Purgatorio

An old poem, recently re-read, enjoyed, and thusly conveyed. After reading the Divine Comedy, a particular presence of opinion was struck upon; the inferno is our human folly; sundry, bestial, caprice. Purgatory is philosophy and the sophistry of mind, unable to escape the body. Upon release, we find our paradise.

Purgatory

I awoke one day to find

the sun shone in my room,

with such a dazzling radiance

to penetrate my gloom;

that I had come to feel so much

since the summer was eschewed

and with its passing so did end

the innocence of youth,

for I had grown to know a love

that sullied as it bloomed,

resplendent as it ought to’ve been

the truth had it coloured crude;

and with the cooling of our climes

my passions also cooled

as I swore I’d never feel again

and sent them to the tomb.

Yet here I were so suddenly,

roused by the warmth of sun,

and so little perturbed by misery

I went in search of love.

Initially I ambled

to the risen sun in sky,

and birds, they did sing loftily

as they swept and then flew high.

First I walked along a path

and then encroached

upon the heath,

I passed through bush and bramble

as my mind gave way to feet,

as I seemed to follow a dreary route

walked before but still unseen.

And turning, saw that I was lost,

no trodden sod before me,

only misty wilderness

‘cased by intrepid shrubbery.

The path I walked had gotten so dark

that now no light pervaded,

and walking it I did perceive

I was trapped by a green

that left me jaded.

So with nothing more ado

but what it is I’d done,

I set to a most determined pace

and simply carried on.

‘Wrap’t in solitary thought

I walked

through the very deluge

of night

with a keen insight

and a prosperous mind

poised

toward beauty

and truth’

It all seemed to me

no mystery,

no phantoms did I find-

but only thick and thicker trees

and others of their kind

all stood next to one another

so many in a row

and hedges rose from in-between,

all this I saw as I did go

trouncing out my legacy

I was a pioneer

and though the density had swallowed light

I was bolstered by my fear.

I gave a laugh to think just then

how superstitious I’d become,

to think the walls were moving in

or that I’d nearly thought to run,

and in their growing mockery,

or just to bring me down,

a branch I’d missed did cut me

deep across the crown;

the roots; they seemed more rigid

and the grass it did grow thick

and every once my clothes did catch

upon a grasping stick

as like limbs they did reach out,

and surely now were closer

so that I was again so full of dread

and the trees; they towered over.

Eventually I came to think

my way looked to be clearing,

exasperated, as I was

a weight was lifted as I were nearing

what I thought to presume to be

a lake that looked endearing.

Oh! Happy life

and grateful chance

to see such a lake appearing!

Addled and perspiring, I wept

then wiped my brow,

to see a break within their flanks

that I found, not knowing how.

Yet feeling it were a haven;

nestled away and safe,

there it was I fell to sleep

for what appeared to me like days.

First I dreamed of finer things

the fancies of infancy and grace,

never before had I known such peace

as when I laid down in that place;

in the arms of mine own enemy:

the persistent green that remained.

And as I lay, most surely,

my countenance did change-

for I felt as though I’d died

and died for such an age.

All such worries of my life

did rise and rise again,

and just as swift as they did come,

they’d sooner drift away,

leaving me to their successor

and my own indelible pain-

though every pain that came to me,

as numerous as rains,

did only last a moment

before their feeling was replaced.

I slept half an eternity,

and in that time did break

all of my thoughts and sufferings;

the little and the great.

And as each passed

I was reminded

how fickle they became,

still sleeping, so astoundingly,

as though the bed had been my grave.

Yet forever reassured I was,

though unable to awake,

that for every hurt

I thought to feel,

a greater one remained.

And in time they each became

 much smaller than my pleasure:

a pleasure sourced so strange;

a pleasure never known before,

as it were only carved from pain,

and so there sat upon my gait

an expression with no name.

There it was I grew so chilled

I screamed myself: “Awake!”

I gave a yawn and brushed myself

then finally did rise,

I looked about to get my bearings

the faceless mass did meet my eyes,

and I roved for a gap in the border;

the one through which I came

and finding it was nowhere

thought how I was trapped

as to be like game.

I travelled first with caution

along my perimeter to see,

and then again in reverse

but somewhat more quickly

this I did but ten times

thinking I had erred

but always left concluding

my way was deeply barred.

