fragments of arcana collection.doc
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Fragments of Arcana
Contents
Alchemical Wedding
SacerdotalA C G T
Phoenix
Only Dust
Arabesque
Monolith
Raven-Frost
Nightmarish
Exhuming Ghosts
Death Rattle Of The Maiden Aunt
Rossetti Confetti
Insect ChristVaude-Villain
The Tabescence Of Gaia
Leptic
Philosophia
Vibrus
Under-Town (Night)
Faded Magic, Broken Dreams
Its Magic
Slave Life
Midnight
Night-Time Delusions
Ishtar Greets You
Morgaine
Sorrow Unfolds
From The East
Shadows / Shade
Gold Lam Soul
So Long, Goodbye
Bones
The Blind Man Cometh
BeneathMy Heart Is In The Clouds
Molten Sky
Blink
Darkness And Light
Philip
Xenogenesis
The Thief Of Death
Cloud Dropping
The Rain Prophet
Odd Rhyme
Bothering GodRose Petals
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Collapsing
Victimology
Desire
Violet Triolet
Sonnet: Valentines Day
ComedyFound Objects
Red Was The River
Dalis Clock
Ghost Song
Bleeding
Moonlight Toasts
Part Of The Act
Black And Tans
Red Petals
Dejeuner Sur LHerbe
Irish Once A YearBooks
Song Thrush
The Falls
Once Upon A Time
The Moron Brigade
Light
Nighwalker
Shadows / Shade
English Summer Day
Welch / Loren
The Interplanetary Slap
Romance
Separate Poem
(Next) Time
Follow
Villanelle: Dreams
Bleak Reality
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Alchemical Wedding
Supernova dust congealed around your finger,
Marking you down for all eternity.
Blow a kiss at your significant other,
Lips touching air molecules that haveAlways been and always will -
From Big Bang to Entropic Freeze;
Just like most relationships, then.
Every proton in every atom of your body
Was formed in suns and supernovae;
They will continue forever -
Flesh to dust to new life to dust:
Atomic reincarnation, physical nirvana.
There is no death, only a transformation.
A geas linking you forever,
While music plays in the background,A wedding march on superstrings
Life is but a melody
But did you catch the tune?
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Sacerdotal
You count the rosary beads
On your sacerdotal abacus
And your bloody sacrament
Tastes like wine and dust.
All your faith is only dew
Beneath the noon day sun
The light of your candles outshone
By the nothing you have done.
Swing your burning censer
And deodorise your doubts
The olid truth is banished
As you re-become devout.
Youve got nothing more than faith
As armour against this world
Only prayers and benisons.
Only Logos and the Word.
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A C G T
The doors of your perception
Need a different key,
To unlock the mysteries,
To allow you to see,A double serpent spiral,
Dancing around the tree,
Ancient wisdom to regain,
Yin and yang duality,
The god text in your soul,
Still waiting to be free.
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Phoenix
Once upon another time
I was dancing in my dream
I awoke in golden fields
And saw the bird ablaze.
And I was looking in a lake
And I was staring at myself
And I did not understand
And clung to ashen clothes.
I am Phoenix once again
And leave behind a broken husk
And I am become fire
And I do not burn.
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Only Dust
Atomised like history
The way of everything
Dust on your fingertips
Grey snow from your paperbacks
The memory of suns long gone
Inheritance in fragments
A googol of particles
Each one with its own tale
Of ancient aeons past
Only dust.
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Arabesque
A barque carries the Tarkan to his destiny
Festooned with fading flowers
Petals falling to the lakes rippled waters
Floating flotsam, a pink and yellow carpetHe will dance the masque
With the odalisques in their basques and little else
Dreams become real on this midsummers eve
Thoughts sieved by breeze and trembling trees
The imagination seduced to enchant passions
And inflame spirits: the sylphs and naiads,
And dryads gathering beyond the gateway
Of human vision, yet their presence felt:
Inhibitions abandoned
Prejudices sacrificed
The moon rising as the sun setsThe watercolour canvas retouched by unseen hand
And this dance will last forever.
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Monolith
The rock that's stood upon the moor since time
Itself began, is older than the grass
That grows around it's base; not e'en the rime
Of winters eons gone can bring to passA single change upon its granite face;
No sun is hot enough to melt it's stone;
No razored blade of man could leave a trace;
No thing could penetrate this mountain bone.
And there, upon the moor, the rock will stand
Until all time has come and gone, until
A dead sun looks upon the darkened land,
And all the worlds beyond the earth are still;
And only then, when all is done, and dead,
Will all its guarded secrets be unsaid.
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Raven-frost
The raven-frost
Black talons stealing warmth
Pecking at the stones
The crumble-time dust of aeons lost.
Abandoned sepulchres
New parliaments for the sky-folk
Beady intelligence dissecting our mistakes.
Raving
Laughing at our fooldom.
Ice-beak
Cold heart exhuming the entrails of fading desires
De-winged, we can no longer fly
As they do
And we let the cold still
The fluttering of inner-fires.
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Nightmarish
The hum of distant traffic lullabies;
Enchanted, you begin to close your eyes,
To dream of adventures under distant skies;
The hero bold, with heart of gold, arise!
