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.
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?
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.
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.
The swoop of this pendulum gives me vertigo.
Up I go!
And down.
And how far down depends on things entirely outwith my control.
Slower in the midsection,
feel those little swings like antipodean inflections;
teasings of an inverted world.
There must be equilibrium.
What we lose on the objects we gain on the experiences
or so they tell me
but the distance between stuck and free
is light years.
And I'm in darkness,
still searching for a light.
Another one gone!
Brothers left without brothers
and mother's with hands so wrung
they become the bell that tolls for grief.
Rare and not so rare
their share of hard won wisdom
is gone.
Vanished. Lost.
And what a loss it is,
The lessons they shared with us
lessen the din of
disharmonious hum into
sympathetic resonance.
This year is brought to you by the word Marvellous.
The more I use it the truer this becomes.
It's funny the way things go, sometimes
it feels the rain will never end.
And yet the brief kisses of sunshine leave ghosts of sensations
you can almost taste.
It's marvellous.
And so it is! Despite the rain,
despite the Teran's rage,
despite the pain of losing another of us,
we're choosing to be just as much of us
and keep our humour high.
The days fly by, unfettered,
ever bettered
by the promises of flowers planted
in the hours nothing was granted
gracefully, but striven after,
relentlessly.
The crown effect guarantees ends don’t quite meet in the folio dome of this cathedral.
Timorous squeaks and piercing pleas out of reach to uncaring ears.
As atheistic as I am, I recognise the prayers of the prey,
the pleasures of the predator.
Withheld warmth brings my uncaressed flesh to shiver.
Croaking, he hops. Eyes sharp, beak sharper; unobscured intelligence.
He’s come for my liver.
Head dips, gore drips and I am reminded of life’s
carbon carousel.
Scream if you wanna go faster.
I had screamed, but what came after was not speed.
What came after was
dilated
time.
I aligned myself with the smallest of beasts.
Ants. Watchmen beetles. Dispassionate and industrious.
Clouding eyes fixated on them; skittering, chittering.
Unmindful of the violence above.
Dry twigs and my bones were indistinguishable
snapping beneath brutal boots.
Roots remodelled cheeks
deep lividity carving the caved contours into violets
blooming in darkness.
Ragged jagged breath and nails, too, tear
for any available oxygen.
Desperation transforming
grunts to glossolalia;
debutante to cooling cadaver.
In the post-orgasmic vacuum, psithurism roared.
I seeped through dank earth
and releasing claim on physicality,
observed from without.
Gold discarded by the falling sun
floats on the crests of waves;
caught on unpopular opinions;
rocking hopeful rafts of dreams.
beams lashed with limited means.
Instability constant,
crows wheel and croak their intentions.
Under the surface, scales flash.
The waves splash, waking desperate instincts.
Instead, the raft disassembles
and this pharaoh is buried
with natural treasure bestowed
by sunshine's dying glow.
New brooms sweep burned bridges into piles of ashen regrets.
Some say this way wipes slates white,
writing “self awareness” in sinuous curve of tear tracks.
Blackened hands, blackened eyes,
scorched skirt rough against barbecued thighs.
Choking on the dust in the deserted river bed of ambition.
Dreaming of the days you played pooh sticks.
Wandering this wasteland
weaponised with witty lines
lifted directly to remind us
April is the cruelest month
as if we didn't understand.
As if the death dates didn't loom each year
bank holiday conjunctions functioning
as klaxons calling forth old traumas.
No chance of resurrection.
And who would want it anyway?
Watch all your loved ones die or decay.
Quickly, slowly, pass the days
in dreadnoughts of anticipation.
The plunder of our collective memories
by the passing of its guardians
marks the changing of the guard,
the evolution of the yardstick of civilisation.
To stall is to suffer.
To stagnate is to suffocate.
For us, to survive has to suffice
for the briefest of blooms still bless us with their beauty
and it is pity I feel for those who don't fill their eyes.
All my friends are sick.
In different ways, of course,
individuality being their unifying constant.
But sick, all the same.
These weirdish days of waits and delays and ever worsening pain and malaise is just what they deem normal.
This dawdling decline into decrepitude is hastened by atmospheric insolence,
thunderheads sulking heavy hunches into agonising lightning strikes.
Limitations shackles dragging back our aspirations into effigies and imitations, bonsai prototypes of dreams.
Making mockery of wellness, these once vital shells dress their despair in decadence and call it art.
Our Kinsugi-ed hearts are stronger for the mending.
And each creation spawned through desperation for distraction gifts the world another opening- beyond which one may escape.
So keep producing wormholes
of connection, of reflection.
Imbibe the time defying expressions
of ancient artists. learn their lessons.
