poetry

night’s leaves

by

on a pristine
october afternoon
i applied for a job
begging at the ports

all for the sake
of feeling my way
against the ghost
of your truth

my lies limed
and loaded flowed
easy riding the night’s
last flicker of hope

i was young
i tried to capture
you with rhymes
and exotic suggestions

touching myself
pretending to be
a poet of all things

you were a tourist
picking through
the constellations
looking for something
behind my falling words

you found nothing but
a boy from jazz highway
rustling night’s leaves

rapture

by

on the radio
the buzzing world
whistling

blowers moan
the clack of
balls clicking

so well straining

a high thin monkey
woman begging for
rapture

ant-people, something has happened – the remix

by

Best experienced through headphones…

ant-people, something has happened that’s made me question the nature of my reality, a thread to follow…

the point of intersection between the human mind and suppression. i don’t think you will ever see me again. i achieved what i was incapable of.

the time wave,
i sent it.

the strong rule the weak and the clever rule the strong. the distribution of our current system is the deadly bank account. there is a dangerous underground operating in telepathic space.

dangerous adventurers who plan to outthink and displace the static fragmentation of our united class society, everyone living lives as a member of a particular class thinking every kind of thought without exception, stamped with the brand of class rubbing elbows and getting jostled in by the crowd.

before the beginning

by

in the moment she answered
formless in-between states of grief
shadows dancing underneath her eyes
she did not recognise me

darkness
dull and desperate
before the beginning
began

i caught myself staring like a
chimp caught humping another
chimp, never would i be better

imitating the ways of the master not to
create but to destroy the beat of her heart

vapour and dust

by

and then it made sense to me
i stood witlessly fumbling the
key to endless happiness she
sat on the bed with her hands
clenched, ‘i will help you hold
the hatred, spread it over the
fields black and foul and what
will you do for me?’ i will give
you another life layered in gauze
and honey, burning in teargas
i will save you from the vapour
and dust of sad dreams

plaything for the gods

by

i was in the desert once
lost in meditation
i was trying to get to
grips with being a
plaything for the gods

i met some souls sitting
around a fire in the open night
they were contemplating
Good and Evil
Lust and Sorrow

all of my incantations
and prayers ignored
by the old gods, i consigned
myself to the enigma of the
meek and their gospel of love

until i stumbled upon a
switch labeled universe
next to a button marked
“Boom”

in a moment of weakness
i pressed the button

Where is her glory?

by

outside, the rats
huddle against the
cold grey shade of sky

eyes trail behind her
shivering as she sings
softly like a morning bell

metallic breath blows
grim where is her glory?

her destructive rage

by

 

metaphorically speaking
a kooky dream bounces between
erotic romance turned
gripping taboo

restrained, repressive
struggling to contain her
destructive rage, she
falls unkempt in blood

slightly deranged
a killer on the loose

I’m not dreaming

by

This isn’t finished, but I thought I’d share it with you anyway as a sort of working out loud post.  Plus my brain is fried right now. I can barely string these few sentences together.

//

I’m not dreaming
my dark eyes see
a purple flower
next to a burnt
out tree

I smell the breath
of the Beast
hear his low growl
and snapping teeth

I remember
my youthful days
(i traveled lighter)
then

over sex drive
little insects buzzing
in my ear

The harpies were there
and the willow tree
and my mom’s friend too

purple rain fell

beneath my window
she talked about
the doves at night

in a view that looks the same

by

in a view that looks the same
nothing changes except time

the rain washed away the early
morning silence leaving in it’s passing

patches of white like tiny barren islands
are all that remain of the snow on my block

On the fate of gods and men

by

Is it true
all men must
die?

How many
faces will you
meet before you
meet your maker
or your fate?

Faces of me
Faces of you
Faces of each
other as one

because

we are all together
and i am not the walrus
but i like to see them
run for

comfort
buses and trains,
run to get laid and
laid to rest

like the antelope
that couldn’t
outrun the fastest lion,
the CEO’s and COO’s
feast on their bones

Sleep now
you’ve earned it
like my father and
your father and their
father’s father

Dead of the fight
seeking solace in
the paradox of
nihilism when the

night is clear, they look
for a direct line to God
only to find he’s not there

God’s Comic has stepped
in to bartend until the
stars disappear and
through blurry eyes
and dried voices they

whisper together
Valar Morghulis
and sometimes gods too

On Damaged

by

Isolated
by my own strangeness
I try to bridge the
unbridgeable
gap between

us

You with your
good looks and
blonde hair, ice-blue
eyes that

beguile
bewitch
behead

those with courage
to look longer than
a stare

I think of something
Prince would say:

“Now move your big
ass ‘round this way
so i can work on that zipper, baby”

I wouldn’t dare,
of course, I need
someone more
damaged than me

to un-play a game
I play with myself

A Kiss Is

by

I’m sure if we closed
the distance between
us we’d kiss. And that
kiss would be the beginning.
And that kiss would be the end.
A kiss is never just a kiss.

Stroke My Terror

by

You don’t want to go where this leads
I dropped my airpod on your breasts
You never give me your honey but
the coffee you serve is the best

I stroke my terror to find joy
Oh I’m going to burn in Hell alright
I promise I’ll burn well though ‘cause
mother said if you’re going to do it do it light

myself on fire, drop dead on the spot
i’m happy to be hurt by your mysterious
ways, the abyss is underneath the table
if you’re able to second guess my (intention)

I’ll play the role of darkness and you can
be the light that lights my perversity.

