Modern man

I wrote this a long time ago, as such, I can't recall for what reason or what I thought to make of it. I like it, all the same, perhaps you will, too...

Modern man is an effigy,

of science, arts and poetry.

Incomplete, inconsistent and widely undefined.

We fight and struggle for our survival,

riddled with perplexities created by our minds.

Unbeknownst, unaware of just what we may find.

And here we are, down the line, clinging to our lives,

To keep order, stay from chaos:- married men with wives.

An ode to all that was before, our fathers would be proud

And here I am: Modern Man, wrecked with wrath and fears,

 But none shall tie me down, still I persevere

The piano

After seeing the film of the same name, and further, writing a short essay on it, I felt compelled to write something more that addressed the voice (as it had become something of a fascination that transpired from my writing of it). Though the title explicitly speaks of a piano, it had originally begun as something relatively vain and autobiographical. Subversively, however, I believe it to be true of all artists in a sense.

My music is my voice,

it leaves my body

as I talk,

revealing what of me

I had kept within.

I construct my metre

with my mind

extending vowels and

consonants.

The songs I sing

are of many things,

and I articulate

at length

in a way

that only few

could ever do the same.

Is it my song

that keeps my company

enthralled?

For when those few

talk to probe me

and my voice is let

to fly,

my compatriots applaud me

and my lovers feel

desire.

Ode to the Cuckoo

I wondered if the cuckoo had ever thought of the hurt that their offspring could endure, at the whim (and wing) of another bird; or whether, perhaps, the bird could ever long for the voice of their mother, that they knew they never could know. Though this poem addresses the mother, in many respects it's a love letter to the child.

Had you ever another thought

about the displacement of your brood-

had you ever to think

of the heartbreak

that could occur

in such a fragile chest,

such a little bird

and left alone

to flitter

flutter

an unrequited love

for the mother

that never laid to nest

but in the hearts and minds

of all your future kin

An attempt to pass the time...

I've enjoyed the past few days of pleasant weather, and saw to find myself sufficiently drunk because of it; literally, not figuratively. Whilst I become slowly inundated  by work, I distract myself by listening to the birds sing outside and writing a few pieces, as my memory so very slowly begins to form it's complete recital of everything I've done. That's a 'reflection', the same as all performative acts (and thus, this included) are. And I realise that at some point I lost my pen at the same time as I began to lose my 'mind'.
That's a shame, about the pen.
This poem's title is the same as the book I never intend to write, they are reflections of one another, an ironic metaphor of sorts, that further, ironically, makes allusions to myself. And as I see things that aren't really there, but must be because I conceive of them and because, logically, idealism makes sense and exists- I piece together myself from parts that I, at one time or another, had chosen to give up, or possibly didn't. I can't know of autonomy. In hindsight I perceive that it's full of repetition, and repetition constitutes routine. Routine in the scourge of the soul.

The Orifice

My mouth fills with blood.

Blood, and the sickeningly

rich, phlegm like taste

of infection.

My tongue flashes against

the fleshy gum, that

erect,

craters the void

of the now absent

capsule like tooth

of wisdom-

the hermit

in the back of the lair.

The abscess of infection

had been comfortably housed awhile,

but no more.

And now the rich blood

flows free

and now

the stench with it

My Experience of Amsterdam II

I fled to Amsterdam in the hopes of fleeing England and the colonial reign; the industrial reign. I fled but it had all arrived early before I, or else, it arrived with me, from my mind and own impressions of tourism travesty. Surely I could not have caused it? Though I thought it, not even the cruellest of nightmares has any forbearance on the outside world; the reality of others-which I can never know independently of my own faculties-and so is as real as the visions themselves. 

   If the above doesn't quite make sense, as well I know; it both does and doesn't (the world is full of verisimilitudes), that is only because I was of an equally contrary mind at the time. The point, however, if any such thing exists, is a question of philosophical Idealism. Unrelated to the poem below, which I wrote in a drug induced haze while failing to sleep in a room full of strangers, who did such remarkably curious things in the dark of the night, before they all fell, rather sombrely, asleep...

This hall

where others sleep

sounds more like a tomb.

A catacomb for a generation to lie

The only sound:

of long,

withdrawn

sighs

the seeping out of their

souls and life.

