“Eylenda” (Poem)

 

it’s aspen in the eighties, basically,

but farther out,

father north,

and with tidier feel,

a winter wonderland

you’re paying for,

governed as a guest,

staffing forever,

but you’re living

your holiday life,

eating vegan food in

vinyl restaurants,

watching art cinema

with a beer in your hand,

starving, full of ideas,

full of elven energy,

peering at snowflakes

wondering how now

it could seem so right,

even in the hard ship

of a dark winter night.

‘Firing Line’ (Poem)

William Buckley Jr grinning
white tombstone teeth
listening rhapsodically
to LSD poetry from
Ginsberg or Leary,
looking from
window paned eyes,
though
both seeing clearly
the truth behind the mystery.

It’s a scene to call for,
cultured carnivores
fighting
the artistic valour,
a kaleidoscope privilege
looked upon from
the higher floor,
growing and gleaming like
the ball-clustered flowers
of a Californian sycamore.

This odd couple,
unbuckled and ready for
rebuttals
a coastal hustle that puts
money in both bubbles,
burying counter culture
prophets with a
televised shovel,
peace and trouble
carved into the knuckle.

‘Pilot’ (Poem)

A pilot called consciousness,
no vetting, no training,
thrust behind the joystick,
told to fly through darkness,
distracted in a jet branded existence,
a flashing toy in a black
windowless room,
blinking lights,
tails of smoke
fading
into
a dark blue gloom.

 

‘An Introduction at Parties’ (Poem)

Narcissist. Nihilist. Problematic anarchist.
Self-destructive alienator.
Pauper. God perverter. Danger.
Does not work well with others.
Instigator. Stirrer. Fraudster. Cheat.
Gangster. Liar. Thief. Cunt.
Perpetrator. Thick skinned alligator torturer.
Tyrant. Tedious. Denial. Vomit. Bile.
“Escape Artist”. Necrophile.
Meanwhile, excuses. Useless. Unemployable.
Clueless. Through with this.
Shambles. Electric shock. Gambler.
Alcoholic. Addict.
Unoriginal. Sick. Pained.
Rejected prick.
Abandoned. Fearful.
No hope for the cheerful.

 

Night Out (Poem)

It’s late night cradling the cool cannister in my palm
arch breathing to a nordic wind
sing song nights, full of lust, long.
Have you seen the skies darken to a cool blue dawn?
Clouds thicken, cigarette black knight, marching along
hard paved streets to candlelit windows, muscular men
and physical love, red lips parting disaster on my tongue.
Fuck, I want to write a love song but there are
diseases killing me mysteriously,
so I fill my torn stomach with viking drink and vaginal fluid
easily. Worthless envy led me here, parasitic, alive
in the guttural landscape, in demise, at the hands
of Spanish women and paranoia.
“Hallelujah” screams the Professor of Genetics and he hands me
a bottle of wine. “Boy, I like your outlook on life.”
Creeping around downtown hardpressed looking for Goddesses
in red dresses, hip swinging, sodomites.
Running now, dancing in a club with lowlifes
breeding ground, out loud, animal sounds, everyone
looking around for the baby farms.
Find them here, night out, proud of the romance
dribble hanging from your mouth.

 

Vortexing (Poem)

I’m tired
of always being of wired
and getting fired
for thievery and non-compliance.
I have a reputation for
always lying, denial and spiralling
like a vortex.
There is some
importance in noting that
I’ll likely choke under pressure
and ruin the project.
Whether opportunities are blown,
or not, my seeds are sown
anyway, anyhow,
I’m still alone
and tired
of always being wired.

‘Forty’ (Poem)

It’s here, and there is colour
and movement and smoke
and cotton and fingers
and lips and characters
and breathing and trumpets
and intervals and moving…
again –
and background laughter
and shaky legs and flutes
and tiny little heads and wine bottles
and private acts and moaning
and total confusion
and then there is nothing
and it is gone.

OXY (Poem)

LOSS OF OXYGEN PANIC BUTTON APOCALYPSE FOUR WALLS BLOOD ROCKS BITCH BLIND CRUCIFIX COCK BLOCK FATHER I’M GETTING OLDER PRESSURE ON MY SHOULDERS CRIPPLING IT’S A DISASTER NO DISCIPLINE I’VE TOLD HER I LIKE MY RITALIN, I LIKE LIVING FASTER, I’VE BEEN CHEWING MY TEETH FOR HOURS, WHERE ARE MY FLOWERS? IN JET BLACK VASES IN DEATH CRACK HOUSES, SPOOKY VOODOO MAGIC HINDU POWERS, WHO BE YOU I COWER BEFORE NO MAN I’M AN ALPHA PAPA PAIN FAGGOT JUST INSPIRED BY ILLMATIC NECRO-SEXUALLY TRANSCENDING RESURRECTING MY MANTLE AS THE BLACKEST KING OF THE JUNGLE.

 

‘E.’ (Poem)

 
Ask me what God is and
I’d say it’s us. What is God if not 
the sacred, profound,
the blinding and brilliant? The challenges
insurmountable, the madness dark and 
bleeding, breathing and moaning, in bite
marks on a Mediterranean morning?  
What is God
if not the unarguable reality, faith
undying belief in
hands still clinging
even at the hopeful dawn of
some mutual understanding? 
My God is you, 
on my lap laughing gone
fearless, hair down fingers
entwine, tangled unimaginable
purity, faster breed of
complicated, love transcribed 
in languages I can’t read. 
Our God cannot be spoken of
without us in its form, has only
one thankful prayer, heard in the
wet lips and skin,
in bodies clenched together
hot and alive
under sun, rain and sleet, — 
Oh, the cold has many arms,
but when it holds, the warmth
of your sky-bound spirit
breaks through, deliverance itself, 
revealing my God
In unspeakable truth, 
In sacred promise,
of defiance and growth so sweet. 
My God is Sentimental, a word I hate
but feel irreversibly, bone deep, forever
willing at the mouth, as goose pimples
on the neck, in gazes we can’t bear —
I don’t believe in what’s not here,
because what is here 
is so beautiful, painful and real,
that it’s beyond my abilities 
as a writer to speak about it. 

‘Grope’ (Poem)

“C’mon! C’mon!”
She’s yelling at me.
I can’t. It’s awkward.
I want to ask something
terrible, but I can’t.
“C’mon!”
“It’s hard when you’re
yelling at me.”
She’s not appreciating this.
This is a favour.
A miserable, lonely favour.
What the hell is she thinking?
What the hell am I thinking?
I make some sound.
Like a happy, deep sound.
She stares at me. She knows
I’m a liar.
“So great,” I say.
“Hmm” she says, and coughs
into her palm.