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...