Problems shared are decimated
Perceptions are deceptive and underrated
in their role as shepherd of experience.
Never follow the Judas goat of self pity.
That's a slippy slope into the spiral of shame,
of self neglect, frustration, sorrow and blame.
Instead adopt Marlowe,
“Quod me nutrit me destruit”.
Hedonistically strategic cultural retreat,
driven by necessity of horrors to defeat
Fury’s furnace fuelled, the flames are licking at our feet
until we dance a desperate dance;
the two step tightrope tarantella.
And this corporeal existence passes
out of bounds and interstellar.
Being inclined to the over active mind
makes you vulnerable
in ways unimaginable
to folk who’ve never been waifs or strays.
Every step on the back foot,
drawing predatory thoughts and hungry looks
to scurrying attempts at connection.
This world seems so simple,
to those who find it simple.
The stacked deck favours the dealer.
Beg, borrow, steal
mimic, mask. Never reveal
the hollow homunculus you feel,
or worse! Intensely solipsistic;
the only real person in a sea holographic
and loneliness becomes it's own sad satisfaction.
A “rebellion is better than tears” reaction
that eats at your happiness and interactions
until you're accustomed to numb.
You watch others’ battles won,
disaffected, trying to work out how it's done
or at least avoid pitfalls in the future.
And with time an illusory feature
of other people's lives, who can plan anyway?
Why strive to do more than survive
when that's all you can manage most days?
And that's pushing it.
The path out of the shit is too well disguised
and buried behind the sharks’ smiling lies.
Societal standards seem illogically unwise
and they play the games with loaded dice
and rules they won't explain.
Every minute gain is minimised
by mistaken intentions. Subtle knives
and not so subtle, wasted time
of trauma born. Mistrustful eyes
turn away from the world.
and back to the half life of disconnection.
That way is safer.
This world is simple
to those who find it simple.
By all means, take advantage of your advantages,
but notice the disadvantaged are taken advantage of
by systems they can't get a purchase on,
and people they dared to rely upon.
And every dismissive assumption you hold
in hands that have never been burned by the cold
is a nail on the bed you told
us we made on our own.
So we'd better lie in it.
I'm not buying it.
This dance of the butterflies
is so despised despite it's beauty.
Our average age on day of death is only 12 plus 40.
Disparities so distant instances of juxtaposition jarr intensely out of rhythm and with lyrical precision present suffering as noble when it's not.
It's not.
Applauding us for overcoming obstacles you placed
as if adjudicators in some Ninja Warrior race
feels disingenuous at best.
Gladiators, ready?!
Potential lost is our Roman empire.
No one here dreams of paradise.
This world is simple
to those who find it simple.
Not the ones you label simple.
They're the most complex of all.
And so here we go again,
Pitting flesh swollen with unshed tears.
You'd think after all these years we'd know
The earlier signs, the first parts to show
The strains.
But no.
Our ignorance remains
And where once there was shame
There is pride in the same.
I'm aware in the greater timeline
That this is merely a detour.
That everything anyone has ever fought and died for
Is just footnotes in the fossils.
Can you conceive it to be possible
That all your actions, however ignoble
Don't mean anything?
Not really.
And we take everything so seriously
Losing lifetimes to violent fantasy of justice
But it's just this
bloodied blindfolds and broken bliss
Chasing leverets of honour through
Corn fields riddled with mines
And sometimes I think it's all worth it.
As once razed we could rebuild it perfect
And we'd know that we truly deserve it
Because we had suffered to earn it
It calls to me at night.
The soothing hush is no match,
for the draw of the same pulse and roar.
It mesmerises with its might.
And I might, (I just might)
slip off down the alley,
bed-robed and barefoot,
pick over obstacles,
ghostfaced and quiet
to arrive tea in hand to:
the bench on the harbour.
The distant clang of buoys,
the slaps of seductive slop
against darkened hulls.
The water is black and so is my desire to jump;
to swim, my flukes guttering in the moonlight.
Master Frank lolls, experience bestowed
and impossible to surprise,
but young Sea Pie of Cultra stirs;
once sleeping eyes now peephole wide
at spying Poseidon’s Daughter.
The water calls to pour down delighted spine,
shivers controlled by a peaceful mind.
Sensation of flying freely sublime.
Expansion of perception and deceptive passage of time.
The sea is all loving, all taking, all giving.
I am it and we are we
but duty calls me back to shore.
My tea is cold.
My cigarette: ashes.
My odious feet and unforgivable legs are numb.
Land sick, land locked, land thrown.
Gravity greedily reclaims my blubbersome, goose pimpled flesh
I stumble home; graceless, ungainly, exhausted.
