Railways
A kind of anti-meditation;
instead of emptying my mind of all those noisy complications,
I encourage, indeed strive for, another wild imagination,
another way to breathe some life into these lines of my creation.
Familiar situation.
I’ve been twice around these railway stations,
looking for the train or track that houses my salvation;
but the platform’s cold,
the seats are old,
and I’m running out of patience.
There’s little magic in this leisure,
where once it offered worlds of pleasure.
Even the tragic words held beauty,
where now, contrived, they smell of duty.
Reconsider
They lied to us.
Every lesson of our upbringing,
so full of ulterior motive,
of instilling in us the tools required
to lie again to our own.
We lie to ourselves.
Disquieted thoughts,
dismissed with a drilled discipline
driven deep into deadening drudgeries of a dying desire
to denounce, to dare, to dream.
It’s all a lie.
Consider this my deconstruction,
stripping back the parts in place,
exposing the wicker bones of this foundation,
this societal full monty.
Bare on bare, let me taste the world anew,
have the sunlight bite my pasty flesh
and sting my eyes with the sharpness of colour,
bring bombardment of sound about my ears,
but sing not upon my swollen tongue the sourness of servitude.
Meteor shower
Stop. Save this moment.
Lying beneath rain that will never fall,
bright-eyed wonder glinting within crystallised suspension.
Stretched out on recliners, absorbing the light of a million suns,
tanning our souls a golden brown,
waiting.
Watching and waiting.
Imagining streamers of flaring white,
the diamond flourish of an icy phoenix;
scanning and waiting,
watching and waffling,
saving all our thoughtful words for wishes,
for this moment.
Far and few. Short and sweet,
the sugar-licks tail across the brow,
crossing out mistakes that only omniscience would notice,
its marker-pen absorbed by the fabric of our covering;
our real-time planetarium,
complete with tea-lights, balmy air,
and sprints of silver memories.
The River Fowey
Breathe in, breathe out,
the River Fowey,
absorbing every ebb and flow,
like the artery of a heart in slow motion.
We sleep upon its hilly vessel,
marveling.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Those rhythms and ripples of oceans far,
tidal heartbeats
that resonate from lunar chambers,
delivering waves of inspiration
throughout our grassy ponderer,
from whence ideas come to grow.
The River Fowey,
tide high, tide low,
through ebb and flow,
they raise, they rot, they recompose.
Coming to
As every moment passes
I disassociate myself from my immediate past.
I remember the places, the actions –
I’ve aches and reminders,
and the taste still lingers in my mouth –
but who was he?
And who am I?
Everything’s fragmented.
Memories replaying like highlight reels.
Anything in between,
lost.
The connecting links that build this narrative,
fabricated,
forged.
In the absence of recollection,
they write in me a story that only pieces of are true.
The more at one with the world that I become
the further I feel from this inhabited form,
this grand machine, so often neglected,
misused, abused, and bottled potential,
like some alien device we’ve no idea how to use,
or for why its creation.
So we dabble and babble till we’re consumed by delusion,
the illusion of reason,
of answering a call that never spoke or ever cared to utter.
How distracted we become, so expert in diversions,
lest the nihilism consume us and devour our assertions.
These days are growing shorter and these thoughts are but contortions
and distortions of a rationale so thwart by malproportions.
I can feel myself coming to,
retreating from this solitude.
Awaking, becoming,
connected again,
but I cannot help the feeling that it’s shallower up here,
further from reality and closer to the fear
that every day I’m living is a far cry from sincere,
and existence is a lie to which I can’t but help adhere.
The art of life
Is there any greater liberty than knowing the choice you want to make,
and then making it?
Perhaps in close contention is the stumbling upon a paralysing fear,
only to quieten it all with a conclusive and calm resolve.
And I sit here not in the absence of action,
but seek to craft and whittle and taper
the wooden block that keeps pen from paper,
and I from satisfaction.
Inspire and goad me from resignation,
unshackle the apathy that binds animation,
and I dare you to find me for a moment retired
’til this writing is worthy of being desired;
a reason discovered, and a purpose acquired.
The meaning of life is to experience living,
so surrender your heart to the art of its giving.
Princely
We are Princes. The lot of us.
And we have forgotten the point of being.
Everything is in the name of stimulation,
occupation, amusement, and purpose;
for in the grand scheme of things,
we have none.
