It is a dream I do not remember But remember all the same Like those faces I desire Without knowing their name As if in the grand scheme of things Wherein a million stories unfold I am just a chapter Of a young man who grew old
These oceans which are open These skies which are blind These forests which aren’t silent These mountains sans a mind Are mine to behold and break To bind and to find For the similes to be kept never similar And metaphors ever one of a kind
You can call my claims childish Or let my words make you weep When you see the vacuum in my voice Hover upon my lower lip Where the broken wind balances Those desires and despair And life in its likeliest form Is heartbeat at the end of a hair
If only I could myself see and show What I have lost in my pursuit to know The allegories of living Without wanting to grow Alas, I have my own Reason to bear the blame: For to the man who shall leave no footprints The dust is all the same
Have you been silent for so long That you wondered if you belong With the people Who left Listening to all that could be heard Whilst wondering about each word As if the carcass of it’s meaning Will somehow survive Those ages spent playing dead Trying to stay alive
If I could be free From the echoes of other people And be something more than A traffic light thought Winking in the dim halls of their tragic mind I would prefer being a butterfly Frozen in ice That way My beauty though long lost; euthanised, Will live still In regret That beautiful cancer Common to all men Drooling on sad lips of time Like honey gone bad; A tasteless parable for Once a good man now gone mad From the cold touch of metal people that I meet With their eyes upon my river back, my other face and feet With yellow leaves gathering In a dry rage to drown My steps towards the hilltop Within the noise of a dead town Asking me to surrender Asking me to still For being born amidst wrong angels To die right under heel
On nights like paraffin When shadows too burn I curl into concrete And cease to ache To be deeply awake Of all the things I am not As sought by those carvers Shaping my form into chess pieces, Dull black and off white; A crooked king, a broken queen and two quixotic knights To be kept alive and conquered Or cast into the unheard Age of borrowed sentiment A proud brick in a ruinous monument Should I now pray To whetstones Wet with sweat wounds of men Pierced alive With the worms of their own wisdom Or within the confines of my Diluted divinity Fall prey To the sinful delight Of being right And fall asleep With this winter as witness And awake when the dying dream Is truly dead And the sound of turning wheels No longer praise Destinations remembered along forgotten ways…
I have spent half my life Looking how I was wanted to be seen Powdered to the tip of my nose Accurately thin With anklets on my feet That laughed alone in night And a locket round my neck Buried out of sight I had flowers on my frocks When I was a lotus bud soft pink And roses in my hair locks When I was allowed to think As if my beauty was just a face Without a wish or voice As if being born the way I was Had something to do with choice If only I could have told them then The thoughts I had in my mind Of my mantelpiece existence Of being beautiful but kept blind Alone as my own mirror Echoing solitude Days spent dressed for the world to wonder And nights being ashamed to be nude
The Sea reminds me Of falling in love With a shadow Of a Dove Who, having slept in flight At the stroke of midnight Awoke falling for Dewdrops of sunlight
But the Sea is sadness And her roots are all songs Left by sailors Too eager to sail Alone into oblivion In a hope to live a tale Written by some abandoned watchtower Laughing beside the dock
And the Dove, crystalline in her virgin whiteness Covets the Shore; With his silence a song Played by the sand Unaware that only the lost Will be found In the seed of his sound
Thus they remain knitted The Dove, Sea and Shore In search of another Forevermore So blind in their yearning Of the love they cannot find That none waits to see The one left behind
I wish to speak with myself The conversation Neither a monologue nor a soliloquy But I am afraid I would not allow My own confessions This heart knows far too much Of envy and hate And much too less Of chance and fate; those dark mistresses Pulling and pushing The tide of each rebirth Should I excuse myself within reason then And let the age that passes through each of us Sunder me to atoms Annihilating; once and for all Each kingly cause And gangrene dream Festering upon the thin skin of mind; For the soul in the end is nothing more Than a shadow aware of it’s own existence. Or should I in opus thoughts claim The Midas Touch And let the pleasure and pain Every loss and gain, ravage me alive Into my own version of heaven and hell Beyond resistance and repercussions Or time and it’s tale And dare to be free For once all of me? Alas the soul cannot know Of which the mind did not sow Thus I remain here Within this blindness which seek The mirror left behind; And await my reflection to speak.
All I can think about is dust and dusk And drowning in a shattered sea Made of glass Like a photograph of a falling man Who is never truly falling But eternally trapped With a suspended scream In an endless dream Like a dreamless wraith; Weightless and wordless As an orphan in death
But sometimes the night is too strong for me to sleep And the dreams I have are too dark for me to keep So I become a cobweb on the far wall Or a three pin plug lost in a socket Some crumpled paper on the floor Or a faded face in an old heart shaped locket A catharsis of cause Building prisons to be free An empty ship sailing An emptier sea
Where there is fog in the air And yet I stare Like a blind man blinking Without thinking at the sky Wondering in my own vacuum About the mute purpose of ‘Why’ With voices at the edge of my vision And footsteps at the back of my mind I am dreaming of being asleep And afraid of losing what I cannot find
Thus, in this black and white world In this sharp and smooth world In this loud and quiet world In this bitter and sweet world In this dull and fragrant world I shall remain awake Till a different tomorrow
I was born out of the blue Like a star without a face And shall one day be falling too As dust without a trace In hope that when I am gone Those very few whom I knew Kept something of the light With which their wish came true…
I am just another Diluted human being Strained with whetstone thoughts And rhinestone dream Tracing the echo of my footsteps In silent halls Sans any walls Was I born to burn And cling to life Like cigarette ash Dying and dying One breath at a time? I can hear the puppets talk At night Their voice Made of wood and string Mirrors of what the violin sing My tragedy and ivory A comedy and ebony My face is falling apart Like wallpaper And what’s beneath is no longer me It’s a different shade This bruise beneath the bandage I am alone And awake And I know That I ache Somewhere deep inside Where those things hide Which I keep So not to weep At every pain that passes Like needle through my arm For I am just another Diluted human being Strained with whetstone thoughts And rhinestone dream
Last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire And the blunt desire To bruise And break These filial bonds Of flesh and bones Rose, untainted Like waves on sea Like a dream disguised as a memory
I was sleeping Under the cold warmth Of the ash blanket Till people appeared By my bedside Beings sulphurous Silhouettes of silver smoke Which spoke: ‘Come to us You child of gravity There is a world beyond the world Shaped by chaos and clarity A latticework of lyrics A synagogue sans any saint A cosmos acclaimed by cynics A painting without the paint’ And I alive in tenuous thoughts Of nevermore and forever Could only see and be A shadow of a reflection Unborn thus free And so those excelsior people With ghost hands bore me away Astride the light they had saved Back from their leftover days
What I saw thence I cannot say There is nothing to remember Between the first dawn of January And the last night of December But there are those half dreamt moments When I seem to know The truth breathed upon me: That Soul is what the light don’t show
But last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire…
