Sobriety

 Yawning ennui,

 this clamorous paralysis

Persists despite analysis

 performed hourly.

Contorted-conscience-compass misdirects,

 deflects

Rejects the object 

lurid luminescent 

In its promised remedy.

“Simplicity itself” they say

 sneering smug and well adjusted

Dustbowl dry and unconfronted

by insistent urgency-

compulsion; disobey

Superfluous solutions 

Pose prostrate and all akimbo

Sprawling whorish low as limbo

Plea for purchase dissolute

Seek sensation’s solace- 

Novelty’s a salve for shame-singed souls.

No one on the shore wants

 the seashells she said that she once sold.

Reminiscences of chances 

Plucked-ripe-juice-drenched full fruition

Never walking always dancing

Elegance despite attrition.

Underestimate in peril

Gravitational kinship

An addict’s heart is always

At the lip of slippy precipice.

Limerance, proximity, 

distraction through debauchery,

Spellbound in saucy sorcery

You seek a deeper bliss.

First the thirst for knowledge leads you

Secrets of the world to learn.

Just as Lilith found in darkness 

Brighter still the want-flame burns.

Shadows deeper draw you onward 

Action now; or be entranced 

Plants and fungus line the walkway

Dust and rocks draw askance glance.

Stirring footsteps raise the will-wraith

Whisperings of endless odds

Of chance of victory; of glory

Snatched from jaws of gloating gods.

Particles of promise glister 

In the swirling shafts of light

Piercing folio domed cathedral

Heaven glimpsed in hell's despite.

Nihilistic, siren slickness,

 inconsistent synergistic 

Hedonistic, solipsistic,

 justifies deficient logic

All roads lead you back to sickness 

Healing path left overgrown.

Seeds long sown bloom unattended

Rotting heavy on the boughs.

Malodorous, bellaputrescent

Break the spell of unrepentance

Visions clarity acceptance

Choose the future. Change the present.

Turn away from temptress dancing 

Tend the harvest, toil the earth.

Undertake the acts of grounding

Break the ancient inbuilt curse. 

Why would you want to be 

What you were when you 

Wanted to be what you are now?

Why would you want to be 

What you were when you 

Wanted to be what you are now?

Cemetery of Unbecoming

 I'm in a holding pattern, 

turning in unending circles

 despite myself 

Chasing tail through unlearned lessons

 in determined quest to bite myself.

Spending days in distraction

 finding ways not to hurt myself.

Re-living debauched memories 

in urgent search to find myself.

This is the Cemetery of Unbecoming 

Buried seeds of lust and longing

Unmarked passes made and missing

Moldering in bargain bins

While single magpie loveless sings.

Muddy boots, palms blistering

I'll take a little risk again

Disinter this interest and

Allow myself a fix again

Basest of humanity; 

faceless forms flick rapidly

through catalogues of flesh on screens;

engorge on empty lechery.

Perspectives over-pinned and tucked;

present the organs you want sucked 

or maybe you will do the sucking…

Anything to break the fucking 

tedium.

And if not flesh; what then, what's next?

Which path to clear a heart perplexed?

To undermine a mind obsessed 

with poisons?

 I can't destroy them 

After all the things they've done, 

Ever-present accompaniment 

Greasing the slips, licking their lips

Instilling distillery dictatorship 

Placing their bets while I plant my regrets

Supplanting my honour with guilty cold sweats.

Necromantical nectar 

Throat golden with glamour.

This pyre of promises - 

 beacon of rancour.

Flare in the fumes of a belly distended

Expose silhouette of your soul villipended

And scorched scarlet afterglow cheeks unrepentant 

Luminate languishing lustful intentions.

The fuel for destruction’s the same as creation.

Energy unspent explodes in frustration.

Reduction

 Reduce it to breaths taken.

Beaten pulses.

Footsteps passed.

Teacups drained.

Each action a klaxon of cause and effect.

Reduce it to sunsets

To tides observed

To unspoken words.

To limitless regrets.

The counting is comfort in cactii spines.

Reduce it to lyrics hummed

To prayers unanswered 

To untaken chances

To feelings numbed

Successfully.

Reduce it to the tangibles

To the concrete 

To the empirical

To anything other than spiritual.

Reduce everything you ever were

Or hoped

Or felt 

Or wanted

to the residue in the bath water

dancing on its way to the sea

Almost

 I see you everywhere, everyday.

Your hair, your smile, the way

you walk I hear you talking

 just beyond the scope of senses.

Whispering grief relentless.