And, thrall to fate, you find a paradise
Inside your mind, a dreamworld thats so nice
That you would never leave; the fire and ice
Of sun and sea; the night, the day, the twice
Beloved misery of Karmic dice
Are rolled snakes eyes two ones gaze up at you,
And though this is a dream, you cannot get through.
The fact that you are changed to fate, a grue
Of fear and fate, inside your heart; no clueTo what enacted tasks you should now do;
No thing but tears of crystal allotropes,
no fears but what you cast in lieu of hopes,
You murmur in your urban bed, the ropes
Of Lethe bind you to your yeps and nopes,
The choices of your wakeful mind are burnt,
Like brands onto your dreams; your words unlearnt,
Becoming pure, unburdened, you have earnt
The truth that willis so much more than werent.
And when the clock brings you back to your bed,
And dreams no longer race within your head,
Recall the paths your nightmares dreamlike led
And be alive, awake, not sleeping dead.
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Exhuming Ghosts
Exhuming ghosts, your diary-digging fingers linger over another memory;
Names are re-imagined into personas, dates into events, words into facts;
But there is still so much which means nothing to you.
Tracing forgotten lines and best-forgotten crimes and you wonder who the girl wasnt;And you notice how much your own writing has changed with the passing of seasons;
It is like you are peering into a strangers mind.
The violence of history bursts from each page with a childs selfishness and
lack of sagacity;
The whole world centred on a different axis.
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Death Rattle Of The Maiden Aunt
You remember the pearls
A nacre boa
Ugly yet fascinating
Like her fashion senseThe great swathes of purple dresses
Imperialistic abandon
The last raiment of a dying age.
All gone now
Like the pink atlas blotches
Sent to a well earned rest
Like the cloying scent
That stung your nostrils
When she hugged you close
Her bosom cleaving.
Too many humbugs
Always offered to you
Like a threat.
An old shilling every Christmas
Forced into your palm
A gift of old wealth
In a decimal world.
And then she was gone
Poisoned by her green pen
Choking on her apoplexy
On what the world had become.
Or strangled by calcium carbonate
A little bit of grit
Inside every one.
One last gasp, one more rattle
At the pleasures
Flaunted by others
Which she never enjoyedAnd this apologist for God
Goes to meet her Maker
Or maybe only the sod.
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Rossetti Confetti
Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti confetti
Dante descending to another world
The undiscovered country
Beyond the churchs wallsAngel Gabriel cannot help you
With some simple parable
Cards on the table
Dalliance becomes alliance
And knowledge crumbles with certainty
Two becomes one becomes three
The pitter patter of tiny feet/ rain/ whatever
Brilliantine smiles on the murder mile
A comb and a phone and well all be there
Strand by strand, pulling out your hair
As it falls like rice outside a church.
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Insect Christ
Walking on water
The insect Christ
Surface tension
Fish and birdsAlpha and omega
So short the life
Caught between the deeps
And the heavens above
A few steps, no more
And then he is gone
All done.
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Villain Of The Piece
A drum roll, please,
For the vaude-villain,
Creeping along the railway track,
In his long black coat and stovepipe hat,
Keeping to the shadows,
Twirling the ends of his moustache,
He has the heroine at his mercy,
Tied to the sleepers of the railway track.
He sniggers, in glee,
At this, his victory,
No hero for this damsel in distress,
In her whalebone corset and long white dress,
No one will arrive in time,
To rescue this maiden fair,
And the train is on its wayTowards the victim on the long white dress.
He has to watch,
This evil vaude-villain,
The denouement on the railway track,
The death of the girl in the long white dress,
And the train is now in sight
And he tries to back away
Only to get his foot immovably caught
Below a sleeper on the railway track...
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The Tabescence Of Gaia
Car-choked tarmac binds the spaces with urban striations,
Dividing and parcelling the verdant remnants,
Little green morsels ready to be progress-gobbled;
Chewed, spat out and shat out into parks and gardens;Controlled, safe places; the wildness castrated
No lupine yellow eyes to watch unblinkingly;
Only yellow lupins beyond the rubicon;
Gaia perverted, and converted into misdreamt worlds,
As tabescent souls become distrait
Of the reasons why they were born.
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Leptic
Your bones stroll to the peeky-boos
Prattling pocket-pages to the drags;
Queeny grins into the you-know-whos,
Shes warmed up by the scags.
Poison mist unscents the life-aroma;
All other arcanities revealed;
Youre in your over-coma
Rigid through the de-concealed.
Dehanded by the master-regules,
Sitting chaired, you only stare
At the sex-elisions; all fools
Are lust-deluded there.
And when the darkness wanes
All you have is pocket-lightness
The pages gone, though you feign
Happiness in rueful brightness.
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Philosophia
Solitaire-predicting like
Voltaire; answers revealed
By whether the cards fall
Into lines that can be completed.
Or dice-life rolling, the
Polygonal kismet tells
You what to wear, who to
Love, and why we exist.
Teleology by chance;
Zen and the art of
Roulette, spinning like Earth:
Your numbers come up.
