The Bateleur's Beak

Blinded eyes are a silken
white. We look away
cold with closing hands,
apathetic to the fray.

Underneath the sands
no fueling river runs,
despite the raging onslaught
no saviour ever comes.

Black and silence stained,
a red and curving blade,
the Bateleur's beak is over
all and scorning any aid.

The veins beneath the surface
are empty and collapsed.
Their poison cargo carried
Harare's pulse has lapsed.

The Coming Of The Season

From the new sprigs of justice baubles hang:
a glittering mockery.
In the square the people stand and sing.
A Row of tents on the cold concrete pitched:
a useless protest: their ears are stitched.

Churchill stands over, double breasted
sheet metal, leaning on his stick.
The wind curls around as mint.
George Canning stands at the back
his stone cloak billowing black.

The tall iron fence: impassable.
The golden rivulets of parliament
sneer out through the pointed onyx.
To decorate this unreachable place:
the coming of the season
and the end of reason.

On The Pavement Lies

The streets are paved with gold,
so runs the old cliché.
The bankers sit in affluence
counting up their pay.
Bright red buses filled to burst
with workers on their way:
smiling people in the race,
and gaining every day.

The cliché's split and bent,
with the city all but spent;
Ii the ashes children play.

The streets aren't paved with gold
they're worn and cracked and cold;
there is nothing more to say.

Margate

Steel waves slap against the stones,
driftwood and discarded carrier bags
litter the shore, the memory sags
painfully, seeping from my bones.
Flashing lights have all but faded.
shouts linger and echo on the air
of my brother and I, a joyful pair.
The pebbles stare up at me, jaded.

I try to tell my son about this place
but his mind cannot accept what is
beautiful is just hiding its face.
Alone here on the would-be sand
my mind aches back for days of
bliss. It is now the waste land.

Through The Haze

Dystopia twisted, wraps around us like flies,
concrete statues marching always onward
as a silent thrusting violence, clouding disguise,
darkened smog shrouds the sunset forward.

Caught amidst grey smoke and cancerous fumes
a small silhouette there, innocence dropped
from his hands. Hatred curls in spires and plumes,
it’s too late, cold fate cannot be stopped.

His eyes reflect cruel towers skyward reaching,
echoing as glass. His thoughts ebb and fall.
resigning legs beneath him are downward seeking,
his throat gives out a scratching lingering call.

I find I’m filled with regret for the dark silhouette,
the twisted knife in his back, his blood running black.
Solace is easy to get, don’t turn away yet;
there’s no coming back, he’s lost, cast into black.

Bleak House

Cold that grips to bind,
bending floorboards warped
my foot hereunder.
I watched the ivy wind
pulling slowly them asunder.

Throughout dust motes hang,
stifling tinsel threading
the banisters through.
I watched with a pang
those wasting lonely two.

Darkling brown the paper peels,
rolling downward slowly
casting a darkened shadow.
I watched over meals
their faces turning sallow.

The house stands empty,
a greying ashen hue.
Left in a corner leaning,
a disused snooker cue.

Beulah

Twisted door frames, aching
and torn, wood flaking crumbles,
damp seeps and tumbles
through the walls and mind.
Brown carpet with rotting
walls. Abject waste of noble grace.
Never talk of silent anger
behind the folded face.

Smell of confusion hangs in the air
subtle stench of stillness and care.
Damp paper peels in the hall
white chalk frowning wall.
Rooms of receipts rotting
a mind, lost. Love squatted here
alongside two lives' cost.
A soft still place of subtle fear.

A love I could never understand.
Never touching, crooked hands
saving water saving grace
cold and aching. Black fireplace.

Yellow seat caved and depressed
to incontinence and sweat.
Aging and dying together
in separate rooms they slept.

Whitechapel

Eyes unfocused blearily stare
tied with tubes and greasy hair
a weakened state with fading skin,
resigned to a cancer within.

Yellowed feet from twisted sheets
his son arranges with hesitant care
faltering words after silent beats,
grey-blue fingers resting there.

Tubes ivy wind the bleached sheets
biting in through veins and wrists.
To the left a man in stoic silence sits
he cannot speak;
his greying throat is slit.

A Veil

Cynicism burning,
cold sickness turning.
Black and shaking inside
a cold river runs sloshing
down my sides. Tears sprung,
I’m only one.

A façade held up to light
shows through like broken glass.
Fear consumes me, fight or flight,
a sudden kick. My life is farce.

I find myself waiting, listening
to a silence that stretches on forever.
Bleak tinged with white, touching together
all I can never grip.

Living is waiting to be found out.
All that follows is death.

The Trouble With Board Meetings

At 12:54 on a Thursday afternoon, just before lunch, Mr. George Hardcastle rose from the head of the board meeting table. He looked around at the board before slowly and calmly walking to the window. The board watched him in silence; Mr. Hardcastle was an eccentric and hard to predict chairman, one of the reasons for his success in business. Upon reaching the window Mr. Hardcastle rhythmically drummed his fingers on the sill for a moment, before opening the catch and sliding open the window. A cold wind slipped into the office, ruffling the hair of some of the board members and rustling the papers on the mahogany table. The men hoped this display wouldn’t go on for too long; Mr. Hardcastle was renowned for his long inspirational speeches and they were all quite hungry.

Mr. Hardcastle turned to look at the room, “well, let’s see” he said, before coolly stepping onto the sill, taking a further step and plummeting 57 stories to his death.

There was a heartbeat of silence in the boardroom. Then chaos erupted. Half of the board ran to the window to witness the splattery demise of their former chairman, while the others ran the other way, away from the window, to the back of the room.

When presented with a vision of death, only half of the board were able to accept it, the others fled from the image like sheep from a wolf.