The path I took was overgrown

and now stood tall and wild

and just as dense as everywhere

they were as savage giants to a child.

Desperately, I pleaded:

“Will you not let me go!”

and there they swayed so silently

that I knew it for a ‘no’.

I walked myself to the edge of the lake

and crumbled to the floor

first I gazed out listlessly

and then with some furore

at how beautiful the water was

and in it, what I saw;

my wretched, limpid, exhausted face

scratched and beaten raw

and behind me, growing taller

stretched trees from sky to floor;

such was flipped my reflection

so that I knew it showed a truth;

that any way I looked at it

there was nary a way through.

And the water softly sparkled

with its placid siren’s call

blacker than any earthly thing

and I shone through its pall.

 Then everything was still

I clamoured for nought the more

but gave myself to purgatory

finally,

forever,

all.

Forgotten (Notes)

Stuck in softness, static, silent,
pyramid light reflects off white walls
keeps everything bound together
such a feeling unlike any other;
Bewildering peace like the resonant dead.

                                       ***

I dip my toe into the bank of memories
the water is still- implacable-
in its way, hard as the surface of a mirror,
reflecting back a vague blackness
as of the sky above.
I sink, falling slowly into endless, unfurling,
Death
as every moment yields to the present:
great antideluvian mammals rearing
through an abyssal blue
encapsulates my form like formaldehyde.

                                       ***

Today, I spent on your lips:
took hours to stare at those uncial petals,
soft, feather-curled and apple red;
relaying your peculiar beauty to memory.
Of course, could I not but say that this 
was a measure of love? Obsessive, yes,
but how I miss those lips
now that even yesterday seems long forgotten- long ago.

                                     ***

Could I,
though you'd hardly know me,
feather languid love
into your heart,
would I,
stood at equidistance,
finish then
what I could not start?

Ode to Day

I sat in a garden, most serenely, and watched the clouds pass and wind blow through the trees. I sat on a wall and began to write, as rain came through and brought with it, the night.

Day that is a day,
that grows and breaks and dawns again
anew,
before, as after, evening. Day that is
a day and as like those days that went
before, and those many days to come
and yet, between so many,
is as yet alike no other. Day that is
a day so new and just the same
as those to be, and those that were,
which now is here but soon is gone
again,
to come again, and grow and break
and crack the dawn-
know that, as you change
and turn to take your leave, so I do also,
change and turn toward another-
and though I may forget
how you did make me something else
for what you were and brought to me
and maybe- maybe- how slight, at times,
it seemed or felt I may have hated thee;
Yes, hated, for your transparency;
that I always knew that you might change
and were born just so that you might leave,
and in your wake would follow steps
in sadness,- know that though I may forget
for every day that did desert me,
I yet loved you like no other.

Fleeting Chance and Circumstance

A couple of notes, written in retroactive thought about the way my day(s) had worked, fulfilling a design, the likes of which I could not account for.

I feel the sharp stab
of fate's
clandestine knife.
A small gash
just under the ribs,
slit like a fish's gills
and out bleeds all
my circumstance.


                                                                               ***

When I say that
'I feel for you',
I don't mean that
I have feelings for you-
but I do-
what I mean, is:
I reach out my arms
under roofs and starless skies
and I try to feel you
in the space that settles
between us;
trying to connect
through aeons of dust,
like slowly throwing out a thought,
or an incantation; a prayer;
a feeling just like love
so it might wrap around you
as I would.

Sleep/lack and Summer

Strange days...
I behold them as like
a vapor-
blurred lines intermingling
faintly drifting away
and what I think I hold
is never something solid
but is prone to drip
through my fingers, or
fade away. Hours,
days- time.
I walk common steps at night
just as I've done many times,
but for all my leaping,
I yet never made it very far;
a corner is rounded:
I am cut on its edge
as I distance myself from
haunts and habits of my past;
slowly drifting
as like a vapor...

                                                                              ***

Predictable motion
the body a vessel
cast upon undulating waves

                                                                               ***

The walls
take on a pattern
just like leopard print
as night descends.
I am cast out
to sea, upon my bed
dipping my limbs
into the turbulent waters
I feel the prick of teeth
cut past my tender skin
and slowly, trees steep
out from yonder blue
which changes from harsh
to be quite demure
and travelling, travelling,
I am kept for hours
without sleep
for I am powerless.

