october 2017

                                (i)

...with these rare, scribbling, sapphire moments

my reason to exist returns

birth is again imminent

the old, mysterious, inky virus has begun

to trickle down my legs

back onto the page it once left

but this, I know, will just be another messy renaissance

bringing nothing tidy, nothing clean

just another savage, wild rush of anger

another expletive which is supposed to drag mankind

down from its delusions

and yet the truth is, this inaudible clutter

may be all that is left

when tomorrow’s souls start screaming

it’s not fair, how can our love

have burnt away one half of the world

while the shelves are so, so empty of deodorant, it’s not right

but what’s also not right are these blue, fat flies

that can zip so swiftly in and out

tasting our wounds

searching, always searching for some grubby resurrection

for their own savage reason to exist...

                              (ii)

...in many ways these lines are undisguised rhapsodies

cries to the aeons yet to come

the approaching, two-way mirrors

that reveal life’s final payload

to be an impenetrable megalith

a silence so utterly violent

the air, our thoughts and even our bones

are stripped to insignificance

it is the end of imagination

of man’s conceited consecration

somehow the future has arrived

without a name

the disguised, two-way colossus

bending mountains

twisting the ultraviolet earth

until the aeons break apart

and reveal their monumental indifference

to the wastage that is all human suffering

these rhapsodies without an end 

this future with no name...

                              (iii)

...maybe the delusion is, what I chase chases me

this life’s cruel asymptote

the looming shadow of a shadow

the gift that feeds the many strange mouths of infinity

a bowl, perhaps, of bright, challenging sunflowers

that for no reason

throw their blinding yellow at the universe

the as-yet-unanswered, dazzling wilderness

that each day slides its mad angels into my veins

for we have always been

the flames, the affinities, the shadows

the excuses for all that which is hidden

the hard-core primate who refuses to die

who would rather learn and then conspire to lie

house of bone, mouth of stone

I have always struggled with the sneaky ways of the wilderness

and so I have run right through the mirror

and out along the yellow, swallowing curve

where the angels shriek with ecstasy

and the universe cuts into my face...