In Transition (Poem 365)

At the airport

Waiting

For an arrival

A departure

A chance

A chance to arrive

A chance to depart

To be somewhere else

To stay

Watching

Myself

Others

Hopes and fears

Dreams and realities

Desires and depressions

Disgust and empathy

Come and go

Live and die

In an uncomfortable skin

Waiting

At the airport

Just...

Bye

A breathless ending

Deftly monopolising

The moment with small, softly

Fading footsteps and

A half hearted wave.

A Celestial Insect

Lying

In a windowless room

Without a light switch

Or any other switches

Or electricity

Made of cardboard

So, technically

A box

Watching Heaven

In a cockroach

Climb a wall

Cross the ceiling

Descend a wall

Cross the floor

My torso

The floor

And do it all again

While waiting

For life to right itself

Kind of sucks.

Oh well,

At least there's entertainment.

Squished Distended

Towards the front end

Upside down

And

Backwards

The frog hops

And

Hops

And

Hops

But always ends up

Facing

The wrong way

At the start.

The Talent that Wasn't There

I lie an entity

Without hands

Weaving a tapestry

Without limbs

Pressing pedals

Without eyes

Choosing colours

Demonstrating

Without ego

My greatest creation

The child of my

Imaginings

Presented

Without pretense

Described

Without words

Conceptualised

Without mind

Displayed

Without affect.

Paper

The sapling leans

Towards the grey

Sun frightened

And parched 

From drowning;

A sudden downpour

Swept away.

Caged Zoo

Tiger

Sitting

Pacing

Sitting

Staring

Sitting

Lunging

Prey.

Getting Nowhere

Grey matter

Is swept away

By the sweepers

Driving sweeping cars

Until the masses stand lobotomised

Hitchhiking in a circle, spinning wheels round

Back to the start again, more grey matter on the ground.

Fertility Party

Towards dawn

Birds sing

But it's too early

Towards dawn

Cockroaches scuttle

And hide

Towards dawn

Couples stop romancing

Laying in awkward  silence

Towards dawn

A noise wakes me

There's someone in my room.

Audition

An air of song

Lilting

Slightly stuck

Just behind the larynx

The thing of beauty

Emerges scraped

And torn:

A travesty

An embarrassment

Humbling.

A time machine

Is in order.

Too Old and Too Young, A Modern Car

The darkness languishes

Cold logic falters

Fear remains

But not so much

To provide the

Thrill of adrenalyne

Not so much

To stop the heart

My cloaks and trappings

Are stripped away

Milestone upon milestone

New ones are taken

But they never fit right

And I am left naked

To the ravages

And circumspect wisdom

Of age.

My years gallop away

So fast I never saw them

A decade passes in a single step

I try to stand still

As the subsequent decades rise up

Threatening to follow all the more quickly

I dare not blink.

Lips Twitch

Smiling words

Redirected

Into a pig's ear.

Smiling voices

Offered lightly

Uttered meaninglessly

Smiling eyes

Cast away

To some preferred shore

Smiles falter.

Not Knowing Where it all Went Wrong

A finger pressed to lips

No words

Without a word

Just a smile

Then nothing.

Ravenous Sign Post

The raven eats a flag pole

The whole thing swallowed

In one long pull.

The raven totters and reels

Made heavy and unbalanced

Stretched diagonal by the metal.

The raven caws and caws

But the calls are trapped inside

Echoing and absorbed, metal and flesh.

The raven spins and swoons

Ejecting the feast as upon hitting the ground

There it dies, as is to be expected.

The raven ate a flag pole.

Quickly Before I Can't Feel My Hands!

The fuzzy lights of

Pain pills are more disturbing

Than the injury.

Imperfect Numbers

Ten.

Ten fingers to count

All the tens of ways

Of pressing ten keys

Ten times

On ten keyboards

Which is ten less than enough

To compose one, much less ten

Letters, and ten fewer symphonies.

You tend to disappoint that way.

And I with the ten things

I never intended to do

Ten things I did anyway

Ten ways I disappointed myself.

Ten.

Cyclical

Towards an end left

Behind, nearly forgotten,

Remembered and left.

Lose a game that's been Lost

Utterly lost

At a loss

For where lost

Is found to lose

The loss

Of the lost.

With Everything Explored

Strolling along

One jaunting day

I came to the end of the road

I stopped and stood

I stared agog

And pranced in place

Utterly dumbfounded

There was no reason here

Birds flew west

Clocks travelled north

And only chimed on the quarter hour

But never the same quarter

In any given hour

And somehow managed to fit

More than four quarters

Into one whole.

