Go on, ask me

Ask me what a poem means:
I will tell you who I am
And how I got lost on the way to words
To find myself knee deep in a field of pictures.

An evening spent
Getting lost
In the softness of
Your own momentum

Morning

Light bleeds
As light does
From the frazzled curtain veins.

Sleep receeds
As sleep does
From that crackling golden shore.

He pleads
Though he knows
That the dream-waves crash no more.

Today... Remembering

He came down the too-high steps
So that I could hold his infinite hand
And read something in his palms
That I had lost before I ever knew it
Lying rinsed in the cattle-trough
The helplessness who saves the world
One flowering splash of colour
In a world of black and white bones.

You should never pick your nose
When you are sitting on a train
No one wants a booger finger
Pointing at their brain

A Poem

This is one just for you
Electronic ink on a page that scrolls
Like paper used to,
When the desert sands were younger
A few drips of thought
Sucked from a puddle of words
Trapped inside a chunk of bone
By the life-pulse regular as the minutes

This is one just for you
A poem, the last I'll ever write
Till the next one
Something to keep the hidden in sight
Long enough for time
To carry us all to a place for looking back
And gazing like tourists at the Canyon
Full of wonder, emptied of size
Pondering the patient water chisel-work

This is one just for you
A reader wrapped in a mind so alien
You couldn't be me
Hold it like a mirror: Cutting edges.
Silvered backing. Scratch too deep
And there'll be nothing to look at
Only a web of words glued
To the corner of an evening
Waiting for the fly to stray too far.

Just a Rhyme to Pass the Time

How do you keep a secret
When a secret doesn't keep?
Can you refrigerate it overnight
Before you go to sleep?
Can you stop it keeping you awake
By counting all those sheep?

He loved everything enough,
To lose it all for me
I cannot look him in the eye
Afflicted on that tree

With the strength of three men
I will hold a summer flower
Up against the wall of my name
Gifting life like graffiti
To the hard empty stone

With the strength of two men
I will pour the cool water
And wrap a cotton blended waist
Reaching first for the feet
Most heavy skinned in dust

With the strength of me alone
I will hold myself at arms length
A cat curled on black leather
Purring unearned contentment
In some dusty forgotten alcove

I smell your smile a mile away
Meditating in other people's expressions
Like the soul of the old oak tree
When the front yard now huddles in pale exposure

Regret

A line in the sand that bears your footprint.

A fork in the road that's two ways to wrong.

A framed photo of an absent guest.

Speech-notes that never leave your pocket.

A drowning swimmer in a dried up sea.

A ghosting fox in a forest of rustling thoughts.

Sheets still tangled in last night's sleep

The seep of water between slippery fingers.

The stuck hands of a stopped clock.

The monster wearing in your worn reflection.

The hand that leads down tree-lit streets when the night aches too brightly to put on companied stillness.

My Brother keeper

I'm the reason that Creation
Bled
Tearing through the garden as I
Fled
Fists that shook the heavens clenched in
Dread
He seeks for me, and only sees the
Dead.


My Father is a painter all in
Red
His brush is every hair upon my
Head

I'm alive because my brother's
Dead.
He looks at me through Him
Instead.

Here Lies the Smile

Dither then a while and see
A sliver of a smile from me
All paranoid and full of glee
A Polaroid facsimile.
By heartlessly effected grin
You have been played and suckered in

For what it is you seem to spy
Is only on my face, not I!

Sunset

Tis happy when
The daylight dies
When softer moon and stars arise

Tis joyful when
The sun bleeds on
The skin of distant horison

With glee today
Is history
Tomorrow may yet never be

How it aches
When bloodied claws
Castigate the midnight pause

And so I wait
When dawn arrives
That moment sweet
When daylight dies.

Procrastination

Waiting for enough time to pile up
Like folds of cream
A crashing wave, sucking with eager lips
At the sands of plans
Till in the tumble of scattered seconds
Who hide their preciousness
Like breath smuggled underwater
Realization dawns in my warming chest
At once urgent and diffuse
An alarming wail,
Spilling through a thousand alleyways
Birthed by the kiss of a brick
On a single glassy pane.

