Birthday

Today, alas, it is that day.
Here is something written in retrospect...

As the 22nd hour is eclipsed since my last meal, I sit down to a late afternoon breakfast, enjoying a meagre portion and near immediately afterwards, feelings of sadness and rancour almost pushes me to expel the contents of my stomach from out my mouth. I feel about on the verge of a tremendous break. I see the date and check the time; nearly time to leave. Upon my return, it will be past midnight again, and with that, the eve of my birthday. This day which has come once every year for me, now, for almost 25 years- as it has for many others born on that Tuesday, so long ago. Many have now died, undoubtedly, and many others have gone on to greater things than I, who remains somewhere, obscurely, in the middle, and with every passing second, minute and hour, grow only more anxious, as has happened now for many years past. Always the slowly growing sensation of unsettlement, and always, after, the ever greater disappointment of my feelings being equated with nought; for nothing has changed. Dizzying, I recount the years I have spent this time pining to be alone, trying to bury my self in suffering on this day, and I recall how- aside from the alleviation of my stresses- how few are the things I feel I want. I wonder that maybe I want you; to ignore that day entirely, swept up in sleep, and have you held in my arms, subdued by the wealth of affections. I think of the smell of your skin and kissing the back of your neck; of feeling the slow rise and fall that's built around that beautiful, beating heart. I want, as ever, what is beyond my reach, an d knowing I have nothing, I tremble at the thought of leaving my house, of entering the day and of hastening towards my regretful birthday of disappointment and misery, dumbfounding.
   I put off going to work as long as possible, and upon my arrival, I am immediately fed instructions, each entirely in contrariness with the previous demand, and full of diffidence, I attempt to obey each as they are received, resulting in my overall failure on all fronts and an irritation at my inability on behalf of those around me. My head pounds and spins- my nervous system is shot, so that I begin to slowly perspire, and, in trying to open a bottle of wine; I slice my thumb open, again, and try not to smear blood on the glass as I hand it over. I ache; my head, my chest, my right knee, and all the joints of my arms. My thumb stings from lime zest as I cut quarters in preparation. I have a lunch formed purely of liquids; sugary juices and coffee, which finds a way to keep me going as I walk back and forth, pushing my muscles to carry heavy bags and heavier crates, loaded with bottles, to invigorate me and break the monotony of my hunger.

                                                                                    *

God is angry;
I hear the wind roar
a tremulant sound
like the hollow
of a diving bell.

Notes from the Weekend

I redraft this quickly and roughly on my short break from work. Nothing more than further notes on the daze of an 'artist'.

Today I woke, not hungover, but lightly drunk still; an evening of plenty of walking, jogging and drinking, preluding, leaving me tensely sculpted, lightly glowing, profusely sweaty, sticky- slightly- and riddled with ailments. Hungry, as always, ravenous as the figurative and literary wolf. My situation is a poor one- but I am not dejected. A beautiful, bright dawning day greets me through the open window, (I recall the late evening's spectacle as a patchwork of azure and amber, crisscrossed by my white window pane and am instantly glad of the fact that I so rarely sleep easily!) I am roused by a lighthearted and jovial phonecall from my father; I breakfast on a pot of strong, freshly grounded coffee and the recreational smoke. The day ahead of me is completely open and free; there are no expectations, and so, I gladly set to work:

Notes on the Author

Within these walls exists no God; but only man, woman, or child- who has made God "in his own image", and thus reflects the need to attain the 'Godhead', which sees and knows all. The Karmic shift places this with 'goodness'; for they that are good will reap the rewards: the good and the meek. But we, who are learning, are not so meek and so conflict arises. This conflict has existed for aeons; it was once sought as a form of worship, and the artist became an interlocutor between animal and 'God'.
   All journey's become essential to your arrival; there is no worth to mind until it is all, but lost.

Nepenthe

Nepenthe!
   Nepenthe!
I must have my
Nepenthe!...
My spirit; it yearns
but still finds no rest.
I chase sleep like shadows,
and dream only a breath
before it should vanish
and I am searching
again.
   Nepenthe!
Oh, Nepenthe!
The sweetest thing
to be wrought
by the hands that
made angels and
Fathered us all!
To know thee, is to fall
into sin, as I sought-
and be glutted vestiginously
of you more;
more all the more of the more
that I take,
and only more wanted
in my loss, so I ache
and seek you in places
where you are not to be caught-
Oh, my sweetest Nepenthe,
please don't leave me short-
   Nepenthe,
my Nepenthe,
must you leave me so fast?
For as you surely pass on,
I am stuck,
wanting the past.

A Forgotten Piece

Gone. Found. Copied:

I haven't washed now in over a couple of days;

not since just after seeing you, anyway

my body is coveted with its own thick musk-

the scent of my pheromones sticks to my skin

like sweet sucrose in sap

as it pushes through pores in my sweat

as I lay there and sleep.

It's a powerful smell

but it's subtle,

and it makes me think of your lust

and it makes me think of your love,

and it makes me think of you. 

Untitled

Pardon my lack of attention to certain 'characters' of the alphabet and their upper-case forms; my laptop is broken- it is an effort to produce most sentences unimpeded by the prospect of much 'cut and paste' and time-consuming revision. The letter 's', is one such, and humorously, one of the most common place charms in the succeeding piece. The 's' resembles the snake; a binding, cold, body of muscle that suffocates and devours its prey (In some cases). The snake must 'stalk', and therefore become the part of the (hopefully) successive lover. There is no title; too many things can be easily said about hungering/hunting for love or love's longing... There is more to all this than just the metaphor.

Like a stranger: some freak
upon the periphery,
I steal from you.
Nothing much-
not so much as
you'd ever notice,
but I swindle a look
that makes me fall in love
with your elegant form;
your mix of playfulness
and sophistication.
I am seduced, entirely,
all over again
as I scamper behind
to pick up the debris
that still bodes warm
and trace your steps as if
to suppose I might actually
begin to possess
a keener insight to your life.
I have been struck
so severely by Cupid's arrow
that should I strive
to remove this thing,
it would surely kill me.
How much longer must I live
then, without confession?
How many years must it become
that I skulk, bent-backed
with face to floor and lowered eye,
not half as strong a when I once was
now the year that's passed seems
already too much. Now I try to be bold and...
second guess. I question that which
never before would have
posed a thought.
And seeing beauty, in its glade
as I take perch within the shade
and watch with willful eye;
such very luminosity is burn'd
upon my retina, casting glare
from out the very outline
of your frame, within which;
nothing else will fit.
I think to be your stool.
Make me the very thing to take
your pressure off, after
so many days of taking leave
and making your escape:
Breaking away.
Let me make your house!
Let me serve you breakfast
from silver trays, I'll save
for them- if I must-
Let me rub your sores-
I apologise: sometimes I'm
heavy handed;
maybe sometimes I'd rub you raw-
I am new to this:
In fact, I've never
loved someone so much before.
I appraise the letter
that sets your name;
I take it away and hold it
every time I think
to set it down again.
Delirious,
I am lost to the empty chambers
of my heart
that I keep vacant,
waiting for you.
Unusual that you should cast
two shadows;
that my negative space
depends on you-
so substantial you are-
yet I wonder:
Do you ever feel the weight
of my mostly silent, suffocating affections?
Do you feel another,
looming close,
or my anxious eye upon you?
Do you wonder that I
should even breathe?
so reliant I am upon you.
so very long I followed you
that I now know nothing more-
perhaps never knew much else
since before my sleepless skein
had started
but how to fill my day with you;
how to coil around
and slowly wrap
applying all the pressure,
for a serpent's warmth
is his betrayal.
I've heard others say
they've only loved once
and I wonder:
Do they recall your name?

