Thinking (a teenage sonnet)

I wasn't really thinking:
I rarely do.
I have to refine it
because it comes out crude.
But you weren't blinking;
that much is true.
So I guess it's no bother;
I guess I'm into you.
How I sound like a teenager
amongst this poem's lines;

and to end these quatrains,
these bleakness lines come fine.

Poppies

Part I

This is real.

I saw people collecting
in town
for the Poppy Appeal.

I thought to myself:
'I don't support the occupation
of Afghanistan -
more blood
leads to more blood;
dead sheepherders
and children
just trying to eat
their flatbreads;

you know the Taliban
are the children of America,
the Mujahideen the bastard children
of Carter and Reagan,
and their weapons
have stars and stripes
splattered on them.

'Am I cruel?'
I thought.
Think of the cripples;
no more nipples
to touch;
dead
below the knee.

'They're victims,'
I thought.
'Victims of the state,
sent to die
so rich profiteers can live.'
And if veterans
are treated well,
more soldiers will go.
And if more soldiers go,
then the blood of the state
rises

and we have
even more driven
Poppy Appeals
and
fields of veterans,
writhing in
ignored torment.

'I can't do it,'
I thought;
I don't care about WW2 veterans;
all the WW1 ones
are now dead.
But Radiohead are doing the single.
O! Sweet Thom Yorke!
With his blistered fingers
and his eyes
searching for morality,
mortality.

I can't do it.
I won't make more pain.
We all ignore pain.
The government NEEDS pain;
FEEDS off it!

Am I heartless?
My heart
is a poppy,
and my convictions
are its petals.

Part II

There's so much blood;
so much violence -
I go to bed
crying;
these guns
pointed at myself:
I gave
the Mujahideen in my soul
the armaments,
and now
all things point west.

And the irony of it all
is that we're killing ourselves:
the longer we stay,
the more they roar;
the faster we leave,
the less they relent;
the more we kill;
the more they resist.

It was never our war!
These were never our wars!
My arms weren't meant for blood!
They were meant
for babies,
and wife,
and softness,
and fountain pens.

I've inherited my father's blushes
and his father's before him;
we all blush at the violence
about which we can do nothing.
Tonight, in the rushes,
I look out upon
fields
of scattered brown,
poppies
everywhere to be found

like lost bodies,
millions of miles away
from green verdancy -
aliens of the landscape.
I wish they would come home.
I wish we could all go home!
I wish, I wish, I wish....

I wish we could
find
our home. 

Part III 

Right, men;
right, soldiers;
onwards march
to the
invincible invisible:
you know
you will inherit glory,
so what's to fear?

As they marched into
the guns
and mustard gas,
they thought of home:
no more wife;
no more children.
Some of theirs
were expecting -
infants left 
to the wind.

Forget about them.
For Queen and country 
(country
could never be capitalised).

They trudged through
boggy abyss
and found
lead walls;
they marched
through holes
in their souls
and came out 
the other side muddy.

When will we be home?
Where is Rule Britannia?
Where is mother's oats?
Where is father's pipe?
Why are we here?
What's the answer
to this crossword puzzle?
Did Blackadder
get it so right?

Men,
put your hopes behind you
and your lives in front of you;
forget what you want:
we must kill the Jerries!
And in our killing take thrill,
'til our bodies like peat lay
for the yards of yesterday.

Soldiers,
this is beyond you or me:
this is imperial war,
disease;
God's concrete,
in which we are to be frozen -
the alive are the chosen;
such an inhuman number of all
British men
will die;
the women will raise
babies from the grave
and ashes into life.

Care not for liberation
or escape from death damnation,
or the whims of the state:
you are not the subjugated
herd that you feel;
we let you pluck at peel
and thumb at false ends.
You'll die for dividend
of your English throne,
and all the greenery you've known,
and all the Devonshire grass
on which you once lay like earthen task.

The stars you will not see;
nor God's country.
You pious boys of old:
on country you were sold;
on honour did you lapse
into death's collapse;
on fate's knee were you nursed
like baby of the hearse.
I hope you find your way;
I hope that you escape
from country
ignominy:
I hope you meet release. 

Part IV 

No more pain;
no more pain. 
I cannot permit
any more pain.

My veins are swollen;
my eyes are glazed;
my hands are enamoured; 
my memory hazed.

I cannot choke on this
any more;
it is not to be swallowed,
either:
the earth will deal
with this
in its own time.

I will not tolerate
any more blood,
any more pain; 
shop windows aflame
with this flood
of dying game.

Eyes of grey
look to the sky
like Cain to slain Abel
or the crow to the cry;
they see no more,
but they seem like cast souls:
they gaze to the heavens
to glean reason, mould.

I wish they were here
to impart
their jovial warnings
of military art
and the seductive wing
of country's blame,
and international admiring
of endless war games:

the war to end all wars
was merely the first
to start all the others;
not to quench the thirst
of blood-hungry despots
dressed up as sheep,
whom, devoid of emotion,
profess to weep.