A Walk

I will cut through the grasses in the night
A sea asleep at the knees
Rustling waves to keep me in the light
Hanging fat in heaven's window.

I'm too heavy to sink beneath this surface
Forever ill and at my ease
Peace an antidote for poisons
I do not have, at war inside of me

A snatch of verse scratched out on paper
Crinkled in a crumpled fist
I'll let you know when I finally get them down
And not the other way around.

Friends

Stranger
Tell me
Would you walk a mile
With my shoes
In step with yours?

Some of the shape of the sound
Slips in deep
A stiletto in an unexpected dark
Black and warm
I am comfortable like a couch
That's seen too much wear
All frayed and unafraid
But warmed by some foreign sun.

Awaken patience
And put him on a lead
Tie the string so tightly
You and I will smile on the
Other side of our faces
Like the sunrise
On two different planets

Future Rainbows (Draft 1)

The seasons change
And im old and grey and clouded
Grown great in my insignificance
A singe speck skudding in the skyHuddled beneath infinity

I wish I had a star’s bravery
To watch the darkness gobble up
The light of a billion billion others
And yet stubbornly to shine
As though it makes a difference

The atmosphere is deep today
Heavy like the blood slugging to my brain
But I’ll wait through the deluge
For the greys to be rinsed away
By future rainbows.

To create something beautiful?
A gasp, a thought, a sunrise
Or not
Either way
To sit and watch the sifting
As the internet slowly passes me by

We all are
Fingers through the wool
Lost in the thick of it

Heart

They say you've gone wicked, rogue,
Roving away with limbs unfettered
Unguarded.
It was only on my sleeve
That you ever had your biggest say
And I
Was tumble swept along your way

What single word could ever hold a hope
To candle up your vacant hollow room
Discarded
Thoughts jumbled on the walls
Paper thin, like the cuts whose healing seems
So slow
At least you misplaced the key to my dreams

I want you back, not the least because
You'll always be the marrow of my soul
This started
Like a promise, but ended in a curse
I'll leave you in the mirror, gazing
Lost
To my own reflection.

Learn to leave your shadow behind
A fallen comrade on this bitter battlefield
Don't carry it in the space beneath your eyes
A weight to pull your gaze softly behind
To turn your home-bound feet aside
You'll never leave this broken ground
While regrets thick gravity moulds you down

A New You

Sooner or later
Always comes along
The question remains:
Will you have let it go
Or still be holding on?

I play your tune, from time to time
The gentle reset of the mind
Timidity expressing the words so hard to find
Are hidden unbidden and rise to the front
When the rythm starts to chime

There is no music in my car
During the daily dawn commute
Devoid of the voice of song
Empty of the thoughts of emotion.
It seems somehow fitting,
One humming can in a random stream,
 Losing the froth and foam of freedom
To the sole accompaniment of the noise within

It wouldn't be theft
To roll you up
Iron out the creases
And tuck you away
To be my rainy day

I wake you break me down
I sleep you hang around
I fall you are the ground
Bouncing makes a crunchy sound

Things march on
As they often do
With no one keeping pace
While everyone falls far behind
And further back from grace.
But that's quite ok
Because she always crosses at the finish
Arm-in-arm
With the last runners in the race.

To be young and fresh feathered
At the edge of trying's nested weaving
To be perched on a rim
A thought away from freedom's wings
Never to unclench those twigs of thought
What if I couldn't learn?
What if I found the ground
So much quicker than I found the sky?

To escape
To carry the sea in a colour
And paint the world in prints
Hands and heart and feet
All sticking out of sleeves
Remembered for what they are
Seeking metamorphosis
And in that pupal soup to find
Gravity's solution

I'll have an ear on the world
And hear with virgin mind
The questions
That have no answers
The ones I long to find.

