Musings on the Albatross, Whose Wings Bring us Home for the Summer

Near the cross I keep me
Always to hold in mind
The brittle sticks that held a Saviour
Dangling in the great divide
Near the cross I wait in silence
On blood anointed feet
Knowing that his condemnation
Fell for me

Near the cross a throne lies empty
A king disowned himself
Today, I find in me redemption
A vein of gold in miry clay.

Repentance
Isn't feeling bad about who you are
It's changing the bad about who you are

Will you listen to the blood in this water?

Deep and wet and thick with all the pain

That you HAD to carry to the shore

Will you hear the subtle calling?

Rippling out like a splash of the invisible

Asking you to find your knees

And lose your mortal arms

Will you follow where the water flows

In droplets heavier than your empty shoulders

To a river of  footsteps up the shore

Of final, desperate, change.

Ain't gonna drop the ball
Ain't gonna miss the call
Ain't gonna take the fall
And refuse to get on my knees

If you want your chains broken
You need to lift your manacles high
If you hold them tight to heart
You'll never stretch your wings
And fly.

Breaking an addiction
Is breaking a bone all over again
So it sets straight this time.

When I awoke
And the dream was still real
The shadows around me
Had hearts that could feel
And I could not

This water
Wetter than most
Gets into every pore
Like damp sunshine
I changed my name
Before I dried.

When the universe
Is a wall
What is on the other side?

Love is like lightning
Sudden and undeniable
It heats you up inside
And messes with your heart
And if it ever goes away
It leaves exit wounds

Depression
Is the wall you build
With your own bones
So that you can be safe

The funny thing is
We fill up with emptiness
So that we won't drown
But when you're full of empty
It only ever pulls you down.

It is the flower
Hiding against the rage of days
Afloat upon the water's cold
That tight into itself is curled
Keeping safe inside the dream
When at last its petals show
And the light is ushered in
Only then do people know
That there's people to be seen.

By the still, wet, glistening eye
You kneel
And hold the hand too weak to work
In letting fall the drips of soul
I find
A tearing that has made me whole.

He sometimes tells himself,
It's just an everyday
But he never seems to find inside
The words he always meant to say
He's at home when the sky falls down
Puddled feet, muddled mind,
Head too high to find the ground

They say this thing weighs
But 9 pounds
A pack of simple twitching
Running to keep up with time.

Stillness doesn't happen in a moment
It's beyond a photograph's reach,
Lost to an unquiet mind
Where the waters drown themselves
In the waves crashing
While God sleeps in the sinking boat.

Stillness is the sound of a pause
A silently inhaled breath.
Stillness is looking on at the carcrash
Where the wheel keeps spinning
And the people line up
In bright blue cocoons

It is remembering
That each moment
Lies inside eternity.

People are
the collection
Of stuff and confusion
And love that gets left on the bench
Milling around
Like sheep looking for a home
But finding an oven instead.

I hold these words around me
My constant friends
They never leave me alone
They always say the same
Thing
But I turn to them all
And never get it quite right
The idol that I make
Is cracked

They often say
True loves runs deep
Maybe that's why
It's always hiding
In the dark and mud
Patient for an unwary toe.

It's frustration
To feel words pile up
Like river logs
Then turn and slip
Away
All eels and mud
Anytime I put
A finger on them.
But the water
Seems damned forever

To look back
Without salt pillared regret
Leaving these things behind

Because
The tomb is empty
I don't need to be bearing
The hollow of broken yesterdays
My anti-wings on aching shoulders
Can silent slip and roll away.

Family

We are more than holes
More than souls
Tied together with string
Caught in a net
Of our own devising

I wrote you a reminder
The other day
In big sad black letters
Strange to watch them melt away
As though you remembered better

Turn the past into something new
Something borrowed shouldn't make me blue
Something old isn't always something true.

Hmmm....

I hate crying
Because it feels like letting go
In the moment's vertigo.
Forgiving unplanned tears
That flee my shivered soul
Unencumbered
By heavy handed futility:
Clasping the cracks together.

I hate crying
Because maybe if I do
Some precious part of me
Will flit away
And be lost to all memory.
Something I never let
Loose from it's cage.
Pain.

I don't come to tear these pages
Clotted thick with a chaos of scribble
And balled up in failure's basket.
Your own attempt
At drawing life.

I come to take these pages
Smooth their battered edges
Connect the broken lines
Paint light into the darkness
And bring that
Drawing to life.

Seeker
You find me in the hidden things.
Holding my sticky guilt hands
You turn them to wings.

I'm sorry.
By now I should be better
Perhaps,
Or at the very least
Someone else.

Words are such a poor substitute for fingertips...

