New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Two new posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Pushing for the Moment

Announcement: Release of Going Down Swinging No. 29

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New poem: Never Again posted on http://markwilliamjackson.com/

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This Is Where

This Is Where

 

This is where my seeds are planted,
this is where my thoughts are filed,
this is where I house my visions,
this is where I lose my mind.                           

 

This is where my ghosts are living,
this is where my child was born,
this is where I mourn the lost day,
this is where I dance the dawn.

 

This is where I feed my cattle,             
this is where I starve my pig,
this is where I bury my feelings,
this is where I start my dig.                           

 

This is where the sun is colder,
this is where the moon is hot,
this is where the jazz bleeds pictures,
this is where the rock’s forgot.

 

This is where the smoke is golden,             
this is where the fruit is stained,
this is where I rest my body,
this is where I feel the pain.                            

 

This is where my mind is floating,
this is where my feet are lead,
this is where my life excites me,
this is where I seek the dead.

From a Box of Old

From a Box of Old

 

From a box of old photos

fell the picture.

I am pressed against

my dad’s back,

cheek firmly between

his shoulder blades,

arms wrapped around.

We sit on a rock

overlooking the Celtic Sea,

wind running through our hair

and I don’t want to ever let go.

We stare through the camera

and I am happy,

a smile as wide as the picture itself

features on my face.

From behind I could not see my dad’s face

but thirty years later

he looks worried,

something is about to happen,

the picture is about to be lost

amongst so many other

painful images.

At the Airport

At the Airport

The laptop-tapping-

cell-phone-talking-

bad-suit-wearing

zombies wait for their flights,

dragging bags and life behind them,

a slow death delayed

due to head winds.

The departure board flickers

like a stock price ticker

to all the hopeful suit boys

taking the delays as a personal affront,

the forces of nature having conspired

to keep Mr. Tie-Wearer

from his meeting.

I sit in my jeans and t-shirt

reading a poorly researched

Bukowski biography

waiting for the same flight,

delayed by the same winds,

only difference is

I’m laughing.

Laughing at the wrinkled frowns,

laughing at the frantic phone calls,

all the huffs and grunts

as the schedule is updated.

What can you do?

I guess some things

cannot be bought.

I Miss Myself

I Miss Myself

 

My little girl hugs me, squeezes,

Daddy, I miss you when you’re at work.

I squeeze back, me too.

She commands my eyes with her question look,

you miss yourself?

We laugh and I say yes.

But, you’re there?

But I’m not.

Death Without Any Words

Death Without Any Words

 

When you roll out the folds of your failed years,

and carefully trace back your choices,

each morning that you stepped into the shackles of life,

closed to the torment of voices.

 

When you lay down for a final time to rest,

and stale visions turn out the lights,

what stream of empty memories will climax with your death,

without any words save for last rites.

Freak Show

Freak Show

              inspired by David Lerner’s Mein Kampf

 

Step right up,

              step right up,

come see the poet at work.

 

Gasp at the furrowed brow,

              the constipated demeanor,

marvel at the rigor mortis life skills.

 

But please Ladies and Gentlemen,

              DO NOT FEED THE POET,

this creature must not be encouraged in any way.

Hopscotch

Hopscotch

 

Rain cries away chalk on ground,

my Angel howls,

all those opportunities lost,

but with the promise of reincarnation

television calls

The Price of Art - Commercial Success Kills Another Artist

The Price of Art / Commercial Success Kills Another Artist

 

1/

I got the movie

“The Basketball Diaries”

I bought it from K-Mart

 

I wonder if the shareholders know

 

while they’re sitting there

in middle class splendour,

counting their dividends,

and cursing their tax man,

I’m watching a crazed drug fiend

bash rebarbative

on his mother’s door,

looking for an angry fix.

 

2/

I stole some art

and deprived the artist of income,

but Nevermind the artist’s dead,

fashioned himself into

a martyr for an unknown generation,

though I do feel bad I deprived a

              major corporation of royalties.

 

3/

Commercial Success Kills Another Artist.

Starved from starving. Exploded.

Blinded after darkness.

 

Suffered a corporate soul extraction

with a stylus tipped syringe,

chemically reproduced

for the herd to devour.

 

Feral primal measure

replaced by a mission statement based pentameter.

 

Weighed down by grammys.

Sank in the flow of royalties.

 

4/

Ginsberg tore me,

Carroll restore me,

Charles Bukowski

is Henry Chinaski.

 

Kurt Cobain

died in vein

‘cause in his vein

was heroine.

Why Do We Do It

Why Do We Do It?

Why do we answer the chatter in our heads,

why do we soil white paper,

giving birth on a page,

painful labour not helped by Lamaze.

Why do we send our children out to suffer

what we must suffer.

We could be doctors or bankers

or deal with the politics of the world,

or the pure mathematics of the universes.

Sometimes it would be easier to part a sea

than have to bury another child under the epitaph

‘thank you but space is limited.’

Hote Hell

Hote Hell

 

The walls bleed hate

in this god forsaken place,

taps drip with torturous monotony,

they've short sheeted my bed

to mess with my head

and effect a frontal lobotomy.

Life by Remote Control

Life by Remote Control

 

Ensconced in the images.

