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Beside the lonely river, a pyre slowly burning.
Upon the distant razor sky, the violet sunset perching.
When from the sun a sudden gust

Flings its glowing ashes across fields
wet with rain,
Shivering the earth, shaking the fire;
A wild lament like the shriek of crows or
The tortured similes of a drawn-out fog-horn

Erupt, and in the distance a storm of
Cicada graze the horizon crackling.
I look to the flames only to see myself
Embraced cruelly in its chilly licking grasp.

No ticking of clocks, no slow murmur of a
Passing pendulum counts these scarred moments.
A ship unanchored in boundless seas, lost.

If a poem has a beating heart,

Then I’ve killed it.

Mashed it like a potato,

Erased it

.

Only a faint echo

Of vaguely discernible verse

Creeps through these pipe-dreams,

Makes itself heard

.

Into the blue - what a view 

It is when ten thousand feet 

Severe contact from the ground beneath.

The aeroplane’s engine hums calmly,

The suns gentle rhythms embalm me

In light. Is it the ocean or the sky?

That point where infinity meets

Its dissolution at the circumference 

Of the globe?  A darkness that surpasses

Even the inkiest depths of un-thought

Winds its forked frozen tails,

Trails its chains through the velvet depths

of the cosmic coffin. Yet all I see

Are pastel hues, cerulean bruised

Embryos swimming through a sea-like-sky;

And cotton clouds like violet sweet-peas,

Swishing wistfully against swimming

Beds of jellyfish fingers. There was

a voice in their movements, calling me;

There, as I lay, silent, peaceful, 

Hurtling five hundred miles 

an hour through the cold atmosphere;

Each passing sway was a second 

passed away, and their angelic chorus

Of twists and inversions formed

A perfect cadence in my mind. There was

a voice in their movements, calling me:

Beckoning me to join them in

Their ecstatic dance, to return to

That sweet nothingness from which

I came, and to where I belong.

It’s a horrible sensation - some kind of deep apathy mingled with sunken despair. I can no longer understand its origins, and under its influence I can no longer understand myself. An identity is a concept with no content. Right now, its one of those sad sketches that has been retraced and torn and outlined a multitude of times - so many times, so many failed attempts - to sketch the object of its consideration, that all that remains is tangled mess. My dimming gaze struggles to cleave its way pasty the viscous gloom. I think I’m traversing an ancient graveyard. Picturesque tombstones mark the points on the horizon, and my fancy pinpoints that to the south a heavy gate has swung violently against its hinges, closing me in. I’m lost, and -

Suffice to say: I’m all alone, in the company of sweet despair.

caught in flight by the tyranny of syntax

the tongue wagging like a fishes tail flailing 

on parched land struggles to conjure

the colours of its own movements

words are scattered like beads and

the dead music strikes deaf ears -

then silence sounds the strongest.

like inky starlight on a cosmic canvas

flushed and newborn and trite and free

struggling against the tyranny of time:

divine electrostatic imaginings

Light spilled into the room

like blood from a wound

fracturing the spheres

of my imaginary existence.

look to the wall and see

an elegant silhouette

tap-dance in air

a mannequin

hung from the neck

by a taut string

manipulated

by an unseen hand

lifeless and yet

so animate

just as if it were

really alive.

1/9/11

So you’re scared. But what of? In two weeks you start a new life in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, at the eponymous university, studying English Literature. Now, the past two years have been intensely dislocating. You do not know what you are, who you have been, what you should have been, who you will be, and amongst all the things you want to do, you do not know what to do, and even then, are they real? These things are floating like shadowy shrapnel behind your eyes, tainting everything you see in the mirror horizon with a dreary darkness. (OK computer, don’t go to sleep). So now you’re just staring at this same old backlit screen, tapping your soundless words into the machine - well, not so soundless - sounding like clattering marbles across a desolate marble hallway as your fingers dance across the keyboard. (I need another drink). 