Of Weeks Past

With nothing else, I delight myself
with thoughts of you.
I dream of holding you;
your legs wrapped tight
around me, I feel you
in my arms as I inhale
your scent and taste your bitter,
lovely, residue
as it's lost in my mouth
to your extensive, virile, kisses.
I think of writing you.
Ensnaring you with my raw words
like stems and shoots and leaves
that, hidden in nature,
tie you all the more mischievously-
with a necessary guile
to fill myself on you.
Like the nomad I am,
I must capture you;
must take my draught
before this sickness kills me.
I am faint through missing you.
The impostor of my thoughts
is not enough to keep me sated.
Though I wait and carry on
unhindered, still
I sear under a golden God
to find the flesh that fits your form.


                           
                                                                        ***

Hail!
Wild rush of
glorious wind!
Hail!
Tidal force bequeathed
by ocean's rare...


                                                                        ***



What may, at first, sound like obnoxious perfidy;
pretensions and otherwise, are really not:
I resolve as I revolve;
spinning a silk strand, web-maze shell
around me, as I delineate from thought
to deal with introspection, extraversion,
hypothetical scenarios, meditation, alteration...
I analyse, logicise, radicalise, rationalise, mystify,
and then act, reflect, reaffirm, relate, respond, readjust.
All things bear subjective relativism.
'All things being equal', and 'all things to all men',
all things are fine and all well and true-
as and was when they happen. 'Here today
gone tomorrow'; another layer twisted through
as I spin, spin, spin, metamorphose and grow-
taking flight from the vulgar youth and infancy
of ideas as I bloom into an adult butterfly-
beautiful, with learned wing.

Notes on the Author

I sit up in my unmade, dirty, bed and smoke cigarettes. They make me feel sick; swirling inside my gut, mingled with all the water and milk from the few past cups of tea, is all that smoke, rolling in the emptiness surrounding.
   My head spins nauseatingly slowly- heavy with the lumber of disarray as I swallow a load of spit that feels like its displacement could cause me to vomit at any time. I hang limp, and extinct of ideas like a ventriloquist doll; my joints equally stiff, my body beaten and muscles knotted- all tense and skinny, I feel dumb and low. Lost... Lost... And falling apart. Every breaking day should bring new promise. Uneasily, I creep from out of my bed. For many days and nights, now, I have not been stable- have not had rest. My wounds have not been treated; my sores never soothed- I have dragged on and on and on, perpetually tired and revolving I stumble without consideration; a worn-out motion with a lack of possession. I fall from duty to duty to duty, from drunk to drugged to a sleepless stupor full of failing courtesy and lack of common sense. It is important not to give up. Important not to slip and become overwrought by the mire that is left in your wake. Important to look only forwards, or else it all becomes worthless; a trick connived by Hades, no less. What is there before you, branching out from all the mess? Behind lay thick, rooted weeds that make you trip, thorns and vines that rip and whip and the stains of your seared flesh as you pass through hell. The cerebral plane tips, and all that was once grounded becomes sky. The self implodes so that the bones of the body can be worn on the outside; a carapace to deflect the startling affects both filial and communal, pulled away from the centre of love as though drawn by the four horsemen that end all. Plagued, Pestilent and left Dead after War. Just another vacuous member of a miserable horde. The mirror's image has long been forgotten; the fading painting was just a representation of an artist's dream. There is nothing you can grasp that has not been defiled by time. Only a semblance of what was had remains. It is picked and held softly, gently, and warmly, close- and finally it crumples into fine dust, as ashes.

Notes on the Author

I wake up and decide that I am incredibly sick of this, already old, routine; every day, for the few hours previous, I'm anxious as hell, waking up to watch out the window and check that it's still dark; that it's not light enough out to suggest that I've overslept, or missed or forgotten to set my alarm- despite the fact that I know otherwise. I'm so anxious, that I half decide every time, to just jump out of bed, right then, and be done with the waiting for my caustic alarm, but every time, I'm still too tired. Instead, I wait, eyes half open or opening fully every couple of minutes and when the alarm comes, put it on to "snooze" for another ten minutes and wait, all stricken and anxious, again for my time to be eclipsed. Growing, all the while, even more sleepy and even more bitter. I roll over and check the clock, then roll over again to face and meet the body of my sleeping lover. Far away on sweeter shores. As always.
   I know I should get up, the way I always plan on doing every night, the night before, but never do. I decide to wait in bed and spend two minutes with an angel, who, beautiful body naked and legs wrapped around mine, wakes me and makes my mind wrestle and sends me, everyday, to work with a raging hard-on. I roll out of bed, all energy, but half somnambulant and throw on my uniform for the day, pack my bags and am already five minutes late- I only ever get to work on time; never early, all unwashed (and sometimes for a couple of days), with aching balls, superfluous with sperm, eyes red and burning to close, a hungry belly and no time to spare. Before I leave, I address the body and lips of my lover with a flurry of licks, bites and kisses and tell her I love her, waking her up just long enough to hear her say it back. I say my goodbye and stand there, absorbing her for the last time and resenting my fate that I should have to leave her like this when my only wish is to climb up aside her and sleep, sleep, sleep...

On Lunacy

For a long time now, and probably about as long as I can really recall beginning to find out and configure my identity, I have been struggling with the concept of sanity, and pushing myself further from what I once dutifully followed as an inhibited and false standard to live by that would secure me little discomfort and an easy passage through life. Firstly, it becomes necessary to pull back a little and rationalise this, almost pretentious, and often times conceited notion of becoming. What I refer to is the space that you suddenly accept and realise is there, when you wake up one day and consider that you’ve drifted very far from where you were once, and the silhouette that you left behind seems to no longer fit the shadow that now follows you. This can be a literally spatial venture, or it can, and usually is, something much more intimate and metaphorical. If the paragraph reads vague, it is only because our understanding is.

   One day, I woke up and was no longer who I was. The analogy that quickest springs to mind exists in Roald Dahl’s Twits, where, after little pieces of wood have been slowly and cumulatively added (or was it taken away?) to Mr or Mrs’ walking stick, they begin to fear they are growing/shrinking at an incredible and unrecognisable rate. The specifics don’t matter too much, I find, because the sensation affects all sexes beyond the performative gesture of gender, and the fear of growing is just the same as shrinking when considered from the stable vantage of clarity.

But what does it mean to say that ‘I’ is no longer becoming as a phrase, because the self doesn’t exist in a recognised sense any longer? Clearly, I understand extension: arms move under the guidance of will; eyes flicker, widen and close, suggesting a mind with desires that controls it; speech flows, sometimes, with a vivid alacrity that resonates with purpose. Yes, a body is here, and a mind belongs to it, but are we not so much more than just a casing? Are we not the gunpowder that sits within, waiting to be ignited by an idea, so we may fly our chamber and, with velocity, soar towards our goals unimpeached? This is precisely what I mean. Between the gun and the target is an area of space which must be overcome; at once we were with the cold metal that housed us, but over time, we commit transgressions, widen our spectrum and move away from the forms which once occupied us- institutionally, socially, morally- to wake up after some uncertain time draped in a mist of execrable confusion and not knowing how we got there. There is no guide; no Virgil to guide us through the circles of hell, and those that went before us simply say to “learn from your mistakes”, but these ‘mistakes’ are the very misgivings that, though left behind, become the counterparts to our solid, misunderstood, identities that we never really depart from, and haunt us forever, forcing us out into the wilderness to howl at the moon with a convalescent animal frenzy.

