Dirty deliverance

The one half,
born to forgive and forget afore the dagger point even grazed our feeble hearts, our half-baked haste.
The other half of us to live and die by dogged decree, serving the final course of our repast, cold riposte at every turn.
But jury purer, justice pending. By my word, what became of integrity delivered by the scales.
This day we heed the colourful, the contemplative.
Hollow criminal. Hello shotgun conscience.
Pause it on the black and white, and cue the grey to wash the crimson bright.
Let love linger, let faith gape, met with sickly sweet humane abundance, bathing in the dusty light.
Overkill in the first degree.
Pleading with the hellbound, the soon to be departed.
But what of the judge-penitent, whose just heart serves us well. Like hell it does.
By my soul, crux of my being, we cannot abide by this dearth of morality. This stately sodomy.

Heathen grace

And with a smattering of congenial disgust
I catch the fate of this feeble mind, steeple chaser, remiss crime.
A spear tip gut, entrails gush, propane cut.
Looking for the one, knuckle-white clinger for every last grain of disdain.
For the one had got away, gotten on for a song, adorn
The disgrace of erring heart, stain of blithe man.
Disaster passed her, laughed a great one, karma come undone.

Mindfield

You see, I was only trying to recall a time
That I think has never been
Was I a child once?
Had I been blithe?
For sweet scented lillies sprout
Memory was in bloom, now entombed
A father’s lesson on taking the wheel
A mother’s warm embrace
Monumental bombshells
Now fragmented shrapnel lodged in my brain
Ringing insane, my one true bane.

Please let me live and receive love
That I can repay it tenfold
That every friend and foe
Poor disillusioned souls
Know that when I go
I did strive to love and hate accordingly.

Easing back//Danse Macabre

Greetings,

To any who follow my blog, I haven’t checked in for some time. I’m not really one to digress from the poetry/prose for a personal diary-entry like rambling but I suppose here’s why. On the bright side, I have proceeded to spin some of my demons to the ground and after a considerable amount of time, self-piteous pennings and all the rest, I step away from the urge to write that which reeks of heartbreak, self-deprecation and dour nostalgia to fuel my every word. I am focusing on what’s in front of me and what lies ahead. That said, on the downside, little of note has graced my days of late. For now. This, like all else, will take time.

I am looking around now far more as opposed to looking into myself and I must tell you, it’s wonderful what I see. I won’t write a thing in vain here, or throw in a cliche expressing an eye-opening experience or an epiphany that has saved me from my own self-professed moribundity. Only that I am claiming goodwill on what was always there for me to stake. I have a great family, a friend or two I trust with all my heart. I’ll be in Paris this time next week for Download Festival, followed by Kenya two weeks from that…I’d love to say I also have my good heart and good health, but this is pretty debatable if not laughable. Amen.

As I have struggled to readdress my passion, my release and often my saviour that is writing – deliberately avoiding opening up crumblesome for fear of closing it with the same blank page – I have read that to write anything, absolutely anything when one hits a wall is a start. I guess that’s been accomplished with the first half of this post that is my mind-numbing account you are so good to read.

I have also read writers’ block can be defeated by reading anything, again, anything at all. I have been doing so though not as often as I’d like, not to mention enjoying new music I’ve been drawn to which stirs me in the same way a good piece of prose might. It has helped a great deal. That and devouring episode after episode of Sons of Anarchy day in day day out.In my defense there are complex themes, an inordinate amount of blood-and-gore related inspiration to be had (enjoy my upcoming posts). Also, Jax Teller either sporting cut or topless. Your argument is invalid.

This morning, I happened upon some notabilia – a poem I had written for a blog called Rookie Creative. At the risk of seeming shamelessly self-indulgent, I’d like to share it. This I wrote before I knew love. It got me wondering – what inspirited me to express myself before all of it came crashing down?

On reading this, I cringed, just as many an amateur writer does when unearthing past works. Excessively wordy was Danse Macabre, risking pretentiousness and in fact not all of it making sense. Well maybe it did in my constantly half-inebriated student of a head at the time I wrote it. 2012, I recall, it was my first year of University, and my first time living out and, to my great pleasure, outside of London. I took to the cobbled streets of Canterbury with instant ardour, and in turn hated going back to London between terms. Deemed it something of an evil. Silly ponderings back then. But with the current hate-fueled terrorist activities plaguing our capital. Well it is no falsity.