It's just

I see you everywhere, everyday 

in passing cars too far away

for seeing to be certainty.

That it was you. I’m never sure. 

I know it makes me miss you more

for

I see you everywhere, everyday.

Smoke curling over ashtray

warm. Your jacket cold, unworn.

You took this journey defenceless.

Cumulonimbus portentous.

but

I see you everywhere, everyday.

Shoulders disappear through doorways 

in the distance. My resistance 

to reality acceptance strengthens 

Credence of multidimensions

because 

I see you everywhere, everyday.

It's weirdish hide and seek we play.

Between these worlds unseen

I slip and slide to find some comfort

but remain with pain encumbered.

Man,

I see you everywhere, everyday.

Gratitude’s debts remain unpaid

immured and uninsured

but mutual as our own destruction 

despite heroic harm obstruction.

Now,

I see you everywhere, everyday.

I hear the words you cannot say

mostly evoked by echoes ghostly.

You'll never forget, always forgive

and in the other timeline live

Squalour

 My processes lag,

Stifling the clanging of cogitative mechanism.

Passing phrases through gates;

Expression. Intention. Undercurrent. Relativism.

Comprehension comes too late.

Contempt cavorting in corporate catchphrases,

Sneering veneers revealed in seething facsimile of a smile. 

Earnest enquiry forms faux ami in translation, mistaken erosion of foundations fragile. 

Perturbed, perplexed and pessimistic I sit.

And remember fondly the simplicity 

of squalour.

Obsidian Lethe

 

It is hard to face the horrors of now

while being forced to look back.

Instead of controlling anything

in this river, I am a rock:

soaking and steadfast,

eroding but not fast,

solid and frozen in shock.

Polly plants-and-paranoia, how does your garden grow?

With emergency vitamins, herbal good health

and filters and masks in a row.

My circle of safety has shrunk to a shelf.

Relied on by many, reliant on self,

Reactive to weather, to hormones, to vaccines,

to pressures unspoken behind the scenes.

My world, my adventures, my stagelife are lost.

No gigs, no cafes, no restaurants. 

No galleries, theatres, cinemas, clubs.

No clubs.

No clubs.

No clubs.

Is this, mourning?

Has the waking world onward wound without me?

But I am busy, yet;

tell Charon I will not sail.

The undead play a part here, look around!

My loss is less than others.

Just more visible.

It always was inevitable, for

Wednesday's child is woeful.

And maybe there's a limit to what each of us can go through.

I mean, I lived a lot of life before

(not that you'd know, I'm a middle aged bore)

but for balance an audit has been called

and I'm found in deficit of 5 years of thrall.

So now I'm in life's debtors jail, paying back fun

and my sentence of solitude has barely begun.

No more collecting passport stamps

or memories of night skies in foreign lands.

I've never felt more gutter class in my life;

razor-tight tip toe on poverty's knife.

Gone, too, are dreams of me ever thriving.

I've accepted my fate as the barely-surviving

until circumstances and life stop scriving

me over there's no point in fighting it.

Forgotten. In this river of chaos I sit.

A rock.

Light It Up

 Is it worth it? The price of progress is paid through the jaw.

Nimble fingers, rotting faces on factory floor.

Filthy quarters, fourteen hours and fines for mistakes

Under orders, over borders, pestilence outbreaks.

Keep your Lucifers close, but keep your family closer.

Mark the time on your face. Just light it up, light it up.

Noxious gases. 10 millions matches made by hand each shift.

Phosphorescence, acquiescence that life is just like this.

Lick the bristles. Bitter thistles would do us less harm.

Prejudicial. Woe abyssal as we lose our charm. 

Keep your Lucifers close but keep your family closer.

Mark the time on your face just light it up, light it up.

Underrated. Demonstrated our lives for this fight.

Facing lawfare for social welfare we died for your rights.

Taking tallies, throwing rallies not Molotov cocktails.

The solution was revolution on industrial scale.

Keep your Lucifers close but keep your enemies closer

Mark the time on your face, just light it up, light it up.

This Day

 

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 wings fly 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.

Balance

 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.

Kathleen

In this tempestuous Spring I'm spinning

untethered, buffeted and way off course, of course. 

These searing winds bring new beginnings, 

weather muffling their message into Morse.

Rat a tat tat! It's only that 

I can't work out where the letters start and end.

It's murky down there. You'd better be smart and bend

your knees to prevent 

the seas reaching you.

Roll with each roll,

you can't control it.

Ten tonnes of emotional ballast beneath us,

we wait for the skies to clear.

