When I think of you
I remember I forgot how to forget
It's growing in my mind
This feeling like the best is better yet
And we don't know what we've lost
Losing ourselves to the snow
And we don't know what we've got
When we refuse to let it go.

The sprinkler on the lawn
Is making rainbows where it cools the summer sun
I'm sitting on my porch
Pretend my grass is going to grow back when it' gone
And we don't know what we've paved
In unhappier concrete
And we don't know what's been saved
What is hidden in the seeds.

If I decide it's true
Then I'm leaving for a place where I belong
If I go then I'll be wrong
The world is bigger than I deserve

Photo

They were all of them framed
In the gold of darkness' birth
Hung on a moment's wall
Painted by the synthetic flash
Of a machine turning chemicals
Into a ragged handfull of emotions
For anyone who would glance back.

Every hour used to come to me
Regular as a blink
But now each second hangs around
Far to long to ever think
Linking me to memory
Keeping change the same
I kept myself inside the eye
But the storm begins again.

Please fix that leaky tap
Dangling in the bathroom
You watch and will the water down
Rinsing cleanness through the plughole
Till it's gone like money

You could be forgiven for falling in love
If it weren't the unforgivable sin
But crossed stars and fingers
Won't stop this tide
From sucking the sand out under you.

Take only what you need from my weakness
I hope you find the cure to wasting away
In the inevitible salvation of time

that thing
what slipps a little at the corners
and relieves itself of your grasp
that thing
you know that thing
hold onto it

Emerging from the winter
Wakes you up to the cold

He was a good man

Remember him as a good person

Always with a smile that made itself

And a joke tucked safe in his pocket

Next to his battered pack of cigarettes



Remember him as a good person

Just a day away from reaching himself

Trying to find the softer shade

That wraps itself around the next tree along



Remember him as a lost person

When is wallet ran dry to his thirst

That struck deeper than any bar could reach

He would strike up a match and swallow down

Some rich cotton wool smoke

And waited for his patience to fray.



Remember him as a lost person

With boots scuffed from the kick of the earth

And licked over with layers of old dust

With eyes that peered out, wrapped beneath

Layers of worried wrinkling skin

But with hands soft enough to keep his word

And straight teeth that remembered

The taste of unvarnished youth.



Remember him as a good person

Who lost his questions in haystacks

Where they were too safe from answers

And the answers he found, Were distorted in glass

Till he didn't want any around.

I don't know what this says about me but..

I’ve always had a subtle kind of loathing
Held in special reserve for those
Self-promoting reporters
Who on first blush appear simple agents of the daily news
But in reality breathe the stuff of endings.
And feed off our collective emotional conscience.
Always earching for the next tear jerking tear jerker
And the irony is, the more we cry the less we feel
Till our ducts are held hostage by each new day’s
Grander homage to
Some nobody that nobody knew,
And nobody cared about
Who had the good fortune to die in a way that left some shine in his name
To be gobbled up like candy by the ever circling vultures
Who can smell these corpses a mile away
And whose pens cut deeper than any talons or beak that nature ever made

I for one, would care to die in obscurity
Whatever faint glow my passing leaves behind
Gently decaying amongst my dreams
As they too are reborn
Composted into new vitality
Under the fingers of a new mind
One who gives a damn. One who knows
One who cares about
The intangible stuff that fortune tries to pluck away from our names
To be carried aloft like the green olive shoots
Grasped in the delicate claws of Noah’s dove
A messenger, crying in silent voice “New lands ahoy!”

The danger of waking up is forgetting your dreams

There goes my girlfriend
Lady Tuesday
Sun-fruits glitter in her hair
Cannon balls lurk beneath her stare
Her weekend is never far behind

Remember
The nightingale
You eager seek
Lives in the breeze
Of the open wild
Not in the feeble
Cage of your
Calcified imagination.

A poem
Is just a picture
Tied up in strings of words

I chased ghosts all that summer
Between the breaking bars
Carrying the tune to the daily rhythm
They supplied the lyrics
Sometimes
When all the world was in a line
And I was at a loss
They were kindred spirits of a kind
Rich and full of the life they lost
I chased them with the spark of youth
Till I too was lost.

