Dull Days Indeed Read online

Who bloats and bereaves,

  Who cunningly deceives,

  From beneath the cloak of western deception.

  We, safe in our tombs,

  Enfolded in pleasures,

  Blind to the images

  That threaten our leisures.

  But stand like trophies

  Which embellish our lairs.

  For the distant we grieve,

  Yet shed no tears.

  We grieve in numbers,

  Twist in our slumbers

  As our consciences ripple.

  Care? How we dare!

  Conscience a consequence.

  Avoid, for if we look too long

  Our hearts might beat.

  So we retreat to cold shrouds,

  There uncrossing ourselves,

  Close our coffin lids and die.

  For ourselves.

  Our sanities at stake.

  Here we lick worn incisors,

  And close down our visors,

  Displaying the crowns

  That shone in the sun of imperial pasts.

  But now retreating,

  Afraid of reflections,

  That reveal and condemn.

  Epitaphs

  Fascination,

  Empty rooms, corridors, halls,

  Warehouses and workshops,

  All echoing with the sound of my dusty feet.

  Fear,

  All engulfing, spectral, ghostly.

  Fear that I wait in vain,

  Ignorant of joy and its trail of pain; J

  ust like them lost here in circumstance,

  Another time,

  Another place,

  And all that’s left is memory,

  Partial, clouded faces in the minds eye.

  A faded newspaper of a bygone age,

  Caught in the sunlight on a grey wall, Tragedy in print like

  The graffiti scratched on toilet doors

  By those who passed before, Empty rooms,

  People once lived here,

  Empty rooms,

  People once loved here.

  Fascination,

  Unfulfilled in empty rooms,

  Full of the ghosts of memory and more,

  Lives incomplete and unresolved;

  Their pain is all that remains,

  In the mortal, manic scratchings,

  The simple poetry,

  Of a bygone age.

  .

  Jogging

  The beat Of feet

  On earthy turf,

  Stake out Time

  In the rise

  And fall of ragged

  Breaths,

  And

  They all Beat on

  In desperation,

  They all Beat on

  In vain,

  To escape

  The rhythm Of epitaphs

  Always

  Pounding,

  In their

  Brains

  Hammers

  We become,

  When aware

  Not of the clocks ticking

  But the spaces in between.

  In these Infernal intervals

  Contemplation Gnaws

  At the very heart of

  Being.

  Now,

  Punctuation Seems a manic

  Necessity of sense,

  For if the breathing spaces

  Become like Distant friends

  We find ourselves suffocating

  Between the beats

  Of our own hearts.

  But the clocks Tick on,

  Always with time To spare

  For spaces,

  Their hammers beating,

  On the

  Nothing In

  Ourselves.

  Vacuum

  A fortress of British granite

  Formidable, soaring arches support

  A venerated interior.

  Concepts in transepts,

  Aisles

  And altars.

  Protective holy shrines

  Of all engulfing

  Nothingness,

  Built on divine promises,

  Immortality that fails

  In ignorance of what we seek and fear.

  Self pitying indulgence

  Of finite terrors,

  Supporting,

  Carrying,

  And transcending

  The void from which we come

  And toward which we hurtle.

  Alone, embodied in the velvet cloaks of fear

  We decline our heads to processions of

  Birth,

  Marriage

  Death.

  Dulling diamonds, tarnishing gold,

  The sparkle of life is lost

  Somewhere in time,

  A slow evaporation,

  Now,

  Forever,

  Amen.

  In birth we scream The password to death From within an empty shell, That fills with a fantasy, Condensed from Fear.

  Reptilian Dreams

  There is no design,

  Only the timeless chaos

  Of accident,

  The slowly advancing tides

  Of chance.

  There is no order,

  Only the anarchic maelstrom

  Of coincidence,

  The insubstantial,

  Fleetingly entangled,

  Yet fruitful.

  We are the godless ripple

  Stranded on the sand Of an ebbing tide,

  Rejoicing bellies down

  In a moment of genetic confusion,

  So seeking an architect

  Who fashions in his image.

  This work, some say,

  This Cathedral of Creation

  Resonates with his form In every niche

  In every shadowy pew,

  Evidence

  The instilling of faith

  As we wallow in the shadow of His Benign countenance

  In awe of his mysterious ways

  And we revel in this paradise Like the frog,

  Who contemplates the exquisite beauty

  Of mirror steel blades,

  When lost, in the bowl of a blender.

