Everything arranged, just fades away.
Washed by a black sea.
The shiver into nothingness.
While eyes above watch.
Grief picks its place.
Planting rotten flowers that scratch the eyes.
I Move away from everything I knew.
Death coming in with the tide.
Staining my ankles and heart.
Taking what is most precious out with its salty inhale.
Sorrow settles in.
Showing up, now hope has lost its way.
The block box held a human heart.
Clothed in bone and skin.
And within, through poked out holes.
It watched the world come and go.
Locked away for their own safety.
Hidden from sight to save the pain.
For love had ruined him time and again.
Threatening and early grave.
It hides a world you would not want.
Nor a state you would ever wish to be.
The eyes, maddened, would bore a hole.
The heart, saddened, choked off from love.
Source of its life.
The black box sits in the corner.
The insides slowly rotting.
But the mind, never forgotting.
The one that put him there to begin with.
And the one who would join him there in the end.
We brake once more on the waves of our love.
Trying not to drown.
But your current rises below and above.
Fixing watery crowns.
But a latent strength takes me beyond the seam.
Crashing me to the shore.
Littered by the ghosts of long dead dreams.
To haunt me, evermore.
In the forest, all alone.
My lonely tree feels cold as stone.
Surrounded everywhere by its branches.
That bend and twist to their own advantage.
They shake in the wind, and shiver in sadness.
Sunken in a disturbing madness.
Until one day you came into the woods.
Scared the animals and riding hood.
Yet the wolves they ran, and hid like rabbits.
Convoluted out of their own bad habits.
And into my glade you stepped so proudly.
And struck a match and yelled out loudly:
“Love is a flame that burns us under!”
And as quick as lightening, you lit me like thunder.
So my lonely tree, burned quick and sadly.
And I faded away, into death quite gladly.
A Comforting collapse.
That extreme degree of falling.
So enticing, heart is stalling.
As loose recollections of perhaps;
that I always was the king of pain.
Knowing it would always come again.
I’ll wear my own destructive crown.
Situation familiar. Characteristic breakdown.
Dreams ignite like a Chagall construction.
You and I, flying over rooftops.
Exploding in colour.
I lay you down and crawl into your skin.
Kissing you intimately, feeling my way.
Your body entices and your heart entraps.
Yet it is your soul I’m after.
The bruised, damaged, fraying thing.
Shaking and asking to have life breathed in.
Frantically unable to be cupped in my hands.
It runs from me like a feather on the breeze.
Escaping like a Bharatanatyam movement.
Colours and light, burning my sad lonely grey into nothing.
Love on your fingertips, sticky from the centre of me.
Though this may be transitory, I give in and go under.
Falling for you again as the waves crash over.
Disappearing in such wonder and the perfumed smoke of you.
Coughing up clouds of devotion, and descending like the setting sun.
They say, the world almost drowned.
The day she wept.
Those salty tears.
So sacred and immaculate.
That the ground began to crack.
Like the conscience of god.
Crumbling into sadness.
For she was so young.
So lost in the dream of idealism.
Now forever lost in her own madness.
Tip the ghost honey, it likes to attract the bees.
Distracts from the different coloured tears.
That run on invisible cheeks.
Where were you when I needed you the most?
Negating our history and the whole of the 21st century.
An incredible void, you chose not to cross.
The chasm left when you moved our luggage.
Years of mangled words and old Christmas ornaments.
Rolling around and cracking, fragile to touch.
Treasured with limitations.
With these thoughts, who needs enemies?
The echoes act like heroin.
Dipped in paraffin.
Taking me up.
Leading me to explode.
Covering you now in glitter and sad reflections.
She began to lie.
Her fingers clasped in on themselves, feeling the strength and weakness in her grasp.
The church, empty now of all souls except those she had come to talk with.
Tears brimming in the eyes, they stung like the holy water welled in the font.
Singeing the new-borns brought in against their will.
The lies came quick and easy.
Words of living danced from her mind and mouth.
Painting the walls the velvet colour of sin which faith knew all too well.
Her prayers circled her and danced above to illuminate the ceiling of the church.
All gold and crisp like an autumn leaf caught in the sun.
Little sparks born from the light that was housed inside of her.
She lied by saying she could cope with this still.
The betrayal to god was that she thought she could go on.
But he knew, and he listened still.
As did all the saints breathing there like ghosts.