Peter Pan

Today the children dress themselves
I want the swing sets for me alone
Squeezing adult hands into kiddie gloves
To swish and soar and fly off home.

Soldier

Great is the darkness between
That place where the gaps flow smooth
Reaching out to one another
Never quite to touch

Out pours that viscous liquid
Thick with the flows of the ticking clock
Straining to catch the second
In its spinning teeth

Round pools the warmth
Curling at the finger joints
To spew into a sandy maw
As wide as any I've ever known

Long beats the chest straining
To keep each gap from swallowing
Drinking each tick down, down
With a fat, slow, hungering tongue

Sealed are the eyelids
Resigned like gutters to the pavement
Holding the end in shutter-tight
But it stutters in uncaring

In the light greater than any darks
It singes away the shadow's hairs
And leaves... nothing
To drip, congeal, set
Into the final inscription of what was
But has now slipped through desperate fingers
And drunk the dry desert wind.

Don't dream that
Or you'll never wake up.

You'll never know your future
in a bubble of the past

I said sorry to my dad
For the mess I've made
Of the hands that he gave me
Nails rising like driftwood
Chalking above the sands
Fingerprints smudged guilty
On the glasses of now
Fingers scrunched and tossed aside
Into despair's waste bin
Holding desperately onto nothing
Till it bleeds away into the warmth
Of cramp and strain and futility
A mess with the stamp of dead-wood
Jutting from palms that know no peace
Except the comfort of arthritis.

Even puppies have wings

Inception

Some nights
I stay awake and wait
For the bump
The feeling of reality returning
The dream fading fast into the undergrowth
Swallowed by the jungle noise
Of a million eddying lives

Some nights
I lay awake and dream
Of the drop
When the legs fall out from under me
The world rushing past on squeakless shoes
Smoothly like a looming pickup line
A race to the floor

Some nights I think
I'll actually wake up
And remember this
With the forgotten clarity
Of the dream that it isn't.

I told you and told you
But you wouldn't listen
Fickle fickle hands
Catch me if you can

It's funny
Realising you are an idiot
Doesn't actually change anything

When I was a Child I Thought...

How my memory... You are
Everfresh
Growing up like grass-
Stains each time I fall
Knees and warts and all
Angel eyes, angel sighs
That's one way to keep floating.

How you are, the question why
I never cease from asking
Holds my tongue hostage
The rudder in the storm
That sank me in my mind's eye
Where the calm
Stretches
The waves flat, long enough
To catch a breath
To drop a wall
You are ever-fresh
Warts and all.

Questionmark.

Burn you out my blood
Thick as a summer sunset
Seal me under the concrete
Of a thousand blank pages
Till ink flows in black veins
And you and I are safe

Fighting against himself
The enemy never shows
Just who is winning?

Hole in the road
Don't let the tire catch you
Tired and on the sleepy sea
Steering into the distance

I'm a darkened soldier
These streets are paved in blood
But no one ever held it to the gun
It takes time to see what you've done

Hole in the ground
Everybody gathers round
Only keep the beat with your little drum
Skin-tight, tatooed farewell
Into that hole in the road
We drive on and let you go

It must have been love
That sort of thing
Can't be mistaken
For a lesser set of feelings
It has a special hat
And makes you welcome at parties
And hugs you when you are down
And uses warm, soft knives
To cut you into different pieces.
How can something else dress up as that?

Untyped

I’m tired
I’m tired of my heart giving out
Whenever it gives in
That things being the same
Never makes a difference
Of looking forwards to something
That never happened

I’m tired
I’m tired of levering up my lashes
Just to blink
That every breathing space leaves
No more room to think
When I hike that haunted hill
To watch the hole grow deeper

It leaks everywhere
Stain from the puncture marks
Lurking like punctuation
Tripping the feet of consciousness

You renew me like bleach –
Freshly scrubbed, rubbed raw
Tossed forgotten to a creaking cupboard
Till I grow old, and mould. Told
By every cell I trust, the lie
Tomorrow’s just a sleep away
I’m tired of today.