The road did not slow

Nor slope

Nor decay

In its descent

Some warning of the end

It simply stopped

As though

A giant pair of shears

Had cut it clean through

Along with the rest

Of time and space and reason

And hidden it all in a drawer

Locked in some long forgotten desk

Where all the best secrets are kept

And forgotten

God is hidden in their too I bet

Or at least the answer to which

Is the right and which are superfluous.

As for me

Finally I just sit

And wait

Whiling away each

Northbound, bisected hour

Since, you see

The way back

Has been cut away

As well.

Chemical Tea

April snowfalls and

Other paradoxical

Weather perplexes.

Famine

Deluge Gods of faint

Praise for dead subjects to sleep

Beneath fruitless rain.

Toil

Small pains for sadness

As suffering is best sipped

More for happiness.

On Entry Wounds

I long to run where
Snipers play, along the green
And blood soaked field to find
A peace I've never
Known from deep within.

Plagiarism

Typety
Typety
Type
Type
Type...
Ty...pe...
Copy. Paste. Print.

Peachy

A silent nod
At parting ways
Towards the east
Towards the west
A cyclical motion
Like ducks
In a hurricane.

Adulthood

One day a crux comes
Calling to carry away
The little ones' dreams.

Blue Barricade

A sorrow

Songs keep ringing

A death knell

Nailing in a coffin

An anguished cry

On the downward slide

A bell toll

Slipping away

A loss.

The Grave Robber

My nights see roses bloom in such stillness

The air about them tearing on their thorns

Their nectar able to cure all illness

So long as no one lives, so no one mourns.

Each tip, a broken heart they cannot cure

Though sadness they put an end to weeping

One cloud of breath, one set of eyes unsure

Unbalances life to lifeless sleeping.

Every step kills the comfort of a tomb

Where side by side eternal comrades lie

Roses thrive in fragrant forever bloom

So long the breath does not refuse to die.

As this land was shared by peasants and kings

So it shared deceit and all such love brings.

Escape is Easy

I spiral out of control

Because of an account

Of your unaccountability.

I go out of my head

Because of a report

Of your unreportable behaviour.

I fly off the handle

Because of a romance

You found so unromantic.

I keep firing shots

Until one of us is dead.

Active Inaction

Elect to confront

To avoid confrontation

And go simply mad.

Not Being Last

An end in numbers

Ending in a great divide

Destroying symbolism

So that nothing counts

There is no sequence.

Supernova

The penultimate penumbra

Saturating Saturn

In the lithe light

Of the brittle body

Of a fast fading 

Celestial station

Trading tired,

Pitted paths for

Monumental mires,

Brief battles for

Sustained strikes

Destroying decay with

The ultimate unifier.

A Meagre Death

The dawn closes in

Dragging claws along the depth

Of night, striking stars.

Towering

Rage encrusted screams

Hanging off of the rafters

The ghost behind the curtain

In antesceptic

Photographs of life.

Good Morning

A shuffling step

Forward back

A tiny smile

Forward back

A little wave

Forward back

And then goodbye.

It Gets Worse with Every Line

Exhaustion waits

A beast in slumber

I can move no more

The eyes twitch

Counting without number

I can move no more

A weight descends

Causing breath to slow

I can sleep no more

Destroying hands

Plunder and go

I can move no more.

Germinate and Rot

Withering crops

Of human stock

Lay troubled

Dieing of

Self inflicted

Wounds

Filled with

The salt

Of the Earth

Instinct turned

Destructive

So that the

Surest path

To survival

Is not

To survive.

Distorted Houses

Imprisoned by glass manacles
Of crystalline beauty
The anemic lays
Pale and trembling
The picture of ambivalence.

Frustrated

These events render

Unrecognisable the

Passions and rancorous howls

As tempestuous

Screams rail, shake and squall.

Until...

To endure the unendurable
Is a feat of small measure
Inching up the mountain side
Step by step without supplies
Until at last exhausted
Endurance fails
And then you're done.

Conundrum

Without the day

Reflecting light

The lesson escapes

The master

Bound in a fury

Of unrequited

Learning.

A Cull for Genocide

Take the few

The weak

The small

Send them forth to fight

A fool's battle

Of skills poorly matched

Light a match

To the incendiary

Watch the fire grow

All consuming

As wounded sheep

Mill about the field

Bleating, screaming,

Natural selection.

Dingy, Orange Tiles

The light shines within

From without

Illuminating the cracks and crevices

The signs of age

The damaged arteries

The flaws

An overworked heart

An underworked stomach

Little used muscles

And the endless toll

Of the surgeries

To hide it.

If the light stopped

Where light is supposed to stop

The picture would be different

But this light doesn't work that way

It seeks out

And brings to bare

The walking dead.