She clenched and fumed, crying all the while.
It was hard for her to know someone who knew her better than herself.
But would not wish her well.
For god would not lift a finger in her plight.
He didn’t then, he wouldn’t now.
No matter how many tears flowed in that church.
They would dry all the same.
Those walls would hear his name, again and again.
She lay down, and closed her eyes; using a bible as a small pillow.
Breathing in the dusty time of incense and pieces of flesh.
She waited for the miracle much promised, what better place to wait.
She lies there still, but do not wake her.
For she may still be dreaming.
As the city hums, and chokes the flowers.
This mind refracts.
Stuttering like the trains which snake beneath my feet.
Beneath my bones which rot like timbers of time.
Belonging to a place that clouds and coughs.
Surrounding like a multitude of sin.
This is what I wanted after all.
But the magpies pull the treasures away.
Spiriting the sparkle skyward like seasons.
I feel old and rooted.
Yet freshly hewn and tender.
A ghost of a ship stranded in an international airport.
Someone’s lost luggage.
Unclaimed but missed.
What if the cracks and voids are filled.
By only nonsense and the spit of this current time.
Fuzzy images and words that make no sense line my eyes.
And roar while I try to sleep.
This sleep, this dream.
Shaking in and out of a nightmare.
Which I chose to play.
Lies, they kept her from heaven.
A raging ghost of self-contempt.
Is it fake when inside there is truth?
For in the dark, all can see her tears.
Slipping into the cracks of hell.
Crying out to change.
/
Fall
Into
Heaven/Hell
Through wanderings of a hallowed heart.
Untie the science while the rain comes.
Let the silence smother you.
Or little taps of life, crash on your skin.
Blanketing this world in a quiet monsoon.
Layering and prevailing over all before.
Let it seep into those muddy bones.
Washing everything.
Purify and personifying a state of being.
Fresh like holy water.
Stinging the sins like acid.
Drown and choke underneath those silent waters.
A vast tide that you wash over me.
Those days that were always numbered.
The borrowed time and delicious decay.
How sour those words met my mouth.
When I asked you to leave.
Tying my tongue into confused states.
Separate systems and traumatic time zones.
A flight into a new world.
Where the clouds coughed around me.
And the skylarks sung our demise.
God raining down sad tears.
That had been building for some time.
Debout sur cette rive une fois de plus.
Sur le bord de l’existence.
Je voussens dans le vent.
Je me sense arrosé dans le marée.
Est-ce que je me vois marcher sur cette plage?
Ou je me sens perdu dans un million de grains de sable.
–
Stand on this shore once again.
On the edge of existence.
I’m standing in the wind.
I feel watered in the tide.
Do I see myself walking on this beach?
Or feel lost in a million grains of sand.
I see the eye dart to the corner of the room.
The words tumbled too frantically, too concocted.
Emotionally too soon.
Sometimes, is never quite enough.
I can live with never, never is stable.
Structured and tragic.
We pave our paths with bricks of never likely.
Now a sigh follows a kiss, and with this, I know.
The illusion fills out.
Like fog trapped in a jar.
Making my soul opaque.
The eyes that darted roll over then.
They should have gone blinded for all they did.
Such sinners in the sockets.
What was once, is now rejected.
Cast out like needful blood for another.
A life to suckle on the sweet blood of a dying Christ.
Me, crucified here on the beach, which beneath, lays a million stones.
The remnants of angel bones, and dinosaur teeth.
Monsters who lost It all.
But never knew until it was too late to cry out.
Hurtling through space, like a spec in god’s eye.
Falling down the waterfall, shaken out of grace.
Sliding, spiraling and collapsing. Leaving nothing but a trace.
Tumbling down speedily, in disgust from your eyes.
Crawling out of this bitter, purgening demise.
Escaping into nothingness, fleeing into dreams.
Tasting the fruit of freedom. Splitting from the seams.
Moving now a certain way, to expand these wings.
Unfurling fraying feathers, precious aerodynamic things.
Falling once again, from ledges beyond time.
Saying goodbye to shadows, and the ghosts that haunt this mind.
Realisation of collapse, braking bark from the knowledge tree.
Not a sad solitary boat of sand, on your egotistical sea.
I fully bow out, take my leave now and resign.
Plunging into tomorrow knowing, I must fall to begin the climb.
