january 2019
(i)
...it is surely a fatal, infectious conceit
to fill the streets with messiahs
to have love flow down tunnels
and scars grow over children’s eyes
sadly our world has but one friend and enemy
and we will triumph
only when we learn to conquer ourselves
and flow like painless water
flow like anemones that open with human hearts
radiating blood
but this is just an if-and-when moment
that sadly no one may ever recognise
the laurels being placed by default
on those who have already scars instead of eyes
and yes, stones beget stones
they lie deep within the blackened streets
deep inside the gurus
the clowns, the hucksters
whose sole, cruel meaning of life
is to suck love down into the tunnels
and laugh
as every enemy becomes a friend
and every friend an enemy...
(ii)
...how can you find more of you than you yourself
or see inside your own thinking flesh
can you even trace the circumference of a billion years
just to show eternity is a waste of time
existence now rightly questions itself
and yet, and yet the forest still breathes foreboding
something is moving
shadows break and merge back into shadows
the undergrowth stirs, a branch snaps
and the survivors slip cautiously out into the open sun
dozens and dozens of man-lizards
stand like sequined statues
quietly splitting the light
surrounded by the intensity of a billion years
their minds tasting the air
their eyes fixed on the algorithms they have become
and yet, and yet even with all this ingenious artifice
that sees inside and reads their flesh, they know
there is nothing more of themselves to find
they are complete, they are glorious, they are defined...
(iii)
...just before my death finally arrives, the muses will come
and together they will squat down on my body
and begin to methodically unpick my purple skin
searching for the thousands of questions I never asked
and then, the final insult, each will push her sex
into my dying face and leave
their judgement will be clear
I failed, I proved to be useless
a piece of inept bio-trash
untouched by ultimate things
and so in order to live, it seems
I murdered myself
and yet long before my birth the muses were already there
everyday swimming beside me
their amniotic fingers
busily sewing thousands of lists into my skin
giving me at least the chance to think past
the epic intricacy of things
to hold, if only for one heartbeat
this vast, burning universe in my arms
but, as is now obvious, I am unworthy
for I have become just another illegitimate ape
clutching my sex, my hate, my hunger...