   I woke up one day and went outside; I smelled the air and felt it touch my body. It was a day like any other and no less or more significant, but on this day, I had arrived. Imperceptibly, though it had been, I had also changed. Over the course of years, I had learnt so much about the world and it’s people- either directly from them, or from my own observant and interactive studies, or also from the pages and hands of the latent dead, who know more than us, because they know their limitations. Amongst all this, I had also dabbled in the realms of pleasures and pains that I had once been so naïve about and, further still, refuted. I had murdered the self that once stood in my shoes and now wore his carapace as though it were my own, making it so, so that it became the new ‘I’ all the better; tailored to fit, as a Tayler, I am. This journey conducted me through drug-dazzled days and nights where I quite seriously consolidated the loss of my mind and sat down, near-tearful to know I’d never commune with fellow man again. I have killed a part of myself when I committed my child to an inhumane slaughter before the first beat of their heart. I have lasciviously engaged again and again in coital acts that were acted with as little concern for decency or safety as consequence, and have after every time, riddled myself with psychosomatic disruptions that extend only from an unfulfilled malaise. I have publicly stripped myself to the flesh to bear the brunt of scorn and have gone further still to allow my immolated soul the oxygen that stops its starving but also soothes its burn. And still I have gone further than this. In all of this time, across the many plains that make the incalculable landscape of ‘self’, with its many peaks and falls, I have been forced to question my actions, either by myself, or others, and meditatively, have consolidated every crime and act of valour with an (un)due penitence, forgiveness, acceptance and faith. I have questioned the very concepts of ‘time’ and ‘reality’ and have hindered my judgement of the social norm, playing ‘Devil’s advocate’ to the metaphysical; testing the patience of belief by running theorems to their logical conclusions in ways that few people will. I grow fearful of my very potential, because I begin to accept that all is possible. The only limitation is mind, and mine has come free of earthly forbearance, grown wings and taken a most solemn flight into the vacant spaces of the uncharted. Have I now wandered upon the deepest seas and richest shores of lunacy? I make a white whale of the lie: ‘Freedom’ and am shackled to its hunt as a death-bound slave. I am aware that those who usually pursue their ideas, who give notion to their singular, secular identities beyond all care of objective circumspection and inscribe within themselves their own laws and lexicon; becoming the true gods of self, are often sullied and hushed and shied away to the silent realms of institutes, where only obscurity remains.

But consider now, this: we are hurled into a world where nobody will ever truly understand us; where we have yet to learn to understand exactly what it is we are or for what reason, and having no purpose, have created reasons to give us a vague sensation of case, cause and care for what has or will be. We have invented complexes so deep that they are ineffably unified with the source of all life so that our identities now take upon themselves the prejudices and categorical presentiments of a millennia or more; all devoid now of true reason or purpose: all now as irrefutable as they are inconsiderate and incomplete. Life has become a maelstrom that will one day cease, and still, we’ll never really know why. Is it so crazy, then, to try to find for yourself exactly who and what you are? Is it wrong to want to know what you are capable of; to know what ills or good you can and may commit, just because the world will allow it, and it moves and changes but never really does, all the while. Being so small in the whole scheme of everything, nothing is really a catastrophe and there exists virtue in all- out of virtue that it simply is- and within everything and the entire world, as one great equation; beauty exists, friendship exists, happiness may exist.

   I have devastated myself for scrupulous aims that, like a Greek tragedy, have filled me with an ironic sense of bliss that only a poet can truly appreciate. It is the poet’s destiny to transcend all reason and die many times in a single life, because we must embody all aspects to prophesy the truths behind love and hate and vengeance and find what unites them all, at their core, and for it all, I have come to know this: Within Life, there is life, and we make up the microcosmos that slowly grows and fills the world; our world, and beyond that; our understanding of the universe. There is no singular aspect that rings true for all things; no universal besides emptiness and death- we make the posterity that presents itself as life, and with it, all the good and bad we know, therefore, be good to others. Be kind, for the kindness of strangers is a much blessed thing. Be self-aware, and know there is weight to all you do, because we give weight to our actions. Learn to share and love, and to those, whom you love, never be unfaithful if faith is what is required, and recognise when all is lost, that happiness requires pain.

A Day Without Recompense

I move continuously onward with the momentous energy of a spiraling shell, caught in a drift, with so many external forces acting upon it. There is no time to stop and contemplate; no room to 'breathe', spare from what little space is occupied by the self. I am the weight of so many actions, and inaction, competing for place atop the preliminary precipice that leads to the continual fall. The stream of life's stream-of-consciousness runs throughout my body which is penetrated and left exposed, as an exit wound, spreading particles of existence that mingle with the world and carry on with their cause, deliberate and complete, as always. There is only motion, in all things, and the stagnant stasis of the word is a lie; only sensations exist with incontestable  truth, subjective as the eye in a mirror. To dig deeper than this is to find the source of all unhappiness; to locate the ever-present question to which there is no answer. Stare at a stone and lose yourself to its patterns, there is no more sense in anything than this.

Notes on the Author

My room is a collection of dust and dirt and hair and sickness. Everybody's hair; in colours and contortions of red and gold and black; blonde and auburn and long and short, men's and women's, curly or not; my own, and not. Looking down at my toes, I think how I used to bite my toenails as a kid. Now I pick them, pull and tear a little, causing catechisms on my fingernails to appear. Half black and full of grit and gristle and jerkily protruding like sick splints of wood- my nails on my fingers and toes, both. I'm filthy. Not necessarily, nor exclusively, in that adolescent, hormonal and lusting way, either; just plain dirty. I feel old in my unwashed self- a thick layer of fresh on top of old, dried, sweat stuck to my skin like a penetrable shield as I slide my fingers down my self and scratch off a flush layer of grime. Little spots cover my face and my uncut facial hair hides all manner of pocks and scars, and my chest burns as it forms a concave indenture and I cough up a small wad of phlegm. Sweat trickles across my upper lip. It's 20 past 4, and I'm still sat on my bed in just my boxer-shorts, stuck on myself as a figure of some dirty old man- a cheap booze-hound, and I like it. It appeals to me. There is an appeal to the dirt and the grime, the catarrh, the fabricated smokey setting like an ethereal haze and the bin full of used condoms which suggests sex.
   And then it becomes a masturbatory act to be sat in the dirt and the grime and the human gristle, and so I prepare to take a shower, and vacate this little, filthy, room of mine that I've hardly left in 4 days.

Notes on the Author

As time goes on passing regularly, the way it does, or rather; the experience of sequential change/movement that we opt to call 'time', for ease and posterity's sake, occurs to be emblematic of 'shifting', 'movement' or continuance, I ruminate on all the articles I have lost, have left me, or am losing, until, surely and unavoidably, there will be nothing left to lose, at all; I will embody, and thus, own nought.
   In the past few weeks, in pursuit of work, much as 'time' is in pursuit of chasing its own tail, I have lost several things, supposedly dear to me. Initially, I recognised, amidst sobering up, that I had lost the eponymous sunglasses that had formulated part of my 'summer' image- both the resultant present from a memorable trade with my kin, and being of some expense- made them, in some way, irreplaceable. Soon, I realised, that the complimentary gold tie pin I had worn them with was also amiss. Little things, but they make for big changes, sometimes. (Or else a big dip in one's bank balance)
   A week later, in due circumstance, I lost my bag in a sprawling crowd of jubilant, near-maniacal, idolaters. I acceded to its loss and continued to 'lose myself', then, in the situation. Nevertheless, the bag was found and returned to me by kindly members of agency and the torpor of mixed emotions was replaced with happiness- only too soon. Making a quick, mental, itinerary, it was revealed that the bag was devoid of all its most precious content; the inks for my pen, my passport for being and a book of my writing. Consolable about all but the last, it was curious that, as I ran through every conceivable page within the book to know what I had written within it- of what was lost and what was not- this book; worth nothing, monetarily, had affected me so much more profoundly than anything else- than any insignia stamped by the governing bodies, or the gold that acted as functional decoration... But words, so incredibly intangible, that had once existed and belonged to me (if such a thing can ever 'belong' anywhere or to any person), and were then glimpses of my self; my exposition to the world; my own stamp that reflected I had lived and thought and was as such, and in being gone, had lost with it all my thoughts and feelings throughout this period of 'time' where I once was... This made me feel that I had lost a little of my self, so much the greater than any solid thing, and so much more the greater than any amount of money would take to recover.
   Just a month ago, or less, I had lost in unfortunate circumstance a golden chain that I wore around my neck. It, too, was a present from my father. It weighed heavily upon me- the sorrow of losing something that had been trusted to me; the guilt, the feeling of never having another, the lost physical presence of my father's love, but in time I had learned to do away with such things; to know that the self is not manifest in articles of gold, and a chain that wears around one's neck will slowly weigh them down further, beyond the emotional, and into the material and then, the avaricious. But what of words? If I choose to forgo them now, then I must forgo all that had come before, and so, never to be will they follow.