Not Anymore

I don't dream
Anymore
I wouldn't know what to do with myself.
If I weren't me
Who would be left
To carry all my years
Of missing out on being someone else?

the chips were leperous with flavours

There is a string
Thick with thread
That jostles me to and fro

A thief that steals the distance
I would add
To keep me far enough away from you

I never got my head around
Before it got the thread around me

I guess a string
Is a simple thing
Compared with being stuck
With what I said.

I didn't
Or rather I did
But
I wish I hadn't

Folded into my washing
Pile on the bed
Sunken beneath an ocean
Slinking out my head

Back to Who I Am.

It's easier to go on unchanged
Than to face the uncertainty of pupation
Or the agony of the chrysalis
Or the entropy of forward motion
It's easier to ossify
To live life in shoes
That never bid the earth good bye
I think that's why.

zombies do not dream

My shining shadow
My fading sun
Atlantis' journey
Has begun

It's not the mirror that reflects
But the light

I wrote you a letter
Which you never read
But that's ok
Some things don't need to be heard
Just said.

Not funny like a laugh
But funny like that kid
Who's life's a joke
The kind with no punchline

A depression
Is a hole in the ground
Depression
Is the hole that I've found

Somedays
I pray for you when you're not looking
I like to think
That sometimes you're better
For knowing me.

Genie

Wishless and luckless and free
What am I to find to be?

A silence of the mind
A silence of the soul
Silence makes the world go round
But talking keeps you whole

I am just 

The child of your ghost

Haunting everything

That I fear the most
Don't go on in pretending

The mirror doesn't lie

I lost you in the movies

When the credits tumbled by

Just a child

Of the ghost

Of the look in your eye

He beckoned to the thoughts of words
But they refused to come
They told him they had other things
They'd rather to get done

I'm going to build me a rocket
And find the final end of things
I wasn't afraid of flying
Till you gave me wings

Down by the lake
I let my time go
Watching dragonflies
All thick and fat and slow

The wind is in the reeds
With quiet in its teeth
I remember you
And somehow you are with me

Inside the smile written on my face

I lose sleep
When we forget how to talk
I keep the words you wrote
Beside me when I walk

This distance isn't dangerous
It kills us with a look
You always found the time
To give more than I took

Even when you lost your place

The wind has moved on
And left the lake to me
Where changes on the surface
Can't scratch the deep

Patience
Is such a heavy thing
Because of all the wait

I have lost the music
The tune that I carried
With tomorrow's lips
Has quietly slipped  away
I wonder when

Faith is
Hope clutched tightly

On the Surface

You skimmed the world across my pond
And counted every ripple
Till even the last one found my crinkled edges
And died


I like you
Not because of who you are
But because of where you were
So you could be who you are
To me.

The bright numbers
Are two and three
Or four if there is food enough for all
But one has no brightness
For someone to see
Cause no one
Is alone

You had the grace to carve me from your side
A rib astray in a place where the bones are not the same
All silver-aged, rough, and cold with moss.
For a tick of time I felt I could catch the beat of your life
 Like it was before, rich and warm with you.
But I finally know what I'd give up to gain what you've lost.

I'll hold you warm and dry Just us against the night Till dawn accidentally arrives

I'll find you in my hope Every time Somebody messed the water up I'm fine

Dying Days

It gets easier to

                         jump

When your fingers aren't married

to             the                     rails

It gets easier to fall

When gravity doesn't

Fail

It gets easier to take 

          The next step

When you've already given it up

Impaled

And left on some shabby sticks

Who took the sting

                               from it's tail....

Waking up
Is the act of making
Dreams real

It is only on our knees
That we truly stand before
A Creator

My Compass

Your love
North's me to your heart
When every direction is pain
That's why it's called
Compassion

Prodigal Father

He stands at the rejected doorway
Heavy shoulders waiting
Loss crinkling in his corners


He stands at a remote crossroads
With the world at his side
And a smile bright as a coin


He cries deep like a well
Like a tree whose sap is blood
With the slow grief of a cosmos

I saw him there
Because I was searching his face
As I hurt him


He hunches over the barely-food
That will never be his, recalling
When nothing was needed, not had.

