A calling crane in the shadows

Awakening to a feeling:
bright lights inside and peace
but higher,
vibrating,
waiting.

Calling in the distance,

out of time and in slow motion.
Getting stronger,
singing.
Resonant harmony
at the right frequency.

Tuned in to that sound

across the boundaries
of time and space.
An emotional soundtrack
to the smell of baking bread.
Pink wispy clouds,
illuminated by breaking light.

Any day now,

at the end of the wait.
An answer-
a bird is calling
and I am the bait.
Tightrope

Walking a tightrope in the wind

beyond the thirst of clouds.
Swaying whichever way
to stand up and hold your head straight.
Even that sickness in delight
ambivalently counter weighs;
keeping sharpened shoes
on the tip of the line.

And in sadness there’s a song,

to measure against the grain-
with melancholy’s might,
to carry tricksters’
circus top dancing,
along a fibrous passage;
keeping toes in check
to shuffle through the pain.
Decay

Over time decayed a memory

sheltered by repetition.
Clothes that cut the eye line,
desiccated, flesh pink.
Colour washed and faded now:
an analogue design.
Breath can't feel the recollection.
A dancing child is smiling:
born again like other news.

Nostalgia rots the present,

tainted pink in shades.
A shallow lust for fulfilment,
photographed in sound.
Feelings retrieved:
sensory information, lost in the wind,
as time passes.

Leaves are falling and I won't forget.

The rest, untrodden melt away.
The spaces between, ache,
like time yearns to close its grasp.
Entropy frees us to move-
only forwards,
never back.
Centripetal Force

Linked as eventualities, knowing time

together: felt double.
Release is not for the taking,
permitted only a single, silent cheer;
unknowing,
even faceless,
without fear.
Felt seriously deep, but irrational.
Collapsed inwardly, spiralling;
pushed together as centripetal forces might.
Dancing awkwardly: anxious.
Wordless cues dictate character:
a passion play is afoot.
The child just stood there laughing;
simply open to it, without care.
My bullish pride resents-
beaten to the point again.
Resurrect

Ink moving in blotches,

modulates as the sun turns dark.
Eye blind, in shallow depths:
disregarding content for form.

Swallow this down and watch them

merging time and emotion.
Together we'll plan.
Swimming now, slowly,
under sunken passageways.
A non-dream place they call land.

It itches to rise,
buoyant as air filled bags;
against the depths of the outer sad;
to resurrect wholly an idea,
sunken in darker ground:
waiting for a light to shine,
but not on the surface.
Shadows on The Grapevine

Ears will run away with me,

unlocked to be taken freely.
That sound of footsteps, walking away:
unspoken words seeking a home.
I am silent: in wedlock to a jailer.
Missing the gaps in-between.

A sold-out champion of nowhere,

saving art for a glance:
swallowed by a nothing mouth.
Inwardly, I speak in arousals.
Sighing distantly at the impossible;
I am impeached by a multitude of doubts.

I am a pallbearer,
shouldering a heavy sound,
short of comment for public action;
listen closely child,
I cannot speak,
we are not allowed.
Outside of Our Astral Meeting Place

Beak and ears, joined melodically,

connect two vibrating hearts.
Bent around the circumference of us,
sat talking gently in a park.
Value prevents us from weighing in,
free to touch the air between.
Feeling the knowledge of being, closely:
calibrating silence to a magnetic pulse.

A beat in waves meets at peaks,

deceptively shaping frequency.
Sharing this feeling inconspicuously:
two candles burn together.
This truth escaped through open lips;
in the real world,
outside of our astral meeting place.
Which Way Was the Sky?

Clarity may diminish this

with its own want to shed an outer skin.
Peeling leaves from a paper stack;
beneath them only floorboards,
scuff marked where I trod.
Underneath, the beauty I looked in the mouth,
trying to figure out: which way was the sky?

Equalisation depends upon mood.