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Vibrus
Harmonic vibrations
As you play the superstring
With Sarasates violin bow.
Newton peers over your shoulderNot recognising the symbols you inscribe
With your stylus made of thought.
The alchemy of eternity
Midases everything you touch
As you un-key the secrets of the universe,
But tell no one.
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Under-Town (Night)
One step down into the under-town;
Some doors close, others open.
Dysfunctional in the Life Studies school.
Open their wallets; spread your legs.Dont let the infamy go to your head.
Blind to your unhappy self;
Your neck medallion rebirths you,
From the nightly faux-glitterati
Of kaleidoscope street lights
And semi-official hope.
Images behind the shadowplay;
Silhouetted manikins fall down;
But the skeletons dont scare you,Theyre only broken bones;
So you absurdly laugh.
Harrow the nay-sayers who mock;
Free from their moral delusions
You can see order in this chaos;
Flesh is only another illusion,
Like money and life and time.
Quixotic princes become frogs
You kiss them and they blow away
Leaving only paper evidence.
This exchange is banally simple,
Wilfully blind; wilfully fooled
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Faded Magic, Broken Dreams
Where the magic has faded,
And corn dollies are only corn, nothing more.
There are no dark corners to shelter myth
Everything is brought into the light.
The tattered fragments of old sortilege
Wrap themselves around teenage book covers
Forgotten dreams guised as fiction
We have banished the unknown night.
Mere fripperies and stage trickeries,
Mysteries reduced to explicable stage shows
No fear in the faces of the audience
Banality has exorcised all fright.
Myrddin Drakemind is dressed as Gandalf,
Circe the transformer is but an answer
To some university quiz show query,
No halgas seen on All Hallows night.
Dream your dreams, magic can yet be minded,
Perceived with senses other than sight,
Dream your dreams, and refuse to be blinded,
By what only exists in the light.
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Its Magic
Its magic, pulling dead rabbits out of hats;
The abraca-dabbler with the faded white gloves,
And the roughed up black and white spats,
Throws up a cloth, producing dovesWho fly into the Gods and disappear.
Trick follows trick like a washed-up whore,
Each one fails to excite the bored voyeurs,
Slow handclaps signal that theres no rapport;
The clappers call out, become saboteurs,
Voiding the last traces of atmosphere.
Its magic, nothing but a show and dont tell;
But what happens when all secrets are revealed?
When each night becomes but one more Hell?And his mundane failings are unconcealed?
When all those watching mock and sneer?
Then, like his doves, he must disappear
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Slave Life
The unseen Skyrope yokes you to this reality (there are others);
Vision-bound to life, youve no concept of eternity;
A laughless jester on the apron stage of delayed pity,
Your ignorant hate festers inside your foolish complicity,You become your own enemy unmanacle your imagination (set it free)
Release your misery, an icon fettered by false history,
By apocryphal truths and twelve-fold parsimony;
There is so much more than their black-covered mysteries.
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Midnight
Midnight:
The mysteries come out to play;
Our fears are their toys,
Plucking puppet strings like sky-rope chords,We dance to their tune.
Scaredy cat girls and boys,
Back to our childhood terrors
Of the monster under the bed;
The bogey man in the closet.
The shadows transform
Into tigers and lions waiting to pounce
Cats drawn from the night-dream realm;
A thousand Gaiman tales;
But the darkness always fades.
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Night-Time Delusions
My night-time delusions
Are but fragments of illusions;
A prosaic mosaic,
A saddening, maddening,Conflation of allusions.
The mind, rouletting ones mentations
Into kaleidoscopic variations
Of forgotten, misbegotten
Dreams, and themes, and other memes;
Our noctivagant revelations.
So dream on, man or butterfly;
Let nightjars be your lullaby,
Let slumber encumber,The weight of night turned to delight,
No meaning but to mystify.
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Ishtar Greets You
Ishtar greets you:
The egg, the hare;
The equinox.
Day slaying night.
Ishtar greets you:
The Goddess come.
New birth, new life;
New day, new light.
Ishtar greets you:
The renaissance;
The sacrifice
Beyond your sight.
Ishtar greets you.
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Morgaine
Morgaine: undawn, the sword drawn, the blood shed;
The son encorpsed, his father/uncle dead;
Dark grips the land; dark takes your heart; sighs die,
Stillborn on red lips white, a bitter lieReturned to bite the heart of sorrows fled.
Morgaine: so pale your flesh, like ash, like death;
Each word a lie upon your jealous breath.
Carrion crows pluck eyes from heros head,
A nations sons all moulder for your pride;
Ten thousand mothers hopes have died.
Yet you, architect, live to sin again;
Growing old, not wise; bitter to the end.
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Sorrow Unfolds
Sorrow unfolds like a dying orchid;
Each layer revealed, reveals another yet;
Recursive grief self-sustains its Kismet,
Like an Escher staircase, unlimited,You cant escape: one more despair to name;
Another petal opening again,
Returned to Start, play it, another game
Always the same, time loop misery men.