Injections from the 40 inch frame

across the room.

 

Bourgeois buttocks comfortable

on a lounge cut from old growth

forest by third world underaged.

 

Watch the news for sports updates,

interspersed with messages of the

latest products, requirements for a

new and improved reduced fat life.

Abject images are quickly flicked.

 

Reality TV

is an oxy   moron.

Dust

Dust

 

I drove through the dense dust

carried to Sydney on western winds

leaving antique coverings.

 

As the sun supposedly rose,

the air changed from pitch to a sepia brown,

framed in forgotten photography

 

The traffic slowed to a crawl

I lowered the window to have a cigarette

and felt injected into a horror movie.

 

Everyone driving the one road

to escape the evil entity

that had descended.

 

I tuned my radio

to listen for messages

of Armageddon.

 

Through the city streets

branches had fallen in overnight conflict,

leaf corpses lay strewn across roads,

and emergency services sirens

howled in the distance.

Reversion (Ode to the Lackadaisical)

 

Reversion (Ode to the Lackadaisical)

 

Cry, scream, bleed,

              as the sun sinks behind

              the horizon’s teeth.

 

Ancient shapes appear in the darkness,

              raining

              their two thousand year old warning.

 

The past, present and future mould

              into a surge of grey.

              -like a cyclone.

 

A man screams as his toes are ripped out

              by the jaws of a mechanical beast,

              and are melted, to be used in car manufacture.

 

A baby cries as his breast is taken,

              his mother is to be used

              welding weapons for the poor.

 

I laugh and joke with my next door neighbour

              over the fence as we have a beer,

              “it’s been quite a good year.”

 

The soil turns to rock before my eyes,

              the leaves are turning brown,

              I’m feeling rather sleepy.

Some People

 

Some People

 

Some people

clean their cars,

paint and polish them.

 

Some people

iron their shirts,

putting razor crisp edges into the sleeves.

Some people shave their faces.

 

Some people

build their careers,

becoming more and more important

with each step

they take.

 

Some people

go to church

and can wash the sins of a weak

in one Sunday mourning.

 

Some people

choose to lose.

Addictions.

Lost At Sea

Lost At Sea

 

Scatter scumdumps on the sand,

              step in sea, be crushed,

words in air, blow and freeze,

              to a melancholic mush.

 

Foamy kisses caress bones,

              fluorescent orange life jacket sag,

remnants of ocean meal strewn,

              beaches face, a hag.

 

In seaweed, mulch, hair long, knotted,

              a skull hides to decay,

velcro to sand and wait a while,

              to stink on a sunny day.

 

A ship, whose name will be lost in time,

              sails into the death,

swirl and twist at the moons order,

              and anchor on a final breath.

 

Anguish and sorrow from castaway lovers,

              at the mess and what could have been,

step over mulch, and condoms, and twigs,

              to once more challenge the sea.

1 August 2009

1 August 2009

 

The first of August 2009 was a Saturday,

the 213th day of the year,

the waxing gibbous moon surrendered to the sunrise

along the Australian eastern coastline

at exactly 7:00 am.

 

There were no official holidays or major observances.

 

I sat at my desk mentally plotting my day,

at 8:07 am the phone rang,

a voice echoed through Bell’s ancient wires,

my brother had died.

 

Google the 1st of August 2009

you will only receive statistics.

Life Doesn't Go On

Life Doesn’t Go On

 

You’re gone and

life doesn’t go on,

life becomes still

and horrible,

and every time

I see the trophy

that you won

in 2003 for

Most Improved

in Division A

Photography

I’m reminded that

you’re not here and

neither is the year.

My Stay Shun

My Stay Shun

 

I guest it was my stay shun

too sale with the fools

who ride the tide of iddio sea.

 

I tried to ply the game

I couldn’t grasp the rules

now I’m doomed to drown in sanna tea.

While I Sleep

While I Sleep

 

Time does not stop while I sleep,

breaths continue to turn the globe,

Europe dances above my head,

and bombs fall on Gaza while I sleep.

 

The gears keep working while I sleep,

machinery keeps crunching,

clouds form and rain drops and skies clear

and seasons pass while I sleep.

 

Books go unread while I sleep,

poems go unanswered,

thoughts wrestle to no end and

die in a dawn ambush while I sleep.

 

My daughters keep growing while I sleep,

possibilities germinate,

where will they go, what will they do,

how can they leave me in my sleep.

 

Tidal movements, and traffic lights, and moon phases,

and whale songs, and bread baking, and coffee brewing,

and street sweepers, and death, and birth, and learning,

and singing, and chasing, and barking, and shouting,

 

and life,

 

life does not wait for me

              while I sleep.

Men of the Lowest Repute

Men of the Lowest Repute

 

Men of navy, of black and grey,

who bleed their lungs to take the day,

who scream their rules, their roads, their way,

who choose the price that you must pay.

 

Men who should loud with votes,

their promises and souls they quote,

whose lives would be of little note,

who send ‘their’ people on straws to float.

 

They’ve chewed the earth, and spewed concrete,

throw us tiny morsels to eat,

with snide remarks they bid us greet,

and pull the grass from under our feet.

 

My vote to none, I won’t condone

the willful selling of our home,

to the beasts who deny our megaphone,

who carve their effigies with our bone.