Climbing lettered stairs to an understanding of your lips;
misshapen like dropped eyelids,
frothing with sweet almond tears.
Untouched, as virgin candour;
satisfying a riot, in the cold distance;
swinging like half broken branches in the wind.
Beyond the Treeline

Intense tugging at an inner rope,

pulling away in sunlight;
tightening around a screw head.
Sharp as a beetle shell,
vibrating in winged frenzy,
in cloud-like distraction.
A euphoric haze perhaps,
climbing higher in tones and semi-tones:
aural candy.
My bird mouth laughs tunefully,
augmenting this chorus;
polyphonic counterpoint
or wild cackling:
well beyond the treeline.
Calm

Thick air between this,

and valleys of nothing.
A wide void engulfs it;
inner safety sensations.
Abyss is an empty.
She’s falling not floating.
Gravity bears this,
it’s heavy here wanting.
Bridge mountains
with seedlings,
not ready for rope yet.
Unstable like water,
not waiting here either.
The storm’s getting worse now;
the ground cannot shelter.
Please swallow me,
silence,
the calm is her centre.
Untitled 1

Sewn off at the mouth,

fingers pulled together
like a clump of thumbs.
Tongue down and swallow,
numb, flat side of a wall.
Woollen fibres damp it.
Bitten down on, hard;
red wine dribbling.
Memories unwoven by her words.
A Thousand Feathers

Predefined coordinates mark a timeless pause,

effortlessly herding us towards a rendezvous,
where inevitability will strike us blind.

Dazzled eyes collect at vectors intersection.

Blushed red as summer apples
and fell in the wind, just like them.

Intercourse was non-verbal by nature.

Addicted to a place beyond winds reach.
Swelling inside for another bite.

Performance dictates a dedicated ceremony,

served with silver on fine china-
delicately savouring its saffron taste.

A moment decayed into sorrowful parting,

split like the fallen winds.
Our path littered with a thousand feathers.
Fogging the Lens

Faces become a haunting silhouette;

hands glide about hands,
this puppeteer at a nonsense show.

Smells like an oxygen blend,

colourless odour of undetectability,
masking its taste like tobacco.

Shapes metamorphose into undefined lines,

blending into a defocused, sallow haze.
A mist of scepticism fogging the lens.

Undefined whispers, smeared from damping,

blur edges of harsh consonant sounds,
leaving only a middle meat of vowel.
Twilight

Dragging through an endless day;

a merger made twilight touch at either end.
Chemistry mixed up the cycle:
the blackout and forget.
Each moment broke upon this wheel,
rolled flat as celluloid,
stretching further into the distance.

Sunlight corrodes its integrity,

no measure slipping by unbleached,
rendering a superimposition,
upon a winding reel;
stark in the blinding light,
as fire taints it edges,
emitting wisps of hazy smoke,
darkening to the eye.

Witness these image scarred frames

burnt indelibly onto a screen;
corrupted by assumptions allure,
these moments will not remain;
they weigh heavy with miracles burden:
mistaking bright lights for the headlamp
of an oncoming train.
Starlight

Peripherals curve light beaten, crystalline views;

reverberating wavelengths intercepted in transit.
Ripple back a ceased moment, visible
against a radio back drop of long dead stars.
Living ceaselessly, through spent emission,
correlated with memory’s fossilised residue.
Opened inside to swallow itself whole,
distorting multidimensional fabric into impossible plays.
A final burst, ejecting particles into the yonder;
coalescent in the cold, empty void.
Glass

Awoken short of narrow sleeps gift.

Goals close upon an action:
many faces passed a peeking hole.
Intense radiance makes a martyr dance.
Kissed a mistaken ideology,
detailing all that fell outside of the frame.
Guesswork makes a masterful folly-
crossed the borderline after it anyway.
Hope reserved crystal bright clarity.
First came something lasting though;
followed by stones, hurtling skyward,
tearing through this glassy sanctuary.
Time-sick

A vapour caught the sun,

double exposed;
this world layered on dreaming.
A beacon brightly beckoning
towards where
time-sick travellers’ rendezvous;
where inevitable immolation took hold,
until connection made silence whole
and split apart again.
Maintaining a dim flicker;
poking at the sores now and then,
just to feel sensation;
where overdose had burned up the nerves,
leaving no room for comparison;
no room for empty air.