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From The East
From the east, rising: a new sun; new dawn,
Red rays rubifying all the wakers
Who sleep no more. Eyes rubbed, dreams fled, this morn
Will see them remember the dawns breakers,The sunlight foam upon the shore. A song,
New to the birds who chorus; but recalled
By the ancients of days; they grieve the young
Who know not this anthem; a sorrow galled
In tears still to be shed. The shadows cast
By this reborn sun darken the new sky,
Clouds mushrooming in mockery of past
Crimes, until all that remains is the lie.
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Shadows / Shade:
The shadow of an archangels wing
Falls on me, darkening my soul;
A chorus of disharmony
Breaks crashing around me;Fascist Heaven is undone
When only the liars sing.
A beggars opera, the symphony
Of Dis and Sheol;
Too bright the light
Causing only deeper darkness;
Everything too black, too white
No grey in this starkness.
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Gold Lam Soul
The man with the gold lam soul
Is in your nightmares again
Gurning his diamond smile
Blinding you awhile.
He jibber-jabbers, auric pain;
Befuddles your sleep state
freshing up with funny money
You grab it, it turns runny.
It melts, leaving nothing
But ink stains on your hands
A tattoo of lost wealth
No toasts to bitter health.
In misdreamt darklands
The pelts of hunted shells
Echoing, hollow souls
Are skinned to pay his tolls.
Spirits only in the glass
Amber poison swirling
Sweet venom in the blood
Reason drowns in mud.
Rebellious thoughts becalmed
The dream assassin smiles again
But youve escaped his sight
Until the following night.
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So Long, Goodbye
So long, the day, from dawn to darkling night;
So long, you say, goodbye to all thats gone;
To all the doubts that try to linger on,
Becoming shadows in the fading light;The day, so long, the years so very short,
The days I long to live again are done,
More memories which pale beneath the sun;
Theyre blanched by careless time, and lost in thought;
No time to cry, you say, the sands run out;
No time, a waste of life spent watching clocks
You stop them all but still times passage mocks
Your final fight, your final scream and shout
So long, the night, from eve to morning sky;
So long, good night, I bid you all goodbye.
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Bones
This is where her bones sleep.
I visit them with flowers.
But they always rot away.
Im counting down the hours
Until I see her again;
She said shed never leave me.
I furnished her with love;
Like in some poem.
But it wasnt.
Never enough, my love for her:
So I buried her deep,
Ignoring her screams.
The earth is silent now;
These secrets never said;
Dead flowers in a wood.
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The Blind Man Cometh
The blind man cometh
Bearing a writ he cannot see
A long time coming
Coming to spread his misery.
His hand holds nothing
This is his gift to you and me
A silent darkness
Coming to shroud our reverie.
His names forgotten
Hearing a word he cannot be
The blind man cometh
Coming alone in enmity.
We run in panic
Fearing this bane, his dark decree
But doom is nascent
Coming to end our ecstasy.
The blind man cometh
Hes here
Hes here
Hes here
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Beneath
Beneath the paint, the flesh; beneath the flesh, the skull.
Hollow mockery of a smile, all teeth, no soul.
Eye sockets hold only shadows; the darkness dull
In the space behind the missing eyes; each dark holeAnother void, another nothingness between
The stars, colder than the coldest rime, older than
The dawn of time, unmourning the velveteen
Emptiness, the Ginnunga Gap, an
Absence.
What filled this Yorick? What grin,
What joke is this that he wont tell to me?
All my love has died and curdled into sin,
And I cant stand the truths that I can see.
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My Heart Is In The Clouds
My heart is in the clouds; it flies
In sunshine, proud like soaring hawks;
Unbearing rain or snow; it skies
Above the hills, and hillside walks,
Above the matchbox towns and roads,
Above the streams and river ways,
The darkened veins of water lodes,
That flow, and flow, and flow always;
Above the patchwork farms and fields,
The hedges lining leas and lanes,
Above the wheat, and other yields,
Above the great and golden plains.
Across the land I send my heart,
With no more mass than any cloud,
I float upon a breeze apart,
As white and gentle as a shroud.
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Molten Sky
Molten sky, burning like tears,
Drenching me as I stumble
Past the funereal void
Of another empty premise.
I pause, to gaze through the glass,
At dust and unread bills,
Before I turn away, ashamed
At how I no longer care.
Gutters full, a car splashes me,
Accidentally on purpose,
And I raise my shaking fist,
In gentle, polite response.
One trouser leg soaked, right through,
The denim a darker shade,
The sky a darker grey;
My soul a darker place.
Shuffling back home, zombie gait,
I dont know why we bother:
Everything is failure,
Closure, and rain.
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Blink
Dont blink
Youll miss it
That moment when the world ceases to exist.
There!
Did you see that?
The nothingness, not even a void.
You blinked
You missed it
Your eyes were shut, unwilling to see.
What are you afraid of?
Theres nothing there;
Nothing there at all.
Dont blink.
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Darkness And Light
The solemn madrigals, plucked on times strings,
Wend through the mystery of the lost days;
The forgotten hours, misbegotten things;
History reduced to nothing but haze;A mist of the genesis of your kind;
The time when others, of similar mind,
Would clutter life with expectations strange,
Their jigsawed enigmas to rearrange.