Eighteen Months for Silvia

Eighteen Months for Silvia

I saw you.
Azure blue vomits fond memories,
celestial visions of our dance.

And how we danced.

But the song distorted,
hideous spasms controlled my mind
and forced my foot on the throttle.

I was starved of light in a summer sky,
minutes stripped hours from my life.
I drove a wicked road past vicious memories,

and crashed against introspection.

I craved for your nicotine
and to chase your caffeine buzz
while my salivating rabid dog of addiction

spewed shackles around my neck.

But in the distance you sang our song,
somehow the bruises hadn’t stolen your vision,
and you stood braver than I could dream.

Eighteen months is a long and short time
to stand in one spot and travel,
a lost weekend? a lugubrious retreat?

This poem should read as a song of ‘thank you’?

Gripped in the Middle of a Week

Gripped in the Middle of a Week

 

Wednesday crashes

like a drunken friend.

Gripped in the middle

of a week.

Too late to turn around,

too early to start

plans for a real life.

 

Separated

from your lungs,

weighted under

the water of week.

Wednesday washes

wishes away.

Only Tuesday

 

Only Tuesday

 

Reds and orange

attack the black

from the eastern horizon.

Car engines start

(the earth’s tired moan).

And today is only Tuesday,

but, like all others,

it is the best one ever.

Another morning

heralds

the best day of my life.

Monday Cripple

Monday Cripple

 

It starts again.

And the memories

of laughs

played last week

have faded

to black.

The end credits

have rolled.

 

The next movie begins.

Title screen:

“A new week.”

Starring:

“You.”

Directed by:

“You.”

With Special Guest Director:

“The Unknown Force.”

 

Fade in:

We find the protagonist

struggling

trying to lift

a great weight.

“Monday.”

Souls Reunion

Souls Reunion

 

After the long sleep,

after the dark tunnel,

comes the light,

the warmth of mourning.

 

Somewhere, hidden to terrestrial minds

reunions happen. Great heavenly dances

celebrate the end of loneliness.

Souls that travelled together

in frail earthly bodies

rejoin in ethereal flight.

Forced Words

Forced Words

 

Coffee cup stains on empty pages,

sunlight fights the poet’s eyes,

mourn the darkness remain in sombre,

dreaming dreams of unborn lies.

 

I called for you to add your coinage,

and build upon the mound of junkyard spit,

but found you lying in accidental sobriety,

prophesising doomsday millennium bullshit.

 

Force the words to fill your pages,

seek acclaim from those who count,

drop the pen in fits of laughter,

seek to blame the ones who’ve found.

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day

 

Sitting haunted at the end of a rented bed,

he lets his head drop into the paper he holds.

Paper from a happy past,

paper pressed before the bottle.

 

Tears drop from his bloodshot eyes

onto the crayon coloured picture

of stick figure girl standing between

stick figure pretty lady and stick figure tall man.

 

Old hands shake the ageing words underneath,

Daddy I love you, Happy Fathers Day.

Words from a happy past

a long time ago.

Scattered Glass

 

Scattered Glass

 

Glass scattered across the road,

like rain,

glistening.

There’s been an accident.

 

Ordinarily I wouldn’t give it a second thought

I’d just think “there’s been an accident,”

but this morning I think

about those involved.

 

Hundreds will drive past

this pond of broken glass,

some will catch a reflected gleam,

some will hear a crunch,

 

but long after the glass is cleared away

someone will still hear the crunch

echoing in their memories,

and will still wince from the

reflected gleam of their vision.

Seiko Staring

Seiko Staring

 

Time slides.

Seconds drip

into hours

into days

into a life.

 

Life slides

and drips

while a man

stands

admiring

his new Seiko.

 

Life catches the bus

our man

still. Seiko staring.

Eulogy

Eulogy

 

If I should die

and you survive me,

don’t you cry

retain the memory.

Have me cremated

in front of a crowd

of the people I hated

then shout out loud;

 

laugh you may as you see him burn

but with this thought he left you

it only took him a few years to learn

the mysteries that stand before you.

 

Then watch them cry

as you read this out

that I should die

without any doubt.

All

All

 

All

Because

Content

Dying

Evolves into

Form.

Getting

Heavier

Inside.

Just

Killing

Life.

Maybe

Now,

Over. Over

Periods

Quietly,

Rightly

Suppressed,

Tightly.

Under

Viral

Words,

X factors.

Yours,

Zealot.

it ergs me

it ergs me

 

i don’t like it

but i need the money

so i shut up

and put up

and cow the milk

and spread the honey

The Legacy of John Winston Howard, Prime Minister of Australia 19

The Legacy of John Winston Howard, Prime Minister of Australia 1996 - 2007

 

Johnny say sorry

              for ignoring land rights.

Johnny say sorry

              for the Cronulla riots.

Johnny say sorry

              for the children overboard.

Johnny say sorry

              for this fucking stupid war.

Johnny say sorry

              for sanctioning book burning.

Johnny say sorry

              for ignoring global warming.

Johnny say sorry

              for aiding your media cronies.

Johnny say sorry

              for all the Alan Joneses.

Johnny say sorry

              for detaining refugees.