For some reason i just cant stop thinking. I sit down in my chair at 12:01 p.m. to decide what to do today, and i end up sinking into deep speculation again - and then an hour later I’m nowhere near the place i never decided to go - in fact, i’m just about a foot and a half away from the centre of my own mind. Then these words come spilling out, as if the inside of my body is actually an empty porous shell that quietly absorbs all the energies around it, condenses it into viscous liquid, and filling up slowly over time - until the liquid (or whatever) suddenly and spontaneously starts seeping out of all orifices - eyes, nose, mouth, ears (even the pores of sweat on my fingers right now) - and I’m writing these senseless vague impressionistic imaginings subconsciosuly hoping that they flicker like fire but not really knowing what they are or what they will be or whether or not they live or die but hoping and hoping - where was i? Yes, these words just come spilling out - whether as a flame, a whimper, or a sigh: They come spilling out.

What kind of stupid journal is this? It sounds like some hideously bad stream-of-consciousness’esque-pretentious-bull-mucus from a B-class movie. Maybe it is. (God help me.)

Was it all a dream? These teenage fads and aspirations and loves and pains and apathies passed by like a churning stream of incomprehensible whispers, screams, moans and orgasms. All that time my eyes were fixed upon a mirror - so close I could see the fissures within my hazel iris, teetering in the gloam that settles upon the precipice of the inky pupil - like a raged cliff dropping into a swirling well of darkness: This is where the aforementioned streams have passed - and dried out. Nothing but a vision. Faded steel-coloured pea coats and ripped jeans scattered amongst other sundries across the dull carpets and old posters, and the rain licking the mercurial window panes - What now? What silence? What anticipation? 

I have passed on the truths that never happened - first loves, caressing in the dying light of a fine july evening, holding her so close that i cease to hear my own heart beating, but hear only hers - our hearts in unison. I have received instead the bitterness and seething hatred that blew in billows through my clouded mind as i began to see that the past four years of my life had been twisted and contorted needlessly, over a delusion, a lie, over one simple thought, like a black-hole, that grew grotesquely large through cannibalising and feeding upon itself, leeching the diminished flame within my childlike breast. All for nothing. Weeping over a shadow, if not even that - a painting of a painting, canvas upon canvas - an illusion. 

Monsters. A swift dip in the chilled depths of insanity, I teetered on the brink of dissolution as a nauseous clown, ragged, clutching to a wilted flower. Through the cracks of my palms I spied gargantuan tufts of steely wool - clouds, dissolving into sand, smearing the burgundy sky, showering the throned young sun sinking on its funeral pyre march towards eternity. I clasp my fingers tighter in fear of the light, bringing into higher relief the hideous cracked palms, dried face-paint clung like dung to the dead skin on my bony knuckles, viewing the interminable dissipation of ashes coalesce in rhythmic patterns, dancing, vibrating, flitting like a cloud of butterflies - mocking me.

Thunderstruck burnt wind,
The ravaged innocent heart
Crumbles into dust.

                I
             Sing,
                I
             Dance,
                I
             Cry,
                I
             Swing
             From
             East
               To
             West,
               A
             Sun’s
             Rise
               A
             Sun’s
            Death:
              An
           Eternal
        Pendulum
     Condemned to
Hang Meaninglessly
  Over the Swirling
       Pitch Abyss  
               …

tawdry books piled like corpses

pallid in the sunlight

ripening slowly like aged prunes

the leafs of their pages wilted

unfold their secrets like 

shadows dancing in the rain

those endless forgotten stories

that never saw the light of day

condemned to the obscure shelf

of a mr or mrs jones

glimpse and flicker like a flame

before disappearing

forever.

Black cats scamper past as I glance back to
The battered tracks,
Where the dread spidery web of darkness 
Enfolds, -

I remember how
We dripped secrets into sacred cavities,
Embraced silently like totems in the cold 
Tombed millennia

Of night; our fingers
Entwined like vines, listening to the sombre
Screeching of corpses sweetly singing ‘neath
Those starry blue skies

nada nada na…..
I remember still

Their eternal echo, I hear it now, 
Resounding the infinite chasms of
My own mind, constant, sincere, tenderly
Reminding me how

I broke myself down,
Down to the barebones - and found
That I was empty.