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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Plane.

He gets on a small private
jet plane:
red carpet
leading up to it;
his own plane
of his own
airline.

He's just
another
fevered ego
in a world
of fevered egos
and confused minds

and media
blistering our
once-pure
thoughts:
now convoluted
by the everyday.

I hope his plane
crashes
and burns
and cooks
his unworthy flesh
into nothingness;

and I hope
the peasant
that lay
his carpet
smiles
at such
unpleasant news.

If I had the money
I'd put such petty trivialities
into the ground
and have people
in plain clothes
look me in the eye
for the unworthy cunt that I am
as they serve me
my ice-cold
cola with ice.

Crude.

You're in Saudi control;
you're
a slave
to the pump.

This spill won't be
the last
to give you
the jump.

It's the reason
why
Nigerians
live
in such squalor.

It's the reason
why
you fret
over
the worth
of the dollar.

It provides you with
a guarantee
that
you'll see
your food.

Why don't you
just
admit it:
you're
a slave
to the crude.

It's in between your fingers;
it's all
in your mouth.

It's all over the map:
east, west,
central
and south.

It's even up north -
in Albertan
tar-pit sands.

It's the reason why
Iraqis
were killed
on their own land.

It's the peril in the pot
and the grease
for the
silver lining;

no one
can see
the signs
when
minds
stop shining.

It's the maker
of our fortune
and the ender
of our times.

We have
all the right technology,
but not
the willingness
of mind.

Country.

If one night we're killed in our sleep, 

we'll know we had it coming:
the blood that's been spilled in our name 

will never stop running.

The conscience of a silent voice 

trembles in the light.
All this we take for granted 

is nothing but a blight.

Everything we've done 

has come at a cost.
Everything we've won 

has equalled life lost.

There are people out there now 

with families dead.
I hope our petty concerns 

will soon fall through our heads.

People who once were huddled in soot

now rise again;

can you hear the pillars crumbling

as our empires wane?

All this wealth will fall atop us

and crush us 

in extravagant death:

as our lungs struggle for air

the world takes a breath.

Someone out there shudders

'neath cold sunset air,

as they observe the silence

and smell the scents of

new fare:

our pursuits of endless pleasure

someday had to end:

through choice or realisation;

through death or dividend.

The blood,

it soaks into the sand;

into the palm

of desert hand,

as we reap what was begun

(but we know 

our day

will never come).