December 2009 scrap

Can’t shake this sadness
It’s not just tiredness this time
It’s the coldness beside me, the embrace of the night
Syntax for company, voice muted shouting for attention
Smile getting more brittle with every waking hour
Every spoon of sugar in every tepid tea
So much to work for
So much to savour
But right now
These sensations just aren’t sweet enough

Taking blessings for granted
Maybe just corrupted by the things I’ve tasted
Hours wasted picturing cherubic faces
Unattainable
Proxies for contempt with self
Crooked mirror shoots light to the crevices
The square ones could never reach
But a mirror isn’t a key
Anymore than two snowflakes can ever be the same

contradict

Contradict,
How clean do I have to come for this dirt not to stick?
Which tailor can I visit to mend this shirt to fit?
Can’t breathe but I let you smoke and now I’m burning
Smoulder
To Cinders
Compress and purify the Crystal
Betrayal
Much more than indiscretion
Shallow flippant denial
Skipping back into the future
Subliminate
Guilt, Frustration, Self loathing
And conflagrate at the push of a button
Location;
a bijou apartment or the corner by the underground
Self satisfaction strikes another wound
Into the flesh of good nature
Before the fatal chokehold
And it’s so cold so London, this distance between us
For days at a time I can play at being a real person
At knowing how to draw all the right lines and stay between them
Bounded
Then I miss a beat, skip a step
And the chalk blurs
Its’ easy to build a complex critique
Hardest to present simple truths
Acknowledge the history we share
Easy to board up or glaze over and fall back to describing society
But what’s that if not you and I?
What are politics but how we choose to govern these bodies
How we give order to the impulse
Shape to the formless?
I’ve been advocating too many causes
And not thinking about the effects
I’ve been filling all my pauses
Waiting for you to interject
And when you interject
I feel how my desire consumed my self respect
Now this realisation is all that I have left
And I’m drawing myself to my feet preparing for the next step
And after that the next and the next
Until this beat stops pounding in my chest
I could’ve been better
I won’t be worse
I can’t give you your dignity back
But I can try and help you build it
I won’t be that cliché song lyric
And fuck you over again
Or myself

Embers

Orange light glowing in embers on the tundra
Swans sit brooding
Geese pad tentatively
And the school kids and grandmas marvel at the expanse
Watching their breath and skidding shards across its opaque surface
The embers pulse with the gaps of the dying day
It’s a slow painless demise
Holding promise of narcotic blissful slipping
And guiltless solitary completion
Leaving half a world of heirs the ultimate estate

Sanctuary

Sanctuary, where the sun meets the sea
And we can sit suspended for a week
Free floating in the breeze
Just the dull thump of your pulse
And the red warmth through our eyelids
An instrument resonating life
Vibrating spectrums
Of sensation we're just ripples passing along,
Synthethesic; in the ocean, on the guagua,
On your bed on Christmas day with Jim Morrison
And one year from now feeling it all again
All the same moment exploding and reforming
Curving, bending, describing a flawless whole.

Miles Davis Photograph

A Miles Davis photograph in black and white triggers Deja vu. I try to hold it like always. Even more so this time because I want to feel impotent, devoid of responsibility. I want the rails to come back underneath.Miles is set, boxed, polished. And even so in that moment he's taut, considering something out of shot, the soft focus surrounding a pefect set for his dramtic tableau, Miles is Miles. That's what I felt then and now I do again, comfortable in the inexplicable familiarity Who could begrudge me that?

poetry (November 2009)

You're like poetry
Softly spoken to the ear
Never a word wasted
Never an emotion unexcited
Happiness in being
Acceptance of a state and yet
Communication of light years of meaning
Your audience awaits another line
For it may always be the last before life turns the page.

Terms of Agreement

A new ethic, disdaining the
Mirrors and simple replicated patterns
That have held sway these months
Not pausing to swap yoke for yoke, like for like unevenly weighed
Inexpertly carried
But a lighter load carried longer, further
I've placed my trust without being asked
Invested my hope with no assurance
So why fret?
This contract is between me and the Universe.