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 wish to speak with myself The conversation Neither a monologue nor a soliloquy But I am afraid I would not allow My own confessions This heart knows far too much Of envy and hate And much too less Of chance and fate; those dark mistresses Pulling and pushing The tide of each rebirth Should I excuse myself within reason then And let the age that passes through each of us Sunder me to atoms Annihilating; once and for all Each kingly cause And gangrene dream Festering upon the thin skin of mind; For the soul in the end is nothing more Than a shadow aware of it’s own existence. Or should I in opus thoughts claim The Midas Touch And let the pleasure and pain Every loss and gain, ravage me alive Into my own version of heaven and hell Beyond resistance and repercussions Or time and it’s tale And dare to be free For once all of me? Alas the soul cannot know Of which the mind did not sow Thus I remain here Within this blindness which seek The mirror left behind; And await my reflection to speak.
In this sudden stillness A final silence grows From beneath the dead branches Enveloping ants and Angels alike
The dry mist of purpose That once haunted men Now haunts their monuments The mindless mortar Made and remade For each thought And every contour Which seeks in itself The forever form That everlasting aspiration Of becoming a being
But the Promethean promises Are but promises Just as the silhouette stems from the shape So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette Like a circle trapped Within its own circumference Sans a seen beginning Sans any unseen end
There is a witness For every arrival Till no one arrives anymore And then the fishes are left alone in the desert To drown in the mirage of memories The breathing carcass Reminiscent of living In an abandoned womb Never to awake Never to walk Like ages unspent Upon the faces of the rock
I believe the night to be beautiful And polite in its quiet understanding Of letting people be Alone with their monsters That others would never see For the dark cannot differ Between the shape and its shadow Nor cast colours by their causes Or ask more of friend and less of foe To night all belong Both the dreamer and its dreams The silence of frozen lakes And the songs of eternal streams But here in the deep Within the halls of man’s own mind The dark reigns ever awake In hope to one day find The answer all eyes seek Yet doubt to ever know; If the soul is but a seed That once then shall never grow…
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…