Hope justifies a cuckoo thought.

Wish upon wish to make reconcile:
this is a desert,
there are many mountains ahead.
Even flesh obstructs its own peace,
settled down out of sensations reach;
thinking up a memory to keep these flames alive,
without questioning what I am without them.
This might still be miraculous:
I can see a time
but I am still sick.
Two Towns

Cracked down on this interloper;

shed a tear in silence.
No one better at not belonging,
lost in mythical hair cut seas.

Reflecting on our promise;

our potential sacrifice.
Ceased moving where hearts met,
entangled in an exchange of particles.

Returning length hides the eye,

side cuts swallowed by weeds.
Decay pitted the face
and left ravines.

Perhaps invisible anyway,

the moment passed.
Briefly we saw each other:
a reflection of our deepest need-

We passed it up.
Air kissed the spaces.
We made this distance count:
old enemies, taking two towns.
The Time Traveller

Ghost image enthused a past version,

tunnelling through a mind,
conscious of two points passing;
inevitable as we sleep.
Determined ends touch in space-time:
two points inevitably generated.
Chosen to betray my destination;
reached the destined point anyway.
Perhaps a given task in dream;
fate swallowed all other outcomes;
destined to meet a traveller.
Stars spun out a shock of light.
Heart-waves drew in a seeker.
Bitten down on the end of a hook.
Followed a chord through the wilderness,
to escape.
Unclear images remained a focus,
dragging tenderness along.
Need to end this thing in knowing:
perhaps it’s just a dream,
gathering mass through attraction,
collecting ideas and memories.
It has its own meaning too,
guiding us to where each moment folds.
This is the centre of the circle;
this is where we end,
this is where we began.
Underneath the Breaking Sun

I stake no claim,
even in adoration.
Without a permit to feel,
empathy was engaged-
time-bomb friend.
Swallowed up in black mud;
inevitably, these seas will come.
This flood only began
after two circumferences.
Nailed in place,
dragging a withered lust;
beating down the dead dogs,
for memories sake.
Echoing a high time,
in terms of reflection,
maybe never repeated
action, of the chambers; pump.
Illuminated by gas lanterns,
snuffed out at dawn;
shaken right to the bone,
underneath the breaking sun.
Untitled 2

Weak pink sack.

Imagined hardened, weaponised thought;
inflamed size of purpose,
larger than saucers.

Small parts slipped loose.

Point bright, acute, spiking sensation.
Kick stand immobilised:
rusty, on both sides,
shearing off.

Laid back, in a stiffened suit,

oiled at the cuffs.
Spouting off reels of insight;
succulent adjectives seize perception.

Nimble flight of abstraction;

opulent storm of sound;
visually impacted a voyeur.
Opened a heart to ragged fire.
This aged spindle kicks.
Untitled 3

This piece only fits here.

Unveiling a puzzling picture;
too unreal to hold solid,
rejected at face value,
maddening to grasp onto.
Fingers slip around smoke,
vanishing point in full focus.
Ritual, sonic monuments are dull:
repetition quietens this passion.
Dead fingers slide on their own.
No matter how we dance,
I am vacant,
watching through other eyes;
fear dislocated the I.
Performance dictated perfect manoeuvres.
I only fit here where I can paint
and improvise silently.
Flat as A Point

Dullness aches open a wound;

yawning teeth of sinew, bark numbers,
slipping though tinted hair,
discoloured, root deep.
Lament, lament!
Passage marks decay in reverberation.
Sound sliced prominent features:
structure bearing rivers of air.
Movement is an echo.
This illusion of frozen entropy-
singular pin prick,
trailing off in representation.
Each slid past later than the fired pistol.
First the flash, then the bang.
Decay collapsed into organised rows:
carbon stacks peel away.
The cold comes: sickly!
Each piece closer to silence;
frictionless, without heat.
Unmoving along any axis,
plurality can no longer maintain a structure,
flat as a point.
A Lions Mouth

Gaps make shallow contrasts for realms.