Reflections after work

I've sat servile; still,
for so very long, long
enough to watch the sky
turn at once from its
very darkest hue
unto a most serene
sort of blue.

So long as to watch
the descent of Sun be
succeeded by the rising,
crescent moon, which shone
a sort of ghostly white
and later, upon tall blades
of grass; a sliver of silver
cased in dew.

And sitting, always, always
wakeful, with nothing else ado
but wait, my body frigid,
freezing cold and vainly
striving for warmth: I shake,
meditatively, my vigil keeps
me watching as the world
moves by; I see the flight
of birds and bats flit
loftily in the night time sky.
I stare at holes within
the floor; those both
natural and made by man,
and gazing deeply into
nothing, am consolidated
on what I am.

Crime and Punishment

The human condition is the only guillotine; sin does not exist but for in the mind's 'eye', and there is no God to punish thee; no Hell wherein to suffer an eternity. No penance and thus, no redemption; man is his own gaoler. Remember this, as you commit against your fellow neighbor.

My eyes drag me down;
they will have their
justice-
Condemned to
surrendering ground.

For Elise

Something about secrets; the grand unveiling of them, the clandestine whims of another to hide that which can only be recovered and illuminated, and consequently, (in the vein of The Bloody Chamber) those who cause the upheaval are often left 'bloodied' for it. The search for a supposed truth which we understand will be our ruin, and yet feel strangely only the more allured towards; the fire that immolates the paper wings of the moth. Elise is the object of Amor but the titular reference also suggests a rhythm.

Relentlessly
and timorously,
so begins the conflagration
of the soul.
It is prepared by you
as you take great breaths;
the opening steps
to approaching that
dreadfully endearing
door. As always,
you continue to go
ahead, without digress,
though it provide you
no rest;
just as fools always
know best.
Never too penitent,
one sees signs
but never considers to stop,
just as fallen rocks
are never to gather moss
upon rolling,
until they are finally dropped.
One makes dreams,
we soon dream too much
we debase it, dilate it, make
it a nightmare, it seems-
Perverted; our fancies, soon
make way to reality and
it's clear there's been bleed-
Sanguine is one,
with the other's regime
while the other is destitute
that one is as one seems.
We step to the lock,
still the door is shut,
but we peep through the hole
to see that which is what,
and there are our nightmares
and dreams so enshrined
that when we fancy we've
suddenly cashed in on our debt-
we begin to realise,
ours was indeed the wrong bet.
We place our hearts on our plates
then proceed to dine.
Our blood overfills glasses
as we glut on more wine.
And though we see it's our
ruin, we'd rather die
than not know;
the type that picks itself,
repeatedly, just to watch
water flow-
curiosity condemns us
into the hands that will
rend us;
we dream our undoing
and towards it, must go.
Rarely deterred once in flight,
and not wholly unlike the
moth with a frenzied
monomania for light, we
pester and tinker though are
continually scorched
and for every war raised
lose only more-
So deep is our concern
that by it, we are submerged.
And though you might think
that such character,
this 'characteristic', to it
there must be a chance,
a turn of hand to this
trick? Nothing at all, not
a little positive?
To this there is only
to open the door,
and then discuss what
good is restored.

Space

There was something here;
it's not any more,
I removed it,
replaced it,
and I hope you don't mind
the silly rejoinder.

God Exists

I have been living, for the life I've lived; I have been writing.
Within each, tiny, fractured moment there is the semblance of surreptitiousness.
With a maddened mind, I have deified all things that have come to pass;
It has made of me, at once, both a stoic and a man in love.

This fabric called love;
I make a rope of it;
I wring my hands and I
mope from it,
and when at last it seems
that it just might end-
I put my neck through the noose
and fall right down again.
                                                                            *
God Exists;
God needs must exist
because
Life is Good
                                                                            *

The world is meant for thee-
O, man-
who may walk upon most
restful ground
and freely pick those fruits
which grow
four seasons of the year
(except in Rimbaud's Hell)
with never a fear nor worry
that one must caulk the bulwarks, or,
otherwise will drown.
Neptune hid his many secrets
deep below horizon's surface,
and Chronos
made way for matter to
fill that dark blanket sky
with stars for thee
to look upon.
Stay here and rest with passive motion;
as you lift your feet,
the world doth turn
and as you sit; the apple
falls for your contemplation.
Those who war will one day
be apocryphal, and
in your final moments of
a most exact and beauteous
quietude; then,
shall your spirit soar.

Ode to Moon II

Ode To Moon II

A quixotic poem about my love for the moon- for all its triumphant beauty and associated boons.

A Slow Decomposition

Hello, again, friends; I've been distracted by obligations, floundering relationships and long bouts of inspection. Too lazy and hot to type up what's new, I began a project to compile some work into a neat collection and pretend it was a complete and completely original book. I sadly missed the deadline, but here's a poem to keep you thrilled, that I hope (and did run a quick check) I hadn't posted before.

Something in my room smells

like rotting flesh, and

I think it’s me.

Secretly decaying

still breathing,

being eaten from the inside

by intestinal worms

and devoured

on the outside

by bacteria

invisible enemies and

pain.

I take a sniff on my clothes,

sheets, and pillows but

to no avail,

the stench only stays when I

can’t smell anything else

only myself

and I wonder if it’s started:

the slow

steady

decline

to

nothing

On Regret

Oh Venus,
Shall I pray to you,
and make a heathen of myself
in front of the face
of my Lord, 'God';
to renounce his imposed patriarchy
in favour of your more feminine charms?
I have cracked
and cracked
my hard, outer, shell
and bled my milk on hands
that would form cups
and even on
that miserable ground
but never where I planted my seed
did that heart grow to fruition.
Never was there a bloom
to make shade for all my toil.
But where did beget
plumage for my work
was only a half-baked
shattered, sort of rhapsody
that soon left one all burnt
and violently crashing
unto the shores below;
a mad Icarus
who flew with false wings
and was left, body-broken
for pride and remorseful hope.

An extract from the Book of Pain

What pains it is, to feel within my bed the ghost of you. To take to my night-time vigil, trembling alone as I picture there your physical form; not so lately left. I summon you there to reach out to me, and feel only the more alone to know that what I think I find; my desire, is only a ruse. I belong only without you...
   Kept awake by the phantom of you, I force myself to breathe slow and deep.
Roused early by nerves and work, barely slept, I drift about my duties, ever yawning, staving off sleep as my eyes grow unbearably heavy and my mind blinks. An arm, a leg, they forget their duties and drop, momentarily, like a nod of the head. A short spasm; an unexpected sleep that lingers less than half a second. Inexhaustibly it pursues me, and always do I feel so flushed; as though perpetually enduring the fall of hot, indelible, tears.

Of a fleeting love affair

Stylistically, I borrowed from Henry Miller who I had been reading at the time and has always been an influence on my more auto-biographical pursuits, especially in regards to women. I can't deny the evident lechery and shan't make myself up to be more than I am: a coward and a cur, ever unsuccessful in love. There is little I do well, and in so suffering now for my lack of conviction and courage in the face of another whom I so adored, I seek respite in the distractions of typing the inked in words from books to their digitalised counterparts. This is from a time, a little while ago, where I battled in my mind for a decision as to whom to give myself to. Regrettably, I lost both.

