1.
In
formation we share: In
tuition we learn: Indifferent
we part: 2.
back
to top
An
expression she has borrowed The
dull blade drags as it a
body with a dog's head a
head with a dog's body With
scalpels they rewrote the gospels Trepan
culture, Karma sutured From
the local to the general Did
we slip the bonds of angels? Insanity
did Kubla Khan It
cried all night, it screamed for solace It
hated love and hated nature She
horrifies herself with thoughts of her degeneration She
terrifies herself with thoughts of something she is missing
I
prodded Thai chicken about my plate with a fork Her
voice was soft but her words were blades There
are no bones in the heart, so it cannot be truly said to break.
We
mapped the pattern Over
a map of the town, With
a scale distated Led
us to the inevitable And,
truth to tell, Confucius
say: Paradise
is there for people like us,
In difference we meet:
And pass quickly down the ranks
Of soldier-straight rituals
Created by the blindness
Of compromise.
The transitory moments
Of blunting one's sharp edges
On the blank wall created
By compromise.
Dumb shows of careless reflex
That have replaced our passions
And narrowed all our vistas
With compromise.
Cold husks and fading shadows
Moving ever more distant
Trying to relearn a life
Without compromise.
By elegance touched, passing through the wet
hamburger
Walls of female castle once invaded by the
heads of father's state.
Eyes wide and mouth stretched by forces beyond
knowledge
The tabula rasa blinks once, twice; ropes of
twisted flesh
Coiling in final acknowledgement of the fact
of the occasion
And of the walls that will never house its
like again.
3.
Putting on the dress of sorrow
she studies her reflection
in the mirror of her childhood
and thinks of twenty reasons
for staying in tonight.
flits across her gray complexion
and she wonders if the child could
have survived so many seasons
by playing in the light.
4.
We learned to speak by listening to the words
That flowed from the darkness outside to the
light within.
Taking grammar from the heart and syntax from
the soul
We opened our minds and let it in.
back to top
5.
She carves her secret name
across the ribs that reach
around the heart that once
beat for her alone.
spells out the letters of a code
that the heart read long ago
but the ribs only just registered.
6.
a dog with a head's body
moves in silent shadow
perpetual enigma
unplanned, extempore
cutting lines of sight
with its image, not meaning.
knows no philosophical boundary
indelicate proposal
rhetorical, elliptical
drawing enemy fire
with its shadow, not substance.
is finally denatured
ridiculous misconception
unwelcome, unbidden
making apocryphal stories
with its silence, not words.
7.
Their leeches bled us of our faith
Drew our blood, let science in;
Bloodless shells we cried for mercy
Pagan shrines to insulin.
Lumbar puncture stigmata
Broken altars, broken idols
To autoclave automata.
Our wounds are read and understood.
Their practice did not make us perfect,
It only taught us to be good.
Did we build our promised land?
Anaesthesia, cracked amnesia,
Hippocrates to guide our hand?
Learn to fall, forget to fly?
In Grays' anatomy found our scriptures,
Heart beats to set watches by.
Find echoes of our distant past
Vexed to nightmare by a CATscan
Ether and Elastoplast.
8.
It took no comfort from our nurture,
It never seemed to understand.
We raised our game and fed it virtue,
It raised its head and bit our hand.
Its hands were tiny fists of rage.
We gave it love, we gave it learning,
It saw our kindness as a cage.
It wanted us to understand
We raised our standards, showed it mercy.
It raised its head and bit our hand.
9.
She terrifies herself with thoughts of journeys
never taken
Of chances she's forsaken
And time it thunders on just like a train that
missed a station
On the platform no one's waiting
She terrifies herself
With the thought of dying alone.
Her moral degradation
Her dreams of love and happiness have only
made her bitter
And beneath all the glitter
She horrifies herself
But never goes home alone.
Of frogs she could be kissing
And mister wonderful is late, perhaps he isn't
coming
The clock is always running
She terrifies herself
That's why she cannot be alone.
10.
The way she looked at me that night,
Mascara spider-lashes fringed with tears,
In her eyes I saw my failings,
In her eyes my reflected fears.
I never realised we had travelled that far down
a road that ended there
In that room.
And knew that it was over.
Just as I would never eat the chicken,
I would never kiss those lips again.
She tore raw holes into my self-denial
I listened to her, heart beating too hard
It ended there, I saw it die.
11.
Jimmy had a whitey
And threw up in eight
Neat piles of broccoli-
rich sputum.
And drew it up on a four
By four grid and super-
Imposed it
Taking the cardinal points
Suggested by the rank-
est mounds.
By the largest floret
We contrived a catrastrophe-
Graph which
Conclusion that we
Had smoked far too much Mary-
Jane for words.
12.
The guy in the bar
Knew none of the words
To the Blur song on the
Juke box.
He couldn't play pool
To save his life and
Got hammered by the
Guy who just liked
'On Your Own'
But didn't feel the need
To demonstrate it.
13.
It looked like an angel to me
In the half-light
But by 100w
It looked pallid and dead.
Lots of things.
But how many of them are actually about me?
14.
We explored the heavens together
Never seeing the face of God
Nor hearing the music of the spheres.
So why can we only find it briefly
In each other’s bodies?