It is a dream I do not remember But remember all the same Like those faces I desire Without knowing their name As if in the grand scheme of things Wherein a million stories unfold I am just a chapter Of a young man who grew old
These oceans which are open These skies which are blind These forests which aren’t silent These mountains sans a mind Are mine to behold and break To bind and to find For the similes to be kept never similar And metaphors ever one of a kind
You can call my claims childish Or let my words make you weep When you see the vacuum in my voice Hover upon my lower lip Where the broken wind balances Those desires and despair And life in its likeliest form Is heartbeat at the end of a hair
If only I could myself see and show What I have lost in my pursuit to know The allegories of living Without wanting to grow Alas, I have my own Reason to bear the blame: For to the man who shall leave no footprints The dust is all the same
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
The Sea reminds me Of falling in love With a shadow Of a Dove Who, having slept in flight At the stroke of midnight Awoke falling for Dewdrops of sunlight
But the Sea is sadness And her roots are all songs Left by sailors Too eager to sail Alone into oblivion In a hope to live a tale Written by some abandoned watchtower Laughing beside the dock
And the Dove, crystalline in her virgin whiteness Covets the Shore; With his silence a song Played by the sand Unaware that only the lost Will be found In the seed of his sound
Thus they remain knitted The Dove, Sea and Shore In search of another Forevermore So blind in their yearning Of the love they cannot find That none waits to see The one left behind
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…
All I can think about is dust and dusk And drowning in a shattered sea Made of glass Like a photograph of a falling man Who is never truly falling But eternally trapped With a suspended scream In an endless dream Like a dreamless wraith; Weightless and wordless As an orphan in death
But sometimes the night is too strong for me to sleep And the dreams I have are too dark for me to keep So I become a cobweb on the far wall Or a three pin plug lost in a socket Some crumpled paper on the floor Or a faded face in an old heart shaped locket A catharsis of cause Building prisons to be free An empty ship sailing An emptier sea
Where there is fog in the air And yet I stare Like a blind man blinking Without thinking at the sky Wondering in my own vacuum About the mute purpose of ‘Why’ With voices at the edge of my vision And footsteps at the back of my mind I am dreaming of being asleep And afraid of losing what I cannot find
Thus, in this black and white world In this sharp and smooth world In this loud and quiet world In this bitter and sweet world In this dull and fragrant world I shall remain awake Till a different tomorrow
I was born out of the blue Like a star without a face And shall one day be falling too As dust without a trace In hope that when I am gone Those very few whom I knew Kept something of the light With which their wish came true…
She was a painted panther Black skin and velvet dye Her eyes had all the answers But her lips knew when to lie Her home was a silver wasteland A piece of moon was her throne at night She spoke only in shadows And heard only the sound of light Her shape was god and movement And her name was without a face People worshipped her from far Like a pilgrim without a place And before long we all will be dreaming Her dreams on the final bed Where all eyes turn inward ever after And no more any word is said Because she was a painted panther Black skin and velvet dye Her eyes had all the answers But her lips knew when to lie
THE HUMAN ANVIL 