I saw her there; golden hair splayed out like spun strands of sun-tipped cloud. Effervescent, though it may sound, but she really did ignite some colour upon the overall pallor of that room. For myself, especially. I looked her way, in passing, unaware of any glance that had inconspicuously enough been passed in my direction- as would have it when one walks into an establishment un-expected, un-warranted and unwise to their concentration.

   I maybe let my look linger, hoping she’d feel me and turn. A fairy-tale. I carried on, passed to my quarter and made my small talk short and swift, the breeze becoming its significant other, it drifted away with barely a passing sound, but pleasant enough to see business, as expected, taken care of sufficiently. I went to my tasks; my results being more important than the spontaneity to which I conducted myself, but no matter. The letters keep coming, the money dries up, the debt amounts and we keep laughing, fucking, drinking and pissing it all away. There blows that breeze again. So my cash flow slows. No worry. It’s not the first time I were hungry- at least I pre-emptively packed out my fridge! Hunger weighs little upon the conscience when one seeks for love. Love. I wonder. What is this blessed thing that rings, so often, but rarely true. A sound, a feeling, a noun. Love, so we searcheth for it- seeketh it where we may, at the end of a night where much more is forgotten. I felt for her, certainly. I felt her, even more so. We had “feelings”, then, for one another, and sweet on me, she seemed, sure enough. That’ll do- for now, for when expectations do not resound so greatly, so much easier is our notion fulfilled. Let love lie and allow us.

   I passed her again and still I went uncoordinated by a sign from her eyes that might instil me with a greater cause. I walked on, nearing her, looking still, but undaunted.  I thought about speaking to her. Would that raise suspicions with due course to the note that I’d left her? How could I know. Would she rather discretion? As I pass her, silently; still thinking about her hair- so much of it, how it draped her, how I held it as she pressed her scent into mine- I notice the man who notices my stare. He knows more than that, that I made public aware of my desire for her. What more will become of his knowing if he finds how she acts not reprovingly towards me, also? I distract myself from my machinations on the grounds of reason and preservation of her reputation; an anti-ego, of sorts, which acts as a soft blanket for my truth: cowardice. Oh, Lothario, why do you crawl like a worm? Leaving, I take time to pause and stop by the window. I push my forehead against the cool glass and stare vaguely across streets and houses, barely aware. Their vacant plots mimic my own empty-headedness. The glass before me fogs up from my breathing. I think about waiting for her. An hour or so- easy time to kill. But… Then what? A quick drink? An easy half-hour. And then what about the other girl I said I’d see for nine? An old conviction or a new taste? Crude terms. Crude behaviour. One fuck or another. One great disappointment for another, smaller, but more fresh. That can change the way, in the future, you are perceived, but by the other, you can always be forgiven. I think to wait it around. I call it an hour on one, hope to catch her, walk a few minutes and kiss her goodbye; keep her sweet. I’d probably see her tomorrow, anyway. And then? Then I’d hightail it back, almost in time to catch the other. Give her a call and smooth over my tardiness (besides, I’m always late…) and spend my night with her. I tell her I was taken up by writing (equally true.) and so got back late. How could she argue? A perfect plan? Who knows. I consider myself a swine and a devout vagabond. Cavalier. Quixotic. Cunt. (No offence, ladies…) I retreat to a public house, severely brimming, and order a beer, waiting for time to pass upon its knowledge. I wait for Romance and Love. I wait to fill myself, becoming every day less of what I was once and all the while, growing closer to becoming something entirely different. I pass my days growing further from the trees that originally rooted I. My thought expands and my body races in pursuit of it, converging with others along the way as my mind lingers on their personhoods and identities awhile. I bloom and am scattered again by the dissonance of unanswered questions and a reluctance to grant temporary truths a quantity more of essence, so that they may last longer than a single life. A whole life is lived and dies in a night. I am alike the mayfly. I long to be more, to live longer, than the mayfly, whose heart beats so fast, who loves so much, so soon, and then is gone. A meaningless dance in the tumult of a soft spring evening. My wings carry me so hopelessly as my nature dictates. I smile for the sun, that it warm me, and I wonder how long until it implodes.

The Sadomasochist

Do you think I enjoy this?
Trying to sleep,
all adrenaline pumped,
as the sun spears through my window-
magnifying the situations' intensity-
with my knuckles cut
and feet all bruised,
shaking for hours like
a broken-down washing machine
as it spins round, and round
and round...
 Do you think I enjoy
this black mist in my gut,
that'll surely kill me one day,
for, it only gets worse
as it spews and seeps
into everything I do.
Call me the 'void',
which I know I am.
What I once was
all seems to be gone;
you're killing me, but
do you think I enjoy
hurting you?

On Frailty

I lay down with a heavy heart, a pulse that beats like thunder; strong and inconsistent. I hold my fears, tight, for comfort. I grip my duvet and pillow in a vain mockery of holding, instead, a warm body. I resist day that dawns with falling rain as I try to wrest some sleep- some rest from this stalemate called 'love', where all is pain and tears and lack of trust. I become slow, conceited and spiteful, burning with an anxious sickness that is nothing new, and yet, something that one can never get used to. No matter how many times the pieces take their part: lining up, coming together, knocked down and falling away, every time the board is cleared and the game begins anew. A man with so many occupations can not always follow his heart. Though the water appears still, one should not think that it doesn't crash against the breaks.

A song of the forlorn

Baby, I'm all a-tremble...
A shaky, unsteady, leaf
and you're the gust
and you're the breeze:
You blow me down

An Aphorism

All is Matter
or Energy;
A matter of time
before the energy runs out...

An Epistle to D

I sit in the chair of my now absent friend and already a victim of nostalgia's cold distance, I recognise our farewell and awkward instance of anxiety felt as I knowingly, evidently, stall the inevitable with lost and rambling, feeble thoughts. As our eyes meet at the door, I flinch and look away. Coy, made shy and abashed by my love. I see in your eyes all the tiredness I had inflicted upon you over your short stay. Flush and handsomely haggard. I admire you, protesting against the self in not reaching my hand out to you; in an offer of consolidating our friendship; in my desire to embrace you; to kiss you, and I envy you your return- that you should leave this mad place with pleasant recollections of a past spree as you immerse yourself once more in regular, working, solidarity, as I return to the destitute scene with the mind of a criminal, and mourn alone your passing from this place; left bitter-sweet since you departed- where here I shall wait those many long hours become days, until you again entreat upon me.
   I consider the tasks ahead and everything I needs must do before me and it is all too much. Right now, when even just to summon the will to move becomes such a dauntingly momentous task, how think I to do? When every thing needs must be done by the selfless 'i', devastated since you are gone... How shall I even think to do?In league with me sits the cigarette you last, kindly, allowed me. Yet, filled with the most miserable woe, I dare not smoke; to see your effigy cremated.

The Nihilist

The Nihilist: Video Reading

Whilst the poem itself has been written up already, here is my first attempt at making a video. It's unedited and simple, but I can't think of what more could be wanted or needed.

An example of flash fiction

Some may disagree, but I really do feel that I'm a better man with drink inside me; it oils the system, lubricates the joints and the mind follows suit, though admittedly, sometimes, the tongue carries itself away on occasion. I woke up early, (something that never happens when I'm sober) and drunk today, disparaging life and debt and desirous of death. I have little left in me that's certain of anything any more.
To detract from that, I wrote this:

Humanity was at a stand-still, the day the news emerged. It had become the biggest thing since... Well, since Jesus, really; which was both a crude, much as it was a fair comment to make. People began vociferating that you couldn't trust the scientists. Can't trust science? Then what else was there? Faith? Easy pickings between the two, really, and especially in this case. What when one wrong meant the other right and both really came down to meaning the same thing. And besides, to oust science now as wrong would be to condone the backwards steps of alleviating any founded principle of it's truth. Start there and what are you left with? Non-existence, non-entity, nothing much but faith again. Yes, the world really was shook up- the day they dug up Adam's bones...