Guiding unwilling, unnatural limbs up stairs of all things!
But, to bed; satiated, salinated, and sanctified.
Suffocated
by the solidity
of the Earth.
I am swallowed by my bitterness
and I swallow it
in this fractal frame of failed relationships.
Cynicism soothes my wounded seat on shelf.
I can’t stand going out.
I’d rather sit here by myself.
I’m past all the politics,
all the pitifully petty pecks of poison.
I’ve destroyed some neural pathways -
traumatic mistakes in my past days -
I’m taking small steps to start to fix them.
Small steps are fine, but small talk is a human affliction.
Fill the air with comforting fiction:
soulless banality hosed down and repeated as wisdom
by those who love to speak but have never learned to listen;
giving advice even they don’t believe in.
It’s deceiving
telling everyone you’re
Fine
all the time. It’s not
Honest.
Holding back - substitution of feelings in place of facts.
Illogical reasoning misleads and distracts.
Choreographed outward expression to avoid exposing inner lack
of belonging.
This wrongling has always felt that gap.
When I started reading Phillip K Dick
I felt seen. Something in me clicked and it all made sense.
Let’s just say, for argument’s,
that you understand
how it feels to live life as a grain of sand.
Watch unreactive distracted citizenry
wail and gnash and wring their hands;
apathetically prophetic taking knees
instead of making stands.
Trembling. Waiting for breath.
And when it comes, the hurricane howl ignites the spite that underlies society.
Sparks to the skies, and hang sobriety!
Times of extremes clouding clarity of conviction.
If we’re all victims,
Then surely we’re all, too, perpetrators.
Ears filled with these half-baked statements of journalistic tinnitus
pushing the same old them-and-us.
Propaganda pervasive; twas ever thus.
Psychological soundbites and deep cuts.
And as above, so below.
On a personal level, it’s starting to show.
Look among you! Do you even know
how many are masking? How many know?
For all of the feeling that’s public displayed
how little is shown when the mind’s whirr is stayed?
This adrenaline engine is seemingly binary:
tectonic plate movement rate
or warp times infinity.
Where is the nuance? Where the gradations?
Where are the plateaus and smooth undulations?
Youth speaks in infinites, we speak in finalities.
Counting up daily accounts
of fatalities.
Powerless but to bear witness
to all of it.
I am so sick of all of it.
The corruption, the lies, the statistics.
I once was able to warn allegorically
but now I state baldly, in fact; categorically
That dystopian nightmare has crossed to our waking.
We're inside a hellscape of our own creation.
Cassandra I, scribed. The Mistress of Mince.
High on a hill girt by oceans of ink.
Foretelling it all in bouquets of verse
presented with the flourish of the under-rehearsed.
For now the flourishes will wait.
I'm overwhelmed and overweight
and spending all my energy
on the one who means the most to me.
Hermitage and happiness go hand in hand.
Watch my tail feather shake as I stick my ostrich head in the ground
It's more important to make memories.
Too late to warn of the future.
I've been waiting so long.
I said, I've been waiting so long.
But like every man or woman that ever has been, you're running late.
You never call, never phone or write.
You just don't show up for our date.
No, no.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was One Good Man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was a love
That's deeper.
So I met a poet at the Chelsea, he said
"I'll be your Bobby, you can be my Brigitte"
So I lent him my head and he gave me a hand, baby
Get It While You Can. He
Promised me poems. I said, "Catch Me Daddy!
Go read to old ladies instead!"
Yeah yeah.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted Was
One good man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted Was
A love
That's deeper.
I'm just A Woman Left Lonely
Singing in this empty room.
I've gotta Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) to wait
My cigarettes burned out too soon.
So I'm out here walking in the rain
Little Girl Blue with her Ball and Chain.
What Good Can Drinking Do? Oh.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was one good man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was a love, a love a love, a love
That's deeper, yeah.
So I found myself a new man.
He's tall and he's thin.
Not much of a looker.
His countenance is grim.
He's only got one outfit, his smile is wide.
No Mercedes Benz, just a horse to ride.
Under this Half Moon it's finally time
To stop my Misery'n. Oh!
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was one good man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was a love, that's deeper. Yeah.
So this Summertime
I've found my love
I've got one good man!
And he's the Reaper.
New poem, new song.
Find it online: Empire of - Deeper.
Listen here: https://on.soundcloud.com/pjvTD
Download/stream everywhere now.
https://on.soundcloud.com/LR83k
Some of you may have been wondering why I have been quiet recently.
I have been busily working on a new project, which is starting to come to fruition.
Above is a link to the first track of my forthcoming album. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Love always. Xx
