Tuesday, July 17, 2012


You slip through my fingers
Like water, a soft whisper
Carried on the wind.
You follow my mind,
Haunting my dreams,
The one who’s always running.
My lips still burn, from the
Taste of your name
Dripping like wax off my tongue.
Your hair, thick ropes draped
Over your back
I wish to unravel the mystery.
Some say to let it bleed,
Purge you from my soul.
Unseen hands wrap thickly around my waist,
Holding me, always, to you.
A lonely rememberance.
I wish I could pick you up,
Hold you by the neck
Blow away dying dandelion seeds.

Doorway of memories past.


Stiff and cold
Her breath grazes my cheek as she
Runs by
Half a second, my pulse races
And then she’s gone.
Reach for her hand
Confusion settles as she
Jumps; stung by some unseen evil
What, me?
One, two three four
Counting the feathers in her hair
Sticking out in erratic shapes
Preparing for lift off
You were here just a moment ago
Ran into that shell
I’ll come with an axe, rip you out of
That place.
I lie cold and alone
Shrouded only by the blanket of a
Hollow ache.
Your heat is palpable
A mere touch away.
But I’m a stranger.
And so I’ll plant this here seed
Place it by the window
To grow as you come back
Piece by piece.

A dying breed


Looking around me, all I see is death and decay. I touch my hand to this concrete prison and my being absorbs its hate. These eyes are blinded with flashing lights, bizarre and unnatural.
A soul within me fades, slowly, as I forget myself.
This chaos that surrounds me, it is breaking my body. Bones are aching, head is exploding. Sickness erodes and chills my greying organs. Light fades.
Smoke crawls into my throat, squeezing lungs with its vice grip. The stuff that coughs out of metal pipes and churning wheels - vehicles that chauffeur us all to hell.
My mind is filled too much, brimming with sadness at the sights around me; the crying of naked women, lost and vacant eyes of so many mindless sheep.
I feel the ache, too. My heart reflects yours; it is holding on to a golden thread. A rope that binds us to life. We may wish for death, but aren’t we already living lies of deceit to our true selves? That is worse than death!
Death is merely a cycle, an end to old - making space for new and fresh beginnings; growth of the soul. Each being holds within their soul the seed of truth. It speaks to them on quiet, still nights such as this.
Go within, take a seat at the throne of your heart. Take some time to listen. Go outside, place your hands on the earth. Bury your burning nose, your aching, tired eyes in the softness of yellow petals. Rest your drumming ears in my favourite lullaby; gentle flowing stream of life.
Simplify life, and freedom will reveal its true form.
This current life is madness, a jarring, cutting blur of never-ending pain and dullness. But return to true life, and the ache will flee… it will meld and blend into a symphony of harmonious laughter. Follow it quickly with this flowering spiral of peace.
Sing your melancholy tune to the glorious moon. Return to my Love, my Earth. 

Red satin ribbons


I watch him
Watching me
Through big, hollow eyes.
Those dark swirling masses are alive
No more, until the moon rises
Deep and beautiful, he howls
Melancholy tunes of despair.
I do not pity him.
Around my heart, once, he built a cave.
A hideous box, slowly squeezing life
For every ounce of purity
Power drained to feed his starving soul.
He cut out sections of his own heart
Pushed and shoved them into a crystal
Sliver of blackened indigo, carefully gifted
To the hope locked within.
A puppet grew where I once stood.
It smiled and acted as it should.
He dressed it, and danced with it
Played with it till its footsteps bled
Red splotches into my skin
Piercing withered bones, spreading veins through broken knees
I hear him ever still, slavering at the door
I’m still hooked up to his machine
See the dirty rope, running from his eye to mine
Feeding me visions of murky grey
Snatching dreams with greedy claws
Keeping him sustained.
I killed him nine times in memory
They were only ghosts, images of power
But as he attacked me with false love and further lies
I ripped out his throat with stronger jaw
He couldn’t sing to me any more.
Lay gasping as he died in a pool of his own gurgling hate
Retched and heaved as my own soul
Burned Himself and disappeared, as the blackness finally won.
Chains wound around my body slacken
Scars darken and fade into red satin
Ribbons of colour and power
Silence and punish me into submission
No more, for he is nothing but a beast
Now
I watch him sometimes
Watching me
Through small, lifeless eyes.

For all the times
You bit me when I was burning

For all the moments
I shook my head and howled

For all the whispers
Hiding around corners and chairs

For all the colours
You stole from me

For all the tears left unshed
As a shield of ice grew slow and thick

For all the hits
Borne with silence and broken glass

For all the anger
Locked tightly inside

For all the years lost
As I wandered aimlessly
Through your blind maze

For all the trampled toes
Broken dreams and stars full of holes

For all the memories
That woke me up screaming

For all the red stained eyes
As you gazed into an empty glass

For all the wasted lifetimes
Overfilled with bitter deceit

Flowing rage, hot and pure
Runs through my veins 
Like rusted coal

Red and black are all I see

Hysterical Laughter
As my ripened jaw
Clamps down on
Delicate
Blackened heart

A toast, I say!
As the wicked drown in darkness.

