After You

I never knew light could be so black
Or fear so true
Until the time I've come to call
After you

Silent grows the sickening weed
That flowers blue
Blooming through the years that pass
After you

Day and night are synonyms
To struggle through
Foot after slowing foot
After you

There are no goodbyes to say
Nobody who
Will miss me when I follow
After you

The bad trip

She said, "There's room for us both"
I said, "It's a bit of a squeeze"
(I was nearly doubled over
With the suitcase on my knees).

"Don't worry, the journey's short",
She mentioned climbing in.
"Since when's 100 miles short?"
I thought with a rueful grin.

We didn't talk much on the trip
(There was talk, but no conversation),
And neither my legs nor my heart by the end
Could feel any sensation.

The broken dream

At last the creaking cradle rests
And thoughts of sleep crack through me
Welcoming whatever dreams await
I lay my head and offer prayers.
In sleep, the visions find me.
Alighting on a bright stair,
I see arrayed about me
Figures of winged angels
In flight, at work, talking, reading,
Looking over me as I pass upward
Toward the light.
I am compelled. I rise.
Every step a league further.
The journey lasts forever,
But the end is always nearer than last I looked.
And then, as the light grows hot,
As the final stair approaches,
The distant cry of a child brings me back.

The Link

Digging through history, they found it,
The link that gathered future to past
And sliced through the curtain.
New doorways lead to old
Stretching out like mirror to mirror
With nothing but time between.
Rippled like a wolf walking on a lake of quicksilver.
Every peak a step forward
Every trough a hop back.
They learned to map the waves
And navigate where nothing but dust devils writhe in restless sleep
And blind the uninvited.

The jungle

Black is the jungle at night
Where colour bleeds to sound
Green and red screaming calls
Echoing from tree to ground.

White is the desert at noon
Where every rock becomes a sun
Heat and light wind and wave
And all energy becomes one.

Blue is the Arctic ice at dusk
Where cold snaps the wind into shards
And the sea swallows greedily
All that the land discards.

The Silence of a Night in the Town

There is no such thing as silence.
No true space to escape.
The heating hums through the walls,
Electricity whines through the air,
Bubbles burst in the empty sink,
A car revs past,
The tap drips,
The meter clicks round another mark,
The television next door faintly tells the story of Albert Square,
A plastic box cracks as the temperature drops,
And my pen scratches across the page.
The silence of a night in the town.

Trampolining - or The Joy of Weightlessness

Wheee! There's something in every wonderful
Woah! That empties every thought of
Wooh! Freedom blossoms in all your
Boing! From the tips of your fingers to the
Yay! I could stay up here for
Yeehah! I'm never going back to
Hee-hee! Solid ground is just so
Whizz! Who says this is just for
Ha-ha! Nothing is ever going to stop
Crunch!

Memory

Memory is a bitter placebo.
Even the worst parts promise growth and betterment.
Yet what is it really?
A connection of false hopes
That we mould to our own interpretation.

I think that was how it happened.
I believe that's what she said.

There are no truths in memory.
Only an imagined reality coloured by desires.
From this cloud precipitates
The drops and stones of every feeling.
We create our own image around us,
A perfection based on idealised dreams
That never were.

Man flu

Coughing and spluttering like the wind from an old exhaust,
I lie and wait for the morning.
No joy in this pale fevered waste,
A desolate screaming into space.
Help me! Let me sleep!
But wracked again and again
The phlegm rises and falls,
Never spits or settles,
Just tightness,
Tightness everywhere, with every breath,
Every turn brings another laboured cough.
What feelings are left in me surge and sigh,
Expand with hot and cold emotions.
Time begins and ends with every heartbeat.
Woe is me - Lord hear me sing,
This man flu is a terrible thing.

Emerald

The emerald eye
Of the buck-toothed girl
And the dog beside her
Thick-set and heavy.
Alive at the thought of moving on
Of mirrors gleaming in earnest reflection.
They cross and crash and end the tale,
And newspapers immortalise.
But black and white strip the life from her.
Such beautiful eyes of emerald green
Like hope itself defined,
And never again will their like be seen.

A fox's breath

And at the end
We are left with memories pooling
Like a fox's breath in winter.
Our time is dawn
Brief, beautiful and bright.
No colours separate our thoughts,
All is one is everything.
The scents and flavours
Of what you did
And who I was
And where we were.
Brittle as a beetle
Whose carapace lives on empty and alone.
But somehow, somewhere,
We are forever.

The Cat

The cat sat on the satellite
The countdown had begun
It snuggled on the warm and dark
Of the rocket being sent to the sun.

It sneaked aboard with the astronauts
As they waved goodbye to the world
And while in the cockpit they tightened their straps
He stretched and dreamed and purred.

...

The Afterglow

Passion lost in the afterglow
As silence calls out truth and lies
Heavy breaths and silent sighs
The blackness at the centre of our eyes.

The face is always the last to fade
As sleep relieves me of your form
Piece by bitter piece is torn,
The calm before the morning storm.

And yet it lives and flourishes
This desolate land bears delicate flower
Pushed to the light against your power
Innocence the world devours.

Red

Red falls again
This impossible anger
Winding its way like a curse
To my heart.
A fiend of burning mist
Clawing, rending,
Tearing me apart.

Every wild word spoken
Everything broken
Every scream uttered
While nothing mattered

I am nothing but rage and fire
Nothing but a knife slash red and raw
A coiled and tense explosive force
A beast, a demon, nothing more.