Johnny say sorry

              for raping the ABC.

Johnny say sorry

              for preaching your evil hymns.

Johnny say sorry

              for marginalising muslims.

Johnny say sorry

              for abandoning David Hicks.

Johnny say sorry

              for poisoning weetbix.

Johnny say sorry

              for the I.R. reforms.

Johnny say sorry

              for the sedition laws.

Johnny say sorry

              for the soldiers who have died.

Johnny say sorry

              for creating apartheid.

Johnny say sorry

              for the rising interest rates.

Johnny say sorry

              for sucking up to the United States.

Johnny say sorry

              for your selective history teaching.

Johnny say sorry

              it’s time, it’s time for the impeaching.

To the Tune of Tom Waits’ ‘Pasties and a G-String’

To the Tune of Tom Waits’ ‘Pasties and a G-String’

 

Staring at a brick wall

              looking through the sun,

my eyes are half-wired open

              and the day has just begun.

 

Knocking on the bleachers

              making sure my throat is clear,

sing a song of cigarettes

              as the midday sun draws near.

 

Throw a fish to Shiva

              watch it flapping cold,

twist my neck much further

              now the day is getting old.

 

Walking on a tightrope

              swinging from a tree,

my eyes are now wide open

              which is why I cannot see.

 

Gently light the candle

              watch its wax wane slow,

drown my head in slumber

              shifting to and fro.

As I Lay Me Down to Rot

 

As I Lay Me Down To Rot

 

As I lay down upon this rock

and watch my skin begin to rot

I place some pennies on my eyes

and spread my arms to be crucified.

 

The sun burns down upon my head

my mind will join where my soul is dead

a sacrifice of no note worth

I’ll bleed into soil and pollute the earth.

 

Eternal condemn as I killed my days

damnation is mine for my evil ways

I cut to pieces my rented soul

used love as a shovel to dig my whole.

In The Silence I'm Damned

In The Silence I’m Damned

 

In the silence I’m drilled,

injected with terrible visions of reality

through my temples and behind my eyes,

exposing the dark places where I chose to hide.

In the silence I’m damned to remember

my brother is gone.

Without Archon

Without Archon

 

Too young our limitations are taught,

and recollections of battles fought

are written in history by victors alone,

while revolutionary pages are bleached by bone,

and the stories that scream to be unleashed

are never in so called democracy teached.

Oh lust to be without archon.

In my head the battle is won.

The Birth of Sorrow - Thoughts of Human Suffering

 

The Birth of Sorrow – Thoughts of Human Suffering

 

And they named him ‘Sorrow’,

              for he cried.

And his tears flowed like a river,

              for they weren’t his, but the tears of a million generations,

and every tear he shed

              represented one human suffering.

He never stopped crying until he died,

              and then the world shed a tear.

Too Many Goodbyes

Too Many Goodbyes

 

Too many souls

shifting into the night,

passing too quickly,

too many goodbyes.

 

Fires that burned too furious,

fires that burned too bright,

too many souls

passing into the night.

 

The lives we lead

and the paths we take

inevitably lead us

to the love we make.

 

So at the end of this stanza

there is nothing I’d forsake

for the loves I’ve had

and this terrible ache.

An Innocent Breath

An Innocent Breath

              for Paul Jackson 6 July 1973 – 1 August 2009

 

Into an ugly world was breathed an innocent breath,

uncontained by boundaries of life and death,

floating on air like an ethereal sail,

elevating all who would take time to inhale.

 

Now the breath is extinguished but the air lingers long,

in the dance of a child’s eyes, or a blackbird’s night song,

in his beloved nature my brother is now clad,

in the words of his mother, a rogue of a lad.

 

It was my absolute honour to have shared some of his time,

haunted by his wisdom, lit by his sunshine,

he escaped through dreams into a wine glass bay,

he’ll be forever in my thoughts simply waiting to awake.

The Epistolary Battle for the Soul of Betty Hester

The Epistolary Battle for the Soul of Better Hester

 

The epistolary battle for the soul of Better Hester

was fought in the realm of time and mind,

the church spruiked their bibles and all of their saints,

the left merely offered a find.

 

The imaginary cackle for the whole of Betty Hester

was littered by ghosts in decline,

feinted warriors fought in positions contort,

while the pen scribbled furious lines.

 

The contemporary shackles that were bestowed on Betty Hester

forced her letters to a 20 year bind,

while waiting to publish a shotgun called out

and the battle was ended in kind.

In Praise of Disorder

In Praise of Disorder

 

Somewhere in disorder are the spontaneous mistakes that make a day particular,

paths that lie unplanned, hidden in erratic overgrowth.

 

In the mess of photos scattered throughout cardboard boxes,

childhoods hide in sepia tones.

 

In the disarray of LP records leaning across hi-fi shelves

hum the scratched songs of your forgotten youth.

 

In the rustic cases of second hand book stores

great words wait to carry you to other plains.

 

In the windy change of seasons

streams await to clear the stale ink from your diary.

 

Held in chaos lies a sweet bohemian breath inhaling all order and exhaling life, planting a kiss

on your unsuspecting cheek, eject your iPod and listen to the street.

Need

 

Need

 

What do you need?

A pen,

paper.

