Which Way?

The only reason I have so many vices is
that the one I grew up in left such an impression.
Skin scarred and hardened, whiter flesh speaking, singing
of tears and tears and cuts and the disappointment
of a world that insists it cover itself in the rain.

“Feel this, this is good, even though it feels bad.
Don’t feel that, that feels good, which is bad.”
I don’t know which contradiction to believe.

The sociological disease, a pandemic,
“Do what I say, not what I do!”
while I learn to do what you do,
not what you say.
And we all go the same way.

Feet sore, back broken, an honest day’s work done.
And what of it?
“At least I’ve always worked.”
No ambition.

An early lay-off, telly and bed and the grin of senescence.
And what of it?
“I tried my best.”
No ambition.

One by one, paths erased.
One by one, advisers passed away.
Frustrated by not knowing which way to go.
Ambition.
No direction.
This is why we need each other.

The Flower

A couple of hundred million years of angiosperms
and yet now all flowers grow in man’s killing fields.
Spilled blood, hatred, crude, by the barrel,
barren plains, sorry corners of meadows
where colourful buds weep
as they seep the nutrients of human detritus.
Bodies decay, as nothing, a spillage, a debt yet to pay.
It’s okay, apart from all the lives they touched they leave behind,
they didn’t have a family. Just another casualty.
Still the flowers, fragrant, grow.

Stimulated stamens, stigma sated,
pollinated, procreated – purpose complete, you mated.
Withered and bearing fruit or seed,
duty done, survival maintained in its ruthless deed.
Yet the offspring grow in polluted beds,
heads filled with past regrets embedded,
shedded from their own parent’s mess,
and then regress, foetal, bleating,
you can’t compete at this meeting.
You’re a gymno not an angio,
you’re more practical not sequined.
Can’t find your place – No room to grow. Defeated.
Seems it’s a show, a popularity contest,
but style over substance
only leads to stylish substance abuse.

Beautiful green leaves
can’t fight with coloured petals
and nostalgic scent.

Crisis

Overrun, swarming, swamped in vermin,
terminal's disrupted, mistrusting and disgusted.
Parasites stalk the tunnels, funneling, running,
headless and screaming, scheming leaving
nothing for the most of us, locusts,
supporters bewitched by their hocus pocus,
raucous, feeding with no other focus.
Scavengers, ravagers, pillagers
disrupting us quiet villagers,
riveted, diligent. They care not for their images.
They can afford to throw them away,
abusers, manipulators, nothing-to-lose losers,
cheaters, liars, red tape disruption ignored, bias,
cut through with purchased pliars,
urged on by crowds of supporters, deniers.
Slathered, frothy chops, all charges dropped,
wrongdoings ignored by feckless cops. .

That's the politicians, not the migrants.

Whatever Will Be, Will Be...

What was your bid?
Is a life really worth that little to you?
Did you take it anyway? You sure did.
Some say I’m morbid
but I kept my feelings, raw, hid.
You told me better stories than folklore did,
real, human and heart to the core. Amid
all of that you never once told me you’d be leaving nor did
I prepare.  My life will never play out as interesting as yours did.

The truth is I blew this, I screwed this up and there’s no way you knew this.
I threw this away because besides you no one ever told me I could do this.
The rumour is my biggest problem was a surprising lack of hubris.
I’ve been there, been here, King Lear, the King swears this thing here,
his crown, the division rings clear, he drinks beer to forget the stinged rear,
dissent and gin, freer, he considers what clings near and it brings fear.

Baptised by trials and chastised, at an age when elastic plasters
grazed knees and chapped thighs are cast iron. Rapt eyes,
I clapped eyes on you and you taught me the past lies.
In past eyes  their gasped cries of regret are the last cries
of chancers and those on their last tries with big dreams
and firmly grasped cards and cast dies.
Spirit lives on but, luck and experience? That dies.

I don’t think I ever said “Fuck the world!” before I knew you,
Your stories inspired me and, back then, I could live through you.
I knew too much, screwed up, at bad things I did lots and good I didn’t do much,
mulched and dumped, scrummed and pumped full of lies,
broken limbs with no new crutch,
told about how I’m scum and how success was a new touch
and well out of my grasp, bitten by the asp before I knew what an asp was,
but I was old enough to be held back, and I knew what that clasp was.

Prohibition, inhibition, society took its toll on me,
a hold on me, golden growth taken, my best years were stole from me.
Misery and joyless, history, pleasant but miserly, schism and mystery.
Tired of fighting, ousted mental jousting and physical fistery.
Black thoughts, black eyes, not taught, mind hives, harsh fights,
bleak hearts, fresh minds, moulded by savagery, civilisation was my last rites.
All past fights, present fights, unpleasant thoughts, scream-filled nights.
Anxiety crippled, political ripples and stipulations tripled for entitlement to help,
whelping and scalped, “Help!” enveloped in the sorry pelt of the hand you were dealt.

