the travesty

life spins its ironies like a menacing cloud of buzzing bees

around her maggot filled brain. whispers poison words. she halts

midstream, hides her corrugated tongue, and carries on.

as if all was hunky-dory.



the bitch is cold dead: you wouldn’t have thought her cunning

eyes once fluttered with fresh washed curtains. rose petal patterned.

now they hang, lifeless, faded, dirt stained. hidden behind

them she crushes flower buds.



in a show of self-denial. secretly she hates their fresh colour,

their tender skin. she tears. she rips into them with her hooked talons.

flower buds will not be allowed to bloom. each torn petal strewn around

her gnarled feet, an insipid slaughter. she strikes an injured pose



in ragged finery. the crone moves her toothless jowls to work on

the curses that escape in frothy spittle through her blue lips. her

face contorted in tear-filled rage, collapses,



disappears in the mass of quivering drool. her skin like crumpled

hide left out too long in the brittle sun. her face cracks open in a gaping grin. she

rejoices in the travesty. called life.

I am song

I am that wild thing that races with the wind flowing in my mane.

I have spit out the bit. I have shaken off the bridle.

I cannot be harnessed by mundane punctuation grammar structure and syntax.

I’m the laughter in a child’s eyes, I’m the wing in the bird’s flight, I’m the cloud in the sky – I’ve broken free from earth’s gravid gravity.

I’m the chaos of erupting lava. I am the abstract with rainbow colours splashed with mad abandon.

I am music without harmony. I am the incongruity in nature’s wanton.

I am the river in spate that obeys no binding boundaries. I gush. I rush. I break my banks.

And spill all over. Swirling. Gouging. Devouring everything in my path.

I am disorder. I am revelry. I am the rejoice in the birds’ chorus. I am the undomesticated wild. I am the child of liberation. I am celebration.

Not for me the well ordered gardens of governed minds with neatly trimmed hedges. Give me weeds. Give me gorse. Give me thickets. Give me undergrowths where creatures wriggle and struggle.

I am the voice that blunders in creation. I am the burst in the star’s birth. I am the lucent remnant in a celestial death. I am the cosmos whose patterns cannot be contained. I am form without form. I am song.

The Blank Page

The page – a fathomless void

So blank it engulfs even thought

It swallows every glimmer

Of imagined conceptions

Knowledge and revelations

That the mind can grasp

In that void – this blot

A dot, a tiny spark

Beginning to revolve

Meandering drunkenly

In the expanse –

Not yet a manifestation

But about to be

A maiden flight

That is about to spring into life

The silence surrounding the sound

At the birth of the countdown

A motionless womb –

Then the resounding boom

A flash of blinding light

Illuminating the endless vacuum

A devastation of fire white heart

Melting exploding in shards

Of multihued gaseous grist

Swirling supernovas coalescing

Clotting into swirling consecrations



From within this vast womb

Of revolving bodies

A tiny being of flesh and blood

Looks in awe at this vast creation

Of germinating births

And makes a tiny dot – a spark

Meandering drunkenly

On a blank page –

An infinitesimal fraction of a heart beat.

Desire

Like the halted breath of a new obsession

Desire aches with renewed hunger

Returns to perch again

On the rusted iron railing

A crow panting

Like the heat of summer

Claws clinging tight

Untidy feathers roughed up by the hot wind

Eyes flickering -- longing

For the forbidden tidbit

Ravenous tongue twitching

In imagined delight

Empty spaces

The days are full, filled with empty spaces
Empty mornings, afternoons, evenings, and nights
And empty nights
The coffee steaming from
The endless cups I sip
Mingles with my breath
I breathe it in and out
Each breath fudging the bitterness
Of every sip
The words I pour, The pieces
Of my heart I throw
Into those empty spaces
Are just not enough, Just not enough

You stay hidden behind opaque curtains
I pronounce each name you call yourself
In these empty spaces of
Mornings, afternoons, evenings, nights -
And as these years slip by
It gets more and more apparent
Perhaps the time just isn't right
Perhaps it never has been right
Perhaps it will never be right

The gift I've been given remains
Hidden in its hard cardboard package
Perhaps it's just a sublime illusion
Of something that never was meant to be
And in this limbo I scatter my empty spaces

Within this state of silent despair
I chatter, I make small talk
With anyone who happens by
In the vicinity of my empty spaces
I make believe, I tell them stories
That my days are full, fulfilled
All the time wondering, wondering
If you even care

And I stay within my empty spaces
Watching all the wasted hours
Being abandoned one by one
Wondering, Wondering
Every second, Every minute
Will these empty spaces
Ever be filled, With You?

unforgiving pasts

but the rains

that sprayed verdant beads

in a past season

have left marks

dried furrows gouged

in once green fields – now arid

where hot winds

blow sour breaths

and sear the scars

-- unhealed unfilled --

and eyes that once

saw the moon even through

the glare of neon lights

are now blinded -- stranded

like a child’s toys

discarded

lost in the parched dust

of unforgiving pasts

The other side of silence

Illuminated by the naked tubelight

oblique rays from the false ceiling

casting artificial moonlight

through translucent curtains

into the dark canopy

under which she sits

listening to distant voices

in her world of silences

lilting undulating

in the heat-soaked night



The soft cling of finger-trails in the overgrowth



The coiling quiet of leaves listless



A bird calling -- incessantly



Dry soil’s sinuous crunch



The trees suddenly stirring with behemoth voice



Her eyes follow the

hidden eyes

slinking through

her purple tranquillity

on the other side of silences