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.