Lost compass, sliding off a map.
The ends of the world, as the world ends.
Jettisoning everything of surplus.
Keeping only what is sacred.
What is precious.
I leave a trail, across the sky like a distant dream.
Exploded into nothing, vanished as the night rolls over.
Yet locked in the DNA that rains down.
Are memories and fragments of this soul.
Particles of god and echoes of love.
Like you I am no longer.
And without you, I am nothing once more.
Like the night.
Soft velvet expanse.
Reaching through time.
Through misty eyes which open wide.
They devour me.
In a kiss that kills me.
Over and over.
Yet tenderly I swim down.
Passing jagged words you keep inside.
Released, only to the moon.
As you howl them into nothingness.
For tender is your way.
Sweet bruises of affection which stay,
within us forever.
As we nestle into the tender wings of love.
Slipping into time.
Somewhere someone is dying.
A last word stuttering from lips.
Visions imprint on eyelids.
Forever.
The tins of the past stack up.
Filling space in your mind as they rust.
Tumbling from the attic like heavy Christmas decorations.
Some shiny, others cut where the edges hurt still.
Somewhere a soul is born.
Breathing it’s first breath as a mother shivers.
All this while the earths spins in continuum.
Caring not for the specs aboard.
Now, that is all that matters.
The imprints of gold beneath your feet.
As you make your own journey.
A destination in mind.
A port of departure behind.
But now, as the wind blows through you like a ghost.
And your skin turns towards the sun like a plant.
Now is what truly matters.
Who knows when the world will stop spinning.
Or when we cartwheel off into space and nothingness.
A story unfolding at the speed of life.
Unplugged or imbedded.
They missed the Milky Way.
Drinking once more from a cup of stars.
Do these words seem familiar?
Rub it on your teeth.
Ugly and sweet
As they slide once more into focus.
Chewing on your past like a shark in a bathtub.
Filled to the brim with sorrow.
Eyes, that are empty.
Calling for tomorrow.
Now your moon hangs heavy in your heart.
Blue, like the subterfuge.
Shrieking past on a shooting star.
All light and brilliance.
Call it what you want, taste it like confusion.
Lifting into that lunar bloodstream.
But be sure to rinse your mouth with the irresistible.
And swallow the sublime.
A little, then more.
Nothing is ever enough.
In this world, where hate is king.
He’s an angel of sadness.
Watching it all from space.
Seeing molecules and indifference collide.
What remains, what took him away.
Stained with pain and cruelty.
Reigning like unlucky stars in our eyes.
Walking it back in photonic blackness.
We only leave the ground for a minute.
To spin on the atoms.
And feast, on the junk of these hearts.
With mercury in our eyes.
There is no difference in what is happening here.
As above, so below.
You catch the sparkle, your reflection off a million diamonds.
Twinkling in the heavens.
Radiating your truth.
Do you blur with movement, or by the lies that cough up like dust.
I was once unsettled.
Once covered with earth.
Repositioned by the hand of fate to a terrible place.
The blood in the diamond that knew my face.
Yet it is more precious now, the life I hold in my hands.
Why ask the sun not to shine.
For the moon to course through the years.
You ask for simple but wish for different.
Which disrespects God who has it all planned.
Unstitch the heavens for me.
Open up your veins for him.
All the same yet convinced in its difference.
If you want to bring the heaven and the stars down to earth.
You must rise at least to meet them.
Lost, feeling the way out.
Travelling through the veins of god.
Hearing that global heartbeat.
Washing away in the flow.
I want to swallow the moon tonight.
To feel the tidal shift in my stomach.
To spit out the bones of the past.
And the well-travelled memories.
I touch this earth and it feels like home.
Yet when my eyes blink open.
I am crushed by the weight of this world.
I belong here, but a million miles behind in time.
Waiting for the palm leaves and ferns to sprout in my veins.
I wish to return, yet also remain.
Eating forbidden fruit.
Running with the beasts.
Perhaps the change will come from inside.
Washing over me like conscience.
Seeing the divine in all that my eyes lay upon.
This is our home.
It is our only one.
Ninety-two million miles from the sun.
Wait for this dust to settle.
A hurt that’s wrapped tightly in a bandage.
Squeezed into numbness.
You asked me here, you want me to stay.
But to remain means deserting me.
Leaving myself alone to drift into space.
You handle my heart so divinely.
Picking off the dirt that reminds me of my past.
Scars that taught me not to break.
