So eloquent and troubled.
How deep the pool must sink.
The surface never rippled.
Never stuttered.
You never blinked.
And in our hearts we took to you.
Like water from the wine.
As thirsty disciples we followed.
Dedicated.
Yet out of time.
Now as you crumble into nothing.
As the mask begins to fall.
We hold you even higher.
And hang your heart up on the wall.
To walk the sands of time, to find the doorway to heaven.
Leaves me breathless.
You put your hands on this skin, and I succumb.
Unabated astral movements behind my eyes.
To know you from somewhere, is to feel you under my skin.
As my blood crashes down the sand dunes on the walls of my heart.
I left you, and found you there.
Waiting for me where the moon sinks.
Threatening never to return.
With honey wine still on your kiss, I will not function.
I slip into another consciousness.
Walking in a dream that quivers on god’s fingers.
Kiss me from dying, and wake me once more.
Let me disappear into your arms that comfort me.
Like a blanket against desert cold.
And I will wash these tears away in the pools of your eyes.
That offer such sweet safety swims.
To the desert floor.
More pain in her heart than a bomb over Japan.
She clicks her heels, but nothing happens.
More alone than home.
She darts into the traffic.
Proudly defiant, like rhinos on the Serengeti.
This was her town, but from it now she runs.
Her tears falling like skyscrapers.
Down into the rain and the black streets of London.
That tries to coil around her feet.
The slinking snake of society.
She runs out.
Down.
Then up.
Onto the lampposts until they change to trees.
And she feels the nature breathe back within.
The racing rats she leaves behind.
Throwing her phone and her tolerance into the trash as she departs.
This was never for her.
She comes now, out into the greens and browns that match her eyes.
Seeing the vista swim into view like a quiet paradise.
She comes here, to disappear.
She comes to survive.
This Monday morning evaporates the weekend.
A horrendous hue of change.
Your absence now in my bed, as our bodies break.
Twisting the world apart.
The world, now on show for bright eyes and coffee headaches.
Stretching out the happiness as the day rolls into grey.
For without you next to me, I find it harder to breathe.
The eye blinks of necessity struggle under the weight of it all.
I do not mean to be a burden, of self-serving theatrics.
This production creeps out of the stage you set.
For each time you go, and the curtain closes.
I’m left picking popcorn and ticket stubs off my dirty heart.
Rushing once more for the weekend, to be first in line.
This heart a needle, in your hay.
That endless world they talk of.
A Drowned world.
It opened in my heart when the starry waves washed inside.
When you looked at me.
With that light of god in your eyes.
And in that moment, like that pebble in your hand.
You grasped at the infinite.
You consumed my soul.
And we would remain forever bound.
Like that pebble in the ferocious stream.
Washed endlessly by the cosmic current.
Until clean.
Through painted eyes I see your heart.
Overflowing, submerged in milk and honey.
In that kiss, I feel the tenderness.
Which my soul has yearned for.
But like a pebble in my shoe.
A reminder remains.
That stain on my heart will never fade.
And those mistakes I will keep in the back of mind.
Place the blame, again and again.
Languished yet molten.
Repeated reframes.
You melt the words into my soul.
A watching raven.
Fleeing the cold.
Of your frozen heart, lodged in time.
Refusing to die.
Refuted such crimes.
This is your Valhalla, your watchful mount.
Where I’m nailed to a cross.
Impossible to surmount.
Like those black raven eyes, you carve into my heart.
Waiting to walk my apocalypse.
Waiting for the dark.
But let the ink, snuff out all the hope.
Tend to my gallows.
With turpentine and rope.
For in the dark I’ll move, as all cats look the same.
And spark up a supernova.
Of our love, flared out in your name.
The dark will intensely turn from black into white.
Your soul will be cleansed.
By diamonds and this might.
Then only God will watch, as we crumble into the sky.
Into a blanket of feathers.
An eternal bed for you and I.
You see?
All of this remains.
Before. Behind. Way after.
The crucible cracks and splutters in its creation.
Offering golden wings in which to ascend.
Where will those heavy wings take us.
On that lunar breeze which blows from the lips of god.
A substituted living now folds into the ocean.
This blessing of cotton wraps around my eyes.
Yet still I see.
If I wait for you, what dies in my veins?
If I go now, will you remain?
The hesitation catches me like asthma.
Your love pollutes my body like oxygen.
Fixing me to rise only when your lungs heave.
At times we are at a distance.
Calling half a world away.
Yet still I remain, waiting for you to see.
Waiting and believing.
That love in your eyes.
Survived, 4am; too tired to see the world for what it was.
Slipping into the cracks and shadows that fill my eyes.
Too numb to notice that I couldn’t notice you.
Standing with arms outstretched like wings.
The bird that always had strength to fly.
That slipped into the open wounds and found our hearts.