These speeches mean nothing; 
these gestures are trite:
they're like tree
talking to tree
of a night.
They sound off in silence
and echo in null;
they clink like the hollow
resonance of skull.

One day, you will find
yourself on the perch
'twixt life and death,
and the life-arching search;
you will answer the questions
they give
in vain
and you will fold at the asking
of your name:

'my name is reliance,'
say ye;
'I am here for to be
what you need me to be'.
But don't let yourself be casked
in that barrel of death;
all that they ask
is devoid,
and will devoid you,
of breath.

And now, 
as you look towards the setting Sun,
you see poor soldiers on the run;
they run into
their lines of fire,
not knowing why death they desire;
and those who live
are doomed to spend
life eternal
with thought to rend:
these poor victims of deathly fate
are none but victims of the state,
and of the time,
and of the crime
of unknowing misfortune's rhyme;
their fates in red, white, blue, heart
to not abate
iron fist's art.

Untitled #3

Twiddling thumbs,
itching fingers, 
thinking of
these thought
malingerers;

seeing those eyes
everywhere
and darkness
baiting,
deep despair;

playing games
with torn cards -
the folds reveal
their bleeding hearts;

noises, noises
in the sky -
celebrations.

Way up high;
down below
we never grow:
we only abide
by forlorn spells,
indulge ourselves
in tolling bells

and in our actions,
never one to chide,
we've satisfaction
that blank artifice
has died;

somewhere
there
within my night
she's lurking like
a tiger bright.

And all that's left
for me, for me
now
is a revelry
in its still
howl.

The übermensch and the mirror

We are gods
in an incomplete world;

we are not semi-gods
in a finished one.

One cannot become god-like;
one either is
or isn't.

We are forced 
to look at ourselves -
fonts of skewed perfection;
vessels of such potential -

and then the world:
bitter, violent, dead and dying,
capricious;
such teeth.

God has abandoned us -
if only we had abandoned him
first.

Child

I said to him:
'when will we be children again
and just look,
see?'

He said:
'you're right;
I don't know.
Why do we reduce
everything
to bare reduction?'

I said:
'I don't know;
but it sure is fun, though -
and interesting.'

'Yes,' he mused.
Then he smiled.
And with that
he found his child self:

when we look away
from candour -
that overlooked candy -
we miss the moments:

what we seek
is within us:
when we look,
we see that child's face turn
and smile;

we pursue the wonder
in our hearts
to its logical conclusion:
we eat the chocolate syrup,
come back for more;
eat again,
wait a while.

And then we leave it -
the taste still remains
but it's changed.
And then we find out something new
about this
intellectual cocoa
and the taste
explodes in our mouths
in the tiniest frames
of spiritual revelation,

rushing out
like the universe to greet us
or a falling leaf
to meet us
or a reproach to
stultify and seat us
or a story
to entreat us:

we realise that the information
possesses us,
enthralls us,
delights us,
and shows us the way home
to that scene
in which we used to revel
in the smallest details
just because
they were there.

The writer

A good story always
has to end with a tragedy.
And God wept.

A blind man writes,
and down below
earth rumbles,
hearts tremble,
fists shake.

'I'm sorry,' he says,
'I have to write: it's my job;
there is no sin,
there is no heaven,
there is no hell,
there is only you;
I am not even here:
I am
a necessity of plot.

Do not fear
as your lives are torn -
you can always
blind yourself
on love's poker;
just look away.

There is more to the story
than you know;
there could be wonder
when you go -
or  maybe not:
maybe rot.

It's in your hands;
in your eyes.'

And with this
he snubs out
the candle flame
and goes to bed
with a crying headache
in white night.

We are all human

Peering out of cracks
from a universe void,
we run from life
to dreams;
run from dreams
back to life:
dance upon
the knife.

We are all
human.

Trees

A host of trees:
I see faces in them
breathe;
eyes twisted
in murderous sight;
they want to burst
free,
murder the night.

They're people, too -
just like me and you.
They just want to grow;
they just want to know.
They just want to talk.
They just want what's right.

They cry
at the heaviness of the air;
their complexions dimm'd,
their pores choked,
by human ash.

They look at Japanese paintings
all day -
ones of silent women,
lonely Moons,
quiet trees,
still bushes;
they know the wisdom of these
and they live in haikus.

If you look closely,
a face will peer out
and slowly humanize -
first the eyes,
shruggish mouth,
twisting nose,
forehead moves,
face tries to move out.

They don't smile;
they can't smile now -
not even children can make them
(but they can still make them laugh).

That Look

That look could kill a man
and melt his heart:
it comes but rarely;

imagined over candle-lit meal
after piecemeal day
working up to
your eyes:

your soft eyes
and endless hair,
trapping as spider silk
and flowing as time.