And verily shall
He quaketh;
He that should stumble upon
Great mysteries
Of the earth unbounded,
Of the eternal beyond, and
All between: All unknown
To return to light
The place men tread
As never a man had
Before.

Notes (from) on the author

After being awake and occupied for several hours now, the urge to 'breakfast' has only just begun to rile me with some severity. I boil a pan of milk and water, looking at the packet of flavoured, powdered, pasta that I intend to indulge in. The 'best before' date tells me that it ran out approximately four months ago, and as I tip the pack into the pan, I notice the debris looks discoloured. Black are the flakes that were once, supposedly, meant to represent broccoli and the scented cheese flakes look like ground sawdust. An emaciated pig, I was jokingly called once. Not prudent about eating 'off' food, and frail in figure as I am, I consider the juxtaposition to be an accurate portrayal. My stomach rumbles my muscles and the convulsion makes me feel sick. I retreat to my room for a while as the smell of food lingers and wafts, overriding the smell of my father that's since invaded my space after I accepted a couple of garments from him that have ever flitted upon my conscious, reminding me of him. Everything drifts in my mind: my plans, my goals, my desires. I must do this, I'll do this first, and then there's this. This and this and everything. I've been eating 'bad' food for months now- at least weeks- and it hasn't killed me yet.

The Prince of Hedonism

I scripted this at a party, while the ink smeared off the page in a manner befitting the sliding levels of decency that were everywhere caught in airs.

The Prince of hedonism-
there he reigns
(and more fool he)
so debonair
as he sits upon
his false, triumphant
perch.
This King of fools
is nothing more
than a most outrageous jester;
above all concerns,
he cares for nothing's worth
and consequently,
is also
worthless.

Lorna

Ever inspired and fascinated with the (unobtainable?) idealogical, we fall in love, again and again, and drive away our dreams with despotism.

Oh Lorna,
How I yearn for you
as I cross glistening grass
fields full of dew.
A flower; a rose,
I pick for you,
pink as the day an infant's new
or, the sun drenched yellow
would also do.
My mind records what the eye
sees, true;
it could never really fulfil
as the real is beau
nor a thought excite
as well as a view
but a dream makes one serene
in a world that fully fatigues,
so when I'm weary,
I think of you
and I am soothed,
and Lorna;
O! I am not so forlorn
but only when you are not
in my arms
and even then,
it is only because
should I be with you
I should receive all your charms;
your grace, your smile,
your warmness of touch
and the severe beauty
that's as a light to your face
and forever, as always,
has me crying your name.

Thoughts whilst I stared through a window

As the 'title' of the post suggests; I was sat by a window, simply watching the strong wind blow, and with an ardent desire to be free as that which moved the trees and leaves to dancing, I so composed this piece.

A passionate gale-
life on the rails;
The helix of the shell,
situated on a
snail-
A downward verge
with hints of betrayal;
The thought of being
stabbed in the back
will make anyone
pale
Transparent, is hail,
now, hail to the
King, hail Mary,
hail Jesus
and avoid that,
for which, you
might end up in jail-
If you're clever or rich,
go to Yale,
or Oxford,
or Cambridge, but one
day you'll still fail;
It's the wittiest twist
and the stickiest fix,
You must plough just
to gather your bale.

Cain: The Wretched

A work in progress, based on the infamous story and the late Byron's short play.

Cain: The Wretched

I loved my father

and he loved me,

though not as much

as he did my brother,

and I loved

my mother

and she loved me,

though not as much

as she did

He.

My name is Cain;

my parents; swain,

swore fealty only

to our Lord,

and embitter’st I

who did defy,

could not love thy

who did abhor

my parentage

and punish my kin;

innocent

and who I loved so great

and in time

my misunderstanding

slowly ripened unto hate.

We made our paradise

just east of Eden,

though never knowing why

we were cast out

initially, and thusly

sentenced certainly to die.

But my parents; strong in

faith and mind, thought

better than to rescind,

and bore our burden

graciously with the hopes

we’d be forgiven.

The clay was old and

tough to our toes, unyielding

to our tools, as we toiled

underneath a blazing sun

and our sweat, around us,

pooled.

Our suffering was not new to

us; we worked hard and

without rest, but was novel

to my parentage, who, had prior

been so blessed.

They wiped their brow

with a sturdy hand, a

smile alight their face,

with a suggested keenness

that seemed to show

they sought honour from

His grace…

On Piety

The world is a funny sort of strange place, where one who declares to have descended from Godhead is in turn crucified for their 'sin'.
Jesus Christ,
Jeanne D'Arc...
All exalted, executed
Your salvation comes at last

On Art

It is a vestige of life in a dying breath.

As with all artists, imperceptibly, creating (or conjuring) works becomes a process of growth. It is like nourishment, through which the artist grows and develops- divulging all their education, influence and personal experience to a pinnacle, at that point, but which is then, after being regurgitated, eaten up by the individual for sustenance and sustainability. We, (that is, the artist) as mother, pluck the worm to feed our young; who we also embody through our desire to pluck greater worms, feed greater impulses and sire our own brood. Both one and the other, we feed ourselves to grow hungry. In the appropriation of all evidences, we bloom in a way that allows a temporary permanency to our works, in that they exist for a time in a relation to us that is unchangeable, i.e. permanent, because once born they are not returned, but rather, juxtapose a creator and source of origin which is in a state of inertia: always spinning, and with each revolution, succumbing to X amount of extraneous forces to the Nth degree, so that, by time we are again faced with our brood, we are no longer worthy of the name 'creator', because we are no more that being, but rather the destroyer, like Saturn, who will feed on them to ensure our fate is not met to face us, but that we may change our destiny- death- and through perennial birth, live forever. In like accord, we change, as so do the things we create, until they are all brought together to create the sum of all things which extends almost beyond our singular devotion to our cause; we are ineluctably always moving, though the signs we leave behind may remain in place forever. Art stands as a token of higher reality: a perspective of truth: the culmination of expectation and reason at that instant in time; given from an unchanging certitude, all at once from the hands of an entity full of temporary fascinations who is born to die.

An ever resounding echo from a caller who has long since passed.

Another thought, in passing

I sat at a table, a book aboard and pen in hand, a drink not far away. I proceeded to write a little, and read thereafter. Though little has been 'published' online, truly, much has been done, as I've concentrated efforts on the completion of my novel as well as the passing of time through the immediate immersion of complicit drunkenness, recklessness and good, albeit bad, company. Here's a little off the 'top of my head'.

O!
How I'd love to be
a pugilist,
were I not
always
reeling drunk
and writing poetry.


                                                                                     *

Me?
I guess
I'm a gross mess;
all smoke,
sweat, spit, blood, shit,
cum and stale piss.
Hardly walking,
rather balling;
a junky in need of a fix:
anything, just another
something
to add to my list.
Could you,
Would you ever believe
that I yearned for
more than this?
Consumption's a sweet,
sour, sugary, bitter
sort of bliss.

Matrimony

A golden band!
A golden band!
How I long to wear you
on my left hand,
upon my third finger
you would fit,
but to fall in love
is a prerequisite
and what a shame
that you could not linger
alike the words of
some old sinner,
buried deeply,
reverentially,
casting a light upon all I see.
Without the golden band
I am not complete:
a man in half,
ergo; only half as wise,
half as happy
and only half my size.
Make me bigger!
Make me a man!
Won't you place that ring
upon my hand and
proffer your love, eternally,
enveloping I, as an
island's seas.