On Venus

Hungry, but I dare not eat.
Suspended animation keeps me
hanging on to dreams and dizziness
like the prophetic ascetics of India.
I glorify mortal flesh
in the raiments of a Goddess
and see heaven in her smile.
I live for this:
for her
and am really dreaming
all the while that she exists.
Were she to pass,
I would instantly snap!
out of my revelry, to bend,
as a branch and shade her,
or uplift her to the stars
so she may glow
in a likewise magnanimity.

Ode to Love and the Infinite

I'm not all drunken vehemence and stoical irony, sometimes I'm impassioned with lofty ideals of love.

You are made of the stars;

they are formed of you:

a million, tiny, bright white flashes

of brilliance, each

like the touch of God-

something so unknown to the minds

of mortal man-

a mystery, primal and archaic

as love itself;

you are made of all these things, and,

they are made of you.

Reach a hand out

into the empty sky surrounding

and know that, in all its vastness,

it is really not so empty at all,

because you breathe

and so fill the world

with joy.

Joy and sadness, both,

for these are things that make the world,

and the world was made for you.

Sturm und Drang

Many things have affected my mood of late; stress, lack of sleep, cogitations on amour, anxiety, desperation and the list rolls on endlessly with all manner of (in)conceivable states.

Here are two pieces, not intended as a couplet, that work along similar themes.

Living off one small meal a day;
no cash, no plan, no ability to maneuver through the ceaseless oceans and winds of time-
trying to chase happiness along the trails of 'panty-lines',
give each day the name of another girl-
I find my monday, tuesday, wednesday... Sunday rolls right into line, with beers and smoke and wine.
Travel the county, paying my dues, paying respects and sweating under an evening sun;
walking further than the limits of my energy to douse my apathy- antipathy-
I am nothing but the concepts and complex terms used to identify me as they come sprawling out the mouths of my company. Old lovers and latent ones, I chase dreams of  intercourse like dragons-
lance in hand, writing, riding out on a drunken horse.
I am at one with many, in this way; friends committed to institutions, institutionalised by a hard life like none ever gone before where tickets are sold at higher prices than we have been given the means to afford.
The air reeks of discommunication- breathe it through phones and 'tablets' too large to swallow-
we pour our lives into a sustainable un-reality as the world and the word withers and dies.
Can you blame me?
Looking for something real in hidden places,
attempting to find a bright spark of understanding, the likes of nothing else, amidst a black expanse.
Vicariously, I live, but through my days, I disappear. The man who walks is not I, for I exist in thought alone.

                                                                            ***

Handsome; slapdash; scallywag.
Everyone looks the same:
same face, recycled, regurgitated
few years later, cut-out, cut-off
fashionistas- same brand, same hair,
"long live the eighties!" decades later
still shouting the same chant,
jumbled image of apostrophised
individuals- look sharp, look here
lookalike, coveting false singularities
like something special. Seen it all before
from somewhere, squint my eyes to see
you at a distance in someone else
ubiquitous race in same tired scheme,
discover who you really are
styled like every other,
make no mistake, digital ash,
white noise- salt and pepper people
like a garbled fuck-fest, can't break
away from this season's hot trend,
same as every other, yodelling
"YOLO!" filling pockets of corporate
aggrandisement, the rich kids assimilating
urbanite poverty, social amorality
"bad boy" types fill rest-rooms like
chocolate bars in vending machines,
so cliche I sick up my palate.
I see a man I think of as my father
and detest him for every minute he is not,
losing weight, losing jobs, losing sleep,
losing sense and patience being
slowly eaten by the money-machine
bones all chewed and spat out back
again into obscurity.
Want to know the truth?
Stop fucking and start using your brain!
Advice for one and all,
we are all the same- identity
like a kid's sticker book
full of amorphous silhouettes-
white girl with a "black girl's bum",
I wretch again and throw up stones
the colour of dyed hair
insecurities: insecurely me...
Hack-job stand-outs all stand up, stand-offish, wanting hand-outs and hand-jobs;
arrogant pricks-
reel in furious envy, reeling in envious furies
from others just the same..
Nothing is exactly as it appears:
empty and vacuous.
Why waste a life living as one
when life can be lived as no other?
Round up the horde and bury them
for they know not that they live.