And it occurs every night

right before their very eyes.

My Experience of Amsterdam

On the eve of the New Year just passed, I spontaneously decided to book and travel out to Amsterdam for a few days with a friend. Having little in the way of communication between us, there was much the possibility of ending up out there on my own. I didn't, but I feel my time there would have been much the same, regardless, though, perhaps, I would have saved a little money.
Anyway, whatever transpired across those few days left an impression on (though really, within) me, and I recorded some thoughts as best I could:

My experiences of Amsterdam have been many things.

The initial excitement of a lost traveller; the interest in the city’s novelties, which soon became tedium, and more.

On the eve of the New Year, the city centre was a chaos. Fireworks lit every road and sector of the sky. Smoke, blinding flashes and explosions were as ubiquitous as the people who flocked to the city for the single night. There was a freedom, a liberalism that bred anarchy, unfamiliar to myself. In London, such behaviour would seek attention from counter-terrorist groups.

A grenade (which was really a flare) was thrown out of a crowd, landing in front of me, and in my utmost apprehension of another incapacitating light and hot, burning phosphorous shredding through my flesh and clothes; I ran, my head tucked under arm. But there was no danger. Not this time. I had seen fireworks dropped and misfired in close proximity to others- all very real and dangerous, but no one seemed to care.

But then, the chaos was not real. It bore the illusion of swift change- the wind boomed with the approaching storm; it was a ferocious sound, unlike any I had heard before; it emanated with a live pulse like the booming of a great beast. It was the noise of the encroaching end, the behemoth Fenrir come to devour the world and there was fire and screaming, then, with the coming dawn, everything had stopped. The people filtered out, the crowds dispersed and the rare brush strokes of the wild had ceased to become apparent. Order had returned.

My companion and I had walked a great deal, taken by hook of the city’s own spirit and in that time we travelled, we witnessed a single and secular act of absolute poetry.

The noise of three pairs of wheels (how people love to cycle in Amsterdam) turning in a symmetrical unison was heard. The sound whizzed like a gentle breeze past your ear- with its own music and metronymic rhythm. As they approached, they rang their bells, for fun or love or just because- I can’t say. Their bells rang to the rhythm of their wheels; each a different sound; a different note and all perfectly in time.

Finally, they spoke. In order of appearance, I believe through distorted memory, in a range of soft and melodic voices that completed the compilation. These beautiful women (for they were, regardless of their fleeting visage) with their machines and backed by nature. That they should be there to play their song to only us on the deserted, late, streets of Amsterdam… The incident was a most perfect, natural scene of something passing.

Greater than the everyday observance.

It could have all been reduced to an arrangement created or modified by the mushrooms I had ingested; that art should befall two strangers, but my appeal to Dionysus compels me to have faith in that it was something so much more divine.

My mental rebellion...

Of late, for a while, or at least a few days, I've exhausted my personal range of emotions and ways of 'being' in a variety of settings; eclipsing both 'ballsy' and blasé. I've drunk myself sober and admired the aesthetic that is life, that is living. I had lost a certain amount of myself and was greeted with prophetic dreams and languorous visions that encapsulated my grave distaste; all the while not certain of what I was really thinking or feeling, because I was heavily drunk or else, just not in a frame of mind to think or recall sober events with clarity. The harm I've put my body through is likely to be repaired and reversed, the strange  documents of half sense and the names that have been written are my only true souvenir of this transformation that is constantly taking place.
This is an example, and I don't know what they mean:

I Was Awoken by a Voice

His name is ‘Mark’;

Sleepily,

he wakes from rest-

post coitus-

and answers the phone for another:

a woman.

It is early

and his duty,

he forgets.

His silence and subterfuge

were all that

were wanted. Now he speaks and

now his fate is sealed.

You awoke me from my visions,

Mark.

She travelled far

to return to you

the docile-with-sickness,

Panther of my mind.

‘A rat!’ She cried,

exultantly

and slipped through the cracks

of the night.

In the fresh morning air

is the scent of a cigarette

that I never smoked. And

so-

she has been here,

but she didn’t stay long.

The Boat Rowers

Then they started

rowing a boat,

at least,

they pretended to be,

and I thought:

No, not they,

though embalmed in light

they be