They give you a list of names and numbers,

helpful organisations and people…

 

although

 

It’s hard to reach out with a knife in your hand,

spittle and blood on your face…

 

You can’t complete their generic forms, you can’t remember,

maybe show them a picture?

 

although

 

The picture inside your heads on repeat, on repeat,

and you cannot project anymore…

 

They give you diagnosis and dangerous drugs,

when you’re suicidal and broke…

 

although

 

You can’t get sober to open the box or push out the pill,

and your fingers are bayonets…

 

that cut your own flesh and claw your dead eyes,

but flesh heals and you’ve no need of sight…

 

although

 

It’s easier to live in the pain, than to fight with such hopelessness,

while you wonder again and again…

 

how the fuck did you get in this mess.

 

 

My heart these days feels tiny in my chest,
like Jonah in the whale
that doesn’t know he’s there…

 

It feels crushed, contained,
fibrillating, strained at best
pumping gut polluted air…

 

Outside the cradling rib cage,
beyond the white boned wall:
four winds and wilding seas.

 

No flame to light my guiding page,
just the siren’s haunting call,
and a pale horse upon the breeze…

 

Shod hooves come thudding faster,
my heart beats ever small
as dark shadows fall like death…

 

I am a portent of disaster,
the thirteenth trumpet call
of the harbinger’s last breath.

 

 

 

 

Well I drunk the sun-down,

then I drunk

the fucker up again…

I played the forlorn clown, then I filled my

fucking cup again…

I cursed the silver moon

and the TV’s fucking news again,

I spoke my words too soon, they

novocaine’d my tongue again…

 

So they dashed my stupid face

on the wall

against my will again,

I wished I’d won the race

that they may never kill again…

but my brains that stained the bricks

were scrubbed

clean of all that did remain…

 

and no one cared at all

that no one ever knew my name…

 

 

 

Some birds sing to fill the air

that all of life might hear,

some song drifts without a care

to find another’s ear…

 

yet in some lonely, darkened place

where silence slowly creeps,

it matters not for want or grace

that music wakes a heart that sleeps…

 

and in its waking sings again

to light those Sunless halls,

with shards of notes in sweet refrain

that out of nowhere softly call.

 

 

 

Four ambulances,

strobing lights through my curtains,

humming under the ghostly blue.

 

It’s three in the morning,

I’m woken by the sound

of saving life.

 

Strange enough that I

just killed a man in my dream,

then green men appear.

 

Two red men

kneeling and pressing,

the green ones are ripping packages open…

 

Like wolves in the chests of prey

their teeth and faces black,

white bones cracked apart.

 

Now I’m on the balcony

half naked in the dark,

my dream-kill, bleeding out.

 

The wolves fall silent,

the green men pick up their spill.

The carcass lies gaping, split.

 

The bed is sweating,

my dream is waiting,

I’ll kill again…

 

When this world spins without its season

why should we care at all,

that leaf not turn nor acorn fall.

While birds take wing not knowing reason

and winter cheats the robins call…

 

When soil and sea withhold their gift

while nets and ploughs still toil,

as lunar tides becalm their shift…

celestial flares, flame down their spoil

to cast the hopes of men adrift…

 

When revelation pyres the page

to sets its words aflame,

rogue angels fall with fiery might

and raise earth’s core to molten rain,

that none again may see the light.

 

 

 

 

From where came This Sun?

that undid my sleep,

that lit the edges of my dark…

 

that snuffed my rest where it begun

and took itself to keep,

what gave this day it’s cursèd spark?

 

What prised my eyes upon this light?

that witness I should be,

what turned my head where’er it say…

 

what raised our fists and tongues to fight

for all that would be rightly free,

and not by might be cast away…

 

From where did all this darkness fall?

that shaded what was grown,

that blacked the edges of our light…

 

that snuffed the hope among us all?

that it be never known,

how lesser men denied our right.

 

 

 

 

Meeting the monks of the patriarchy

beneath an overhang of gorges,

they looked like us…

 

bearded and muscled

they seemed without scripture,

yet purposeful and pious.

 

They offered carvings and wine

revealed Icons and relics,

and blood-curdling art…

 

black as Crows were they,

hospitable with civility…

yet still they reeked of Blood

 

 

Some other eclipse

 

Not indigenous

like the rest of us,

nor ethno-right…

you are the blight.

 

No “Ordinary Decent Criminal”

your offence expands, Subliminal.

You feed unconscious bias…

unbridled in the pious.

 

Your victims feel the shame

irrespective of your name,

some of them are sure…

it’s what you came here for.

 

Our cages long were filled,

the masses fed, blue pilled,

before ever monsters came…

and we tied their crimes to names.