  Artist

  In the midst of the still night, I twist and turn

  Restless,

  Then arise and tear back the curtains.

  The crooked smile

  Of a new moon

  Sneers at me.

  I cannot tell the day from night,

  For the sun is black and cold,

  The cruel moon

  Is the eye of a Cyclops god

  Who would devour my mortal soul,

  Leaving a void inside.

  Who will fill it?

  I cannot be at one with myself,

  I cannot choose for

  I am a chained, shackled

  An emotional masochist,

  Afraid of the warmth,

  The Sun.

  I cannot reach out

  Lest my armour melts

  In the searing furnaces

  Of vulnerability,

  And I die rejected,

  In the light that divides,

  The day’s distinction.

  Estelle

  A chance, Opportunity unplanned,

  Yet greeted with zeal.

  You begin unbidden,

  I follow hypnotized and respond,

  Following your road of vital trivia,

  So far from my destination.

  Yet entranced I follow In control yet confined

  Ensnared in a

  Vicious cage of politeness.

  My nature an unadventurous Zodiac paradox.

  A hunter haunted, by contradiction.

  But now

  A sparkling eye, Subtle body language, Circles complete, Hair in fingers, Laughter.

  This sweet spell where time Becomes timeless, Minutes too precious to pass.

  Meetings agreed , but forgotten.

  You never came.
<
br />   Au Revior, you recede,

  Leaving a threatening glow

  Forbidden.

  A tragic, delusion.

  Now confusion reigns supreme,

  In my mixed up world of fact and fantasy.

  Love’s Wake Dog.

  Your visions of England;

  Fresh, green windy towers of wisdom.

  High rise blocks caked with ice. Autumn, Winter and fateful summer.

  You,

  Far away and estranged,

  Pursued by dark eyed wardrobes

  That open doors

  To release the scent Of love in mothballs.

  Lost, fragile alone,

  Tenuous links with a familiar world

  Strained perhaps,

  To breaking point.

  So a strange retreat.

  Doors close,

  No more translations of Nasal dialects.

  What did you see?

  Now he shrinks to save himself

  And fuels the only fire

  He can warm to,

  A simple numbing solitude,

  Alone in the dark,

  Blinded by what he always knew.

  A sightless moth

  That refuses the lure Of the Summer moon,

  And the porch lamps lit over open doors,

  Blind and deluded,

  The wraith retreats,

  No longer shall he trail

  Like a witless Wake Dog.

  Unseasonable Embrace

  It is Spring,

  High upon a wind whipped hill I watch for signs out in the valley, Which sprawls before me

  Like the long lost Mother of a million dreams.

  I watch for signs.

  New Leaf,

  The flash of rabbits tails,

  The call of the cuckoo.

  Yet the horns of winter Impale my senses.

  As the clouds drag themselves

  Wearily across my horizons

  Their sleet strangled showers

  Cooling fires that long to erupt in my heart.

  I watch for signs.

  Wary of the sentence of death

  They will pronounce on me In a Summer execution.

  I see you barbed and baited with all I desire, and fear.

  I am pushed and I am pulled,

  Between the anguished heat of Winter

  And the frosty numbing void of June.

  The seasons stand on their heads

  Somersaulting inside,

  With the prospect of blossoming joy.

  I could reach out and attempt to touch you

  Like the Summer sun I avoid and desire,

  Fly close in worthless, waxen feathers,

  Until all dissolves in certainty,

  Just as the seasons will turn.

  Spring to Summer, your barb in my heart,

  I would be dragged across continents to a final resting place,

  In the arctic cool of Springs cruel dreams.

  Yes we could die together

  In an impossible, unseasonable, embrace.

  Tomb

  Our reality is hollow

  There is nothing out there

  To touch

  But we ourselves are touched

  And tormented

  To seek the sensory

  And call it rock

  Blind men feeling the light

  And calling it blue

  Gaping at rainbows Inside our heads

  Groping for gold.

  Handless clocks still

  Pound out the hours

  Each second a toothed blade

  Annihilating the flesh

  Sending ripples through tortured souls

  And unstable places

  Building worlds out of

  Human fragments.