Shrinkflation

 It’s heady times we’re living in!

Full pelt, high tilt, heading for oblivion,

watching the numbers on labels go up and 

pounds in pockets go down.

See the same all over town;

Three pints and a game of pool is now

One pint nursed over an evening.

Only there ‘cause it’s cheaper than the heating.

Choice between bus fare and eating.

Fancy portmanteaus to hide reality of meaning.

They call it Shrinkflation.

I call it profit-motivated, cronyist complicity in mass starvation.

Theirs is catchier.

 Whatever.

Have you eaten jelly babies recently?

When I opened my packet last night, 

The fright! 

The horror! The drama! The scene!

Half the kids had been kidnapped! 

I reached for my phone,

I had to call the police!

But then I remembered - they’d already know.

It’s been happening for decades at least.

We can talk about Freddos, too,

or car parts, or diesel, or booze

but my first glimpse of this dastardly practice

was mightily unsavoury -

you’ll have to forgive me for this.

How do I put this without getting banned?

Do you know what an eight of an ounce is in grams?

It’s 3 and a bit.

An eighth of an ounce once cost twenty quid!

And pound for pound we’re weaker than ever,

Tenuously taking steps while the tensions tighten in our tethers.

More debt, more struggle, less hope,

no matter how you rearrange it.

Recognising failures in the system doesn’t change it.

Standing idly by, 

blithely buying into blindfolds

blinged beyond belief

Offering ornamental oblivious relief 

from all the 

actions and inactions and reactions

and rot.

What’s it all for anyway?

We are sinking in the mire of our own making.

Taking too long to make choices,

fry replaced the song in our voices

long ago. It’s starting to show.

The foundations of civil edifice begin to splinter.

Yet to arrive are the fuel privations in the midst of bitterest Winter.

Still Summer,

still sunshine and clammy.

No bees, no insect bites from midges this year.

Just pollen dusted lashes and cheeks streaked with allergic tears.

Instability of emotion, 

plankton massacres in oceans,

death cult levels of devotion

to illogical half baked notions

and the over saturation of fear.

One in 6 adults here are on medicines for depression. 

When will we admit there’s nothing wrong with us,

but this path is cobblers

and we’ve broken heels.

It’s time to fix it. 

Here’s the deal. 

Leave the drama to the actors.

Consider the possibility of favourable factors.

Candles give both warmth and light.

Emulate them. Stop this simulation 

of projected self and merely

hold your own.

Solidify you source of ignition,

find truth lies in your intuition.

Be forthright,

Try, try, try, try again.

Offer help to strangers and friends.

We’re going to need it.

The Bells

 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.

Marvellous

 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.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today

 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.

Sunset at the Lilypond

 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.

Ambition

 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.

Wasted April

 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. 

Sick

 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.

Simple

 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.

Here We Go Again

 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 

Fishing for Birds

 

I Just Might

 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. 

Witness

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.

Little One

 You said I could be anything

As long as the words you wrote were the words I'd sing.

You said I could be anyone

If I'd do exactly what you'd want.

They said "You could be a star

If you lose ten pounds and change who you are".

They said "You could have this part. 

Come sit on this couch, you know where to start".

Oh my little one, you're prettier

In ribbons, dresses, ruby slippers,

Glossy pout and frilly knickers.

Oh my little one, your innocence 

Now bought and sold, preserved pretence

With pain and pills you're recompensed.

You said I shouldn't use my mind;

Smart women aren't hired and the world is unkind.

You said that I shouldn't frown;

Because wrinkles are ugly, ageing's not allowed.

They said someone should shut me down.

So they gave me more pep pills, trapped inside their playground.

They said I was a doped up mess;

NDA silenced, I could not confess.

Not so little one, the time has come

To climb the beanstalk, get the gold,

Write off all of the lies they've sold.

Not so little one, no one's gonna come to rescue you 

No woodsman, fairy, crystal shoe.

No no no no no no no no.

You said you'd cut another deal,

But your Faustian pact just does not appeal.

You said I'd never work again,

That I'd stumble through life and end up round the bend.

They said I would change my mind,

Come crawling back, leave my freedom behind.

They said they would write me off,

Slander my name, tell the world I'm insane.

La, la la la la la la la.

You're the little one, you come to me

On bended knee with palms outstretched 

As if I'd forgive, as if I'd forget.

You're the little one.

You cast me as your princess,

 I became the femme fatale.

I say you shouldn't follow me,

For I am the giant, this beanstalk belongs to me.