Sweet arias of angelic design
Harpsichorded into the symphony
Of eternal, temporal harmony;
Segue into the shadow-stepping line;
The masquerade, features hidden, dancers
Take their partners onto the floor, trancersMesmerised by the incessant humming,
The all-pervading, concordant, thrumming.
The solemn madrigals of childhoods end;
Wend through the attar-scented atmosphere,
Until they reach the ears of the un-friend;
The one who embitters himself; the fear
In the darkness; the darkness in the light;
The one who ever cloaks himself in night,
The denier of hope, the hangmans rope,
The bloody spots which will resist all soap.
Sour agonies of demonic design,
Are racked into the broken spirit folk;
The cosmic Logos reduced to a joke
Mistold by the liars of bread and wine;
His masquerade, ennobling black cassocks,
As they mew and mewl upon their hassocks,
Mesmerised by their censered swinging;
Proudly now their psalms they will be singing.
And, at the end of this eternal fight,
We will be between the darkness and the light.
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Philip
Flow my tears, the policeman said
Philip K Dicks inside my head;
Hes Kindred to my misery;
He died at only fifty three.
And ever since, Ive not been sane,
No room for two inside my brain,
Through a scanner darkly I see
Inspiration denied to me.
The words are there, before my eyes,
The golden man, I realise,
Is the writer who I could be,
Winning somesolar lottery.
Do I dream of electric sheep?All I wish is that I could sleep,
And not be strange at three oclock;
Living a Valis counter-shock.
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Xenogenesis
Falling
like a meteor
like a flower
Petals separatingSeeds on the wind.
Xenogenesis (panspermia)
Into the grass
Into the life
Into the future
all
donedown.
Fire in the sky
burning bright
burning sky
Burning bright with fire and life.
And
now
we are.
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The Thief Of Death
The clock has lost
Its minute hand,
It only counts the hours.
I count the cost
Of life unplanned,
The tick tock of lost time.
I watch its face,
Enamelled white;
So will they bring me flowers?
Lifes stagnant pace,
Day after night,
Reason without a rhyme,
Has trapped my soul
Inside this dearth
I cant escape my scheme.
This blue-green hole,
This Planet Earth,
Is nothing but a dream.
Ill shuck off grief,
Ill cast aside
This voice without a breath;
Im but a thief
Who has now died,
Forgotten in his death.
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Cloud Dropping
I dropped a cloud today
It broke upon the kitchen floor
Releasing rain
I had to get the mopBrushing away cotton wool like a dead lambs fleece.
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The Rain Prophet
The rain prophet laughs, soaked to the skin;
Other men stare and shake their heads;
They dont know why he has his grin;
They think that madness has claimed his mind,As he dances on the flowerbeds,
Kicking up what dry earth he can find,
Watching the rain turn it to mud;
And he saw the rain inside his brain
He felt the damp inside his blood
Blessd is the gift from the sky
Blessd is the cool, calming rain
The land had become far too dry.
The rain prophet will dance till he diesAnd no one knows he brings the rain
Who would dance beneath such skies
But a madman with rubbish to say?
Why do we think that rain is a pain,
When we should smile when skies turn grey.
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Odd Rhyme
Falling into 007th heaven
Or should we call it Six Six Six?
Pull a rabbit from his bag of tricks
Or a cream cake fresh from Devon.
Magic me on you silver cloud,
Or line me with your sows ear purse,
Well race in a big, black hearse,
To the land of the fake Turin shroud.
There well dine on Woodbines and wine,
While angels sing old sea shanties,
And Marilyn Monroes chorus line
Are dancing in their scanties.
Wake up sleeping, its time to dream,
And the stirred not shaken Agent of the Queen,
Wants to never become another has-been,
Like some cake without the cream.
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Bothering God
I see the priests in gowns of black and grey
They bother God
They bother me
I wish theyd go away.
They tell me that I should attend their church
Id rather die
Is my proud cry
Than have a pew for perch.
Repent! Repent! they cry, these fools in black;
I laugh out loud
I laugh at them
I see theyre took aback.
They pray for me, my soul, as though Im bad;
I see whats real
Its no big deal
At least I am not mad.
For what is faith but an insanity?
A delusion?
An illusion?
A priestly vanity?
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Rose Petals
Inamorata Illuminati
Rose petals blowing like snow
Choked on attar
Torn by thornsStill you go.
Astrological obscurata;
The stars your future
Their light blinding
Etched on time
Never reached.
Symphonic melancholia
Violin strings tear your soul
Spirit vibratoThe bow hand never stops
Never stops.
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Collapsing
Collapsing in on yourself like an ancient star
All your energy spent
Only a new blackness
Not even light can escape youOnly information can defeat your dying grasp
An elegy, nothing more.
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Victimology
The eternally innocent seek to live up to
The blood guilt which was falsely bestowed;
They cast themselves as the only victims
Blaming the dead for this bloody episode,Refusing to acknowledge their own crimes
The stolen lands, the displaced thousands,
The stealing wall;
this dark pantomime
Continues, as mo one challenges the lies
Of the spokesmen for this ethnic cleansing;
Who preach so they can authorise
The theft of land and lives and hope;
For the dead theres no apology,
But these fools will kill their Zion,
Victims of their own blind victimology.