When you throw them down
and rise coquettish
it's like our eyes
are holding hands -
you know it's all about the eyes.

I've not had it yet -
not had
fulfillment of desire
or charcoal, heart, fire
or tongue, clamp, chain
or wings: clipp'd, heal'd.

I can imagine being there
with you,
though -
can see your soft, small hands;
your neutron star eyes;
sensitive iron;
peeled grace,
frayed,
revealing white light.

The truth is
you remind me of someone -
she's a great girl,
and you're not grown
but you're bigger than I know
and the more you're held
in time's tow
the more my hunger ties meld
and in iron forge
heart is smelt
and a rising is your name dealt.

That look could kill a man,
and bring despair full circle.
A new chapter, into which to hurtle.
A new void, into which to peer
at anguish at the throttle
and hearts at the bottle
and smiles on the incline...
Still, everything might be fine.

Earslip

One careful word
misconstrued;
one careful word
chewed
and sent to
the annals
of care
where
worlds are made
that are not there.

And though it is
brushed aside
it's given life
inside their minds
and seems to say
the deepest things
about ironic
subject rings

that circle
and intertwine
then bleed away
like party wine
into folds of decay
then rise again,
again, at last,
to plague the corpus of my cast.

Orator

As I stood there projecting
I could see him holding
his heart
in his hands
above his lap
in an offering
of surrender under desire;

his darkest heart
illuminated -
sense from the senseless,
feeling from the numb.

I could imagine his mouth
on my penis
trying to suck the essence from me
but failing:

crumbling: no;
intellectual giant: in their eyes.
My eyes: font of words;
no perfection; just desire -

deep, dark desire

tapping away

and revealing itself

slowly

as the half-glowing eyes
of unconsciousness.

Poet's drunken bitterness with a vain of truth, wondering at possible judgement - resolves to make poem more modest.

I want to be
so good a poet
that people don't
clap for me
out of respect.

To be heckled
by ignorant fools
with liquor on their lips
would be glorious;

I'd rather that
than unsure,
unfeeling,
indifferent
English respect.

The good,
along with the bad,
along with the unborn,
go hand-in-hand
in their warm palms.

And it's trying.

I think of you.

Night-time's eyes
are blinking slow;
these cords are tight
and they pull down low.

And as you float
into your bed
I think of you.

The Moon is full
with sleep to-night
and the tides
within your eyes

lap the shores
of my mind
'neath starry blue.

Borne aloft
on cosmic discs
the serenade
of love's duress

is creeping fine
like silken spine
and weaving me
as smooth as wine.

On your lips
there hangs a moth
with intentions fine
and wings so soft;

in an Indian garden
it takes to night
to evade my touch,
leaving trails
and lines.

As winks rise
and heat is left
I'm taken in
through dream's cleft:

blue hues
and stars of white;
you are the Sun:
you give me life.

And as he lay
in folds of soft
she sighed a sigh
and in darkness coughed;

on her mind:
his curious way.
Two bodies still
to not mete love's decay.

And as conscious moments
through dreams sift
she hears a word
and cups a kiss;

in safe embrace
of uncertain arms
she finds new life
and endless charms.

A moment with a leaf.

I saw a leaf fall
and, in trying
to describe it,
I tore it apart.

Through trying,
and wavering,
and quailing,
and not trying.

In that
green-gold cascade
I saw
a hidden heart,

but it was mine
to know,
mine to have grow;
the details
mine not to impart.

Autumn is gentle
as child's hair
and waves solemnly
at winter's despair;

her eyes are blue
and her skin is brown
and her teeth are white
and her hair is gold;

like a twilight diva
to behold,
whom in the throes
of career's wane
takes on a rich
and sensuous mane.

I saw a leaf fall
from a tree
without a will,
without a way,
and it descended and sank
eventually:
it had no name.

And, no, not melancholy
was its way:
in gentle expression of the day
and of reality
it lives inside the clay
or informality.

It is a lung
of a lung
and gives me lungs
to have come along
the words to say
not what the will wants the way,
but of a formless,
clear and flowing page
of the untapped mind's
undelay.

Telesales.

I sat in the large room,
everyone plugged into their headsets
like lazy bees.
I was there for two months -
a temporary
Christmas job.

I sold Sky warranties,
but I didn't try too hard -
I'd preserve my sales
and have long,
drawn-out conversations
about BBC4
and Bulgarian orphanages.

'How are you today, sir?'
they'd all ask.
'Yes? Good-good.'
Their repeated disingenuousness
made broader compliments
rise from my bile -
such indifference to
simple humanity.

I worked with a cocky guy
with cocksure feathers
named Taz
who would sit back, smug;
prance around giving it the sales mouth;
I would sit there
and smile a deep, internal smile.

When I left for college
and my journalism course,
I told him:
'I hope you reach the top,
my friend; but don't
fall off'.