Second Adam

I didn't mean to let you down
Destiny waits for the Fall
And I was fallen worst of all
The purest Adam in town

You are my unanswered questions
You wake the walls inside me
And make them yearn to be set free
You are gravity in my empty spaces
Direction is in your smile.

You are my toes in wet grass
When summer still remembers growing up
You are an iceberg of infinity
When I'm wondering
Just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

You are the heart
I long to hide me in
If only I could find you
And send my walls to be free.

Caged bird
Silence heard
Feathers only
Lie
When the universe
Lies outside.

Not so Bad

It wasn't so bad
Being lost
It was life in
Darkness
It wasn't clear
What was worse:
The terror hidden from my eyes
Or the one lurking in my mind

It wasn't so bad
Being lost
Just a world of darkness
Without a blanket
A moon without a sun
Solid, real, substantial
And coldly complete.

There was a flower on my desk
A crumpled, withered thing
Memories of being green
Now crisp, dried, yellowed
Shuffled through time's deck
Yet lying undisturbed
At peace.
A gift that never meant
More. Than it ever did.
At last it resembled more
The promise of the grave,
Than any promise that was made

There was a flower on my desk
But there is one no longer.

Prayer is turning the page
And finding the pen
And asking God to write

How do I walk
With him whose footsteps
Are the gulf between stars
Whose feet burn with suns
Whose voice calls out
Ans space's vacuum cries out
Till even emptiness is full.

How do I walk
With dragging feet
Barely keeping me off the ground
His breath is gravity
Yet I am falling upwards
When He stands behind me
And whispers "Come
Walk the heavens, and see"

When you sit beside me
There is warmth in my shoulder
And all my aches forget how to speak
You leak out my corners, out my seams
A dream so full, so full of dreams

The silence in my heart is hollow
And it swallows up sound
I can hear it when the beast moves round

We imagine He is
As we are
And we are made less
Because of it

I'd tear down these pillars
If I could just see you a second
As the roof comes down upon me

Sometimes I run from the beast
With the unblinking eye
Sometimes I hide in the quiet
Corners of my mind
He sniffs me out
He knows my names
He breathes in blood
And he leaves
Me
A ragged doll lying in the rain

You were forgiven
For those things you never did
That silent sadness weighing
Like a frown upon your head
At the altar call
I had to let you go
Wandering the winding carpet trails
To where salvation's secret keeps
Me awake all those nights
When we fought with sleep
You and me never doing things
That I never forgave
Because only holding them over you
Keeps me from being forgiven too.

I'd love to see the unclothed world
And not just garments of these obscuring irises.

In one word
You seek for the
Knowing
Of ground beneath
Your searching feet
Thick, tangible
So that when the
Darkness
Piles up to your knees
You can go on
One step at a time
A thousand unnoticed miles.

Dear Kryptonite,
Whenever I am with you
You make me feel like superman

Firefly
Burn so bright
But you'll never catch the moon

The Mountain

No matter how hard I yell
The only thing that moved
Was my own echo

Were you ever real to me?
Did I rip the floorboards of my fantasy?
Oh love,
Better to have loved and lost
Than to turn and love again.
Were you an illusion,
A substitution til the end?

Here is one more certainty
Beneath the waves a calmness has come over me.
Oh love,
I have come to learn from you again
Forgive me that I never
Knew you by your name.

Don't go on
Carrying hope
Like an Olympic flame
Though you wait
The runners never came
Don't go on
Growing older
Like everything has changed
Beneath the waves
The mountains have forgot their names.

27 Reasons

There are twenty seven reasons why

A collection in Short Spaces

Moonlight
Is only second-hand sun
But it beats a world
Where the light gives up
Before it finds your eyes










If you live your dreams
YOu will forget to live your life.









Smiles are only heavy
When they aren't worn
On the inside









Loss
Is the privilege
Of those who have something

Love
Is the price you pay
For giving something up

Thoughts
Are cruel company
To the unsilent mind

Mocking the wind
That bears them
Like a child

With the cruelty
Of an honest lie

They lurk in bedroom closets
Behind suits hanging at their best
And pour moth-dust in the creases.

Yeh...

The Map

In a pocket of time
I found a map to you
I wonder if
The path still lies true
When I've lost all trace of North

Some things can't be frozen
In a cage of pen and paper
Some times the blood in my head
Is the only ink at hand
That can write trust into my bones

I'll stay up all night
And plot my course into forever
Hunched like a starving bear
Over the season's last salmon
Doom rolling in with the snow clouds.

I'll tread the path
Till my footsteps are as natural
As the wild earth they cut,
Warmed against the winter scorn
Wrapped in thick determination

And
Never once pause to think
If you've somehow
Moved on from there

Are there ways of being human
That don't get lost in the fog
Of time's sticky fingers?

