The Miserable Virus

Walls and mazes
dead ends
forgotten beginnings

Just let me
finish licking my fur
Then feed me

Petal in a book
sacrificed
for future reference

Give me a smile
not mine to receive
a delicate frown

Saved from myself
by myself
alone

Patient picnic
the same meal
yesterday’s best moment

With a friend
time passes
quick to react

Weight
gain and loss
seek balance

Playing a game
holding aces
never letting go

Foul Hole Bog

Ghoul under my skin
Tell her my secrets
Make me question everything

Ol’ time radio 1998
Worn out side B
Digital watch never ticks

Fuck me sideways
I’ve forgotten my glasses
Lost resting on my head

I let you out
When I shout to you
I say nothing

I keep my mouth shut
Stapled; filed away
Along with the false and fragile

Agonising about the future
I feel pain in my shoulder
No sleep ever again

I slept well
Last night I sewed
Embroidering life lessons

Scarf face mask
I will not steal
Closed shop. Too much wind.

Cow Sick

She wants to run away
Into a strangers arms
Weaponised love; accepted

Her parents don’t care
Grandparents say she can cook
That’s her pitch

What will happen once you arrive
Lost and stranded
Strange land; distant people

She does it because she will care
Barely an adult; thin promise
A hope of better quality of life

Cut paper; cut fingers
Blood on her letters
She’s lost control; the words are empty

She wants an empty suit
A man who works
A leaf on the tallest tree

Promises, promises
What is she after
She doesn’t know; she knows that much

Do you believe in radical acceptance?
No?
Oh.
Well think about it. It could help.

The world will be out to get you wherever you run. You cannot hide from yourself. Where can you go to seek shelter from pain? Within. In peace. In constant love. Conceptual romance. No bonds or knots. Alone or together. You will be fine. You will be at rest.

You climbed a tree and looked down at me.

You spoke with your face.

I could see. You weren’t happy at all.

I had risen my voice. It didn’t feel like my choice.

I walked away. Like this was a play.

But this was no act.

You didn’t want to know. What you already knew.

My temper had torn our bond apart. Left holes in our hearts.

So I wrote to you. ‘We can see this through.’

There was nothing to see.

You built yourself a new home. A new start.

So in the heat I lay. Wishing for a new day. By the tree where you looked down at me.

---

I fear few know you. But what it is to be known? To hold faith that this dream is no dream at all. Possibly.

Your golden potential unravels day by day. An untouched block of wood being carved notch by notch. It is my melancholy pleasure to watch this process. It gives me life.

Such a gift is yours to give. But does it loosen our ties or make them stronger? That depends on my stubborn mind. My ongoing boredom and hypnotic drudge.

I want some motivation to continue my activity. You provide this. I am receptive in spurts. Like a bird flying high for a view I leave the shackles of this land momentarily. Wishing you were up here with me, you are, you are the sky.

---

(I want you to tear this to shreds.)

* * *

I can be your nothing. The thing in your life that doesn’t really matter. A background feeling. An underlying thought pattern. A goose with orange striped eyelashes.

While your everything comes and goes I am there. Washing dishes on a cold day. A cooling breeze on a hot one. Repositioning things on the mantle. A horned lemon with a sweet sweet tangy syrup dressing.

With all the potential I stay still; rarely showing any form. A shadow flickering in candlelight. The feeling of ‘what shall I do now?’ An unexpected hand gesture. A silken scarf with an image of Delia Derbyshire riding a resplendent golden moose represented by colourful sequins.

---

Time makes the highs low and the lows high.

The esteemed are just the flavour of the month. Change occupies all.

Ambition at an all time low but I feel bliss sat next to a cat.

Adapt to the situation don’t try to change it to fit you.

Water dips and flows into every crevice of the rocky sea shore but is slowly shaping the hard, strong cliff wall.

If you are like that, you are life sustaining, the lowest of low, making all those around you feel high.

Feed your friends and treat them well and they will return the favour. A painted glass teardrop can mean a thousand things. It can be treasure. It can be crap. The value is not in the pieces you hold; it is inside of you.

A tic is an sudden, repetitive, voluntary response to an unwanted urge. It is our way of measuring time.