A Kind of Problem

I stand amongst the
Dark and huddled masses as
We are swallowed whole.

Shut Down

I face the computer
It faces me
I stare into its depths
It stares back
We are at an impasse
A storm is brewing
Not quite a war
Yet
But something quietly
Unpleasant
Like the smell
Of the living decay
Of a person who has
Been staring at the computer
For days on end
Never moving
Slower than sloth
Mold growing
Between the toes
But I can't give up
Not yet
The computer is
Bound to blink
First.

Overbalanced Underfoot

Reaching forward, toes

Outstretched until the bottom

Falls out and I plummet down

To the end, an end

Without a middle.

Forlorn

The joy of laying

To rest the remains of a

Wasted life is fierce.

To Bed

The day stutters, still,

Halting with the screech of gears

Grinding in protest.

In Time

The world tilts on its axis

Hollow on one side

Slightly dented

As it turns its wobbly course

Trading seasons for seasons

Until all seasons fade

To one long, raging, unpredictable storm

First they follow science to try to work it out

Then they follow God, the followers of every god

Then the followers turn simply to the Earth

And desperately try to fill it

Stuffing to smooth the concave edge

But it will not mend, it's been too long

Instead the hollow, empty of flesh

Held together by cracked skin and brittle bones

Breaks apart, and the entire planet crumbles

As the ancient has its end.

Thoughtless Thoughts

Whenever I try to think
All the thoughts go dribbling out my ears
Whenever I try to think
I scream and shout but nobody hears
Whenever I try to think
I get caught in a terrible lie
Whenever I try to think
All of my brain cells quite quickly die
Whenever I try to think
I forget exactly where I stand
Whenever I try to think
I always sever the other hand
Whenever I try to think
I drink from the wrong side of the cup
Whenever I try to think
I decide to give the practice up.

Depression or Disease

Still lethargy fills

My limbs, puppet strings lie lax

Long ago abandoned by a

Disinterested

Dead puppet master.

Unfulfilled

Lethargy has sapped

The body of all its strength

The mind of all its reason

Until the will fades

Leaving me hollow.

Faded Goal

To a darkening
Celestial sky I climb up
But never reaching.

In Order to Save Humanity

Trepidation
Dreading the day
And its endless
Uncertainties
Unclassified
As mannequins
Mill about
Spouting senseless
Theories
In replica
In repetition
Until the telephone
Wire snaps
And the nonsense
Escapes
Polluting the atmosphere
With a high pitched wail
That calls the drones
To divvy up
Measure up
Line up
And terminate
Executing the human race.

Without the Day

Towards a long awaited outcome
Traveling through the dark
Transversing waters deep and indifferent
Towards a long awaited demise.

Hardly Even There

The listless way he walks
Those fetching fetchless sighs
The empty way he talks
Those indifferent goodbyes
Illuminates a tragic trail
Trudged along the way
A failure waiting to fail
And try another day
To coax a walking corpse
To turn the day around
And continue through the copse
Without becoming a corpse lying down
Is a lesson lost on a drowning man
To continue until we no longer can.

Ten Things that Won't Necessarily Kill You

Running with scissors

Playing in traffic

Eating live mice

Waltzing through mine fields

Playing Russian roulette

Shooting yourself

Juggling acid

Swallowing a grenade

Watching TV for 720 hours straight

Stapling your eyelids to your forehead.

Talent

Humiliation

Calls, a hearkening to rise,

Fight and fall once more.

Webs

Down the dark hall

A spider creeps

First left

Then right

Then right up the wall

It travels

To a world in vertigo

Stormed by a giant

Armed with a shoe

The ground shakes

As the spider darts

From the thump, thump, thump

Of the attack

Retreating into a crack

To rest

And plot

Its retaliation.

A Little Rain

With a betrayal

The storm simmers with flames of

Tempestuous heat.

Disquiet the Mind

Through stress lies a calm

Illusionary stream which

Winds its way, eating away

At the subconscious

As the conscious screams.

Awaiting Serendipity

Longing toward the light

Against the dark cold

Of a life far more

Disappointing

Than dreams

Promised in coloured

Brightness; a joy

Known on the surface

But not in the heart.

How to Spend an Afternoon

Here I hold

In my hand

The fabled

Recipe

For respite

From boredom;

A potent

Formula

Which is matched

By nothing,

For nothing

Is quite as

Useful at

Whiling the

Hours away.

Watch closely

As I tear

The card up

And it blows

Away on

The wind to

Scatter through

The masses.

Now hurry,

Pick them up,

Every piece,

Or the cure

Will be lost

Forever.