Elemental

If I am to be a log on the fire of life
Let me burn bright
Transforming
As each white cinder joins the night
Glowing orange against the desert
Let me give comfort, warmth, energy, inspiration
And even as I cease to burn
And crumble back to the soil where I was born
Let me leave a powder memory mingled underfoot
It would be an honour to heat the kettle
Nestled snugly against me
Boiling the water which you use to make your tea
Drink deep and smile for me
Beneath the stars and moon we share

Dream2

My Father hits my sister in an alternative Christmas present
My town re imagined, re mapped
The drama occurs off screen
And I inhabit the aftermath
A sibling conspicuous by her absence
And a parent puffed up despicable with self righteous excuses
Another dream with violent passages
Echoing the realities suppressed
Unbounded in the dead night heat
However aloof once thinks one may be from certain subject matter
However detached or cold
Something must seep through into one's loam foundations and poison the water supply
Yesterday I reflected onto my elder, and vice versa
Whilst the fire water scoured the inside of my head
The sex sweated out my angst and fear and nurtured new buds but that was all conscious
And when I wriggle in mosquito night Something surfaces
And familial guilt that refuses to die but instead sits lurking beneath the radar, Strikes with a vengeance,a part of me as much, if not more
Than any of this present reality
I'm taking responsibility for my happiness
but to the untrained eye that might seem similar to taking the piss
Waking or not, I'm learning lessons
Reflecting on the heart pounding horrors before
And mint tinged night in a second rate discotheque
Green European beers and barbed revelations of what I already knew but couldn't embrace as ours
We're thrown into a world but we're not alone
We carry fragile umbilical connections through which love flows
Connections that strain and sometimes snap when fists are raised and blood flows
Rushing
A flush comes right now
In retrospective empathy and shame
No answer will come from writing this
No forgiveness or resolution
But no hurt will grow either
Isn't that a beautiful numb dead end?

For Reinaldo Arenas

To dance with lethal potential
Like a bare chested capoeirista
Is that not true poetry?

Sat behind every chain store desk
Ergonomically incorrect
Lurks that spirit
Hiding behind the tired eyes of every
Faceless ballpoint bureaucrat

Spreadsheets keep the lights on
And the spirit encased
Equated
to material values
less than the price of one bulb
Discarded in the corner like an artist in solitary confinement
Smeared in their own faeces
Unable to dream
mutilated for performing the most natural of acts
to dissent

If a holy war is a conversation with god
Then the conversation must always be an argument
A single scribbled line on smuggled toilet paper holds more honour, humanity, divinity
Than a million martyred killers

So which prison should one choose?
Or is this a choice at all?
Divinity and Agency are not renowned as easy bedfellows
Perhaps the sole moment of recognition
Will come when you are already dancing, starving in the dark

Poem

Basking
Reading novels of feminity, family and theatre
With the TV upstairs a bawdy reminder of location, language, life
My mind conjures images of truly happy times
In East London Pubs
With people I love
And our true selves together
Drinks, jukeboxes and hugs
Poets, accountants, lawyers and others
All really just boys and girls released from pretence
Because bullshit walks and we sit and joke
And really really laugh like so rarely
Whichever doomed relation dominated my words
The spirit was really of platonic bonds
And I swell with pride when I think of you and the journies we are taking
And wish for decades more of this
I'm afraid that one day too soon
I'll be sat in another bar
Far from your relatives and achievements
The only one remaining, stubborn body sustaining
The weight of lonely tears uncried
I've been blessed, insulated, from much tragedy
Which means there could be so much to come
So the next time the circle closes, however many of us sit within
For me it will be the sweetest taste of freedom
To laugh just one more time with you

Friends (Today)

I could never fulfill the expectations we set together and

it's so hard when I don't know what I want from you

Sometimes to be comfortable in my own company is the biggest

present I could ask for

But when I claim my space I find myself apologising

Over and over and over again

6.04 And I'm responsible for where I'm going

The wheels I've set in motion have no one direction
a mild form of torture
Until I act

I push you and praise you and miss you when I'm gone
(When my lover is but a murky echo) but when we're close I never have enough precious time

My rants and raves and soliloquies of facile wisdom become worse in memory, beasts of my ego tearing the flesh of our clasped hands and I'm lonely thinking how much I've learnt from you

All of you

So this is my apology and this is my prayer that in our hearts we meet without the monkeys on my back tagging along

Without me dragging the void through the doorway and consuming your laughter on your living room floor

I want to win your pride with love and care not bold promises

Thank you for being you, what more could I ask?

Question

Am I a writer or just a critic in disguise?

Poem (Today0

Death Dreams
Night Cramps
Early Rise
Late Arrival
Exotic Fiend
Another Chance
Aching eyes
Adapt for survival
Sore peeling hollow sunken
CARCASS
His or Mine?
Cinematic edits stab into necks
Pistols are drawn, explode, holes smoke
In the same day life moves on
And raw rough cuts are replayed for laughs
Dull pulse still beating
Now Frames echo around, around, around
Cranium
Heartbeat seems to falter
Signals of distress and calls for aid
Ignored build Blades of eternal guilt
Into the tumor that will never remit
A document of projected emotions
Untenable.