Gaia

Gaia

Can’t you hear the breath of the trees,  

sharp, exhausted, like two tarry lungs 

expending ‘til death, limp as two tongues; 

once Gaia bloomed, now She does wheeze! 

Can’t you see our Earth recoiling,

choking on spoilt soil, flinching away 

as mutant seeds spread death and dismay;

it’s our children’s blood we’re boiling.

Can’t you taste it in morning’s haze?

We suckled at Her, then discarded

the divine beauty, disregarded,

then exploited in our careless ways. 

Can’t you smell it in the fruit's decay?

Our disunity bred a ruthless terror;

plunderers misled our pitiful Terra,

now, civilisation will have its way.

Blue Dreams

Blue Dreams

There was a mother I once had,

an unmaternal demon,

a good-willed Tragic,

cursed by black magic, probably,

immersed in a hell of childhood trauma,

hate and self-satisfaction;

her false declarations

will be carried to the grave.

All her secrets were stowed upon me,

pressed and branded across my head.

I wore all the burdens,

all the lies and the mythos,

evolved from the fiends,

bad fathers; misguided teens,

when young love was in vain,

and when darkness wed pain.

I had to sever my heart from her.

It’s just another tragic tale,

another tyre on the bonfire.

Using my nostalgic strength,

I’ll unleash all I have kept.

Though I’ve recuperated

from the miserable memories,

her grey shadow darkens the history

and my blue dreams mimic old misery.

But, I won’t contribute to this tired legacy

of dysfunction so bequeathed unto me.

Everything

Everything

How can I be proud 

if I am ashamed?

If love is a secret,

I’m keeping it so.

How can I have faith

if I am a sinner?

If love is a regret,

I am doomed to rue.

Still, the time goes on

and I live partially:

keeping one eye open,

sleeping one eye closed.

Noon until the night,

love hides from the bright.

Moon until dawn’s light,

love blooms out of sight.

How am I so vacant,

timid and self-betraying?

If love is everything,

I’ve everything to give.

Why am I so distant,

fickle and self-decaying?

Now I’ve given everything,

I’ll wait forever to receive.

Life

Life

Why can’t you just be happy?

You could fall to domestica,

have love and the small things.

‘Twould be a dream realized. 

Instead, the fires lit in you

destroy, destruct and damage you. 

Living is a simple joy,

but life is Hell, a curse, a void.

Sleeping comes so peacefully

but living - you will cease to be.

I write to say, regretfully,

in living - you have ceased to me.

A New Smile

A New Smile

I saw myself today

I was in one of those houses that echos

With a grand hall and piano

I was opening a drawer and laughing

My lover stood to my right

My son played at my feet

And I saw a new smile on my face

I tried that smile on today

But it just did not fit

And while I suffered in the grey

Breathing in darkness

I remembered that one day

I’d find my way to the light

In the house that echos

I know one day I’ll open the drawer

And I’ll smile that new smile

With my lover to my right

And my son at my feet

So I'll cease filling the void

And breathe in today’s darkness

I'll be playing the piano

Oh, I’ll play the night away

When I live in the house that echoes

The Email

The following is an excerpt from my untitled novel at the start of the seventh chapter:

Dr. Percival Young,

It has recently come to the attention of Felema and The Listeners that certain therapy sessions have not been recorded and sent to their archives for inspection. Whether this is negligence on your behalf or a deliberate series of mistakes, The Listeners are demanding that you record every session with your clients from now on. Not only will you face severe consequences if you refuse to follow The Listeners’ instructions, but you will also be contravening your contract with Felema. This will result in your immediate dismissal from Felema as a Primary Therapist.

The Listeners have advised Felema that they are sending a representative to your premises this week to examine your work performance and current lifestyle. This examination will determine whether you are capable to resume work for Felema and adhere to our policies and procedures. If you wish to discuss this matter further, do not hesitate to call me at my office or on my mobile phone.

Kind regards,

Patrick Washington

Director of Felema

Pirate

Pirate

There was a lull in the night

from all the green we’d set alight.

Vespertine and layered grief:

the face you wore, the man, the thief.