...heroin...

In response to Naked Lunch, a poem derived from a line I haven't since found...

Baby, you're my heroin:
I feed my soul on you,
and digging in
your growing nails,
raked up a wall
around my wound.
Maybe I don't know you-
as I press you in,
like past my skin
and, like a diamond,
treasure you. And you drew me in-
had me erupt in crimson,
pleasured plumes;
you shook me cold
and left me hungry,
hankering for you
and I kicked you
like a bad habit,
but I'm a dope fiend-
an addict-
and totally stuck on you.
   And baby, you're my novacaine:
I bare my teeth for you
in bouts of words,
sobs and shouts,
until they all come through.
You get inside my blood
and settle in my brain,
and at last I'm subdued-
when you hit, I feel no pain.
You numb me to the world;
numbing me to everything,
but the body always pushes out
whatever's underneath the skin,
and so I always need it more-
can't let it all rush out,
and the need for a hit
brings more words,
and then the sob and shouts.
Yeah, baby, you're my anathema-
the very best of what's my worst;
I bend my knee in reverence
to be blessed by your curse
and I bear your weight-
my crucifix-
to be swallowed, lonely, by the night
and every time, stabbed in the heart,
so full of love,
I die.

A Modern Lunch

Jesus accepted all-  even the addict and the whore; 'yay verily', he even took them greater into his breast than the pious and the just, for in their delirium, renouncing all earthly things, they came closer to the Lord than any man had ever recourse to know.

A tribute to Burroughs:

I drink the extracted black liquid of the Java bean for breakfast on a crestfallen Monday afternoon: there is no reasoning behind this day and no desire pulls me in any direction but the urge to smoke and obliviate myself. The urge to toilet raises me from death-sleep, though I try to postpone from it as long as I can, short of pissing myself. I am on the drive to destruction- a burning car plummeting down a dead road at night, lit up only by stars and kept hot by its own exothermic reaction
"Hurrah for energy!"
"Watch, now, as I make myself disappear..."
Hear the sound of the great, white, wail as man bends towards his own end;
"Tharr she blows"- man makes mass squeals pumped full of ego-ridden amphetamines, "watch the showers approaching overhead," advice for those, to be taken, who insist on living ruthlessly.
I reel from another biscuit as visions of grandmothers come at me, apprehending with trays full of 'sweet-treats' you just can't eat. Sickness invades the human stomach and makes 'ass-souls' expand like colonialism. I hear the howl of a painted white plane overhead and wonder if it ever read the words of Ginsberg. How long have I felt like a "junky" now? My body's whole sequence of events indirectly affected by undigested chemicals within. Beauty is skin-deep; I dream of tattooed girls and shark attacks; Shaved heads like a crying singer- Nothin' compares 2 U- text speak like a baby, the way she does, will I go the way of all things?
Plunged down the eternal world of the mouth to be shit out safely on the other side. Fenrir, the wolf-mother finds me washed up drunk on the planes of Tartarus, another jumbled, fading, soul with a mouthful of spit and gristled flesh ripped by bear (trap) teeth from my belly as I prepare to bear all unbearable burdens and 'bare' all at once to be bent over and fucked by the next constitutional climax of my life-
"Paid your tax? Paid your bills? WHO ARE YOU?!"
A man with no name leaves no trace as he passes, wind that leaves an acrid, airy, smell that dissolves the hairs of the nose until another hair-brained scheme is concocted to trap the 'invisible man' who is so insensitive to light that he emits no sound as it pulls right through him, penetrated like a bullet tweased right out of the exit-wound by steadfast, surgical hands. "No need for a rhinoplasty; he knows which way to go"
"Twease me baby, shine a little light on me."

The Modern Werther

A tribute to Goethe

You are the very image
of perfection;
and all my heart and happiness
resounds within;
your very eminence
perfumes the air I breathe
and fills me with compassion.
My ideal is formed of you.
And what is sleep to one who takes
such pleasure from holding
the softness of your arm, or,
gently delivering a kiss?
But I am no longer comprised of the parts
that equal, in your eye,
the very reality
of my love.