Thought.

A simple life

expressed

in the simplest way.

Happiness, grief,

on paper.

Hopes, fears,

in the pen.

A life.

A Single Tear

A Single Tear

              -for Silvia

 

A single tear escapes,

and travels a lonely cheek.

 

One single drop,

slow

and carefully

crawls

from the eye,

through the valley

between cheek bone and nose,

and places a gentle kiss

on the side of the mouth.

 

A single tear,

born from within,

from a single memory,

from one fragment of a life,

not a life,

but a life remembered.

 

One beautiful diamond

into the pool.

I Want to Build a Café

I Want to Build A Café

 

I want to build a café,

where all my friends will drink,

wallpapered with savages,

call it “Ginsberg’s Stink”.

 

Have a jukebox in the corner,

playing music no one can hear,

expounding on the dogma

“the Manipulation of Fear.”

 

At night we’ll ouija monsters,

ghosts of ones who were beat;

Have you come to bleed the freak?

Twelve dollars fifty, all you can eat.

Whispering to Embers

Whispering to embers

 

I’ve stood in the open

and dared lightning to strike,

screamed down thunder

to remember a fight.

 

I’ve whispered to embers

to turn to fire and burn,

stared through past windows

and wanted to yearn.

 

I’ve cried at your stories

and laughed at my own,

built temples to decadence

while I’d none to call home.

 

I’ve swallowed my youth

from a bottle of time,

I wanted the story

but drowned in the rhyme.

Tuscany

Tuscany 

 

I’ve had enough.

 

I’m going to take my family to Tuscany,

where we’ll suckle on the Tyrrhenian nipple,

and bloat ourselves on the blood of the sangiovese,

then simply lie back in the sun. And never get up.

Selling Sydney

Selling Sydney

 

Walking from the train station

to the office through

the quiet city streets.

 

Echoes of history.

 

I walk past terraced houses

that have stood together

for over one hundred years.

 

Feel the stories

 

dripping from the bricks,

stories of loves & struggles

fixed in history.

 

New buildings.

 

Cathedrals of consumerism.

Shopping centres. Office blocks.

Apartments, high rise.

 

Selling history according to corp.

 

My office building

looms

grey.

Like a rain cloud

solidified and fallen.

 

I step off the street

and into the open plan

designed for efficiency.

 

And put aside my history.

This Now

 

This Now

 

Science

is funny.

Calculations and

medications and

meditations and

salutations to

God

only knows

what future.

 

The only truth is

now.

 

Feel your second

complete.

Words

Words.

 

Words.                                   Words.

Married to each other.             Married.

Sent into the world                  Sent

like blind children.                   blind.

Thrown to the wolves.            Thrown.

Ripped apart.                         Ripped.

Stripped from bone.               Stripped.

Stray pieces of meat               Stray.

left to rot in the sun.                Left.

After the vultures                    Vultures

have finished picking.              finished.

Her Empty House

 

Her Empty House

 

Everyday

the same.

Awake.

Drive to

work

drive

home.

@ home

she locks the door

and cries.

The children are gone.

The meaning is lost.

Locked in

her empty house.

            

 

The Skepticism of Dreaming

The Skepticism of Dreaming

 

We’ve lost the legends that forged our ambitions,

lost faerie tales in a child’s forgotten mind,

let children grow into organised structures

and denied the opium of the fathers behind.

 

Avalon lies in delicate pages,

recounted by historians as based in no fact,

and Heaven is dying a cancerous death

with each innocent ending on a battle raged tract.

 

The kamikaze has been stifled, the dragon’s breath held,

Kublai Khan merely fell in Japan,

scientific probes and punctures have removed all enigma,

and left tales of the failures of man.

 

We are left to dream only terrestrial dreams,

of houses built on compliant foundations,

secured by mortgages secured by safe jobs,

and paid for by mute indignation.

Silvia, the Years Pass Like Rainbows

Silvia, the Years Pass like Rainbows

The years pass like rainbows,

with each colour

clearly defined

and yet blinding into

the whole.

It is you who is the

cause of my sun,

you who clears my sky,

you who gives me the words

in which I fly.

Four Bullets

Four Bullets

 

Four bullets and he is taken,

a day in the life that changed the world.

 

Four bullets from the shaky chamber of

a nowhere man and history explodes.

 

Four bullets and we can no longer imagine

there’s nothing to live or die for.

 

Four bullets anonymously manufactured

that still ricochet today.

An Anonymous Unit, Southern Inner Sydney

An Anonymous Unit, Southern Inner Sydney

 

The remnants of a roast chicken lay strewn

on its ripped open foil bag packaging

on the dining table,

along side a too full ashtray

and too many beer bottles.

 

Our hero lays back,

bloated,

excess he’s taken unprepared.

 

The midnight TV flickers blue,

advertisements of telephone sex.

 

The phone rings, he’s stirred,

wrong number, they always are.

 

While he’s up he gets another beer,

turns off the TV,

and soaks in the silence.

 

Our hero lays back,

sated,

excess, he’s raping, unaware.

