Wednesday 29 September 2010

Spider.

I never washed the spider
down the plughole:
it climbed down
itself.

I never gave command,
nor helping hand.

I'll feel sad
if I find it
a coiled mess
at the base of the drain.

Its life is in my hands now.
Its life is in my hands.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Scapegoat.

They feed me
to the lions
and tear at my flesh.
'No one understands!'
I cry.

'No one understands!'
'Feed me to the lions!'

And they tear
and tear
'til I'm torn
and they think
their own wounds
are healed

(but if you knock
on their chests,
even barely,
you shall hear
a hollowness).

The reason behind everything.

In a world of complete chaos,
nothing happens for a reason:
things just happen,
and that's it.

You walk a road,
and only one:
all those other
possible ones
will never touch you;
they will never touch me -

we shall not even feel them
brush our skin.
(If you want peace,
then go to sleep.)

There are many different roads home,
but only a drunk man
would think them different.

But, on reflection,
we don't walk a road;
we walk a circle
from life to death
and beyond (or not).

Take what chance brings
and run with it
until you hit the wall;
and then carry on.

Habitat.

A man needs his habitat.
Even when he's flying,
he's gotta have it:

a place to recoil
behind the leaves
of existence
and wallow
in the peace

provided
by getting away
from all that noise.

Wednesday 15 September 2010

God, I hope it rains.

The clouds have been
hanging around 
for a time;
I've been walking these streets
for ages:
God, I hope it rains.

These city streets
will be flushed
and cleansed -
the grime
will be washed
downhill
and will be trod back
on bootheels.
God, I hope it rains.
 
My eyes are weary
but my feet have 
quit complaining,
and my head is full of tears
my eyes won't loose.
God, I hope it rains
on this dry and horrid noose.

I'm willing it to rain,
because these clouds
look far too servile
to drop their loads,
and my mind needs
relief from this heat.

Don't be so proud:
give in
to the weight
pulling you down:
that way,
I could give this sadness eyes
and feed it
what it wants.

Scents and smells.

When poets talk of
scents and smells,
my mind shrinks:
maybe I've grown cold
to the lights of the world,
but my nose
cannot detect
the smell
of fresh-cut grass
or the nasal fare
of spring and autumn.

Is it just
an accepted craziness
to pretend to know
these many scents?
Do poets think themselves
better equipped to tell?
Or do they really glean
the true characters
of all these free-floating molecules?

If I were to go
up a poet's nose,
I wonder whether she'd notice
my subtle farts.
Or would she simply
mistake
the smell
for autumn mulch?

Tuesday 14 September 2010

These words.

Words
evaporate from my head
into cyberspace;
into some
desolate place,
forever lost.

Whispered 
into binary,
stored as 1s and 0s
on chips of silicon,
they're
half alive
and half dead - 
in limbo.

I thought about Nick Drake
this morning,
and how
if he were alive
what music he'd be making.

So,
these words leak
in entropy
as more flow
from heads
into digital storage;

but one day,
I hope 
they find someone lost
and show them
the way out;

because
they could never
do that
for me.

Sunday 12 September 2010

A room.

Many times
I've walked this room,
and in the cobwebbed-cornered 
gloom
I saw a written name:

it said:
'Many times you've 
smudged these words,
but still they stain.'

I sat in silence
with my lover,
lamp in corner,
pipe in mouth,
in a thick woolen jumper
whilst she knitted.

The wolves were
scrambling at the door
again,
and she said:

'Phillip, won't you feed them
our love?
Even though it's grown dry,
the smell's still so intense.'

There are ghosts of myself
in here.
I can hear my words,
like faint white noise
or the resonating
of a tiny scream.

It's a shame
it's not 
mental illness.

Greatest hits.

Every album
is a complete work
unto itself,
but they cut and paste them,
out of context:
several half-dozen
good songs.

Greatest hits
of the most ripe fruit,
chosen
though the others still nourish.

There's no time
to listen to the story:
you'd rather have
the scant
and naked plot
and go from there.

In time,
your ears die
and new things
sound too far away
or insignificant,
and all you're left with
is a song
that everybody likes.

Saturday 11 September 2010

The life of come.


It looks like our species
is going to commit suicide -
through religion,
fascism, insanity, madness,
disregard
for our planet;
each other;
ourselves.
 
A space man comes on TV
and says it'll all be all right.
 
And as the Muslims kill the Jews,
and the Jews kill the philistines,
and the Christians kill our hearts and minds,
the smoke clears,
revealing a beautiful,
still planet
that's free of infection.

Box.

I put myself in a box.
Thinking outside the box...
I wasn't:
I was numb.

A box
within a box
within a box,

like 
a pathetic
Russian Doll.

And when I woke up
in that box
it did smell like cardboard.

But it was dank,
and I tore straight through it
to the light -
thank God.

Her.

I thought I lost her,
but she's still inside me
making noise.

Before her,
there were just characters:
and nothing more.

I've never since
felt a love so pure,
and she's still inside me
somewhere
making noise.

There's still a little piece of her
inside me
like a shard of glass;
and it stings me.

The pleasure.
The pleasure
was like no other.