To catch you, half a world away; lost in the fog of tomorrow.
Cancelling time zones as the tock and the tick irritate.
And your kiss, inebriates it all.
This Atmosphere changes everything.
Up here, I cannot see the fall.
Don’t take this from us.
As the heart hovers and throbs.
An unending passion that is born in the slightest smile.
And the most agonising cry.
Your words caved in as the world collapsed.
Ushering happiness and banishing the ghosts.
What worlds do we hope to die?
Which ruins threaten to drag us down?
You meet me on the dock, that inches out into space.
Into time, dappled in joy and the yet to become.
Like a swirling candied apple planet in our hands.
And we dip our feet into stars.
Watching it all from above.
This sudden shudder and retract.
Of a past that wishes to bury itself.
In a book so eager to close.
The whisper in my ear as, the night fades, is you.
Promising me tomorrow.
As dawn washes into my eyes.
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.
There’s a resonance within.
These bones that call.
Out to the nothing, across god’s table.
The banquet to the stars.
Which hearken us home.
Though it’s hard to try against a world of darkness.
One that creeps in with the rain.
It calls to me daily.
Blinking out of my mind’s eye.
Stuttering psalms and pearls from my mouth.
Dropping all mortality.
Reminding me that I am divine.
Crushed to diamond dust.
Inhaled in the right light.
When the moon is bright.
Deep into your vines I travel.
Riding ruby seas of love.
Waves alive with serotine.
That burst at the heart centre.
Filling your soul with stars.
How dare you illuminate and steal this heart.
You glisten there with your tide of treachery.
Luring many to the edges.
My heart was strong, yet you broke it apart.
Forcing the pieces to drift in their gravitless state.
You are a thief and a liar.
For the light you shine is not your own.
Stolen and reflected from the sun.
One that gives much warmth and life.
You are cold and capricious.
Showing different faces to all below.
Keeping your dark side at bay until it’s too late.
I wish to break free, to kill you completely.
Or at least break away from your orbit.
To lift into a dream.
A sky that fits into your hand.
Let loose like the heartstrings of a melody,
that taps at your soul.
You breathe the air I need to survive.
Blown backwards like a northwest gale.
Billowing underneath these feathered sails.
Crystalize the weight that hangs heavy like the edge of space.
Skimming the clouds of your floating world.
To dive into the air of thought that passes between us.
That leaves me shaking like a night terror.
A heartbeat like a sleep kick.
These strings are made with each joint decision.
Tasselled and tied the rigging of a wandering star.
Leaving my hands covered in stardust.
And lungs of love full to burst.
I go silently into that pastel sky.
Watching the moments as I go.
Lifting off deep into your soaring kingdom.
Lifting once more into a dream.
She lived up there, where no-one went.
A sparkled silent sky just for her.
And her dreams and diamonds, all well spent.
As she walked through her world in a blur.
For it was on the moon her soul resided.
In lunar craters she crept and hided.
Watching the world from the safety of space.
Removed and distant, from the human race.
And her heart was safe and full of silence.
As the solar winds blew through her soul.
She forgot the tether from us through her highness.
And all the destruction and collapse down below.
Oh this heart has witnessed such unimaginable things.
Beating into yesterday, hoping for tomorrow.
This renouncing of a god served a purpose for the hour.
And birthed such maddening overwhelm.
Apocalyptic daydreams that swung in the breeze.
Hanging heads like melancholic flowers.
Plant it here, neatly and quick.
The thought within, itching and humming radioactively.
Around it salt was strewn, forming a circle like a halo around the moon.
Wolves howled, and seas stormed.
The mind asunder, ravaged by the absence of purpose.
Of hope.
Trying to join the dots in the empty space.
Acrophobically conditioned to fail.
Mind and muscle try to escape gravity.
Standing too soon.
Trying to lift off into the unknown.
Far away from here.
Hanging onto nothing but indecision.
You close your eyes to the jet stream, and that fear of falling.
You feel it now in your veins.
Coursing through the difference like a teenager.
Struggling for understanding.
But they could never see. They would never know.
Eager to cover you in un-precious stones.
Which is why you must leave.
To sail on the solar winds that taste of honey.
Forget the palatableness of decay.
For a distant shore will feel sweeter.
Than this rocky edge of adolescence.
Pieces float in the blood.
A crimson river, drawing up to space.
Flowers smashed into oblivion.
Only to remain.
As particles of dust.
Floating inside you.
Dusting your eyelids and tainting your tongue.