Notes in Passing

Fingers digging in flaccid flesh
carries the stench of soap and sex;
enema clean,
thoughts of pondering unexplored skin,
crept in like dirt under the nail-
But baby, if I don't
how ever will I know
the breadth of your cave/hole/love...

Baby, I don't mean to be rude;
I just want to get into you-
feel like I'm falling through.


                                              ***

Afraid to call it what it is-
Coward- Took two years
to bring you here;
Spent so much
time.
Time is nothing.
Counting hours like counting cuts
Silence held like my body in your arms,
always looking out- looking away
watching the leaves fall
with x-ray eyes-
see through smiles to whitened teeth
and heavy hanging words
in the curdling atmosphere.
Wanting to be someone else,
far away; think in distance.
Trapped in a bell jar
between pit and pendulum
screaming silence:
Get me out of here.

Notes on the Outside World

It's taken a long time to build myself up to the stature of the figure thus presented, and every day, I lose a little more. These are notes, in passing, of a journey that brought me here...


Everything is unsure,
unsteady footing, ground
that trembles underneath
with turbulence.
Nothing stands to reason.
Nothing stands at all,
invested with time-
bitter delays of a prophecy
gave way unto decay
and entropy.

                                               ***

Broken hands make heavy work-
hands that bleed
shake with trepidation
and make frail structures
where cuts smart.

                                               ***

Cancer!
Rot gut!
Bring it on!
I have need of venoms,
and will waste away
as a beggar who is always hungry
but I will never be
too scared to live!

                                               ***

Old red brick
against a pale blue sky,
so serene,
feels like dreaming
as my heart sinks hollow
in my belly,
holding hands with Paradise,
why?
It feels good to be outside.

                                               ***

Empty, eternal, grey
like gelid windows
glazed over blue
in infinite space,
vastness stretching from time immemorial
open roads lead to Rome
where my beauty sleeps...

                                               ***

Freezing cold,
kisses hurt the worst,
cuts a little deeper
in winter. Love like sun
thaws cracked skin,
brittle as bleached bones
on snow.

                                               ***

Rumble of a
'smoker's' cough, stagnant
like a burrowed toad
digging in to me;
dying to get in to you

                                               ***

Love rhymes with apathy
it is nonplussed
c'est ne plus

                                               ***

Insides hurting badly;
body broken,
bruised, black and blue-
waiting for buses at sunrise-

On Work, Debt, and Feigning Sleep

What rank display of injustice is this; that four young graduates, new to the ways of the world as fledgling sparrows, pushed to take flight, should be treated with so much enmity for what they thought they'd done no wrong in, or else, for their ignorance in such maters, or their impotence alone, (which is hardly indefeasible in such a world of shifting states...) that for accruing- what is to them- a portentous debt on behalf of the city council, who should then be stirred to threats, and even more, add to such sum a little extra- for the cost of sending out a bailiff (as though a phone call would not suffice...)- so that salvation seems an ever fainter glimmer somewhere else, afar, ashore, and all the while we work hand to mouth, the richest men hide their money beyond the reach of the 'taxman', but elicit no response and elude the 'blind' Justice ever still.