---

Sitting by the lake. You are by my side. Looking at the cotton sky mirrored in the fisherman’s playground; a thought enters my head. I turn to you to whisper my idea but you are not there.

I watch the grass grow at the side of my blanket. Bees and flies pass by; secure in the summer’s plentiful bounty. I can’t help but feel powerless. Possibilities number too many and decisions too far away.

A cold breeze blows so I pack up my things. Leaving all as it was. If I could get you here would you even share this pleasure that hits my chest. Short and sharp, painful like a spasm, yet warm and reassuring. I feel better.

I thought I heard your voice but it is just a bird alarmed that I am nearby. Walking on the way back I see a kaleidoscope of colour on the graffiti mural on the side of the shop. I am steps away from you and my heart begins to pound.

Key in the door and the room lights up. Cat greetings with a purr and demand for food. Although just a roof over my head; the place smells of comfort. This is your welcome and I am back inside you once more. I am home.

---

Take me away from this night sky I’ve inhabited for so long.

Withstanding wind and all kinds of atmospheric tension.

A shout from my past scars seeping works of sap into being.

I will leave a bare branch but it is in my bark my legacy lies.

Textured hope and virtue exceeding a butterfly’s beat.

Leaving the deceptive darkness let me live through the pure spring breeze.

A two fold cycle we’ll ride until we are within each other.

Laying my roots down in your garden. I’m sorry if I’m irresponsible.

I feel like I’m dreaming. Stable and still. In silence I’ll think of you.

Trying not to upset your environment. I’ll breathe oxygen if you need it.

Will I get visiting wildlife? Maybe that will change my course. Certainty is distant.

Cold comes from the North and East in these parts. Memories will come and go.

The sun can heal your trauma. I don’t want to cause you to suffer.

Though trees bleed and leaves fall down life pushes us forward again and again.

Is it enough to share and appreciate the good things that happen?

Endings are inevitable. As the new day rolls in; I do not know what will be.

---

The Lucky 13

Handling a garden fork with uneven tines is like speaking with your mouth closed. Four candles burn bright behind your eyes, giving you a golden glow of uncertain silence. The work gets done on a cold, cold night. Glistening is: A large undercoated silver wall; ready for the shining paint. Painting the wall screaming ‘Please garment and I quit’ is one way for the glowing fork walls to reach their destination. As this jazz piano tune rings in my ear, everything stops. Silliness in stillness in silence.

Synthia had started a band, she wanted to play organised music, you know… with an organ. Soon the notes started to flow; through the letter box. ‘Turn that noise down’ they said. Well, Synthia didn’t like this at all. She arranged the musicians into two groups, shouting to one: Start! Stop! Start! Slow down! Stop! Once they started playing she shouted to the other: Start! Stop! Start! Stop! Somehow eventually the music fell into place, in perfect synchrony with each other.

I’ll take the next train, I don’t wanna be your friend anymore, I’ll see you eat foie gras and nothing else – those damn ducks and clucks, they know what’s been going down… I’ll show you the road, mad hat, crab rat. I’ve never seen you looking as luscious as you do with that little… Oh well it was worth it. Banned hands get sharper by hour, no colours and his primary friend, a grey overhung juice, with its small, small crashed up nerve. I’ll see you never again, never again without a hearse, the strange tailed faucet crowed.

I have had a cat’s eye face graft operation. The projectile plasmoids which were my eyes look like glass teardrops in the grey metal dish. My new opticals sit in their sockets like the soft silky voice of every tomorrow’s wishful acquisitions. Two who are constant in their stillness capture my lust. In dusts speckled light shines a deep influx of noise. Broken up by, the two; short and tall, extrovert and introvert. The songs of time spoken through a coloured filter.

Knowing only what has been before, the future still surprises them.
She sees herself as a fly in an icecube brushed aside by the peripheral society where it sat. A long tube blown away by her mainstream sense of nowhere sang a song that lightened the nights gaze. Her eyes in the merged pillars of what turned out to be a weathered hazel tree. Offering nuts to the bolts that wrapped the front of a sound which turned to rust. Like her hair glistening in the snows pale reflection of lust. A handful of bee’s acid like stings the night to perfection. In smoke water the burden of a few minutes of earth’s grasping vines drips into dust as she utters a moment of silence.