Gathering Tchotchkes

Gathering Tchotchkes

 

Tip-toeing through life,

gathering tchotchkes,

and trying to calculate

the appropriate amount of tax to pay,

wondering whether the neighbours

noticed

anything,

and if it doesn’t rain on Sunday

we should do

something,

but if it does rain we’ll

stay home,

and if it doesn’t rain

we’ll probably stay home too,

it’s a nice house,

look at its beautiful

mortgage,

360 months,

principal & interest,

the gardens are level

and the trees are trimmed,

controlled growth,

automatic garage door

makes life so much easier.

I wonder if the neighbours

noticed.

anything?

Racing

 

Racing

 

We’re all racing towards

the last second,

the last breath.

 

Up ahead

a row of brake lights,

another one of

life’s traffic jams.

And no escape.

 

You got on to the motorway

to save some time!

And now you are stopped.

 

Physically.                            Stopped.

Mentally.                              Stopped.

 

Still racing towards

the last second,

the last breath.

 

You should have taken

the scenic route.

        

Death Does Not Always Come at the End

Death does not always come at the end

 

Some people die

long before

their last breath.

 

Ordinary people

who offer no

new word.

 

Death is caused

by

a lack of life.

The Cerebral Haemorrhage of Suburban Life

The Cerebral Haemorrhage of Suburban Life

 

A cacophony of lawn mowers
shatters a serene Sunday morning,
the rattling of empty beer bottles
being moved from last night’s dinner table.

A tyre burning nausea.

The cerebral haemorrhage of suburban life.

The nine to five, t.v. guide,
pigeon holed mind control.

Sitting Watching

 

Sitting Watching

 

I have just stepped off the train.

 

I pushed with the others to get out

of the station                                               and

managed to break free of the pack              and

secured a bench on the footpath.

 

I sit.

 

I should keep moving with them,

keep moving towards my workplace           but

this morning something tells me to

STOP.

 

In front of me a sea of suits

ebbs and flows down the street,

seaweed shades of grey and black,

murky and churned.

Their faces hold no expression

and yet they move with determination.

 

They move or are moved?

They are drawn.

 

They know they should be somewhere,

by a certain time.

So their legs do the action

that they don’t realise

their brains are ordering.

 

The street cleaners are at work,

they look angry.

They follow the flow of suits

like you would walking your dog,

with a plastic bag and ‘pooper scooper’.

 

The sound of metal chairs

being dropped on concrete.

Umbrellas opened.

The coffee shops.

 

Traffic behind me plays the soundtrack.

Engines, horns, screaming ‘hurry up, there is

somewhere I have to be by a certain time.”

 

Above,

tall buildings impose their authority,

like sentinels.

 

Still more                                                       and

more suits float by.

I should be in there.

I should.                                                        But

this morning something told me to

STOP.

 

Some of the sharks in the sea

are looking at me.

A thousand mobile phones,

with ears attached,

turn to look at me,                                          because

I stopped.

 

I didn’t think much of it at the time,

I just stopped,

but I’m starting to realise

that something is

terribly wrong.

 

Because the sharks dared to look,

now some of the smaller fish are looking.

The sharks had a scowl,

but the smaller fish look

puzzled.

“What are you doing?”

“Get up!”

“You can’t stop.”

“You’re going to be late.”

“There is somewhere you must be

by a certain time.”

 

I get up                                                        but

I cannot merge with the flow.

I swim against the rip.

 

The suits fret.

I am a leaf                                                    and

they are a line of ants.

I have broken the line.

The drones look to the leaders,

“what do we do?”

I have caused some to almost

come to a complete

STOP.

 

Almost.

 

As a consequence they

have to jog 2or3steps

to get back into line.

Back into the inaudible rhythm.

Thump,              thump,                            thump,                            thump.

 

I made it to the other side of their channel     and

am now standing, facing the wrong direction.

 

New drones look at me,

scared that I am going

to step into their path.

Their minds are calculating,

they look to their

left                            and                            right,

“if he steps in I can side-step

this way and not lose rhythm.”

 

I should jump in                                          and

go with them.

I can’t.

They keep coming                                       but

are thinning out.

Then there are none.

The waves have stopped.

The street is death like.

I should have gone with them. Now

I can’t.

 

I light a cigarette and think.

What have I done?”

 

I step into a coffee shop.

They stare at my clothes.

Suit and tie.

They look up at their clock                           and

back to me.

I ask for coffee,

the lady asks

“is that to take away?”

 

I say

“no, I’ll have it here.”

The silence deafens                                      and

she stares,

“what have you done?”

 

I take my coffee                                           and

sit.

“What am I doing?”

 

People are scurrying again.

Carrying folders.

They look at me                                           and

at my table.

Shouldn’t I have

a folder in front of me,

what am I doing?

 

The coffee tastes strange.

Forbidden.

The street keeps

working

around me.

           

England

England 

 

England.

How have you left me?

Naked and bullet riddled.

And why?

Because I loved you?

Because I was born into you?

Because I was you?

But not now.

Take back your rose heart,

your bulldog stance

and empire tales.

I seek a new language.

 

             

Polyester Stormtroopers

Polyester Stormtroopers

 

People who walk with intent?

Stepping over life

strangled by ties

blinded by cell phones

controlled by time.

 

Armies of zombies in

hideous polyester suits

stormtrooping through casual.

Crushing love with heavy shadows.