I hear the songs of that place play out in my head when I sleep-
the repetitious myriad like a taunting that keeps,
as alike sirens; fade out and then leap
upon your conscious but only so brief,
but then it goes on so long and I still never sleep.
   I lay awake, feigning motionlessness, and time passes:
I breathe.
I turn from one side to the other,
as my ear turns numb, and I think
'how it seems I must be up in not so long!'
  I grow weary at that, my lids heavy to bear,
and though it darkens my vision,
I yet feel caught in a stare,
or better a snare! A snare to be sure-
for only a snare could keep one feeling so poor.
Yet despite this, there is better be done:
there is always, as yet, to tiredness succumb,
so I conjure at this, as I try to breathe slow-
my legs begin to feel cold, so I pull them up from below-
and I empty my mind-
or at least, I do try, but always get to thinking:
"If I do, then am I?"-
then the pursuit of dreams fills me and all anxious I lie,
hoping that something might just transpire
but I'm suddenly reminded- for no reason at all-
I still have no money and my overdraft's full...
   They tell me they'll take my possessions away,
but I only have little,
and what I do wouldn't pay;
it's mostly all broken, or falling apart,
but that doesn't mean that it would please my heart,
for all that is all I have to claim, and thus:
all I have to tie to my name,
and the man who owns the land
still wants his rent
but it's hardly as though all of this could be said,
and as it is, the only place to rest my head,
though it's certainly the nadir when it comes to my bed.
   And oh, this bed! Prithee, why so small?
That my toes breach the end
and my head hits the wall,
certainly, once it was said I were tall
but you wouldn't say as much to see me curled up in a ball.
Then my knees start to ache,
but I must move all day at work,
and work! That duty could hardly be shirked,
but to work at my best, I must first get some rest-
and that's the whole reason of this, don't forget,
and I wonder how much time has been spent,
as I turn,
ever more anxious I must be getting up again.
In the life of the sequestered, I am,
perhaps, at the top. I scratch my legs for a moment
but consider to stop:
anxious rashes are a bad habit better not indulged,-
this thought occurs for every time the act is expulsed.
I turn and I wonder if an hour has passed
and think, with affection, of the time just last,
when I had left, of a warm embrace from my dad;
kissing my mother on both of her cheeks;
indulging my nephews; entertained by their charms and caprice;
my beloved sisters and dining at a table seat.
And it is for such things that cause me to weep,
and the guilt that I feel for acting ignobly,
not least of all for being remotely haughty,
an injustice, if ever, it were to be true, I conclude,
as an hour awake softens towards two-
I consider to read, at least it's something to do,
something enriching, 'Yes, that's what I'll do.'
... But I don't. I exhale and wish I were simply asleep...
I thought I was, once, but the moment passed and I thought
maybe I hadn't slept at all.
I begin to think ,maybe I'd just forgotten it,
or maybe thought of something else,
and it strikes me as strange that something you just had
can as quickly become irretrievable.
Initially, I try to get a feel for what time it could be:
how many potential hours to sleep I have ahead of me.
I don't reach out to check, not because I'm afraid to know,
but because time is irrelevant.
I sleep for what seems like seconds, stretched out
across a span and randomly interspersed, as alike
breadcrumbs dropped into sand- cohesive, but not concatenate.
   I turn again, my finger hurts,
I am reminded then of work,and the cut I received
that made it surf with a wash of blood
in spurts that first occurred, when-
in what was only yesterday, I tried to put a glass away-
and so it is that flares up now
and evinces my countenance to scowl,
though such cuts, of course, are nothing new-
since my time at work, I've gained a few-
but just my luck that as one wound should mend,
another cause brings me pain again.

A Farewell to Winter

The winter months had chilled my bones and left me, somewhat, senseless; with their exit, I welcome the coming Spring.

The winter months find me cold.
It isn't just the hum-drum
of an ever present grey sky;
because even then, trees stand out
starkly against the bleak, grey, hue
in a beautiful contrariness.
It isn't just the temperature, which,
clutching at my toes, makes me
layer upon layer and retreat under my duvet.
It isn't even just the mildness, the indecisive
never one way or another all throughout its drizzle,
never kicking up a storm or blowing snow-
 a purgatory license sort of weather-
no.
The winter months find me cold
all because I am not loved. I have; receive, affections:
little things that make me smile and slightly
warm me up- a tentative touch on my hand;
a kiss from a friend full of feeling enough to burst...
They make me smile, certainly,
but it's never quite what I want.
I balk a little, under pressure; retreat inside a hollow
heart-shaped cave and try to purge myself of all animosity-
for like only attracts like-
and as the cold creeps in I realise just what it is I want:
this sturdy ground to set me up
and give me strength to carry on:
It is to fall in love, and know I'm
equally loved.

A Note in Passing

Much time has passed since last I was more faithful; in such a span I have committed myself more to certain things and less than others. As was my intention to put the following piece up at a time when it was more relevant, over the proceeding month, so will I now list it as another note, in passing.

It's hard, you know-
coming back to this room
once you've been
and gone
leaving me to only traces
of your passing. Leaving
me, otherwise, alone.
Leaving you is an affair
where words can say
too much;
my lingering touch on your hand
says more than any word:
"I do not want to let you go."
But, like air,
you slip through my fingers
and I look back-
you are gone.

