Timeline

 Monsters mauraud causing pressurised pauses and coursing these hares of attrition to force us

 to face what we bought with the souls of the daughters 

whose freedoms are phantoms resigned to a fortress.

Without remorse the hawks proudly purport 

to distort the discourse, to control and contort storylines and reports til the truth's lined in chalk 

and the demons extolled for their will to extort.

 Hideous hordes haul their horrible orifice-

s through the streets and then off to their offices -

coffee and cowardice; cancelling policies

killing off folk for the cents in the sofa seats.

Feign fascination from false adulation 

Or face cancellation by fickle crustaceans

Their claws and their carapace wilful conflation

Of facts and emotions with false accusations

Sophistry’s slavers paint rivals as raving,

ordering us to ignore what they're saying

scripted unwill into games they’re playing.

Injustice tsunami; we're drowning not waving.

Fortune

 “Fortune favours the brave” they say

in tones taut with untruth.

I'm cornered forcing

My face forward 

Hackles rising inside the fortress 

Of knives that I bought

With the battles I fought 

Just to get off my knees in the first place.

This misplaced faith reveals itself

a flasher in a dirty mac

Fangs cracked in grimace,

brown and beastly. 

I'm not easily broken.

Frustrated, choking

on unspoken fury, yes. 

Was I ever anything less?

With my back to three walls 

I'll chimney-crawl

Palms hot and slipping, knees burning, toes curling

Til I'm above it all.

I'm more than capable 

Your tricks pitiful, escapable.

Their hallmark unmistakable 

Little poison smirks and shirked responsibilities 

Leaving slickly silvered schistosomiasistic slithering ribbons of parasitic sleaze 

everywhere.

Like angel hair

 festoons in a Grimm fairytale forest

Leading not to freedom, but a furnace.

Adrift now on spinnerets deftly thrown threads

Money spiders claim me as their own.

 I dread

The battles ahead.

Despite my history of victory 

Complacency's amphigory

because 

The Future Belongs To Those Who Can See It Coming 

and I'm running towards it

My awestricken orbits

Entranced in the audit

Of plausible plaudits

Presented by Hope as possible pathways

To choose.

It's not a very cunning ruse, I'll admit that

But the patterns tell all, they love a bit of chit chat.

It's no mystery,

This cyclical long-form repetition 

of communal maladaptive dreams.

But Morpheus has forsaken me these past 30 years.

This sleepless lucidity is the blessing in the curse.

I'm well versed in the machinations and the misery.

You play chess 3D and I'm bored of games.

This hue and cry of shameful failures,

baying hounds on the heath 

“On a long enough timeline the survival rate of everything drops to zero”

Entropy and Apathy the anti-muses informing your decisions. 

Efforts at improvement abandoned, branded unrealistic by pessimism.

But pendulums swing by definition 

and your barbs of derision are blunted

By every ticking moment spent

In the prism of crystal vision.

Choose well.

Or perish.

Dangermoth

 I remember 

Rough rope knots digging into aching flesh

Dappled light

Sour sweetness of salted skin seasoning 

the scent of the clematis.

Top to toe, resting the rest the wicked rest.

Smoking and full of schemes.

Each time we contemplated the notion of eternal life

It was always on the premise that we'd both be there.

Still raising hell, climbing trees, eating flowers,

Sharing woes and being proud of our adventures.

Lessons dissected over wine and cigarettes 

Are better learned and it diminishes regrets.

I won't forget.

“We're survivors. We survive. That's what we do, me and you”

That's what you said. 

And you meant it at the time.

And every other time because you'd needed to remind me

When you'd rescue me from yet another trap. 

Knight in shining dreadlocks,

Penguin onesie,

Wooly jumper

You taught me

So

Much.

Now

Education incomplete 

I stand depressed, by life defeated

Hollow hearted, eyed and cheeked.

It hurts

How fucking dare you go without me?!

We had plans. We said we'd meet

When beards and tits both touched our feet.

Verandas, rocking chairs.

Our spouses friends, our kids alright 

And even grandkids if we played it right.

And now

There's too much time without you.

I don't know who I will go to

Just to tell my honest, open, truth.

You were the one who never judged

The one who gave me back my buzz.

And you gave me your St Christopher.

I gave it back, though; unlike you -

My favourite clothes all taxed and strewn

In far flung corners of your trotted globe.

We owned each other’s lives you said,

My home was always ours, my bed

“The velvet palace” yours instead 

Whenever you had need.

But now you'll never see this one

Nor the man my boy's become

Nor the firecracker your girl will be.

Seven days in sunny June.

A lifetime shared, imbibed, consumed.

Drawn to light, 

too much, too soon.

But now your tattered wings are flying free.

Only One

 The magpie brought the message sent.

It flew into the tree and then

I looked and looked and looked again 

But there was only one. 

It said nothing, shifted stance

And cocked it's head askew, askance 

At my concerned but accepting glance

I could see only one.

I'd seen this omen once before 

In brutal clarity’s recall

I wept and wept and wept some more

And cursed that only one.

But now I know the message sent

Is not to torture or torment

Just warn of loss to the extent

It can, as only one.

Tuxedo donned in noble rite

Its visits solemn and polite

Piebald Mercury takes flight

And leaves me only one. 

Humble

 Hard to explain how much I hate the word humble

Insidiously supplanting sincerity and stumble-

Spoken into each gobful of gratitude as token

Hat tip to hard work, to the also-rans, to being less than.

Hard to explain because it all sounds like bullshit. 

Like chat gpt’s overly adjectived descriptions

Like every unhuman artistic production.

Tragedy is humbling. Success is humbling.

Perspective is humbling. Honesty is humbling. 

All engaged in a race to be smallest,

Shrinking from callings, calamitous fawning, disingenuous drawls from lips drawn into duplicitously delighted half smirks.

This word is doing the devil's work.

Drowning heartfelt honesty in velvety venomous sophistry.