Lilies and lilacs lifting into a dream.
Lifting in the pulse and throb of the heart.
Blooming in particles while they orbit your organ.
That heaves and struggles to understand.
The demise of such beauty.
Caught and spun, little one.
With moon dust charcoal delirium.
Pulled down, in gravity’s smile.
Replaced with apathetic juveniles.
Scream out, and shut down.
They still laugh, at the tears of a clown.
For you it rains, transitional pain.
A disappearing all over again.
But what if you survived it?
And what if you changed?
What if your revived it?
Cosmically rearranged.
Skywards hopeful, shooting free.
In sweet delicious wild lunacy.
Fragile youth fades in the blink of earth’s eyes.
But your stars remain, in your own private sky.
These moments, like pearls on silver lips.
Gently spun and mouthed in wonder.
Consumed by the burning fire of solar saturation.
A golden treasure that I can sit beneath.
Counting coins and constellations.
Never equalling my love for you.
We are but pieces of a shattered moon.
That fell to earth when the world was sleeping.
They never knew how I kissed you, pioneered your love.
Discoverer. Sweet foreign terrain.
Unknown to them in the quietness above.
We are blank space and white noise in their muddled worlds.
Silent, like the dawn.
Tiptoe with me now, to the edge of the unknown.
These transparent moments.
Into the corner of god’s pocket.
Un-stitching fabric and time, eager to breathe the space of the infinite.
And air that sets my soul alight.
Burning the past and dancing on the surface.
Of a moon that those below can only howl towards.
Crawled from the cobwebs of a translucent dream.
Stretched out across the fingers of the gods.
Held down and wrapped by you, suffocated in love.
You are in the air as I breathe.
The god particle that explodes within.
A bigger bang than the galaxy around us has ever witnessed.
The seismic shift of you.
Burrowing deep into these lava bones.
Stolen time which seeps out of blackness.
Returned like pearls to the sea.
All we know, we have forgotten.
Clearing the realms for wonders to birth.
We close our eyes and catch the breath that escapes.
The Sustaining mist of God.
As this mind coughs up havoc, with its mystery of the unknown.
That pulls with a gravity to the dark and tragic.
God cradles us in feathery hope.
Kissing promise once more into our blood.
Gravitating away from grief.
Running water of certainty in our blood.
For we never truly know what exists.
Beyond the curtain of our eyelids.
What have you done?
Today, this life; where have you gone?
Which angry root did you pull out?
What weak bone did you break?
What flood turned to drought?
Which love to an ache.
You may forget everything in the end.
As time shuffles by, and souls begin to bend.
But you have each moment, each second in the sun.
A little tiny diamond, reserved for each one.
To pick up today, and more the day after.
A small little treasure, like happiness and laughter.
So forget the mould and oil that covers you like gloom.
And go out and discover, shoot for the moon.
He spun the coin, watching it take off in its own little orbit. Whizzing and chasing itself as it spun around. It usually took a few seconds, it never happened right away. At least not yet. The blurred smudge of the coin slowly began to take shape as it slowed down. It was a pound coin, the closest thing to gold he could find. The year embossed on the metal was 1989, that was very important, though few would ever see the date.
The blurring lines of the coin began to slow, but as they did, they stretched outwards, spreading across the surface like a wave. He’d seen it a few times before of course, but each time he did it seemed to entrance him. The waves grew wider and wider as the coin began to slow. The blurred waves taking on an oily shine, catching rainbow marks as they swam outwards like the tide.
And then the coin stopped spinning, it hung there on its side static and humming slightly as the waves that had spread stopped everything. Time was his now, and he moved in towards the coin, the waves forcing him in slow motion. He felt the tightness in his lungs, but he pressed on, like trudging through water. He reached out, his fingers finding the way towards the coin. When they touched, a radiating light exploded outward in the room, blinding him in an instant.
This was the part he always had trouble with.
June 23. 2014. June 23 2014. June 23 2014.
He repeated it in his mind over and over like a mantra. He’d been told to visualise the numbers, but his mind always struggled with that part. It would make things easier if he did, but he was used to difficult.
With a rush of air and collapsing of light, he was thrown into something that he could never quite describe. He was always thankful to land the other side though, his eyes and his hands always burning for some reason. But his lungs thankful for the air on the other side. The air back in 2014. A simpler time.
It was for him at least. Which is why he usually came back to then. Back to here.