Look in the mirror; perhaps you'll see

Soft. Milk
Smoothed Silk.
Swallowed down
Forgotten taste,
Waiting in haste.
All I need: Toxic waste.
The stream of brown,
Comes pouring down.
A bitter smile
For the burning bile.
Scratched and aching:
Sweet relief: my only belief.

Arched and curling,
Thrusting and moaning.
Two fingers caress,
Cold and undressed.
The shimmering mirror
Soon to be clouded.
Excrement enshrouded:
Lily White with Corset tight.

Globules and driblets hanging
I need to share.
There’s nobody there
Attending this fair
Holding back my hair.

Binging and purging
Forever turning and hurling
Throwing out afer forcing it in;
Tiled skin, pressured in.
The blood, the shame:
Obesity’s claim on an
Emaciated frame.

Binge. Purge.
Binge. Purge.
Binge. Purge!
She couldn't breathe.
But no one heard.

Acid throat and rotting teeth
Grated ribs and infants feet.
Soon she couldn't take the pain,
Slowly crumbling
Her bliss.
Her pain.

Compulsively she fed this line
She couldn't breathe but now it's time
To start the dance, a dance of death
She couldn't breath, no breathe left.

I stand and I fall
Before you all
Raised on a point; so tall
All on my own
With hollowed out bones.
People look; longing stares
There's no one who cares.
Looking: A needy state;
I'm trapped in a prison of hate.
Losing weight; lost fate.


It’s all in the waste; I love the taste.
Seeking the ache; longing for pain.
Absolution in my name.
Purging my shame. It’s all a game.
I’m left here divided from all.
United with no one, alone I fall.
Kneeling and turning
Burning and hurling
The tiles, the bowl:
Friendly, welcoming.
Home.

Everyone dreams the dream,
But I am it.
There’s loss and sadness
Chasing the dream; seeing
The seam, the lining, pink
And red in the burning brown.
The chunk and the brine
All that's mine.
My body’s lost; lost in the flood,

Overwhelmed, underfed.
Malnourished. Underfoot.
Lily White with corset tight.

The Wall Of Memory

I took photos of my life. I used to take a photo to remind me when something happened.

I took so many pictures. So many.

I developed them and stuck them to my bedroom wall. First just a few favourites. Then more. Friends, family, pets, places, bodies. They all began to fill my wall.

Untill one day, you couldn't see the wall anymore.

I had blocked out my wall with my memories. Memories had taken the present and hidden it behind the veil.

Sometimes I wonder. If the wall fell down, would the pictures still stand? A wall of memories supporting the roof of my life.

The Crashing Of Waves

Politeness remains. The last bastion of hope. Even at the end of civilisation awkward politeness will see us through.

“How’ve you been?”

My blood freezes in my veins, I’m lost again; in over my head; drowning. I’m treading water in an unfathomably deep, stormy ocean; isolated on all sides for thousands of miles. There is no one to help. The black water slaps my face, choppy waves force their salty path into my mouth. I can’t help but swallow the foul, bitter, elixir. How can I stay afloat in this ocean of despair and emotion? She knows me. How? I have no idea who is she is. There is nobody to throw me a life-ring; everybody just looks on in terrifying apathy.
Has she mistaken me?
She has mistaken me.
The dizzying high of my fear ebbs into disappointment.
She thinks I’m someone else.
I am someone else.
I’m out of the deep and left spluttering for breath on the ground, slumped in the mud and the discarded dreams of the backstreets, coughing up water. My throat is aching, crying out from this punishment. I’m alive but humiliated.

“David? How’ve you been?”

She knows me.
I’m back in the great tossing ocean. Alone. Left to the fury of Neptune.
I’m dead.

Eyes

I remember her eyes the most. Strange isn’t it that after adoring a person; after loving them so deeply you would do anything they asked of you; after holding them close so to you, learning the contours of their body; hearing their dreams; living in a world of fingertips and brushed moments of hands on cheeks; and then, finally, seeing them walk away from you for that last time; it’s their eyes that you remember. Something as inconsequential as eyes. I mean, they’re closed for the majority of the time, and when they are open you don’t dare to look at them. These two windows to the soul; those two green pools with flecks of gold. These two-way portals, pulling the world and you into them; replacing it all with pure emotion, with an individual’s hopes and fears…if only we’d dare to look. It’s these things that we remember. The two things we see the least.

Liberty of Spring

From here I can see the world.

White mist drags a curtain off the
sun; revealing to the Earth its saviour.

The still life of a dead winter tree
is no more; a lost painting of Inaction.
The sun has come to set it free.

Red and black freedom
glides past my perception. Creations
of a sublime nature. Flowers add dots
of colour to the green of nature’s nation.
The tallest citizens reaching with open arms
towards the warming gold. Redistributive
of life to those in lower height. Alms
for the poor and never conservative.

A variety of life so wide and changeable:
the individualism of nature shines
out, as the sun shines down so able.
The plunging ravines; the tallest climbs:
such diversity and such liberty.
Who are we to argue with these transcendent
rules of nature. Humanity: an obscenity.
Hiding from ourselves as independent.

The liberty of spring reminds
of freedom we’ve lost along the way.
We’re blind and lost far behind.

All that’s left to face is the cost.

Love's Reqiuem

With her leftwrist bronze twist circling forever,
she reaches toward my face, open
hands. Fingers fold.

Her green eyes with flecks of gold.
Reflecting in mine, reflected in hers.
Infinite reflection, a luxury of contemplation.

Without her I am nothing. Her calm
encircling me, warming the shards of
a broken soul behind the glass of my eyes.

This is where my inhibitions hide.
In the recesses of my being; nothing inside,
what's left to hide?