Ketchup

For the love of ketchup
She thwacked her palm
Against the bottle
Which caused her harm
And made her jump
And knock her plate
And twitch her nose
(A nervous trait).
The egg flew up
Potatoes down
One on the ceiling
One on the ground.
She slipped on her peas
And fell with a shriek
The egg dropped
And flopped on her cheek.
She lay on the floor
Like a pale egg cup
And all for the love
Of tomato ketchup.

You Called the Moon to Me

You called the moon to me
It answered with a milky glow
And left the night, dropping low
Behind the Rowan tree.

You painted every star
The brightest shade of gleaming gold
Connected them with stories told
From countries near and far.

You promised me your love
And let it last for all time.
I promised you all of mine
And we set them in the sky above.

Again

Again and again and again
Like a dull blade
Sawing against me.
Face on the screen
Black and white
Like a sickness draining colour
And criticism.
The button down, button up
End of the sterling circle
Cropped and burned before the turn.
Cocksure, crystallized.
The end again.
Always to the end.
Again and again and again.

The Queen

Cracked and worn the coronet
Sat heavy on the golden head
The Queen is dead! The Queen is dead!

Silks reduced to ashen flakes
That drifted round the royal bed
The Queen is dead! The Queen is dead!

No words to mark her passing
No platitudes to be read
The Queen is dead! The Queen is dead!

Just a girl in a nightgown
Shortly woken from a dream
The Queen is dead! Long live the Queen!

Nothing

The burning is here
Frustration ever inwardly cycling
All bleeds to black

There is a wall here
Infinite and impregnable
All crumbles to dust

The hailstorm is here
Roaring, making thought impossible
All fades to noise

I am nothing
But noise, dust and black.

January

It's here, the delicate draft of white.
Gone with the sun, but now in the half-light
It hangs on the last leaves and branches of the bare trees.
Soft and cold, it melts at a touch,
Transferring heat like-for-like
To reach an invisible balance.
Red fingers steam in the perfect twilight
And crystal eyes sparkle,
Drink in the expanse of white and grey.
It's here.

Life and lichen

The washing machine turns another load,
As I sit in silence staring as it winds and whirrs
And somewhere above me children call and cry.
Everything is background but for that one spot of lichen
Glowing golden on the roof across the way.
Gold against the red tiles and blue sky,
Burning with full focus.
Time is a tune for others to enjoy,
Its beat is lost to me.
I just sit and stare at that patch of gold,
And only your footsteps wake me.

Sickness

Sick in bed yesterday so didn't get any writing or blogging done. Will put up two today.

The fruit grows rotten in the garden
And water pools with incessant drops.
Nothing here matters any more.
Everything here is lost.

The green of the grass is a sickness,
The red of the bark a wound.
The birds in the sky could fall and die
It'll happen to each of us soon.

But why did it have to be him?
Why kick out my support?
Was there some reason I don't understand
Or just the gods at sport?

Piece of a War

At the end of it all
However few are saved
Like father like son
Blood follows blood to the grave

The End

How will it end?
With the last bee's dying breath?
When there's nothing left in the hive?
With the last woman desperately seeking
The last man alive?

With a spot of atom splitting
(Weather permitting)
On the shores of Hinckley Point?
Or a meteorite in the middle of the night
Knocking the earth out of joint?

Or maybe a war we're too well prepared for,
The victor's the first to the button,
Or will one half starve while the other laughs
And feeds the planet-sized glutton?

Fire? Flood? Tornado? Mud?
Will the ground open up and swallow us?
Whatever we find, I hope the next in line
Don't decide to follow us.

The Spark

Helions and hellkites, what have I done?
The earth is ablaze, the devils have won.
It's just because I was scared of the dark.
How has this come from but one tiny spark?

Drop

Shaped by natural science
So perfect, so pure
Tapered and pin-sharp
Fat and heavy
Designed by resistance
Copied to defeat it
Made more perfect again
'Til hitting hard
With a crowning splat

The Hammer

For the hundredth time
She drives the hammer down
And pulls it back again.
Four and twenty lives she's lived
Each one the same and paling.
"There's truth to this", she thinks.
Truth in every shattering blow
As needles fly and nerves twitch.
Ten again. Ten again.
And fifty throws of the dice.
A life, a knife, a boat and chain.
The water shrinks and slaps
But she stands like an iceberg,
Cracked, but gleaming.

Where the Wild Things Were

I still see them now,
Those creatures,
Dressed for work and everyday.
Claws dulled,
But hair still Brylcreemed,
Waiting at the bus stop,
Not even eyeing-up the other passengers.
This is not their place.
These are not their terms.
Whatever happened to the Wild Things?

The battle of blood brook

Far along the river bank
The battle lines arrayed.
Never a paw was out of place,
And never a whisker strayed.

Fifty strong was the line of voles
To only a dozen of shrew.
Face to face with bright teeth bared,
The many and the few.

'Tomorrow', Julius called across.
'Tomorrow', Coln agreed.
And the sun sank on the river bank,
And still was the shiver weed.

Deep were the ears of barley wine,
And loud the songs of the vole.
'Til deep they slept while the shrews crept
And across the brook they stole.

Long were the tails of the shrew that night,
And long were the knives in the dark.
As blood flowed thick on the riverbank
And red was the watermark.

Morning rose as the river flows
Slow and pale and cold,
Over fathers who would never awake
And sons who would never grow old.

The Bomb

We don't have long to stop the bomb.
Tick tock - tick tock.
Which switch is off, which switch is on?
Tick tock - tick tock.
Which wire to cut, red, green or blue?
Tick tock - tick tock.
Oh my, I just don't know, do you?
Tick tock - tick tock.
Snip-
...
...
...
Phew!