april 2017

                (i)

...inside every skull is a brutal infinity

a gutter running through the mind

a one-and-only starry circus

that pins vast roses to the sky

so ask not what is lost or gained

when visionaries mumble into your hands

their god is our bitterness

but our loneliness is our freedom

for it is sight itself that now dictates

the terror stretched over our faces

the eye's circling blindness that spies the rose

and takes its beauty for itself

and yet here we are trying so hard to smile

at the masters of ceremony, at the goons and clowns

as they high-five our children’s heads through the air

where’s the harm in that they laugh

our god is your bitterness

and blowing kisses they cart-wheel down the gutters

and out into what remains of our brutal freedom

rose petals falling from the clouds... 

                                (ii)

...these irate, invincible word-snakes

are now beyond control

the mad muscles in our throats

have finally taken flight

devouring history

setting fire to milk

demanding of each prepuce

that it spits frogs and bones

that each vulva swells with crucifixions

they have even called for universes

to emerge without minds

and for hearts to pump only water

yes, a wily delirium has without doubt

bitten into our wrists

and the magic of re-booting humanity

has now passed into the hands of a narcissist

a manicured glutton who devours burning milk

whose prepuce has taken flight before the world

whose heart pumps only water

whose universe is without a mind...

                               (iii)

...although so far I have escaped the wooden face

the eyes soiled with age

yet there is still no freedom

from the cold, cold narrative of my own irrelevance

and even though the acid rains of Venus

have thinned my blood

and the clays of Mars

have entered my soul

the peoples of the Earth

have been loved by no-one but themselves

so it must be said

the Sun should have done more

far more than merely fuel sex

day and night for four billion years

clearly it is the confidence trick of oblivion

this grotesque, special synaesthesia of the peoples of the Earth

to have everything and call it nothing

to have nothing and call it everything

an old, old narrative

where shadows merge and never yield

not even to freedom...

                               (iv)

...I have finished with being human

absurdity now holds me in each of its fists

and in each of mine I too hold absurdity

we two are killers

obscure, immoral predators

who roam arm-in-arm across this inbred conscience

seeking deliberate ambiguity

anything to camouflage the tightening fists

the instincts drooling as we close-in

on those who scavenge from our sad, selfish memories

the child racist

who stuffed snow into my mouth

and the mobbing crowd that knew

a little delirious butchery

was the very best life could offer

and so everywhere around me

the sunlight began to turn black with ignorance

and I became a killer of killers

a chimera betrothed to the absurd

standing arm-in-arm watching the skies darken...