What purpose have we now that we’ve pooled our resources?
Working 40 hours a week so we can enjoy 50-odd of freedom.
Freedom.
From what?!
From the struggle of living? Perhaps.
But not from our 8-hour shifts; only existing as part of the freedom we claim that it’s robbing.
How twisted a purpose,
and altogether meaningless.
Even science, as bold as it comes,
is an extraordinarily complex, but all the while utterly insignificant pursuit of denial.
We are meant to survive.
No more. No less.
And, to be fair, we’re pretty damn good at it.
But I just cannot help but wonder how much of my everyday life,
it’s triumphs and woes,
how much of it is the utter fabrication of a deeper despairing?
Like battleships cruising into the middle of an easy, peaceful, sunny bay,
we blast gulls from the water.
Just because.
Because we’re Princes. The lot of us.
Royalty of survival.
And with little in the way of adversaries,
is it any wonder we go mad with boredom?
Solace in the city
I cannot bear the silence.
Forever awaiting the unperturbed
to rustle or bump me from my slumber,
in the dead of night
or lonely day.
Settle me in city streets
where sirens sound their sordid tones
to rob you of your R.E.M.
and riddle you with dreams,
but I, with eyes closed all the while,
will smile and sleep among the keeps
that house the rare-outnumbered.
The Chameleon
We morph and we morph
until we find the form that pleases most
and paints a fair reflection.
What I seek in love ain’t love alone;
that is, it’s not enough to love, or to be loved in return,
it is the striving to find a version of me that I’m willing to keep around.
For every person I meet, for every situation I’m in,
there seems to be another kind of “I”,
filling the mould and adapting to this changeable environment.
Nor is it a case of trying to work out WHO I am,
because there just is NO ONE WAY in which I exist.
A multitude of personas, ideologies, desires and aspirations,
all of them webbing a complex weave of existence,
amounting to the sum of all my parts
and becoming “I”.
Instead,
it’s about experiencing most every side of this multichotomical state of being,
and deciding which, if any, of these many masks is the most becoming.
I am who I am in the presence of you,
whoever YOU are
or MAY BE when, in the presence of me,
you’ve morphed and warped your skin to suit the colour of this encounter.
So you see, I don’t mourn because love is hard to find,
or muster from the twisted roots of crass desire,
but the BLATANT, STARK and NAKED fact that cries a tortured plea
is that you were the only one that made a better me.
The boat that rocked
I was lying on a beach, looking out at a boat,
stationary at the tip of an arm of land, jutting out from the mouth of this cove.
I stared at it for a while, willing it to move,
to sail away so that I may see it in motion,
taking to the waves, as was its design to do.
But it remained, unaffected by my wishes.
And though I have heard we should not ask of the divine to prove itself,
like some genie to appear upon rubbing a lamp,
it seemed too opportune a moment – for He perhaps even more than I –
to prove this atheist misguided.
I did not clasp my hands in prayer, nor look to the sky for answers,
I simply asked, and awaited to see if I would receive.
“I’ll believe…if you move that boat.”
The underlying question being “Will you give me faith?”,
whereby I’d take it as confirmation, if the boat did indeed move,
or were it to stay put, I’d find myself godless.
The boat moved.
It didn’t sail majestically, or race from its dock,
but for the first time in all my moments of watching,
it rocked and swayed…presumably upon some passing wave.
I smiled.
“Coincidence.” I murmured.
But I cannot claim that I thought no more of it,
and this bit of writing is testament to said denial.
Perhaps it was coincidence.
And I remember asking of God to move it again, just so that I may be sure.
It did not move a second time.
But perhaps I’d had my quota? I’d asked, received, but then questioned,
and sought out affirmation of my confirmation.
If I were He, I’d not have moved the boat again either.
Where would it end?
When would this demanding reassurance find itself content?
When it moved again? When it sailed West?
When it rose from the very water it rocked upon?
To grant every trial and proving question would be to grant an infinite medium,
becoming of the man a magician of sorts,
whereby he would then no doubt conclude he was, in himself, a God.
Why did I deny the first proof, and cast it off as coincidence?
Because it was not complex enough a request?
Should I have asked for something more elaborate, before wasting it on trivials?
I believe at the time I was aiming small,
giving my God-in-question every opportunity to present himself discreetly.