Where did it all go wrong? Bong! The clock ticks, the bell tolls,
as stock takes and roll calls let me know hell calls, tell all and sundry
I won, it is not for me whom the knell tolls and the swell falls.
I am still at the peak, my prowess endowed, by others enamoured
and powers are glamoured, stumbled and stammered but found my strength and health.
My odds the longest of the long, so tough I couldn’t even kill myself,
more than twice, the strongest of the strong.
Felt my wrath, not half – scathing – Daft I laughed and continued to walk,
the only thing I need to know is the destination of this path.
But fuck it, I’ll run.
Not knowing the destination is most of the fun.

Unwanted Advice

Someone once said “To die in pursuit of a dream is better than to live without one.”
At what point in this savagery,
killing time, selling it too,
did I give up on the imaginary?
When did I get so tired chasing my dreams,
When did I become so scared in my head,
That I would give up on all I wanted, it seems
I thought I’d be less tired compromising instead.

Now I’m portly,
in a quandary about the quantity the kitchen paper’s absorbing,
daubing my signature on soul sales contracts, maudlin,
and worried about the mortgage.
I’ve cut out gluten, it makes me bloated,
my company just floated, I’m locked into share options
twenty years already I doted on their interests,
ten more is all I’m hoping, set sail and boated
into a future of promise,
heaven; suffer now for a chance at better later.
Suffering is easy.
All I need is TV,
my tai chi,
and a chai tea,
and a read of a self-help book nightly.

Someone once said “If it’s an effort to be happy, you’re not happy.”
But that must be a lie,
trust me because I
have paid for the best tests, invested, I’ve spent much wealth
on life coaches as recommended by Men’s Health,
and they all say it’s my fault I’m unhappy,
crappy job, nappies, relationship tense and scrappy?

Someone once said “You’re not a fighter if you’re fighting to submit.”
I didn’t believe it a bit, thought it was shit,
but now I wonder,
Was my dream the biggest blunder?
Or was it sensibly choosing not to follow it, as I slowly went under
Downed, unconscious and drowned in a sea of frowns,
clowns in suits, chasing dollar and pound?

Someone once said “Sacrificing everything is the worst lesson you can teach your children.”
And I wonder if they might be right,
this unsightly night, brightly lit by dim lamps,
the stars shine and remind me the universe is billions of years old.
What do I get? A blink,
It stinks, maybe I should make the most of it,
Maybe it doesn’t matter, my life’s a dream and I’m just the host of it,
but when I die it shouldn’t be about loss,
it should be about love for life,
and a toast to it.

Someone once said,
“A bank balance can swell for talents well beyond their worth,
and a property is not a home, a home is where your love lives,
and whatever it is have no self-loathing about your girth,
a body is only as good as the mind in it, and the compassion it gives.
The things that truly bother a human spirit, as they lay their weary head,
gasping, clutching at the final few moments of life, undignified on some bed,
are not “I’m glad I paid the electricity bill!” or
“I spent too much time with my loved ones, I wish I’d been at work more, instead!”

They regret not having spent as much time in contact with their loved ones as they did with strangers on the mass transit.
They regret that the closeness they felt with those strangers was uncomfortable and remote.
They regret not having started conversations with those fellow strangers.
They regret having spent more time working to make sure society thought their family was perfect than they spent recognising their family was perfect regardless.
They regret that their idea of perfection was sown from the seeds of nonsensical media and political ideals, reaped into a crop of resentment and emotional distance.
They regret the days they spent arguing about a photocopier instead of hugging their children, making love to their partner, or walking and talking with a friend.
They regret that people supposedly work to live, when they live regardless of whether they work or not.
They regret that to have a quality of life, one has to work for a concept as lacking in meaning as money.
They regret that love is not a universal currency.
They regret the times they sold their dreams to sacrifice it all for whatever they deemed more important.
They regret that they were stupid enough to be duped into thinking this was noble.
They regret that they taught their children the same lessons they had learned before.
They regret the spiral.
They regret that they were not the ones to break it.
They regret.
I grow weary of their regrets.”

On the shoulders of giants, but small of mind,
in the footsteps of fallen messiahs, I stepped.
Every one of them, I came to find,
in death, and regret, they slept.

Someone once said “I have come to take you to a land without fear or care.”
That someone is death. It is their advice I wish I could share.

Aurora

Each turbulent intake of air
as meaningfully pointless as the spin of a quark.
Subatomic joys and strong forces,
attractions, seemingly inexplicable, at least for now.
Energy released in the splitting of those bonds.

Destructive plasmas form in the mire.
Red, tannic; veins drenched,
veins forming a structure, a sponge,
like roads, like chaos, or the galaxies in the black.
The vomited nebulae among them,
a cacophony of creation and destruction;
a live set, Shiva’s music lesson.
Waveforms and vibration, passion and elation.

Solar flares cry their way across the chasm.
Electromagnetic interference yearns for the spark.
Quivering, diminishing, the teardrops slim,
leaving only the visceral aurora
above the savage beauty evolving unaware,
it moves, it eats, it kills, it smiles, it loves,
and it appreciates the holy glow
with a reverent stare.