I say you couldn't take control 

Of my future. I've paid with the years that you stole. 

I say mutual exploitation

Cuts both ways. I'm banking those days.

I say "You avaricious fool,

You were just a tool now I make all the rules."

No more little one, you can't climb trees in ruby slippers.

You'll get a slap in the face from the hand that feeds. 

You're the little one

I've been where you'll never go;

Behind the curtain, beyond the rainbow.

No more little one, the time has come

To take the less well travelled road 

And follow it, wherever it goes.

Listen/Download Little One on BandCamp

https://empireof.bandcamp.com/track/little-one-original

Self-referential #6

 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. 

Witch's Garden

 Green grow the shoots here in my witch's garden.

Tiny green tendrils that reach to the light.

The fox wears the bells here in my witch's garden;

Atropa bells nod. Keep watch in the night. 

My heart is purple as hellebore

that blooms in cold and rain.

My colours warm with pleasure

to thaw your frozen pain.

Tall grow the trees here in my witch's garden.

Higher than headheight, verbena in your eye.

Short grow the shrubs here in my witch's garden.

All thyme is creeping, at least in your eyes.

My heart is purple as hellebore 

that blooms in cold and rain.

My colours warm with pleasure

to thaw your frozen pain.

Perfume hangs heavy in my witch's garden;

Lilac that lingers long after the sun.

Firebird foxgloves in my witch's garden,

mend broken hearts but could break them for fun!

My heart is purple as hellebore

that blooms in cold and rain. 

My colours warm with pleasure 

to thaw your frozen pain.

Pity invaders in my witch's garden;

unwittingly playing with death at each touch.

They nourish the ground here in my witch's garden.

Of blood meal and bone meal there's never enough! 

My heart is purple as hellebore 

that blooms in cold and rain.

My colours warm with pleasure 

to thaw your frozen pain. 

Listen to the song here; 

https://on.soundcloud.com/JyyjV

Deeper

 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.

A New Direction

 

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

After The Storm

 

I never thought the I would side with an aggressor.

“Never let the means unjustify the ends"

But it's hard to have honour suffocating under pressure 

When the enemy of the enemy's temporarily your friend.

12 step. Goose step. Misstep. Fall.

Fatalistic, impotent. 

Flailing fetid firmament. 

Perpetually panic-perched

In fight or flight frozen.

But the show's on.

So it goes on.

Mask in metaphor,  mask in reality.

Putting  on the face of a sunny personality. 

Scars in metaphor, scars in reality.

No more question of my strength or my sanity.

Crossfire massacre of crazed masculinity;

No Man's Land is my permanent vicinity;

With extra helpings of aggression at Christmas,

“for old times’ sake" it's a sentimental sickness.

Threat-making, bear-baiting sarcastic cowardice.

Rage-churning, bridge-burning emotional terrorist. 

Promises vomited into pits of lies, bilious

dismissive, supercilious 

and sneering in your bitterness,  you're hideous.

My defence is the simplest;

nullifying narcissistic assaults on my peacefulness 

by finding you ridiculous.

You're piteous and less than this.

I am the carapace that weathers every storm.

I'm the arrow-struck, 4ft thick, besieged fortress wall.

I am Horatio standing on the bridge.

I'm a nanny-goat protecting her kid.

You are a buzzing gnat,

A toxic stinking sewer r*t,

A remnant of an era that

is over and I won't go back.

I've lost count of the times you've tried to inspire suicide 

But my success is measured in the things I have survived

and every time I smile I know I'm breaking free of your control.

My laughter is the fanfare at the rebirth of my soul.

I am stronger now that I'm free.

I am seizing liberty 

My choices are my own (inside constraints of living)

My future is unwritten.

It's only just beginning 

And my life's my own, 

My life's MY OWN. 

(In case anyone was wondering,  we don't use the word R A T in this country. It brings terrible misfortune.)

I Write To Still My Inside Songs

 

I write to still my inside songs.

But words escape, they flutter fecklessly away.

I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

Verbal tics have possessed me lifelong.
The disguises are displaying exponential decay.
I write to still my inside songs,

to shackle them with cursive ink where they belong;
expression of ignorant impression of air from within clay.
I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

The context is lost and meter and meaning are both wrong
But phrases form perfume and colour my spiritual bouquet.
I write to still my inside songs.

And sometimes they're dripping with venom and vengeance from forked prong
But I never claimed to be Virtue in any morality play.
I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

It's the battle to wrestle harpy squawk into birdsong
Sit and scribe, instead of say.
I still write my inside songs.
I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.