Are there questions
Whose answers are so large
They'd squash me into a new shape?

Will I move fast enough
Next time I open my mouth
To catch my foot before it gets there?

Pins and needles
Like it was before
Dead limbs coming to life
Crawling up inside
That shape I'll always remember
I lost you between the aisles
When the crowd pulled away
I was all pins and needles
Coming back to life
Phantom pain for phantom limbs
When standing is being lost.

Fold yourself
Sticks and glue
And paper moulds
Shape yourself
Into that thing
You wanted to be
Deep down
Where you lose
All your surface.

Not another wounded street
Or an end that cannot meet
Just the passing of time
In the other lane
Just the fractures of mine
Lying in the way.

The Crusade they called me to,
Bootless and weary,
Had forgotten its enemy
But we'd fight on so long
As morale held itself aloft.

The flag we raised,
Hacked and torn,
Was too heavy
With trust and ashes
And the wind too feeble for
The pennant to hold itself high.

The guns we cradled,
Were not our own,
Caked in purchasing blood
And with the same betraying barrels
That sent them down
We held us out of death's clinging mud

The things we lost,
Youth and light and peace
We never missed
As we chambered them
And set them off in clouds of thunder.

Don't wrap yourself so tight
You aren't a birthday present
When your outer layers peel away
It's not going to be pleasant.

only fools fly
when they've lost their wings

There's nowhere to hide
From a life lived in the corner of things
Where all is cracks and seems
Made for slipping through

You can't live with your heart on a napkin.

Dreams don't get more real
Just by being dreamed more
You just get less able
To tell the difference

When the lines cross
And sparks jump into the gulf between
Reaching out with twitching fingers
To snap the other side
Then I let go
But try as I might
I can not suck the burn away
Or forget my glimpse of light.

FOR EVER

If you've ever
Seen the wall ascend
Like a line devouring the horison
Swallowing up, and left, and right
Know
You are not alone

If you've ever
Run bruised fingers
Along it's cobbled skin
And wished yourself inside
To show
You were not alone

If you've ever
Soaked in the fear
Like the wrong medicine,
Of letting it slip from your sight
Go
You are not alone

If you've ever
Wandered through
Wall-less woods untracked
And hated yourself for looking back
No
You are not alone

If you've ever
Felt trapped in wicked skin
Carried by the strength of weakness
That was heavier than all the words
As though
You were always alone

If you've ever
Lost a day in its shadow,
Let a heart grow cold at the spine,
And surrendered gravity to the inevitable
Know
You were never alone

If you ever
Rest your eyes on where
The scar of hearts and mortar stands still
Yet turn away without catching it's dreadful gaze
Go
You'll be never alone.

Would you shatter your doors
And batter the walls
Kick through the beams
And knockdown the halls
If you never look up
Then you won't see it fall
Brace yourself honey
You're gonna feel small
The lies on the street
Will cover your floor
The sky coming down
Will open the door
But you'll never see
A single day more
The truth cuts with the falling
For there is no future
Where there was one before
When you ignored the warning.

You don't break up like stone
But settle like sand beneath searching waves
And in the sifting footsteps of your dance
You tread the path, find safety
And are reborn once more
Beneath a sky so open it's split in two
Joined at the horisons with thread and glue
You wait like stardust in the black of the shore
Never breaking up like dying stone
To fly with newfound dusty wings
To sleep within the footsteps of kings.

YOU need to stay out of my dreams
Until I find some new ones
Or find a new universe to wake up in.

Someday

You don't rewrite a symphony in an hour
But I want to be the moment of a flower
The instant of a snowflake, hanging
Lost at home in a world of white
I want to be the hole that makes the parts greater
The lens that lets the light inside
And opens the doors to forgotten radiance.

You don't repaint a masterpiece in a second
But I want to be the silence that beckons
And hides the sounds that get in the way
A smile that's there before you turn around
I want to be the ship that breaks the ice
And settles the distant lives of strangers
Till we share a language running deeper than words.

You don't rewrite your soul in a heartbeat
But I want to walk that strange, familiar street
And be the laugh that's forgotten the false
Till I wake one day, human to the bone
And full to the seams of the world

These stupid holes that I cling to
Grim, savage tears down through the bone
My life rafts in a sea of my own creation
Are not a home any longer
When a hole makes me less
Than the sum of my parts
It's time to drift below the waves

Help me stitch these inner seams
Where the thread has cut the cloth
And whispered into dust
Help me to catch the inner cold
With warm steady arms
And cage the fleeting brain sparks
Before they burn my bones to ash.