I’m tired.
I’m tired of the way everything
Slinks around with nothing in its hands
Of trying to cut you out, but
Only cutting me in places I can’t see
That remembering the hanging thief
Had only palmed a petty trinket charm

A heart beaten bloody
Tired of the weight
Of holding oxygen
At brain height.

We
The beasts
That cherished the stone
That broke the world

Run from me.
You who take my cherished memory
And sets it alight
The flames shall burn us both no longer

Good.

Numbers have no meaning
Just a way of passing distance
Between two different things
I'm counting up my blessings
But numbers are what you make of them
I can stop just when I want
Or go on till forever
Numbers don't mean a thing.

Does it make you happy
To define the world
As the distance between your ears?

Every single day
Oh the sideline and cliché
Drive-byes and driveways
Goodbyes and and you say
You didn't ever do
What you promised
I hope that I could never need
To hold you like I do
Wash the words away
And you're left staring
Down the sink hole.

Quicker than the end of a sentence.
He left
Cold water and the cool of a stare
He returned
To the sound of the record on repeat.

some days
I just can't seem to say enough nice things about Annelise.

Energy you give me
A waterfall in a heartbeat.
The silence lasts just a moment
Hanging still until
Thump
Religion.

Such a pretty smile
And my fat peasant head
Hanging around the doldrums
Stirred by your passing wake
Is determined to watch
Just to make sure I do not follow.

Float like silver pain on the bullet of the night.
Sting like a cure that hides its punch beneath a skin of sugar.
Run with the wind dangling between your fingertips
Silken streamers slide through the cough of autumn
A slumbery sun clears its throat
Stumbling back to bed with the freezer door left
Ever-so-noticeably ajar.

walking a little each night
Let down your hair
You won't change but that's alright
Don't have to dare
striking the mystery
Send showers to space
You won't get the better of me
It's much too late

Much too late
To wake up and see
What the waves
Carried onto the sand
To carry your mind up to me
From your solid land

Planting your feet so deep
Your toes kiss the earth
You won't get the better of me
You've exhausted your worst.

She was classically beautiful.
She had a nose like an oboe.

Carving through the hills that hang
Brown and pregnant with the frost
A silver spoon with dirt stained hands
Rests easy on the porcelain curves
Not enough mouthfulls to go.

The shadow line fell bumpily
At the rising concrete ridge
Cut in a "Z" squished nearly flat
By the weight of a beating sun
The azure flowers hung just above
Peeking down to watch
As dark meandered slowly sure
To catch it in its hiding place
A nest of colour cut from stone
And shivering in the sun.

Every alien I encounter
Wear's a human face

Where do you go when you've lost the love
When wings and things keep beating up your ears
Loud so loud like the room's not big enough
To hold the sounds it leaks from every pore
The thickness of work being undone and left in the rain.

Where do you turn when the jacket doesn't fit
For you've got limbs you weren't born to bear
The bus is broken down with so many stops to go
The signs are changing up, the juggler appears
To drop everything in a hail of rubber colours.

The sadder self awaken now adrift away from sleep
The sheep are counting down the hours of the dream
You could make me or leave me here unformed
A pile of clay in a dusty window.

Simple as the stroke of midnight

There is some stuff in my brains
Thats not letting itself be wordshaped at the mo
Just murmurings below the surface
A deeper shadow hinting
As a leviathon underneath
With the power to shatter my tiny boat
Or leap into the open sky
Or pass on unnoticed in peace

When the quiet sounds come calling
He is a lamb, a sheep, awandering.
The wolf underneath is stirring
As he drifts pillow silent and free
Unchecked in the sense of direction
He this ways and thats with an ease
The wolf-howl asilences conscience
He is drifter, unacknowledged retreat.
And so the fell gambit is hailed
A breaking of chains that suspend
To tumble down fallings and wailings
And gnashings of teeth cut blade sharp
As they gnaw through the the ends.
And the links pitter patter in hailings
Creep at snail's pace, the thoughts
Climb back beneath his scalp
The mirror, the liar, the candlestick maker
In light he sees true, sees the call of the moon
Sees the wolf in sheep dress
All astir all ablend, just a cloud
In a sheep-tufted land.