The snow had begun to fall early that evening. Though the sun had long since slumbered down, it was around six o’clock when the few flutters of winter dusting started to whip past his window. Daniel had left the curtains open like he did most evenings, watching the wild sky drip away beyond the horizon. It had rained lightly that day, and it took a while for the snow flurries to leave any impression on the ground. But as he watched from his small window, his face illuminated by the Christmas lights, he noticed as people came out of their houses to investigate the snow.
A few kids ran about under the streetlights, already bunching up snow into cold balls to throw at one another. It was a shame, Daniel thought to himself, that Christmas had passed already, and the snow had waited until after it had passed. Another bleak grey day that offered only the magic of the season, rather than from the endless possibilities of the weather.
He went to the kitchen and made himself a spiced tea. The smell of cinnamon and spices hung in the air, warm and inviting. He then went into the main room to where the Christmas tree was, sipping the tea which burnt his lip. He’d put it up alone this year, the first time the ceremony had ever been performed that way. He looked at the huge golden bell that sat a top of the tree; sparkling, like everything else did, in the strung Christmas lights that dotted the place. He couldn’t remember ever buying that bell, yet it appeared every year to top the tree they always had.
He sighed and placed his tea on the side, pulling one of the boxes towards him. He hated taking the tree down, or the Christmas decorations. As a child he’d always pleaded to his parents to keep them up longer. But they were bound by the laws of the season and the far away court, and all the decorations had to be down by the twelfth night. Why? No one could ever tell him, that was just how it was. Yet this was how things were now, every year it seems. Him, alone taking down the very things that were put up to enliven his life, if only for a few weeks.
He started to take off some of the ornaments, some of which he remembered putting on the tree even as a child. These must be so old he thought suddenly, vaguely aware of his own descent now into adulthood. His phone began to hum into life nearby, but he ignored it. He wasn’t in the mood to argue again, and that’s the only thing that phone was offering to him this evening. He placed some of the baubles carefully into their homes, snug in a box that would keep them safe for another year. He turned up the music he had playing, his new tradition; Christmas songs to ring out in the stripping of the tree. In a way, such a violating act. The trauma of the season.
He hummed along to some of the carols, there religious message washed away now he thought in the progression of the years. He felt old, and tired. Like his youth had slipped away without him even noticing it. He might as well be boxing up his memories instead of these decorations, freezing all he ever wanted and all he dreamed off in these magical days of Christmas. Spun up like candied sugar and placed away safely, to be removed once a year along with his heart.
He sat down on the rug; patches of glitter peppered the tufts still from the wrapping paper that had been destroyed last week. He closed his eyes as the choir music filled the room, taking him to a place in his memory. He watched as his younger self ran down the stairs, eager to see if Father Christmas had been. His parents, holding hands and smiling as they watched their children tear at the presents that had been carefully placed hours before beneath the silver Christmas tree. Though the tree was fake, over time it had faded and fallen apart, much like the marriage and the moments he now saw in his mind. The presents, along with this love within the family had been torn apart and forgotten about also. Thrust up each year like some special spectacle. Packed away when all were done.
His phone rang again, bringing him back. He opened his eyes and looked at his phone on the table, lighting up and convulsing in an epileptic dance. He ignored it again and went back to the tree to finish off. The lights were always the trickiest. It was easier with someone helping, and fun too he thought as he remembered how they had joked around putting the lights over one another, pretending they were trees themselves. The time when one of the fuses had gone and the whole house had been plunged into darkness, not before the sparks had succeeded in frightening them both.
Lights were always a pain to put away, but he resigned himself that it would be another year before he had to worry about them, and balled them into the old shoebox he kept, sealing the lid and the doom of the lights till next year. The rest of the decorations found their way into boxes relatively quickly, only a few things were placed around the small house as it was. He nearly forgot about the wreath on the door, only remembering it when he glanced outside to see how the snow was. It had come down pretty heavy now and he thought about going for a walk later when he was finished, to enjoy the winter landscape.
