms; death in its present state.

Let's get together to do something throwaway.

Hold each other down and dare to eat the fruitful flesh; defy the sky for aging.

Let's go and be something throwaway.

A spool of imagery blurred from lens flares; part of a circulatory system.

There's a nightclub that exists at the end, named the Four Horsemen.

It sells single cigarettes, private dances for necromancers, green fairies by the hour glass

Inside, names and histories are throwaway.

The Four Horsemen know there's a limit to everything and that is the limit of

The Place we are in and the weather outside is raging.

Let's fuck in a life that's throwaway.

Romantasy

 

This is... Romantasy

Laying on top of sheets, like witch piled sticks.

Limbs placed around ritualistically.

Bound like the oath given by a lover's samurai.

 A place of allegory on which to slay the king.

Where dragons are known to dive,

hunting on the wing.

Needle over vinyl on brushed stereo HiFi.

RPM forty-five: "I'm straight I'm queer I'm bi."

There's no such thing as committing original sin.

It's all been done before.

Over ankles, wrists, elongating spills over the floor,

Winter sun runs shadows like cats.

Mint winter air pinking skin in natural habitats.

Like seasons, love is cyclical.

"Love the sinner not the sin", as if they're not reciprocal.

I love you both.

Sinners sinning.

Don't panic, not everything's satanic.

Like walking with a collar doesn't make you a dog.

Or a religious man.

Operating in a society of binary low-key aggression.

Where the weather is important.

Extreme conformation is aspiration.

Fucking... being a man's man is an occupation.

We suspend our belief system that this is living.

To run fingers over the frame of mass delusion.

That this is a scene to be seen in.

That we have armour that is glistening.

So we tie ourselves in sheets and knot the linen.

To be rid of sports leisure fashion.

From feeling these people are Martian.

From being afraid of nothing.

To lay sticky skin to sticky skin.

You and you and me and me.

Sinners Sinning.

Butterfly Exits The Head

You come like a musical note.

You come like the crackle of lit Cuban leaves.

You come like a stab somehow missing an artery.

You come like from a bygone era.

You come like burning sienna.

I beat like a pen on a love letter.

I beat like barefoot on floorboard timber.

I beat like the next sobbed movement of my heart.

I beat like a detonator counter.

I beat like a flicker of burning sienna.

We will fall to our heart-shaped knees.

We will spill over-flowing froth from coffee cups.

We will show our teeth behind full lips to those we want.

We will see God wet with rain.

We will be buried with burning sienna.

Your eyes like changing skies above me.

Your voice like May flowers in a beastly wilderness.

Your body like a river winding through this religious land.

Your lips like lights of home.

Your hair like burning sienna.

Can I squirm like a contented cat under you?

Can I share that across road eyelash glance with you?

Can I watch you dress and buckle your shoes for you?

Can I do anything for you?

Can I come to your burning sienna?

Your unrequited office love can go suck it: you don't get more unreachable love than for the dead

 This is.... Your unrequited office love can go suck it: you don't get more unreachable love than for the dead

As the servant turned by vampire,

I am turned by you.

I adore it.

As the hypodermic pierces flesh,

I am pierced by you.

I adore it.

Lash me to the yardarm, set sail at the brewing storm

And still I will not be as sick as the sickness from which the poem's born.

As the priest prostrates to any deity

I offer myself wholly prone.

My love: temple to your heart of precious, glinting, stone.

 

The only pure thing is fallibility,

It offers no respite.

I adore it.

History collapses, memories fold, rain is hard.

Everything vacant and cold.

I adore it.

My love is tactile as colour; blessed and cursed

And my love will only matter in this unmeaning, undead universe.

As the comet tears into the black star

I'll rescue you from nightmares

My love: a dream where something in this fucked place cares.

This is a straight down the line, no messing, stone cold love song (AKA: we fuck with pain)

This is....

A straight down the line, no messing, stone cold love song (AKA: we fuck with pain)

You wanted something faster.

I wanted something flashier.

But I don't crash with you.

And you could never stand second hand looks.

We've both known trauma.

We both know to be gentle with another.

We talk about starting up a funeral parlour.

I say we should call it the House of Eternal Rest.

You say it's better to name it House of the Dead.

We agree how we would decorate; 

In keeping with a deadwood town in the Midwest.

And we laugh about hiring a taxidermist.

It's a deflection; neither wants to die first.

I'm not throwing up because of my addiction, I'm throwing up because of what I'm addicted to

 

This is....

I'm not throwing up because of my addiction, I'm throwing up because of what I'm addicted to

Fear don't fail me now.

Fear be a tortured preacher.

Civility be a skeletal creature.

And I will die of complications.

Blind luck or dumb misfortune got me here.

Hanging like cat's cradle on hot tin roof.

Where I pretend like I'm not a product

of necessitations.

And I will die of complications.

 

Barely holding to the filthy midnight

sickly moonlight cobweb sail.

It just won't catch the wind on these oceans.

And I will die of complications.

Because life is about taking positions.

Putting bodies where they need to be.

The symptom not disease

Will cause me

To die of complications.

 

For someone what was will always be.

For someone what is will never be.

It's happening perfectly.

We absorb and spill out transcendence.

We caught each other's eye.

The ground beneath did not split apart,

to my surprise, I'm surprised.

I've been circling you circling myself

Bringing hindsight to a Prior Fight.

Duelling pistols drawn to our backs.

Reincarnation is something I can do without.

I study, appalled, at what once was there,

disgusted at what I now present.

I voice: "What's dead is dead, for all I care!"

But I don't really believe in it,

Nor in astrological confessions.

The stars align:

I will die of complications.

 

Sunlight shines through a petal.

The moonlight chills the bud.

Foxes aren't nocturnal

Instinctively they know the safest light to hunt.

And what is consciousness

If not a signal received from the mothership?

"So, let's get down to business

While we still can raise ourselves to the cause"

But I can't understand their insinuations

The winner doesn't change

Between philosophy and human remains

My death by complications

And what of apparitions

If not broadcasts intercepted from outer space?

Because the best of us are detuned actualisations

Never in quite the right time or place.

Just by being we distort the natural law

Resisting the inevitable,

the human conditions, the societal manipulations

Causing us to die of complications.