Throwing words down for the sake of practice

That green you hardly recall
That hangs beneath innocent shoots
Leaves whispering in the breeze
Lies and politics, spinning like tops
Open up your mind and fall off
Saturated down the gangway
And into the dorsal bellies below
In a greyscale world, we're already lost
Floating off with the Titanic into the black
Terrified of whites slicing in the grey

Wake child
Walk in your velvet slippers
Through the tolling of the morning
Separate
The webs of every second
With fresh-shed finger nails
Slip inside
The creaking closets
Where shattered feelings hide and die
Wrap around you
Every fleeting wish
Every evaporating sigh

Tragic creature, if you never
Change you'll be my iceberg
And all I get to see is the surface.

I wish that you were here with me
To shuffle up the deck
Messing things up to make them better
Is your style to a tee.

Wishes he could drain like water
Through the sands of time
Disappear in a hiss of air
And in the dead of a night
Where the sky is a rocky bed
Slip into the streams of slumber.

Beat yourself up
You'll still look like a fool
For picking on an idiot.

Stitch me up before you go
I'm happy for my seams to show
If the thread is made of you.

Why don't you do it?
Wield your conscience like a hammer
And crush my shell before it cools
I'd like to feel a little worse
For not being the right sort of me.

The Angry Man

I'm not gunna walk this line, old man
Yellow-toothed envy doesn't cut my skin
Yell all you like, but you're not getting in
I don't get angry, I just get on with the plan
This house is my armour, my soldier, my second-born son
So you go on with your words while I go get my gun.

You
Leave larger footprints
Than any feet ever could
In the sifting sands beneath me
Where the carpet once stood
You
Spiderweb cracks that race
And bite and wrap me up
In threads of silk drawn tight
Threatening every breath
You
Haunting like a ghost that never died
Or who died so dusty long ago
That every face is yours, and isn't
But might be if I just turned around quicker
Next time.

Maths

Gotta stop pretending that I count
You plus me always adds up to the wrong amount

Traffic is thick on the blade of the knife
You let yourself go when you hold me so tight
And cutting you off is killing the light

I howl at the moon and I blot out the sun
Remembering crimes beyond reach of a gun
Breaking the Sabbath before it has begun
With a conscience uselessly raging
So I bury knife in the soul someone
For the times they are a-changing.

The bankers and ghosts
That are tied to their chairs
With ropes and with shackles
That are thinner than air
But stronger than life
And completely aware
You're money may need some changing
Value your mind
Till it's no longer there
And the chairs stop rearranging

Now you're so faraway
He won't come when you call
The wire's so tight
That it cuts when you fall
And you've lost the way down
Cause the ground is so small
Remember what is worth saving
From this dizzying height
You feel nothing at all
For the times they are a-changing.

I wanted to paint over my memories
Of you
But I didn't have any paint
In your colour.

If I made you better
Would you make me well?
I won't hide behind the curtains
no more, Counting down the seconds
Till you are first.

Toss out your badges
Wear your bandages with pride
Polish up your boots
And then leave them far behind
You're wearing someone else's shoes
Through the long and broken mile

Need a life with less clutter
Less heart beating on the door
Asking what's the matter
And if I told you what I saw
You'd see it's nothing more
Than stupidity mirrors
And memories on the floor

I wish you didn't play with my head
Or I didn't play with mine
Or whatever
I wish I could look at your name
In the regular way
And not like a combat statistic
Pushing up daisies where a headstone should be
I wish I didn't feel.
Like a robot counting the days
With warm metal indifference.

To All Those Dreams That Never Made It

I used to think in clouds of watercolour
At night my mind would race
In pastels on a damp, white, hopeful canvas
But now when I go to pour the paint, it's dry
When a dream grows up, it dies.

You can't steal yourself away forever
Without something getting lost
Click your bootstraps together
Kansas is going byebye

Love is the feeling of falling
Into someone else and getting lost
In the collision

Love is the decision to let
Someone else's thoughts cross your finish line
Before your own

Love is the warmth of knowing
The coldness of life only through
The flames of fire.

Would it be such a huge thing
To lose yourself in the walls?

Sew your ladders onto the sky
Leave me here to wait a while
I'll climb these clouds
Or stitch myself some stairs
That lead to safer footing.

Quietly fail to prepare yourself for sleep
Be careful not to wakeup all the counting sheep
Lose yourself in remembering what you couldn't keep
Where are you now? Just a light in the deep.

If I found the word
To make you complete
Would you let me spell it for you?
If I found the map
That leads to your feet
Would you only be an ex?
If I asked the wrong question
When we happen to meet
Would you give the right answer anyway?

The present is the future getting lost on its way to the past.