He finished his tea and snatched up his phone, looking at the missed calls. He sent a message quickly and then stood back looking at the barren tree, back now to its natural coat. They usually had a fake tree, but this year they had gone for the real thing. It stood now, just a hair smaller than him, shedding pine needles below itself like some defecating potted creature. He closed his eyes and could smell the aroma of the tree, the fading pine of a dying spirit. He wondered where it had grown, what bird or beast had called it home in the time it grew to its seasonal perfection. To be adorned and beheld for a few weeks only to then be thrown out with the other junk of the season, left to decompose in the street awaiting to be whisked away to somewhere out of sight. In that moment he saw the death and cruelty of Christmas. How things were cherished, only for the moment, then forgotten about and placed away. His phone nearby rung a reply, and he glanced at the preview from where he stood. A small tear appeared, and rolled down his cheek, the air leaving his lungs before a gasping inhale.
Daniel went to the French doors and cast them both ajar dramatically. The cold winter wind swept into the room, and some snowflakes fell onto his carpet. He snatched up the tree by the middle trunk and took it out into his garden. His bare feet sank deeply into snow that had settled already, but Daniel did not care. He went back inside and picked up matches that rested by the Christmas candles. He returned back to the garden and struck three matches at one time, letting the oxygen breathe life into the flame. He threw them onto the tree and lit some more. The snow whipped around both him and the tree, but eventually the flames took, and it began to burn. Flames licking the innards of the branches as he stood in the snow that numbed his feet. Drifting from his living room, ‘O Holy Night’ lifted into the air and encased them both in that moment. Frozen for that cold blink in the eye of Jesus, who watched on in seasonal despair.
Taken from ‘Impermanence of things‘
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.
To be the shell in your pocket, or the pebble in your shoe.
Allows the skin that covers you, to take me in.
Closer to your flesh that breathes.
Fragrant like a flower of hope.
Seeing everything.
Closer to god.
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.
FADE
Hold me and heal me.
Chase the darkness away.
Rock me to sleep.
Cut your wrists and then stay.
Forever in this palace of darkness and time.
Locked in a dream.
All beautiful and mine.
Forget all the world, with its promise of pain.
Hold me and fade.
Like a tear in the rain.
Throw it away.
It hangs heavy in your hands.
A broken love all torn and heavy.
Easy to let it slip into the folds of time.
It came there suddenly, the tear in their eye.
Hanging like a beautiful jewel in the corner of the fleshy oyster.
Threatening.
Threatening to tumble, fall and disappear.
Smudge into a cheek or dripped away with fear.
The silence kisses the skin, and darkness breathes upon the neck.
An invasion hurried by the darkest forces.
Throw it away.
Wouldn’t it be better.
The pumping flower struggling to survive.
Wet with dew drops birthed in this moment.
The tears speak of a hurt, unseen yet complete.
A collapse inside like twin towers.
Don’t listen to the breaking.
How can they throw it away.
Something they cannot call their own.
Wouldn’t it be better.
If they stayed?
All year round he kept to himself.
Quiet and content, like a book on a shelf.
It was Halloween though when the tables turned.
And in his head, those thoughts had churned.
To live it up, go mad and wild.
To put on costumes, like any other child.
He loved that night when he fitted in.
And wasn’t shamed or drenched in sin.
He could go out and talk to others.
His friends, his mum and all his brothers.
Accepted him and played for ages.
Some souls to flick through his dusty pages.
It was Halloween he loved and longed for.
The skulls and sweets; and dismembered gore.
He felt alive and loved the freedom.
That came with the scares of the creepy season.
For that was the time he loved the most.
For poor old Charlie was such a lonely ghost.
Hold me and heal me.
Chase the darkness away.
Rock me to sleep.
Cut your wrists and then stay.
Forever in this palace of darkness and time.
Locked in a dream.
All beautiful and mine.
Forget all the world, with its promise of pain.
Hold me and fade.
Like a tear in the rain.
ISLAND
This fear of limitless emotion.
Washes at the shore of my soul.
I fought a war for our love.
Raging like a storm on the face of time.
And now I fall like an island in the sea.
Alone and bare.
Washed by a tide, a poison of loneliness.
Never more to welcome the sun above.
I can only skim sad pebbled tears out to you.
There on the horizon.
That sight of hope, which will never land on my coast.
I glow, and diminish through this all.
Soon nothing but a shell.
That cannot even echo the sea.
Into your ear I promise heaven.
Though I’m sure we’ll go through hell.
Consider this a quick confession.
Before falling under this spell.
My love is mined in deep deposits.
In caves of the dark and unkind.
But there’s skeletons buried inside my closet.
And devils lurking in my mind.
Havoc and Consequence 