 

Now they’re massing behind walls

prostrate in prayer that calls,

that the infidel be slain…

for the cause of sacred name.

 

Though some of us see people

not minaret or steeple,

that we might be as one

and fuck their Kingdoms Come

 

 

Head down, hanging in the azure

she drifts,

her wings as silken arrows.

 

She folds and dives,

then falls

as silent as any end.

 

Her tiny heart is calm and free.

Her prey close,

she splits the breeze asunder.

 

Striking, she takes the air again,

majestic kill and sorrow…

mouths to feed await.

 

The Land feels no loss,

the Sky feels no gain…

everything is as it should be.

 

Slavering dogs and screams

saturate impermeable walls

 

like

 

reptilian brain

holds trauma…

 

fucked into flesh

cuffed and beaten

 

transgenerational stigmatisation

breaks a soul

 

like

 

Sounds and smells of oppression

trigger memories…

 

torn from roots

burned and banished

 

like a

 

Genocide…

 

 

Wings migrate when seasons shift,

a subtle breeze will turn…

 

low murmurs ‘neath new feathers lift

their flight away from home…

 

un-compassed in their domestic fledge

unknowing of its end,

 

they ride the winds of nature’s pledge

wherever they may send.

 

Yet not the same for men as birds,

with knowledge of return…

 

for them just hateful fists and words

that wish their homelands burn…

 

and what of those that come anew?

Not born of blood or soil,

 

will they feel safe as free men do?

No State their lives to spoil.

 

There’s a poem waiting for me

she’s upstairs in my room,

she’s lying legs akimbo

and howling at the moon.

 

She’s been there since this morning

rearranging all my thoughts,

burning all my crosses

obstructing all my noughts.

 

Every line she is transmitting

gets scrambled in my head,

she’s adding and omitting

from the pages of my bed.

 

Oh to climb the hallowed stairs

to claim the sacred key,

to unlock that which she shares

so exclusively with me…

 

she’s the mistress I can’t woo

she’s the siren of my luck

she’s the one I bow down to

though will never get to fuck.

 

 

 

 

Dreams are real confessions

of bad deeds never done,

the ghosts of our obsessions,

our shackles come undone…

 

they are day release concessions

granted unto us at night,

the suspension of repression

to see the evil that we might…

 

do to one-another

if uninhibited and free,

in a world that was some other,

where in darkness we could see…

 

that the light which holds us fast

is the lie we hide behind,

and the mould in which we’re cast

lives in the kingdom of the blind.

 

 

The silence this morning is songless,

it hisses between my heartbeats…

I listen for the blackbird but his tree

has retreated to the forest.

 

I am over the border in a white room.

In my dream my father’s mouth is a cave…

it hangs open, expecting nothing.

I breathe his last breath in, it is gone.

 

My hand lies softly on his sallow skin,

he is peaceful, yet grotesque…

why is this the final mask I see?

as if all the others had left with him.

 

Back in the shock of today’s sunlight,

I am awake, a year away from his bedside…

I am deeper in the cave of his absence,

the dark is darker, the silence louder.

 

But what about his work,

his words, his brush, his voice of truth…

 

what about his courage,

his willingness to stand alone.

 

And what about her fearless heart,

her love, her stoic reveal of proof…

 

what about her motherhood,

the foundation of her children’s home.

 

And what of our dismissal

of good that might outweigh their wrongs…

 

averting our eyes blindly,

forsaking gratitude where it belongs.

 

The pen that drags my hand across

the desert of the page,

knows neither joy nor sense of loss,

no calm or boundless rage…

 

it’s just a tool of thought and dreams

to colour in the days,

to bind their rise and fall with seams

and mark the many ways

 

…in which there’s no predestiny,

no gods or revelation,

no saving grace for you or me,

no end, no destination

 

The pen that drags my hand across

the desert of the page,

sees every day, another lost,

in this infernal cage.

 

 

 

All joy and hope

sucked from a womb,

finds three unwise men

in a manger-like tomb.

 

No room in the inn

just a slather of waste,

no angelic choir

descending in haste.

 

A score card of wars

ticked off by dull men,

who dine on cheap whores

just to fuck’em again…

 

while “meek Mary mild”

is swaddled and bound,

bulldozed with her child

into the holiest ground.

 

 

 

 

Surrender the search for words

in the early morning pain of dawn,

let traffic hum and rain-town birds

steal quiet thoughts and see them born…

 

imagine forests damp with dew

the roar of waves upon a shore,

a loving hand that guided you

in times when you were lost before…

 

and in that place find peace and calm

in moments free of earthly stress,

to soothe your wounds of hurt and harm

that you might heal to feel them less.