Dydd Santes Dwynwen

News had been couriered my way by a friend that it was to be  'Dydd Santes Dwynwen' on the 25th of January; a Welsh equivalent of 'Valentine's Day', to pass the descriptive brush over it lightly. That we were to host an evening of entertainment for our friends and others curious enough to pay attention, was either an accident or else planned. To commemorate the day, I read a few verses on love...

Where there is warmth,
there is blood;
Where there is warmth,
there is love;
a love for being,
for a being cannot go on
where there is no love;
being requires time,
nurture and a gentle nature
to create a gentle disposition;
one that cares, nurtures, loves.
Without these things, we are not
the all that we could be;
we will lack warmth,
we will lack care,
we will not love:
We will be cold, callous and unkind
and only disquietude will spring
from the pools that are left
of our great steps
as we walk, raging, unruly
and ruinous
as terrible giants.


                                                                         ***

How I wish it were
that I would be like water,
come Winter nights that have
you grip your tender blanket,
source of comfort pulled on
over like a lover,
there I would be,
as alike a mist
that first chills the form
but then gently goads
one into making their self
warm. I would be contained
deep within each glimmering
snow-flake's intricate pattern
supplanted upon your window,
softly, as a kiss.
   Such kisses would I give to you,
were I water, and were you
yonder pane of transparent glass,
your temperate touch
so cool, wherewith I would smother
every inch
with my brazen lips
that ever had a dainty fancy
to feather the landscape of your body;
each hillock, peak and
valley, just as snows
are wont to paint serene
a wilderness, so I layer
my gift upon you, so many times,
your skin be made
to pale through the blushes of
my pressure, as buds full of
petalled beauty are wont to burst
so let our love rush forth
and cause a shiver
for every time my affections
shall knock against your windows
or the extensions of my body
or my soul knock against
your walls, therein,
my love, as clear as purest waters,
you shall know.

"...And night became the stars..."

To one who walks through the seven circles, there is no greater comfort for, than company and to reminisce.

To take long walks in
the warm Spring air
below the umbrella of night,
to smell the fresh, damp
earth, hear the snap of
twigs, the rustle of leaves,
to hear another pair of feet
accompanying me.
A tender grasp around my hand...
Is this too much of a dream?

An Excerpt from the Book of Pain

Something old, seen anew.
Think nothing of it; the time is past, I simply found it quaint:

It is a strange fate, to endure the sufferings of a "broken" heart: to continue to sit and eat your breakfast in the mornings, to enjoy the many amusements and company of friends, to live each day, as always, as never before anything had changed- but to do all this and feel that each pleasure rings a little more hollow; as though the blissful purity of such enjoyments, and trivial matters, had been extracted. It is as though a shadow had settled on and swallowed what makes such little things grand, and the greatest: empty. To live with a heart that beats erratically; with a ghost for an echo of your own palpitations; a fractured mirror to receive a warm embrace, and at night; to sleep most wakefully- woefully- with hot lurid tears and perspiration like the throes of passion set to ravish the occupant who finds no home.
   It is a terrible fate: a broken heart- where even the most meaningful consolations only serve to sever the chords that free the torrent that follows: to engage the self-deceiving sympathies and render one lost in oblivious contemplation, melancholy, and hurt.

Of Work and Solitude

 I know I've been vacant a while;

many things consume me;

 my organisation's gone to tatters

and I'm low on esteem and energy...

Here is a poem from a time gone by:

I wake up to a day, so weary,

a twilight day of the kind so eerie

that makes me pine for slumber, nearly

with a shining eye that glistens, teary

as I fight to rise from bed.

I rise to a day that gnaws my bones,

compelling me to leave my home

and descend into the world alone

with an unearthly aching head.

I wash my face with water, pure,

an almost immediate, if temporary, cure

that trickles, effervescent, as I reel in, allured

and further lap until I am quenched and sure

and so, my routine commenceth again.

If I find time, though I am usually late,

to be at some affair, or at some place,

I may choose to see to my hunger’s fate

though I more often than not, ignore the pain.

It seems, in life, one must not allay

from reaching out, beyond the haze

of our most immediate, uncertain, days

and take hold of that, which the spirit craves.

Immured in my vision, I carry on-

though I lose days and clarity to drink

and into many drunken nights, I sink;

both far away, yet on the brink-

and many my dreams are lost and gone.