I once had branches That burned in my backyard A pyre sans desire A fire drowned by its fire And at night In the dark When ghost grew like fruits From the shadow of its seeds From the ashes of its roots One could hear In the cast out whispers that they kept Broken words bandaged Pain yet un-wept And they said, they said In the black waves of bright flames We are faces without faces Nameless within our names And if night be a star in the ocean And infinity an eternal motion If silence be the words without sound And self a state never to be found Then the world with it’s weight held in a grain And poets with their pens dipped in pain The weathered visages with their vermillion words And the horizon a home for forgotten birds Is there to be seen, is there to be shown And not to be alone or utterly unknown
O the desire to be Loved by all And the ache of letting go When it is harder to fall Because of the world with it’s quiet words left to rot On transparent eyelashes Of eyes that dream, of eyes that dare Of eyes that hold, of eyes that care Should I wish upon myself an early demise Would the darkness in it’s view find it wise Why then sometimes I want to be The silence that shapes the sea Why then sometimes I want to be Someone whom none can see
Despair, beware I am a sky without cause My pain, insane Do not ache for applause Stare in the mirror O horror of my mind What you see is what you are Be gentle if not kind And whisper unto the wind These fables of your own For you are no Pietá But a statue turned to stone
He carried a corpse on his shoulder A straw man made of stone And walked the nowhere path A footstep in a crowd; alone He had feathers on his broken back Which wept on silent nights And he wished for a shooting star Having never had one in sight The man was armed with silence And buried tears in each eye Had no heart of which to speak of And dared not ask why So he searched his own shadow That wet the mosaic floor And wondered if his life Even mattered anymore For he was a mortal man Who died in his own dreams And come night only his pillow Answered back his screams He thought of leaving it all And be dust and be free He thought of casting his anchor In the middle of the barren sea For him the changing world Was a wave that ever repeats And he questioned unto the chaos Why do I rhyme when nothing fits?
Her face was a prison of prisms Her eyes twin melodies of mind Her skin shone like vanishing velvet Her kiss was one of a kind But she was no fabled princess Wandering lost at his open door Nor was she a cast away goddess He had once prayed to before She was a woman in making And held her heart in her own hand She knew the world as her oyster And she a pearl in the prophetic sand She saw the world with its visage brimming With light bulbs and bright lies So she searched for the one who stood With bruises like midnight skies He was a naked man Unclothed; without a name Who counted a single star Thinking that all were same To her he was a child unfed Left to roam as a newborn in wild Once without a home Through fate utterly exiled
He saw her hand in the ocean And the world closed around his eyes As he drowned in the water that whispered Breathe now or the dream dies He felt her fingers upon his shoulder And he answered back in kind Till their lips sealed shut a secret Which no soul could ever find And they danced in the depths like dolphins Two kindred hearts as one Who wished so much for the stars That they grew their own sun So that when the leaves now rustle And the colours do not make sense They can watch the silence get slower And the rainbow go back in rain
If my face now makes you weep Let my voice then put you to sleep So tomorrow when you awake Like a flower on someone’s grave Know there lies underneath He who asked you once to save
Would it pain She asks Knowing all too well that it would But I said No As if saying thus shall make it so And watched Drifting in the lap of the night Horror’s hand take hold And smother The last filaments Those final particles Ruminated remnants Hers and my own Settle on the dying petals Of the flower we painted But forgot to plant If only we had not been Part myopic, part colourblind There would have been gardens to tend New flowers to sow Some fragrance to find
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
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.
I believe the night to be beautiful And polite in its quiet understanding Of letting people be Alone with their monsters That others would never see For the dark cannot differ Between the shape and its shadow Nor cast colours by their causes Or ask more of friend and less of foe To night all belong Both the dreamer and its dreams The silence of frozen lakes And the songs of eternal streams But here in the deep Within the halls of man’s own mind The dark reigns ever awake In hope to one day find The answer all eyes seek Yet doubt to ever know; If the soul is but a seed That once then shall never grow…
I saw my children standing in the rain Their faces lined with age and late reason Watched the abandoned bicycles And broken seesaws Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old Seemed painted In the moist color of quiet The abandoned delight Having dissolved In the lament of the rain They turn; the motion a sad song An unfinished lullaby To look at me with eyes Half awake but never asleep As if I with my window earned wisdom Would know Why all things grow Only to die If life in the very virtue of living Is a lie But they know the answer As well as me It is better to forget than to believe what we see In the everyday aftermath Of the daily demise Of choices left to chances And promises made before goodbyes For in the end all paths Shall return where they began Even the oceans with all their eternity Are but remains of the rain…