It patches us up now, flitting inside our skin.
Pulling feathers over broken bones.
It does not notice the cartilage cage it builds up around itself.
A prison to its good intentions.
It too now needs help, to lift up and soar again.
Love, please come rescue us.
Make us fit to fly and leave this place.
With only fallen feathers to show we were here at all.
Never let me go.
The skin falling away, sucked at by mortality.
Surrounded by naysayers and sad eyes.
And all was black.
When the light began to prick apart the void.
A voice echoed.
Thundering down the halls in my soul.
It shook the dust from my memory.
Yet smelt of only yesterday and frangipani blooms.
The ones you insisted on, to mask the death that lingered.
A sorrow set the sparrow inside free it seems.
Clattering against the door, then out into the exhales of god.
You cannot kill a dream you say.
As I stand, entrenched and elated.
Seeing you there, a ghost on the threshold.
Not asking to remain in the cold and the darkness.
But to draw me out into the light.
You always pushed me on.
I want to peel back the pale ribs.
And let you take me on, inside and out.
Licking the walls of defiance, beating the death that they thought prevailed.
With those who won’t believe, they don’t have the eyes to see.
Or even contemplate the beautiful dream.
That is you and I.
In the seen, unseen.
Timid and quivering.
Frightened once more by the darkness.
The cave of self looms and lures.
Hissing out in words spoken from lips.
Those once thought as delicate and kissed.
Cracks appear, and the light vanishes.
Heaving of stone, that misplaced affection.
An internal echo of loneliness.
What threatens was the dismantling of love.
Held behind glass to taunt and tempt.
But never touch.
I love you, though I see the dagger.
And I fear nothing of the after.
Only the fact I shall be there alone.
4am as the world whispers me awake.
All is calm as the night travels in my veins still.
I slept the day away.
Rubbing the tiredness and memories from my eyes.
Half a world resting in my heart from where I started.
Right where I belong.
The veil is yet to be lifted from my shaded stay.
Talking to me still from the past in a language familiar.
Talks of entangled vines and harkening songs.
A call of the kookaburra who rests on my eyelids.
The red land beneath my feet.
Sticking to me like sand on wet skin.
Rub away these English oaks. This chitter of festivity.
Don’t lead me blind with your patriotic tales.
Colour me sunlit gold and let me sleep.
Crying into the night and drifting away on the tide.
Waking on a shore I pray that I do not recognise.
Cracks in the colossus.
Licking time across new wounds.
Limping and lumbering back into the ocean of your eyes.
Taking lifelines.
That little notepad you kept in your desk.
Right behind your mind.
Scribbling a sonnet for thine truth to break.
And a storm to release.
Sweeping up all the worries and the fish from the bottom of the sea.
I bottled up these sea storms.
The swell in your day.
But you pick and poke at the cork and the corrections.
To then complain that you are soaking wet.
What fable lives now in that oily deep?
What treasures do you covert, claw at and keep?
For in my mind too swim a thousand sharks.
Tasting blood in the water.
Now, no longer able to swim.
A tangle of troubles, the octopus crawling underneath the waves.
Occupying my deep.
The earth subsides.
Transient thoughts of escape.
Dissipate.
Pick the petals from my mouth.
As the mourners avert their eyes.
Death, was no surprise.
Yet this extension, a spark inside.
Flutters like a butterfly trapped.
The decades wash over me now in waves.
Heady and fragrant.
Crashing coral like beauty through my soul.
Leaving stains like memories in my eyes.
How long was I there, what was left?
Do these bones show rings if sliced in two.
I feel born anew.
Trembling and naked like the first day.
Yet now, covered in the embryonic fluid of knowing.
That tomorrow is just the beginning.
Catch those condemnations on the rim of your glass.
Mix in amber.
Preserve and observe this staging saga.
Of my life in Technicolor.
Shining like the diamonds above your eyes.
Then you cover all you see in flowers.
A bed. A tomb.
A road for my departure.
If this is the last and the final time.
Then button my eyes and draw the line.
And keep me hidden beneath the ground.
Where earthly secrets and worms are found.
For if you are not the beat of my heart.
Then into death my journey must start.
And silence my mind as it heaves to you.
Kill this love which you’ve broken in two.
These trailing stars that shatter through our existence.
Leave chaos and beauty in their wake.
Transcended diamonds embedded in our skin.
Fires burning deep within.
What golden light are we trapped beneath.
Such hazel eyes of god.
My soul is a blackness wrapped around your galaxy.
As you pass through like a luminous shooting star.
Leaving varying traces of your continuance.
Vibrating this space with only departure and grace.
Caring not for the planets that fall.
In the trees, no; in the sky.
The veins are hiding it.
The light shining like the eyes of God.
It’s there all the time, do you never see it?
No, but I feel it.
Washing in my bloodstream, collecting like wax.
