Category Archives: Poems

Poetry is
The art of the heart
Written in the lifeblood
Of the soul.

Mother Bear

Another day, another airport,
So far away, further than before,
Heading to calm steam emotions,
Flat self echoing fear and superstition,
All that I want, I cannot say,
All is calm inside and out,
But deep down I rile,
Thank the steam of cool control,
That stems the flow of tears,
The solid resolve to not break down,
That holds me tight in iron grip,
And flattens my darkest fears.

Life without is strangely empty,
No thoughts can move along that path,
You are my reason, touchstone, sanity,
Without you I am adrift at sea,
I know you are always with me,
That forever waits for no one, yet
I hope to hold you close once again,
And chase your nightmares away, Mother Bear,
For me, for everyone, you have always been there,
And within us you will always stay.

Notes on Suicide

What the fuck is the point,
Why the fuck should I care,
There’s nothing more for me out there,
No solice to last, no thrill, no real blast,
No life-joy, fun-filled, exhilarating high,
No self-destructive, suicidally-depressive low,
That I haven’t already tasted, seen, heard felt,
Why, into this carpet, can’t I just melt,
To each Michael his music,
To Ruthie, love of life,
To Elil reality acted,
To father, just more strife,
But I don’t have that je ne sais quoi,
That joie de vivre, or other quota,
It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s all a pile of shit,
Even Ian has a life, though it’s pure flip,
Where is my hole, my soul in the ground,
When will I ever get off this merry-go-round.

Let the candles burn low,
Let my heart bleed dirt,
No more will I cry,
Never again will I hurt,
This ugly thing called life,
An abomination, no, more, an abortion of hope,
And again in the darkness I grope,
Like a sad easter bunny, searching blindly for one last egg,
I fell too deeply, now broke my leg,
And noone may help me, nor hear my lost soul beg,
For loneliness is my only friend, and in the end I’m dead.

But death is too good, too final for me,
The nine billion monkeys would no longer be laughing with glee,
They would have lost their plaything,
In dying I hope, the end is the end,
Another life would be hell,
And it would all begin again with the last toll of the bell.

Death is too easy for me pray-tell,
No last chance saloon or horror hotel,
Nothing nightmarish but what’s in my own head,
Don’t cry for me, I’ve made my own bed.

I sacrifice everything, and nothing at all,
For life is really simple, look on the wall,
In blood will be written; when all angels fall,
The end is the beginning,
As winter follows fall,
The forest is empty,
The trees have all died,
The wood is all hollow,
The three woodsmen have cried.

Tears won’t outlast a true nature’s beast,
And rest is eternal for nothing at least,
Not in this lifetime or the next,
Not my smiling face putting demon’s to rest.

For as we all know truth is power,
And the only lasting truth will be known in my last hour,
But to know, to want, to feel, to have,
These are the things that can only make us sad,
Cry tears for our children for they do no know,
The loss that we give them is the bottomless hole,
That black empty cradle of deathless light,
That in its bright shining cripples all night.

There is no more to say to this babble,
Rise up above the shit all ye rabble,
And take what is yours from my own pompous lips,
You can have it with my blessings, it’s really a pile of useless shit.

But then again,
Love,
Truth,
Sacrifice,
Isn’t that all so very nice.

And in the end, it comes again,
Like bad penny rising or bile in throat,
No more will my laughter everyone choke,
For death is my final say in all things,
And you can all fuck off, even you in the wings,
You don’t mean shit to me,
You’re not even a speck on a speck,
And the truth to all lies makes this one big joke dear friend,
Because I really couldn’t give a shit in the end.

So fuck off all you well wishers,
All helpers and lovers,
Friends above-board and under the covers,
I don’t need any more insights or painful revelations.
I know it all better than you ever will,
And yet I know nothing at all.

But,
I will fight,
I will bleed,
For the day my soul’s freed,
Because nothing to live for,
Is everything I need.

Even Flow

This is how it is, in life, in me
With all that I am and was, all that I will ever be
This is me.

Flowing like a sly snake slithering slowly sideways
Hot sand not touching skin but instead moving aside
For the slickness of my life to leave a telltale s-shaped jagged wound
In the land that I walk, forever doomed by those prophetic words,
“You’ll be a real heart breaker some day,” who knew
The heart that I would break time and again would be
Mine.