DANSE MACABRE

Where the night will cost you the toils of your day,
To sip much too much, to heave and bleed it all away.
That’s London and it’s laughing at our simpleton ways,
Cue the zombies of death to keep us at bay.

‘Tis London, the streets we walk nightly
With Mayfair smoke blown from stiff lips, drawn tightly.
Smoke that dances, twists, unfurls into Satan’s pretty smile,
Choked in our liquid foolery, we smile back for a while.

Where we walk through crowds of feigned pomp and little circumstance,
That’s London where she told me she wanted us to dance
And sung words of sugar and spice that put me in a trance.
We didn’t understand, didn’t feel it with our hearts
Eighties noise got lost on these parts.
Said we can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance
Well they’re no friends of mine.

But we only wanted London
We erred then and we’ll err again tonight
Now the city of vice feeds on our souls
We cannot see the light.

P.S I cannot believe I quoted Safety Dance. There is no wondering why I sometimes really hate myself.

Shellshock romance

Secretly in love with everyone
Fiercely afraid of everyone
Neath scarce armour
Walking minefield, wound exhibit
Reported awol
Slowly speared for a no one.

Witching hours

The crazed witch that harrowed us to insanity in the house where I grew up
Is slowly making her way back into my life
From a distance I see her, I feel her
Wending her way through overgrown jungle-garden weeds and fetid animal carcasses. Grave omen
I know that cackle, inimitable
As pronounced as hers decades ago
When she wore my father down, took his key, took his crown
We all sat watching, too scared to move.

And now they come over me nightly, clawing
Gnawing at my limbs from all four corners of my bed
Trying to tear my mind out, and drink my faint heart dry
Please call off your demons
Here is not your resolve
Father I promise,
I won’t let her in this time
As long as we all live.

Free to be, unfree

We don’t know where we go, or even where we’ve been. We don’t even really know how to now, forgetting how to breathe. Being uneasy comes too easily. We got so much nerve for the unnerving, I look around and I see only me. Sanity is a cast iron cage. Break before you bend. Don’t you understand how simple it is to be complex?

Breath of past/To the last

Never made dealings in cert
The lone leaf weary, refusing to be taken by the wind
And make swirls beside all others
Remains shaking obstinately on concrete beside the gutter
You will not take me.

But you think I am indolent
It is greater pains to be down fighting your will
Than to be be dancing for you the way you want
But there is no love for those who go against you
We take not a thing to have nothing to return
If you don’t believe me
Look, here comes a boy now
To stake his youth, his cleanly play
An almost stout skip to
And the crisp leaf crunches underfoot
His polished schoolboy loafer
Oh so worth it
He’s better for it too, now
Lone leaf sighs
And then there is peace because it served a boy well
In this cold comfort hell.

//

Nothing I’ll do now is fair game
Passive gamer
Gross disdainer
I didnt stand a chance
Never could believe I made a believer out of you
Know this please
I have loved
With you, by you, because of you
For a time
I feared the fire that burned our nights
As it was explicable
Only by that thing otherwordly
Let the stars be
And the shield remains up
To my dismay
And to your modesty proper.

Come on over

Blood vegetable pastry, Rioja shards, Curt Smith now spins
Lone dinner party, ghosts come unannounced, shadows gatecrash.
I’m good fun. Life of the party is what they say.
Watch me bang my head against your grief
And dance with my disease.
Dagger of the mind.
I was gone not a moment ago but that’s not blood drawn from vein.
More likely I’m just getting my period
Because I just sobbed for Marling’s Blackberry Stone
Then I wept for Lethe
And soaked the bed.

Devil knows I am

Deathly afraid to stop knowing you
Fierce prize of a cub-like man. Once, no twice,
Let’s try thrice devoured for a bland, scarce dinner
For a barely chew and spit morsel.

Disaster after disaster will pass her
What pathetic life form
No refined pallet
But swills at every chance.

Let’s hold up now
Do I cease to beat myself black and blue?
And shiny but I do not shine
Playing better than my worst is harder than it sounds
You do not know a thing
I brushed off your sins
Before they even left your pretty little mouth
To say nothing of the ones
That barely impressed upon your chest
That stand neither a coaxing, nor trial
I am no judge-penitent
Assume no such title
I swam, no drowned in deep blue love
And hell only knows this preemptive defense
The heart so eager to quickly mend.