  We drift in the great hollow

  Twisted, stretched and tormented

  Reaching out for the ungraspable

  Hearing the unhearable

  Or only echoes

  Of something

  Lost in the dark.

  Dawn of The Dead

  On hot Summer days such as these,

  the air is sucked from collapsing sewers and stands stagnant over the crumbling estates.

  I can almost see it.

  It lingers in layers, across the painfully still parks and playgrounds, the foul breath from the arse of this place is a testimonial to its inner decay, its corruption, its degeneration.

  This place is forgotten, but not quite, for those who live on the Hill surround themselves with dogs and electric fences. This isn’t Toxteth.

  There is nothing to fear from these, until a shift in the breeze wafts their way, but that’ll never happen because they’ll never smell the shit.

  On hot Summer days such as these,

  I open the windows and appeal to history, to the embryos of epochs stirring in wombs, who twist with a grin to Highgate.

  Here on these still fertile estates, dead ideas are yet to germinate, still peculating

  in conflict and contradiction.

  Wicked Spoons

  Once Upon a Time

  In a land of white linen

  A heart beat slowed

  And a mid life mid wife man

  Unstowed his wicked spoons

  That thrust inside to expose

  The mucus drenched membranes

  Of a blood matted baby.

  Mountains of thigh flesh

  Blood bright and breech fresh

  Accelerating metal tools

  Pain is tube subdued

  Un-natural and aided

  A bright blue Innocent baby

  Coughs and splutters

  As un-choking tubes gutter

  The first breath Of air

  In a

  Brave

  New

  World.

  Dream (Part One the Awakening)

  Basements

  With faceless friends,

  Dank darkness

  Invades the nostrils,

  A candle flutters liquid,

  Revealing,

  The overwhelming solidity

  Of mildewed mausoleums,

  Bulging paled plaster

  And water threats.

  Here I enter sliding fetal Into wombs of endangered light,

  Rolling from rooms to room,

  Chained by lintel links,

  In this a giant downward squirm

  Of earth worm architecture

  Man cavern becomes water wrought,

  Gypsum plasters,

  Polished marbled limestone labyrinths,

  That cause to stoop and crawl

  Toward a fissure terminus,

  A grinning abyssal maw,

  Then passing through,

  Suddenly subdued, and

  Crushed in a giant earthworm jaw!

  Dream (Part Two the Ascension)

  An attic garret long deserted,

  Chalky floorboards crumble insubstantial.

  Here is uncertainty tangible.

  Caged threats,

  These white paneled doors deceive,

  Touched they would dissolve

  Like my mothers hair on that grave diggers spade,

  Releasing the weight of fears beyond.

  Here I tread softly

  On hopeful beams,

  Towards a four poster bed

  Barring passage to sanctuaries,

  Beyond solid unhinged doors ahead.

  Ransacking a chest of draws,

  Entwined in strangles of

  Dead vines which invade

  Human frailties,

  I find my dead Fathers shirts

  Still sealed in cellophane.

  I recoil embryonic,

  In dialogue with new ghosts,

  In numbed

  Contemplation.

  The Rippled Edge of Time

  Change here is lost to human eyes,

  Even photographs deny passage
,

  Shape and monochrome unchanging,

  Etch familiar horizons a hundred years on.

  Only the living seasons attempt to refute

  In their rhythms of white and grey,

  Immortality is almost

  Manifest in the monoliths

  At Ramshaw rocks

  Once at Flash,

  I met an ancient man,

  At the withered extremity of life.

  Old Jim, every inch a part of this place,

  Or so I thought,

  But his bones ticked like his old bicycle.

  He is still a stonewaller

  He told me tiredly,

  Rebuilding the bridles

  Generations have slung across

  The rippled edge of time.

  But the hills here shrug off

  That which seeks to master them,

  Or drag them down’

  Into the terminal rhythms of human frailty.

  They stand in unflourishing defiance,

  Rank after rank The Roaches,

  Denying frantic finite men like Jim,

  The comfort of change,

  Forever rolling to horizons,

  A frozen rhythmic illusion,

  Stretching beyond us all.

  Midnight Breathing

  Long sighs and the wind in the trees

  Sends shivering shafts

  Of fractured moonlight

  Across my sweating brow,