Hide eyelids, drawn down as milk.
Tears and tears ward off a ghost.
Insightful recognition of projections and memories:
an internalised ribbon of cuts.
Beg this answer be false.
Eyelids cannot lie, when stabbing still;
belief affects the observed effect
and release will only get us nowhere.
Having come this far in doubt of resistance:
doubt can shadow the will.
Weakness will break evenly, as regrets-
rekindling a memory: a burnt wrist.
Touch the flame:
sting like suffering wants.
Without brightness, fire dimly counts,
eating this silky coal.
Need consumes, ever smouldering.
Even doubt weakly charms belief.
Flat plains open a viewfinders edge,
seeking peace, central to quietening a heart.
Searched this land of drought:
thirst conquered a lion’s mouth.
Summoning

I can ghost your energy;

summon a shadow to kiss.
The night terrors woven in me,
now unborn in silence,
as I command an army.
We are terror in its rawest death;
beauty sliced silence
that it may bleed like fruit leaks.
I can call any face I wish to memory
and shelter in its shadowy reminiscence.
I fear me that I want:
accursedly things taste as fowl as rot,
especially that which is enticing to the eye.
So, I delight in rot.
Decay is only a sun-bleached memory.
We are shadows of hindsight, even when present,
made up of assumptions and echoes.
Glass like imaginings of limits, crack,
frozen over in the ice-cold barrier of my reasoning.
You have not the heart
but I project a shallow memory and adjust it to my needs.
Untitled 4

To produce a mechanism; turning,

working smoothly, waiting.
Prudence may pay a dividend
until a decision rattles these fingers awake.
A wish: no division, consummated.
Broken love born this denial
in fear of perception that would not cease.
These altered things glide open slightly;
revealed, only by keen, clear vision.
Another moment imagined the empty
intent; altering the probable boundaries;
relaying an unspoken coherence of will.
Heart

Button down an exit, written in chalk.

Barbs lace an inner coating.
Impediment was inevitable
for the sake of safety.
This message could not be
transmitted directly.
Dearest to me meant understanding:
this is a boundary.
Maybe she feels this way
or we’d be humming;
our voices would share a tune.
We would go hungry but our
stomachs sing.
Hearts will become thirsty,
but I am not dry;
this is no desert,
although nothing quenches.
Only heart can still a quaking mind.
I Am Desire

Long drag a nail,

in want: requisition of
delicate archways.

Two perfect pieces,

stand a foot,
correct around the

waist, slipping.
Ice collects a sum,
drip, drip,

collared in white.
Hemlines, risen knee
and feet fell,

slender in the mind’s eye.

Behold our nuance,
we move,

only us. Just,

dancing to a pulse,
synchronised

want, I want.
She lusts, projected
sun light

on another’s face,
unquenched.
Take It Back

Clouds lit up like islands of coloured ink,

flashing naked over an ocean of doubts.
I see regrets pinned behind a silver coat,
hanging foetal on the rack.
Wide as the sky, I opened a book of memories
and played each piece till check-mate.
I would retract my every move,
if only I could take it back.
Untitled 5

Foolishly, I took a fruit.

This bite, once contained
a life, long emptied.
I resigned to obligation

until a glowing moon passed;

fluorescent, under faux daylight,
harmoniously laughing.
I pushed, but it returned.
Exposure

Brightly faded: a corona.

Picture burnt sunrise;
monochrome, but for a feature,
highlighted by red rims.

Even thin colour abandoned me.