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The Desire
Desire begets desire: each petty need
Which we imagine is so great that we
Can not survive without its agency,
Is nothing more alloyed than naked greed.
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Violet Triolet
I thought I loved you, Violet:
A widow who Id love to swive;
And so I wrote this triolet.
I thought I loved you, Violet;I thought I loved you, then I met
Your husband, who is quite alive.
I thought I loved you, Violet,
And so I wrote this triolet.
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Sonnet: Valentines Day
As I was walking through the forest fair
I came upon a sweet and tender scene:
The trees gave way unto some village green
Where I espied a maid of golden hairAnd rosy cheek; this lass was in a clasp
With one I took to be her current beau;
Some dark-haired boy inflamed by passion low;
But lacking lovers knowledge he must grasp
In innocence, not guile. I looked away,
Embarrassed at intruding into this;
But theyd not seen, locked in a fumbling kiss;
They saw me not, upon this lovers day;
Two Valentines, they proved that love is blind
If sweet desire is all thats in your mind.
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Comedy
Lifes a joke
Dying on stage every night
Tommy Cooper eternally resurrected
Slow handclaps from jesters at the backCat calls at your prat falls.
Outwitted by hecklers,
The gift of the gab that you dont have.
No sitcom for you, sunshine.
Only bad reviews in the funny papers.
Lifes a joke.
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Found Objects
My words are found objects.
They are dredged from newspaper trenches;
Purloined from ignored palimpsests;Recovered from literary trash.
Plagiarism as art.
Recycling is the new abracadabra;
Doggerel re-minted as blank verse;
Pervert (reverse) the soundbite.
The mundane and anodyne flickered page-wise;
Refried beans refried again.
In old litter, new treasures revealed.
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Red Was The River
Red was the river
Adam is the red clay
All flesh is dust
Is it red with blood?Are those bodies in its maw
Or only reddish mud?
Red runs the river now
Run red it must
Flowing down from battle scene
Where broken guns will rust
No cries, only vultures
Dots in the sky beyond.
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Dalis Clock
Im melting, like Dalis clock;
Stuck in the pyramids eye;
I am the God in the rock;
I am the hole in the sky;Forever undone; unsaid;
Like the Christ breaking his bread.
All the pilgrims are shadows;
Theyre playing in empty fields,
Waiting for the Rapture that never comes.
Im burning, like a giraffe on fire;
Running to the nowhere-land
Where every saints a liar;
Where every thought is banned;Forever martyred, bartered;
Like the Thames Blake chartered.
All the hymnists are silent,
Voices stolen by self-gnosis,
Knowing that the Rapture will never come.
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Ghost Song
Bewitched by sleeplessness
I tune to a station of the night
A long-dead comes singing out
A midnight diva, ancient aria,Still playing out into the night.
The wireless graveyard shift;
The ghost song of a buried soul;
The spectral timbre of a
never-written symphony.
The Unfinished, burned and lost.
On the edge of for-never
I am caught between the
air and the earthA hand unreaching for the dial
A dream of midnight sleeplessness.
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Bleeding
The Earth is bleeding;
A wound beneath the sea
Dark the lifeblood of the Mother;Spiralling outwards
In a black golden ratio.
Greed only prospers death;
The ink stain shadow
Blotting out dreams.
Still, though, we plan to wound;
Until the body which nurses us,
Has no life left to give.
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Moonlight Toasts
In the pale moonlight,
with our moonshine toasts,
We pledged our friendship
till the end of time.As the stars shone down
on these two wan ghosts,
And the old church clock
began its first chime,
We drained our glasses
of our golden ale,
And said last goodbye
to the world around,
And on the moonshine
sail, without a sound.
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The Dreamery
Take this stuff
Strands of nothingness
And spin a new lie.
Whisper the magic nonsense
As your face turns
To a cooler pillow.
Eating mould from a rotten book cover
Imaginary psilocybin.
Ya Ya Ya
Chant Number None.
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Part Of The Act
Its part of the act
Laddered stockings
A battered top hat
And I see you now
Up on the stage
Acting like you own the place
Something about the age
And it is a fact
That we never split up
But we dont say that
And you see me now
Just one of the crowdJust another watching face
Alone but not proud.
Its all an act
These games we play
But we dont say that.
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Black And Tans
Shot in the back by the Black and Tans
You know how it goes, you both understand
Only a game of life and death, thats all
They kill one of yours, you kill two of theirs
And God forgive you, but you dont care,
Not if you can make those bastards fall.
Waiting in ambush, rifles are ready,
Sweat on your brows, but hands are steady,
Murder rings out, but no longer appals.
Shot in the back, they killed your brother,
Or son, or husband, or cousin, or lover;
From down in Cork to Donegal.
And what will you do when freedom comes?
When the Black and Tans are all long gone?
Will you have peace, from Cork to Donegal?