He was cut by the foreign stones of home
But they could not reach
His blow carved deeper than his bone

This man whose name is mine

I saw him stumble
Because I saw my blunt face ripple
In the murky puddle.


He leaps from the doorway
A bird set free from time's cold cage
Tears paint laughter in every line
A man ditching dignity
To reclaim a son.

Change
Isn't going to a different place
It is
Doing different things at the same places

Trust isn't stillness,
Standing on your own shadow
Trust is swinging
Your legs out over the abyss of light
Holding faith between your toes
That when foot and shadow finally meet
On unknown ground
It can still carry you.

Trust

Wake no more
Rapid heart
Set your nerves
Down where we can see them

Summer

Summer's wasting, but not for me
The rivers here run cold and clean
I could find the time to throw a thought your way
And I do
But my arm's not strong enough
To reach to you

Summer's wasting, so I hear
But all that wasting passed you by
This year
Things don't know how to be different
But you have changed

Summer's waiting
All for you
Just cling to His hand
He'll bring you though.

Musings on the Albatross, Whose Wings Bring us Home for the Summer

Near the cross I keep me
Always to hold in mind
The brittle sticks that held a Saviour
Dangling in the great divide
Near the cross I wait in silence
On blood anointed feet
Knowing that his condemnation
Fell for me

Near the cross a throne lies empty
A king disowned himself
Today, I find in me redemption
A vein of gold in miry clay.

Repentance
Isn't feeling bad about who you are
It's changing the bad about who you are

Will you listen to the blood in this water?

Deep and wet and thick with all the pain

That you HAD to carry to the shore

Will you hear the subtle calling?

Rippling out like a splash of the invisible

Asking you to find your knees

And lose your mortal arms

Will you follow where the water flows

In droplets heavier than your empty shoulders

To a river of  footsteps up the shore

Of final, desperate, change.

Ain't gonna drop the ball
Ain't gonna miss the call
Ain't gonna take the fall
And refuse to get on my knees

If you want your chains broken
You need to lift your manacles high
If you hold them tight to heart
You'll never stretch your wings
And fly.

Breaking an addiction
Is breaking a bone all over again
So it sets straight this time.

When I awoke
And the dream was still real
The shadows around me
Had hearts that could feel
And I could not

This water
Wetter than most
Gets into every pore
Like damp sunshine
I changed my name
Before I dried.

When the universe
Is a wall
What is on the other side?

Love is like lightning
Sudden and undeniable
It heats you up inside
And messes with your heart
And if it ever goes away
It leaves exit wounds

Depression
Is the wall you build
With your own bones
So that you can be safe

The funny thing is
We fill up with emptiness
So that we won't drown
But when you're full of empty
It only ever pulls you down.

It is the flower
Hiding against the rage of days
Afloat upon the water's cold
That tight into itself is curled
Keeping safe inside the dream
When at last its petals show
And the light is ushered in
Only then do people know
That there's people to be seen.

By the still, wet, glistening eye
You kneel
And hold the hand too weak to work
In letting fall the drips of soul
I find
A tearing that has made me whole.

He sometimes tells himself,
It's just an everyday
But he never seems to find inside
The words he always meant to say
He's at home when the sky falls down
Puddled feet, muddled mind,
Head too high to find the ground

They say this thing weighs
But 9 pounds
A pack of simple twitching
Running to keep up with time.

Stillness doesn't happen in a moment
It's beyond a photograph's reach,
Lost to an unquiet mind
Where the waters drown themselves
In the waves crashing
While God sleeps in the sinking boat.

Stillness is the sound of a pause
A silently inhaled breath.
Stillness is looking on at the carcrash
Where the wheel keeps spinning
And the people line up
In bright blue cocoons

It is remembering
That each moment
Lies inside eternity.

People are
the collection
Of stuff and confusion
And love that gets left on the bench
Milling around
Like sheep looking for a home
But finding an oven instead.