They feed off each other’s misery like monkeys grooming. Their emotions burnt out, their tunnel vision memories never fading away. A grasp of what death could mean. Is mean, as the time ticks away the night’s dawn closes in. Through one way glass they see a reflection of themselves in each other. A couple embrace between double glazed windows. This bright image repeats itself on a screen shown to millions. The gaze of those sat watching wander into the eyes of their caring friends. All this as a man lops off both his arms. Taken for granted without knowledge of how this will affect them now and later.

Being average is difficult because of the ability to aspire to things always out of reach. The easy options that evade the average are mean. If only the average could change their mode of thinking then the aforementioned would be less mean. The average is a mainstream view of: Capitalism isn’t working. More isms are poured into the void left, right, and centre. The void is accessible via senses, every tomorrow. Imagining uncertainties is good because pondering the only certainty in life will get you nowhere but there: The void.

I am a 1 + 1 = 9 type of guy; I see things where they are none. Single figures so very finite, invented expanse with multiple guides. Teaching ways of delusion, the ants sit in their farm. Like somehow barracks for unused numbers want to line upside down and back again. Nature’s a spinning wheel so use the movement to your advantage, the sly digits clicked. Painted letters into words, and rearrange on the canvas; telling the world what they don’t know, that they have known for eternity: the past and previous Zen dance.

Tiny fruit flies aim for my eyes. While a long ponderous moment is taking place, I feel deaths own warm hand on my shoulder. At least I think it is death, maybe it’s you, it is you, and you’ve come to kill me. So I smile at you and you walk away. You walk back to your lonely trail in life, music and love. While I wonder on, fixated with death, in a crowd of one person where the clocks don’t tick. I cannot stand the sound of a ticking clock. The clock ticks on and I realise I am also alone in life, music and love. Happiness in loneliness, this is the time where our paths have crossed, never to meet again. The same direction we walk together, apart we stride towards our goals.

The ignorant are insulting perhaps one of my dearest friends behind her back. While I collapse into myself, I shed a tear for the whole of the world, in sadness, stillness and for the water effect lollipop sticks in the slalom race. The water runs back and forth, up and down for a long time. Maybe an hour or so later, a red telephone box appears by the side of a winding road with a red Royal Mail van driving along it. I then go an epic adventure and rest at a friend’s house and eat ring shaped potato snacks. So salty!

She said I should put my hair in a cake. I think something was lost in translation as a small bird blew a hole in the window too. ‘I think she had the flu.’ Said the Veterinary. Who flew out of the room to take an emergency call. Some people were walking in circles with a purpose in the next room. The slow dancers danced and terrific cries were heard from the surrounding area.

‘Give me eyes and ears, feelings to feel.’ Said the sphere, inside a sphere that could speak. A donut shaped life will not see it, when it happens. For its eyes are on the outside. Only the dudes looking inside will see the mirror that shows them the real outside. Like wood with potential to be carved the people read into obsession and ill health.

An ostrich seed dropped from the plant bearing life for the creatures that lived below. We stood there basically asleep to all the sensory delights of the world. He gave a clip ‘round the ear, to the fishes that swim ignorantly. It tried to be the religion that gave itself up when the truth came along and contradicted its own teachings. A pointless pencil drew the universe while three sheep jumped the gate. A crowd of people and animals gathered around and peered down upon the scriptures.

Blown noses and slide mucus. I crashed the plane when I sneezed, said the man in green shoes. So much sadness, a whole history erased with a lingering blink of an eye. A spectrum of colour turned to greyscale with a gherkin placed carefully onto a large generic electronic item. It is the worst possible start to the second half of the second where my life changed. ‘Four cats are with me’ or ‘mae pedair cath gyda fi’: you decide. A panda bear, never swears he never cares when he doesn’t share.

Please Stop Ticking Clock

I began, at last, to see what I could do. With a silent, meaningless, incomprehensible, unreachable god; with no text to pass on or preach, the impossible is at my fingertips. Imagination bubbled up inside of me, like a spring out of the ground. Or, an ever uncoiling helix uncompressing new ideas constantly. Yet, my fingers felt numb; dead, almost.

Realisation of a resting god?

Tick!