Or will new enemies bodies begin to fall?
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Red Petals
The attar avalanches your nostrils
Overpowering your senses
Sickness cloys you
Driving you to ozone-seekAnything but this imprisonment.
The walls will not release you
No way out can be found
Trapped in the rose garden
Perhaps you should slash a rose stalk across your wrists
And watch the petals fall.
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Dejeuner Sur LHerbe
Dejeuner sur lherbe
All eyes paralysed to the nudie girl
Honest flesh among the suits
Among the flowers, beside the streamPicnicking like in a dream.
Perverse intent, innocent world;
Eat of the bread and fruits,
Passions no longer curbed.
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Irish Once A Year
St Patricks Day, they all come out,
The lads and ladettes, who all shout,
For Guinness hats, and pints of stout,
For theyre Irish but once a year.
They crowd the bar, and push and brawl,
I dont know them, theyre strangers all
To this beloved drinking hall,
For theyre Irish but once a year.
And when tomorrow comes around,
Theyll be English then, safe and sound,
Shamrocks swapped for the British pound,
For theyre Irish but once a year.
Im not Irish, Ill never be,
Im quite content in being me
Ill not wear others history
And those who are Irish but once a year
Well, they can pogue mahone
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Books
Lurking on shelves, the unread words of dead
Imaginations beckon my glances;
Faces stare out from the rainbow covers,
As the sneak pictorial entrancesWith the promises of sons and lovers:
A thousand plots all wanting to be read.
Which one will you select to read tonight?
Gory, black-robed, horror hyperbole?
Or Sci Fi with tales of ships in Deep Space?
To be able to speak nonverbally
Must be these honest wordsmiths greatest grace:
Prose which can cause lust, horror, or delight.
A laptop stithy, a keyboard hammer,To craft and draft the base into the best;
Your words chain linked together to create
The volumes which upon your bookshelves rest;
We turn the pages and appreciate
How such written riches can enamour.
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Song Thrush
I hear the song thrush in the tree
He wont reveal himself to me
I see him not, but hear his song
I hear him sing all summer long.
All summer long he sang to me
But summers gone, and so is he
My cat got him.
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The Falls
In that far cathedral, the halls
Of future prayers and preachers,
You genuflect, on bended knee,
On how you came within its walls;How you were taught by its teachers.
Was it but yesterday when we
Played unashamed before The Falls?
And now weve become beseechers;
Our past become a mystery.
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Once Upon A Time
Once upon a childhood time
A long, long time ago
Id be upon my grannys knee
A little boy, not grown;
And shed tell tales of wondrous things,
Of Cinders and Snow White,
Id sit quite still, my mind aglow,
Quite late into the night;
These legends of a sleeping girl,
Of spinning wheels, and woe;
Of fingers pricked, of curses thrown,
Of castles in the snow,
They thrilled that boy, and filled his mind,
With dreams of magic lands;
Of witches foul and princes fair,
And gypsy caravans.
And though that time is now long gone,
The boy grown up a man,
Hes kept his love of fairy tales,
Inspired by his old gran.
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The Moron Brigade
The Moron Brigade is on the march
Theyve already marked their banners
Theyre made from best English starch
And fromDaily Mailmanners.
And their ink is always green
While their faces are always red
With their righteous angry sheen
A Blue rinse running through the head.
They shout and stomp, and stomp and shout,
All noise and fury and RP vowels
Hatred to loosen any bowels
But with only figments to shout about.
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Light
The light
The light, it falls
In rays on stony walls
Warming the cold roughness,The unyielding toughness,
The cracked mortar.
Dust motes twinkle
In beams slanting edgewards
Through breeze-rattled glass,
Slowly beginning to pool
At the nadir of the frame.
The iris opens,
The mind sees the fall ofSunlight on the sycamore trees.
Ageless, yet old,
Forever falling.
The light falls
Bringing life to all;
So why, every day
Does the Earth turn its face away?
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Nightwalker
I watch my love, she stalks the night,
I watch her through the glass;
I watch my love in dying light,
She stalks across the grass.
My love, she stalks with silent pace,
Intent upon her prey;
Shes perfect in her lissome grace,
Shes perfect in her way.
She stalks, she runs, and then she leaps,
Her claws are out for blood,
I hear the faintest, muffled meep!
And then its gone for good.
I watch my love, she stalks the night,
I watch her slay a rat,
I watch my love in dying light,
My darling, deadly cat.
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Shadows / Shade:
The shadow of an archangels wing
Falls on me, darkening my soul;
A chorus of disharmony
Breaks crashing around me;Fascist Heaven is undone
When only the liars sing.
A beggars opera, the symphony
Of Dis and Sheol;
Too bright the light
Causing only deeper darkness;
Everything too black, too white
No grey in this starkness.
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English Summer Day
Blue sky grey
English summer day
Car choked arteries
The traffic jam smokes alongSun glinting off a million shards
A rainbow sheen for
Bank Holiday ennui.
The sea gulls are waiting
Impatient for rubbish to be thrown away
Circling the piers and the beaches
With the sunburned peaches
And the salty blue-green sea.