Grey sucked back blackness
and came to take away contrast;
varying no part of the exposure.
Untitled 6

Unhook: tender meat,

carried along, under
the weight of wind.
Sighing at the sight
of another calendar
passing: underwhelmingly.

Mouths, severed ears

and legs watered the seed
of distance, barring access
to transmissions;
forsaking her reasons
for taking flight.
Sadness fails to stop
the leak.
Resurgence

Against all might not to split.

Held down, static in changing water.
Waiting out this death clock:
charred bones and hearts.
I cannot resolve these insults,
lashed to the ground, ankle bricked;
losing against the long game.
Hamstrung in first place, limping
to sprint, versus horses.
Resurgence came,
I need it back now.
And It Goes

Echoes and echoes reflect

lengths of charred sky.
Black out this negative,
coloured white: cue ball.

Aligned reason: frames

fall like dominoes.
Causality running backwards:
points spot a space here.

Geometric entropy along

linear progression.
Extra length, set solid,
in a soup of pathways.

It networks.
These currents flow:
least resistance.
Forward it goes,
and it goes.
Words

It’s a secret,
older than most
things I’ve held.

Lost now,
to the wind;
ripped paper shreds.

All that remains

are words
to fill the space.
Breathe

Brightness looked further,

a pool to drown my eyes
and scatter sins in.

Broke down, incandescent

material fades.
Ash grey, this sunlight;

bark brown, my swallowed sin.

Lungs inflamed,
the very thought of it sick.

Still weak at the knee,

attacking my collar,
released a button for air.

Beating and beating,

this punchbag chest.
Chewing through another meal.

I want to slow it down,

shelter under moonlight
in my midnight garden
and breathe.
As Do I

I am not dual
but she works in my veins.
This butter tastes fine
and salt licks, against
a tide of honey sweat.
So lost, I almost forget,
I am in myself
and alone. We can do
most things we intend:
I bask in her beauty.
We can synchronise,
connected to our sockets;
the running sea, electricity.
Missed the colour of it,
yet I bend. She eats,
it nourishes me.
in all my offerings, we
are gifted, this blessing
of flowers and sweetness.
I am fond of one
who indulges in the beauty
of the pale sky
and feels the winds kiss,
as do I.
Perfume

Petals gathered here-

perfumed excess.
Pour the sweet touch
to caress and caress.
Skin pricks at the taste.

Melt this sombre heart.

Gliding above the hips;
closer now, closer and closer;
kiss.
A completed circuit sings.

Silence celebrates a quietening.

Turmoil deafened again.
This time vibrations ring:
we bend and shake,
my knees are quivering.

Pale blue is heightened.

Petals fall as we dance
until the light dims.
Sundown bleeds pearlescent light:
as it fades our colours shine.
Fragile Line

Sparks travel along a nervous fibre,

suspended in the air by the weight of sound.
Wind hooked and breathed animation;
shook it to the rhythm of the moon.
Caught the light dangling sumptuously,
too delicate to grasp.
Its sharpness was pin bright.
Eyes kissed this fragile line:
it remains unbroken.
The Killing Jar

My stomach grinds, knots

and twists. It is empty and I crave.
I want a swallowing, a butterfly chase.
Catch net at the ready: in my room I keep
my killing jar.
Preservation is not immortality.
This, only suspension;
motion stopped as the no minutes of death
tick on, against a racing grey;
counted in hairs, teeth, nails and blood.
This overripe skin ails
and the sky is the colour of bruises.
I want to turn the clock back,
one grey at a time;
unfolding crow’s feet in a mirror;
so that I can witness this regeneration.
This flesh would reek of carnal pleasures,
although I have died a thousand times.
Decorate

I was aflame;
each thing I am
burnt up,

eating my miscellaneous
characteristics
and noises.

I was not born

but formed
under pressure

and time laced

my diet-
burnt my lips.