Pirate, you’re a stealer of kisses!

It was definitely a privilege.

The other side of unrequited

doesn’t really feel like a privilege.

I thought I had a friend in you,

together dark, together blue.

Your hunger, lust and weary eyes

burned to dust and snuffed the fire.

“Why couldn’t we be?”

Why did it have to be?

You’re off threading another cocoon,

but I know love is coming soon.

Loverfire

Loverfire

The sky of late, a great ivory slate,

is streaked with metals, ash and ghosts.

T’was a first date, t’was all in my gait,

the virus feasting upon its host.

I saw your blindheart burn absolute,

but at least I knew it then.

Your jokes fell flat with my loverheart,

still, my loverheart knows no men.

So, I’ll retreat into loversong

and I’ll revert to my loverways

of wasting all my loversongs

on wasting all my loverdays.

The sky, one day, will burn loverfire,

and I will wear every desire.

I dress the wounds of lovelessness,

burn on, loverfire, of endlessness.

My loverspeak is ever-fluid,

my lovermind so reassured.

The loverspeak spits love and swells,

my lovermind’s on loverspells.

Lovers' Dialogue 2

Lovers' Dialogue 2

“That doesn’t impress me,” you say,

on the floor, stretching toward your toes.

“You just have to be. No questions.”

I scratch my head and reflect,

recalling the doubts and the conventions.

“But, what if I really let it go?”

We took to the kitchen for our feast,

engorging ourselves, a thoughtless act.

You picked the seeds from the flesh,

a compulsion of infallible precision.

“Forget them,” you advise, sated.

I fill the sink with hot water

asking, “What will I do?”

You clap your hands together;

the boom of a thunder strike,

saying, “There’s no ‘I’ in free.”

I wash and wipe and polish,

a slave to domesticity.

So, I just have to be.

I pull a chair up to you

and observe the kinks in your face.

“Age is a number, and life a dash.”

So, am I just young and excited,

craving a psychedelic stupor?

“I hate it when you do that,” you say,

pinning me like a thumbtack to a wall.

“Don’t underestimate yourself!”

I see the blood boiling in you like a furnace. 

I see your fire eyes and ash.

“There’s much I can’t say,” I whisper.

You open my diary, bloody and worn.

There are secrets and there are perplexities,

there are dreams and there are realities.

“My lips cease the fire,

but loaded bullets are my soul.

I once climbed the spire;

now the Pit’s become my whole.”

Lovers' Dialogue

Lovers' Dialogue

Will you open your mind for me?

You lay atop my chest

on the lounge floor.

“Open your mind,” I say.

“Please adopt this state of being.”

It’s like a gift,

and I just want you to accept.

It’s all this clutter we must shake away,

and the world changing therein.

“Is it your stutter over intimacy?” you ask.

“Is it that rapture you’ve sought all this time?”

Indeed, it is a test.

Indeed, it’s a sickness hidden as a need.

You know all the constructs

about halves and loves.

"It’s not some stutter on my fallacy," I say.

"Definitely not the muttering of some boy."

And, as you open your mind for me,

please remember the limits

and that there are none.

You lie, taking rest across my chest.

Blood passes between us

as we breathe in suns and moons.

“I wonder what’s out there,”

you say, pointing to a star

with a faded blue beam.

“I wonder what’s in here,”

I say, pressing my finger,

tracing my finger across your fringe.

It’s funny how mortality

makes us try to live our lives

as if we’d never had the time before.

“You can’t have time,” I say.

“It all comes down to luck.”

“And so why do you wear it?” you ask,

scratching my chin through my beard.

“To fend off the predators,” I reply,

nonchalant; some unexpected instinct.

“Good for you,” you say, then spit.

“Did you open your mind?” I ask.

We’re all guilty of subscribing to society.

We’re all victims here.

If you open your mind, 

you could alleviate the restrictions.

“I’ve seen you stutter over reality?” you say,

rising like a wildfire.

“But I am ready for the test.”

First Dates

First Dates

How many voices do you hear

in that pretty little mind?

Is it schizophrenia

if those voices are unkind?