Half Life

Soft as the downy skin
that covers the fruits,
fat and fallen,
of summer and spring,
as delicate a sheathe
does cover my own
make-up of pliant skin,
blood and bones,
but unlike the fruits
of the tree,
who take their food
so easily,
I am made barren,
emaciated and at loss
in taking the nutrients
to make the self ripe
and plump,
for I feed so rarely
these days
and the skin gets weak
and breaks in many ways,
ripped, or pinched, or sliced
or gripped, or torn
as easily as a new born
babes- a fine cut like
hair across a razor blade
will leave my hands stripped
of their primordial clay
and adorned with all
the evidences
(pock marks and scabs
and body malformed)
that's indicative of strife
or battering, bludgeoning, force
that causes aches and spooling
pools of claret to emerge,
and by the bite of
teeth, or some other
course, the liquid is
made to pour forth,
and of all the extensions
which from me reach,
it is, particularly,
the hands I need:
these hands create the
language I read and leave
behind the signs that
indicate that I once were,
which is "to be",
and yet, for my indelible
pains,
it befalls that I rarely
eat,
and consequentially,
as I write,
I am cut,
and brought to decrease
while before me, I create
an inexhaustible totem,
and all the while behind
me, I bleed.

Eve of Mercy

A satire.

How can it be
That man won't war,
To peel back flesh
And part of blood
When man hath fallen,
(With due course to Eve)
And ever since
Hath done no good.
Stripped of our virtue,
Crown and wings,
(The ilk of which
Our muse doth sing)
We become such folly beasts
And set loose upon
Our mistress Peace
And Justice, both, so
Virginal
Of whom we ravage
And abhor,
And for their innocence
Don't know
The heinous crime
That does befall
Them
That do not wish for power
But seek only meekness
Until their final hour;
An hour of which, us;
Man, will bring to be
About so much more quick
With our fire and iron and
Malice, all as though we deign
To make the thunder fall
And as by lightning-
Scorched,
We leave the land
And profess a fallacy:
That it were His command.
And for all the well,
We make double ills
Afraid as though
Our kindness
May spill,
For our mother, mercilessly, did
(For ill begotten gains!)
Quest for knowledge
And for what she found
Condemned us all to sin.
For the truth is known:
Humanity is nothing
And humankind is little more
Than a plaything
To our natural laws-
To be shot, or burned or drowned
Or left to some fate
So much worse,
And for it all,
There's little to be done
But to ceaselessly follow
Our course and run
Our piece of earth
Beyond its ruin,
And all because
Of a woman's doing.

A Song of Springtime Sadness

Generally, with the lightness of gentler weather, we often find ourselves infused with a preternatural happiness that eclipses our worries and makes us all feel so lofty, to be one with the changing nature of the earth. Generally, this is the case, but not always. And so much more rarely does one feel this love when they feel as though their own source of joy had been disrupted by change otherwise than the purely climatic.
With the passing of time I've felt so often a pain now so that the pang itself is ever so familiar, and yet it never gets any easier, and every day is just another day I live with suffering.

Around me are so many noises;

the manifold voices of singers

ring out from out their box-speakers

like phantom messages of the past.

The wind blows, as always,

rustling leaves and carrying clouds,

the blue sky burns into my retina.

This day should be so complete,

almost, it is, but…

There is an untraceable element

that compounded my happiness

and it dissipated

the day that you dispersed.

Now every day is just as bland

as the day proceeding

and each is just as saddening

as the day that follows.

Every song rings untrue

that any song be sung

without you.

And even should that element

of happiness ever return,

how could it ever fit the same,

when it will never be

as it was

on the day you left me

On sexual frustration

Where do you get
off at
Being so hot
and always waiting,
Anticipation
rising for the moment
where we might
at last
just
drop down to each other's side
to lie a while
and shut our eyes

Something old

Such a lithe figure
I cast-
a spectre
and little more,
little being all
that can be seen
of fat, attached
to my body and bones.
What serves for repast,
a vector remains
of where once
there was a hole
within my moral fibre
within my very soul.

A truth

Of late I've lost the gumption to keep doing what it is I am. As a consequence, I've inevitably been trying even harder just to do it more, and not allow myself to become comfortable with resting. I have tried to do all the many things that have been needing to be done, and ultimately, I have worn myself so thin that now my vocal chords hurt just to speak or swallow and my brain hurts just to turn my head and process my new sights.

Today I felt like sitting down on a cold wall and never thinking to get up from there.

I work a job I hate, to scrape together a measly survival, so I may continue to exist in this place, where I fall ever and ever into greater debt to those around me, who I must ask to bail me out, so I might work more and harder still to pay my rent, which permits me to live here and write my novel in the spare hours I so seldom get where I'm not wanted to be doing something else.
I need an advancement from a publisher, so I can quit my job and pay my bills and sit down to write with a full stomach.

Right now, I have an empty stomach, an empty cupboard and an empty wallet all of which I must put to use to make empty promises of payment to a man who doesn't really know or understand me.

Today I felt like never coming home again and just walking in an ever continuous line until I wore away to nothing. My muscles threadbare as the hole in my jeans. The holes in my shoes and boots and trousers. The holes in my t-shirts and jackets and coats and jumpers... There are holes in just about everything I own.

Today I have felt destitute because, with my rushing body striving to be in so many places and always on time, with my ailing health and failing memory- I have left behind me a trail of my possessions, and as I look back and expend my energy to reclaim what was lost, I fail to see the complications amounting in front me.

Today I felt like crying. I have not, in so very long, been sure of anything as much as I am of this: I am slowly losing to everything. There will not be much of me left.

I never claimed
to be anything
more
than what I am.

On Headaches

I feel heavy today-
unconsciously crossed
into bouts of dizziness
where my sense gets smashed
and dashed upon the floor
is my balance-
my understanding is flawed
as my brain is knocked,
spilled over
and spent
by tremors that attack
and eclipse,
and then are gone.
Instantaneous phasing
between realms of what
appears as straight
forward
but then again,
is not.
I feel a heavy mess;
weighed down
by my own, embittering
thoughts-
Why do I feel like this?
What is the depression
that I feel in my head
like a slurred bowl
in a drunken man's
hands;
the contents now out
that were in.
Every time I close my
eyes, I battle the cold,
harsh sense
of sleep.
Life becomes nothing
but walking into a dream.
Rigid sleep-
so long awaited
now you finally are
a part of me
though I find myself
adrift, as distant
seas
where I am seized
encompassed
and lost-
find only sensory deceit.

Meditations on the scent of perfume in my room

I wrote this a while ago, weeks ago. A poem simply forgotten and then found whilst I was looking for something else, but upon seeing it again, I thought to write it up now, (now that it is so very irrelevant in any case) just to pass the time, or else, because I am indebted to you- whomever you are.
   It can be seen as innocent, or bawdy, as you like simply by the play on words; my own intentions were very much to provide an imagery of both sex and prayer.

Lingering in my room
is the scent
of my lover, who betwixt
sheets had spent
her time with me
as we joyed
and we grieved, sharing
alms, and legs
and received
from each other with
heads bowed and bent
at the arm and the knee.

A Divergence from Certainty

Of late I've been feeling somewhat peculiar at turns and bouts; suffering feelings of complete lightness pervading my body and my mind's ability to perceive becoming dizzy and confused. Faintness invades my being, I enter moods of yearning to collapse as my head passes the motion for my legs to falter. Inconspicuous headaches lead to exasperation and denial of it all leads to superfluous stress- a day hardly passes where I don't wish just to drink.

Ethereal,
I feel unreal;
a silent part of
the great, moving machine;
just a vagrant phantasm
neither real, nor yet
a dream

Notes of the Author

While I think about moving, think about doing anything other than being sat here, I think about writing, but never do it. Here's something I wrote a while ago while I sat to write and also, never did.

