Like those before
I’m haunted by comparison;
sporadic, transparent anxieties,
ghosts of aspirations I never held
flashing
and torn from consciousness –
a moth-eaten fabric of cotton thought,
too soft, or frayed,
or sodden with apathy,
wrung out in the sink,
swallowed whole by the legacy of former invention.
Wash it down with the rest of your lukewarm beer
(your latest excuse for indecision)
lest you take responsibility for all you do,
for all you are,
and are not,
and could be,
but won’t,
because the only choice you ever made
was to compare distress with action.
They never even had a clue
or planned that it be so,
but made to move as if they knew
and found their ground in tow.
It used to run red
When skin was thin I dug right in
and mined for all I pleased.
Each night I’d write until first light
and wake each day with ease.
I sliced and diced, not once, not twice,
and scattered my heart to the weeds.
It’s true some grew, hell, some even bloomed,
but I failed to take heed of the breeds.
Now callous and dry, my skin holds no lines,
only roughness and a will to secede.
I long to delve deeper, and now know why the seeker
will cut just to see how they’ll bleed.
Be human
Don’t brand yourself the villain;
those burns will scar a drama into every motivation.
You’re acting up to just how bad you think that you might be,
but you’re not wicked or perverse to think or say or look or feel,
to experience your existential, and writhe amongst your world.
It’s a sensory bonanza, full of immaterial rules;
to pander to their censorship is slander to your soul.
Absorb, digest, imbibe, and breathe those hundred-thousand reasons
to ponder, wonder, live and love,
to run and walk amidst, amongst,
to fit between, pass through and through;
be HUMAN, fool. What else? Be you.
Take Flight (Poppa)
Take flight and join your many wings,
go soar with all those birds you housed,
and race the Concorde through the clouds;
don’t stop ’til you reach heaven.
Take care, I know you always do,
you’d tinker ’til the tests ran true,
your measured words were tailored too;
today mine echo out from you.
Goodnight, and rest as you once knew,
although we’ll miss your morning brew,
your laugh before the joke was through,
we know you’ll be happier up there with the weather,
where your silver-pin wings will transform into feathers.
Take care (I know you always do).
Take flight; the sky was made for you.
~ for Poppa ~
Abdicate
It’ll be Winter by the time I even know it’s Spring;
the darker days will steal away the light that Summer brings.
And in a black reflection, I’ll be thumbing through my things,
to find when years felt vast and sheer, and more than casual flings.
If only we’d known it in our youth
and held our reign like Kings.
The walls have eyes
There’s reflection in this construct,
and seeing you in them all glossy,
warped and out of focus,
lowers me into shallow pools
of hidden sideways glances,
as if to verify that your form ain’t really wavy,
like the imitating peering pane that captures and contains me;
allowing me the freedom
to see but not be seen.
This impressionistic window
is all that you have ever been.
Big Fish
What mini Gods who all saw fit
to redesign the grand design,
and tailor nature till it sits
in line with how we feel inclined
on any given time or day;
both in themselves a custom play.
For why is it we tinker?
Custom blinkers
wrapped about our eyes and ties
our hopes to lies and dreams to flies
and bites, hook-line-and-sinker;
no better nor wetter than the common carp –
the great regretter:
“for why a hook about my lip?!
I only sought a sightly sip.
I regret! I regret!
Release and forget,
and I’ll swallow up only my natural set.”
My life (till now) again
I’ve time to heal and mend the ties between old friends,
to reassess my daily spend;
my life, till now, again.
There’s every chance I’ll die without ever knowing why
my better’s best and spirit’s high
when I don’t seem to try.
Come morning, wake from sleep and reap the daily keep,
thy eye is blind and would not weep
nor creep for nothin’ cheap.
With course I must contend, and preach as I pretend,
at least I’ve time to reascend;
my life, till now, again.
Look forward
Traveling backwards on a train
can skew your point of view;
transfixed upon the stitching,
not the pattern made for you.
Remains
To the last, I’m rosy;
with so much left to give,
and not one inch comes undeserved.
I’m left perturbed I can’t give more
or draw this scene for evermore.
It’s time. My line will be
blunt;
what use is there in fabrication,
dressing up an ugly truth,
or pretending coal is gold?
I’m old enough to live life better,
to play love smarter, and know to be kinder…
*
interrupted.
Days have passed since last I cast this thought
toward the rock I caught
my net upon;
another gone,
forget and long for yesteryear
when truth-be-out was without fear.
The line remains upon my tongue;
sung, flung, wrung n’ hung –
the line remains, the fire remains
and stains disdain into refrains that sing
like stings before they’ve stung,
like pins in skin and lightning lungs –
the line remains upon my tongue.
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?