Divine.
Sublime.
Yet I see it now, the great orb above.
We came from it, that far off place.
Its essence coats our skin like angel dust.
A pleasant peppering, are you sure it’s those shores we stole from?
Can you not tell, does the rock in your pocket not breathe like that mountain?
Torn from the mass, yet special in it’s size.
It’s like a pebble in my mind.
Like an egg, beautiful and full of life.
It shines too, like gold.
That is the light, that is what we are.
Then why is it sometimes dark?
Dark you say?
Yes, black sometimes like oil.
That would be your own fears, covering what needs to be free.
Then let it be.
Yes, let it will be.
These boys and girls, with hidden smiles and transparent trauma.
Promise nothing of tomorrow.
Selling chalky kisses in crises centres, splattered across the map.
Which you now trace your fingers across.
Finding washed out welcomes in every state.
At least those that you remember.
Your phone calls go unanswered, avoided like Monday mornings.
They move away and sigh long lamentful breaths.
Dropping almond eyes to the ground.
Feet shuffling to a sound of a country mourning.
A country held prisoner to the promises of a thief.
Now tomorrow feels scary, fluorescent feelings that fold like paper moons.
The tide turns too soon.
And you return once more to the ocean, picking the salt from your eyes.
Counting the tears that drip like a million wishes into a well.
Like the one you cast into as a child.
Shining bright like Christmas lights.
When everything seemed touched by magic.
Tentatively, almost like a whisper.
A bloom of admiration crept up inside.
Love had hung so precariously.
Like a dew drop on a paper-thin petal of time.
A confession from fate.
The tumbling of truth, wrapped in time and circumstance.
Here.
Now.
It calls out to you, lifting the wrappings on a moment spun in space.
Call me once more again the name your lips tremble to utter.
Cast me a glance from your eyes that remove fear.
The swirled marbled eyes of god.
I let your lips continue what your fingers started.
Leading pathways to your sacred heart.
And fall once again into the swirling wave of the future.
Securely, knowing it was planned.
QUIESCENT
She tried to save him on that day.
That day, when the coffee stained sky folded.
She reached out in her own way.
Only for her hands to turn to stone.
And her mind to dust.
A cruel trick of fate positioned her.
To watch his demise from such a vantage point of safety.
Silenced in an eternal knowing.
While a tempest raged in her eyes and mind.
So she threw it all back in time.
Crouched under her bed until the voices left her.
With bangs on the door and within her heart.
Which now thundered to a singular beat.
Then the vines crept up around her veins,
and she erased her broken kingdom.
At least she tried to.
Then disappeared into the rains that then came.
Leaving no trail in her wake, only questions.
And the angels covered her in mercy.
As she chased the dragons by the flooded lagoon.
Beyond this place of darkness.
That covers us like oil.
Beyond my biggest weakness.
Far past the pain and toil.
A light will come on like surprise.
As the weapons start to rust.
And shades of love will cover those eyes.
While the agony fades to dust.
THE BLUE OF A BRUISE
Idling of the blood stream.
Brightening those nightmares that shudder.
Twisting in and out of focus.
The mind finding reference points.
All chalky talk and eye darting.
Searching the door to find new weather.
Trust seems lost again.
Blue skies clouded like the eyes of God closing.
Tearing in the rains of revelation.
Words struck the vein.
The devil tastes the pain.
What part is called to be diminished?
Swallowing in a rapture, that unpicks the scars.
A lie to curdle the blood.
A pain to feel alive once more.
Do you know the lungs want to sing?
Padded with angel feathers they heave in lament.
The soul siphoned away, bottled like wine.
Death’s most beautiful throw.
Snatching things, before they grow.
The blankness of the shadows that pass.
Yet wonders dwell underneath.
Hidden stories that flow like lava mines.
Emotions running deep.
Eyes that meet on the train.
Skin that breathes all the same.
We are each a spark of light.
Glowing intermittently in the cold expanse of now.
Reduced down as the 20th century folded.
The devils may click their tongues.
Hiding in caves and pits of pain.
Dipping into those darkness pools.
But we are stronger in the sun.
It burns away the filth of forever.
Shedding the past so the wings can rise.
Renewed and burning with our soular flame.
So you may move with purpose and an elevated heart.
Often reminded of the angels you’re among.
We slipped again, into the night.
Out of view.
Known only that we were here,
by the stories they tell.
Fabrications and fables.
Drops of disillusionments that melt their trustful hearts.
We wander, as they wonder why.
All around us keeps on spinning.
Our own rotational axis that keeps on thinning.
Down into splitting heirs.
Putting matchsticks between your teeth.
Setting the enameled house to fire.
Write these reasons on the back your hands.
Staple your own destiny to your eyelids.
Then once again play that mournful song of tomorrow.
And disappear into today’s setting sun.
Havoc and Consequence 