I hold these words around me
My constant friends
They never leave me alone
They always say the same
Thing
But I turn to them all
And never get it quite right
The idol that I make
Is cracked

They often say
True loves runs deep
Maybe that's why
It's always hiding
In the dark and mud
Patient for an unwary toe.

It's frustration
To feel words pile up
Like river logs
Then turn and slip
Away
All eels and mud
Anytime I put
A finger on them.
But the water
Seems damned forever

To look back
Without salt pillared regret
Leaving these things behind

Because
The tomb is empty
I don't need to be bearing
The hollow of broken yesterdays
My anti-wings on aching shoulders
Can silent slip and roll away.

Family

We are more than holes
More than souls
Tied together with string
Caught in a net
Of our own devising

I wrote you a reminder
The other day
In big sad black letters
Strange to watch them melt away
As though you remembered better

Turn the past into something new
Something borrowed shouldn't make me blue
Something old isn't always something true.

Hmmm....

I hate crying
Because it feels like letting go
In the moment's vertigo.
Forgiving unplanned tears
That flee my shivered soul
Unencumbered
By heavy handed futility:
Clasping the cracks together.

I hate crying
Because maybe if I do
Some precious part of me
Will flit away
And be lost to all memory.
Something I never let
Loose from it's cage.
Pain.

I don't come to tear these pages
Clotted thick with a chaos of scribble
And balled up in failure's basket.
Your own attempt
At drawing life.

I come to take these pages
Smooth their battered edges
Connect the broken lines
Paint light into the darkness
And bring that
Drawing to life.

Seeker
You find me in the hidden things.
Holding my sticky guilt hands
You turn them to wings.

I'm sorry.
By now I should be better
Perhaps,
Or at the very least
Someone else.

Words are such a poor substitute for fingertips...

Second Adam

I didn't mean to let you down
Destiny waits for the Fall
And I was fallen worst of all
The purest Adam in town

You are my unanswered questions
You wake the walls inside me
And make them yearn to be set free
You are gravity in my empty spaces
Direction is in your smile.

You are my toes in wet grass
When summer still remembers growing up
You are an iceberg of infinity
When I'm wondering
Just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

You are the heart
I long to hide me in
If only I could find you
And send my walls to be free.

Caged bird
Silence heard
Feathers only
Lie
When the universe
Lies outside.

Not so Bad

It wasn't so bad
Being lost
It was life in
Darkness
It wasn't clear
What was worse:
The terror hidden from my eyes
Or the one lurking in my mind

It wasn't so bad
Being lost
Just a world of darkness
Without a blanket
A moon without a sun
Solid, real, substantial
And coldly complete.

There was a flower on my desk
A crumpled, withered thing
Memories of being green
Now crisp, dried, yellowed
Shuffled through time's deck
Yet lying undisturbed
At peace.
A gift that never meant
More. Than it ever did.
At last it resembled more
The promise of the grave,
Than any promise that was made

There was a flower on my desk
But there is one no longer.

Prayer is turning the page
And finding the pen
And asking God to write

How do I walk
With him whose footsteps
Are the gulf between stars
Whose feet burn with suns
Whose voice calls out
Ans space's vacuum cries out
Till even emptiness is full.

How do I walk
With dragging feet
Barely keeping me off the ground
His breath is gravity
Yet I am falling upwards
When He stands behind me
And whispers "Come
Walk the heavens, and see"

When you sit beside me
There is warmth in my shoulder
And all my aches forget how to speak
You leak out my corners, out my seams
A dream so full, so full of dreams

The silence in my heart is hollow
And it swallows up sound
I can hear it when the beast moves round

We imagine He is
As we are
And we are made less
Because of it

I'd tear down these pillars
If I could just see you a second
As the roof comes down upon me

Sometimes I run from the beast
With the unblinking eye
Sometimes I hide in the quiet
Corners of my mind
He sniffs me out
He knows my names
He breathes in blood
And he leaves
Me
A ragged doll lying in the rain