Rambleshak musings that I may turn one day into some sort of poem. Deal with it.

sin is the flame that melts our wax
leaves us mishapen
we cling to the warmth of the flame
and it feeds off us
burns us hollow
our beuatiful gold and silver coats
peel and blister
faint and flicker
even as we soak in its warmpth
and as we warm
we distort and flow
and pile up in rivulets until
we reach a low we cannot overcome
and when the flame is gone
we remain calcified in a state
of ruin and shrunken horror
completely incapable of ever
becomeing whole again

till God remakes us in HIs furnace
And puts a new Wick inside us
And remoulds us in HIs image
And promises that one day
When His time is come
We shall recieve a gold and silver coating
The likes of which we've never had before
Which itself will glow like the sun

They came to take away
They carried us off to the play
To be the curtain

She's most herself
When she forgets to be herself
And lets whatever
Bubble to the surface

Physical is beautiful she says
She's digging through the moments
That make up my head
She's understanding things
I forgot to forget
She has angel's wings
She has angel's wings

It's the triumph of the second over the day
I hang out my clothes to clean on the line
The sun takes all our guilt away
It evaporates
It evaporates
Into the moment

I don't think I'll ever understand her hair
The colour of living
Like life leaks out her head
If that is the price for being her
It's like buying a house for a cent
And the back lawn
And the back lawn
Still smells like fresh mowing

She's turning everything into expression
She worries that it's in the wrong direction
There's a certain kind of plughole
She strives to avoid
It blocks the sink
It blocks the sink
And floods through the kitchen

We're talking about big things till they crouch down low
She'd like to take a trip somewhere before she goes
Do something like it matters
Not just to her
She has angel wings
And living hair.

In the future
Everyone has knitted hands
And they watch the past through screens
The present happens to other people
And makes them famous
In the future
Every cake is self-icing
But chocolate is forbidden
Except to those who are
Two sizes too big to fit the laws.

If I was a watermellon
Oh the places I would go
Mostly into people's stomachs
But maybe into snow.

I'd totally go skiing.
What is cooler than a watermellon doing sweet skijumps? I mean seriously.

Smiles are the uppercuts
Of body language
Laughter is the roundhouse kick
And frowns
Are the running away screaming
Like a little girl
With pony-tailed hair.

Laughter
Is the only medicine
That makes you better
When you are already well.

God came
And wiped away
The figurative tears
From my metaphorical plate
At some stage or other

Song for the Tired Man

A shell I wish I had
All bone and teeth and forgiveness
A home to wrap me up
And keep the world at wall’s distance

A place I wish I had
To lick my wounds and silences
And run from the accusations
Hidden on the surface of my eyes

A laugh I wish I had
To be believed by everyone
To prop slip-sliding walls in place
Pulled out at the whim of a moment

A bed I wish I had
A place to outrun tiredness
That stalks these tiger striped halls
A beast amongst the antelopes



I remind me on each new today
Of the path of feet that led me here
Forever devoured by the underbrush

A rock I have
Cut from the forever of forgiveness
A home to catch me up
When my ground loses its way

A trust I have
Given to me more than I can ever return
The promise of every exhausted sigh
Reforged into new laughter

I could wear out these shoes
Before I walk a mile in yours
If I never for a minute thought
Outside this box, outside these walls
Where I hang my decorations to myself.

Tomorrow is today
Today is made of wings
Feathers are for flying
Birds are made to sing

He shines his soul
To hide from the shadows of fright
He gazes through the sleeping hole
And disappears into the night

I'm afraid to write you a poem
Just incase it comes true
And incase it doesn't

Change made me stay and count the stars
Made me make my bed this morning too
Change made me tally up my blessings
At the very top was you.

Were I to describe you in a single word
Like a net to catch the all of you
You'd slip between the holes of string
And sail off to the moon.

I like to think of you
As reaching into my open chest
And easing out the broken glass
With warm hands.