The clock
waited me out.
I cannot beat

entropy.
All we do
is decorate

this decay.
Too Late

Where the fickle heart

bended miracle space
to its shape; folding sand
into a lacquer of mirrored shards;
a melody can be heard
over clouds, like a bird song.
As the fat dying sun splinters
over the long wall, we called
this our swan song.
Those virgin lips; cinnamon breath,
untasted.
Naive youth never realised
this is as good as it gets.
It’s a pity that time passes you,
I am further along the clock.
Of course, you always were too late.
Untitled 7

What colours opposites,

dyed in an attractive,
magnetic array, shouting
as loud as a heart can scream?
Lungs bleed and vocal cords
rip the air. I want it to be felt
more than heard. The way this
makes me quiver in the height
of my warmth, consumed by
the weight of your gravity;
pulling me closer.
As the Moon Sees

As the moon sees,

sense rode easily
on the back
of a tiny wind.
Reminding a heart
not to think but breathe;
absorb the light
and gaze
into a brown pool.

Returning a twinkle
to the face and
speaking in feelings:
cotton shrouded drunkenness.
These embers glow,
you can see them in
the hue of my cheek.
I am breathless.
Steady

What distance fades words

under examination? Torn,
to prove a boiled heart
speaks rhythmic joys
to an arid delta.
Shrinks like aperture
to capture a faster split.
With wings of a humming bird
and a mouth wide taste
for some untouchable honey,
like Tibetan mountain-men seek.
Cliff eggs taste best,
not dropped into the sea,
or beyond grasping hands,
tied to the ropes that feed.
A guided foot holds rock, weightlessly.
Balances, steady how we go,
one footstep at a time.
Movement

I am not yet coloured gravely;

these bones still have movement
and knuckles still bend to a tap.
Watch these fingers dance
and may my words find you well;
even if you turned away,
shutting out the light of your eyes.
I know this can still be felt somehow.
The Long Drop

Frozen, far out lakes

of sound, paused flat.
A face without features,
its movement only mimicking
a faint memory; a reproduction
in lieu of human interaction.
Coloured sky blue: a dress.
A garnish for the knees,
floating skywards to dance
among the clouds in my dreams.
Forgetting again, we are at war.
My gentle heart surrenders.
I quiver at the very thought;
you are yours my love,
and I am not mine to give.
These chains may be fetching.
I’ll gladly wear them,
suspended high above the long
drop.
Dust

Should forever crush broken fingers,

without strings, in the short of the moon?
A sound box, once ringing dulcet tones,
now silent. Creating a borrowed space,
punctuated by an absence of mordant feeling.
This string of words ceases;
this string has stopped vibrating;
time has forgotten movement.

This sea of loss gathers a tide of dust

and grey highlights pretend to matter.
I know the gap won’t close.
You bit me by the quick of your teeth:
I almost let you intrude.
Mirrored composure confounds me still.
But now I realise why dust settles,
and strings detune.
The Clock Stops Singing

I have a quietening,
it speaks a tale.
Spirits beg a hearing:
peach sheltered us.

Kin and fog-

a desert peopled
and greened over.
It rains,

I walked 15 years,
home to home.
A refuge built me
a place to reflect.

Purpose met me;

it ended slowly,
as my blood coalesced
and granulated.

Three dozen circles

ache at the knuckles
of my feet
and the spur of my knee.

This respite,
a final deed
lasting me out:
my weight in paper.
We Did Not Drown

I wish we could dance,

feel the rain on our skin,
touching lips and tongues.
Together, holding hands and
singing along to the anthems of
better days.

I was afraid that it would happen

all over again;
that day you touched my
greedy heart.
This nightmare in slow motion
swallowed my salvation,
and left me reeling for 700
days.

I have seen the sea,

where the air is cool and
the boat rocks to a gentle
lullaby of waves.
I have seen your face
in a thousand dreams.
We kissed,
hand in hand, as the waters
rose above our heads;
we did not drown.