Soundtrack:

And that’s the trouble with poetry

by

I awoke this morning to the hammering sound of rain. Just what you want out of your Monday morning – dark, wet, gloom. I made a batch of strong, dark coffee to match the mood. I turned to my one true source of motivation – books.

I cracked open Matthew Zapruder’s new book, Why Poetry. He’s on a mission to bring poetry back to the people. He argues that the way poetry is being taught in schools puts most people off of it for life.

“So many of us have been taught to read poetry as if words mean something other than what they actually say.  In this version of poetry, poems are designed to communicate a message, albeit in a confusing way. Everything that is in the poem – metaphors, similes, imagery, sounds, line breaks, and so on – is decorative, that is, place on top of the message or meaning of the poem.  The student’s job is to discover that meaning, and to repeat the central (often banal) message or theme back to the teacher, or in the exam.”

Liz Lochhead, former makar (poet laureate) of Glasgow, had this to say:

“The way poetry is taught at the moment is absolutely appalling…they teach poetry as a problem, rather than a joy, and that’s disgraceful…It’s clear that even teachers think poetry is code. I have been asked by a boy, who emailed me once: ‘when you wrote that poem about a bull, what did you really want to say?’ His education had allowed him to get the misapprehension that a poem is a code trying to get a message across.”

And that’s the trouble with poetry, it gets a bad wrap in school and few people, except sad sacks like me, ever recover.  It’s funny for as much as I read poetry is dead and that I should be a writer of a different sort, I can’t shake the poetry bug.  I love it and it’e my favourite form of self-expression with words. I love the wild ride poetry allows you take with language.

My favourite poems are those that are self-contained, that is, you can use your literal imagination to enjoy the poem as it is on the page without having to have an extensive knowledge of obscure literature or need a guidebook to help your navigate the many allusions and references (which is ironic, seeing how the poet that got me fired up about poetry when I was 16 was T.S. Eliot, but to be fair, I didn’t understand what the heck he was on about in the Waste Land, I just loved the pure language. And Prufrock and Hollow Men easily stand alone).

Zapruder nailed it for me though when he said, “poetry can only fully be pursued when the writer is not ultimately preoccupied with any other task, like storytelling or explaining or convincing or describing or anything else.” The poet must “be ready to reject all other purposes, in favour of the possibilities of language freed from utility, is when the writer becomes a poet.”

Some things change; some things stay the same

by

I’ve decided to blow up my blog theme again and try something new. Actually I’ve had this theme for a while, just never used it. I’m undecided as to whether to do full blog post on the page format or some variation of the grid style blog or the read more style. The advantage I think the full blog post has is it, if done right, draws the reader into to the post, plus if you’re into the ‘time on site’ metric, people have to scroll further and further down to see more posts, which equals more time on site. Disadvantage – if the current post doesn’t capture the reader’s attention, they probably will bounce and go onto something else.

Enter the grid style blog.

The advantage here is the reader can quickly scan the front page until something catches their eyes, then they read a little bit and if the opening is compelling enough, they’ll click through and read the rest. Disadvantage is the title and opening paragraph is all they read, they never click onto the read more to discover what else you have to say.

I also think I need to assemble my web self together in one spot or at least to have this site to act as journal/portal.

Ok, so with that I mind, be aware that I’ll be tinkering around with the design over the next fews days, possibly into next week as I am about to go into heavy consulting mode over the next couple of days and then I’m off camping for a few days.

—
Confession. I’ve been feeling a little existential angst over the past few days, which tends to happen some times when I’ve been reading heavy stuff. I finished Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell and his Illuminations. Season in Hell in particular made me question my own existence. What really made Rimbaud walk away from a promising literary career? A Season in Hell seems to suggest Rimbaud, having produced his greatest work, realised it was all a shame – art, poetry and the like, and so walked away from it all to be a trader and an arms dealer in Africa. After A Season in Hell he never wrote another word again.

The stuff going down in Charlottesville didn’t help either. It’s like we’re going backwards. Our chief leader, not immediately taking a stance against such behaviour, made it worse. 48 hours and much media pressure finally got Trump to call out the evil by name. I know he’s a massive showman, but this isn’t a television series. We don’t want to be entertained, we want to be led.

What little faith I had in the system is now gone.

Sorry I digress. We were talking about portals and poetry.

I worked on this today:

Fear

I’m not used to fear, it messes up my day. I was taught
to be fear-some and fear-less, never let them see you
sweat, I was told.

I was a blind fanatic at best. My nerves, tempered steel.
Then I tasted fear for the first time, it was bitter and
not at all pleasant.

The sensation – knots in the stomach, anxiety and dread –
came all at once, the moment I felt I had something to lose.
Where once I treated life as a casual affair,

I now hang on in earnest, a slave to my own excesses.
Dull are my senses, factory numb. Only morphine,
masturbation and rum can revive me.

Barricaded behind the four corners of my house,
I pray for Saint Peter to lift me up. Or maybe
the Buddha can unbind me.

I must eliminate myself from this monastic place.
Let go without giving up.

And now off to watch some Thrones. The buzz on the Internet today tells me it’s a great episode!

Nightmare hooligan

by

I wasted many years
chasing windmills and waterfalls.
Now I finally act my age, and my
friends feel uncomfortable when
I’m serious. So I play the clown,
the eternal court jester, the fool.
I’m a nightmare hooligan with a bloody
nose seeking the Book of Knowledge and
the Truth, if there is such a thing.