Huntress Di de Crepitus

 

Hopscotching through the street light puddles

Looking for a fight,

I’ve got my crypt kickers on,

 I’m ready for to night

I hope you’re spinning in your grave,

Awakened by your thirst

Cause I’m also out for blood tonight

And yours will be the first.

My joints are burning fevered fire

I ache with moisture surge

This effervescent dark desire

passion’s pains to purge

I’m the Huntress Di de Crepitus

I promise you this

I’m gonna take you out 

all steak no chips.

You, you won’t see the morning.

And you, you won’t see me mourning.

You, you won’t last the evening

And you, you won’t see me leaving.

You’re a creature of the night,   

But I am one as well

And bats and fungus like the dark,

Not just the folk from hell. 

We’re sick of your biting wit,

We hate the way you count.

I’ve eaten garlic bread and I

am sweating it out.

My joints are burning fevered fire

I ache with moisture surge

This effervescent dark desire

passion’s pains to purge

I’m the Huntress Di de Crepitus

I promise you this

I’m gonna take you out 

all steak no chips.

You, you won’t see the morning.  

And you, you won’t see me mourning.

You, you won’t be feeding

No, you, you won’t see me bleeding,

Anachronistic as a tango in the discotheque 

And how the tables turn; now I'm a pain in your neck.

Your prey is mostly out by day and you can't day-time stalk

You'd have to buy the world's supply of factor 50 block. 

My joints are burning fevered fire

I ache with moisture surge

This effervescent dark desire

passion’s pains to purge

I’m the Huntress Di de Crepitus

I promise you this

I’m gonna take you out 

all stake no chips.

You, you won’t see the morning.  

And you, you won’t see me mourning.

You, don’t heed this warning

And you, it’s you i'm scorning.

And when the sun creeps back  

And you are dust upon the dawn

I’m throwing back a coffee,

Getting my sunglasses on.

‘Cause in the day time others

Of your species group to feed

Off our precious psychic energy

I won’t let you suck. Cede!

My joints are burning fevered fire

I ache with every moisture surge

Effervescent dark desire

Passion’s pain to purge

I’m the Huntress Di de Crepitus

I promise you this:

I’m gonna take you out

 all stake no chips.

You, you won’t see the morning.

And you, you won’t see me mourning.

You, you won’t last this evening

And you, you won’t see me leaving.

Newsfeed

 Monsters maraud 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.

Sufferings strata hierarchical hate

ID parade to provoke not placate

Spotlights division distract from the state's 

Poisonous policy serves to stagnate.

Senselessly scrolling through cats ads and clothing 

While troops are patrolling the lands that were stolen 

From under the noses of folk still unbroken 

By drones in the darkness and mine mouths up blowing.

Sixty years since

Turn on, tune in, drop out.

This year's mince;

Turn on, log in, tune out. 

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.

May Queen

 And so we come to the end of the dread days.

May brings blossoms and sometimes rain.

The Cailagh cackles. Her twigs are crackling

in her hearth, dry and needless of restocking.

Endless ticks and tockings as the days hurry past.

The Sun seems anxious to grow, anxious to set,

but her days of maturity aren't even halfway over yet. 

Bring fire and spin this wheel’s turn.

Wish away the memories of winter.

Let her savage kisses burn

and cover me with sacred blisters.

Effort

 Laying waste to laziness this month I have ravaged the paving and surged forth purging

intentions and replacing them with actions.

Playing catch up instead of silly buggers,

crossing off those lists like Santa on speed

my need for completion is primal. 

You can call it survival instinct 

if it tickles you. From the inside

my visions are midnight clear and intrusive.

Externally I'm reclusive. Hardly time for food,

let alone friendships. And it's just this

time when I'm in the mood for banter.

But too burnt out to play 

in the post-manic ever-after.

Aurelian Ratio

 The aurelian ratio’s rationale

corrals all things

into patterns recognisable 

for the cognisant,

rational thinker.

It is easy to be blinkered

by the beauty of her bounty

and patterns when romanticised

resemble art by Gaudi.

Fill your eyes with tangerines of gamma glow each morning.

Waltz in monochrome moonlight under celestial celebrities performing.

Petrichor perfume pervades your dreams. It’s sweetly soul transforming.

Waves continually break in sparkling kisses, sand adoring. 

Fractals form like fantasies,

euphorically evolving.

But the puzzle's too big for mortal minds, 

it's not for us to be solving.

So recognise the leitmotifs

 that maths and physics gift us.

And let these specks of knowledge lead, 

and lighten loads, and lift us. 

Fork

 Bifurcation, crossroads, choices.

Cacophony of conflicting voices.

This way, that way, take a step

Try not to seed a new regret.

Who are you now, and who to be

in days to come’s a mystery.

But, mark this time as turning point.

Embed the memory

of when you saw future as full

of opportunities.

Open the Door

 Open the door.

It could be anything.

The possibilities are, if not endless,

at least more numerous than listable.

And to remain here, listless

hand on handle, participle dangling

like poorly constructed fragments 

from a native’s lazy tongue

is the thief of potential.

