Aargh, this silence kills me —
My Muse is dead, Her voice
Gone — silenced
If ever truly here … hear hear
Her voice no longer here, yet
She is closer — present
— longing
I feel her — the longing
My cross
To bear — across this desert
Of dust, and despair.
You swear by your last breath
that FOMO – that endless catching up
of too trivial matters to mention
yet too important to not share
widely, is not swearing – while I
follow another church of similar truth
the Fearing Unsolicited Casual Knowledge
by dipping my toes into the river
of vagueness NOT – I say FUCK
is what I do, I find bliss
there in the ignorance
I find the blessed peace
you are so desperate
to achieve.
<huff> Is there a Blurb AI? Poets shouldn’t be required to write blurbs for poetry collections. It’s poetry, it’s shite, it’s shitty words on dead trees. I hate promoting words responsible for the slaughter of millions of trees. I hate blurbs. I hate writing pretentious words about dead words. I hate … but I have to get the book sold, is there a Blurb AI? </huff>
You ask me to put my past behind me / but the past is all I have / I carry nothing of your alluring future / the known is all there is / the tapping of tired toes across hazy dusty floorboards / the yanking of rusty chains and boys crying wolf / gingerbread men and sickly treacle tarts / I need no other future than the one that has come to pass.
In the new land nothing grew
Like weed, no growth without feed
They said
I could indeed
Become a better me
If only I could learn to see
Truth in the deal
On offer:
Death only speaks to the living.
In the land of the new nothing grew
But sorrow
Over the same tomorrows
& weeds walking
Asking for charities
From OAPs
Skidding like kiddies
In silent wintery splash parks.
Death speaks only to the living
& OAPs
Hell-bent on killing
Every thought
Of change.
Death to the living.
Death to weed.
Death to the deal
— on offer
In the land of old and new
I pursue a Truth
Worthy the cause
Of living.
Every week I shed my face,
Don the youthful appearance
Of my latent longing eye
Buried deep within
An unconcerned
Apocalyptic
Mind.
Every day I seek that face
Once, or twice, spoken to
Like it held the answers
To someone’s solemn
Dream.
Every moment I find
Only shattered memories
Of what one was
An I.
Every shard just evidence
Of yearning
To stay
Alive.
I no longer make bold
To chant your warbling words,
The poetry of the longing
& pining for another world.
I no longer venture
To tempt our Father’s Fate
Of falling into love’s abyss
& Mother’s wicked mesh.
I no longer presume
To sing my tepid Truth,
The poetry of a longing
& a tightening noose.
As I tinker with the fourth poetry collection I realise how far I have come, yet I find little comfort in that moment knowing the roads I’ve walked and the oblique paths waiting in the shroud of ignorance. My life did a volta, unexpectedly as if it was a poem and the poet changed their hum. Hum. Hum. Hum. I never knew the power of a hum. A hum can break and undo a life, a solid life as if set in concrete can shatter from a simple change of hum. Huh, fancy that. Ho hum. I tinker and think no further on matters ahead. Shards of moulded clay lay shattered by my feet. I imagine I look naked and lacklustre, finding no evidence of otherwise. The darkest day has turned to night, and in that I find comfort.
Come as you are, come as you were
When the slow snow fell
Across our virgin land,
Seeking glitter and glimmer
Underneath the Nevertheless
& the tinfoil hats
Tightly towered.
Come direct, come circumspect
Through the muddle and puddles
Of the path I present:
A tarp to trap you! Hold you
In my flailing arms,
Embrace my sorrows then
Slice up my heart.
Come as you are, come as you were
Back then, when
We failed
Our hearts.
I’m tired, tired
Of staring through one pair of saxe blue
Seeing only lukewarm winds
And faint flakes of glittering glow
I’m tired, tired
Of seeing the same fake limbs flailing
As dawn turns to dusk
On yet another arduous unadventurous
Day
I’m tired, tired
Of putting one foot ahead of the other
Foot, feet, a measurement of yet another
Failed attempt
I’m tired, tired
Of staring through a single pair of saxe blue
Seeing lukewarm winds pulling through
The faint flakes — the glittering glows
Of Christmas