I will sleep you off your feet. My words are streaming down your face, dripping onto your toes. You look down and they are clear. I.e. they have no colour. They are totally transparent. You don’t mind though, because it’s not really you.

Day-dreaming of a sexy ghost, who is a long way away?

Tick!

‘A man crying is not to be sniffed at.’ Said the ambiguously gendered voice. ‘Unless you are crying too; or have a common cold; then you can sniff. The rules never can be concise’ continued the argument. ‘Only my infinite length rulebook opens the door to a world of true justice.’

Be confused by some bullshit on an advertisement?

Tick!

Lonely weather, your friends are out of reach across space. There is only one of you. Yet you are so varied and changeable like a wheel travelling over a landscape. Sometimes anger compels me to think I am alone, but compared with you I am not. I am not as angry either. Although, I can feel your rage on hot days.

One sided conversation with a force of nature?

Tick!

We choose children to play games with the lives of the population. Then they try to be so precise with the truth; giving one solution to questions where the answer lies with a wide spectrum. No longer are their leaflets full of joyful ideas, they just poke holes in their enemies. Finding fault where they can.

Doom mongering the political present and future.

Tick!

A single look at the golden girl. A drawing seen of walls; all twirled. I touch your face and I cry; then starve. There’s no doubt that you want to be free. Look at me; I don’t look free to you? I sure hope not. I’m locked inside a box of books. Not reading a single one. See your face and I cry: ‘Stop to look.’

Type to the beat of the music to see what comes out?

Tick!

He knew that he could survive through understanding of a non-religious personal god. The states of universal consciousness which rock quantum suicide. My finger exists here and now on my keyboard but doesn’t exist here and now on my keyboard in other ways such as the future of your final destination. So when my life interpretation machine called my brain dies will I live on in other states of reality?

Wishing I was clever enough to work out or understand some interesting things?

Tick!

The gaps between the very smallest things are perhaps filled by copies of themselves from different histories. Unable to be detected with our three dimensional instruments because they are incompatible. Seemingly invisible these gaps are too dark. Sometimes in my field of view a tiny spot appears so bright yet so small. It’s probably a problem with my retina or brain; still, it provides me with the inspiration to wonder.

Thinking about holes and gaps – not mentioning the worms!?

Tick!

Why do I do things I do? For you? Is it only you? All of you? Or just you. Mr U knows that his name can be confusing. ‘Me?’ People say. ‘No, U’ he says. ‘How do you spell your name?’ They reply. ‘U’ he says. ‘No, you don’t understand, look, just write it down.’ It could of been Yew, Yu, Yiw, or Ewe but no, it was U. Must be crazy having a name like Horseshoe thought Mr U. Get it?

Noticing shapes in letters?

Tick!

O to be tubby is to be fat. I’m 15 and half stone and losing weight fast. I aspire to continue the trend. For once, there is a light, a far away light. Is this the white light of death? Or is it the green light of hope? I’m colour blind, but surely I’ll find out soon enough. Another year before I go back to a place I have been but not like this, not like how I felt before. Back then it felt as though I wasn’t there not even really knowing what to wear. In the future my mindset will have changed, I’ll think do I care? Well, I do, somewhere.

Token ‘personals’ ad?

Tick!

As the blood drips from my nose, she can see me bleeding and unusually she can feel it. I move her hand from under my nose, placing it to my palm. I notice her look over my shoulder, I don’t turn to look because she doesn’t look concerned. It is man who slowly enters into the room in a sharp suit. Not that I know this yet but I did earlier when I cut my nose on his suit.

Is it enough to dream what others can see?

Tick!

I’ll write sixteen love songs for you. It’s just that I’d never let you know. Some days I look around, head held high, wondering why? Oh, why? I never told you. Then I realised, ‘I have pride in my depression damn it! It’s my big squeezy hug teddy bear. Except it doesn’t have the warm fuzzy feeling.’ Blame me if I draw you in then disappoint to change the way you want. I’m as stubborn as a mule and end up just using you.

Things that disappoint me about myself?

Tick!

Thinking fast into the future. I don’t know what counts as the present anymore, it seems like nothing much happens there, so I just sit and think about the future, and sometimes the past. When I think about the future it is now through rose-tinted glasses. While the past is a regret. This is the present. This, is the present.