Stealing all the positive things that might just come

And all the negatives, too!

Which are only negative when viewed too closely.

After enough time even verdigris is charming.

Open the door.

Let your eyes experience all this and more.

It could be anything.

Small Potatoes

 A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

It induces hubris.

And hubris by nature is insubstantial,

pinned to power inconsequential, like

the choice between chips

and roasties.

But when the potatoes are paths

and the peeling alone could end a life,

it's dangerous to listen to the Dauphinoise.

Creamy, smooth, rich they may be.

But unpalatable when paired with ketchup.

Even mayonnaise is too much.

The potato grows in silence.

The iron corrodes in silence. 

And knowledge corrodes noisily

shouting certainty above all things.

Garden Justice

 Spiders crawl.

Their sprawling limbs deftly spinning

false narratives into unrecognisable realities.

Nets of untruths bind and gag

honest observations.

Sticky strong silk shrouds 

instead of scold’s bridles

adorn whistleblowers.

No stocks for public punishment,

these juicy martyrs will be silently sucked dry. 

Eventually the weight of the larder will shred that web

and the arachnids of sophistry 

will be swallowed by the hooded crows of hubris.

Abstract Spring

 Laundry lots and sunny spots and warmth outside our windows - 

open now. New ideas, bicycle rituals and clearance.

In more ways than one.

Innocent individuals chase innocent dreams.

I would the world be with them. 

Part 1 - A Productive Sunday

 I was sick of the shape of the lounge. 

The windows ignored and the mess all around.

So we made a plan to move some shelves.

Well, one in particular, we could do it ourselves.

That big one, the oak one, the one full of books.

It'd been ages since we sorted them, I was on tenterhooks

For all the treasure we might find.

So we set aside some time.

Sunday morning, up at dawn.

Sort and shift, then mow the lawn. 

The deal was made, alarms were set.

Boxes and bags were ready prepped. 

My excitement at the prospect sowed tragedy's seed,

As whirring thoughts robbed me of the sleep that I'd need. 

And I heard the street life come and go,

Then witnessed the gamma light tangerine glow

Of the unwelcome sunrise that cruelly seeped

in through the window, and sent me to sleep.

At twenty to twelve my phone shrilly rang

Thrown into a panic, awake with a bang,

I fell out of bed and onto a shoe

(Which explains at least one of the mystery bruises)

Staggered to stand and opened the door,

Aghast at the time lost and vaguely sore.

Shouting “Good morning!” to Gio (still in bed)

while the homicidal feline winds his way through my legs 

and I try to get down the stairs.

Just there, through the 8 ft windowpane

Are Esmeralda and Jonathan, they're back again

For the summer. They're our resident herring gulls.

The cat is enraged, awkward placed and my lulls 

did not seem to be having the desired effect.

He was ready to kill me, his tail erect

And bristled to easily three times the width

of his normally slinky marinko tail-whip.

I stepped. He swiped then yowled down the stairs

and I followed, bleary haste tripping and scared.

There was so much to do! Cup of tea! 

Teeth and shoes! 

We hadn't a singular moment to lose.

Gio emerged, in the same state as me.

“We were going to move the bookshelves, weren't we?”

End of the End

 Another one gone.

Another three songs 

poisoned by emotional association.

It's a strange wave that breaks when they shoulder that box.

Raw, real and final.

The ritual is primal.

Elegies and eulogies hang 

as a forlorn fog, a longing 

we would call nostalgia

if it weren't so immediate.

So overwhelming.

Vinstaspam

 It's fascinating to watch the transformations,

the faces changing, shapes and shading

molding the old into the new.

Glued to metamorphoses 

my eyes eat the emergent futures.

Time lapse footage of homes refurbished,

swimming pools built in forests.

Inanely observing character arcs of 

of inanimate objects and costume art.

It's a digital dollshouse, an Arcadia of artifice.

The opiate of ordinary while you live life vicarious.

Damp

 Because the darkness remains, despite action to the contrary.

Because the dampness pervades, despite the open windowed remedy.

Rani ranidae, amphibious amphora, 

Vessel for all the spores that ever lived before her.

Mouldering and smoldering, restricted to the attic.

No yellow wallpaper, just a wheezing asthmatic.

Rhizaria in darkness lies, waiting to be fed

While her cousin Actinomycetota

Chivvies along the nearly dead.

Dehumidifier, anyone?

Float

 Stoicism in the face of Caprice 

is a skill

 that still

 evades more than it is exercised.

Long term goals require long term planning

and I'll be damned if anything more than the now exists for me.

(Toxic) mindfulness (a problematic paradigm that leaves me powerless in the face of troubling times) is pushed by gurus and gym bunnies alike.

All reaching for a blissful blank.

I recommend a floatation tank. 

Remains

 Counting down the days and ways that I have missed you.

The moments that we haven't shared.

The times I know that I was scared

but to others it looked like anger.

To others it looked like idiocy, 

like flippant avoidance of serious thought. 

The objects and experiences I bought

after you bought the farm.

It took years

and it's only now,

drowning in the hourglass

that I realise how much time has passed.

And how much 

I have left.