…
But just now, it occurred to me how infinitely complex a coincidence
that I came to be lying on that beach at all,
looking out at a boat,
on water,
next to land,
both earth and sea teeming with life,
for me to cut right through this wonderful amalgamation of coincidences,
and ask the boat to move.
It did move.
And the mind boggles.
An Ideal
I want to go to the mountains.
By Summer or Winter,
I’d escape to a log cabin,
not far from the town that bustles below
(but far enough to see it all from my balcony,
or the steps on my porch),
faintly whirring with life by evening,
an orange glow from softly-lit streets,
in the haunches of rock and god-like awe.
Not looming, but beckoning,
daring me to scale its walls,
stand atop its barrier
and see for miles that complex scape;
a skyline forged by inner strife,
and carved by weather’s temper.
In the town I’d sit with locals,
drinking coffee by day and beer by night,
relishing the dizziness of thinner air,
and shuffling home by moonlight.
Smiling as I bury my head in a feather pillow,
I remember the girl, smiling too, behind the bar.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll buy her dinner.
Air of change
The air, myself and time alike,
all seemingly stand still.
No wind, no walk, no tick n’ tock,
no great escape or thrill.
So many loves have brushed me by
and all have left their mark.
The lightest, bustling, playful air
still etched upon my heart.
I’ve been confined to water for
so long. It’s time to change.
I’ll need the aid of passion’s air
to lift me from these waves.
Come whipping winds, sweep left, sweep right
and carry me from here.
I’ve spent too long just watching time;
my eyes too dry to tear.
So catch me in your freest hand
and throw me way up high.
I’ll soar like leaves caught in your breeze
and, like the birds, I’ll fly.
Find me wanting
Why do I force upon myself evenings of incapacitation,
drawing close my eyelids as I wade through heavy haze
and discover lonely melancholy.
So much for a lazy Sunday;
naked but for joggers that desperately need a wash,
but couldn’t make it to the pile of dirty laundry –
for what am I to wear all awhile they tumble?
So much for its relaxing effect,
when all I crave is something, someone, to excite my every nerve,
and pull tight these muscles in a passionate struggle,
to fire and fall like the waning flame,
only then to truly relax,
filling the mould,
and setting.
Too early for bed, but too far gone,
drugged to a state of aimless wonderings
that yield little in the way of productivity,
and whisper of things left undone.
I push through my hair, in the way you used to,
hoping to scrape from there the excess thought
that burdens my heavy head.
Swigging but for the sake of something to do,
you’ll find me here,
deadened to invigoration;
if you’ve something to say, please, say it now,
for though shackled
and cuffed by lack of wanting,
for what it’s worth, at least,
you’d find an honest answer.
Cold side of the bed
Deliver me affections
that I may eye and draw upon
to soothe my heart’s afflictions,
and feed me not the colder kind
that binds my skin to icy claws,
and finds me thin upon the floors
of Friday-night addictions,
and were I home with you tonight
I’d fight the cold with kisses.
Prelude to The Wandering Rose
Seemingly ever out of reach,
but holds the hearts of many,
her deepest thoughts are hers to keep
and call upon when ready.
Free-spirited, but fleeting,
and singing as she goes,
my heart is ever-beating for
the darling wandering rose.
Corner of my eye
How precious those diagonals,
that criss and cross along the cloth
and plates that island every crease
between our foreign glances.
Conversing far beyond our tongues
and rules that govern parted shores,
there speaks a language, known to those
who’ve mastered the unspoken.
Hidden in each hearty laugh
and smiles that kindle inner-thought,
a vibrant flow, that glows and grows,
lights up the room and all its hearts.
How precious these diagonals
to hold and harbour all our words,
and how subtle we both find ourselves
in voicing the unheard.
Rebound
Fickle as they come
and go, without a parting word,
fly-tipping memories
into a pit of disregard
that rots in the sun,
and burns in the cold
like the icy, sharp and beatless heart
inhabiting my chest as a squatter,
stealing my blood (like the thief it is)
and filling my veins with wonder;
of a kind that’s built to ever-desire,
and priding itself in trickery.
But lest we forget the victims,
lying and lying to their new-found lovers…
and modesty deserts me.
Not wise, but privy to workings ever-deeper;
evermore, everless, and always deceiving.
Take care to examine the love you’re receiving.