No masochist,
Me
Just broken, ever so slightly
You see
This is not the beginning or the end
For life does not work like a movie
Pat top and bottom, clear middle and run-up
Exercise some common sense and realise
That the reality of life is a constant, ever open ‘o’
Of amazing change, amazement itself just another way of saying
‘oops, i did it again’

So this is where i sit now,
Having ‘oopsed’ one time more
This time no more an oops than ever before
But it could be the last one to be made with eyes shut
If I am to make more, they will have to be consciously on purpose
Meaningfully all the more painful for their directed aim
To make me more than I am, once more again,
To turn this sad sourpuss of a future-prefect child
Into the man he needs to be to see this life to its fruitful end
Another aim, this time too high, maybe, but all the same
An aim to me to be what I need for my life to be complete
To be completely happy and comfortable, or at least comfortably happy

Which is one and the same, isn’t it?

So this is my manifesto, that all children come first
That I will make my greatest effort to live by the creed
The creed that is burned in God-like mile-high flaming letters in the darkest corners of my soul
I must “Hurt as few people as little as possible,” and
“Help as many people as much as possible,” for this is life distilled,
Is it not? To be able to say, “I did it my way, and my way hurt so little, and helped so much,
So it must be the right way, for me, at least” and maybe to end it with
“Don’t you see this is as true as mathematical formulae?”
Only to watch others nod sagely, never to know if they agree because you are right
Correct, even, but rather that you are nice, a good soul
And they would not want to let you down on your deathbed.

Saying this before then would be presumptive and arrogant,
Even that they may lie to you to make the last moments all the more meaningful
All the less painful, but you do not need to ask them
For if you do not know, in your heart of hearts
That you have lived your life by your own manifesto
To its fullest extent, the end of the meaning of life,
Your life, will have become something less than what it could have been
And at the end, this is all that will have mattered, you will see.

To be able to look into the eyes of yourself dying
Years from now, and say, “I plan on getting their well,
And dying better” is the most difficult promise we can make, ever
But we owe it to ourselves, don’t we?
To be good is easy, to be really good is easier
But to be Good and Real is the most difficult edge to take in life
The tight rope of sanity and depression, of energy and loss
To always make the right choice because it is the right choice
Not because anyone is watching, or because it suits me
Because some karmic bean counter is watching everything I do
Or because some all-seeing creator is watching my every breath
Or because some all-knowing lord has said it must be so
But because I choose to be that way, knowing full well
That I could be else, have it in me to be the worst of life’s wretched
Creatures, but choose instead to slave away at a life harder to reach
The comfort not given but taken one step at a time, one tear at a time
One slice at a time, one second at a time
One moment in time, and that is all.

each moment counts, make it count, or die trying.

There is nothing more pure than this.

Love

So what is love, she asks,
As if there is an answer
What is love,
To you, is what she means,
So I tell her –

Love is the only thing you can give away
And receive back more, the more you give,
Love is caring about someone else’s happiness
More than your own, wishing them well
Even if it poisons your soul to watch them smile
The green demon of envy reminding you that you are not only human,
But partially, at least partially, ugly inside, like all the rest.

Love is what you do when you have nowhere else to go,
No tree to hide behind, no road to run down, nowhere to escape.

Love is what you do when all else is lost,
And you realise that time itself is a mystery,
Not flowing forwards and backwards through space
With you in tow, like you were trained to believe
All those years ago, in school, through life, in memory
You realise life and time are intertwined
As is love, the memory found of some lost scent
Some distant song, come back to haunt you
From somewhere deep down, a place you thought you lost, for once
For ever, never to find, but in love, now
As you once were.

I could explain all of this, but stick to banalities,
For banalities are all I can think of, as love
Coursing through my veins takes my head and spins it round
Rises my gut and the pulse that comes from within
Spits in my face the steam of lost thoughts and broken dreams
And reminds me that, once again, I am no more
No less
Than everyone else.

memory’s burn

I received a call today
Not for me
But for my soul on legs.

She smiled when she heard the long lost voice
It was the missing, one day out, wishing her a
Happy Birthday from afar.

My heart broke again.

This is like a test, a test of me
Of the lengths I can stretch to
The distance I can bend, before I break.

I can feel that familiar ache again,
Another sorrow marked on the walls of my soul-cell
Deep in the gut where I was born, inside of me.

This happens again and again,
Even knowing that I should be focused elsewhere
On the Workshop notes I sketch, now hidden behind this document.

But I lost focus, because my heart broke again,
Only
Softer this time, somewhere in the background.

There are true loves and
Loves that are true, then there are
True lovers, but that’s a kettle of a different colour.

Today I was reminded of all three, by that phone call
That phone call that was not for me, but
My soul on legs.

Today my heart broke again, in the quiet of the background of this thing that is me.