Editing at Midnight

A flick of the slick knife
cuts away the wheeze of clinging clauses
and the whirling worlds of wordy wonders
are slashed with a snickettysnack chop chop
into a pile of well ordered ideas
dropped with a thud onto a page.

The truncated stubby ends of sentences heal
under the crack of fresh mint full stops
free from the granulous gangrene of verbosity.
With no bombastic ballast the words go
flap-flap-flapittyflap and soar away
into the horizon of a new thought.

The abandoned ideas flip away
and flop into the dark corner in your head
where they gyre and spiral like
chickens with their heads cut off.
Tick turns to tock as they wait for the
clunk to click into a new beginning.

Outlines

Perhaps the world would be better in black and white.

The colour dripped out,
the landscape scrubbed with acid
to get out those nitty-gritty stains.

Spotless.

Sterile.

Simple.

The imaginary lines touch at the imaginary horizon.

A breakdown of
all that you believe in and
all that you are
into sharp angled shapes.

Meaningless.

Isolated.

There can be no sunset in grey.

The Temple at the Corner

Before stepping over the threshold of the temple,
I take off my half-baked sartreian ideas
along with my slippers and leave them
at the corner where the old flower-seller sits.

My bare feet make no sound on the naked stone.
(The questions of skeptics and
the pockmarks of history
have worn it equally smooth.)
I indulge in a game of quick hopscotch
across the thin line of belief.
The air smells different on either side.

The goddess seems unfazed by my usual offerings;
I suppose even goddesses must get bored.
I make do with the warm smile
on the flower seller’s crinkled face.
She asks me if I want flowers in my hair;
she knows I always shake my head in reply.

A little boy delightedly tugs at the bell rope.
The sonorous clanging reverberates in my head
and touches a childhood memory.
It has the comforting ring of the familiar -
the sound of those things that never change.

Scars

They cut through your skin of innocence that night.
You crawled out naked and raw, the air keen in your lungs,
cold and throbbing with the promise of unconquered dawns.
Your soul burned in the red-hot heat of reality;
you ripped off the scabs with impatience.
Those scars are your story. You wear them with pride.

Fix

The television is on.
Juices pump in your brain
as you play god,
blinking lives out of existence.
The perfect fix at the end of a hard day.

Blink.
Human tragedy stretched out on the widescreen -
the chattering fire of cameras and questions.
Loss battles the chance of being heard.
Blink.
The love of your life has gone out
for a commercial break but will be right back.
Don’t go anywhere.
Blink.
History is being made
as numbers jig across the screen
independent of the lives they belong to.
Blink.
Love and lust exchange meanings in the perfect unreality.
Guns and sex melt into each other so fluidly
that you are bored. You’ve seen it all before.
Blink.
The talented Mr.Chuck Norris
just snapped a guy’s neck
with his legs. So cool.
Blink.
howdoyoufeel?whatdoyouthink?whatareyougoingtodo?
he feels nothing but the weight of guilt
and the phantom corpse still cradled in his arms.
Blink.
Some stranger caught a UFO on camera.
He will no longer be laughed at. You will forget
the happiest moment of his life the next time you
blink.
Poverty. Disease. War. Disaster.
The world is going to end unless YOU change it.
Make a tax deductible donation TODAY to -
blink.
The eyes had been starved empty.
The light had faded out slowly
again and again and ag-
Blink.

Cheer up, the sun’s gone out

Cheer up, the sun’s gone out -
your apocalyptic vision may just be true.
‘Tis not gonna light up again, don’t you pout
I know how much you really want it not to.

A couple of hours is all it’ll take.
To everything you’ve ever loved, say bye-bye -
the first to go will be your secret soul ache
and every memory that made you cry.

The sea will rise and take your life away,
you’ll never have to care about it all again.
The fire will burn those bills you could not pay,
the dreams you lost, trust you could not reclaim.

Gone will be every desire you dared to caress -
an empty endless night unfurls at your heel.
Your voice alone will echo in the darkness,
but gone will be every wound you refused to let heal.

But if you are willing to brave another day,
like us, look to the east with hopeful eyes.
Be who you thought you could be, don’t turn away,
the sun wakes slowly, but surely it will rise.

Dawn breaks with pompous righteous grace,
claiming to right all the wrongs you’ve done.
It will put everything back in its place
so you can take back your mistakes one by one.

Why yes, this is my first attempt at rhyme. Why you ask?

Wish You Were Here [edited]

The world ebbs and flows
as time trickles
like sand between my toes.
Moments crushed underfoot.
Forgotten.

Wish you were here
to share this now
breathe the wind
and feel the noise
hide this moment
in your smile
let it shine
in your eyes -

Hush.

Let the wind whip away
the unsaid words.
Breathe. Live. Be.
Becoming can wait,
and so can tomorrow.
The fisherfolk are heading out to sea;
today, they cast their nets
for happiness.

Her Name Was Sadness

Speed written with minimal editing.

Sad child,
you know they will never be happy.
The world is not going to become a better place -
it will rip itself apart
piece by piece,
and you will just stand aside and smirk
and say I told-you-so.
You will see the brave falling -
those foolish idealists
who thought they could make a difference
if they tried,
if they cared.
The egotists.
The nihilists.
Death takes all.
And you will stand by its side
smiling your sad smile
watching them go -
pass through the gate,
or into the white light,
or into non existence,
or whatever they believe in.
You will see
the wrenched scream,
the bleated plea,
the silent prayer,
the brave smile,
all with the same indifference.
You tried telling them.
They did not listen.
They scorned you.
They tried to ignore you.
But today you do not laugh at them.
You do not preach
or taunt.
You know that they have something
that you never had.
You know that they had life.
You smile
not with victory,
but with sadness.

Her Name Was Happiness

Sunshine pours out her eyes
and loops ’round her feet.
Madness like a cur follows
at her heel – yapping and nipping
at the dirty rainbow -
stained with the laughter of an old friend -
trailing from her shoulders.
Its frayed edge unravels
leaving small puddles of memories.

Dreamless and lost.

She wanders the streets of the world,
looking into the eyes of strangers,
a bowl loudly clanging by her side -
empty but for a few smiles,
a left over piece of love.

A crow caws his hoarse song
and stars appear – like hand prints
across the faded wallpaper of the sky.
Her eyes dart about quickly -
no one is looking.
Her heavy hips sway and her blistered feet
move to the music only she can hear.
She dances softly into the twilight.

Courage.

She knew.

Her body had rotted from the inside.
The disease – the medicines – the doctors -
had done all they could.
The smell of disinfectant peels off the floor
and creeps up the faded green walls.
The heat sits heavily -
swirling with the fumes of melancholia
and the pity of strangers that trickles in
through the half opened door.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

A moan scrabbles at the back of her throat.
The tasteless food claws its way back up
out of a body throbbing with defeat.
She lies on the sterile white sheets
like a piece of crumpled paper
that has been folded the wrong way
too many times.

Her eyes – glazed with acceptance
flicker – towards the door.
Her granddaughter carries a bunch of fake
flowers and worried guilt
like a stone around her neck.
The woman smiles at the girl.
Her face – crinkling, wrinkling, folding -
“It’s going to be alright” she says.