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Welch / Loren
A faded Raquel Welch
Peels herself away from the Blutac on the wall
Folding over herself in false modesty;
Colours faded, but still as young,The curves are still as round, always will be;
An icon for an absent worshipper.
Sophia Loren looks down
But doesnt frown
At the unmade bed, the dirty dishes,
The cobwebs clinging to the ceiling corners
Her gaze does not vary
Forever young
Lust captured, printed, hung.
The room echoes with coldness
Only the spiders are tenants now.
The traffic hum outside
Is but a distant song
A tuneless dirge mourning silence.
Another corner goes, the Blutac too old,
Too dry; another corner, then the last;
And Raquel Welch meets the bedroom floor,
To remain folded, and unmourned,
Revealing a cleaner oblong
Unappreciated by the spiders
Unseen by all.
And Sophia Loren looks down,
A little longer awhile.
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The Interplanetary Slap
The interplanetary slap is coming
It is travelling through hyperspace
A hand whose impact will be legendary
When it collides with the craters of your face.You have offended a member of the other sex
One who might as well be of an alien race
Your single entrendres have not been misconstrued
And its time to blast off from this place
To go and orbit some public house
Although with your same charming lack of grace.
The interplanetary slap is coming
A Doppler hand in light speed slow motion
And there! It has arrived, crashing down
In its meteoric trail of commotionCreating an explosive impact on the skin
Thats really going to need some lotion;
You stagger back, knocked out of orbit,
Leaving you with the suspected notion
That you should shoot off from this place
Before theres another hand slap explosion.
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Romance
One love, two lovers; star-crossed like some play;
They meet across the railway tracks; and on
The other side decide to run away;
And with that thought they are afar, upon
The evening train. Theyve read too many books
Or maybe not enough and are in love
With thoughts of love. Shes tired, and sleeps; he looks
Out the window, at the dark sky above
It looks like rain and at the fields of wheat,
Shadowed yellow stalks waiting for the scythe;
He thinks of when and how two people meet,
He was entranced, first sight, she was so lithe;
They kissed, and kissed, then fucked, then kissed again,
And knew that they would forever be one;
And so these two, too young, have caught the train,
Eloping to a future yet to come.
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Separate Poem
Her widowed soul bleakens and blackens in the turmoil fire;
Descending into the darkness, burning, ever-turning
In the void beneath the spire, the great gap
Into the heart of the earth, the heart of the dearthThe mirthless realm where dead things go.
Unalive but not yet dead, her body is shrived;
The soul-wrench agonising of existence, the last
Harrow of the faithless. Marrow-mauled, she
Finally knows the surcease, knows nirvana, as she is
Unchristened from the imaginary perdition of her mind.
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(Next) Time
Broken hourglass, time running through my fingers
I catch only grains
Too late to turn it upside down
Life my life backwardsDepression to happiness
Senescence to nappy-ness
Crappy to uncrappiness.
If I could but turn time downsides up
Id do it right next
Time.
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Follow
Follow me, my pretties, follow me
Into the whirlpool dark
Im sporting my top dollar madness
And Im looning like a larkThis is a clown face masquerade
A Pagliacci dance
But Im clicking my heels together
I caper and I prance
Along the golden-brown high way I go
To fairest Afghanistan
Its poppy day for the dead to be
A jig for the Taliban
Moonbeams steal me like the wind
Blowing north by northwest
I dance in the Sea of TranquilityI pull faces and I jest
Follow me, my pretties, follow on.
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Villanelle: Dreams
The night has dreams in wait for all our minds,
All we must do is trust to go to sleep;
As bodies rest each sleeping mind unwinds.
So close the curtains, tightly shut the blinds;
Into the arms of Morpheus you must leap;
The night has dreams in wait for all our minds.
Each night, each willing, wilful dreamer finds
A way to fall inside your dreams so deep;
As bodies rest each sleeping mind unwinds.
Rest now your worn-out brains and tired behinds
Until youre stirred by your alarm clocks beep;
The night has dreams in wait for all our minds.
Perchance your mind insomnia binds
And we wait for dreams to come, counting sheep:
As bodies rest each sleeping mind unwinds.
We need these dreams to flee our daily grinds,
In nightly fantasy our souls must steep:
The night has dreams in wait for all our minds,
As bodies rest each sleeping mind unwinds.
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Bleak Reality
Your mascara has run in the rain,
Making you look like a reject from The Crow
But you never liked the same films as me
I liked the sight of existential painWhile you preferred Francois Truffaut:
When buying DVDs we could never agree.
I hear you ring the doorbell
Yet again you have forgotten your key
What would you have done of I hadnt been in?
Theres no point asking, youd never tell.
So many secrets you keep from me
And the future is wearing thin.
I get up and open the front doorLeaving you standing as long as I dare
Without you suspecting anythings wrong
You rush in, get water on the floor,
But I find that I no longer can care:
I realise that it all has gone on too long.
You start to shout, looking like the Joker,
And I cannot suppress a laugh at you.
Only then you know the banality
Of our pointless two-ness. We must broker
An end to this non-relationship; you,
And me, must face our bleak reality.