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.

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.

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.