We fell in together
Like peas in a pod
When the week was born
And as it spoke first words
Silence fell on us
Like sardines in a tin
We collected our breaths
And wandered on

You are the continuation
Of the last thought before sleeping

She lives before she changes all the clocks
She makes the words come alive out of books
She takes all the labels off bottles
And patches them on tables

Stress is the flame
That burns you inside out.

I could roll them into paper
Tumble dry, hang on the line
Leave them out with the recycling
But never ever fill them in

These bullet holes
These bullet holes
Just won't leave me be
And I'm pierced through

Watching everything drain slowly
Down the plughole, kitchen sink
Filling up with all my me
Emptied out and tunneled deep

These bullet holes
Just won't leave me be
Cut me into pieces
Ventillate each smile
Break off all the brave teeth

You could set me down like jelly
Refridgerate me down to numb
Pull the shells out, operations
Won't reverse what you have done

These bullet holes
Are no more real
Than the rest of me.

It's funny I should laugh
But maybe it all comes out in the math
Every torn yesterday adds up
To today

Surreal - The Loss of a Job.

It came with no gifts
The door remains unknocked
As time writes out its lists
It barely gets a mention
With arms not offended
Or raised in welcome
It's feet stepped onto carpet
And barely raised a whisper
It changed everything
And left me unchanged.

I wish I didn't twist
And knot up every time
Wrap around stray thoughts
Till breathing is too tight
Spare the trust
Hate the sleep.

You occupy my innards
So massively
That gravity pulls my thoughts
Spiraling always in
And out towards you.

If she wants me to
There's nothing I wouldn't do
If she wants me too.

The Stranger Thing

A strange thing came billowing
Down my dark hallway last night
With hands not quite feet
And stitching so tight
It crawled creepy slip
Down under my sheets
And grabbily gripped at my dreams
A strange thing had eyeballs
But never a blink. Ever one single
Held heartbeat cupped slowly
Beneath the tattered weave of shingle
Skin. Reaching out milkily
With hands not quite feet
A strange thing came billowing
Down into my dreams
Where it spoke stranger language
Then scurried away
Leaving only one single
Held heartbeat cupped softly
Inside my time-chilled chest
Questions fluttered in its passing
Pale seagulls in a rippled wake
I fled from dreams and lay unmoving
Thinking thoughts of twisted snakes
Of lakes whose deeps know deeper things
To wonder what future heartbeat holds
And if she'll come lullaby
Some sweet unexpected day
Or leave one heartbeat held
Till dreams themselves fade and blow away.

Change is the heartbreak of the moment
The farewell kiss of the present
The footprint of time
The dance of the kaleidoscope
The release of a breath
The wiping of a tear
The rupture of laughter

Change is writing life
Down on a crumpled napkin
Doomed to be lost in the wash
But remembered like the ghost of a moment.

The summer stumbled in quickly
As spring rewrote its priorities
And decided to stop cutting the lawn

God Good.

God is so good
You can only say the extra 'O'

Christians choose to be weird
Painting their lives with Blood
Till living is death
The dying of the night
A hesitant dawn, a tremulous cry
A waking up to breathing
Emptying out alien lungs
To drink down an air so sweet
Made pure by the Blood

Trust

God has a place in the black
Where our feet fill the gaps
A constellation where our names
Are written in invisible ink
Where we can shine like suns
With light that never looks back.

Everything
Is so huge
When viewed up close
No wonder it
Makes no sense.

Speak like sunshine
Or like moonlight
Find yourself a pale imitation
Of her.

That strange cocktail
Of the terrifying
And the exhilarating
The human brain was not made
To handle life at full speed
Without the occasional wobble

The lines fall straight and crooked like they always do
And leave us to untangle ourselfs from them
Do the spaghetti dance.

Don't step on her hard
You both share a breath
She was born with her hands held so tight
And that grip it steels
Bares its teeth
Keeps her sane and so distant
Don't step on her hard
She keeps out of reach
To keep in her heart.

Leave me this time
In peace you mean it's mine
I need to find a safer place to shine
Wake up and find
The pieces of yourself in time
You need to go and leave this place behind
Leave a reminder
That the forest hides
Behind that first tree line
It's all going fine
I'll paint another blind
A picture of me leaving you behind
A deeper seat for me to sit and lie.