june 2018

                      (i)

...lay your cherry blossoms down

lay your children’s bodies down

yes, you with your shadow in your hands

with your lonely drama so vast you cannot see it

come, lay them down

and give them your epic tears

your lamentations tucked into the crevices of walls

without your children the universe is useless

so come, let your teardrops fall

let them fall warm into their eyes

for you have nothing left

but the cruel immensity of their passing

nothing but this unbreathable, yellow smoke

drifting through the orchard 

an unheeded, acrid warning

so vast you couldn’t see it

we are the earth’s frozen shadows

the ever-widening crevices in the walls

so come, before it’s too late

lay your cherry blossoms down

lay them down...

                  (ii)

...without exception we are all on our backs

over-corpulent bastards, unable to stand

offensive chunks of fat

that serve and crave legitimacy

by sucking the insanity from each other’s backsides

our so smart, cat-walk utopia

the ever-spiralling, two-way paradise

of entertainment beyond the grave

and yet we have had so, so many chances

to change the human narrative, to get it right

the inconsolable civilisations

emerging from the waves

scouring the foreshore for sea-glass

for any trace of their meagre benevolence

the amber remnants of themselves

a frozen utopia

that again tried so, so hard to get it right

and so now here we are

the take-away, paradise bastards

unable to stand

unable to swallow any more of the narrative

the alpha and the omega of civilisation...

                         (iii)

...every night dead angels crawl across my bed

humming to themselves in excelsis

but I know they have only come to collect memories

to smell them, taste them

and then spit them back into my face

they will use anything

so long as it carries the scent of retribution

even fragments of my own conscience

and these, my transgressions embedded in the ceiling

they swirl them around and around

until they become the blazing dust of some galaxy

and all the lives I once touched

are then tossed into the screaming flames

but these angels don’t care

they throw their voices

repeating work brings freedom

and whisper that I am just another name on another list

a transgression to be deleted

before the world can move on

collecting its fragments

and singing gloria, gloria...