I think to write. I contemplate writing, what I will write, for how long I will write, how and when I will fit the act of writing into my busy schedule that is entirely devoid of any plan. I scope the online databases for music to listen to whilst I engage in the awkward routine of ‘working out’, all the while, I consider my writing. Then, I shower, I breakfast, I dress, and still not a word is penned or typed. I go so far as to looking and rereading things from the past that I’d written, just to get me in the mood, I think. After a while of dawdling, I send out some emails, reply to a few messages; exercise the fingers in any way but the right way. Then I think about reading some more for an hour or so- I pick up a big book and abscond to read just a chapter before I can get down to some real work. Of course, the backbone of any solid writing is to have a compendium of good, solid, literature beneath you! I read, flick about to see how much nearer I am to the end, flick back and continue to read. I begin to contemplate my ambitions- a holiday, paying off my debts, rent. Monetary issues. I near the end of the chapter, overshoot it, and continue to read into the next. I send a message or two to an ex-lover, vain attempt to cradle the heart from its, still-fresh, pain. As I read I begin to get hungry, and there, I begin to think about food; what to have for dinner, what to save for later in the week, what will stay freshest the longest and so, must therefore be eaten last, and then, I begin to think about what I require in terms of ingredients, in order to make a more fulfilling meal. Some bread, an onion, lettuce. I think about my meagre finances, I think about a sandwich. I am hungry, I recognise, and how can I sit to write if my belly detracts from my ability? I think of cheese, ham, pickle. Cheese with mayonnaise. Do I have this with or without ham? And then; what about mustard? But still, I need bread! I think to venture to the shops, then I will make my sandwich, and then I will sit to write. I think all of this, and then, in thinking it- I think to write it down, here, but alas- this is not my novel- and so what I write is of not much use, at all.

'This is the greatest affirmation of life'

The city holds such indomitable assault upon our sense; sight, sound, smell… but look how it thrives with life! Look how those bodies- all so many of them- they move; they move with you, or they move against you, but- they always move around you. I am no spirit, I am no ghost! I have life, and so you shall not pass through me! And they do not- not even in their multitude do they think to pass through one, many as they are, an unspeaking legion, they stir and breathe in mind with one, as a thriving multiplicity that extends from one thought, much like we, ourselves, with our own thoughts who think alike the others to be moving with volition in our own unconventional and unique way. And as such, we become one with them all... 

For Sons and Daughters

It is the unbearable weight of all children to never be less than their parents, for, if we are to be no better than those before us, how can we ever hope to better the world?

Meditations on Longing for Sleep

Oh Morpheus!
Why dost thou, King,
mock me so!
Your ever faithful prince,
with fabled curls of raven hue
and full of all mist,
evanescent, that rises
from your ancient,
far reaching yet distant
seas.
You find your rest
so easily,
in even dens of
thorns and weeds and
dried, dead leaves
wherewith only mind
to dream
you may make descend
your ebony bed
and steal away
all consciousness, except
a reality so heavenly,
the likes of which,
on Earth,
were never met

Reflections on loss

It takes a sober day
to wake up within me
consciousness. Walking down
common roads to recollect
those fractured moments
shared with you,
and the lost sentences I read.
I consider the joys
that you felt and did not
feel with me.
I do not curse
my forgiveness- I am
grateful not to live
in antipathy.
I am grateful for all
the splendid things
you gave to me, and
I yearn to love your growing,
your changing, your becoming-
though it pains me
to let you go.
So I must-
that you might learn
to love, and share and give
again to others,
so much more,
the less of I.
                                                                             *

I find myself condemned
to repeat circuitous motions
that resonate only with
heartache. And the cold tomb
of the unthinking dead does not seem
so grave, when compared
to my mirthless solitude:
shaking with every breath
that life should go on,
unceasing, though the extension
of my form
sees little in a life
that is not lived
for loving you...

Nocturne

Time is unbound-
in an instant, I see before me
all of my memories;
cherished and stowed away,
contained to be saved
from cruel, inevitable
deterioration.

The amphitheatre is before me-
the symphony plays
one last, slow song
so the lovers may hold tight-
steadfast within the walls
of what is now
their only life together.

I see such memories
simultaneously
and breathe in the bliss
of seasons and years-
of fresh grass and
cold snow; the polluted
the pastoral- it matters not
but that it was
and still bears the token
of love.

Such love as fills
all things and makes us
wonder not why we don't see it
until it is broken,
for it lives so close
to us, its cherished vows
go unspoken.

Here,
in this space of my mind,
where only you belong,
I see you full
though fragile
and realise
that I owe you yet
so much tenderness.

In love with Love, itself

Ophelia!
...Amelia!
Amour!
I know you not
but love you so,
my mind; it wanders
to your shores,
and sodden,
collapses at your door.
The earth is trodden
until my feet are raw-
you elude me still,
though my spirit soars
and for every time
I sigh your name,
like an incantation,
my breath escapes
and lingers on your lore;
a history, rich,
that leaves me broken,
tired, Restless. Poor...
I miss you, yet
I'm ever enamoured
and love you more
and more,
and more...

A Haiku

On a certain social media site that I seldom frequent I had seen that the Haiku was a current popular form that people were enthusiastically trying for themselves. I rarely dabbled with them, myself, but hold an appreciation for them, nonetheless. In like spirit, I wrote a couple, here's one just for you.

In time, I began
To see that life was not what
I thought it had been

A few things once forgotten

I'd been searching through some files and things, writing here and there, and wrote up again, in format anew, a selection of smaller pieces that had been typed in haste into my handheld phone, and since (until now) discarded. Some are humorous, some desperate. Take it as you will.
Prepare for a medley.

Torn apart by so many things,
Gripped and ripped
By Frenzy.
To covetousness I did give in
and committed crimes-
and crimes against me.
Treachery, Lechery,
A din that riles and ails me.
And miserly, I kept them kin
Though a mutinous bunch
That would seal my ending.
In stagnancy, I did stagnate
A worm
Fit for the heaven offending
To let loose their wroth
And fury upon
Such subjects; of punishment
Commending.

                                                                                   *

What is a dick
but a funny thing-
Something that sticks
out and in:
A (quick) prick,
and that is it.

                                                                                    *

Die,
or go forward;
wage destined wars
so you might live again.
For life, love and laughter.
"For unknown drugs and pleasures,
and a distant star called HOME" - (Final lines courtesy of W. Burroughs)

                                                                                    *

One must remember
You can never make your
Magnum Opus
Twice

Untitled entry

I've been dealing with sickness and suffering this week. It's left me mostly bed-bound; a retching mess, poor in nutrition and health, creativity and experiences.
Today I picked up my pen again for the first day in a little while and, like a convulsion, the writing poured forth. I'm still addled with confusion, mostly caused by my own poor sense, slightly sick with a delicate palate and slowly growing resolute that I will never clear my amounting debts and never make up my mind.
I'm too tired right now to think of a title. Here is something for you.

Ruptured with innocent
admiration and love, I
choose to lie around you
alike the other girls do I-
my arms a living belt
around your waist, my kiss
upon your cheek in place
of a blusher, and silently,
as if unknowingly,
you carry on as I burden
the weight of my affections upon you
like the pest you make
me feel I am. I become
an ant scuttling on
the hand of a tyrant
just waiting to be noticed
... and I'm crushed more
painfully by your oblivious
nature than by your palm.
   I see now how I
mistreat those others
and wonder who it is
that you would rather
crawl upon

Molière

It is for you I live;
that my vacant self
be filled
by the love
you give
and here, trace
a steady path
unto my heart, my mind
and my soul,
that you light with
profound touch,
for you reach me
so deeply.