             

The Meanings of Life

The Meanings of Life

 

Introduction

May I ask you all a question

              if I may be so bold?

I’m starting to wonder and question life

              now that I’m getting old.

I was wondering if you could tell me,

              in your own words if you like,

of anecdotes and experiences

              about this game called life.

 

Opinions

Colonel Sanders of Kentucky

              see the young as lucky;

“when I was a lad we never had

              the privilege of going mad.”

 

The lady who inhabits Kensington Hall

              feels peasants shouldn’t grow above six feet tall;

“I remember days when peasants cold

              wouldn’t dare to live beyond thirty years old.”

 

Posthumously Mr. Bracknell entered

              an opinion which was presented

on the accumulation of wealth,

              but alas he neglected his health.

 

Jenny Summers, 17,

              longs to be a beauty queen;

“I feel that looks are everything

              in the quest for the diamond wedding ring.”

 

Conclusion

Now that I’ve heard your answers

              let me give one of my own,

for it seems although we’re different

              we’re not in this alone.

I hope you’re not offended

              as I give my opinion,

‘cause to tell you the honest truth

              I think you’re all quite wrong!

 

There is no point living in the past,

              you cannot segregate into class,

money cannot buy happiness,

              and looks only appeal to the shallowest.

                            (but that’s just my opinion!)

 

I Tried

I Tried

 

I tried to write,

I tried to fight,

I tried in vain

to find a light.

 

I tried to love,

I tried to live,

I tried it all

with nought to give.

 

I had a drink,

I found a friend,

I tried to sink,

I tried to mend.

 

I tried to sing,

I tried to cry,

I tried at life

I want to die.

 

                            22nd May, 2005

 

             

Stigmata

Stigmata

 

Come with me to the depth of depravity,

              together, let us sink.

Squirm with me as we enter insanity

              and kill what once was pink.

 

I remember screaming as my womb was being taken,

              this life I could forecast.

Umbilical cord cut, I was forsaken

              and into this world cast.

 

Now nihilism is a wicked condition

              that I’ve accepted with open arms.

In a stance prepared for crucifixion

              I weep of life, its charms.

 

Memories are my stigmata

              I bleed into my glass.

I’ve no life left with which to barter,

              of love I’ve had to pass.

 

Into the foetal position I crawl at night,

              and with salted wounds I pray.

This world I’ve built I do now fight.

              I watch my reasons blur, astray.

 

The virgin that I’ve sacrificed,

              native and pure, my soul.

Come taste bitterly of my vice.

              My anguish must be told.

 

                            Leppington Caravan Park, 1995.

 

Solitude

Solitude

 

These walls are getting closer,

they whisper and taunt me,

their shiny wood veneer look mimics my moves.

Slow and calculated.

 

I sing to myself to pass the time,

with a slow beat tapped on the table,

roll another cigarette to burn my throat,

another coffee to nauseate me.

 

It is too far away and nothing to bridge,

trees in their beauty repeat.

I dream of conversation.

And I sing another song.

 

I wished to be alone to collect my thoughts,

but this solitude is blinding,

I twist my neck to pass some time,

now that my song is finished.

 

                            Leppington Caravan Park, 1995

 

 

             

In Darkness

In Darkness

 

In darkness barred by child proof gate,

an Angel mourns without abate,

cries to shadows to placate,

but doors are shut to seal her fate.

 

No one is conscious to hear her call,

that nightmare seclusion did befall,

echoes reverberate down the hall

of monsters in slumber that tried to maul.

Man is Born to Suffer the Madness of Gods

Man is Born to Suffer the Madness of Gods

 

Man is born to suffer the madness of gods,

left crippled on a bloodied field,

screaming their fucks bestrewed with pleas,

defiantly decrying a fate now sealed.

 

An angry sky contains the miasma,

clouds guard whatever heaven might yield,

soldiers too young to have gathered real sin

now bow and confess to be healed.

 

But no hand reaches, no angel heralds,

no great light offers repeal,

the empyrean closed, the body is meat,

the spent pawn merely rots on the field.

 

Body drops on body across the sanguine plain,

still vessels once of life now no more,

the forgotten, the fallen, the dispossessed,

the children of fathers before.

 

Born into the chains of destiny,

where evil men carry no corpse,

a child who once fed on the milk of life,

now chokes in a binge of remorse.

 

Driven to the field by absent leaders,

in the name of gods who bear no face,

the children of children and children of children,

spend their lives in falls from grace.

 

Man is born to suffer the madness of gods,

the cruel shadow of time lays its hand,

from labour pains to anguish the soul fades away,

and in a god’s name is now damned.

Greatest Story Ever Told

 

Greatest Story Ever Told

 

The earth bleeds its oily wounds

into the pockets of man,

evolved to rape and pillage

crystals burnt into the sand.

 

The oceans scream their whale songs,

while the ice shelf drops its load.

Carved in bone the history of man,

the greatest story ever told.

 

 

             

 

Adult's World

Adult’s World

 

Every morning I kill a bird

before it has a chance to sing

leave my angels asleep in peace

and step into an adult’s world.

 

You told me your plans the night before

of dances thought of for the dawn

but they do not include a part for me

for I must drag into the adult’s world.