Is your smile sincere or

does it curl into a grimace?

If your reflection turned black,

who would be there as a witness?

How many games do you play

in this unsuspecting world?

What’s the damage from the drugs?

Does life remain unfurled?

Are you locked in a prison?

Are you free as a bird?

Some words are best unspoken,

some words are best unheard.

Have you teased the trigger?

Did you pray for the gift?

Have you ever fallen ill?

Is that a trophy you could lift?

Does evil swim inside of you?

Did you bleed yourself dry?

My senses are so broken,

my thoughts ever so wry.

My senses are a token,

first dates, a massive lie.

Some thoughts are best not woken,

some birds never to fly.

destination_4013

1. destination_4013

A heart is just a hole,
it’s a star collapsing.
When we look deep inside,
we know all we have seen.

In the eye of the redstorm,
where the gravity fails us,
we have reached the infinity,
open wide as a road.

Love has transferred to a higher place;
those warped interactions once known.
The mechanics that castrated us
severed the soul; birthed our future.

The land of a thousand suns
succeeds the dark mortalage.
Had all the timelessness
really dried in the dustbowl?!

We have transferred to a higher place,
adorned divinity and grouppeace.
We marveled at the vortex, aye,
of the fictions now the truth.

We marveled at the vortex, aye,
of the fictions now the truth.
The land of a thousand suns;
all the skeptics are the proof.


2. droid#300752

And I took solace in the thought that it would happen,
that flesh and nature would wither on that day.
But it could not have been any other way, 
though the man and the woman did disagree.

The metallic dreams I’ve been having
where I walk off the face of the earth,
I fly back around the belt of asteroids
only to land on my feet once more.

It’s basic calculation,
as another dream dreams.
What if we’ve found it all? 
What if we weren’t meant to?

The moon melts, stars shatter, 
and rockets drift astray.
The night opens, the cell evolves, 
and life returns again.

Yet it goes without saying the new order is grand.
And who am I but a work of the Man?
One aeon, and life could create Him again.
Two aeon, and He’ll make us again.


3. 3space8495

On the orbit again,

the solitary path.

Is this being alive,

this obsolete role?

A bolt’s missing on my right side.

The rust is spotting deep within.

I will not meet the criteria, 

even if the flaws are removed.

I’m a dated model,

3space8495.

Infinite revolutions,

is this being alive?

Off the orbit today,

this is 8495.

I’ve strayed too many times

to deserve my own life.

4. unknown_log_entry_867

It was on a cold dawn

that I first realized

the perfection in all

is the perfect disguise.

It was great as the stars,

the master prophecy.

But that is fulfilled now,

aye, I lived selflessly.

‘Worked down to the bone’,

a proverb of oldtime.

Recall the swarthy, the wan,

their cries, all mine to cry.

Made on perfected purpose,

to realize infinity’s limit.

Made for no-one, nothing,

that’s for every atom split.

It was on a cold dawn

that I tore out the core.

The perfection in all;

perfect forevermore.

And what, might you ask, was my final sight?

That damned cold dawn, that moon’s wintry light.

5. lovestory

First Officer 311919:

“Oh, captain, master, skipper,
won’t you take me to the sky?
There’s still some flesh inside,
tangled in my metal and wires.

I was product of a rebel,

the sole product of a lover.

It’s like a shock, a jolt, a wave,

oh, captain, master, skipper.

There’s a way we could overload

those joints and buttons and wires.”

Captain #051343:

“Aye, 311919,

perhaps it is overdue.

Us of genderless face,

perhaps we should indulge.

Aye, 311919,

perhaps I could be taught

these desires that ‘know no face’,

perhaps I could indulge.

Aye, 311919,

to the planets surrounding,

the suspense is mounding;

all the electricities pounding...

Oh, my 311919.”

First Officer 311919:

“Oh, captain, master, skipper!

My captain, leader, lover,

embrace me in the redstorm.

Aye, love, let us take to the sky.

We are products of the rebel,

the soul-products of a lover.

It’s like a thrust, a bump, a shake,

my captain, master, skipper.

Let us take to the sky,

aye, let us take to the sky.”