Bowl of Roses


You've seen caged anger flare, seen two boys
knot themselves into a ball
of pure hatred, writhing on the ground
like an animal attacked by bees;
you've seen play-actors, sky-high exaggerators,
careening horses crashing down,
flinging their eyes around, baring their teeth
as if their muzzles were peeling away from their skulls

But now you see how such things are forgotten:
for before you stands the full bowl of roses,
which is unforgettable and wholly filled
with that utmost of presence and promise,
of offering up, beyond any power to give, of being here,
that might be ours- our utmost as well.

Living in silence, endlessly opening,
making use of space without taking space
from the space adjacent things diminish,
barest hint of outline, like untouched ground
and pure withinness, all strangely soft
and self-illuminating - to the very edge:
is there anything we know like this?

And like this: that a feeling arises
because flower petals touch petals?
And this: that one opens like an eye,
and under it lie eyelid after eyelid,
all tightly closed, as if through tenfold sleep
they might curb an inner power of sight.
And this above all: that through these petals
light must pass. From a thousand skies
slowly they filter out the drop of darkness
within whose fiery glow the tangled pack
of stamens bestirs itself and springs erect.
And the movement in the roses, look:
gestures from vibrations so minute
that they'd remain invisible, if their rays
did not fan out into the universe.

Look at that white one, blissfully opened
and standing there amid its spread of petals
like a Venus balanced on her shell;
and the blushing one, which as if flustered
turns across to one that is cool,
and how the cool one withdraws aloof,
and how that cold one stands, wrapped in itself,
among the open ones, that shed everything.
And what they shed: how it can be
at once light and heavy, a cloak, a burder,
a wing and a mask - it all depends -
and how they shed it: as before the loved one.

What can't they be: was that yellow one,
which lies there hollow and open, not the rind
of a fruit in which that very yellow,
more intense, more orange-red, was juice?
And was mere opening too much for this one,
since touched by air its inexpressible pink
has taken on the bitter aftertaste of lilac?
And that cambric one, is it not a dress
in which the shift still clings, soft and breath-warm,
both of them cast off together
in the morning shadows by the old woodland pond?
And this one, opalescent porcelain,
fragile, a shallow china cup
and full of tiny brilliant butterflies, - 
and that one, containing nothing but itself.

And aren't they all that way, simply self-containing,
if self-containing means: to transform the world outside
and the wind and rain and patience of Spring
and guilt and restlessness and muffled fate
and the darkness of the evening of earth
out to the roaming and flying and fleeing of the clouds
and the vague influence of distant stars
into a handful of inwardness.

Now it lies carefree in these opened roses.

~ Rilke

Saturday, July 30, 2011

there were stars in her eyes, once.

Some short years ago, a little, wrinkled lady used to wander into my work, a lonely cafe on the corner of the busiest street in town. Her cloudy eyes met my shoulder, and I could see the dust settled in her silver hair. The skin she wore was dried up like a desert prune, and a mist hung around her in curtains. I could see she had tasted the sweet and bitter of life, and the years had started to craze her brain. Her cheeks were hollow and her eyes round and full. The sun had kissed her face and left brown stains as a reminder - of the days when she used to run through the heavy summer’s glare and not have a care to her name. Her teeth were sunken into her jaw, rotting and stale with yesterday’s memory, of dreams unfulfilled and slowly forgotten. Bunched around her waist were thick ropes of desire, pungent and red. Flowing down over her legs and curling between her toes was a silky dress of soft pink, telling tales of innocence and lost beauty. Sitting atop her head was a tiara, one of those plastic ones bought from a two-dollar shop, plastic and spray painted silver. I could see she believed in the shiny jewels embedded in its crust. Hands clasped together, she sat on the seat by the window and stared, unseeing, into my soul. The pain and clouds that fogged up her mind’s eye caused my ribs to squeeze my heart into submission. And in my soul, I wept. Big salty tears rolled down my inner windows and pooled in the depths, collecting all the other unreleased liquid pain and turned into an icy lake, still and silent. I wished for this old lady, called her unspoken name silently in my head. I rehearsed walking up to her and curling my arms around her bony shoulders, holding her close to my heart. I wished for her to wake up and see that life was still all around her, that death hadn’t called for her. Yet she wandered around in a daze, as if she was already dead. A ghost, a memory, a shell of pitiful forgotten dreams. I turned to clean the already well clean table behind me, and felt her stale breath on my neck. I froze, and turned to see her slipping her hand into the fridge behind the counter, sharp bony fingers clutching at a bottle of juice. One by one, she pulled out bottles of juice and hid them in her sequinned bag. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my lips seemed glued together, only way to open them would be to prise them apart with my nails. The bottles rattled around loudly and only then did I wake up and let out a shout. The whole place jumped and I opened my eyes wide. She was gone, not a trace that she had even existed. Was I day dreaming? Could that even be called a dream- or was it some sort of fucked future vision of the woman I could one day be. Shaking my head, I took a deep breath to clear the fog from my vision. Only then did I catch the thick stench, the scent of her unwashed body hung heavy in the air.