 

I want to stay and count the flowers

instead of watching minutes drip into hours

but it’s the hours I trade that buy the bricks

that pave the graves in the adult’s world.

My Childhood

My Childhood

Bikes could take you to
the ends of the earth.
I once planned a trip
to America.
Around the same time
I wanted to change
my name to Batman.
Just before I fell into a lake
and blamed a made up
bully for pushing me.
But after I rode into
a telegraph pole and
broke my nose.

But my bike couldn't
take me from
my parents
screaming at each other.
That echoed after me
wherever I went
and still echoes today.

They punctured
my wheels
and
broke my chain
and
deafened my eyes.

And brought
my childhood
to a screaming halt.

Elegy for the Lost

Elegy for the Lost

I took a trip a while ago
    to a mystical far off land,
that was run by a magical platypus,
    who held within his hand
the much sought after meaning of life,
    and yet he never let on.
To all who questioned he would say
    "it's time that you moved on."

As many left others would enter
    and spend their time so grand,
carefree they'd play and run and laugh
    in the mystical far off land,
but inevitably their time would come
    when they'd ask about his hand,
and the platypus would look down and say,
    "it's time you left this land."

I spent my time on swings eating sweets,
    until one day it dawned;
I had no purpose, what was it about,
    the platypus said "you were warned,
you've spent your first few years with me,
    the times you had were good,
but once you start to question
    you must leave your childhood."

My memories of that land are fond
    as I look in the eyes of my child,
but I know too soon her time will come,
    and one day she will cry;
"I think my life is meaningless,
    I can't play all my life,
there must be something more than this,
    what is the meaning of life?"

A few years ago,
    before my mind was raped,
        I could fly without inhibition.

Ecco Homo

Ecco Homo

Angels have fucked demons in my head
while I stared tears at the television set.
What am I, and what am I supposed to be?

Car crashes and dances strobe through my dreams
blinding all rumours of two thousand years.
Who am I, and who am I supposed to be?

Clouds shadow past in a moon filled sky
as a crown of thorns eats and cuts and bleeds in my eye.
Who am I, and what is meant by "INRI?

Who are the crowds with questioning face
who hold a Barabbas in such condemned grace?
Who are they and what do they want from me?

Where is my father when I call out his name?
Where are the seraphim who sing me insane?
Where am I, and where am I supposed to be?

What form takes the traitor who plots my end?
Certainly not serpent ouroboros friend.
Where are you and why won't you let me see?

Am I doomed to drown in a prophecy of fire
in some hope of exultation and promises higher?
Who am I, and who did so decree?

Forgotten Songs

Forgotten Songs

Old fingers pressing down the keys,
remembering songs and histories,
time signature blurs into falling free,
I wrote strangled sonnets for you but who'll sing for me?

Thrash, struggling for a youthful line,
drowning in a pool of rushing time.
The fear of forgotten rhymes,
who'll light the shadows in my mind?

When a Great Man Passes

When a Great Man Passes

When you've watched a great man wither and call for death,
all mortal concerns drown in the context,
and your wicked doors of perception are splattered with blood,
and left to loom like a demented god.

So free your bells to toll their oppressive tone,
from the top of your austere gramophone,
that your raised in the shadow of your god's cruel hand,
as an atonement for a life spent in reprimand.

Let Days To Rest

Let Days To Rest

Mournfully aside he cries,
To passers by who dare pass by,
A tale of yesterdays now lost,
And how immeasurable is the cost,
When others scream to love the day,
They will leave their days to rest,
With the slightest chance that they may,
Climax to a day above all days,
They're happy to let astray,
A life of naughts without protest.

Youth Gone Mild

Youth Gone Mild

The thought of excitement
drops me into a deep funk,
did I pass time
and grow too old for my age?

When did I start wearing sensible shoes?

When did my neck take control of my head?

When did fuel economy become so important to me?

When did garbage night become the centre of my week?

When did I develop a system for paying bills?

When did I start looking for articles on interest rates in the news?

When did I start reading the news?

When did nine to five become the whole day?

When did bedtime return?

An open neck shirt in the workplace is a mute rebellion.

Bicchiere Piange

What is lost?
What has gone?

You're holding an empty cup
that once held a most nourishing juice.

It held memories of a flawless past,
and hopes for an endless future.

But as you stare into the corpulent chasm,
and squeeze the moribund fruit for its last teardrop,

the memories remind you of
what is lost,

and the hopes are echoes as you scream into the cup for
what has gone.

Human Race

Birth is the starting block
pop
they're off and racing
racing to school
racing to work
racing to get married
pop
new contestants enter the race
the race continues
no time to look
to the left or right
where life happens
they run in panic
to win
to get to the finish line
the end.

Panem et Circenses

your face is mangled
by monsters imbibed
and piercing screams
from verses inside.

Insanity breeds strange comrades.

Will the papers spare a line -
for the life of a poet?

A Three Year Old Painting

She
throws her paintbrush
on the table.

Colours
fly.

A smile
is
painted.

Counting the Stations Until Their End

People on the train stare.

Stare into nothing.

Stare and reflect
on the points in their lives
that have lead them to their seats.

Stare and think
about where the train is
taking them.

Stare and count
the stations
until their end.