He looked around now, the familiar softly warming his heart. There were different approaches to his time jumping, it had been explained to him. He could land in a different place, anywhere in the world if he chose. He wasn’t restricted to when or where, or if he’d ever set foot on that part of the earth. But these steps always required more, and he was only really interested in this place, this time. It brought him a comfort that the present and the future no longer held.
He was in the apartment he’d just left, but it all looked very different. He felt the lighter atmosphere in an instant. Gone were the heavy furnishings or blinds to trap the light. That precious light was welcomed in, the blinds open and the door to the balcony cast wide as if calling out to the sea. He could hear the see, even though it was quite far below. The crashing sounds of the waves seeming to catch in the updraft and lift the sounds up to the 28th floor. He knew the view well, and much preferred it here in 2014, then in the present. Here he could take their hand and trace the line of the coast off in the distance. In the present it only called him to the rocks below, the sirens that dwelt there luring him to the ends of overwhelm.
He looked at the clock on the wall, and knew they’d be back any minute. He always liked to watch them coming in through the door. That paradox of frustration and relief at coming back from the end of a long day.
And there they were, coming in through the door. He went across to the entrance and breathed in their sweet smell as they walked right through him. He knew his own self would appear any minute, coming out of the shower and greeting them. It pained him not to be able to touch, but he was glad that sight and smell both worked normally. He saw himself then exit the bathroom, tying the towel around himself and coming over to kiss them. He ghostly traced his own steps, merging with himself and following through with the kiss. He closed his eyes despite himself, but quickly opened them and took them in his spirit like arms.
He missed the kisses. He missed their touch. He missed so much of what was now all around him which was why he returned here so often. He watched them both moving around. The kettle now being boiled as the coffee and tea was prepared. Bag dumped on the sofa. He breathed it all in, the preciousness in the ordinary.
He could stay forever if he liked, and indeed he had stayed for long periods of time before. But time being the linear monster that it is, he found he had to wait out the times when they would sleep. He could not sleep here, back in time. His body wouldn’t allow it. It was as if it was constantly battling some force which pushed it on. So, he spent hours watching them sleep, watching them dream. This was always a good time to come, because he loved this day. The 23rd. He knew the evening well and he never got bored of seeing their reaction.
He noticed it then, glittering on the table. And surprisingly, so did they. The coin was shimmering, the sunlight catching the dulled yellow from the pound coin. Then they both went across to the table, he watched them move as if in some strange dream. This couldn’t happen, he could not disrupt the past. But it was happening, nonetheless. Before he knew it, the coin was in their hands, tossing upwards. It landed on the palm, their hand covering it.
Heads or tails?
Try again.
Flick, up in the air.
He reached for it himself but missed and watched as they again hid it under their hand.
His old self grabbed them, both of them laughing. Then they made a dash for the balcony. The joy carrying itself out into the outside to share with the world. Grabbed again, but this time fought back, tugging at the towel to share even more with the world.
He watched this all in a stunned state, as if unable to move. He shook himself back to, but by then it was too late. Another toss into the air and this time the coin spun upwards with such a force it was as if it were being called back by God.
Over the sides it flew, watched by them both and by he himself before he launched himself over the side.
It made no sense. He’d never been told this could happen. They were never able to see the coin before. Or had they just never noticed it? He thought suddenly to himself. They couldn’t interact with him, that is what he’d been told. But something was different this time.
He sped towards the coin, himself hurtling down towards the ground, the rocks below coming up fast like pointy teeth. No matter, he would just touch the coin and reset. He could not be hurt back here. He didn’t quite know what would happen if he did land, but it didn’t matter as his hand clenched around the coin.
But it did matter, for his ghostly hand went right on through the solidness of the coin. And those rocks found his body quicker than he could blink.
The pain was real, and instant. In his tumble he had twisted slightly, the jaggered rocks that his body had smashed against had greeted the blood like the ocean spray, disrupting it outward. He lay there for but a moment still alive, looking upwards as he could see the figures on the balcony looking on before disappearing back inside. Back into the lives they would live together for only a couple of more years.
As he passed, he heard the clock ticking and he could see in his mind the coin spinning.
Though he had paid attention to the date of the coin, which was indeed most important, what hadn’t been explained were the little rings of dots that circle the pound coin. A normal coin he’d assumed at first. But each time he had jumped, a little dot had disappeared. The coin, which now lay just below the surface, washed by those south pacific waves, had its last little dot slowly disappear.
Nothing, it seems, lasts forever.
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.
Havoc and Consequence 