Mud bricked veins blossom through the same
old feelings that I have always been here
with this voice and a patchwork of photos
from when I was a little blond kid
It all makes sense how we treat each other
and we marionette the radiant nervous postures
of self calming animals, sycophants and kings
Bowstring tidal waves hum in every throat
peaking at the eyes, but we never disturb
the heritage overlays and polite mess of
streets that run between our hearts
Somewhere under the streetlights, a lonely dog howls.

There is no preparation for the devastating meadows that shout through your days with the suddenness of a kiss
and leave you terrified of every child's question, every serene face, every cigarette butt rolling through god's earth like a pilgrim
every moment is holy for it means nothing and we're all damaged on the edges of our first loves that shape us in riddles like receding tides.

We're all so well trained and so open that we sink like bright shapes into the fog of forgetting that cracks every bud of spring.

Oh and we're all so much blood writhing in tightening circles for the beauty and the fear of it.

Long ago we saw that love, profundity, boredom and rage
Were nothing more than colours.
Hues and timbres applied to a blank canvas.
But the canvas rotted like a lie we couldn't be fucked with.
Now contentment, hate and joy paint with men
and the faces creak like fabric stretched too far.

To the Internet

What we're mainly concerned with is subtracting distance

My cheek against yours
crammed against the furious scrum of all trees
withering and bursting
creeping through the gutters

And every lifetime completely present
like a stone to the mouth

Our ballooning faces popping windows
and confusing eachother's dreams

Every tongue in every ear
Screaming louder and louder
like the noteless ocean breeze.

There comes a time when all our edens
sink into the ache of ancestry

and the secret tunnels of moss
that embroid our childhood
are eroded by the dead

The taverns, the bedrooms,
the smell of spit and hugs:

A once conjoined twin
speaking the thud of phantom memories.

None of the photos caught his laugh
Half her stories I ignored

Their tiny leaves spread through my dreams
And fruit like unexpected apples in my morning breath

It's hard not to feel small in these humming orchards

Of the Self

It came upon us that we were nothing outside of memory
A slippery repetition painted on the back of a march of skulls
speciously linking smiles to a swelling chest
tears to fists, fists to each other, all rivers and sandstorms the same.
What we weren't clear on is whose memories these were -
So we erased ourselves in empty bottles and the haze of one good night.

Of throats

- Magritte's The Lovers

It was only later in life that I'd come to learn that anxiety was something in the oxygen.
Brought in by the bad air that grew old tombstones and generated locusts.
Just another environmental hazard - quickening the hearts and sparking eyes across bar room floors.

Later still, I'd miss it as it shuffled into myth.

Hymn to grazed shins

--

To always be shocked
with tears melting down a frozen jaw

To lean on the corner of annihilation

To remember epiphany lies at the heart
of a crushing banality

To lie.
To stay silent.
To speak the truth.

(apologies to Entombed)

It rages
The secret words scrawled on the backs of bricks
In the chest shattering grins of the militant love
Whose name is love and that love is a fist that will smash through the world and arrange the stars for the eyes of my love.

An Old Joke

Some people you love
For the way you disagree with them

They hiss like speed through their godless night
With mist and thunder for veins
They’ll die out like coal.

Laughter is the currency of glory.